The Golden Chain
Cheon-yeong's voice softened to a murmur.
"Have it ready within a fortnight. If you need more time, tell Hee-yeong. Bring goods in kind, and I will change them for rice."
"Yes, yes..."
"You may take your leave."
When Cheon-yeong rapped the low table three times, the guest flinched and rose. He bowed to her three times, then retreated backward, step by step.
The doorkeepers opened the door, and Hee-yeong was waiting outside. Her painted red lips split sharply into a smile.
Before their eyes could meet, Cheon-yeong dropped her gaze to the table. Count the grains of rice. Count them meaninglessly, and the door would close soon enough.
Cheon-yeong's body toppled sideways.
"Divine Maiden."
"I'm tired."
The woman nearest her caught Cheon-yeong as naturally as breathing. While the others cleared the table and prepared the bedding, she stripped away the uncomfortable shaman's robes as well.
Once she was in comfortable clothes, Cheon-yeong looped her arms around the woman's neck and mumbled.
"It's hard."
"Is it?"
"It's hard."
"I know."
"I want to stop."
The child's voice was terribly small, but the woman heard every word. She had been rocking Cheon-yeong gently, soothing her — then she held the child tight.
"So do I."
The breath she let out was indistinguishable from a sigh.
Beneath a skirt cut unusually long, thick golden chains bound both of the child's ankles.
Hanging from the woman's neck, Cheon-yeong glared with bitter resentment at the chains trailing all the way to the floor. She knew, with perfect clarity, who held the other end.
If knowing precisely whom to resent was this child's misfortune — then it was a misfortune.
Director Hong Il-beom stared for a long time at the shot of Cheon-yeong gazing into the camera from Ji-sook's arms. No matter how hard he looked, he could find nothing to correct. A small smile touched his face.
The cinematographer and the assistant director, who had rushed over the instant they heard the call, were equally awed.
"We could lift this frame as-is and use it for the poster. The figures standing in the gap of the sliding paper doors, the room behind them kept dark to throw the characters into relief."
"If the gold chain trailing from her ankle connects visually into that dark room, it'll be even better."
"That's good, PD Seo. Write it down somewhere before you forget."
The sight of Cheon-yeong — who had just been browbeating and driving an adult far larger than herself — now clinging to Ji-sook like a child throwing a tantrum, left a peculiar impression. In particular, the way she let her arms hang loosely around Ji-sook's neck, her face resting on the woman's shoulder as she stared straight ahead — the gaze was cynical, and yet somewhere in it there was a desolate sorrow.
Joseon Secret Royal Inspector was fundamentally a comedy, and the marketing would sell it as a comic action romp. But any audience member who saw that look in her eyes would feel a flicker of confusion, and with it, a fierce curiosity.
"Okay."
Lee Su-a's first shoot was over. Without a single NG.
Gwon Du-il, who had known it would go this way, clapped his hands and gathered everyone's attention.
"Great work, everybody! The snack cart's in, so grab yourselves a cold drink. Today's on Lee Su-a!"
Grateful cheers poured out, as they inevitably would.
The snack cart was stocked with every kind of coffee for a caffeine boost, of course, but also traditional drinks — plum tea, chrysanthemum tea, sweet rice punch, cinnamon punch. The snacks, too, leaned traditional: sweet rice studded with nuts and jujubes, honey pastries, rice cakes.
The staff lined up to collect their drinks and snacks. With the set in such high spirits, it was only natural that praise would rain down on the person most responsible.
"I'd heard the stories, but seeing it on set? She's no joke. I thought she was a real shaman."
"I went to a fortune-teller at the start of the year for a New Year reading, and she was exactly like the mudang I saw then. That thing shamans have in their speech and their faces — that, I don't know, that vibe? It's identical, I swear."
"Does she actually have a little of the real thing...? Plenty of celebrities do, you know."
"Ah, no wonder I felt a chill during the shoot. Don't tell me...?"
While the staff chattered, half in earnest and half in jest, a more serious mood hung over the cluster of actors.
Park Min-hyuk knocked back a mouthful of cold sweet rice punch and heaved sigh after sigh.
"I got completely steamrolled. It wasn't even a long scene, and I lost count of how many NGs I racked up. What if the director never calls me again?"
"You'll do well in the other scenes. There's still plenty of shooting left."
Ye Na-ri, who understood that feeling all too well, pushed a honey pastry toward him in consolation. Jo Yong-jin, sitting with them, summoned an enormous amount of courage and offered a clump of sweet rice.
