00. Prologue
“Cut!”
The stream of water, which had been pouring down like a torrential downpour, stopped.
“We’ll take a short break!”
It was an artificial rain so heavy that it was difficult to even open one’s eyes. As the model, who had been pushing herself until her lips turned blue, collapsed to the ground, her manager rushed in carrying a large towel and a blanket.
“Lee-yeon, are you okay?”
Shivering all over, she could barely manage a nod, and her condition seemed even worse than before.
Seeing how her condition deteriorated as the shoot went on, the manager had been anxious the entire time.
“This really won’t do. It’s impossible for you to keep going like this.”
“I’m, I’m okay.”
“What do you mean okay? Do you know what your face looks like right now? I’ll talk to the filming crew—”
“No. Don’t do that.”
Despite having a face that looked like someone who had barely survived drowning, Lee-yeon did not bend her will.
“Hyeong-seok. I can do it.”
There was even a look of grim determination in her eyes as she looked up at her manager. It was like a venomous resolve that she would absolutely get this done.
Hyeong-seok eventually stepped back, feeling that if he stopped her even after seeing that look, he would only feel guilty later.
“Alright. I’ll go make a warm water bottle, so rest for a moment.”
Only then did she give him a small smile, and seeing that, he made a crying face before quickly running off somewhere.
Left alone, the expression instantly vanished from Lee-yeon’s face. Curling her freezing body and catching her breath, she eventually closed her eyes, and a tear that had been pooling the entire time finally dropped.
“…….”
It’s a relief that I’m already completely soaked. Because no one will think it’s strange.
For a while now, she had been exhausted from fighting the afterimages of her past that tormented her. That was why she hadn’t noticed someone’s persistent gaze, nor the presence approaching her.
Even when a warm water bottle suddenly appeared before her eyes, she naturally assumed it was her manager.
“Thank you. Hyeong-seok—”
However, the person standing in front of her was someone else.
“……!”
Unlike her, who was completely drenched, it was a man with a smile that looked like it had been well-dried in the sun. It was Guk Geon-woo.
As always, he was dressed in a flawless suit and wearing shoes without a single speck of dust on them, standing in his characteristically loose posture.
Cloaked in the dazzling sunlight as if it were his own halo, he flaunted an arrogant posture that made looking down on others seem entirely natural.
With one hand shoved into his pocket as he casually looked around, he looked so bright and innocent, just like someone who had come to check out a filming set for the very first time.
So, others probably wouldn’t have noticed at all.
Just how coldly this man was looking down at her right now.
“Lee-yeon. Is it very hard?”
It was a gaze that brought certainty to the thought that this entire situation had come from his head.
“……This is your doing, isn’t it?”
Wet soil and grass were crushed within her clenched fist.
Where she was sitting right now was a dirt floor, and the surrounding area was thick with wildly overgrown grass.
When she first heard that the filming location had suddenly changed, she had wondered if it could really be, but she knew the moment she saw the storyboard. That Guk Geon-woo, this was his plot.
A woman in a cream-colored dress amidst rain so heavy that one couldn’t distinguish their surroundings.
A composition that closes in on a shot with a barbed wire fence between them.
This was clearly…… a set that recreated that day.
The only person who could do such a thing was this man standing right in front of her.
“How is it, does it bring back old memories?”
For once, a candid, affirmative answer came back. He had always played innocent and feigned ignorance every single time, but this time, it seemed he had no intention of hiding it.
“…….”
“Oh dear. You’re trembling too much.”
This man, who was always skilled at deception, adjusted the blanket around her while pretending to be worried, yet the temperature of his gaze did not warm up. His movement as he pulled the barbed wire fence—which the manager had pushed aside—back between the two of them was also incredibly languid. It contrasted sharply with his worried tone of voice.
“The sun will set in a little bit…… If the shoot drags on, it will be too hard on you, Lee-yeon. Let’s focus just a bit more and get the OK cut.”
On his face, visible beyond the wire mesh, was a gentle expression that matched his kind words.
However, that was merely a disguise meant for others to see; Lee-yeon could see the face hidden behind it.
“Since you are a professional, Lee-yeon, I’m sure you’ll do well.”
The real face of the man, who no longer hid his true intentions from her, was always so chillingly sharp.
“And you’ve already done it once before, haven’t you?”
It wouldn’t have been surprising even if her heart felt like it had been cleanly sliced out.
“…….”
He wasn’t wrong either.
For hours now, the storyboard for this cut they had been shooting with such density was ‘the face of a woman who has resolved to betray her lover’. She had to flash a cruel yet beautiful smile beyond the wire mesh, but she, who was famous for immersing herself well, was failing to do it properly.
Because, just as he said, this was a matter of repeating a certain moment from the past.
“Try to remember it well.”
In front of the man who smiled callously while knowing full well what her insides must feel like, Lee-yeon ultimately let fall a tear she couldn’t hold back.
I absolutely didn’t want to cry in front of him……
The moment she bit her lip hard out of resentment and turned her head away, there was a loud clattering sound of the barbed wire fence falling over, and soon a hot hand gripped her face.
“Ugh.”
Reflected in her wet eyes, the man’s face looked as if he was trying to confirm something.
However, Lee-yeon, who was already driven to her emotional limit, did not have the leeway to deeply consider the meaning behind that expression. She simply thought he was angry again. That he was trying to watch how much she was suffering.
Why on earth are you the one getting angry?
The fundamental question she had always harbored in this relationship reared its head again. A question to which she could never find the answer no matter how much she thought about it, and thus only brought her anxiety.
Who on earth was this man?
She had decided to endure him with a penitent heart, but now it was truly the limit.
It was only natural that the words she had crammed down her throat every single time finally burst out.
“Let me…… meet that person.”
Because she couldn’t endure it any longer.
The person who should be angry wasn’t him. It was also not his place to mock her while looking at her pathetic state right now.
Even if she had to suffer a humiliation worse than this.
“I need to meet him.”
Yet, upon hearing those words, Guk Geon-woo’s expression became strange.
He looked at her with a complex and subtle face that was difficult to describe in words, and strangely, her chest tightened. Like when one gets a premonition that something bad is about to happen.
Right around the time she felt something was wrong while looking at his increasingly chilling face, he spoke.
“San is dead. On that day, at that place where you abandoned him.”
“……!”
That was the first time the name ‘San’ had ever come out of his mouth.
“That’s why, Yeon-hwa. You shouldn’t have abandoned him.”
It was also the first time he had called her Yeon-hwa.
