A Self-Staged Drama
"By the way, how is the child doing?"
"She's fine."
"That's a relief..."
A look of genuine relief spread across Yu-yeong's face.
"You see, the ghosts that come into my body... they all leave once they've gotten what they wanted."
"What they wanted."
"Yes. Like eating a meal with an actor or idol they love, or getting a hug. Things like that."
"So they've all been that sort of thing, every last one."
"Yes..."
Yu-yeong nodded. As she did, her thoughts drifted to what the child who had borrowed her body had done. All the little girl had seemed to want was something fun to do.
She worried about whether the child had gotten her fill of everything she wanted once she'd taken over her body — whether something had been left wanting, whether that was why she hadn't been able to ascend.
"Until now, you've simply been lucky."
"Ah."
"At the very least, none of them ever moved to steal your body outright."
"...In exchange for scandals. Endless scandals."
"Look on the bright side."
At Cha-mu's flat remark, Yu-yeong's lips jutted out as if to protest the unfairness of it — but she soon nodded anyway.
He was right. She would look on the bright side.
At the very least, no crime had ever been committed.
"Do you think that baby got to do everything she wanted, while she was in my body?"
"She certainly ate her fill of grapes."
At Cha-mu's offhand answer, Yu-yeong burst out laughing before she could stop herself. It was impossible not to picture the child bouncing in her seat with delight, giddy over a bowl of grapes.
"Show me again sometime, won't you?"
"Of course."
Watching Yu-yeong dote so tenderly on a being that had seized her body without permission, a sigh welled up from somewhere deep inside Cha-mu.
Too soft-hearted for her own good.
"Yu-yeong! How are you feeling?"
"Hello. Yes, I'm doing fine."
Yu-yeong returned to the filming set exactly fifteen days later.
Rumors had circulated in the meantime that she was retiring from the industry. Given all the scandals that had broken, it wouldn't have been surprising for another one to erupt — paparazzi shots of some male celebrity slipping in and out of her hospital or her home. But nothing of the sort appeared.
People whispered that Yu-yeong had been so shattered by the ordeal that she'd shut herself away, yet the woman who walked onto set after two weeks away wore a brighter expression than she ever had before.
"Oh, and who's this?"
"Ah, this is our new road manager."
"Wow, I thought he was an actor for a second there!"
"Haha."
Yu-yeong laughed awkwardly and shot a glance at Cha-mu standing behind her. Dressed in a crisp shirt and slacks, his hair neatly combed back, even his usual half-lidded eyes were open wide and clear.
Cha-mu bowed politely toward the director.
No one recognized him. The Cha-mu who always wore a hat, kept his eyes half-closed, and drifted through odd jobs like a nobody was invisible to them now.
"I look forward to working with you."
With that, Cha-mu escorted Yu-yeong to her mark.
Over those fifteen days, her face had visibly come back to life.
Yet even seeing it, Cha-mu said nothing. His job, after all, was nothing more than keeping watch — making sure no other stray spirit slipped into her body. And that was a task that posed no difficulty for him whatsoever.
Instead, every evening, Cha-mu offered up his prayers and searched — for a way to close Yu-yeong's ghost gate, for a way to mend a vessel that had cracked straight through. That was all he could do: keep looking.
Once filming began, he stationed himself in a corner far from the cameras and studied Yu-yeong with an unblinking, unwavering gaze.
He simply did, with all his effort, what needed doing.
After the shoot ended and she returned home, Yu-yeong lay down on the sofa and picked up her tablet.
Just as she had promised the yeong-ga in the black hat, Yu-yeong chose leniency for the person who had borrowed her body.
She wanted no punishment, needed no settlement money. She called the police herself to plead for mercy on the woman's behalf.
Cha-mu had done his part; it was only right that she do hers. Yu-yeong gave everything she could to the duty in front of her.
The attack had happened while she was possessed. It hadn't been her fault — and while she couldn't speak for anyone else, Yu-yeong understood the woman completely.
More than anything, it grieved her to know how many people had been hurt and upset because of her, through no will of their own.
Whatever the reason, she couldn't bring herself to press charges bitterly against people who were already suffering because of her.
"A self-staged drama, they say..."
The public's response to her heartfelt act of mercy, however, was anything but kind.
When the news broke that Yu-yeong — infamous as a scandal machine — had forgiven the very person who had terrorized her, people started claiming the entire ordeal had been an elaborate act she'd staged herself to salvage her image.
