The Guardian Deity of Youngmyo Village
A man with a rather thin voice was confirming his suspicion.
"Who? Lee Yeonjae?"
"Who else would it be? Fuck's sake, the kid gets into Wooyeon and suddenly he's strutting around with his shoulders all puffed up."
"Honestly, do you think he can even act? I couldn't tell."
Over the sounds of them relieving themselves, the talk about me carried on without pause.
"Little shit's what, twelve? Best he can do is recite lines off a page."
"You know what pisses me off more? Wooyeon. Nowhere else would take him, so they dump him here. What the hell are we supposed to do for a living, then?"
"What do you expect those bastards to think? Fuck. Wooyeon itself, or the brats who act cocky thinking they've got Wooyeon at their back—it's all the same garbage to me―."
"Hey. Hey. Quiet down."
The thin-voiced man cut off the rough one mid-sentence.
The irritated reply asking why dried up just as fast.
In an instant, the bathroom went silent.
Considering I couldn't hear any footsteps heading for the exit, they'd finally caught on.
To the fact that the door of the last stall was locked.
It's honestly more impressive that it took them this long, given how small the bathroom is.
I debated for a moment what to do. The debate didn't last long.
I simply reached out and pressed the flush, and was treated to the sound of someone scrambling out with a strangled yelp. At least wash your hands before you go…
I couldn't guess who the other men were, but the rough voice was easy to place.
He was the one assigned to approach the cast first, which meant he had a fair number of lines, too.
To put it simply: the second most substantial role in the episode, after mine.
Looks like I've really gotten on his bad side.
He'd been running lines with me just a little while ago, smiling at me gently the entire time. Well—I understood. From where he stood, he had every reason to hate me.
It wasn't a problem an apology would fix, and it wasn't as if I could hand the role over either.
So there was nothing I could do about it.
But still. To think all I looked like was someone 'reciting lines.'
Forget lunch. I'd better get more practice in.
My plan to practice through lunch failed miserably.
Manager Ahn Jinbae stood firm as if to say that if he were going to let me skip a meal, he'd sooner shove dirt into his own eyes first.
"Can I be done now…"
"Just one more bite."
One bite, then back to the script, then another bite, then the script again—and by the time the cycle finally broke, the lunch hour was already over.
"The cast's vehicles will be arriving shortly! Everyone, from this point on this is not rehearsal—it's the real thing! Please take your positions and stand by!"
At the staff member's clear, ringing call, the actors and crew scattered in every direction.
Manager Ahn Jinbae smoothed down my clothes and murmured quietly.
"Go show them what you're made of, Actor-nim."
There was no way he knew what had happened in that bathroom.
And yet the words aligned with it so perfectly that a laugh slipped out of me before I knew it.
After saying my goodbye to Manager Ahn Jinbae, I stepped into the building set up as 'my house' within the story.
Through the window, I could see the cast members carefully climbing out of their cars, blindfolds still on.
The moment the cast, led in by the villagers, stepped through this door, everything would begin in earnest.
I stared at the cameras hidden in every corner of the room and waited for my cue.
After an interval I couldn't have said was minutes or hours, a knock finally sounded at the door.
I slowly bent my neck.
Lee Ho-seop, by now firmly established as one of Korea's most recognizable variety personalities, tore off his blindfold and let out a strangled uueok at the scene before him.
That scream startled the other members far more than anything else.
"Geez, Ho-seop hyung! Ah, you scared me."
"Sorry, sorry. I was on edge."
The place where they stood was, all things considered, an ordinary village.
There had been the time he opened his eyes inside a giant supermarket, and the time he woke up on the rooftop of some random building.
Granted, nothing would ever top the sheer absurdity of waking up in the middle of the mountains—but by comparison, a small village counted as downright normal.
So this is that place. XX Park.
He'd come here a few months ago for another variety shoot and recognized it instantly.
Of course, what actually came out of his mouth was something entirely different.
"Where are we…? Is this a village?"
"No idea. That building behind you, hyung—kind of suspicious, isn't it?"
Shin Woo-cheol, who shared five regular shows with Lee Ho-seop, likewise looked around as though he hadn't the faintest clue.
Any moment now, the actors playing the NPCs would make their approach.
With no idea what they were supposed to do, all the members could do was talk. Since there hadn't been a scary episode yet, odds were good one would come today; don't let your guard down just because the mood feels sleepy, keep the audio from going dead—that was the constant, restless chatter.
"……Wait, no briefing this time either? Why is nobody coming?"
But no one approached the members.
A strange tension crept over them; shoulders hunched, they glanced around—when suddenly, the youngest let out a curse.
"Maknae! Profanity! Profanity!"
"Ah, sorry. Ah…"
"What? Why'd you swear all of a sudden?"
While the other members blinked in bewilderment, the youngest kept a hand clamped over his face and couldn't bring himself to speak.
"Maknae! What's wrong with you!"
"……Our eyes met."
"Huh?"
Stammering, the youngest pointed a hand up at the top of the gray building.
Where every member's gaze landed, there was nothing but an empty window.
"…? There's nothing there."
"There was someone! Ugh, I hate this. Wahh… I guess today's the scary one…"
Sniffling, the youngest murmured that a woman with long hair spilling down had been standing there, looking straight at them.
The professional entertainers pounced on that without missing a beat, shrieking and carrying on about how terrifying it was.
Just as Lee Ho-seop figured they'd wrung enough footage out of the moment, someone who had quietly sidled up behind the members still staring at the gray building spoke out of nowhere.
"Hello there?"
"AAAAGH!"
"Hup—!"
"……Agh, seriously, why are you like this in broad daylight!!"
While the seasoned pros pulled suitably theatrical reactions, the youngest—not yet fully steeped in broadcast instincts—stopped breathing for an instant and then reacted with pure, unfiltered irritation.
