Seo Ha-yeong looked at him through her glasses and spoke.
“That sounds good. Go ahead.”
Park Song-min swallowed hard.
“……Well.”
As he spoke, his tongue felt as though it were sticking to the roof of his mouth.
He was doing his best not to stammer.
“This man, Kang Yoon-ho, spent five years in hiding.”
“Right?”
“He could've survived those five years on anger, or on a desire for revenge…… But I don't think that's it.”
“…….”
“I think what really kept him going was knowing that ‘someday it will end.’ The hiding would end, the truth would come out, and he could go back out into the world. So what he feels when he sits in the interrogation room isn't anger or resignation…… It's relief.”
Seo Ha-yeong's eyebrows twitched.
“Relief?”
“Yes. The release of not having to hide anymore. More precisely, a tremor over relief.”
“A tremor over relief…….”
The PD watched Seo Ha-yeong's reaction.
This was already the second time they had worked together, so the PD could read the changes in her expression.
And that expression right now meant one thing.
‘……She likes it.’
Seo Ha-yeong picked up her tablet again.
She erased the last line and began writing a new one.
Her fingers moved quickly, as though someone had opened a faucet that had been shut tight.
Beside her, Yoo Yeon-jae stole a glance at the tablet screen.
Yoo Yeon-jae's eyes narrowed more and more while reading the lines appearing there.
“That definitely gives it life. It feels as if the character's come alive.”
Seo Ha-yeong looked at Park Song-min in the middle of typing.
“That phrase you just used, ‘a tremor over relief.’”
“…….”
“I loved it. Song-hu, you have an exceptional ability to read subtext.”
The crew murmured among themselves.
“I've never seen her make a face like that before.”
“Wow, that's insane. Writer Seo, with that enormous ego of hers, actually took someone's suggestion.”
And then.
“Good. Let's go in this direction.”
A file of added dialogue was displayed on the screen in the format of last-minute script pages.
A new exchange between the detective and Kang Yoon-ho.
‘No, if this happens……’
The shoot had suddenly grown longer, and he had more acting to do.
Park Song-min was still acting the part of Park Song-hu even now, and it was agony.
It meant he would have to keep up the act longer without being found out.
Just then, Yoo Yeon-jae met Park Song-min's eyes.
The corner of Yoo Yeon-jae's mouth rose in a grin.
“This should be more fun than before.”
“…….”
……For you, maybe!
***
The interrogation room set.
The fluorescent lights came on again.
The camera took its position, and the boom microphone descended.
The two men sat facing each other again across the metal table.
Park Song-min was rehearsing the added lines from the last-minute script pages in his head.
The lines themselves weren't long, but they had a depth the original two lines had lacked.
Kang Yoon-ho's answers to the detective's questions.
And a single line of monologue at the end.
‘A star writer really is on another level…….’
The moment he read the dialogue Seo Ha-yeong had written for him, Park Song-min couldn't help admiring it as a novelist.
‘You can see the life this character has lived in every line. I should write like this from now on.’
He closed his eyes.
Kang Yoon-ho's five years came rushing back.
The ceiling of his cramped boarding room.
The names written in his notebook.
Triangle rice balls from the convenience store.
His mother's wake.
Louie's betrayal.
‘?’
No, not that last one.
At any rate, a new layer had been added to it all: the one Seo Ha-yeong had written for him today.
“Ready…… Action!”
Yoo Yeon-jae opened the file.
“Kang Yoon-ho. The article you wrote five years ago, about allegations of corruption in the Han River basin development. You died right after it came out.”
Yoo Yeon-jae's gaze bore down on him, razor-sharp.
“So how am I supposed to make sense of you sitting here, alive as can be?”
“Take it at face value.”
The low voice continued.
“A dead man has reappeared.”
“……You've been hiding? For five years?”
“Hiding?”
Park Song-min slowly raised his head.
The murky fluorescent light pooled in his eyes.
“No. I was preparing.”
“…….”
“Yes, for five years.”
Yoo Yeon-jae's eyes wavered.
“……What were you preparing all that time, then?”
“Everything.”
Kang Yoon-ho brought both hands up onto the table.
His handcuffs struck the tabletop with a metallic CLINK.
“Names. Amounts. Dates. Call records. Who gave how much to whom. It's all here.”
He tapped his own temple with a finger, tap, tap.
A gesture showing that Kang Yoon-ho had etched five years' worth of evidence into his mind.
Seated in front of the monitor, Seo Ha-yeong tilted her head.
‘……I didn't write that, did I?’
Personally, she disliked actors departing from the script on their own initiative.
Most of the time it didn't match the picture she had in mind, and their performances became excessive.
But…… that gesture just now fit the script better than the script itself.
It might have seemed insignificant, but with one tap of his temple, he had imprinted the fact that the evidence was inside his head onto the screen.
With a single gesture, he had conveyed information that would have taken ten lines to explain.
“All right, good.”
Yoo Yeon-jae delivered the next line.
“So? Are you going to tell me everything?”
Kang Yoon-ho lowered his head slightly.
His chin dipped, and his gaze fell to the table.
His wrist was visible between the handcuffs.
Then came the monologue.
“……I had to die.”
His voice caught.
The words escaped between ragged breaths.
“It was the only way I could live.”
The air on the set froze.
Someone could be heard sniffling.
‘He had to die to live.’
