Thinking Only of the Fog
A strange sound reached my ears.
Krrk. Krrk.
It might have been something breaking apart, or something straining to hold on.
“—Yeonaenim?”
“Yes?”
I forced the calmest expression I could manage and smiled. I prided myself on how natural it looked.
But the other person, as if determined to find the crack in my composure, held my gaze all the same. The moment my eyes met those gentle ones, the nausea surged worse than before.
“I'm fine. Please, keep watching.”
What exactly was fine?
Nothing about this is fine.
I wanted to scream. Everything felt pointless. Why was I even here?
“First, take one big, deep breath. You're okay.”
I told you, I'm not okay.
I wanted to snap at them. But they hadn't done anything wrong. And there were too many eyes watching, above all.
……But why should I care about anyone's eyes?
Every time I closed my eyes and opened them again, lightning flashed. My mind was chaos.
“Jinbae, the doctor—”
“Just a moment—”
The people in front of me were all talking over one another. Jeonghyeon-hyung was among them, staring at me with eyes full of worry.
Jeonghyeon-hyung.
What happened just now had been acting. The one who died was Dr. Kang Seok, not Jeonghyeon-hyung. That much, I wasn't confused about.
But… I couldn't climb out of the emotions that belonged to Horn.
What's the point of any of it?
It felt like sinking into a swamp. Why did I have to live like this? What meaning was there in a life spent dodging misfortune factors day after day? Would I live like this forever?
And even if that life was mine alone to bear—what about the people around me? What had they ever done wrong? What if someone died again because of me? Before that could happen, I had to—
“Can you hear me?”
Someone had stepped in front of me. A face I'd seen a few times, so it was familiar.
A psychologist.
Someone the drama's production company had assigned from the very start of filming. Apparently they'd brought them on to preempt controversy over the script's graphic violence, though we'd never exchanged a single word until now.
The discomfort curdled into something worse.
“I'm—sorry, but could you all just leave me alone for a bit?”
I clenched my teeth, straining to hold on to every ounce of courtesy I had left.
“I'm sorry, everyone, but please go. I'm fine.”
Nothing was actually registering. Only a blurry static buzzed at the edges of my ears.
What did I do wrong?
I felt wronged. Even as I told myself I couldn't whine like a child, the resentment kept welling up anyway. It was simply getting too hard to think.
“Yeonjaenim, let me just—”
Someone wrapped me in a firm embrace. Whoever it was, they were big enough to swallow me whole.
I didn't know who it was, but I thought, please let go.
What if the misfortune factors transfer to them?
That couldn't happen. I had to push them away. I had to be the one to do it. I had to do it, because I was the one who knew. You were all innocent victims—
“Don't push me away. Please.”
I thrashed, trying to squirm out of those arms, and the harder I fought, the tighter the grip became. It felt like a seizure coming on. I wanted something—anything—to explode.
The moment my body started trembling, the person holding me began to plead. Tender whispers poured into my ear without pause, but none of them resolved into words. And then, abruptly, a single word pierced through the noise.
“…I'm sorry, what was that?”
I jerked my head up. The other person was still holding me so tightly that all I could see was the fabric of their coat.
Still, I asked again, urgently. “An-gae—you said An-gae?”
“Yes, that friend of yours. There, there—it's all right. Just think of An-gae. Can you do that?”
An-gae. Yes. An-gae.
I nodded hard. Just think of An-gae. I want to see him.
Tears threatened to spill. A large hand patted my back in slow, steady rhythm.
“You're doing so well. Just think of An-gae.”
A calm vibration spread through my body in regular waves, and my eyes drifted shut before I knew it. The hazy field of vision grew dimmer and dimmer.
“…….”
And with that, I lost consciousness.
Ahn Jinbae waited until the actor was truly asleep before he finally allowed himself to breathe.
“……Haah.”
It was a sigh distilled from every emotion he had no words for. He hadn't realized how badly he'd been startled in those few short moments—his back was soaked through with sweat.
As he rose with the actor cradled in his arms, Lee Jeonghyeon approached.
“Jinbae, we'll clean things up here. Go on ahead.”
The face that usually broke into such a warm smile was nowhere to be found. What looked down at him was hollow with despair.
Ahn Jinbae started to ask if he was all right, then stopped. He was surely wearing exactly the same expression.
“Thank you. I'll leave it in your hands.”
“The moment this is wrapped up, I'll head home too.”
It was a genuine mercy that they shared the same agency.
While Ahn Jinbae carried the panicked actor into the tent, Lee Jeonghyeon's manager got to work shielding the scene from view—scanning for anyone raising a phone, then swiftly reining in the production staff. With Wooyeon Entertainment managing the situation on a massive scale, worrying about articles would have been a luxury.
Lee Jeonghyeon apologized on their behalf to the production team, still shaken by the sudden turn of events. As he bowed his head to each person in turn, everyone just waved it off.
Meanwhile, the moment Ahn Jinbae got home, he called the doctor.
“Jinbae-ssi. It's been a while.”
“I'm sorry to contact you so suddenly. He's in no state to be taken to a hospital.”
“Not at all. How long has he been unconscious?”
The doctor attached an IV line alongside a sedative and several other drips, then left. Afterward, Ahn Jinbae spent a long while simply watching the actor's face.
As was his habit in sleep, he made not a single sound, breathing so soundlessly and so deeply that he looked for all the world like someone already dead.
What am I supposed to do?
Ahn Jinbae scrubbed a hand down his face. He hoped for an answer; all he got back was the sound of his own sigh.
“It looks more serious than I expected.”
Lee Jeonghyeon muttered as he returned, having finished sorting out the situation. His voice alone was enough to convey how deeply the day had shaken him.
Ahn Jinbae answered blankly. “Yes. When he wakes up… I think we'll have to start him on medication.”
