The Premiere of Twins
Today was the day that Twins was revealed to the world for the very first time, at Cannes.
Interest came pouring in — it was the new film by Yoon Kang-yeon, the acclaimed director whose craft had already been proven by a Palme d'Or win. The Lumière Grand Theater was packed wall to wall, the crowd murmuring in a low, restless hum. That polite rumble faded away on its own as the theater slowly sank into darkness.
In that total darkness, it was sound that announced the film's beginning.
"AAAAGH!!!"
While the production and distribution companies rolled by, a mother's scream filled the theater to its rafters — a raw, ear-splitting howl that went on for several seconds. When the screaming finally broke off, the cry of new life rang out in its place. The screen stayed pitch black until the newborn's wailing had subsided.
Then, with a sudden snap, the screen lit up — split exactly in half. A thick black line ran straight down the center, as if a single person had been sliced cleanly in two. The newborn's face and movements, divided across the two frames, were identical, as though they were one and the same. Only the backgrounds were different. On the left, the baby cried atop a pristine white bed; on the right, it cried on hard asphalt.
And so the children grew up against different worlds.
[Age 3. Age 5. Age 8. Age 11. Age 13.]
Each time the number at the top of the screen changed, the children grew noticeably before the audience's eyes. Though only the backs of their heads were visible, the way their very bone structure changed was unmistakable. While one sat in class at school, the other wandered the streets. While one ate a meal laid out by the housekeeper, the other tore at meat with his bare hands. While one studied alone in a room lit by a desk lamp, the other chattered away in a space packed with people. Despite the utterly different settings, the backs of the heads caught on the split screen were identical — as if they had originally been one.
[Age 14]
And the instant that final number appeared, the firmly fixed black line began to slide sideways. The boy on the right, sprawled asleep on the floor, was pushed out of frame as though being swept away, and as the boy on the left rose from his bed, the screen smoothly became full width.
The first moment the child's face was ever shown.
"……"
And everyone inside the theater fell silent. The eyes of the child — now a boy on the cusp of adolescence — were already dead.
Lee Jin-woo rose quietly and tidied his bedding. Brushing his teeth, washing his face, putting on his school uniform — through it all, his face was expressionless. He fastened every button neatly up to his chin, gripped the doorknob, and let out a short breath. Then he opened the door, and a flawless smile bloomed across his face as naturally as turning a page.
"Good morning, ma'am."
"Young Master, you're up? Today's your first day of middle school, isn't it?"
"Yes. I'm a little nervous, actually."
"Oh, you'll settle in just fine, young master. The Chairman and Madam have already left for work. Have a safe day."
Lee Jin-woo bowed politely to the housekeeper and slipped into the car waiting outside the house. And so they arrived — at the middle school he would be attending from this day on. Through the window, throngs of squealing kids his own age streamed past, but the boy's eyes as he watched them were flat and indifferent. Yet by the time he pushed the car door open and stepped out, a smooth, polished smile had already settled onto his face.
Lee Jin-woo entered his assigned classroom, Class 1 of the first year. The air buzzed with exactly the kind of giddy excitement befitting the words new school, new semester, first day. Jin-woo blended into the crowd without the slightest difficulty. He became class president, applied himself to his studies, and got along with his classmates without a hitch. It was a tedious life, no different in any way from the one he had always lived.
That is, until he met his desk mate, Kim Jin-ho.
"Class president! You look exactly like a kid I know!"
"Do I?"
"Yeah. Whoa, how can two people look this alike? Are you a doppelgänger or what?"
Lee Jin-woo faced Kim Jin-ho's gleeful, giggling chatter with a gentle smile. But the camera caught the spit flying from Jin-ho's mouth, the droplets landing on Jin-woo's uniform, and Jin-woo's eyes moving fast beneath that placid smile.
"Hey, Jin-ho. I'm curious about that kid too. Would you introduce us sometime?"
"Really? Well, we were planning to meet tomorrow anyway — come along!"
Jin-woo smiled sweetly and thanked him. And that night, a brand-new white dress shirt sat discarded in the trash can of Lee Jin-woo's room.
The next day, Lee Jin-woo walked home from school alongside Kim Jin-ho.
