Broadcast
By the time June drew to a close, summer had settled in for real.
It was milder than in the era I came from, but one thing about summer had never changed: it was still hot, sticky, and miserable.
As for ordinary changes, well.
“That’s a shame. Today’s the last day…”
“Even if we weren’t filming, once it gets any hotter, heatstroke becomes a real risk, so this is probably for the best.”
With broadcast day a week away and additional pickup shots for the later episodes still on the schedule, my runs with Ryu Cheong-ah were coming to an end.
Since it was our last day, I agreed to the suggestion that we at least have a light meal together, and we ended up at a barbecue place nearby.
How had things turned out like this?
I thought about it, then let the question go.
No matter that I had lived through regression once, I still knew choice was something you couldn’t easily undo.
And I knew even better that complaining about it after the fact was pointless.
Once a choice was made, the responsibility belonged to me alone.
I didn’t want to act like some pathetic loser and keep whining about it.
As I cut the meat while thinking that, Ryu Cheong-ah spoke up.
“T-th-next week’s the broadcast, isn’t it…”
“Yes. We made it this far thanks to everyone’s hard work.”
“I’m still disappointed. If I’d done just a little better, maybe we could’ve gone with preproduction… Ah! I’m absolutely not saying the director or any of the staff did a bad job! I just mean…”
“I know. You’re not the type to mean it that way, Ryu Cheong-ah.”
“Ugh…”
“Forget it and eat. We’re at the finish line, so you need to keep your strength up. I’m paying.”
“No! I invited you out for this…”
“It’s fine. As long as I’m not paying for the drinks, I’m good.”
“...I don’t drink. Not anymore.”
It must have left a strong impression at the company dinner.
Her face flared bright at the mere mention of it, and I could guess at the reason well enough.
So Ryu Cheong-ah before my regression must have gone through something like that at least once.
That was why the Ryu Cheong-ah I knew never touched alcohol.
Still, more often than not, I found myself feeling caught between déjà vu and a sense of wrongness whenever I looked at her.
Ryu Cheong-ah the rookie and Ryu Cheong-ah the top star often felt like two different people who happened to share the same face.
Would this Ryu Cheong-ah become that Ryu Cheong-ah, if she learned enough?
Whenever I thought about it, another thought would surface.
Maybe Ryu Cheong-ah would be far happier as a no-name actress.
Knowing everything that surrounded her, I couldn’t help reaching that conclusion.
But it was a pointless hypothetical.
She was destined to stand out.
Unless she never set foot in entertainment at all, Ryu Cheong-ah was always going to become something remarkable somehow.
“This is so good. Hehe…”
It was a ridiculous fate for a ditz who could get that happy over a single strip of pork belly, but anyway.
“Yes, let me know if you want more.”
“Ah, I can?”
“Yes.”
What, was I supposed to be stingy with that much charity toward a broke girl?
By now, her episode fee had probably already gone into those people’s pockets and then been siphoned off somewhere else anyway. It wasn’t as if I was being asked to do something inhumane.
Whether she knew what I was thinking or not, Ryu Cheong-ah stuffed herself happily, chewing away with both cheeks full.
After that she even added doenjang jjigae and rice, and by the time we left the restaurant, she looked completely revived.
“Thank you for the meal!”
“Yes, you really did eat well.”
“Ah…”
“That was praise. Sorry if it sounded like I was being sarcastic. My manner of speaking doesn’t change easily, so when I relax, I end up sounding like this sometimes.”
“Was I… comfortable to be around?”
It was an odd question.
Her expression was bright, as if she’d never expected to hear that.
Did I put too much distance between us?
I had no intention of getting any closer than this, but it still wasn’t something I should say so bluntly after coming this far.
“We’ve been running together for more than a month. Wouldn’t it be stranger if I were uncomfortable around you?”
“...!”
“Anyway, I’ll be going now.”
“Ah, I…”
“Yes?”
“Um, do you maybe have someone else to watch the drama with…”
She looked away and trailed off, fidgeting as she asked the question.
What, is she asking if we’re all watching it together or something?
She’d asked every time the filming team had had a group outing, so I assumed this was the same thing.
