Chapter 160 |
"No, so what is it?"
Hong Gyeong-yeon was baffled.
"You expect me to believe this?"
"Why are you two trying to talk without me? That's hurtful."
"Mr. Cha, please, just a moment."
Seon-hae, who'd been dodging the writer's keen gaze the whole time, finally broke into a grin.
"It's probably not a lie~"
"Is it April Fools'? Did some variety show reach out? Show me the cameras."
"Gyeong-yeon...."
"You know it's not bullshit...."
"Fuck."
"What variety show would cook up an otaku worldbuilding bible just to prank a screenwriter...."
"FUCK!!"
Gyeong-yeon started tearing at her hair. Seon-hae patted her back and turned to Do-hyeon.
"You're sure this is okay?"
"Mm, well, Mr. Baek introduced me, right?"
"He did, but I'm not sure we should be going this far."
Seon-hae shrugged.
"It's not like our writer here has any Artists or magic users in the family."
"Please, I'm still not done processing this worldview."
"Give her time. As you know, we're the type who write scenarios within a realistic framework, so fantasy doesn't sit well. We used to be a documentary pair, you know that, right?"
At Seon-hae's defense-that-wasn't-a-defense, Do-hyeon grinned.
"Oh, yeah? For someone like that, isn't your current project a time-loop story?"
"We still kept it relatively grounded."
"Anyway, I didn't bring some random uninvolved person here just to be difficult."
"As if I didn't know that."
"Just now I said I'm a Total System Artist, right?"
He leaned back deep in his chair and continued.
"Put simply, my specialty is 'acting.'"
"Looking at it, the talents labeled as Artist really are all over the place, aren't they?"
"There are people like me whose specific profession itself is evaluated as a talent. Total System tends to be that way. You know the saying--mastery of one thing leads to mastery of all."
"As in illigwanji? Come to think of it, both our elder and you look like you wouldn't, but you're both lowkey fond of Confucian principles."
"The Gaps just roll a bit slower than mainstream society."
Do-hyeon set his emptied coffee cup on the table. Only ice clattered down.
"Back to the point--acting fundamentally needs a script to function. I'm someone who takes a script and pulls it into reality. I'm not the one who writes it."
"So the reason you dragged our Ms. Hong in...."
"I need a script."
He folded his arms.
"I've no idea why Mr. Baek introduced me given your situation, but my ability fundamentally works best when there's a stage and a script."
Gyeong-yeon, who'd been pulling at her hair, raised her head.
"Mr. Cha, I understand you often do improvisational acting without a script and throw in ad-libs that aren't in the original. I've heard the quality is quite high. Doesn't that factor in?"
"That's a sharp question for someone who just got dragged here and force-fed a crash course. You're right, it's roughly possible. And that's about it. Ad-libs alone won't produce a useful effect."
Do-hyeon gave a contemplative hum and scratched his forehead with his pinky.
"But even if I'm Total System, I'm not combat personnel. If Mr. Baek's gotten involved, I'm guessing someone stumbled into the wrong labyrinth. Am I right?"
Seon-hae nodded.
"That's right, a labyrinth."
"Then it makes sense. The place where I can use my ability best is exactly a labyrinth. A place where a stage and script are already more or less prepared."
"Still haven't explained why you kidnapped our Ms. Hong."
"You're not asking me to intervene in that labyrinth?"
Do-hyeon propped his chin on his knee and grinned.
"That's usually what I get hired for in The Gaps."
"I'm going to need a bit more detail."
"Safe labyrinth experiences. Or establishing a connection with the situation inside. Communication. If someone absolutely must enter a labyrinth but can't hack it, I create a 'safe role' for them. Or...."
He waggled his propped finger and rolled his eyes.
"I make it possible to communicate with people already inside, without going in yourself."
"And the talent called 'acting' explains all that? It's kind of confusing."
"Artists don't live on talent alone. Within reason, they learn magic too. Alchemy, for instance."
"This is officially full fantasy-genre now."
