Blinding Light
The silence flowed on.
"······."
"······."
With everyone still frozen in place, the long-haired manager glided across the surface of the water.
Off in the distance, a fishing rod was bobbing away with the current — the one that had slipped out of Park Songhwa's hand the moment she was shoved.
Splash—
The man slipped into the water and began to swim.
Long, smooth strokes that barely raised a spray. His long hair came undone in the current and trailed after him like a stroke of black ink.
"Um······ he is swimming right now, right?"
"How is he······ that good at swimming?"
Even the safety officer stood there blankly holding his rescue tube, while the long-haired manager snatched up the fishing rod and turned back with unhurried grace.
"Mishin, sir!"
Only then did Park Songhwa come back to her senses, scrambling down off the dock.
"Are you insane?! Why—why did you have to jump in, Mishin, sir!"
Lee Mishin silently held out the dripping fishing rod.
When she took it without thinking, the reel let out a low whine. Something silver thrashed at the end of the line.
"······Huh? Wha—?! A fish! The fish is still on the line!"
The tension around the reservoir erupted into cheers all at once.
"Dinner is secured!"
"You saved a person and landed dinner······."
Towels flew in from every direction. Somehow the staff had produced blankets, and in no time he was buried under them with hot packs stacked on top.
Park Songhwa snatched up a towel and rose on tiptoe to wring out his wet hair.
"What if you catch a cold! Did you swallow any water? Did you bump into anything anywhere?"
"Please calm down first, Songhwa."
"······That's rich, coming from you."
Park Songhwa held out the hair tie from her own wrist.
"If it stays stuck to your neck all wet, you'll freeze."
"······."
"Tie it up."
Just then, the PD came running up, out of breath.
"Manager, are you really all right? You don't need to see a doctor?"
"I'm fine."
"But, um······ I hate to ask at a moment like this, but where on earth did you learn to swim? That form doesn't just come out of nowhere."
"I used to do a bit of it in the mountains."
Gimcheon, with its fine mountains and fine water. Every summer vacation, his grandmother would drag him down to the creek.
"Don't you go cooping yourself up in the house! Go out and get some air! What kind of grandboy of mine can't even splash around in the water!"
She told him to catch snails, so he caught snails. She told him to swim, so he swam. The curriculum had exactly one subject: survival. Maybe that was why, strangely enough, his lung capacity always seemed to have grown by summer's end.
"You—you swam in the mountains?"
"Like the training they do during mountain asceticism······ discipline?"
"You mean like meditating under a waterfall, that kind of thing?"
"Nature training, of course······."
The PD cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Manager."
"Yes."
"That scene just now — could we air it? All we'd need is your signature on an image rights consent form······."
"I have a condition."
"······Sorry?"
The PD blinked at the answer, which had come as if he'd been waiting for the question. No way. Did he see this in the future too? The moment the thought landed, goosebumps rippled up his arms — and that was when it came.
"Please take good care of Park Songhwa's screen time."
The long-haired manager kept talking, absently tying up his hair with the hair tie.
"In a good way."
"······."
The PD stared blankly at the retreating figure for a long while.
'That man······ when he sets someone up, he sets them up, but when he saves them, he really saves them properly.'
To say it again: eighty percent of a manager's job is waiting.
And this two-night, three-day stretch of waiting had been one of the most productive on record.
'Fresh air. It's been a while.'
Set up a camping chair next to the van, rest a laptop on your knees, and you had yourself a studio with excellent ventilation. No rent, either. Though the mosquitoes did collect their own maintenance fees.
Opening the music production program he'd quit when he took the job felt awkward in a way that was hard to describe — and yet, at the same time······ a little thrilling.
The working file was named [AllIn_Sketch].
The problem was that he'd heard the melody for exactly one moment. Reconstructing it was like re-treading last night's dream: the broad strokes stayed sharp while the details kept smearing. And then there was the bigger problem. Everything before and after the hook was blank page. The verses, the pre-chorus, the bridge — all of it was on him.
He tapped the keys, deleted, tapped again. It was still a long way from finished. Until something clicked against that blurry thing in his memory, the song would remain half-made. But little by little, it was taking shape.
He closed out the pre-dawn session and looked up at the night sky, and the reservoir suddenly came to mind.
In the vision, the one who'd fallen into the water was Park Songhwa. The skidding rain boots, the tilting body, the column of water shooting up — every detail had been vivid. So he'd sprinted over, shoved her back, and in the end it was he who went in.
'······The future changed, didn't it?'