“Sorry, but I already have plans.”
“A woman?”
“A man. My closest hyung.”
I felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
- Do you like movies?
- There’s some lunatic among the people I’m close to, so I’m forced to watch them. At least once or twice a week.
- A woman?
- A man.
It was funny how the line of questioning never seemed to change.
And something about the questions themselves made her feel even more like the Ryu Cheong-ah of the future.
“A-a male senior, then…”
“Is there a problem?”
“No!? That’s the best!? You’re so loyal!!!”
Looking at her beaming face, I decided it didn’t matter much after all.
“Then I’ll see you next time.”
“Yes, next time! Definitely!”
She bowed ninety degrees, all too proper, then turned away—only to glance back over her shoulder. When our eyes met, she laughed a little awkwardly.
And just like that, Ryu Cheong-ah disappeared from view in a flurry of motion.
Only then could I turn and head home.
It really was broadcast day now.
The realization was strangely moving, and naturally, a little nerve-racking too.
But time wasn’t going to wait until I felt ready.
Quarter three began on the first Wednesday evening of the month, at 9:57 p.m.
Broadcast day had arrived.
“All right, all right, it’s about to start! Why are there so many damn commercials?”
“That’s how the company that airs those commercials makes its living, you know.”
“I just hope they don’t put them on the shows I actually watch.”
“You really are an ungrateful bastard, aren’t you?”
“Hey now, it’s called focus and selectivity!”
I sat in front of the television with Seonghun hyung.
My heart beat low and heavy.
However I looked at it, once I knew my writing was about to be released into the world through this screen, there was no helping the feeling.
I forced myself to steady.
Then I fixed my eyes straight ahead.
And soon after,
“It’s starting!”
with Seonghun hyung’s usual theatrics, the broadcast began.
The Republic of Korea was a country with an enormous population for such a small patch of land.
That meant there were all kinds of families in a single city, and some of their quirks might stand out, but still.
As of 2014, there was a family custom so universal it might as well have been called conventional wisdom.
“Oh! It’s starting a new drama today, isn’t it? Honey! Give me the remote!”
Every Wednesday and Thursday at 10 p.m.
That was the hour when housewives took hold of the remote, and it was part of that custom.
The head of the household, Kim Seongtaek, clicked his tongue and muttered in irritation for no real reason.
“Another drama? We already watched the whole thing through the finale last week.”
“Exactly. That’s why we’re starting a new one. This time it’s a historical drama. A sageuk.”
“Historical drama, my ass. Anything in this time slot is just men and women whining, making out, and crying their eyes out.”
“Why do you always have to say it like that? Just give it here.”
He was a department manager at a decent-sized company and usually carried himself with a fair bit of swagger outside the home, but at home he wasn’t very high in the pecking order.
No, before even getting to rank, his two daughters had already made it obvious they wanted to side with their mother and watch the new drama.
At this hour he was supposed to be watching a documentary and then going to bed.
That was what Seongtaek was thinking, but whatever else he was, he was a husband and father who loved his family.
Which was why, two hours a week, he handed over the remote to his wife without a word of complaint.
“Sigh. I guess I’ll just go to sleep.”
“Why don’t you watch with us for once?”
“Why would I watch some young people’s love story?”
“No, they say this one’s not like that. Apparently there are gangsters in it?”
“Why would gangsters be in a historical drama?”
That did stir a little interest.
No matter how old a man got, he was still an animal that couldn’t help getting worked up over other people fighting.
“Do you know anything about it?”
“No? I just saw the trailer, and the male lead is supposed to be ridiculously handsome?”
When his wife said that, the daughters chimed in eagerly.
“Right? He looked so cool! He seems like a rookie too.”
“Na Jingeon? I think that was his name. Wait a sec… oh, right, this is his first lead role?”
It was the period when smartphones had only just become common and were still settling into everyday life.
The younger daughter showed him a picture.
As far as male celebrities these days went, he had an unusually Western, almost feral kind of good looks—definitely enough to shatter the prejudice that all of them were skinny pretty boys.
No wonder the girls liked him.
His room had been full of Western actor bromides.
