The Face in the Mirror
The first thing I heard was my own shout bursting out.
“You bastards! Get your heads in the game?!”
The moment the yell hit my ears, my heart started pounding.
Yes.
Script possession has finally activated.
With Criminal Community, I'd dismissed it as a dream, but this time was different.
I intended to dissect every single detail, and I had to.
Though I'd pinpointed E-sports as the key, At Your Fingertips was worlds apart from Criminal Community.
Criminal Community had locked in the incident and merely added the time loop variable, but this story demanded far more changes.
For starters, the protagonist wasn't even a volleyball coach...
“Setter! Look at your teammates!”
Huh?
A volleyball court came into view, players dashing across it.
Hold on—was Park Seong-hwa being a volleyball coach fixed?
What the hell was going on?
Before I could question it further, things on the court started going south.
The score gap widened relentlessly, defeat hanging heavy in the air.
I might not know squat about volleyball players' skills, but Park Seong-hwa clearly hated what he was seeing.
His chest boiled with rage.
First-person possession didn't let me hear inner thoughts, but emotions hit hard.
Though in this case, I didn't even need to feel them.
Park Seong-hwa was kicking a water bottle in uncontainable fury.
Right in front of the broadcast cameras.
He seemed even more macho than in the script.
Character shift? Or just the situation?
I tamped down his surging emotions and tried to scan the surroundings coolly.
Meanwhile, the match ended in loss, the team's morale in the gutter.
What followed matched the script beat for beat.
Park Seong-hwa pushed brutal training, invoking his playing days, and the coaches and players rebelled.
It escalated to conflict with the team's franchise star, exploding into a violence scandal splashed across headlines.
The outcome: dishonorable dismissal.
By now, I could predict the next beat.
In the original script, Park Seong-hwa's next stop was the league's bottom-feeders.
But here, it'd pivot to an E-sports team.
This world didn't even have a true bottom team.
The one Park Seong-hwa currently coached had finished dead last in the V-League for two straight years.
Sure enough, a call came to Park Seong-hwa, alone in his dim apartment, knocking back soju.
It was from the owner of the E-sports team Seonghwa Empire.
“E-sports? You mean electronic entertainment?”
“Are you messing with me right now?”
His voice, his tone...
Was the owner kinda young?
Some immature chaebol heir?
Didn't quite feel like chaebol vibes, though.
“...Why me? I know nothing about computer games.”
Park Seong-hwa ended the call with the perpetually unserious owner and searched "Seonghwa Empires" on his laptop.
Articles flooded in.
I read them more voraciously than Park Seong-hwa himself, but there wasn't much to glean.
Just that Seonghwa Empires had been dead last for years, and a few months back, their main sponsor switched to a domestic AI firm.
So the owner he'd just spoken to was that AI company's CEO?
It kinda made sense of the casual speech now.
This was the downside of first-person possession.
What I could see and know was locked to the protagonist's viewpoint.
No flashbacks or perspective shifts like in typical dramas.
With Criminal Community, Hyun-tae's emotional arc was crucial, and the confined space made it manageable.
But scaling up to commercial drama size brought all these annoyances.
I'll figure it out by watching.
In the end, after agonizing, Park Seong-hwa accepted the offer.
To cover the massive penalty and to prove he wasn't a failure.
But his tenure as Seonghwa Empire's E-sports coach was anything but smooth.
No—it was a total disaster.
“Do you even have the right to say that, Coach?”
“What? What'd you just say?”
“You think we don't see the pity in your eyes? What kind of sport is this? Just clicking keyboards and mice—quit acting like it's hard! Stay in last place, why don't you? That's how you look at us!!”
“...!”
Traditional sports versus E-sports.
Old generation versus new.
Resistance to change versus embracing it.
All collisions.
Clash of ideals, worldviews, values.
But...
The value of effort never changes.
Victory earned through effort shines, rendering all those clashes meaningless.
“W-We won! We actually won!”
“We won!”
“Don't get excited—prep for set two!”
Just one set victory.
They ultimately lost 2-1 in sets.
But on the players' faces amid the bitter defeat, a new resolve flickered.
Maybe we can do this too.
From inside Park Seong-hwa's body, I watched it all and shivered with thrill.
The underdog team's growth sequence was unchanged from the original script.
Only the sport differed; the direction of change stayed the same.
But injecting “Where does the value of sports come from?” elevated it beyond cheesy hot-blooded sports fare.
Now it was about direction.
Nail the visuals, and it'd be sleek, preserving the inherent fun from execution.
That was the moment.
Park Seong-hwa, washing his hands in the bathroom, slowly lifted his head.
Ridiculous, but I still didn't know his face.
In drama terms, this was act four, maybe five.
Yet I hadn't seen it because he avoided facing himself.
No mirrors during washing, showers, even shaving—just a quick electric razor pass.
Hesitating before the fogged mirror, he clearly dreaded confronting his failed self.
And now.
Park Seong-hwa faced himself in the mirror.
Stubbly jaw from poor shaving, straight philtrum, upright nose.
He looked handsomer than I'd vaguely imagined.
Script-wise, Park Seong-hwa was forty-five.
Age tweakable by ±5 without jarring—forty to fifty.
Prime range packed with skilled actors.
But unknowns weren't off the table.
Who could it be?
Did the superpower see him as Park Seong-hwa incarnate?
There—in my eyes, no, Park Seong-hwa's eyes—his reflection appeared.
The coach who'd lost the match but finally grasped what a “team” meant.
Absurd he'd only now realized it, yet a relief too.
Park Seong-hwa smiled.
The smile so absurd it drew another.
“Damn, still handsome as ever.”
With that, Park Seong-hwa left the bathroom.
Watching it all, I trusted the superpower's choice.
An unexpected face, but no actor fit Park Seong-hwa better.
“Hey. What're you doing?”
“Huh?”
Cigarette smoke stung my nose.
One second on a finals stage roaring with thousands, next back in quiet reality—dizzying.
Like motion sickness.
“What're you thinking so hard about?”
“Oh, just a bit dizzy.”
“Dizzy? You pushing too hard lately? Sleep while you work. You're not some kid...”
Seeing Reporter Mun's worried face snapped me back to reality.
“Reporter, I'll hit you up later. Forgot I had someone to meet at the station!”
“Huh? Oh, go ahead!”
“Promise I'll call. See you soon!”
I needed Reporter Mun's help to dig into E-sports anyway.
The only expert I knew.
But right now, that wasn't priority.
I had to see Yeom PD.
Tell him how gripping the story I'd seen was, how his creation could unlock fresh appeal.
And convince him.
To revise the script together.
This drama could work.
And I wanted it desperately.
Betting everything on it.
I bounded up the stairs to the variety department office, excitement cooling to reason as I arrived.
Barging into MBY Variety like a madman? Rude. Call first.
The instant I pulled up Yeom PD's number on my phone.
“Director Do Hyun-woo?”
Turning, there stood PD Yeom Jae-moon.
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