Every scene he'd seen until now had played out exactly as shown. The press conference, the hospital special, all of it. But this time, he had intervened and changed the ending himself.
'Am I supposed to be happy about that, or not······.'
Put another way — that future he'd seen in the CEO's office, the one a dozen years down the line, could change too. The nameplate that had read CEO Lee Mishin.
'Can't exactly sit back and relax about that one.'
Oh, wait. Come to think of it — the credits for All In listed the composer as AG, didn't they.
'So I become a CEO from a producer background? That happens fairly often, actually······.'
But he soon shook his head. Because in the future he'd seen in that office, there'd been a second article attached to the tablet.
If he were AG, there was no way the reporters would have left that out. They'd have led with genius-composer-turned-CEO before anything else.
'Then don't tell me······.'
A future where he became a CEO, and a future where he became a composer. The two tracks might exist separately.
A word he'd once brushed past came back to him. Multiverse.
In an ordinary life, choosing one path means folding up the other. But right now, at least two futures that went well were laid out in front of him.
'If I played the two of them off each other just right······ maybe the future could shift even further.'
He was still turning the problem over when the last night of the shoot arrived without his noticing. Departure was tomorrow. In the yard, cables were being coiled up, and the cast had gone to bed early.
'And that······ snoring. Whose is that? Turns out celebrities aren't so different after all.'
Slipping out in the gap of quiet, he made his way to the creek. Night had settled over the water. He rolled up his cuffs, stepped in, and turned over a stone — snails clung to the underside in clusters.
"Knew I'd find you here."
He turned around. Park Songhwa stood there in rubber boots. Her face was completely bare — she must have come straight from washing up before bed.
She waded in after him with a splash and flipped over a submerged stone, then beamed.
"Whoa, you were right, Mishin, sir — there really are tons out at night!"
"I am a country boy, after all."
"Oh?"
They talked about the countryside for a while, then sat side by side on a nearby wooden platform.
"Actually, there's something I want to tell you."
"······."
"The day after you mentioned All In. I floated it to the A&R team lead — just casually, you know. I asked what they'd think if the comeback title track was called 'All In'."
"······What happened?"
"Her eyes went saucer-wide and she went off — 'Are you out of your mind?' And then when I followed up that it'd be a dance track, she grabbed the back of her neck. 'You're joking, right?' she kept saying."
"······."
It was more than understandable. He probably would have done the same.
"Right. So I backed off. The company's lost enough money because of me already. I don't have the nerve to keep pushing."
He answered without much thought.
"Then we'll just have to show them with the finished product."
"······Sorry?"
Park Songhwa's eyes wavered.
"We finish the song, put your voice on it, and let them listen."
"······."
"Besides, the most important opinion in this business has already been given. The person singing it says it's good."
Her own words coming straight back at her, Park Songhwa hid a strange little smile.
"······Okay. Let's do it."
Then she stuck out her pinky finger.
"It's a secret project. Just between the two of us."
Their pinkies hooked together.
"Oh, right — the production press conference is next week, isn't it."
"Yes. The press screening for Country Mouse."
"That's······ my first official event since the scandal. And unlike a shoot, there······"
The end of her sentence was swallowed by the sound of crickets.
Reporters. Camera flashes. Questions nobody could control.
He didn't need to hear the rest to understand.
'She's developed a trauma.'
The first vision he'd ever seen, from the rooftop kitchen. A woman bowing her head amid a storm of flashing cameras. "I sincerely apologize for the trouble I have caused."
It was no wonder she'd grown afraid of the flash.
"······Even just hearing the sound brings that day back. Click, click, like that. Oh — I'm absolutely not blaming you, Mishin, sir······."
"······."
Park Songhwa rested her chin on her drawn-up knees.
"I'm scared of the questions, too. What if gambling comes up, and I can't keep my expression under control, and that becomes a meme too······ even thinking about it makes my heart race, and I feel like the panic attacks will come back······."
'······Panic attacks?'
He hadn't known it went that deep. This was a more serious problem than he'd thought.
As he weighed what a manager ought to say, he decided to set the mood deliberately.
"You don't need to worry. You'll do well."
"And how can you be so sure of that?"
"Because I've seen it."
Park Songhwa's head snapped up.
"······You saw that too? The press conference?"
"Yes. You were lifting your head proudly in front of all those cameras, smiling."
It was, of course, a lie. But if this lie could give Park Songhwa something to believe in, then it seemed like a lie worth telling — just as it had on the Our Hospital set.
"······."
Park Songhwa was silent for a long moment. Then she let out a long, slow breath.
