The Angel Who Fell
Inspector Hwang of Exorcism Investigation 2—Seo Joongsung—held the phone a little away from his ear as Kang Minha's scolding crackled through the speaker.
"A ghost showed up, didn't it! You should've performed a proper gut rite at least!"
"I did perform one. What was I supposed to do when it showed up anyway?"
"Do it again! With that huge frame of yours, you didn't even catch one ghost—what have you been doing?"
"True enough. Inspector Hwang should've been the one to catch it, I suppose..."
"Well, the movie's going to do great anyway. Oh—send me some photos of the kid."
"He already took a few selfies on my phone. I'll send them over."
Answering this obligingly, Seo Joongsung found himself wondering why on earth he had to endure begging for baby pictures—they weren't a divorced couple, were they? Minha, even more than he himself, had clearly never managed to leave Love in the Moon behind.
Kang Minha asked again.
"What about the coffee truck? Did it arrive?"
"Yeah, it's here."
Seo Joongsung lifted his head and looked up at the truck Minha had sent.
[ My Love, the Moon Family ]
The truck was wrapped in a family portrait of Kang Minha, Seo Joongsung, and Lee Heeyoon. His friendly cameo was still supposed to be a secret, but thanks to that truck, word was about to spread far and wide.
Just then, Lee Heeyoon stepped out of the van. With the temperature already climbing past thirty degrees Celsius, he made a face of pure disgust the moment he got out, looking half-ready to climb right back in.
Then he spotted the coffee truck, stared at it with a sullen expression, and raised his phone to start taking pictures. Seo Joongsung gave a small laugh at the sight and spoke into the phone.
"Our son just got out of the van and went straight to photographing the coffee truck."
"See? He loves it."
"He really does."
Having snapped a few shots, Heeyoon went to the truck first and collected his coffee and a cotton candy shaped like an adorable little demon character. He stared at the thing with the fascination of someone seeing it for the very first time.
"Take some pictures of the things he likes too."
"Minha, but..."
"What?"
"...He's in demon makeup, so it makes for a rather curious photo."
Even without acting, Heeyoon carried an oddly ominous air about him. Seeing that atmosphere already radiating off him before he'd even stepped into the role, Seo Joongsung decided that Director Jeon Changhwan's eye had been dead accurate—the man who had sworn up and down that he simply had to talk Heeyoon into this cameo.
After hanging up with Minha, Seo Joongsung walked over to him.
"Send Minha the photos too."
"I was going to."
But Heeyoon only tried to send pictures of the cotton candy and the truck, so Seo Joongsung took the phone and snapped a few shots of Heeyoon as well. Chewing on his cotton candy, Heeyoon said,
"They say my character is a demon—an angel that fell from grace."
"Yeah, that's what I heard."
"If a good person turned bad, there'd have to be a reason, wouldn't there?"
"...I suppose so?"
"Then people ought to cut this kid some slack for the evil things he does. There must have been a reason for them."
Now that was an unfamiliar interpretation, to say the least—especially for Inspector Hwang, whose entire being brimmed with the passion to exorcise.
Seo Joongsung looked at Heeyoon with a strange chill creeping over him. Heeyoon, for his part, seemed entirely unaware that he was making a case in defense of a demon.
Part of the second round of filming that followed was shot together with Seo Joongsung, but most of it consisted of Heeyoon's solo scenes inside the cave—scenes no other actor was allowed to enter.
Director Jeon Changhwan told the actors of the exorcism squad to see that part in theaters.
"You'll be crossing blades with him in The Exorcist Detective 3, after all. Go watch it on the big screen and be shocked."
Seo Joongsung had been carrying a strange eeriness with him, as though he had genuinely stepped inside the play itself. It was because the crews coming out of the cave after filming were all dead pale.
"It's really, really terrifying..."
Everyone who came out of the cave said nothing but that. Their souls looked as if they'd fled their bodies at the sight of an actual ghost, and only Director Jeon Changhwan wore an expression of extreme satisfaction, grinning ear to ear.
The staff might have been terrified, but Heeyoon, the moment he finished filming and stepped out, snapped back into his usual self—and was now learning ssireum techniques from Baek Geonwoo, the actor and former champion wrestler. Heeyoon found the whole thing tiresome, but Geonwoo insisted that fans at fan meetings would absolutely love seeing the Batdari-geolgi, the outer leg hook.
Watching the two of them from a distance, Director Jeon Changhwan came over carrying a cup filled with nothing but five shots of espresso, and said,
"An actor so perfect it's genuinely irritating, isn't he?"
Seo Joongsung laughed at the phrase an actor so perfect it's irritating. Then he nodded and answered,
"That's exactly why... if that kid's uncle ever causes trouble, I intend to step in myself."
"..."
"If his face ends up plastered across the society pages before The Exorcist Detective 3 comes out... I'm sorry in advance."
"...Just hold out until right before the release. That's all I ask."
"Understood."
Seo Joongsung nodded, then watched Heeyoon learning wrestling techniques like any ordinary nineteen-year-old—getting annoyed, laughing at his own annoyance, then getting annoyed all over again.
And he wrote down what he had felt in that moment as a text.
On the way home, a text was waiting from Seo Joongsung.
He picked out only the things I can't do to say.
I wasn't confident about a single one of the three. Even so, I sent that reply. Because that was how I'd been taught to answer.
I looked once more at the photo of the coffee truck with its banner—My Love, the Moon Family. It felt wondrous that something so brimming with affection could exist in this world. The more people came to cherish me, the more people there would be hoping I could keep acting for a long, long time.
And the fan meeting would probably be filled to the brim with exactly those people.