Kang Yoon-ho's five years were compressed into that one line.
A death staged to look like an accident.
A person erased from the world.
The irony of being able to survive only by dying.
It was a wretched life.
But Kang Yoon-ho did not cry.
Over the past five years, that emotion had long since faded.
So what remained in this moment was relief.
Relief that he could finally tell them everything.
The very emotion Park Song-min had just described to Seo Ha-yeong showed on his face.
“…….”
“…….”
The camera framed their faces in turn.
The fluorescent lights in the interrogation room went BZZZZ-.
That was the only sound drifting through the silence.
“……Cut.”
The PD's voice broke the stillness.
Unlike before, there was no immediate applause.
CLAP―
Only after Yoo Yeon-jae cleared their throat did the first clap sound.
Then the applause spread in an instant, like a flame catching.
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP―
Seo Ha-yeong stared at the monitor, stunned, and muttered,
“……So that's what a tremor over relief looks like. Just how far ahead did he see into Kang Yoon-ho's character?”
Park Song-min's legs shook again, as they inevitably did.
It took him longer than before to come out of Kang Yoon-ho's character. With more lines to perform, he had sunk deeper into the role.
‘……Was I pretty good?’
That was his thought as he glanced around at everyone's reactions.
Jo Yong-gi ran over and handed him a towel.
“Song-hu, that was insane! Seriously!”
“…….”
“How can a person be like this? You know I fucking love you, right, Song-hu? Kang Yoon-ho had his five years, but, ha, I held on for five years too!”
“……You're loud.”
Please, just……
He was already so drained he felt like dying.
Yoo Yeon-jae took a drink of water and glanced at Park Song-min.
When their eyes met, he gave him a small nod.
Park Song-min nodded back without thinking and let out a long breath.
“Hoooo…….”
‘……I survived.’
He had come back alive.
Just like Kang Yoon-ho.
***
At the same time.
Park Song-hu lay on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.
Louie was curled up like a doughnut, asleep on his stomach. The cat was surprisingly heavy, leaving him unable to get up.
‘I wonder if he's doing all right.’
The time for the shoot to begin had already passed.
It was only a cameo, so it should be over soon.
‘……He'll be okay, won't he?’
He suddenly grew anxious.
He picked up his phone to call Jo Yong-gi, then stopped short.
His thumb hovered over the call button.
‘Whoa, shit. That was close.’
Park Song-min was at the set as Park Song-hu right now.
He had almost caused a disaster.
‘Right. He'll call me when he's done.’
He put the phone down.
Louie stirred and shifted position, and the weight on his stomach tipped to the left.
“Hey, you're heavy.”
“Grrrr.”
“What's that supposed to mean? Are you mad?”
“Grrr.”
“……Fine, just stay there.”
Louie fell asleep again.
Louie's tail gently thumped against Park Song-hu's side.
‘There's nothing to do.’
He had no schedule, and he couldn't go out.
If he stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, something could go wrong.
The world didn't know he had a twin brother, much less that his twin was pretending to be him.
He had no choice but to wait at home until Park Song-min returned.
‘Is this going to happen often? If it is, I'll need something to pass the time…….’
He opened social media, then closed it.
He opened the news, then closed it.
He opened YouTube, then closed it.
There was nothing exciting enough to give him a dopamine rush.
‘Well, my shut-in twin brother is pretending to be a top star right now.’
What could be more thrilling than that?
And it was happening for real.
Maybe that was why he had become numb to everything else.
‘Oh, right.’
Soseol Joa.
The site where Park Song-min was always writing.
He visited Soseol Joa on his laptop.
Automatic login was enabled.
The [Mini Song] author page.
One ongoing series.
Its genre was hunter fantasy.
The title was <The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>.
‘I'd stopped reading it partway through.’
He picked up where he had left off.
“…….”
The pacing was fucking frustrating.
Once the protagonist had awakened, the story should have moved straight to the next stage, but pointless episodes kept getting in the way.
‘Why does going out to eat with the protagonist's companions take up a whole chapter? Seriously, nothing happens. The characters just talk to each other, and then it ends.’
And the cliffhangers were weak, too.
The tension dropped right off at the end of each chapter.
‘No wonder he can't attract readers.’
But the characters were another matter.
A line from the supporting heroine who stayed by the protagonist's side caught his eye.
-Getting stronger is good…… But what if you break yourself doing it?
That single line held all of the supporting heroine's position, feelings, and fears.
The villain had circumstances of their own, too.
Perhaps that was why the protagonist's victory over the villain brought a wave of bitterness rather than catharsis.
The intersecting paths of two people who had no choice but to fight.
‘He definitely writes characters well.’
He opened the comments.
There weren't many, but he saw reactions much like his own thoughts just now.
-If the pacing picked up, this writer would be so promising. What a waste.
-A writer who dumped all their stat points into character appeal.
-I complain, but the characters won't let me drop it.
-Please pick up the pace T_T When is the protagonist who got the Enhancement Stone finally going to get stronger?
-So fucking frustrating.
Pacing was the lifeblood of a web novel. If a story failed at pacing, mass popularity was hard to achieve no matter how good its characters were.
‘Well, looking at current trends, dramas aren't so different.’
Then he happened to notice the [Write] button.
‘Maybe I'll try writing something…….’
He felt as though he could do a better job than Park Song-min.
No, really.