Let's Be Friends
“……What's your name?”
It was Hon who spoke first, after staring at the wall for a long while.
Kim Jihoon, Agent Jang Yoseok's nephew, flinched in surprise, then quickly composed himself.
“I'm Kim Jihoon.”
“How old are you? Never mind. I'll just call you by your name.”
“Sure. Do whatever you want….”
Kim Jihoon looked more than a little dazed.
He clearly hadn't expected Hon to address him first.
Hon seemed to notice that too, because his reply came out irritable.
“What, why? They didn't send you in here just to stand around. You've got to talk to me at least a little if you want to get out. What am I supposed to do about it? You have a home to go back to, don't you?”
The torrent of words sounded like a small child's whining one moment and a weary adult's sigh the next.
That oddness was so fascinating that Kim Jihoon simply stared at Hon.
“What are you looking at.”
At the sight of the test subject glaring back with eyes full of defiance, Kim Jihoon gave a soft laugh.
“You're… a lot cuter than I expected. When Uncle talked about you, I pictured someone much more hard-boiled.”
“Yoseok-hyung—no, Agent Jang. What did he say?”
“He said whenever you're not talking, your face just goes completely blank.”
“What a waste of breath.”
“…….”
Hon's brow was deeply furrowed.
It was plain to see just how far underground his opinion of Agent Jang had fallen.
Watching the test subject's mood carefully, Kim Jihoon spoke slowly.
“I live with my uncle. We've been together since he joined this company, and for the past five years, all I've ever heard about is you.”
“About me?”
“Yeah. Whenever he comes home from work, he talks about you for ages.”
Agent Jang talks about me?
That was exactly what was written across Hon's scrunched-up face.
He looked like a child whose every thought was transparent.
“Haha. You really are cute.”
Kim Jihoon smiled gently.
In that instant, Hon thought he looked just like Kang Seok.
“I'll apologize on my uncle's behalf for how he treated you today. He was completely against me coming here in the first place. He's probably taking his anger at me out on you.”
“……Hey. Do you know Seok-hyung? Kang Seok.”
“Dr. Kang, you mean? Of course I do.”
So they do know each other.
Hon nodded slowly, gazing at the boy in front of him.
“No wonder…. You talk like him.”
“Dr. Kang and my uncle are such close friends that I've seen him all the time since I was little. Honestly, the only reason I got to meet you at all is thanks to Dr. Kang.”
“Seok-hyung did that?”
“Yeah. He said he wanted to get you a friend.”
Kim Jihoon gave a kindly smile.
“We had dinner together again last night, too. Do you know how many times Dr. Kang told my uncle to treat you well? He's a genuinely kind person.”
“…….”
The unspoken follow-up was obvious: meeting someone like that—you must be blessed.
Hon gave no answer, but Kim Jihoon didn't stop smiling.
Perhaps the brief exchange had loosened something in him, because Kim Jihoon's shoulders had slumped lower than before.
Hon stared blankly at him for a while before finally asking in return.
“……You had dinner together yesterday too?”
“Huh? What was that?”
“…….”
Kim Jihoon apologized for not hearing and asked him to say it again.
Hon watched that gentle gesture for a moment, then blurted out:
“Fine. Let's.”
“Huh?”
“We can be friends. Let's be friends, you and me.”
The words came out of nowhere, but what Kim Jihoon found himself facing was Hon's smile.
Hon was grinning as brightly as a little kid.
“If Seok-hyung wants it, I guess we have to.”
“Oh—no, only if you want to—”
“No, actually thinking about it, I think I do need a friend!”
With a face full of mischief, Hon's laughter looked utterly delighted.
Watching him, the corners of Kim Jihoon's mouth slowly lifted as well.
“Okay. Then from today on, we're friends.”
“Yes! Friends! Haha!”
Hon giggled like a child and held out his hand.
“To celebrate becoming friends, let's shake on it!”
“Haha, sure.”
