A soft harmonica melody plays as the story unfolds.
What had been a white screen reveals itself to be the face of a painted clown — a red nose and darkly made-up, melancholy eyes filling the screen.
The face was buried so heavily under makeup that it was difficult to gauge what the person actually looked like, but the eyes alone were striking enough to lodge themselves deep in the chest.
Not for long, though. It lasted barely three seconds — the red-painted lips pressed against a harmonica, showing only that the player was the clown.
It didn’t seem like a particularly significant role.
The screen went dark. It appeared to be some kind of location, but the low resolution made it impossible to tell exactly where.
The fluid harmonica melody gradually faded, replaced by what sounded like a recorder being played by an elementary schooler. It was the same song, but the unstable pitch and frequent off-notes turned it into something no different from noise pollution.
The dull, thudding sound like fists hitting a drum, and the pitch breaks that made you instinctively furrow your brows, created the worst possible harmony and assaulted the eardrums relentlessly.
The reason such terrible sounds were being produced was because someone had failed to repay a debt.
A hissing sound, and a small flame appeared. A red point formed against the black background as murky smoke seeped out.
A cigarette.
By its light the surroundings brightened, allowing the faces of the characters to become visible. There were more people inside the dark shipping container than expected.
A man with a recorder in his mouth, a rough-faced man with a cigarette, and in the corner — more men.
Every time the rough-faced man threw a punch, a loud, squawking note escaped from the recorder.
Squeak — behind the man with the recorder, another figure could be seen curled up on the ground. On him, far worse violence was being inflicted.
Unable even to scream, the man swayed with every blow, until he finally collapsed face-down on the floor, making strangled choking sounds. The scene was brutal, but the camera used his fading life merely as backdrop.
He was not the protagonist.
The protagonist was the man with the recorder.
Every focus was fixed on him, and everything moved around him.
With the thudding sound of dress shoes, the man with the cigarette approached the protagonist.
“Come on, damn it. It’s a good day, isn’t it? Christmas song — just play one lousy Christmas song and I’ll let you go. How hard can that be?”
The suited man crouched down, looked the protagonist in the eye, and drew on his cigarette so deeply his cheeks hollowed.
He exhaled a long, full breath of smoke directly into the protagonist’s face, and fear crept across it.
The protagonist’s face was a wreck. He’d been beaten so badly his left eye had swollen shut, and his face was smeared with blood.
In his right eye, terror was written plainly. A mixture of blood and cold sweat streaked down his cheek.
“Hm? Easy to borrow money from others, but hard to pay it back?”
Behind him, the rough-faced men continued their one-sided assault on the other man. The protagonist couldn’t answer — lips trembling weakly — when someone collapsed beside him.
The man who had been taking the beating all along.
Whether he could no longer withstand the merciless violence, a pale hand twitched unsteadily. The tremors gradually slowed.
His face wasn’t visible, but the pale back of his hand stood out starkly against the dark background.
Not the protagonist’s face or situation — it was that white hand that drew the eye. The trembling hand stilled completely not long after.
The protagonist recoiled in horror at the sight of the man who was no longer moving, but no one else paid it any mind.
To them, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Oh dear, this one’s no good anymore. Send him to the operating room. Now, where were we?”
The protagonist wept and begged for forgiveness. He pleaded just to be allowed to live. He clung on, saying he’d do anything.
Having borrowed money from a loan shark and been unable to repay it, the protagonist placed his own leash around his neck. He had lived a fairly affluent life — but a single mistake had cost him everything.
Now it was time to see his past.
The contrast between his brilliant past and his current state was meant to show just how wretched he had become.
“Huurrgh……”
Yong Cheonha, who had zero interest in the life of a man who wasn’t even his type, couldn’t fight off the sleep being ushered in by the air conditioning.
His head lolled in every direction — left, right, forward, back.
It was so violent that anyone watching would have been genuinely worried for him.
Not an exaggeration — it looked seriously like his neck might snap, so Chae Songhwa, sitting in the seat beside him, startled and grabbed his shoulder to shake him awake.
That settled him down for a moment, but in less than five minutes he was swaying enthusiastically again.
To be honest, Chae Songhwa didn’t particularly want to watch this film either — but he didn’t want to walk out midway.
The seats were fewer than fifty, and the audience fewer than ten. The departure of even two people could make the film look that much more pitiful.
Chae Songhwa adjusted the armrest and let the swaying-like-a-reed Yong Cheonha lean against his shoulder.
With something to lean on, he was considerably more well-behaved.
