The Genius Actor Who Brings Misfortune — Chapter 150
"Kim Jin-ho. Do you... do you know how Jin-woo's doing?"
"Jin-woo? He's doing fine, why?"
"It's nothing, it's just— he's been up to something lately. He doesn't even come around here anymore."
As Kang Tae-il mumbled the words out, embarrassed, Kim Jin-ho let out a coarse laugh.
"Come on. That guy's been in a different league from us since the day he was born. Honestly, I still can't believe he hung out with us for a whole month. Why would he?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Kim Jin-ho looked at Kang Tae-il the way one looks at a naive child, and then told him the truth: that Lee Jin-woo was, in fact, the only blood relative of the chairman of that 'Isim Group'.
"The kids at school don't know yet, but my mom told me. She's been on my case forever about getting close to him — it's honestly exhausting."
"How did your mom even find out?"
"My dad works in management at Isim Group. They're divorced, my mom and dad, but you know what she says? Family is family until the day you die. So the three of us still have dinner together once a month. That's where I heard it."
Kim Jin-ho kept picking up stones and throwing them into the river, over and over.
Watching that meaningless ritual with a blank stare, Kang Tae-il murmured, "Yeah. He really was different from us from the very beginning, huh."
"Damn, I should've told you sooner. You weren't getting your hopes up, were you? One month of hanging out doesn't make him the kind of guy you can keep as a real friend."
"...Hey. We're in exactly the same position, you and me. How can you talk like that?"
The reply to Kang Tae-il's choked-out words was an unexpected one.
Kim Jin-ho, who should have either groveled through an apology or snapped back in irritation, simply wore a baffled expression.
"Why would I be in the same position as you...?"
"What? Then what's different?"
"Well, I mean... I have parents, for one."
At the words dropped so casually, Kang Tae-il's mouth closed.
Kim Jin-ho scratched awkwardly at his temple and kept going.
"No bad intentions or anything, but you live at the orphanage, right? Honestly, that's not a normal environment. I mean, sure, my parents are divorced too... but everybody's divorced these days, so."
"......"
In the silence that followed, Kim Jin-ho finally realized he'd stepped in it and fumbled out an apology.
Kang Tae-il listened to the clumsy apology in silence — then shot to his feet.
"Kim Jin-ho. I'm saying this because it's the last time."
"Huh?"
"Wake up. To kids whose parents *aren't* divorced, *you're* not a normal environment either."
"......"
"Don't come here again. I see your face one more time, I'll beat you like a dog."
Kang Tae-il left the riverbank as calmly as he could manage.
And the moment he turned the corner, he slammed his fist into the wall again and again, his face twisted.
"Fuck. 'Normal,' my ass. What the hell does he know about normal."
With every kick, a breath full of rage spilled from his mouth.
Anger at the bastard who'd toyed with him with careless words.
And anger at himself, for failing to deny it properly.
At that very same hour, another person was holding those very same words on their tongue.
"Section Chief Jeong. Do you think I'm normal?"
"...Of course, madam."
"Really? Because I don't think I am."
Jin-woo's mother turned the documents the section chief had handed over, one page at a time.
"Beating and cursing out your only child every chance you get... what kind of parent could call herself normal after that? I'm just a madwoman, that's all."
"......"
"I owe my son so much. The least I can do is play the good parent whenever I'm having one of my lucid moments."
Having turned the last page, his mother smiled faintly.
"Handle it."
"By 'handle it'... you mean?"
"Kill them all. Everyone involved. Including the loan sharks operating out of that place."
Loan sharks — how vulgar. At her elegantly delivered words, the section chief swallowed dryly and asked,
"Shall we... handle the boy as well?"
"......"
His mother's gaze drifted toward the window.
A wind far too cold for the season of spring slipped into the room.
"It was exactly this cold, the day I strangled him with my own hands."
And the section chief — the man who had carried that baby out and abandoned him in the cold — said nothing.
His mother looked her accomplice dead in the eye and spoke the rest.
"He's been dead to me all along, anyway. He was never alive to begin with. So..."
Handle him too.
The words, cold without a single trace of hesitation, slipped out past the door as if riding on that wind.
It was around mid-afternoon when Kang Tae-il answered a call from an unknown number.
He should have gone home long ago, but he'd been wandering the streets venting his frustration ever since the run-in with Kim Jin-ho.