Which made it all the funnier.
Lee Ho-seop thought, privately, that he was jealous.
"You're the travelers who scheduled a visit today, aren't you? Welcome. I'm the guide who'll be showing you around Youngmyo Village today."
The pleasant-faced man recited his lines with a smile, clearly memorized.
He was visibly trying his best to act natural, but the stiffness in his expression and the faint sheen of sweat gave away his nerves.
Still, once the editors got their hands on it, it would look far better.
Well aware of this fact, Lee Ho-seop answered easily.
"Nice to meet you, sir. So we're here to look around the village today…?"
"Yes. Tonight, our village festival—a tradition thirty years in the making—is scheduled to take place. You've arrived at exactly the right time. You're all very fortunate people."
Outsiders weren't usually welcomed around this time of year, he added, but today was a good day, so now that they'd come, they should enjoy themselves to the fullest.
Before the members could dwell on that oddly weighted remark, the man offered to show them around and took the lead.
The streets were thick with people preparing for the festival. Some sat clustered together making pinwheels; others were stringing glittering lights along the rows of trees.
Everyone wore a smile, and cheerful laughter—like something playing from a radio—drifted from every direction.
It was a scene meant to look warm and idyllic, yet somehow the members watching it all felt a lingering unease.
Shin Woo-cheol, the designated brain of the group, was focused intently on the guide's words, hunting for clues—
—when the youngest, who had been glued to Lee Ho-seop's back with a tensed face for some time now, whispered in a small voice.
"Hyung… doesn't something feel off to you?"
"Like what?"
"……There isn't a single kid here."
Lee Ho-seop's footsteps stopped cold.
He was right. A crowd the size of an entire village had gathered, and every last one of them was an adult.
No matter how they looked, not so much as the shadow of a child could be found, and the members began to murmur among themselves.
"We don't know what the mission is yet, but… something about this is definitely weird, right?"
"I smell something, I smell something."
"Could this be like the Pied Piper? Some villain's scooped up all the kids and we have to go rescue them or something."
Lines floated through the air, each member tossing out whatever might fill his own screen time.
Oblivious or indifferent to all of it, the man kept up a ceaseless explanation of Youngmyo Village and its festival.
Having been thoroughly abandoned by his useless teammates, Shin Woo-cheol asked his own question.
"Sir, this rite you mentioned earlier—are you talking about an actual ancestral ritual?"
"Haha, is there such a thing as a fake ritual? You could call it the very heart of our Youngmyo Village festival. We always close out the festivities by gathering everyone together to perform the rite as one."
"A ritual? I smell something, I smell something."
Hwang Min-seok muttered.
Lee Ho-seop couldn't stand the way the man kept shoehorning his catchphrase in at every turn, but he didn't let it show. He simply grumbled inwardly while fussing over the maknae, who kept clinging to him whining that he was scared.
Ah, enough with the religion stuff already.
It was prime controversy material.
Not that he blamed the network people, mind. It sold absurdly well, that sort of thing.
Having already spun out three plausible storylines in his head, Lee Ho-seop heaved a sigh of a man utterly without a clue.
"So are we not getting any food…?"
At Ahn Ji-cheol's question—delivered in full character as the resident airhead—the man smiled warmly.
"Of course you'll be fed. But before your meal, there is someone you must meet first. Someone rather like a guardian deity who watches over our village."
A guardian deity! At those words, a flash of energy went through the members' eyes.
So the main storyline was finally starting.
Whoever this person was, meeting them would surely reveal what the mission was.
Carrying a strange flutter of anticipation, the members trailed after the man until they arrived before the gray building they'd seen earlier.
The very building where the youngest had glimpsed the woman with the long, trailing hair.
Patting the back of the maknae, who had now pressed himself even closer, Lee Ho-seop was the first to step inside.
The interior looked like an ordinary family home.
The moment every member had crossed the threshold, the man closed the door without a sound. Then he dropped to the floor and bowed low.
"…??"
"I bid welcome to the Guardian Deity."
The members were still frozen in confusion—were they supposed to bow too, or not?
Sensing a presence, Lee Ho-seop lifted his head and, before he could stop himself, let out a soft Huh?
Someone was standing before the members.
"That drama—"
Shin Woo-cheol, evidently thinking the same thing as Lee Ho-seop, started to whisper and then swallowed the words.
Someone stood there, expressionless—one of those figures you couldn't decide whether to call a boy or a young man.
The longer the silence stretched, the more the air seemed to pull taut like a wire.
The members rolled their eyes at one another, unsure what to do, until the youngest—the ever-observant one—quietly sank to the floor and bowed.
As if entranced, Ahn Ji-cheol followed suit, and then the remaining members, Lee Ho-seop included, hunched over in awkward, half-crouched bows.
The moment every gaze dropped to the floor, the small feet that had stood motionless finally began to move.
And along with them came a voice—unbelievably heavy, unbearably unpleasant, coming from anything you'd call a child.
"So you've brought me strangers."
"Yes, Guardian Deity. They say they wish to observe the festival."
The man who had led the members here answered with soft deference.
The small feet moved on, and with them came the tap-tap-tap of unhurried steps.
That sound came to a stop directly in front of Lee Ho-seop.
He waited a long while, but no further words came, so at last he cautiously raised his head.
"You there. You'd best be careful."
"……Pardon?"
The moment their eyes met, the expressionless face tossed the words out as if they cost nothing.
Stunned into silence by that uncanny presence, Lee Ho-seop could only stare blankly—and then the boy slowly lowered himself to sit down right in front of him.
On a face mere inches from his own, the corners of the mouth were curling upward, as if about to split.
"Because today, you'll be the first to die."