A self-staged drama.
It stung, that much was true. But neither could she blame the people saying it — she understood why they thought that way.
"...It wasn't staged, you know."
Murmuring to herself, Yu-yeong set the tablet down. The people who wouldn't believe her no matter what, who would hate her no matter what she did. She shook her head, brushing the thought away.
She knew all too well how hard it was to turn the public's heart.
"Well. Nothing I can do about it."
As if soothing herself, she exhaled the words, then slowly lifted her head and let her gaze wander around the room.
A lovely, upscale villa, with everything she'd ever wanted to own within reach. People showered her with praise for her beauty, and she no longer had to scrape and agonize over every thousand-won bill the way she had in her lean years.
She could send her grandmother fine fruit every single day. She could cover her grandmother's treatment and hospital bills without a second thought. That reality alone was more than Yu-yeong felt she deserved.
"Let's think positive."
Saying it aloud, she tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling.
Yu-yeong knew better than anyone how, once a person started drowning in the bad things, there was no bottom to how far they could sink.
So she made herself think positively whenever she could — made herself look only at the good.
Lately, when she went to set, she saw no ghosts. That alone was an enormous joy.
Even setting aside the possessions, Yu-yeong had once had to face the earthbound spirits lingering around filming locations several times a day. Some of the people who had died in sudden accidents looked so horrific that she could hardly bear to face them head-on. She didn't know how to help them ascend, and she couldn't make them vanish either — so all she could do was swallow her terror and pretend not to see.
But ever since she'd grown close to Cha-mu, all of that had disappeared. She was genuinely, deeply happy about it.
And with no other yeong-ga slipping into her body, she could now savor every moment of her own time, entirely hers, outside of filming hours.
Before, even reading a single book could be derailed — another soul would take over her body mid-page, shatter her focus, and force her to do things she never wanted to do. Not anymore.
As she traced the shape of her changed days, Yu-yeong broke into a soft smile.
She loved this ordinary life. She was truly, honestly happy.
She buried her face in the cushion and grinned to herself, quiet and silly. She just felt so good.
Just as Yu-yeong's days were turning brighter, Cha-mu's daily routine had grown a touch more complicated than usual.
Yu-yeong was a popular actress, which meant her schedule was relentless. He could have left it all to Seul-a, but having declared with his own mouth that he would protect her, Cha-mu had no desire to watch Yu-yeong come to harm. So he drove her car himself and silently trailed her every move.
By the time he returned to Wolryeongsa after shadowing her side all day, a mountain of work still awaited him.
He washed himself clean, entered the shrine room, and offered his prayers. Fortunately, in all the month that had passed, not once had Yu-yeong come to harm.
It was a considerable stroke of fortune.
Seated before the altar, Cha-mu began to recite the prayer incantation. The prayer was for Yu-yeong — but it was also for the lonely souls left behind, unable to ascend to heaven.
Where Yu-yeong caught only the occasional spirit — the ones with deep grudges or unusually potent energy — Cha-mu saw nearly all of them. That was why he always prayed for those pitiful things. Even if he couldn't gather each one up with his own hands and see them across, he never ceased offering prayers on their behalf.
...
When his prayers were finished at last, Cha-mu returned to his room and opened his laptop.
One of the new fixtures in his routine was searching out videos and articles about Yu-yeong.
Partly it was the road manager title. But more than that, it was another attempt to uncover the identity of the presence dwelling inside her.
"More of this garbage."
A string of foul curses spilled from Cha-mu's mouth as he scrolled through the articles about Yu-yeong. The vicious comments under the same story she had read — the one about her forgiving her attacker.
His face twisted with irritation as he stared at a reply claiming the whole thing was self-staged, a reply whose upvote count had blown past a thousand.
Injured badly enough to need four weeks of treatment, and they call it self-staged... The scowl deepened across Cha-mu's face as he remembered the sight of Yu-yeong, hurt and smiling, insisting she was fine.
In the month he'd spent watching her, Cha-mu had seen nothing in Yu-yeong capable of pulling off something like that.
He had compared her to a child who hadn't fully grown up, and that had been no exaggeration. She was precisely that kind of person — quick to laugh, quick to cry, so guileless that he genuinely wondered how on earth she survived working in the entertainment industry at all.