In any case, hearing it was a sageuk with gangsters in it made the whole thing feel a little less off-putting.
It was still a bit early to go to bed.
Seongtaek sat back down on the sofa.
“Ahem…”
“You were bored, weren’t you?”
At his wife’s affectionate teasing, Seongtaek snorted and crossed his arms, pretending not to care.
Then the commercials ended, and the drama began.
There was a prejudice that usually came to mind when people thought of dramas.
For one thing, the beginning was usually very boring.
But this time—
“Huh? Is that a construction site? I thought you said this was a historical drama.”
The footage opened on some abandoned construction site.
While Seongtaek was momentarily flustered by the start, which reeked of a gangster film, his wife and daughters were squealing over the male lead’s face.
“Holy crap! He’s insanely handsome!”
“Isn’t he so masculine? We don’t really get guys with that kind of style in Korean acting much!”
He felt a slight sense of exclusion, but his interest was piqued all the same.
Seongtaek focused back on the screen.
The handsome guy his daughters were swooning over was slumped against a pillar.
He was breathing hard, glaring ahead with fierce eyes, and there stood a rough-looking middle-aged man who seemed to be the boss, lighting a cigarette as he said,
“Do you know the difference between a dog and a wolf?”
“...”
“Only one thing. A dog can be tamed. A wolf can’t.”
The voice dropped heavily, like it was pressing down from above.
Then the boss exhaled a long breath and said,
“That’s why you’re dying. Because you’re a wolf pup. You can’t be tamed, no matter what I do, so I’ve got to put you down.”
Seongtaek’s posture changed.
The lazy crossed-arm attitude of “let’s see what this is” vanished, replaced by sharp, intent focus.
Without even realizing it himself.
“What a load of crap.”
“Why can’t I just live as a dog? Why do I have to live as a wolf?”
Conflicts and stakes and all those things settled naturally into the body without needing to be thought through.
Cliché.
This was how it worked—erasing the strain of understanding through familiarity, then hammering easy expectation and pleasure straight into the brain.
That kind of noir tension didn’t care about age or gender.
The tension created by a situation involving death grabbed viewers instantly and made them focus on the scene, and by then even his wife and daughters, who had been squealing earlier, were silently staring at the screen.
Rather than bursting, it spread softly, like a low hum.
The camera language and composition were things the viewer didn’t need to analyze deliberately.
And in that immersion, the boss confessed.
“You know. I heard that if you raise a wolf pup, the northern nomads say it’ll grow up and snap your neck the moment its head gets strong enough.”
“You did well all this time. Get some rest.”
The wolf who had wanted to keep faith.
The prodigy the boss himself had pitied right up until the moment he was cast aside.
The underlings approached the male lead with knives in hand.
Even in his last moment, the wolf was still a wolf.
“Stick him in one go. Don’t make a fuss.”
His wildness, utterly unafraid of death, gave the whole thing a kind of grandeur.
As the underlings moved in from every side, drawing closer to Yeong-ho while also closing the circle around him, their backs receded from view.
Then someone pulled an arm back and drove it forward.
Thud—
With that sound, the screen went black.
Seongtaek had already lost his voice to the five-minute-long scene.
And then, immediately after that,
the next shot was the floor of a Joseon market under a blue sky.
Suddenly cheerful sounds spilled out chaotically, and with a snap, the tension dissolved.
What the hell? Why is this showing up all of a sudden?
Only then did he remember that this was a historical drama.
He wasn’t stupid, so he understood what had happened.
Ah, Yeong-ho ended up in Joseon? A Joseon gangster?
So the incredible Yeong-ho had fallen into Joseon.
Then what was he going to do now? Was he all right for the moment?
As the questions began to rise, the infuriating drama had no intention of answering them yet, and instead cut to some random tavern.
No, seriously, what happens to Yeong-ho!?
The moment his frustration peaked—
“Three bowls of gukbap here! Enjoy!”
the woman handing a customer a bowl of soup rice appeared, and Seongtaek’s attention was instantly snatched away with an, Oh?
She was elegant and graceful.
The sort of woman anyone would look at and immediately think, Ah, she’s the heroine.