"Artists especially--the more they know and the more they've learned, the more they can do. Easy to mix and match. And the more my talent blooms."
"It's surprisingly, how should I put it...."
As Seon-hae searched for the word, Gyeong-yeon supplied it.
"Diligent."
"I'm the poster child for diligence. You know that. National treasure actor, Cha Do-hyeon!"
"Every time you say that, it somehow doesn't land."
"Oh? Why so prickly?"
"Do I look like I'm in a state not to be prickly?"
Gyeong-yeon muttered.
"There are many things in this world better left unknown."
"It's fine, Ms. Hong. Once this is over, I'll look into memory-erasing methods."
"This is a genuinely horrific situation...."
"So what Mr. Cha is saying,"
Seon-hae faced Do-hyeon.
"is that we need to write this 'script' for you before you can use your ability?"
"If you could build a 'stage' too, that'd be appreciated."
Despite being middle-aged, he grinned with a face that radiated raw, delinquent energy.
"The more specific what I'm given, the less effort it takes."
An actor playing every instrument alone doesn't make a movie.
"I'll assess the difficulty of this job and bill accordingly."
"You're surprisingly agreeable, Mr. Cha."
"Get on Mr. Baek's bad side and an Artist can't survive in Korea."
"I heard The Gaps are absurdly vast."
"You could run, but you'd need to be ready to live as an untouchable."
"And now we've got a caste system."
Gyeong-yeon mumbled, dazed.
"Send me home."
"You can't go home anyway because of the filming schedule. You know that, Ms. Hong."
"I'm going to curse someone."
Seon-hae was on the receiving end of Gyeong-yeon's petulance. Do-hyeon snorted.
"With what?"
"Can't regular people learn that magic stuff?"
"If they could, the world would end on a regular basis."
"That's a fair point."
He was right, which made it twice as annoying.
"So, what... what do I do? What am I supposed to do?"
"I'm curious about that too."
Following Gyeong-yeon, Do-hyeon asked.
"What are we doing now? Why'd you call me, Director?"
"...Uh...."
Seon-hae froze.
"...I don't know either?"
Baek Mu-jin really had only made the introduction.
"I just felt uneasy and told our uncle I wanted to do something--anything."
"That 'anything' sounds even more ominous, Director...."
"No, those detectives who came the other day, right? They were from someplace called the Sensitivity Bureau."
At that moment, Do-hyeon fixed his gaze on Seon-hae.
"The Sensitivity Bureau?"
"Hm? Ah, yes."
"......"
He ran a hand over his mouth, wiping even the raw edge from his face, and continued.
"Let's talk in detail."
Every trace of humor had vanished from Do-hyeon's eyes as they took in the two women.
"From start to finish. What you've seen and what you've heard that warranted summoning me."
"......"
"What labyrinth you've been poking around in."
***
They were a truly terrible match.
Cha Do-hyeon grew up under parental violence, and Lee Yeon-woo was raised in an institution where violence was routine. It was an era when the very concept of child abuse was still dim, yet these two lives ran especially deep and dark.
They first crossed paths in a summer alley drenched in foul heat and humidity.
"Stop it."
"What?"
"I said stop it."
"The fuck you say, kid?"
There stood a five-year-old child, Cha Do-hyeon, who'd found the pettiness of punks stealing and stomping on little kids' bread so unbearably grating that he'd been grinding down thugs several times his size.
And another five-year-old, Lee Yeon-woo, who had come out to teach the younger children at his facility how to run errands.
"Hard of hearing?"
Both were in a thoroughly unrefined, raw state.
"Quit making a disgusting scene and get lost."
"Who needs to get lost here, exactly?"
"My schedule's running ten minutes behind."
"You wanna fucking die, you little shit!!"
Neither had a mild temper.
"AAAGH!!"
"Ow, fuck!!"
"Let go!!"
"You animal...!"
"Who're you calling an animal, you piece of shit!!"
One was fixated on crushing the other. One was obsessed with fixing what was crooked. The only ones screaming in the dissonance between them were the institution children.