“Yeah. If you explain it properly, he'll understand. I'm sure of it.”
In early last year, ahead of shooting Twins, Lee Yeonjae had spent several months in counseling with a psychiatrist. The assessment had flagged suspected depression, anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
'I wouldn't call his condition positive, but for now we should monitor how things develop. He's still quite young, and given his temperament, I can't responsibly push medication on him right away.'
The doctor had handed over the test results—the very sheets Lee Yeonjae had checked off himself.
'He's conspicuously defensive on certain items, so I reached out to the orphanage, and it turns out he's taken these assessments many times before. His earliest results closely matched what I'd expected.'
'……I see. Are you saying the actor deliberately concealed his test results?'
'I am. And from everything I've gathered in our sessions, I believe he does it because he thinks it's better for everyone around him.'
The doctor had gone on to describe the other patterns surfaced during their sessions: self-esteem so low it bordered on clinical, self-loathing that flared far beyond proportion, a deliberate avoidance of anything touching his dissolved adoption, relentless and excessive pressure he placed on himself. He'd even added that it was fortunate Yeonjae had never once self-harmed.
The doctor had said it offhandedly, but Ahn Jinbae—who knew what had really happened to Lee Yeonjae—could only fall silent.
His actor had never needed to. He had lived a life so horrific that self-harm was redundant.
He never did it because he never saw the point.
Bile rose in his throat. Ahn Jinbae opened and closed his fist again and again.
I should have found him sooner.
He should have been the one to reach him first. Should have protected him so he'd never had to endure any of it.
“Haah….”
Ahn Jinbae sighed without end. Beside him, Lee Jeonghyeon, who had been staring fixedly at Lee Yeonjae, asked:
“What did you say to him earlier, when he was out of it? An-gae?”
“Yes. I was half out of my mind myself, so I was just saying whatever came to mind—but that one word, he responded to it.”
Ahn Jinbae let the word fill his mouth once more.
“An-gae.”
“…….”
“I've thought something was off since the awards ceremony. I think it's time I looked into this properly.”
“I'll make some inquiries on my end too. If anything turns up, we share it.”
Lee Jeonghyeon answered, mentally running through his own connections.
“What's his reaction going to be if he's told he has to take medication? We'll need to break it to him carefully so he isn't shocked.”
“He won't have any resistance to the medication itself. To him, it really is just—medicine, nothing more.”
Ahn Jinbae had once seen an interview where an actor discussed depression. The actor had said:
'Why is there still such a stigma around taking psychiatric medication? It's exactly the same as putting a bandage on a wound.'
'Exactly. It's simply receiving the appropriate treatment for your symptoms.'
'It's hard to speak for everyone, but… I just hope people who are struggling don't miss the window to get treatment. So things don't get any harder for them.'
Unless a condition was mild, the wise course was to improve it through proper medication prescribed after consulting a specialist. Mental illness was no exception—yet the stigma surrounding psychiatric care remained stubbornly real. Fortunately, the actor had no resistance to medication itself. The only problem was that he simply hadn't registered how serious his own condition was.
“If we calmly walk him through the assessment and the results, he'll cooperate fully. He's a sensible person.”
There were, undeniably, corners of the mind that could not be fixed by willpower alone. And yet the reason Ahn Jinbae had kept the truth of his condition from him came down to one thing: greed.
'Guardian. For now, please focus on guiding him so he can express his emotions more actively.'
'Yes, I understand.'
'Right now his instinct to suppress what he feels is very strong. As far as I can tell, he believes that without a justified reason, even feeling an emotion is wrong. That's the resistance we need to break down first.'
Ahn Jinbae had followed the doctor's instructions with utter devotion. Anything that might help his actor, he did—every last thing.
And it hadn't been useless, because the actor was slowly, slowly changing. Remembering how, over Han Seyeong's perfume, he'd spent nearly two weeks locked away completely alone, the progress was nothing short of astonishing.
'I want to spend more time with you, hyung. So what should I do?'
An actor who had never asked anyone for help, never wanted any, had reached for something of his own. And the very first desire he'd ever voiced was the wish to stay by someone's side a little longer.
At the time, Ahn Jinbae had barely contained the love and the overwhelming swell in his chest, put on a calm and steady face, and answered: 'Just keep doing what you're doing now.'
Then Ahn Jinbae had let himself want more. Maybe my being here is enough. Maybe everything could heal, all at once. He had allowed himself that hope.
And today, watching the actor spiral into panic, he finally understood. All of it had been his own arrogance. His own greed.
“Jinbae. I'm only saying this in case you need to hear it—it's not your fault. You know that, right?”
Lee Jeonghyeon glanced sideways at Ahn Jinbae's ashen face. Ahn Jinbae managed a strained smile.
“Yes. I know that.”
“If you hadn't been there, who knows what would've happened today. Everyone can see how much you love Yeonjae. And Yeonjae knows it too, obviously.”
“He does. He's always saying thank you for looking after him.”
“There, see?” Lee Jeonghyeon was just moving to offer more comfort when Ahn Jinbae's smile turned bitter.
“But you know, I think he only says that because I'm his manager.”
“Huh?”
“He seems to believe that if I ever quit being a manager, there'd be no reason for us to see each other again.”
“…….”
Lee Jeonghyeon had no words.
Ahn Jinbae murmured on, a remark impossible to tell whether it was meant for the other man or for himself.
“It seems he simply cannot conceive of someone being kind to him without a reason.”
The actor always searched for the motive first, the instant anything new entered his life. Given that no one had ever approached him without one, it wasn't hard to understand. It was simply that the knowledge broke Ahn Jinbae's heart.
A long silence settled over the room afterward. It was a small voice that finally broke the suffocating air.
“……An-gae?”