"If you say it'll go well, Mishin, sir, then it goes well. That's how it works. That day — I'm not lowering my head."
"You'll still have to greet them, though."
"······Are you some kind of T-monster or something?"
On the walk back, where the lights of the lodging came into view, Park Songhwa suddenly turned around.
"Oh, right. One favor to ask."
"Name it."
"At the press conference — dress up as nicely as you possibly can."
"······Sorry?"
It was the most baffling request he'd received in his life.
"Dress up? Why would I? You're the star of the day, Songhwa."
"Don't you remember? What I grumbled about at the rest stop?"
He remembered. What he had said to Park Songhwa.
"It does feel a bit unfair, though. I'm not the celebrity, but somehow everyone only recognizes me."
"In a way, that's a good thing. Thanks to that, nobody recognizes you at all, Songhwa."
"Well······ that's true. Thank you."
"That day — just one more time. Take all of it for me. The flashes, the stares, all of it. Walk beside me, as dazzling as you can possibly be. Then I······"
Her voice dropped, clear and steady between the chirping of the crickets.
"I don't think I'll be scared at all."
The Country Mouse production press conference.
Ever since the lineup had been revealed, media registration for the event had doubled. The reason needed no asking — it was one person.
"What time does Park Songhwa arrive?"
"Ten-thirty. They staggered her thirty minutes after the rest of the cast. Said they didn't want their routes crossing."
Two reporters front and center at the photo wall, prime real estate, traded talk as they wiped their lenses.
"Today's money shot is Park Songhwa, no question. The rest of the stills are just bonus."
"It's obvious, isn't it? Head down, scurrying steps. The guilty-party entrance. That one frame and we're done. They even say she's got flash phobia ever since that day."
"Tsk. Poor thing, sure, but that's the business."
"Poor my ass. Who told her to go gambling?"
Just as they finished rationalizing, another voice cut in beside them.
"Oh, did you hear that rumor? Park Songhwa's manager is apparently him. You know, the YouTube guy — eight million views. The long-haired shaman who predicted her downfall."
"Make some sense. What celebrity in this world keeps the guy who sent her to rock bottom right by her side?"
"Just tabloid garbage. People will write anything these days."
"What's a shaman going to do as a manager, plan the schedule by fortune-telling?"
Snickering laughter spread. And at the far end of the photo wall, a YouTuber with a tripod already had his livestream running.
"Alright, everyone! We are LIVE at the Country Mouse production press conference! Park Songhwa arrives any minute now — her first official appearance since the scandal! Her FIRST!"
The chat scrolled fast.
10:28.
A black Carnival minivan glided up to the hotel's main entrance.
"Here she comes, here she comes!"
"Get in position!"
The reporters found their stances one by one, and the lenses up on the ladders swung around. Fingers settled over shutters. Some were already half-pressing, waiting for the guilty-party entrance.
The van stopped. The sliding door opened.
The first thing out was a single heel.
"······."
Then Park Songhwa emerged, one hand resting over her chest.
Her chin was lifted. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead. There was even a smile at the corners of her mouth.
"Wha—?"
"······That's the face of someone making her first official appearance after her 'period of reflection'?"
"I distinctly heard Park Songhwa was terrified of camera flashes?"
The fingers hovering on their half-pressed shutters had nowhere to go.
Before the murmuring could even die down —
Click, click—
The sound of heels came around the front of the van.
The first thing visible was height. A tall, striking figure rose above the van's roofline. Next, the suit. A black suit that fell from shoulder to ankle as if measured by a ruler. And finally······ long hair. The hair spilling over his shoulders rippled like water with every step.
"······."
Buttoning his jacket, the long-haired man began walking level with Park Songhwa, at her side.
Click—
One reporter pressed the shutter as if in a trance.
That was the signal.
"Th-that man······!"
"Long hair······ wait, the long hair?!"
"It's him! The shaman from YouTube!!"
"The rumor was true?!"
"Look at that suit fit, insane······ hey, what agency is that guy with? Is he an actor?"
"He's a manager! A manager!"
The YouTuber was screaming into his gimbal.
"Everyone, the manager! Can you see the manager?! That's the shaman, right?! This is my first time seeing him in person, right now!"
CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK—!
Park Songhwa was waving and smiling. In the middle of a baptism of flashbulbs, head held high.
'Ugh, it's blinding.'
Beside her, the long-haired man walked on without blinking once.
Author's Note: I dozed off. I'm so sorry. I'll post one more chapter at 23:20!