SDM 60

After ignoring all of Baek Sang-hyun’s messages for several days, Seong-woon entered the filming set and greeted everyone as usual. The director, assistant director, camera director, and even the youngest staff members and supporting actors all warmly received Seong-woon’s greetings.

It felt just like a past life when his greetings were almost ignored or met with just formal nods. Seong-woon chewed on the slightly bitter past before swallowing it down. It’s unclear why it hurts more now. Is Ryu Chae-yoon feeling the pain of Jin Seong-woon’s past?

When he entered the actors’ waiting room, Baek Sang-hyun was already waiting, having completed his setup. As soon as their eyes met in the air, Seong-woon politely bowed his waist in greeting.

“…Hello, sunbae-nim.”

“Ryu Chae-yoon.”

Baek Sang-hyun looked at Seong-woon with a face full of things to say, then let out a long sigh. Seong-woon looked up at Sang-hyun with an expression of feigned ignorance.

“Your health.”

“I’m healthy.”

“As if you’re healthy.”

Baek Sang-hyun picked up the thermos next to him and poured warm tea into a paper cup, handing it to Seong-woon. Seong-woon, who had been hunching his shoulders from the cold, looked at the rippling surface of the barley tea before accepting the cup.

Today was the third day of filming, and there was a coffee truck sent by Ho-yoon, but… strangely, the barley tea made by Sang-hyun tasted better.

“We really filmed quickly.”

“The director said he’d finish the shoot before the new year.”

Even though there was no overseas or provincial location shooting, they had finished a whole movie in less than a month. It showed how enthusiastically the director, actors, and staff had been filming.

Seong-woon gazed briefly at Baek Sang-hyun’s profile. He looked a bit thinner compared to when he last saw him. The slightly darkened under-eyes and deepened shadows might suit the mood of the drama, but Seong-woon thought Baek Sang-hyun should be the one worrying about his own health first.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Do you have severe insomnia?”

“Severe if you call it severe, not if you don’t.”

“…”

“It would all go away if just one person were here.”

Even as he saw the mischievous smile curling Baek Sang-hyun’s lips, Seong-woon couldn’t smile back. He kept remembering what people had said about the works filling Baek Sang-hyun’s room.

Baek Sang-hyun never cared much about what others said, not now either. So he probably didn’t know how badly Jin Seong-woon had been spoken of, how negatively he had been evaluated. If he had known, he couldn’t have openly shown that room on the broadcast.

“That… the room you showed on ‘Let’s Play Together’.”

“Room?”

“Yes. The room where you had organized his works.”

“Mm.”

“…Many people are saying not-so-good things.”

Baek Sang-hyun’s face hardened. Watching his expression turn icy, Seong-woon barely managed to move his tongue.

“You had organized a list of works, directors, and actors. The common point…”

Seong-woon couldn’t bring himself to say his own name and took a deep breath. He just couldn’t directly say that Jin Seong-woon was disliked by everyone.

“They’re saying it’s a coincidence, or suggesting you should show it again mixed with other works…”

“It’s not a coincidence, why?”

Baek Sang-hyun stared at Seong-woon, still not relaxing his expression.

…He’s making me tighten my own noose after all. Maybe the scars have faded a bit since it’s become the past now. After repeating this to himself a few times, Seong-woon felt he could finally say the name ‘Jin Seong-woon’.

“Jin Seong-woon… was someone everyone disliked, wasn’t he? Usually, people dislike anyone who’s even just friends with or… anyway, has any relationship with someone they dislike. Birds of a feather flock together, right…”

“I don’t care about that.”

“…”

“Because I’m someone who still likes him.”

‘Still likes him, huh…‘ Seong-woon had to bite his lip hard at Baek Sang-hyun’s words, which were in present tense, not past.

Wasn’t this the very words he thought he’d have no regrets if he could hear just once before dying as Jin Seong-woon?

‘I wish there was even one person who liked me.’ It had been his wish for years.

“I guess you were joking about liking me after all.”

“Don’t you understand what I’m saying?”

“The person you like, sunbae…”

“So.”

“…”

“There’s only one person I’ve liked, both then and now?”

Just as Seong-woon’s lips parted slightly, the waiting room door burst open. The director poked his head through the door gap, grinning widely. He looked very pleased.

“Alright, let’s go for the final shoot!”

Seong-woon briefly met Baek Sang-hyun’s eyes, still fixed on him, then lowered his gaze to the floor. His heart was racing too fast, and he didn’t think it was because of his illness. His chest, nape, and the area from his ears to his cheeks were all flushed red.

“Chae-yoon?”

“Y-yes…”

“Don’t tell me you’re not feeling well because of that water cannon incident…!”

