The Question Mark in the Credits

"Watching that kid, I finally understand why people call heavy drinkers 'drink whales.' Is that a person or a whale?"

Gam Seong-beom said this while Do Jae-yeon was still absorbed in the article. Just as he described, a near-fortress of beer cans had built itself up in front of her. Since she hated mixing her drinks, Do Jae-yeon always measured her beer in liters.

The moment she finished the article, the alcohol burned right out of her and she shot to her feet.

"They say Lee Heeyoon acted really well."

"Well, did he?"

"See for yourself."

The CEO and the Vice President hurried over to Do Jae-yeon's seat and began squinting at the tiny smartphone screen together, reading it out loud.

It was lavish praise piled atop lavish praise.

The CEO and the Vice President erupted in cheers, and no matter how well soundproofed the room was, the roar carried clear out into the hallway beyond the monitoring room.

Lee Heeyoon, who had been dozing on the sofa, finally woke, blinked around blearily, and pushed open the door to the monitoring room. Then he narrowed his eyes and asked,

"……I was asleep and you didn't even turn the lights off? What is this?"

"Hey, you were out way too long."

"Then wake me up."

Lee Heeyoon grumbled, though there was no real complaint behind it. Everyone in the room knew that. Do Jae-yeon held out her phone to him.

"There's praise for you."

Heeyoon took it and looked over the article. Whether it was sleep still clouding his eyes or not, he read for a long while before handing the phone back.

All three of them braced themselves. He did well, so of course they'd say he did well — but why show it to him? And they had even prepared responses for whatever came after that remark. But then Lee Heeyoon simply curled the corners of his mouth up and smiled.

By his usual temperament, he should have found it annoying and acted insufferably arrogant about the whole thing. All three of them had their comebacks ready — and that smile stopped them dead, leaving them scrambling for a reaction.

Heeyoon returned the phone, flipped on the lights in the monitoring room, and said,

"How much have you all been drinking?"

"Oh no, we barely touched it. It was Do Jae-yeon who drank a lot."

"And even for Jae-yeon, honestly, that's not much by Jae-yeon standards."

As the Vice President, Gam Soo-han, came to her defense, Do Jae-yeon nodded along vigorously. Lee Heeyoon heaved a sigh of deep disappointment and said,

"Everyone go home."

"R-right. Yes. We should."

Gam Seong-beom reacted first, sweeping all the beer cans off the desk into a single box. Once the cleanup was done, the four of them piled into one taxi together to sleep at Wooheonjeong.

Fortunately, Lee Kyunghoon did not appear for a while after that.

Two days later, I was ready to go see Giyeon.

My role was a secret, which meant I'd never had the chance to watch the film myself. Luckily, Jang Chaerin had been waiting for this movie forever, and it was her who suggested we go see it first. We rounded up about ten people and headed for a packed movie theater. Chaerin was the only one who knew I was in it — Woo Woongbae and Ki Ian had merely guessed that, since it was a script I'd been reading so intently, I might possibly show up in it.

The theater was fuller than I'd expected. Aside from our group of ten, there looked to be thirty or so others.

With so many of us moving together, I'd assumed no one would recognize me — but surprisingly, a few people in the theater did.

"It's Eun-ha……"

"What? Why is he so big now?"

By now, I was used to this reaction. First, It's Eun-ha! — and then, Why is he so big? Only half a year had passed since filming, but I'd heard that at my age, your face ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠changes day by day.

I signed autographs for everyone who came up to me. And in doing so, I very nearly missed the start of the movie.

Inside the theater, I watched the trailers for films coming out later that year while I waited for ours to begin.

And honestly? Watching it, I was a little shocked.

I could confidently say I knew nearly everything there was to know about the script. But when it came to the edit — there was still so much I didn't know.

I was stunned by the grotesqueness that editing, sound design, and mise-en-scène could conjure together. That something could be that horrifying and, at the same time, that beautiful.

The film reaches its climax when Do Yeojin resolves to separate the creature from herself. She seeks out a quack running an illegal clinic, finally peels away the skin of her ex-husband, and substitutes a temporary graft meant to last two weeks.

And in those two weeks, the protagonist returns home with the creature and spends a stretch of happy days together. They dance. They sit across from each other and eat. They even take photographs to remember it by.

Meanwhile, the substitute skin begins to necrotize — and the creature comes to understand that in the end, it must return to being the protagonist's flesh.

That scene made the audience genuinely uncomfortable. It was grotesque beyond description. And yet I couldn't quite believe that beauty existed within it.

At the very end, the protagonist — having fainted at the creature's hands — opens her eyes again and discovers that her skin has regenerated. She despairs, until she finds the small gift the creature left behind, and the film ends there. It was a keepsake her husband had once mentioned in conversation, heavy with old memories.

And just like that, the movie was over.

At first, I'd simply been glad to have a role where I could hide my face. But when the film ended, I found myself oddly rueful, realizing anew that my name wouldn't appear in the end credits.