"You're gonna freak out when you see him too. Oh — they say if you meet your doppelgänger you die, so what're we gonna do if you two just drop dead on the spot? Am I gonna end up the only one under suspicion for nothing?"
"Is that so? Still, can two people really look that much alike?"
"I told you, they're completely! identical! — Oh, there he is. Hey! Kang Tae-il!"
Kim Jin-ho raised his voice and hollered. The camera, sweeping along after Jin-woo's line of sight, caught fierce sunlight — heat haze shimmering as it blurred the figure of a boy sitting on the riverbank.
"Heyyy~ — that's him, right?"
With the bouncing voice, the boy's figure came into focus. He looked a long way from anything resembling presentable. Then Lee Jin-woo's eyes and the boy's met in midair.
They had the same face.
After a silence of only the briefest instant, Lee Jin-woo smiled softly.
"Hello. I'm Lee Jin-woo. Jin-ho was right about us."
"……"
"We really do look alike."
Unlike Jin-woo with his easy smile, the boy's face was blank with bewilderment. Then he bounced up from where he'd been sitting.
"Whoa! Whoa~. That's so freakin' weird. He really does look just like me. I thought Kim Jin-ho was full of it."
It was unmistakably the same voice, the same face. But the way the facial muscles moved, the range of expressions, even the rhythm riding through his speech — Lee Jin-woo and the boy were entirely different people.
"Could I get your number? Or even just your social media handle?"
Jin-woo asked for the boy's number, and was answered with an apology — he didn't have a phone.
"I live at the orphanage right now, so I don't have one."
Facing Kang Tae-il's crease-free smile, Lee Jin-woo smiled back.
"Then if I want to see you, I'll just have to come here. It's got a nice atmosphere. I like it."
"……"
Kang Tae-il's eyes narrowed, slowly sweeping over Lee Jin-woo.
"You little shit… I like you."
Two identical faces, wearing utterly different expressions, beamed at one another. The sound of a violin washed in faintly, like a calm tide.
It was the overture announcing a tragedy.
"So the orphanage must be around here. See you tomorrow then, Tae-il."
"Yeah! You two get home safe!"
Kang Tae-il waved his arm in big, sweeping arcs from the alleyway until Jin-woo and Jin-ho had disappeared from view. Only when their backs had shrunk to specks did he turn and slip into the alley — where he found a hidden door and pushed it open.
"Hey, fellas, I'm back~!"
Weaving expertly out of the cramped alleyways, tangled like a maze, Kang Tae-il arrived at his destination. But it was no orphanage — it was a traditional hanok house.
"Oh, look who's here, cutie."
"Tae-il. What do you want for dinner tonight?"
"Kalguksu!"
Kang Tae-il threw himself without a flicker of hesitation at the burly, dangerous-looking men dressed in black suits.
"Kalguksu it is! Fine, I'll call you when it's done."
"No way, tonight's Mansu hyung's turn to cook!"
"You brat, I cleaned up that mess you got caught in last time, didn't I?"
"That's got nothing to do with this! Fuck's sake, if you're gonna weasel out every single time, just throw the cooking-turn sign away already!"
For a face that looked like a mischievous kid's, the profanity pouring out of his mouth was startlingly fluent. Then, through the friendly racket of the boy and the men, a heavy voice cut in.
"Kang Tae-il. We're going out to collect a debt today."
"Ah, right. Are all of you going out, hyung?"
"We'll leave just Jinsu behind, so study in your room until we're back."
"Got it!"
At Hanseong's words — Hanseong, head of the Hanseong Organization — Tae-il answered on the spot, smiling brightly the whole time.
"We'll be back around ten, so have the kalguksu ready by then, yeah?"
"But Hanseong hyung told me to study?"
"……Ha, shit."
"Pffhaha, Mansu hyung. Get home safe~. I'll be studying hard while I wait for my kalguksu."
Snickering as he saw the men off, Kang Tae-il returned to his own room. The room was littered, untouched, with clumsy traces of a half-hearted attempt to raise a child: a workbook with an unfamiliar three-syllable name scribbled on it, apparently stolen from somewhere, worn-out textbooks, a disorderly heap of toys.
And so Kang Tae-il was quietly studying, just as Hanseong had told him to — until the noise from outside shattered his concentration.
