Did You See It?
The members all arrived at the same thought at the same moment.
We're screwed.
"......"
They were so startled that no one could get a word out.
When no answer came back, Kim Suho let an awkward smile spread across his face.
"Why has everyone frozen up like that...?"
It was a soft smile, untainted by even a hint of a light-hearted laugh—but it was every bit as terrifying for all that.
The members' eyes darted nervously toward one another. Hyung-nim, what do we do?Beats me. Lee Hoseop answered Shin Woocheol with his eyes alone while desperately racking his brain.
The problem was that the smiling face in front of him was so frightening that the words kept dying in his throat.
Wait... but there's no real reason to be this scared, is there?
He was just a kid, after all. On this side, there were five grown men.
Granted, within the story he was obviously no ordinary child—but a child all the same.
And above all, this was a broadcast.
There was no way an actor would go off-script on his own; he must simply be following a planned cue. So there was nothing to be afraid of.
If anything, getting scared would be the strange thing. It was just a show.
Guess I panicked over nothing.
The fact that he was thinking this at all was already proof that he'd panicked, but Lee Hoseop refused to admit it and squared his shoulders.
"Um... Suho-ssi. We're sorry for sneaking in. You were startled, weren't you?"
"Yes, a little. I didn't hear any knocking. Which way did you come in?"
When they said they'd come through the kitchen window, Kim Suho laughed—haha—a laugh befitting an adult humoring a pack of mischief-makers.
"I thought our deity was the only one who pulled pranks like this. You're a cheerful bunch, aren't you?"
Just as puzzlement began to creep over the members' faces at how unexpectedly mild the atmosphere was, Kim Suho curled his still-smiling lips upward.
"You came up here after hearing the story about the top-floor ghost, didn't you?"
"...! Yes!"
At a line whose purpose could only be to set up the next development, Lee Hoseop nodded his head furiously.
Kim Suho motioned for them to follow and led the way. There we go—now we're making progress.
"It's one of the few ghost stories that circulates through our village. They say a woman who hanged herself to death in this building long ago can be seen through the window. And they say anyone who meets her eyes dies before the day is out."
"Gah..."
At Kim Suho's words as he climbed the stairs at the very front of the group, the youngest member went pale.
At that reaction, Kim Suho gave a gentle smile.
"Don't worry. Nothing unpleasant like that ever happens in Youngmyo Village. Our deity watches over us at every moment, you see."
"What a relief..."
The youngest's answer came just as they reached the very top floor.
Kim Suho, opening the stiff door with surprising familiarity, gestured for them to go inside.
"Take your time looking around. The villagers who worry because of the rumors always come up here, see that there's nothing at all, and head back down relieved. I'm needed to attend the deity now, so I'll go on down ahead of you."
"Thank you, Suho-ssi."
Kim Suho smiled and slipped away without a trace.
It was a wooden floor that creaked with every step—yet strangely, not a single sound escaped his footsteps.
"Whoa, this place really must be an old building. The floor's screaming."
"There's got to be something here, right? Let's split up and search before it gets dark. Hyung-nim, you take that side; maknae, this side."
At Shin Woocheol's direction, the members scattered in all directions.
After combing through room after room, Lee Hoseop finally made his way into the one at the very end.
He was poking around the room, which had gone dark without him noticing, when something caught his eye.
"Huh?"
A slightly crumpled wad of paper sat atop a box.
Its placement was far too convenient to mean nothing.
This is just a handout, isn't it.
Instantly energized, Lee Hoseop was on the verge of shouting for everyone to come over when—
"Did you see it?"
Startled by the voice behind him, he spun around—and there was the smiling face.
The head tilted. Then it kept tilting, all the way.
At the snap of the crack, Lee Hoseop's senses came rushing back to him.
"Jeez, you scared me.... Didn't you leave? Why are you suddenly—"
"So you did see it."
Why is he dropping honorifics?
The surge of anger that had been rising in him vanished in an instant.
The face before him was smiling, just as before—but it was utterly, completely different now.
The light of the streetlamps outside spilled into the room.
Kim Suho's face was terribly cold. And terribly bright.
Those pitch-black eyes glinted in a way that felt almost wrong.
"You saw it, then."
"......"
And in that moment, Kim Suho reached out his hand.
Shin Woocheol, the first to discover the clue, shouted for everyone to gather around.
The clue was a notebook.
It was stuffed with clipped newspaper articles and what looked like personally taken photographs; even a quick flip through it showed how thick it was.
"I pray that someone, anyone, finds these words."
Shin Woocheol read the sentence on the first page aloud. Beneath it was written that the author was putting pen to paper in order to expose the con artists ruining Youngmyo Village.
"Good heavens..."
With every page turned, the members' jaws dropped a little further.
The notebook chronicled everything from thirty years ago, when the band of swindlers first came to Youngmyo Village.
The con artists had engineered deliberate accidents first, so that the villagers couldn't help but believe a deity existed, then tricked them into holding rituals supposedly needed to appease the deity's wrath.
Told that offering five lives as sacrifices once a year would let everyone live in peace, the residents swallowed it whole.
It was a tired, worn-out story—but what was shocking was that most of the people sacrificed so far had been children.
The con artists had sold off the sacrificed victims separately, and because younger children fetched higher prices, they pressured the residents into handing over their own sons and daughters.
"Is there any low these bastards won't sink to."
Shin Woocheol grumbled and fumed, while inwardly worrying whether this was even appropriate material for broadcast.
The fact that the word 'sold' had been carefully chosen as a vague euphemism seemed to show how hard the production team had worked to keep the content within bounds.
In any case, after endless persuasion and threats, the villagers had, in the end, offered up their own children as sacrifices—or so the notebook claimed.
