The Sound of Waves
Orange Company.
The production house preparing the film Giyeon carried a strange energy hanging in its air, one that matched the odd films it made.
"Him? Lee Heeyoon, that Lee Heeyoon?"
Ever since receiving a call from her college classmate Gam Soohan, Ju-eun Victoria Wu Schäfer — the half-German director preparing Giyeon — had started taking another look at The Garden of Manyusa.
The actress cast as the female lead of Giyeon was Do Yeojin, a film school classmate of both Gam Soohan and Ju-eun Schäfer, already somewhat known to the public for her supporting turns in successful films.
For an actress of Do Yeojin's standing to agree to this movie had been a genuinely radical decision. The budget meant her fee was practically nonexistent — but more than that, the content itself was something most actors went out of their way to avoid.
So the plan was to shape the film's tone and manner around Do Yeojin.
And yet the boy from The Garden of Manyusa, with that endlessly mournful, luminous face, seemed to have nothing in common with the monstrous creature in this film. Yes, he could act — but acting, in the end, was something directing could make or break.
Ju-eun Schäfer spoke over the phone with Gam Soohan, the vice president of Leader Actors.
"Sure, you've got yourself a pretty boy who can act. Lucky you. And this kid is actually interested in our movie?"
"He says he wants to do it."
"You hated my screenplay."
"When did I ever hate it? Our tastes are just different."
"Different tastes is hating it."
Ju-eun Schäfer tapped her cigarette out into the ashtray as she spoke.
"We're doing prosthetic makeup anyway, so the face can be dealt with somehow. But his voice is too young."
"Just give him one audition. For old times' sake."
"Hey, do you have any idea how bad things are in the film industry right now? Even a small-scale movie like this is drowning in applicants. This is no time to be sneaking people in through connections."
"Right, and back in sophomore year, every time you got dumped and we went drinking, I…"
"…The audition's next Thursday. Come then. God, it's been a while."
"Yeah. Thursday."
Ju-eun Schäfer mouthed a curse as she hung up. Gam Soohan was a kind man, but when it came to film, he always made absolutely sure to collect on every favor he'd ever given.
Han Dohyun entered the Actor's Fair alongside his closest friend these days, Son Jion.
The exhibition hall was packed with countless actors hunting for work, and industry insiders weaving through the crowd in search of uncut gems.
Lately, Han Dohyun had been thinking that Son Jion's personality had shifted somewhat.
Son Jion was, by nature, someone who lived and died by style, the kind of person who rarely let her feelings show to anyone.
Signature bob cut, expressionless face. Dressed head to toe in monochrome, carrying accessories that were each one more trendy and lovely than the last. Every acting student wanted to know what Son Jion wore, what she carried. Her record-keeping Instagram account had a healthy following too. People were always curious about those who revealed nothing of themselves.
That Son Jion had lately changed into someone entirely different. In short, she'd lost her fear.
All day long the two of them met people and exchanged greetings. Han Dohyun was one thing, but Son Jion — pathologically shy with strangers — spent the whole day greeting people with a soft, easy smile.
Then, the moment she climbed into the passenger seat of Han Dohyun's car after leaving the fair, she curled up and deflated like a balloon losing its air.
"What was it Lee Heeyoon said again?"
Han Dohyun ventured, and Son Jion, who'd been studying the fair's floor plan, answered.
"That the camera is on my side."
"Did that help?"
"So much."
Son Jion murmured, leaning her head against the window.
"To me, he's basically a god."
"Keep watching cult dramas and you'll turn into a cultist yourself."
"It was a drama about destroying a cult."
Son Jion grumbled like that, then glanced back at the screenplay Han Dohyun had tossed onto the back seat before speaking.
"I thought your uncle was offering you a film role. The rookie cop part."
"It's not exactly being handed to me. I'm auditioning."
It was a film screenplay from his uncle, Han Taerin, CEO of Moby Dick. The man had insisted on giving him a fairly substantial role with no audition at all, so Han Dohyun had said he would audition for it anyway.