"Let go of me!"
"Shut it. This little runt sure likes to squeal."
Kang Tae-il was dragged away, his head seized in the grip of a stranger, panic written across his face. His hands flailed for anything to grab, scraping against the floorboards.
"Let's start easy — break the left hand first?"
What Kang Tae-il found himself staring at, in the swirling chaos, was an enormous hammer. The moment was caught on screen along with the sharp intake of breath, Kang Tae-il's pupils blown wide with shock.
"Look at this kid. Why're you shaking so much? Eh? Scared?"
And as the man sneered, Kang Tae-il glared up at him.
"What're you looking at, you fucker."
The man raised his hand, but Tae-il didn't flinch his head away. After the sound of flesh striking flesh repeated a few times, blood trickled in a slow line from the corner of Kang Tae-il's mouth. And the hammer rose again.
"Whoa, look at this kid. He's smiling."
"Guess he really is one of Hanseong's, huh."
Kang Tae-il was smiling. Even as his body shook uncontrollably, he did not stop smiling. Every time he opened his mouth, a mixture of blood and saliva dripped down his chin. And just as the hammer rose once more, the Hanseong men came back.
"You fucking bastards!"
Through the sequence of brutal fighting that followed, Kang Tae-il clutched one hand and crawled into a corner. A man with his cheek smeared in blood rushed over to him.
"Tae-il, you okay? You hurt anywhere?"
"What took you so long? My fingers almost got smashed to pieces."
"Fuck, what did those bastards do. Is your hand okay?"
"Ah, forget it~. But where is it?"
"Huh? What?"
Kang Tae-il grinned at the man's bewilderment.
"My kalguksu. Where is it? Don't tell me you already ate it."
"……You brat. Guess you're fine after all."
A hand ruffled roughly through his hair, as if to say cheeky little punk. Kang Tae-il never once stopped smiling, until the noise had died away completely.
Only the camera caught the way Kang Tae-il's hand, hidden behind his back, was trembling.
"What's wrong with your hand? Where'd you hurt it?"
"This is the glorious wound I earned fighting seven against one!… is what I'd like to say, but honestly I just fell down in an alley yesterday."
"Aigoo. You clumsy thing."
"……Can you really get hurt that badly just from falling? If it's bleeding, wasn't it a serious injury?"
Against the backdrop of the riverbank's calm current, the conversation flowed on among Kim Jin-ho, Lee Jin-woo, and Kang Tae-il.
"The alley's got a bit of a slope, y'know. Ah — right, so are you sure your homeroom teacher wears a wig? That's not just a guess, right?"
As Tae-il steered the conversation elsewhere with practiced ease, Lee Jin-woo glanced down at the bandaged hand. Tae-il flinched and slid his fingers sideways, out of sight. Jin-woo's head lifted, and the two pairs of eyes met, quite naturally.
And that night, Lee Jin-woo returned home and summoned the section chief.
"Section Chief Jeong. There's something I need you to look into."
"Of course. Please go ahead, young master."
"First, find out whether there's a boy named Kang Tae-il at the Nahak Orphanage. If there isn't, dig up everything you can on the boy who sits on the riverbank at five o'clock every day. Don't approach him. He doesn't seem like someone with ordinary instincts."
"Um… young master, there would hardly be only one boy sitting on the riverbank."
To the chief's helpless tone, Jin-woo answered with a face devoid of expression.
"He looks exactly like me."
"……"
"You understand what that means, don't you? And how serious a matter this is."
"Yes. I do."
"And as for my mother—"
"Please don't worry. As I have until now, I will handle this as a secret between you and me alone, young master."
"I'll settle the accounts precisely, so wait six years. When I come of age, I'll transfer several of the buildings registered under my name directly to you."
"Naturally. I will do exactly as you say, young master."
It was content impossible to believe coming from a middle schooler, delivered in a voice cold as frost — and yet the chief's face held nothing unfamiliar. Lee Jin-woo was grown beyond his years, and in truth he was not naive in the least.
But for all that, he was still only fourteen. A young child living in a narrow world, who believed that what he alone had seen was the whole of it.
And that was why he never knew where Section Chief Jeong went, after leaving Lee Jin-woo's room.