Not answering unknown numbers was basic rule number one, so at first he ignored it.
But when the tenth call came through, the irritation already piled up inside him clouded his judgment.
The moment he pressed the call button, thinking he'd at least unload his curses on whoever this was, a familiar voice came through.
"Kang Tae-il! Where are you right now!!"
"...? Jin-woo?"
Jin-woo, like a madman, repeated only one thing: run.
"What on earth are you talking about? Calm down."
"Forget calming down — where are you right now? It's dangerous. Don't even think about going to Hanseong — get to the riverbank and stay there!"
Hanseong? How does he know about Hanseong?
Kang Tae-il's eyes wavered with confusion.
And the first word to cut through his frozen mind was danger.
Kang Tae-il hurled his phone to the ground and ran.
"Kang Tae-il? Kang Tae-il!!"
Clutching a phone that returned nothing but silence no matter how he shouted, Jin-woo gritted his teeth.
At the same time, he glared at the man standing before him, eyes lined with red.
"Fine. I understand. Of course it pays better for a creature like you to grovel before someone who has something to offer, rather than a child who can give you nothing right now. Even if that person is a complete lunatic."
"......"
At the coldest voice he had ever heard, the section chief swallowed hard.
"Your overstepping rubbed me the wrong way a while back, so I planted someone under you... Ha. If I hadn't, I suppose I'd have found out about all this far too late. It doesn't matter. Get out of my house. Now."
"That is... not something a young master has the authority to order."
"Right, of course. It's still not *my* house — it's the 'Chairman's house,' isn't it."
Jin-woo shrugged. And at the same time, he smiled.
"So I told Father. That the child Mother killed back then is still alive."
"...!"
"And that you were the one who threw that living baby out into the street."
Before the stunned section chief could open his mouth, the door burst open without so much as a knock.
The chairman's secretary spoke with urgent haste.
"Section Chief Jeong. The Chairman requests your presence."
Jin-woo regarded the section chief's deathly pale face with utter indifference.
At his light tilt of the chin, the secretary and the guards dragged the man out.
"You think I'm going to keep my mouth shut?! Everything you ordered me to do, young master, it's all been recorded—"
None of that mattered to Jin-woo.
He bit his lip, staring down at a phone that wouldn't connect no matter how many times he dialed.
Please. Let him not be too late.
But what Kang Tae-il came face to face with was a scene of horror.
The hanok house shattered beyond recognition, bodies sprawled this way and that.
The house could be torn to pieces a hundred times over and it wouldn't have mattered. But the dead do not come back.
Seeing the corpse of the man who, only that morning, had been ruffling his hair, Kang Tae-il simply stood there, dazed.
And Kang Han-seong, barely clinging to life, screamed at him. Leave. Now.
He shoved away the boy trying to lift him up and roared at him to get out.
"Your family killed mine. I can't even stand the sight of you — so get the hell out!"
To Kang Tae-il, who couldn't understand any of it, Kang Han-seong only repeated the same words.
Get away from here — he screamed it over and over, without end.
"Why— why are you saying this? Hyung, you're my family—"
Deaf to Kang Han-seong's heart, Kang Tae-il just clung to him, sobbing like a child.
Kang Han-seong, who had been snarling through gritted teeth, finally contorted his face.
"It's dangerous if you stay here. Someone else could come back at any moment. Please. Go."
"Hic— hyung, hyung—"
"Tae-il. Please. Remember the first rule of our organization."
"......"
"Kang Tae-il. The first rule. Hurry—"
At that piteous voice, Kang Tae-il backed away. One step. Another.
And so he fled from that place.
The first rule of the Hanseong Organization: obey Hanseong's word.
And so, by his command, Kang Tae-il abandoned his own family.
"You— you son of a bitch!"
The place Kang Tae-il arrived at, running, was the riverbank.
As if the waves had swallowed the sky itself, someone stood alone on the riverbank, taking the full force of the pouring rain.
Kang Tae-il scrambled up the embankment.
Even after slipping halfway, he dragged himself up on his belly and reached down to haul Jin-woo down with him.
"You fucking bastard. You knew. You knew everything, and you did it anyway."
"......"
"You ruined everything. Everything's fucking gone. Happy now?"
Kang Tae-il seized Jin-woo by the collar and slammed him roughly into the ground.