"Oppa, oppaaa...!"
"Hwehhh, hyung...! Hyung! Let's just gooo!"
"Don't hit Yeon-woo...!"
The crying voices were utterly, heartbreakingly childlike.
Yet at the center, two precocious children who no longer spoke in a child's language--even when their quarrel dragged on and inevitably turned bloody, not a single adult stepped in.
Those were the times.
"Must be nice being popular, huh?"
Cha Do-hyeon, who had never known how it felt to have someone cry for him, sneered at it.
"Must be nice having no dignity."
Lee Yeon-woo, who had zero interest in other people's affairs, simply found the survival method of a boy who could do nothing but rampage distasteful.
I'm not like that.
I will never do something as filthy as letting emotions soil 'me.'
***
"......"
"Hello."
The face he saw upon waking--the General Manager blinked.
"I have a question, Coco."
"Yes, question."
"Do you curate these dreams?"
"No."
"I thought as much."
Sitting up, the General Manager added.
"Isn't the timing a bit too perfect?"
"Hello?"
"Yes, no problems at all."
He lifted Coco from the bed.
"Heehee."
"You're squishy."
The black, gelatinous cushion-like thing obediently entrusted its paw to him. The General Manager gazed down at it. His partner seemed happy.
"I had an interesting dream."
"Hello!"
"I suppose there's no reason not to be well."
The lukewarm warmth against his palm stirred some unknowable afterimage.
"......"
His eyes met the quarters' mirror.
"Ah."
A fierce expression.
"Is this what happens when the synchronization from last night's event lingers? In the mirror?"
"Yes."
"How strange. I feel no discomfort myself, yet to see a version of me that isn't the General Manager reflected in there. I find it genuinely fascinating."
"Yes. Yes. Yes."
"I never expected to end up with such an entertaining body."
He closed his eyes and turned away from the afterimage in the mirror. He didn't want to sharpen himself over one bad dream the way he used to. Pushing the coexistence with 'Yeon-woo Mode' without prior preparation had led to this.
An unexpected result. Accepting that, his lips stiffened.
"......"
"......"
Then he smiled again.
"I'll need to be more careful from now on. Even General Manager Mode isn't omnipotent. Even with the body preserved within the hotel, I'm not perfectly safe."
"Correct."
"On one hand, I feel I've grown. On the other, I feel I've weakened. Wanting to see only good things, eat only good things, keep only good feelings--it's unsettling."
"Hello?"
"Everything is going well, and yet... my mood is strangely foul."
Ah, blast.
"So it has gotten worse after all."
This was undesirable.
"But fixing it would likely wound my circuitry. I'll leave it as is for now. Even in this state, aside from the mirror image, the two modes aren't conflicting."
"Conflict? Hello? No?"
Coco hopped over to the mirror, then looked back and forth between the reflection and the General Manager outside it.
"Hello?"
"Yes, it's merely a phantom image."
Something with no actual will--an image, nothing more.
"I am the General Manager, and I am Yeon-woo. It's simply that after the attempt to hijack the Drenched One's event before dawn, an image I hadn't fully resolved remains. To put it another way...."
"To put it another way."
"It's like a shadow."
Not me, yet reflecting a part of me. And changing as I do.
"It seems to be a byproduct of merging with this hotel's horror elements. I intend to leave it be, as it may prove useful in its own right. Can you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes. Coco, understand."
Coco left the mirror and pressed flat against the General Manager's feet again. As the hotel itself, Coco too seemed to understand that the Yeon-woo in the mirror was merely a 'reflected form.'
"Splendid."
He bent down and extended his hand, and Coco climbed up to sit on his shoulder.
"Personally, I find that sort of face rather dull."
"No?"
"You have a tendency to see me in too favorable a light."
"No!"
"Do I?"
The face of a deceiver.
"......"
He put on his glasses.
Looked in the mirror again.
And curved his eyes.
"Much better now."
His usual, unruffled self.
"Wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes."
"Haha. How regrettable."