The film was boring enough that falling asleep mid-screening wasn’t at all strange — the message it was trying to convey was unclear, and the cinematography offered nothing either.
Nothing but faces he didn’t recognize, and even those appeared only sparingly. Whether it was the camera quality or the lighting, the backgrounds were blotchy and amateurish.
A work made by amateurs. The title of this film was Things That Get Discarded.
That’s exactly why I told them to come up with a better title.
And true to its name, the film had been discarded — drifting from one place to another until it ended up in this small screening room.
Four years later, and I’m finally seeing this on an actual screen.
The lights in the screening room didn’t come on until the end credits finished rolling.
He sat quietly and read through the names of the handful of actors and characters.
Among them was Chae Songhwa’s name.
It appeared as briefly as his role had been, then passed — and after it came the names of the crew.
When the roughly one-minute end credits finished, the lights in the screening room came on. The audience members who had stubbornly held their ground until the end were already on their phones — not quite what you’d expect from people who had just been staring at a screen.
What are they saying on those phones, he wondered.
Sharp criticism, perhaps — or maybe they’d found some profound meaning that even the actors and director had never intended.
Even during filming, he’d thought it was as much of a disaster as disasters got — so how strange it was that he’d somehow ended up watching it on an actual screen.
Less a feeling of fresh sentiment, and more — hard to say. Bittersweet and hollow, with an unsettled aftertaste.
It was a strange mood — not the kind of lingering feeling you were supposed to get after watching a film — and just as he was on the verge of turning sentimental, the person beside him made an even stranger sound.
“Pshewww……”
There’s someone making airplane noises in their sleep.
Since they needed to clear the screening room, he shook him awake without hesitation.
“Cheonha. Cheonha?”
“Shh? I’ll kill——”
Even half-asleep, he’s careful about how he addresses me.
It wasn’t that he was being careful — the profanity had simply been muted mid-word — but Chae Songhwa, with no way of knowing that, quietly practiced the unfamiliar way of addressing him again.
“Cheonha. You have to wake up.”
“……Hm?”
Wow. Chae Songhwa marveled softly to himself. He hadn’t even said it that loudly, but the moment he called him by name, the person who had been grumbling sleepily in his own world opened his eyes.
Rubbing around his mouth with the back of his hand, he finally seemed to come fully awake — eyes going wide as his gaze darted rapidly around the room.
“……Wow. That was great!”
“You slept right through it.”
“Ah. Drained from taking in all that film — I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
He hauled his still-unsteady body up and walked out of the screening room.
It started off somewhat watchable, but the scene where they dunked the guy in water…… the intimidation factor was just too weak. Couldn’t sit through it. Anyway, how are they going to collect the debt from him?
The two of them walked into a tonkatsu restaurant near the cinema with fairly nice interior décor and sat down.
I’d wanted to spend time together somewhere with a nice atmosphere, maybe a classy restaurant — and instead I slept through some pathetic film, and now it’s tonkatsu for dinner……
This was a first date. A first date, and it’s been comprehensively wrecked in the most colorful way possible. Thoroughly ruined in just one hour.
The crispy tonkatsu felt as tough and chewy as chewing on paper.
Waking up from a nap had left him with no appetite, and a fishy taste from the cabbage salad swirled unpleasantly around his mouth. The pork loin felt oddly stiff too.
A sirloin tonkatsu landed on Yong Cheonha’s plate. Chae Songhwa, sitting across from him, had carefully transferred it over.
“Try it — if that one suits you better, we can swap.”
His mouth suddenly flooded with saliva.
Not because of the tonkatsu — because of the face sitting across from him. Wasn’t this person’s manner just a little too refined? Right now? Like this?
He’s trying to win me over.
The hand holding the fork trembled.
His smartwatch buzzed again, telling him his heart rate was too high. I really need to leave the watch at home when I go on dates.
He smoothly unclipped the watch and slipped it into his pocket, then carefully put a piece of tonkatsu in his mouth that felt too good to eat.
It melted on his tongue. Oh. This place was something else.
“Want to swap?”
“No! This is great!”
Yong Cheonha, already full without having eaten a thing, held back a beaming grin and put the food in his mouth. The juices burst through magnificently.
Was he still half-asleep earlier?
The person who had been picking at his food like tasteless fodder was now eating like it was the best thing he’d ever had.
Feeling somewhat reassured, Chae Songhwa glanced over at him quietly.
It wasn’t going to be a generous review by any stretch — but he was still privately curious what Cheonha thought. How did he see it?
“……How was the movie?”