Jin-woo swayed like a paper doll, offering not a flicker of resistance.
Kang Tae-il's face, contorted to its limits, looked furious; Jin-woo's expressionless, tightly shut mouth looked bored.
Two boys wearing different expressions were feeling the exact same thing.
They were miserable. And hollowed out.
Jin-woo, gazing blankly up at Kang Tae-il, opened his mouth.
"Would you... just kill me?"
"...What?"
"I've tried, but I just can't manage suicide on my own. I told Mother to do whatever she wanted with me, and even she couldn't go through with it. Haha, what a fucking joke. All that posturing, and for what."
Looking at the boy staring at him blankly, Jin-woo smiled faintly.
"Still, dying at your brother's hand has a certain dramatic flair to it, doesn't it?"
"You insane bastard—!"
Kang Tae-il shook Jin-woo roughly once more.
Every time the two of them moved, the muddy water fouled their clothes further.
"If you want it that badly, I'll do it."
A hand splayed into five fingers closed around the soft throat.
"You could never be my family. Don't say something so disgusting."
"Ugh—"
Bloodshot threads crawled across Jin-woo's eyes. The flailing of his body gradually stilled.
Kang Tae-il murmured that his family was somewhere else entirely.
"The people you killed today... fuck, they were my real family."
The trembling in his voice finally gave way, and the tears began to seep through.
Strangling a murderer's throat, Kang Tae-il wept like a child.
"Khh—"
Came the sound of breath catching, choking, breaking.
Sobbing, Kang Tae-il slowly loosened his grip.
Jin-woo coughed like a man possessed, and Kang Tae-il sank to the ground, hollow-eyed.
"Why— why didn't you kill me?"
"......"
No answer came to Jin-woo's question, asked in a voice ruined to a rasp.
And so the two of them sat on the riverbank for a long, long time.
Time passed, and the wind and rain died away.
How long had they been sitting there? Feeling his clothes slowly drying, Kang Tae-il spoke.
"You're not my family."
"...I know."
"You could die and come back to life a hundred times, you still wouldn't be my family. That's never changing. But..."
Kang Tae-il's gaze drifted, empty, toward the river.
"If you're gone too, then I really am all alone, aren't I..."
"......"
Jin-woo quietly studied Kang Tae-il's profile.
At some point, the boy had come to wear the same eyes as his own.
Jin-woo offered a clumsy comfort.
"Father... he'd like you, I'm sure of it. Of course, it was Mother who ordered your family killed... but even she can't defy Father's word. He's the Chairman, after all."
And that was exactly why Jin-woo coveted that seat all the more.
He didn't want it to end with simply escaping his mother. He wanted to crush her.
And it seemed like sitting in the Chairman's seat would make that possible.
"I don't care about any of that. I don't... need anything. My family... they're all dead."
But his twin showed no interest whatsoever.
Ridiculously enough, neither did he, at this moment.
Then, in Jin-woo's blank eyes, a light flashed for an instant.
"Then shall we die together?"
"...What?"
"You don't want to be alone, and I don't want to keep living like this. There's a way for both of us to get what we want."
"......"
"We die together. Let's die here."
Jin-woo smiled brightly.
The joy of a boy who had found his answer shone before Kang Tae-il's eyes.
"This time, we stay together — until death."
"......"
Kang Tae-il simply looked at him.
His lips, hesitating for a long moment, finally parted — and just as the words were about to come, the screen cut to black.
"......"
The audience held their silence. Not a single person made a sound.
As if in reward for that silence, a warm, mournful violin began to play.
And slowly, the screen brightened, as if dissolving into light.
The sun was just rising, and the riverbank was drenched in orange.
The two boys were swimming.
The warm light wrapped around them gently, as if to shield them.
Swimming with no destination in mind, straight out toward the deep — their faces were bright.
Even with their clumsy strokes and mouths full of water, even as their breath slowly ran short, they spat out laughter as if they hadn't a care in the world.
"Haha!"
And so the two boys, wearing the same face, swam on.
With bodies washed clean of the mud, of every filthy secret.
Smiling in the bright morning light, they were — at last — wearing the same expression.
Jinwoo, Taeil / Yeonjae Lee
(…)
Directed by Gangyeon Yoon
Written by Gangyeon Yoon