Even with no prior knowledge at all, you could feel it.
And yet, despite that kind of face, she didn’t feel luxurious.
Before anything else, the word that struck him almost unconsciously was hardworking.
Oh…
“Hyang-dan! Two more bowls of gukbap over here!”
“And bring us some makgeolli too!”
“Just a moment, please! You’re all so impatient!”
Her glances, her gestures, the short bursts of language she threw out, the texture of the human being speaking them.
There was an appeal to it that made the eye follow just one person, no matter how many others were in the room.
It was the kind of force that lodged itself in Seongtaek’s awareness and kept him fixed on the female lead.
The power known as presence.
A force that seized a person without needing to pile on anything grand.
That was the greatest asset of Ryu Cheong-ah.
Seongtaek found himself paying attention to every word and every movement Hyang-dan made.
The whole process was so fascinating it almost felt miraculous.
Before he knew it, he was following Hyang-dan through the rhythms of her day, through one fleeting moment after another.
And then, at last, it was night.
“Ugh…”
As Hyang-dan was tidying up the tavern, she heard a strange groan.
Everyone immediately knew that was Yeong-ho, which only sharpened the tension, and as Hyang-dan moved toward the sound, everyone waited for the next moment to come.
And then she finally found Yeong-ho.
“So what, are those two about to do now? Is this one of those make-out dramas?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, honey! Focus, will you?”
“I mean, come on…”
What was he supposed to do about being curious?
His wife’s chiding even felt a little unfair, but he didn’t have time to glare at her.
It was more important to see the next scene anyway, so of course he would.
“Hey! Are you all right!?”
Yeong-ho was dressed in a shabby hanbok, his hair hanging in a wild, tangled mess, looking exactly like some lowborn Joseon nobody.
And yet the reason people could tell it was Yeong-ho at all was because the role itself was the same.
It was easy to think, deep down, that Yeong-ho’s soul must be inside a Joseon body.
The scenes that followed were like that.
Hyang-dan grunted and wheezed as she carried Yeong-ho to an empty room in the tavern.
She looked after him through several days of tavern life, even as he made no move to get up.
Then Yeong-ho woke.
From Yeong-ho’s point of view, it became clear that this was Joseon.
That he had died, come back to life, and been sent into the past.
And that Hyang-dan had saved his life.
The story led him, step by step, through the thin thread of emptiness he felt in the midst of it all.
“Why didn’t you just let me die?”
The whole family watching that sharp line understood it somewhere inside.
Of course they did—Yeong-ho had lost all the younger brothers he had cherished, and even at the moment of death he hadn’t run away. How empty must this situation feel to him?
So he had survived alone again.
That emotion flickered briefly through the scene.
But there was something else, something that jabbed right through that sticky mood and changed the tone.
“I can’t just pretend not to see someone collapsed on the street. Forget it and eat.”
Hyang-dan, stubborn and tenacious, fed him anyway.
Then one day passed, then another, and as life in the tavern continued, Yeong-ho finally started doing odd jobs after Hyang-dan scolded him for lying around and told him to help if he had time to spare.
It was the beginning of a relationship.
“Why do you live such a hard life?”
“Is there anything special about it? I just want to eat, sleep, and then grow old and die. I’ll sneak over and listen to the peddlers’ stories too, then laugh my head off on my own.”
“The tavern? It’s where I lived with the mother who took me in and raised me. How could I leave? I’m going to protect it for the rest of my life.”
“Then why were you collapsed there? What did you do before this? Do you have family?”
They shared small, ordinary stories.
But the simple emotional current built into the setup itself was there all the same.
A girl doing her best to live today while a man who had lost everything slowly healed was the core of it, and the story fed those essential pieces in quickly and cleanly.
There was a kind of warmth to it, I supposed.
And just as Seongtaek was sinking into that flow—
“Anyone here~!”
Bang!
A gang of thugs, swords at their waists, barged in rough and loud.
“Aren’t those the Geomgye guys?”
“It is! Those bastards came all the way out here…”
Whispered voices.
The tavern owner, Hyang-dan, clutching the hem of her skirt in clear tension.
