You Should Act (3)

For a second I thought I knew where the sound had come from. Ice, cracking.

Lee Songha hadn't so much as blinked when the insults were aimed at her. The moment the arrows swung toward Lim Seoyoung, her brow tightened. She started forward, and Seoyoung caught her arm at once.

"Guess we were the narrow-minded ones. See you at the K-Star taping, then!"

They had turned the place into a sheet of midwinter ice, and now the Sugar Cat members vanished with little fluttering waves, still wearing those angelic smiles. They even gave me a proper waist-deep bow on the way out.

If you've got a problem, just swear at us. Spit, swing, have it out—wouldn't that at least clear the air? This felt worse. Like being beaten senseless by shadow punches, all impact and nothing you could hit back.

The first time I saw them I'd taken them for kind, bright kids. Who knew they were that black inside? So much for my eye for people. Dead-fish eyes, the both of them.

That aside, I had to do something about Seoyoung, standing there with her head down. Songha kept dawdling, shooting me looks that said do something.

I'd never talked a grown woman down, but little girls? Plenty of those.

"Seoyoung."

"I'm fine."

Before I could try anything, she lifted her head. I'd been afraid she was crying. She was perfectly steady.

"It's not like it's the first time. I don't let talk like that get to me."

Of everyone in the group, Seoyoung had spent the longest away from home as a trainee, and W&U was her third company. I knew by now that wasn't an easy life. Her nerves had hardened enough to let a few barbs from old colleagues slide.

I pocketed the comfort and went half joke, half serious.

"What is wrong with those girls? Should I have charged them for you?"

Her face melted. A small hand smacked my back.

"Don't you dare. Things are finally rolling for us, and if I cause a problem, then what? This is the stretch where careful isn't careful enough."

"Next time I'll jump in faster and chase them off. They've got energy to burn. Why do they keep hunting you down just to start something?"

"Ignoring them is the smart play. Oppa, you know that phrase, byeongmeokgeum?"

I'd seen it online.

"...No feeding the morons?"

"Yeah, that. I'm just going to work hard on my own thing. If I do well, they'll make themselves sick with rage and take to their beds anyway."

"You think? Then after we take a music-show number one, let's go pay them a sick visit."

That part was one hundred percent sincere.

"Pfft—hahaha! God, I hope we actually do!"

Seoyoung laughed, big and bright, and caught the hand of Songha, who had been trailing after us.

"You let it go too. Don't go charging in. Got it?"

Songha's face was still sullen.

"Why aren't you answering? Got it?"

"Got it."

In the end even Songha couldn't hold out, and she nodded.

We went back to the waiting room and changed the mood by inhaling snacks. The moment Seoyoung, who wouldn't normally let that kind of high-calorie stuff near her mouth, started eating, the Traitor poked me in the side.

"Something happen out there?"

"No. Not really."

Right. There was another black-hearted one standing right beside me.

The Traitor drifted off looking baffled. I found myself watching his back again. I called him the Traitor, and still the shock of that first day was starting to blur. The guy I'd been around all this time was good-natured, diligent, and competent at the job.

If I hadn't seen the future that first day, would we be close by now?

I was trying not to let my guard down, but the thoughts kept multiplying anyway. If Reporter Song hadn't said So he's been like that since back then, I might already have written it off as a new hire's hunger to be recognized and dropped my guard.

How was the Traitor living, twenty years from now?

An entertainment reporter knowing his name suggested he was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠still in this business even then...

It was a mess. My brain only held so much, and there were too many things to worry about, too many people. I needed to sit myself down and sort it out before I overloaded.

After the snacks, we headed out to rehearse the stage with the kids, each of them wearing an A4-sized name tag on the chest.

The first time I'd seen those I'd laughed. Here they were essential. With a big idol group—rookies especially—a PD couldn't possibly memorize every face and name.

Kim Hyunjo was out for an external meeting, so the Traitor and I filmed the rehearsal on our phones. It wasn't a stage they knew, which was why we'd shoot it from every angle, monitor the footage back in the waiting room, and fix the spacing and the expressions on the spot. Anything to make the performance a little more perfect.

The waiting stretched on and on, until the live broadcast was right on top of us.

We finished every last preparation and were waiting on Hyunjo when a knock came at the door.

"Come in."

I opened it expecting someone stopping by to say hello, and found a camera.

"We're here to shoot the VCR."

"Sorry?"

"The clip that introduces the next act. Fifteen seconds, so if you could all gather for a moment."

Hyunjo had said they'd film an intro before he left. So this was it.

I called the kids in from dance practice, and a woman—writer, or something like it—held up a script the size of her palm and walked us through it.

"First you say the group name. The songs Neptune's introducing are Kim Jongsu's 'Autumn Set' and Sky's 'Don't Follow Me.' One line each, in order, and then..."

She ran her eyes over the four of them and pointed at Songha.

"Songha, at the end you'll mime walking in place, then whip around and say the title: 'Don't follow me.' The rest of you mime following her, then stop. If you play it dead serious it'll be cringe, so just have fun with it."

"Okay!"

I'd seen plenty of these while monitoring music shows. Intro clips that came out cringe no matter how you did them, no matter who did them.

The kids memorized their single lines and shot the fifteen-second intro. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠opened with—

"Hello, we're Neptune!"

—and moved on to Kim Jongsu's "Autumn Set" first, billed as a tender, emotional ballad.

Seoyoung tossed her line out, bright as anything.