I have confidence in my singing.
Dancing, however, was a very different story. I'd known it would be before I even started, but actually trying it made clear just how different.
"Hey, sorry, but... are those arms and legs actually yours?"
For the fan meeting, I'd been learning a short-form challenge choreography from a friend of Ki I-an's in the Practical Dance program. And the friend who had first gazed at me with pure envy gradually began spitting outright abuse.
"Why won't this work? That's just weird."
Before my regression, and again in this life, I had studied modern dance at school. So I'd figured I could at least manage something... I couldn't. Not at all.
Ki I-an, watching from behind, grew frustrated and cut in.
"Hey, you memorize scripts like an absolute monster, so why can't you memorize this one short sequence?"
"Maybe I should just show them the Batdari-geolgi instead."
"Are you insane? Why on earth would you show fans that?!"
Baek Geonwoo's suggestion was starting to turn into reality before my eyes. Honestly, given the choice between watching me thrash through this challenge and watching a wrestling throw, the fans would probably prefer the throw.
I marveled at my own two arms, which refused to move as I intended.
"So there are things I can't do."
The dance major studied me gravely as I muttered, then spoke.
"How about not dancing at all?"
"If I skip this too, what am I supposed to fill the time with?"
"Postponing the fan meeting?"
At that, Ki I-an asked, troubled.
"Is it really that hopeless?"
"I'm saying this out of genuine worry. He's dancing at the fan meeting, right? The entire internet that day is going to be about that dance."
"To laugh at him?"
"You think they'd be praising him instead?"
Wow. Bold words, freely given. And in a place like this, I'm somehow still supposed to be the one lacking manners?
The practical dance major declared:
"One thing's for certain. You're a headbutter."
"No, I'm not."
"And you can't use your upper and lower body at the same time."
"That part's true."
Learning the upper body alone worked. Learning the lower body alone worked. Doing both together, however, didn't. Frankly, wasn't the real mystery how anyone managed to pull that off?
Even so, the friend possessed by dance dragged me, desperately, up to what you might call a level where you can at least tell what it's supposed to be before finally leaving. An obsessive one, that guy. He'll make something of himself no matter what he does.
After we had practiced until we were utterly spent, the dance major departed, satisfied with his own relentlessness, and Ki I-an and I collapsed flat on the floor.
"Woong's movie is doing its crank-in soon, right?"
"Yeah. Three days from now."
"The screenplay was fun."
"Yeah, it was. That lunatic finished the final draft in just two weeks. Ha, fuck... getting wedged between two geniuses kind of fucking sucks... Have you decided on your next project yet? It's been a good while since Love in the Moon ended."
"No idea. There's so much I want to do."
This would be the first production of my legal adulthood, and the company was pouring unusual care into choosing the script.
My problem was that too many things looked fun—I wanted to do all of them. So this time, I'd decided to leave the choice to the company. To trust them.
Ki I-an, who had been lying down, propped himself up again.
"So you really are a headbutter after all—but what are you going to do about the singing?"
"I'm practicing."
"What are you singing?"
"Piano Man."
"Hey, no. That's a bad idea. I don't like it one bit."
Ki I-an turned dead serious, tore into me for a good while, then asked earnestly,
"Do you absolutely have to sing? Honestly, standing there quietly with your mouth shut might be the best fan service there is."
He doesn't trust me one bit. I keep telling you, I'm not a headbutter.
"Hey, it'll look cool. Don't worry about the singing."
"...You lunatic. Don't go saying things like that about yourself."
Do Jae-yeon had been that way, and so was Ki I-an—people with good social sense always, always blocked me from praising my own talent with my own mouth. How unfair. Unfair, I say.
But the look on Ki I-an's face was one of pure, absolute disbelief. Staring at that face, even I started to feel anxious for no reason.
Ugh. Back when I filmed that drama before regressing, I'm pretty sure it went fine... Or is that just my memory flattering itself...
At twenty-two, Lee Heeyoon had landed the male lead in a high-school romance drama, playing the vocalist of a band.
Yu Eunsu, cast as the female lead, had been practicing her pronunciation with a pen clamped between her teeth right up until the shoot. Her manager spat out a curse.
"Eunsu, don't listen to a single word that bastard says. Who the hell is he to tell you how to pronounce things!"
Yu Eunsu pulled the pen from her mouth.
"Did you not see the director's face?"
"What about the director?"
"He didn't stop him, standing right there. Because the guy was right."
Having said that, she set down her script as well, then asked her manager,
"What if he's cool, though?"
"Cool? What do you mean, cool?"
"He's singing today. I heard he did six months of vocal training. What if he's cool?"
"...You've seen that talent of his with your own eyes, and you can still say that?"
"You've seen that face of his, and it doesn't worry you even a little?"
Yu Eunsu asked with genuine, earnest puzzlement.
Just then, a staff member came to fetch them, saying that preparations for the shoot were complete.
The director said,
"We've got all the singing shots. Now we're only taking your reaction cuts, Eunsu."
"Yes, sir."
Yu Eunsu answered and looked toward the stage.
Even after every shot of his own performance had been captured, Heeyoon had insisted on performing the whole concert once more off-screen—with his acting and the band's sound positioned entirely outside the camera's frame—so that her reactions could be captured as someone genuinely enjoying the music.
Yu Eunsu believed that while Lee Heeyoon took plenty of heat for the sheer size of his talent, when it came to diligence, no one alive could lay a glove on him.
And then the performance began.
Yu Eunsu did something that was not in the script. It was her line to deliver, but both her hands flew up and covered her mouth.
He was genuinely cool. Even more than she had imagined.