It was obvious she was scared, and yet everyone—Yeong-ho and the viewers alike—understood why she didn’t back down.
The tavern was one of the last remaining inheritances from her only family.
“What brings you here? If you’re here to eat, there’s an empty seat over there…”
She spoke with forced courage, but everyone knew the knife-wielding thugs hadn’t come for a quiet meal.
One of the Geomgye trash who had been eyeing Hyang-dan from head to toe chuckled and approached.
It was obvious he intended to harass her.
And just as everyone there, viewers included, swallowed hard at the tension—
the drama returned to its original promise.
Yeong-ho stepped forward.
His face darkened as he strode out, curling his hand into a fist and drawing his arm back.
Then he pulled it farther still, all the way to his shoulder.
And then, like a spring released, he fired.
Smack—
Even the moment his fist hit the man’s cheek, every motion had been so dynamic that there was no choice but to get swept up in it.
It was as if the long buildup had all been compressed into one breath.
“Ghh…”
The Geomgye thug crawled across the floor, unable even to breathe properly.
Behind him, his three companions froze in shock and staggered back.
Holy shit!
The relief was so delicious that Seongtaek was just about to cheer when Yeong-ho, his eyes blazing between the strands of his loose hair, growled,
“If you came to eat, then eat. Don’t go making trouble.”
And just as the excitement reached its peak—
Come to My Love~
the screen froze and turned gray.
A song that sounded absurdly cheerful and completely wrong for the moment began to play.
Along the bottom of the screen, a huge banner for a famous coffee franchise popped up.
Seongtaek was dumbstruck.
No—his whole family was dumbstruck.
The drama was over.
No matter how hard you rubbed your eyes, it was still over.
In an instant, as if waking from an especially sweet dream, the immersion shattered at its absolute peak, and the advertising banners for the production company and the episode’s highlight reel passed by in a rush.
“???”
“What? It’s already over?”
“Ah! They only showed us that much!”
Seongtaek’s hands and feet trembled.
“A-and we can’t see what happens next?”
“They’re showing it tomorrow! Ugh, seriously, these writers are vicious!”
And so Seongtaek realized it.
Cliffhanger craftsmanship.
It was the cruelty of perverse souls who took joy in manipulating other people’s emotions.
He had fallen prey to the malice of degenerates who spent all day thinking about how to make sure he watched again tomorrow!
The same thing was happening in houses all over the place after people watched the first episode of Sword-Bound Gentleman that day.
“What is this, why would they cut it there!?”
“Ah! Aaaagh!”
“Couldn’t they at least have ended it after hitting him just once!?”
We were living in the age of information, after all.
Those surges of emotion were immediately reflected in the real-time search rankings.
“Oh, what’s this actor’s name? I need to look him up.”
For a first broadcast in a quarterly slot,
they hadn’t even used a famous star.
And as for promotion, the only advantage had been that this was a new drama in WBS’s terrestrial lineup.
Even so, the ranking was astonishing.
[1. Sword-Bound Gentleman]
[2. Can Love Be Advanced?]
[3. WBS Rebroadcast Schedule]
[4. Sword-Bound Gentleman Cast]
Number one in real-time.
It was the record Sword-Bound Gentleman set the moment its first episode aired.
A party room on the outskirts of Seoul.
The production team of Sword-Bound Gentleman, whose on-set atmosphere had been unusually good, gathered together to watch the drama.
In other words, when the ratings came in, everyone was together for that too.
“...No way.”
Every person in the room sat there with their mouths open, dazed.
They all looked like their souls had been sucked clean out of them.
It was because of the number hanging before their eyes.
[4.1%]
Was that a good number?
There was one person there who could answer that with his own body.
Thud!
Min Byeongki dropped to his knees.
With trembling hands, he covered his face.
A moment later, a groan full of metallic rasping sounds leaked from his mouth.
“Aaaah, aaaaah…”
The thing about meat is that the one who’s tasted it knows what good meat is.
But the meal Min Byeongki had tasted was “the drama failed.”
“It’s a lieeee!!!”
“H-hey! Somebody stop the director fast!”
“Director! Please calm down!!!”
Director Min Byeongki had fully triggered his PTSD…!