"And the next song is Sky, back as the bad girls!"

Last of all, Songha marched in place while the others crept after her in pantomime. She stopped dead and snapped her head around.

The hair that had been swinging in the air settled in a soft slide, and then—

They got an okay in one take. The satisfied crew left the waiting room, and the Traitor and the members high-fived, saying it had come out well.

I couldn't get in on it. I just stood there, blank.

Because I was staring at Songha.

She can act.

From that day on, I watched her.

Not stalking. Just a careful study of every move she made, and a quiet little investigation on the side.

I played the finished music video she'd appeared in, and the behind-the-scenes footage, dozens of times. I shaved sleep down to nothing, analyzed it, and came to a conclusion: Lee Songha was nowhere near bad enough to be called a terrible actress.

If anything, to me she looked overflowing with talent.

I was no expert, but in the making-of there was a moment where even the music-video director singled her out and praised her.

So why hadn't she gotten a good evaluation in acting lessons?

I tracked down the name of the teacher they'd sent her to and dug into the background, half expecting a quack. The teacher was someone W&U genuinely trusted. Someone who had taught plenty of actors signed to other companies, too.

I tried, lightly, to bring acting up with Songha again. All I got for it was another view of her back as she fled. More than once.

A day, two days... Several busy days slipped past with nothing to show for them.

And today.

I was finally climbing to the fifth floor, after a call from PR. I swallowed my excitement and gripped the boxed coffees tight. Team Leader Park had told me that if I wanted what I'd asked for, I could bring coffee.

The second I hung up I'd flown over there and bought the largest size they had. Hong Joo-mi's synopsis—the one I'd been waiting on—was about to land in my hands. What was a few coffees next to that?

"Coffee's here!"

I held them out the moment I stepped into the PR office. The staff and Team Leader Park lit up and plucked them out one by one.

I stole a glance across the desks. No synopsis. Where was it?

"Team Leader Park, the syn—"

"Ah, right. What you asked for. Here."

I swallowed and waited. She set a small paper bag in my hands.

Hm? Smaller than I'd expected.

The moment my trembling hand went into the bag, the excitement hissed out of me.

"Four signed Blackout CDs."

"Ah..."

Right. That had happened too. I had asked for these.

A few days ago, when I'd run into Team Leader Park downstairs, my nieces and nephews had come to mind and I'd asked whether she could get them. Not one or two—four. I'd worried it would be a burden and told her it was fine if she couldn't, and left it at that.

She'd gone out of her way. I couldn't let even a flicker of disappointment show, so I scrambled to get my face under control.

"Thank you. They're genuine fans. Hand these over and they might actually pass out."

"We work together. It's not like you asked for the Blackout members' personal numbers. Signed CDs aren't a request I can't grant. And..."

Team Leader Park smiled, sly, and set something down on top of the paper bag with a soft tap.

A sheaf of paper, stiff, without a single crease.

"This is—!"

"I hear TVL's doing it? This is the one you mentioned, right?"

"Yes. This is it. Thank you!"

"If you're thankful, spot us coffee again next time."

I clutched the synopsis like treasure, and one of the women cocked her head.

"Though I think your instinct might've been off, Manager. I read it first, and it was kind of childish."

"Right. An animal you helped coming back to repay the kindness—that premise is tired, too."

Harsh verdicts, from both of them.

"Just from the synop, it doesn't exactly grab you, does it?"

"Yeah. Very much a 'so this is a cable drama' feeling?"

It had been the same in the future I'd seen. Everyone who read this synopsis had called it childish and cliché.

So it's real. This is it.

I said my goodbyes to the PR staff and walked out fast. Then I sat down in the fourth-floor lounge and read from the first page.

Aha. A few lines in, and I understood.

Why this synopsis had been received so poorly.

A synopsis is a trailer. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You write it as thrilling as possible, so investors and the people around actors might bite. You package the ordinary and the cliché as something special. Sometimes you even drop in an overseas shoot that was never in the plan.

People pour that much craft into it—enough that some writers do nothing but synopses.

The famous results of that approach were Time Slip and The Mermaid Princess Who Came Ashore.

This synopsis was too honest. Not a catalog made to sell to someone, but a flat arrangement of the thing as it was. School homework, say.

I ignored the packaging and focused on the story alone.

A cold winter. An ordinary heroine, on her way home, picks up a cat collapsed in the street. Scruffy on the outside, with beautiful blue eyes. She tends it with everything she has, and the next day it dies anyway.

The cat comes back as a ghost, swearing to repay the woman who let it close its eyes, at the end, in warmth.

So that was why the title was Cat Guardian Spirit.

From then on the cat ghost meddles in the heroine's work and her love life, sometimes helping, sometimes stirring up trouble wherever it goes. In the end, thanks to the ghost, she wins recognition at the office and finds love with a handsome boss. A romantic comedy.

Read only as a synopsis, sure—it was the sort of thing people would call childish and cliché.

Ah, but there was a fairly fun piece of setup in the relationship between the cat ghost and the heroine.

The cat ghost had come over from America. For one reason and another it had collapsed on Korean soil and was freezing to death, but because of where it came from, the ghost could speak nothing but English. And the heroine couldn't so much as look at English without her stomach turning.

So, with no other way to talk to her guardian spirit, she was forced to hire an interpreter...

Wait.

Hold on.

How does this work?

I flicked through the pages to the character introductions. Heroine, hero, the cat... and there, at the very bottom, was the thing I had hardly dared to hope for.