“No, it’s not that.”

He could feel Baek Sang-hyun’s gaze tracing his cheeks and the neck wrapped in the turtleneck sweater. Unconsciously pulling up the sweater to cover half his face, Seong-woon grabbed the clothes the stylist had hung up and rushed into the changing room.

As he rubbed his reddened cheeks vigorously, he thought that perhaps now he understood what ‘sincerely’ meant.

* * *

Baek Sang-hyun entered first and stood inside the container set up as a safe house. Here, Shin Jung-woo dies at the hands of a startled Shin Kang-woo when his phone rings.  The director seemed to have deliberately scheduled this scene of the ultimate climax as the last shoot.

But Baek Sang-hyun found it impossible to focus all his attention on filming. He could no longer regard Ryu Chae-yoon, who said that everyone disliked ‘Jin Seong-woon’, as just ‘Ryu Chae-yoon’, the youngest son of a wealthy family.

Baek Sang-hyun had shared a meal with Jin Seong-woon in private just once. And that night, he had received a notification from Jin Seong-woon not to contact him anymore. Saying that if they were close, Baek Sang-hyun might also be criticized along with him.

How was that different from what Ryu Chae-yoon was saying now? Ryu Chae-yoon was no different from Jin Seong-woon, who had pushed aside all his own wounds and pain, anxiously fearing that he might tarnish others.

“Baek Sang-hyun, are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really weird for me to say this, but… be careful. Chae-yoon might eat you alive.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“I don’t know where such a monster suddenly appeared from. His skill is on par with veteran actors.”

Director Lee Jun-ho clicked his tongue. It was only natural. Jin Seong-woon had appeared in diaper commercials before he could even babble, had starred in more works than one could count, and even when everyone disliked him as they said, they couldn’t criticize his acting skills.

‘…How could anyone dislike Jin Seong-woon?’ 

Baek Sang-hyun swallowed dryly as he watched Ryu Chae-yoon coming out of the waiting room. 

‘Someone who emits such a beautiful light. A light that can only be described as starlight.’

“Chae-yoon. I’m counting on you today, too.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, before we start filming, could we seal the deal for the next project first? With Chae-yoon as the lead…”

“I’ll think about it, Director.”

Ryu Chae-yoon smoothly handled the director’s near-sincere fawning and received the prop gun, tucking it into the back of his pants.

The face painted with various bruises and cuts looked so different from Jin Seong-woon that one might believe it was drawn by someone else, but Baek Sang-hyun now thought that distinction had lost its meaning. Because in his world now, it made even less sense that Ryu Chae-yoon was not Jin Seong-woon.

Ryu Chae-yoon stepped in front of the camera with such familiarity that it almost seemed tedious, as if he had done this his entire life.

“…Sunbae.”

Could anything be as hollow as that ‘sunbae’? Chae-yoon had never truly seen Baek Sang-hyun as a ‘sunbae’. Recalling Chae-yoon’s occasionally appreciative glances, Baek Sang-hyun smirked.

“Alright, all cameras checked? Let’s start shooting.”

Ryu Chae-yoon immersed himself perfectly into the role by lightly closing and opening his eyes. Baek Sang-hyun barely pushed aside his inner turmoil, simply following him like a moon shining with borrowed starlight.

“Baby, why are you here?”

“…You came.”

Ryu Chae-yoon delivered his lines with a strangely detached yet slightly frightened voice. It wasn’t technique, but emotion blending in, their acting interlocking bizarrely like perfectly fitting gears.

“I don’t remember telling you to come here.”

Baek Sang-hyun took a step closer to Ryu Chae-yoon, looking down at him. Trembling pupils, brown eyes with a strange green tint glistened with moisture.

Finding it irresistible, Baek Sang-hyun unconsciously reached out and grasped Chae-yoon’s face. Though not in the script, Chae-yoon didn’t flinch at all, instead swatting away Baek Sang-hyun’s hand and drawing a gun from behind.

“…Put that down, it’s dangerous.”

The trembling gun didn’tlook dangerous at all. Baek Sang-hyun delivered his line in the gentlest, most beautiful tone yet.

“I’m tired now. Sick of it all.”

“Gang-woo.”

“Your father and you never saw people as anything but dogs, right? The kind that rolls over when told, barks when ordered…”

‘Jin Seong-woon’ let out a threadlike scream in a voice that sounds like it’s being choked. 

‘No, Ryu Chae-yoon, no… Jin Seong-woon…’

“Our Gang-woo has become mentally lax.”

“Y-you…”

“Do you want to be hung from the ceiling again?”

“…”

“You’re too old for that kind of discipline now. Why are you acting like this?”