"What did it feel like? Being steamrolled, I mean..."
"Hold on — Yong-jin, you sat next to me to pick up tips, not to comfort me?"
"Uh, well... a bit of both..."
"You're too honest!"
Park Min-hyuk laughed heartily, then answered in earnest.
"I memorized the script until I could recite it in my sleep, knowing I was going into a Hong Il-beom picture. Especially after I saw Su-a's acting at the table read — I thought, oh hell, I'm in deep trouble, and I practiced with one goal: don't screw up. But then... the door opened, and in that lavish room, Cheon-yeong was the only thing my eyes locked onto. My mouth just... stopped working."
Even thinking back on it, it was a strange thing. Cheon-yeong's room had been decorated lavishly specifically to cow the "guests" who entered. And yet Park Min-hyuk had felt overwhelmed not by the room, but by Cheon-yeong herself.
"At first I managed to keep the lines going somehow, but the moment our eyes actually met — that was it. My breathing, my dialogue, everything fell apart. If I hadn't prepared as hard as I did, I swear they would've torn me a new one and thrown me off the set."
"When you say 'that was it'... what do you mean, exactly?"
"Hmm. How do I even explain this... An actor is supposed to put on the character like a costume and step onto the stage, right? But it felt like I'd been dragged up there stripped naked — character, costume, all of it gone. Just me."
In a way, it might have been that he simply hadn't immersed himself in the character properly. Not that his pride would ever let him say so.
Park Min-hyuk fudged the rest. Jo Yong-jin, who had been thinking back to what it had been like during The Master's Medical Log, asked again.
"Was it the feeling that you couldn't see a single camera around you?"
"Ah! Yes, that's it. That's exactly what it was. Forget the cameras — the other actors, the staff, even the background went blurry, and Cheon-yeong was the only thing I could see. Really... Aigoo, I get chills just thinking about it. And it's not like I was possessed or anything."
Park Min-hyuk scrubbed at his goosebumped arms, and Ye Na-ri added her own account.
"I know that feeling. Ji-sook was stationed closest to Cheon-yeong, watching the guest. While we were standing by it was fine, but the moment they called action and Cheon-yeong opened her mouth, my eyes just... snapped to her. Like I wasn't supposed to be looking at anyone else. Like I had to look at Cheon-yeong."
"Wow, okay, I'm actually starting to get a little scared? Is that even possible through acting?"
Without meaning to, Park Min-hyuk turned his head to find Su-a. Ye Na-ri and Jo Yong-jin did the same.
Lee Su-a was talking with the director and the actors she'd be working with in the next scene. She was the only child there, and her looks were striking enough on their own — but she didn't have that same magnetic pull she'd had a moment ago.
Proof that the gravitational force they'd felt during the shoot had been entirely deliberate.
"Na-ri, Yong-jin — hang in there."
At Park Min-hyuk's pitiable pep talk, Ye Na-ri and Jo Yong-jin nodded with grim resolve. They were the two who would have to face Cheon-yeong the most. And Jo Yong-jin, as the lead, absolutely could not afford to be overwhelmed by her.
"I'll have to increase my practice hours."
"Same here."
The two of them chewed their rice cakes and quietly burned with determination.
I wouldn't say my acting experience is particularly varied. I haven't been in many productions to begin with, and the one film where I had a lead role collapsed mid-shoot.
I've paid to do plenty of one-person plays, but that counts as a lot of experience, not a variety of it. My on-set experience, likewise, has been sparse and monotonous.
Even so, I had a pretty good idea why these adults were glued to my side, carrying on like this.
"Su-a, sweetheart~! You've read the script, so you know that everything Auntie and Uncle say and do to you is just acting, okay~? So you mustn't be scared of us~?"
"Uncle and Auntie want to be really, really good friends with our Su-a~ Baek-yeong and Hee-yeong are veeeery wicked people, but we're not~"
Choi Seo-rin, playing Hee-yeong, and Ahn Cha-young, playing Baek-yeong, beamed with aggressively sunny innocence, their voices pitched into a peculiar nasal coo.
These two characters were the main villains of Joseon Secret Royal Inspector, the ones who subjected Cheon-yeong to ongoing abuse. And the next scene they were about to shoot would show just how thoroughly the two of them had starred in Cheon-yeong's wretched past.
So they were, in their own way, advertising their harmlessness — to make sure I wouldn't be frightened or traumatized during the shoot.
It was funny. It was also a rather desperate sight...