Son Jion always called Han Dohyun a nepo baby. It was a fair label. A relative of the CEO of Moby Dick, an industry juggernaut, with a former actress for a mother. No matter how hard Han Dohyun worked at acting, he could never claim that the opportunities opening before him came from his own strength alone.
And at some point, his acting had simply stopped growing. It felt stuck.
Yet everyone around him kept saying he was good. Kept saying it, over and over.
While he was thinking this, the car the two of them rode in pulled up in front of a gopchang restaurant. The back door opened, and Han Jeonghyeon slid into the back seat, a jacket draped over one arm.
Without so much as a greeting, Han Jeonghyeon leaned back against the seat and was nearly asleep when he spotted the screenplay lying on the back seat and picked it up. He seemed to flip through the first page or two, then tossed it aside and shut his eyes. Son Jion turned around and asked,
"Nobody handing you a role either?"
"They'd have to offer first. Nothing I like."
"Must be nice, having lives as easy as yours."
At Son Jion's remark, Han Dohyun said,
"What, I'm still auditioning for mine."
At that, Han Jeonghyeon, who had been drifting off, snickered.
"Maybe it's like that in other industries, but ours is the one where your parents' names are your business card. Unless we die and get reborn from scratch, we live off our parents' cards. That's just what we are."
At that laugh, Han Dohyun replied,
"Right. You and me both."
"No, hyung. Not you and me both. Your acting is meh, and mine is good. Don't lump us together."
Han Jeonghyeon said it with a laugh, then crossed his arms and summoned sleep. He'd been pushing himself so hard lately that he crashed like someone fainting.
Son Jion glanced once at the sleeping Han Jeonghyeon, then said to Han Dohyun,
"He's a lot better than you, sure. That doesn't mean you're bad."
"Yeah."
Han Dohyun smiled at Son Jion, consciously, then asked as if joking,
"Isn't his personality kind of like Lee Heeyoon's? They're the only two people who've ever told me straight up that I can't act."
"No. They're completely different."
"Different how?"
"Lee Heeyoon doesn't dislike people. If anything, he likes them. Han Jeonghyeon… do you even know what liking someone means?"
At Son Jion's words, Han Dohyun snorted a short laugh.
It was what his aunt always told him. Her son — Han Jeonghyeon, his cousin — had some kind of emotional problem, and so, as his older cousin, please try to understand him.
He sometimes wondered how such an angel of a woman could have produced a son like that — but then he'd think of the uncle, and the certainty would come: ah yes, that man's son, through and through.
Thankfully, thanks to his mother's Herculean educational efforts, Han Jeonghyeon had at least not grown up to be a serial killer or the like.
Though really, he'd only barely skirted the line of outright criminality. Han Jeonghyeon's greatest problem was that he felt no moral responsibility whatsoever for wrongdoing. No matter how his aunt taught him, guilt was the one thing she could never instill.
Son Jion spoke.
"What Lee Heeyoon said to you — at the very least, it needed to be said. 'After you can express everything Shakespeare wrote, then go make something of your own.'"
"Yeah. True."
Han Dohyun nodded and fell silent for a moment. Then he asked Son Jion,
"So what's Lee Heeyoon doing next?"
"No idea. His agency won't say either. If anything, the secrecy makes me think he's going into something they're not allowed to talk about?"
"A big film, maybe."
"The vibe doesn't feel like it."
On the premise that Lee Heeyoon could show exactly the potential he'd shown in The Garden of Manyusa — if Lee Heeyoon had had parents in the industry, he would by now have been cast in some highly anticipated project alongside a director everyone knew, or an actor everyone knew.
Thinking about that fact, Han Dohyun couldn't help but let out a small, bitter smile.
Han Dohyun remembered the regular performance he'd done in his second year of high school. He'd won the lead role far too easily. Granted, that year there'd been no monsters like Han Jeonghyeon or Lee Heeyoon around.
When he landed that role, the school principal had said to him:
Hearing those words, he understood. His talent and his effort had never once had any influence on the course of his life.