Smiling, Kim Jihoon clasped the test subject's pale white hand.
“This is great, really! Haha!”
Hon kept laughing.
The smile never came down from his face.
At some point, Kim Jihoon began to feel that it was too much.
“HAHAHA!!”
“…….”
Hon was laughing so hard it looked as if his mouth would tear.
It was so unnatural that bizarre was the only word that fit.
Kim Jihoon instinctively sensed something was wrong and tried to back away—but the hand clasped around his was iron-tight.
“L-Let go of me.”
“Why? Haha!”
“Stop it….”
In an instant, terror took hold of the boy.
Without releasing his grip, Hon brought his free hand up to his own mouth, his gaze locked on Kim Jihoon the entire time.
Crunch.
Hon bit into his own hand without a moment's hesitation.
Blood streamed down from Hon's hand; his mouth was smeared with it.
“…! Let go!!”
Kim Jihoon, who knew exactly what kind of power Hon's blood carried, went white as a sheet.
Still laughing, Hon poked at Kim Jihoon's cheek with the bloodied hand.
Under that playful touch, the boy's cheek was painted red.
“We're friends! What's wrong?”
“I'm sorry—my bad, I'm sorry. Please. Please let go….”
“Don't worry! If you were in any real danger, your uncle would come. Or… haha, Dr. Kang would show up!”
But no one's coming, are they?
Just as Hon said, the steel door stayed firmly shut.
Whatever staff members were watching the two of them through the CCTV took no action whatsoever.
The moment Kim Jihoon realized this, his whole body froze.
☓ It's over….
Before the boy's bloodless face, Hon laughed and laughed without pause.
“This is an experiment too, anyway! My whole life has always been… haha! This is probably a test to see ‘how I react when I make a friend,’ isn't it?”
Kim Jihoon's pupils blew wide.
Facing a human who feared him, Hon strained to squeeze out his laughter.
But forcing a smile while his eyes crumpled in misery, he looked closer to someone sobbing than someone laughing.
“So now I'll show you ‘my reaction.’”
Blood seeping from the torn flesh quietly soaked into the floor.
Hon raised his blood-drenched hand and covered the boy's face with it.
Kim Jihoon, sunk entirely into panic, could not so much as struggle—he simply froze.
Once Hon confirmed that enough of his blood had transferred to the boy's face, he slowly lifted his hand.
“…….”
Kim Jihoon's eyes, too, were fixed on Hon's hand.
And then, thumb and middle finger met.
Just as Kang Seok wanted, Hon welcomed his friend with everything he had.
“When I say ‘Killing Horn,’ you all say ‘It's a smash hit!’ Ready? Killing Horn~!”
“Smash hit~!”
The barbecue restaurant was loud with the voices of dozens of people shouting at once.
The clink of glass against glass rang out from every direction, but the table where I sat was quiet.
“Seo Jio.”
“Huh?”
“Snap out of it and eat more meat.”
“Oh….”
Tsk. The kid's completely checked out.
It was a brutal shoot, to be fair.
The Kim Jihoon that Seo Jio played was a minor role with only a single scene, but he was by no means an easy character to act.
People show all kinds of reactions when they fall into panic. Breathing turns ragged, the whole body trembles, words stutter, the gaze darts around restlessly. To put it simply…
It's a role practically designed to get you roasted for bad acting.
Thankfully, Seo Jio's performance had been excellent.
Why else would the PD have thrown a dinner gathering that was never on the schedule?
The Seo Jio I knew would have flashed a lazy grin and tossed out something like, “Guess I got lucky.”
Instead, the guy himself was still dazed out of his mind.
It felt too awkward to just tell him to pull himself together, so I shoved a piece of meat straight into his mouth.
“Mmph.”
“I don't care if you don't want it—eat five more. You burned a lot of energy today, so you need to get something down. Or you'll collapse.”
Seo Jio chewed away diligently and then tried to ask something.
“Yeonjae—”
“I'll answer everything, so eat five more pieces. Then ask.”
