A Reason to Prove
‘Hmm, was it before or after Emma Stewart's bodyguard days? Let's set the search area to LA or New York for now.’
Armed with a small hint from the fire captain, Kang Chang-hoon immediately began digging through social media, prioritizing places where Hollywood and Broadway existed.
‘Tsk... I don't even know his real name, so this is a shot in the dark.’
Truthfully, he had no idea what to even type. Fine — brute-force search it was.
‘Honestly, he's handsome by our standards, so he'd have to be by theirs too, right?’
He added keywords like handsome and hot guy to the search, then started combing through MyTube for something else. LA was a place where massive wildfires broke out on a regular basis, after all.
He figured he'd get lucky with one of these videos eventually — and then, watching one, Kang Chang-hoon stiffened and leaned his head close to the monitor.
"...Huh?"
He had found Yoon Jae-i in the unlikeliest of places.
"Wow, Jae-i. You used to do this?"
"Do what?"
With so many past jobs under his belt, nothing came to mind. As he stood behind the team leader watching the screen, the other staff quietly gathered around too.
The article attached a candid, split-second capture: a fire captain being interviewed about the wildfire, with Yoon Jae-i and Oliver passing by in the background.
Soot smeared his face and his turnout gear was filthy, but his looks were so striking that he was recognizable at a glance.
The image quality was poor enough that the communities were up in arms over whether it was really him — but to the man himself, there was no mistaking it.
"Ah."
It hadn't even been that long since he'd quit, and they'd dug it up this fast. At Yoon Jae-i's short murmur, the people around him erupted instead.
"No way, you were a firefighter?"
"That explains why you're so good at putting out fires."
"If it was LA, the pay must've been great, right?"
Yoon Jae-i glanced sideways at Han Jin-woo. Their eyes met, and Han Jin-woo drew a cross in the air — it didn't leak from our side.
‘I suppose I should be glad it wasn't that incident.’
Frankly, now that his job was out, it was only a matter of time before that incident surfaced too.
Would the bereaved families be all right, having painful memories dredged up again because of him, from so far away? A flicker of worry crossed his mind, but Yoon Jae-i let out a hollow breath. What had happened had happened.
"Still, of all the photos. Couldn't you find anything more flattering?"
Well, might as well enjoy this. He'd already drawn far more attention than expected through Along Along, and he'd anticipated that some piece of his past would come to light eventually.
"Why? I think this one's great."
"I was still a rookie back then."
"Wow, so you'd barely started the job when you went through all that?"
"Yes. It happened to be the worst wildfire in LA history, apparently. I nearly died from exhaustion."
Yoon Jae-i laughed at the memory. His competence had earned him a fast track out of rookie status, but a hellish ordeal was still a hellish ordeal — the smell of smoke hadn't left his nose for weeks.
"Alright! I have a million questions, but let's get the shoot started first."
"Ah, yes!"
At the team leader's call, the set sprang back into motion, and Yoon Jae-i moved to stand before the camera.
"Hyung. Our side is planning to run a verification article too — that's fine, right?"
"Go ahead."
"If you have any good photos, send them over."
"Hmm..."
People had always taken pictures of him; he'd never been one for selfies. He didn't do social media either... Yoon Jae-i rummaged through his messaging app first.
His father's profile picture was still a photo of Yoon Jae-i in the black firefighter's uniform.
"Will this do?"
"Wow... Da-hyun's going to love this."
"The marketing team leader?"
"She's completely obsessed with you, hyung. I heard her singing the 'uniform' song the other day."
"Really?"
She'd seemed so brusque when he'd gone to greet her... Well, either way, it was a good thing — she wasn't working there just to earn a paycheck, but out of genuine affection for the agency's actors.
Having sent the photo, Yoon Jae-i threw himself into the shoot.
"Oh."
"You're really good at taking direction."
The staff, expecting awkwardness from a rookie, marveled at how polished he was. The team leader sat in front of him, watching with a fond smile. He'd been cast half out of fan devotion, but he was even better than expected.
"Let's ease into it."
"Sure."
"For the interview, we naturally have to start with Along Along. Taking on such a substantial supporting role so soon after your debut — how did it feel? What mindset did you bring to the filming?"
"I knew I'd been handed a huge opportunity. Having stepped into a position beyond my merits, my first priority was not to be a burden to the people around me."
Even as he answered, Yoon Jae-i paused between phrases to make the photographer's job easier, shifting his posture and angle. The photographer gave a satisfied grin and a thumbs-up.
"And... I needed time to learn the historical genre from the ground up."
"Don't tell me you'd never watched a single period drama before?"
"I hadn't. I was in America, after all, and I hadn't had many chances to watch Korean dramas."
"Wow, so you delivered that performance without ever having seen the medium?"
"I did some last-minute cramming."
What earned Yoon Jae-i such acclaim in Along Along was, once again, his acting.
How could a rookie command such perfect period-drama intonation? Critics noted his pronunciation and vocal delivery were rock-steady, without a single waver.
"How do you interpret Prince Muhwi, in your own words?"
"He has sociopathic tendencies. A spoiled child. He knows exactly what he's done wrong, but has no intention of changing. He wants to be loved, but won't lift a finger to earn it. It's the feeling of forcing your own values down someone else's throat? And the only person who never did that was Jung Yeon-hwa."
"That's a brutal assessment."