And it was written by a woman who, having made an irreversible choice, had drowned in regret ever after.
"It was only after I sent my child away like that that I realized something had gone terribly wrong. And that no amount of regret could ever turn it back."
Before anyone knew it, Shin Woocheol had reached the final page and read out what remained.
"There is no deity. The con artists have deceived us all these long years. We, deceived by them, drove our own children to the edge of the cliff with our own hands."
The following passage contained a desperate plea: "I have gathered the evidence into documents. Please, I beg you, make this right."
The words saying that the con artists were already watching her, and that she could never escape this village for as long as she lived, were blurred and smeared alongside tear stains.
Given the circumstances, the identity of the woman's ghost said to appear in this building seemed clear: the owner of this notebook.
It was a subject no one could easily open their mouth about, so they all fell silent.
Shin Woocheol let out a small sigh and laid out the situation.
"So the sacrifices for this year's ritual are the five of us, I suppose. There wasn't a single kid in the village, was there. They must have invited outsiders because there were no more children left to offer."
"...! Whoa, chills... you're right."
"So is our mission to escape this village before we get sacrificed?"
"And we've got to take these documents and report them, obviously! We need to throw every last one of those bastards in jail!"
The documents left alongside the notebook contained the personal details of everyone in the con artists' ring.
Besides the man who had guided the members when they first arrived in the village, there were three others—but Kim Suho was not among them.
"Huh? Why isn't Kim Suho on here? If he was playing the deity too, isn't he a con artist?"
"No idea. But hold on—where's Hoseop-hyung? Maknae, go check for him."
"Oh—Hoseop-hyung's gone, isn't he."
With the notebook's contents consuming their attention, the members had completely forgotten Lee Hoseop's absence; now they belatedly looked around.
At first they waited without much concern, but when the youngest came back with a face full of panic, the mood turned serious.
"Hoseop-hyung's not here."
"What?"
"I don't know. He's nowhere. I looked everywhere."
"Did he go back downstairs?"
Thrown into confusion by their leader's disappearance, the members scrambled into frantic motion.
At that very same moment, in another place, a very similar commotion was unfolding.
"Actor-nim, would you like some water?"
"Thank you."
I accepted the bottle Manager Ahn Jinbae handed me and took a sip. My throat, knotted with tension, finally began to loosen.
Off to my left, the main PD was raging in a state of pure fury.
"Are you out of your mind right now? Did you decide you wanted to ruin the show?! Do you have any idea how much money went into filming even one episode of this?! How many times do I have to tell you this is NOT a rehearsal!!"
"...I'm sorry."
"Sorry?! Is sorry all you've got?!"
Staff members scrambled to calm the main PD, whose face had gone beet-red with rage.
"PD-nim, please, breathe for a second. We haven't even finished filming yet."
"That's right. You can tear into him after the shoot. Thankfully nothing bad actually happened."
The fuming main PD drew a few deep breaths and finally gave an okay sign to signal he'd calmed down.
The staff member in charge of on-set management stood before him with his head bowed like a condemned criminal.
As I watched the storm subside and let out a sigh of relief, the main PD suddenly rushed toward me.
"Yeonjae. Really—really, thank you. If it weren't for you, this would've been a disaster."
"It was nothing."
"It was not nothing. Thank you, truly. That nearly turned into a major accident. Kim PD told me you were a good actor, but I had no idea you could pull off ad-libs this brilliantly too."
I understood exactly where the sentiment was coming from, but his face was so close to mine that it was a little much. Thankfully, a staff member hurried the PD away, muttering something urgent. What on earth was all this fuss about?
This is pure chaos.
I should have expected it ever since the meeting two days ago.
When the writers stressed over and over how crucial it was to handle unexpected situations well, I'd wondered why they kept bringing it up.
This performance was completely different from what I'd done in The Tail and the Zelkova Tree.
Unlike a drama, where you can reshoot the same scene as many times as it takes to produce the best possible result, Mission Clear was built entirely around the live moment.
My own lines and actions were set—but I had no idea whatsoever how the others would react.
I'd been told that, as seasoned variety veterans, they'd play along appropriately enough. But that didn't dissolve the anxiety.
I performed feeling as though I were walking across the thinnest skin of ice on a frozen lake—and thankfully delivered every line without a single stumble.
The story seemed to be flowing along exactly as the writers intended, tangling nowhere.
That is, until I spotted the script—with its ending written out in full—lying out on set.
Hold on... what is that?
Isn't that a script?
By the time anyone registered it, it was already too late.
The main PD, scanning the set through the camera feed, flagged it—but by then the cast members had all already entered the top floor.
The actor who belatedly realized the script was his own turned ghost-white and trembled where he stood.
"I-I'm sorry. I was practicing earlier and... I must have l-left it—"
It was the actor who had played the guide.
The same gruff voice I'd heard from the bathroom came spilling out of him, stiff and frozen.
But no one was listening.
Everyone had descended into a panic, shouting over one another about what on earth they were supposed to do now.
Since this wasn't a live broadcast, it was, in principle, a simple matter of cutting the shoot and starting over. But the risk of that was enormous.
With rawness and immediacy being everything to this kind of filming, the production team could hardly afford a choice that would shatter the immersion completely.
So the person sent in was me.
Given the order to run in, grab the script, and get out fast, my body moved before my brain had time to think.
Taking the stairs two at a time, my mind went numb.
If I run into a cast member, what do I even say?
And if they've already seen the script, what then?
A few seconds later I reached the top floor, and with no time to hesitate, slipped into the room at the very end.
But there was already someone there.
"Did you see it?"
By the time I came to my senses, my mouth had already opened.
The person clutching the wad of paper turned around.