Seo Jio hesitated for a moment, but obediently did as he was told.
Only after watching him deftly wrap the five pieces of meat I'd handed over into lettuce bundles and demolish them did I speak.
“So what are you curious about?”
“Then you—well, like….”
Seo Jio couldn't quite put his words together.
It was exactly what I'd expected, so I waited quietly.
The questions that followed all fell within the predicted range, too.
“How do you handle emotions like that? The second they call cut, can you just step out of the character?”
“Sometimes it does take a while. But after doing it a few times, it got easier. If you practice, you can do it too.”
I'd struggled to pull myself out of immersed characters in the beginning as well, so I understood exactly the confusion Seo Jio was feeling now.
After that, I answered every question he threw at me thoroughly.
I kept slipping meat wraps into his mouth between answers, and it was oddly endearing how hard he ate so he could get to his questions faster.
What is this feeling?
Like raising a kid? No, not that.
It felt different from talking with An-gae or Han Haram.
To be a little more precise…
Like mentoring a junior?
The moment I organized that sentence in my head, I swallowed a sigh.
Anyone watching would think I'd been in the industry for ten years.
Already angling to be called sunbae. I'm hopeless.
I worried I was about to start dispensing puffed-up, self-important advice—classic senior-actor pride. I tried to say less, but Seo Jio's barrage of questions made that impossible.
He had so much he wanted to know that I answered them one by one as they poured out like water from a spring.
By the time the dinner was winding down, even Seo Jio, who'd been unable to settle, had regained his usual self.
“I got way too worked up. Sorry about that.”
“No, it's fine.”
If anything, I'm a little disappointed it's over.
Hiding that thought made me feel oddly sheepish.
Seo Jio stared at the empty grill for a moment, then asked abruptly.
“So Kim Jihoon—the one I played—doesn't die, right?”
“Nope. That scene flows straight into the next episode.”
Hon pretends he's about to snap his fingers and waits for the staff, but the steel door never opens to the end. Kim Jihoon faints on his own, and Hon lies back down on the mattress with a complicated look on his face.
Cutting straight from there comes the conversation between Kang Seok and Jang Yoseok.
The two men—old friends and colleagues at the same company—are in conflict over the question of “how far they should push Hon.”
Jang Yoseok's position is that “what they have now is already enough to use as a weapon,” but Kang Seok disagrees.
He argues at length that “Hon's abilities are brimming with potential for growth” and insists that “even if it means crushing him psychologically, they must develop his remaining abilities further.”
One way or another, though, their goal is identical.
To use Hon for killing in order to rake in profit.
The experiments repeated every day exist for one purpose: figuring out “how Hon can eliminate a human life more efficiently.”
There were other companies trying to interfere with the two men's business, grown even larger with the success of the H Project.
In the first shoot, we filmed an action scene where someone ambushes Hon and he takes them down—and later on, that attack is revealed to be another company's doing.
Killing Horn, in the end, was a story of grown men fighting over a being that would bring them colossal profit.
And the story of Hon, dying in the middle of it all.
I'm looking forward to the edit.
Since the script leaned dark and grounded, the PD had said he'd balance the whole thing out with crisp, exhilarating action scenes.
Since SF dramas don't exactly rake it in in Korea, he seemed convinced it wouldn't be a blockbuster but would at least hit solidly in the middle.
Frankly, I thought much the same, though I hadn't said so out loud.
And apparently, so did this guy.
After hesitating for a long while, Seo Jio whispered so that only I could hear.
“How big do you think this drama's gonna get? Because of my mom… if it looks like I'm about to blow up, I need to brace myself in advance.”
He knew how awkward the question was, because he'd dropped his voice as low as it would go.
I quietly clenched my jaw.
I'd tried my best not to let it show, but apparently my acting skills weren't up to the task.
“……Yeonjae. Would you rather I just laugh?”
At that low murmur, the laughter finally burst out of me.
This guy is genuinely hilarious.