It was a good enough movie to make me greedy.

Curious to see what the credits actually said, I stayed in my seat a while longer. The credits began to roll, and I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠found the name listed for the creature's role.

A question mark.

I found that kind of funny and laughed out loud. Even that, I thought, felt exactly like a small independent film.

In any case, I figured people would be curious, ending it with a question mark like that. But the moment I laughed, Ki Ian and Woo Woongbae each smacked me once from either side.

"Hey. It's sad."

"How do you watch that and laugh?"

Tch. Weaklings, the lot of them.

As I thought this and glanced around the theater, nearly all the seats I'd noticed earlier were still occupied. In other words, everyone in the room — myself included — was waiting for the end credits to finish.

That, too, was a strangely moving sight.

"What? Why don't they list the monster actor's name?"

"Ugh, so annoying. Aaagh!"

"Look it up, quick. Who was it?"

For what it's worth, the reactions were stronger than I'd expected.

"Wow, the acting was off-the-charts good."

"Oh no, what do I do. Is this much crying normal after watching that?"

"Damn it, the monster died……"

"He didn't die. He just went back to his own world. He's happy there."

Whoa. I think something's going badly wrong here.

"Ah, hello? Is that Orange Company? Who's the actor playing the monster?"

"Why isn't anyone picking up the phone?"

"I think they're on a call right now."

"Ah, yes, reporter-nim. Have you heard of a film called Giyeon? Do you happen to know any of the actors in it?"

It goes without saying, but the people who seek out small films like this are, almost all of them, cut from the same cloth as Jang Chaerin. Which is to say — the discerning eye that made Chaerin the most pampered cinephile in her particular niche was shared, to the letter, by the thirty-odd strangers who had just watched the film alongside us.

And so those thirty people were moving almost as one — as thirty copies of a single Jang Chaerin. What's more, most of them were the hardened variety who spend practically every day of the year in theaters, so each of them seemed to know at least one or two insiders in the film industry.

Chaerin, who knew exactly who the creature was, covered her face with both hands and wailed like an infant hearing shocking news for the first time.

"It was so moving…… So beautiful…… Lee Heeyoon. Wasn't the skin monster just gorgeous? That kind of beauty doesn't exist in love between human beings. Ha. It's so sad and so beautiful."

That reaction is honestly a little chilling. Chaerin was always eccentric, but her response after this film went a step beyond.

Watching her, Woo Woongbae murmured,

"……I want to make a film like this too. Someday. I really do."

What kind of nonsense is this kid spouting? I frantically reined in Woo Woongbae, who looked like he'd been possessed by a spirit.

"Hey, what are you saying? You're supposed to make crowd-pleasers. Get ahold of yourself."

It seemed this movie had scrambled people's brains a little. And I wasn't the only one who thought so.

Orange Company.

Director Ju-eun Schepper fled the building, escaping the staff members who were slowly going mad under the flood of phone calls that hadn't stopped since the film's first screening.

She'd never seen a reaction like this, and she couldn't tell whether it meant the film was doing well — or badly.

Ah, well. That part, at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠least, was certain.

It was better than silence.

Director Ju-eun Schepper stuck a cigarette between her lips and, standing well away from the building, looked up at the Giyeon poster taped to the office window. She'd put it up in the hope that even one or two passersby might see it and spread the word — and tucked behind it, for good measure, was a talisman she'd received from a fortune-teller's shop.

She took one drag, and the breath she exhaled was trembling.

"Something's…… strange about this."

Once she'd stripped away all the giddy, breathless chatter, the only words left were that something was strange.

Until now, Ju-eun Schepper's films had always drawn little response in the days right after release. They typically ran in a single theater, and at unglamorous hours at that, so even getting there to watch was a chore.

But of course, every filmmaker hopes their movie will do well when it opens. Occasionally she even dared to dream of winning an award. Why else would she have taped up that talisman? Her father — a German, a Protestant, no less — had declared that on release day, today, he would follow his Korean mother to a Buddhist temple and perform 108 full bows. The daughter born between a Protestant father and a Buddhist mother was now pinning her hopes on a shamanic charm — and yet the situation felt so little like an oddity, because every single person connected to this film was praying, desperately, for just one more pair of eyes on the screen.

Director Ju-eun Schepper looked down at her phone, still buzzing endlessly with calls from journalist acquaintances begging for even the smallest hint about the actor behind the creature.

"It's definitely strange……"

This reaction wasn't normal. Not for her.

Standing as if at the eye of a gathering storm, she looked up at the poster once more. In it, the made-up hand of Lee Heeyoon cradled Do Yeojin's face from behind. Seen before the film, it looked like a monster about to attack; seen after, it looked like a hand caressing her, tender with love. That had been the poster's whole aim.

And that aim was achieved — that very night.

One by one, posts like that had begun to sprout across the internet.

And the very next morning, Director Ju-eun Schepper received word that the number of screens showing Giyeon would be expanded.