He hadn't been particularly crushed by that fact, though. What had crushed him was Han Jeonghyeon.
He'd thought nothing in this world was farther from acting than Han Jeonghyeon. Even as a child, Han Jeonghyeon had not loved his parents. Even at the age when parents are a child's entire world. How could a man who didn't know love possibly act?
And then, when Han Dohyun saw Han Jeonghyeon's play for the first time — he despaired.
The play was Voyage of Evil.
"Fisherman: You think I conspired with the devil? That devil's blood runs in my veins, is that it? I lost my son, and two days later I put out to sea again — is that such an insult in your eyes? Of course, my wife tried to stop me too. She said the weather was bad. But do you know what is more frightening than losing a son, more frightening than foul weather? It's the debt. That is the devil. I did not conspire with the devil. I am owned by him."
In that moment, Han Dohyun had covered his face with both hands.
Han Jeonghyeon, who couldn't even comprehend what a parent's love was, was playing a father boarding a fishing boat two days after losing his son.
Han Jeonghyeon, who had never once in his life gotten his hands dirty, had depicted, exactly, a man who had spent twenty years and more taking the sea wind on the deck of a boat.
Han Dohyun had sunk so deep into the play that he'd projected his own father onto Han Jeonghyeon. It was an absurd thing to do.
How could anyone be that good?
For an instant, Han Dohyun felt isolated from everything in the world.
After the final performance of the play ended and the cast dinner at the gopchang restaurant wrapped up, Han Jeonghyeon had ridden home in Han Dohyun's car.
The moment he'd washed up and sprawled onto his bed, the demon spoke to him.
[Just give up and buy it with your lifespan already]
This demon had spoken to two deprived humans. Humans deprived enough that they had to sell their lifespans.
One of them was Lee Heeyoon, who'd had no guardian; the other was Han Jeonghyeon, who lacked the emotional understanding needed to act.
Han Jeonghyeon stared at the emotional slots floating before his eyes.
Where Lee Heeyoon had traded lifespan for loneliness, to protect the people around him, Han Jeonghyeon had traded his lifespan for a handful of emotions he couldn't understand.
There were so many emotions, and lifespan had its limits. In the end, Han Jeonghyeon had never managed to purchase the one emotion he wanted to know.
[Guilt]
He'd decided it was an emotion he simply didn't need, and had never even considered exchanging for it.
But then Lee Heeyoon had said it. That he would never understand Claudius of Hamlet. That the emotion he lacked was guilt.
The demon had demanded twenty years of lifespan, and when Han Jeonghyeon refused, it had offered up a different quest instead.
To receive a perfect score for his acting from one famous, ruthlessly critical reviewer.
[That reviewer gives scores that are uncannily, perfectly identical to the ones our demons do!]
[A demonic human even demons approve of]
[Lee Heeyoon got a perfect score before he ever died]
[And you've lived quite a bit longer than he did, and you still haven't gotten yours]
He was desperately sleepy, yet couldn't actually fall asleep. Han Jeonghyeon reached out and searched his phone for the sound of waves.
He'd played the fisherman for so long that without the sound of waves, sleep wouldn't come.
As he drifted off listening to the waves, the demon's voice reached him.
[Went through a whole regression with someone else's lifespan just to buy this stuff… you really are something]
[You're serious about acting. Genuinely vile and genuinely magnificent.]
[What gets me is, you hate his guts, and yet you keep letting Lee Heeyoon go on acting]
Han Jeonghyeon, who had been letting the demon's words wash over him, couldn't let that one pass.
"Obviously Lee Heeyoon has to keep acting too."
[Why?]
"Because otherwise, who am I supposed to compete with?"
The demon was flabbergasted into silence for a while, then started up again.
[Haah, what's the point of talking. This bastard doesn't even know what guilt is.]
The demon's exasperated voice was pleasant to listen to. It sounded like a lullaby.
Han Jeonghyeon sank into a deep sleep.