That was the impression Yoon Jae-i himself had formed. He let Prince Muhwi's emotions rise to the surface for a moment — and the photographer, watching through the aperture, flinched in surprise.
"But having actually become him, what I felt first was frustration. I wasn't always like this. You made me this way, so why is it all suddenly my fault? I suppose he's a wounded child who still can't escape his memories of the past."
"Let me be honest with you — I liked Prince Muhwi more than the Crown Prince."
"So you like the bad ones."
The chill that had settled over the room melted away in an instant. Yoon Jae-i didn't just answer the questions; he tossed out jokes, keeping the interview relaxed and easygoing.
"What kind of project do you want next? A drama, a film, or maybe a different line of work entirely...?"
"Anything I can start shooting soon. Drama schedules are shorter than film shoots, and this one moved fast, but I was lucky to work with wonderful people, so I have no complaints."
He hadn't even started filming the movie yet — where had he heard that from? The team leader underlined that section. Something to rework in the edit later.
"Speaking of other lines of work... that photo from your past just broke, didn't it?"
"Ah, yes."
"Why did you quit? You had public recognition, and in LA the salary would've been substantial."
The truth is, I became afraid of fire. If not for that, he might have lived the settled life his parents had hoped for. It had been the longest he'd held any job since the military, and there had been a real sense of accomplishment. Yoon Jae-i laughed, the sound deflated.
"I'm just not the type to stay in one place for long. I tried my hand at plenty of things before firefighting."
"Including your time as Emma Stewart's bodyguard, then...?"
"Yes. I did that briefly before I was assigned to the fire department."
"Quite the résumé... What else was there?"
"Try digging around and find out."
"You're a hard man to pin down. Fine — I'm counting on the netizen detective squad to fill in the rest of this interview for me."
The photographer declared there was nothing left to shoot and stepped back, ceding the floor to the team leader.
"It's been reported that you're the half-brother of idols Yoon Do-jun and Yoon Do-hwa. How did you take the news, Jae-i?"
"I didn't know I had half-siblings either. I only found out by chance that my father was battling illness, and I came to Korea on my way to see him..."
"That must have been bittersweet."
"...It was. Back then I had no idea they were idols. People were taking pictures of them, so I just thought, are they SNS celebrities or something?"
Leaving out the tangled details of his American family situation, Yoon Jae-i said only that it had weighed on him — they were still his blood, his younger siblings, and heading straight home the moment the funeral ended hadn't sat right with him.
"The twins seemed to enjoy having me around too, so I thought I'd stay a little while. I'd just quit the fire department, after all, and I had nothing waiting for me."
"So you were originally planning to return to the States right away?"
"I was. The twins gave me a proper tour of Korea, too."
"A good older brother. And thanks to him, we get to have the actor Yoon Jae-i — I consider us fortunate."
"Thank you."
"Then let me ask — why did you decide to become an actor? Was there a particular reason?"
Yoon Jae-i gazed into the air for a moment. He wanted to feel again the happiness he'd known during the filming of The Child.
Now? Hard to say. Filming is still fun. The sensation of erasing myself and becoming someone else was new. But there's something more primal than that...
‘I didn't want to run anymore.’
From the fear of cameras, from the old voices that had tormented him. He'd overcome his camera phobia, sure — but he still thought about the past.
Cho You-kyung's words had struck a small chord in his heart too. As Yoon Jae-hee, he had set records no one else could touch. So what might he accomplish as Yoon Jay?
I want to test my limits one more time. I want to be acknowledged. Even if the people who once hurt me point their fingers at me again, it won't touch me now. I want to stand tall and declare that I was Yoon Jae-hee all along.
"A reason came up — I have something to prove."
"Prove? Like what?"
"That's a secret."
"Not even a tiny hint, just for me?"
"I'll leave you with the mystery."
Yoon Jae-i broke into a wide grin. Ah, we should have gotten a shot of that. The team leader clicked his tongue in regret.
Having seized the narrative, marketing team leader Lee Da-hyun papered the portals with positive articles, and public opinion turned almost overnight.
The excessive reverse viral campaign fizzled out the moment his past came to light — if anything, people felt his Rising Star status in their bones. So the reactions really do flood in, huh. It had become a moment of confirmation.
The moment Yoon Jae-i officially confirmed he had worked as an LA firefighter, some people couldn't sit still. They set out hunting for new photos from his past.
"Well, well. So he had a fine profession."
"You saw the article, Director?"
"I did. And even without hearing it from you, someone makes sure I hear everything."
He meant Cho You-kyung. Director Lee Young-chang chuckled. He had welcomed Yoon Jae-i's return to acting with open arms, guarded the live broadcast of Along Along like a fortress, and cheered on his new beginning.
The Yoon Jae-i he sensed was, once again, excellent. More than twenty years away from acting, and his form hadn't dulled one bit. Talent never goes anywhere.
"I still think of you as a child, you know."
"I'll take that as a compliment to my purity."
"Haha! Right. Let's head in."
The restaurant Yoon Jae-i had been brought to was one he'd visited once before, while working security for Cho You-kyung.
At some point, Director Lee Young-chang had wanted to bring him here and feed him something delicious.
As Yoon Jae-i moved to enter the restaurant, he caught sight of a familiar license plate across the street.
‘That looks like the CEO's car.’
Or was he seeing things?