Baek Sang-hyun approached until the gun barrel touched his chest, looking down at ‘Jin Seong-woon’ imposingly.

“Shoot if you want to.”

“…”

“If you have the courage, that is.”

Baek Sang-hyun glared at ‘Jin Seong-woon’ with eyes that seemed to turn white, then turned his back. After nonchalantly walking a few steps away, he picked up a jacket from the floor and was dusting it off when a loud ringtone pierced the air.

And ‘Jin Seong-woon’, startled as if his breath was cut off and his heart had dropped to the floor, pulled the trigger. As Baek Sang-hyun slowly collapsed at the crude gunshot sound, he shivered at the clear, chilling laughter.

“Ha, haha, hahaha…”

The already cold air seemed to freeze. Baek Sang-hyun was certain that the director and all staff were getting goosebumps. ‘Jin Seong-woon’s’ performance in the actual shoot was so good it was scary, far surpassing the impact of the script reading. It felt almost ridiculous to evaluate it.

He must be shedding tears with an expressionless face. Even that face, so beautiful it seemed divine, as if carefully crafted by God, now seemed to belong to ‘Jin Seong-woon’.

Baek Sang-hyun had been imagining the performance he must have been creating for quite some time when the director’s “Cut!” made him raise his body and turn his head. Ryu Chae-yoon was taking shallow breaths, his face completely wet.

Seeing that face, Baek Sang-hyun concluded he could no longer resist the violently burning impulse. There was no more meaning in exchanging words full of implications.

He didn’t care if he was despised as crazy. After all, Baek Sang-hyun’s life had been extended by Jin Seong-woon, and he lived solely to mourn since he couldn’t yearn for him. Baek Sang-hyun traced the long scar on his palm and the back of his hand with his fingertip.

“Wow… I think we just filmed something amazing…”

“The chills still haven’t gone away.”

Ryu Chae-yoon wiped his face with a handkerchief from his manager, then turned away without even meeting Baek Sang-hyun’s eyes.

Baek Sang-hyun barely, just barely, held back the call that was about to burst out as he followed Ryu Chae-yoon. As Chae-yoon, who had headed to the waiting room with quick steps without looking back despite knowing everything, flung open the waiting room door, Baek Sang-hyun finally called out that title.

“…Sunbae.”

Ryu Chae-yoon, eyes wide open to the point his eye corners were tearing, hurriedly pulled Baek Sang-hyun’s arm and slammed the empty waiting room door shut.

“Are you cra-“

” Jin Seong-woon Sunbae.”

“…”

A face mixed with shock, a reproachful gaze. But Ryu Chae-yoon, still shedding tears, doesn’t show any expression of not understanding at all.

For Baek Sang-hyun, that alone was a perfect answer.

Simultaneously with the director’s “Cut!”, a hologram popped up in the corner of his vision.

Congratulations!

You have completed the quest.

Reward: Information disclosure range adjustment (3) – Ryu Chae-yoon searched for his own soul.

‘What is this…’

Wiping his tear-stained face with a handkerchief, Seong-woon glared at the hologram that was even sprinkling virtual confetti.

‘What does it mean Ryu Chae-yoon searched for his soul? What on earth is this about? Why does that damn karma always give such incomprehensible information?’ 

Just as his head started to ache from the persistently puzzling message, a familiar voice echoed in his mind.

“Ah, I see. Ryu Chae-yoon was a piece of your soul, so he must have searched for you.”

“Yes, that’s right. He felt thirsty and felt like a fragment, so of course he would have.”

“Then he saw Baek Sang-hyun.”

In Seong-woon’s notes about Ryu Chae-yoon, there was a detailed description of the moment he first saw Baek Sang-hyun’s acting.

During a brief escapade evading his bodyguards, though in reality, they knew and just let him go for a while, Chae-yoon went to a movie theater and saw “Song of the Sea”.

Instantly captivated by Sang-hyun’s acting, Chae-yoon often wrote sentences like this in hisdiary: ‘Sometimes a faint light can be seen in Baek Sang-hyun’s acting’.

“Yes. Ryu Chae-yoon was captivated by Baek Sang-hyun’s light, which reflected your light.”

“That can’t be. Then, shouldn’t he have had a different impression when he saw ‘Collaboration’ later, where Sang-hyun and I appeared together?”

“By then, he had already come to think of Baek Sang-hyun’s light as the original, so he thought your soul was the mirror. It’s actually the opposite.”

“Then his wish to be entangled with Baek Sang-hyun…”

“In reality, it was a wish to find the rest of his soul and become whole.”

Seong-woon exhaled deeply. He could feel his heart trembling. It was as if the 7% of his soul that had been dormant inside him until now was stretching.