Even an Earthworm Wriggles

Jung Ga-yoon answered with a faint smile. "How could I possibly dare to fight you as an equal, senior? I was beaten one-sidedly, of course."

An Ji-ho, who had only been trying to lighten the mood, kept darting wary glances at the sudden edge in her voice. This wasn't like her at all, he thought, tilting his head.

"One-sided?"

At her words, Baek Ga-yoon gave a derisive snort and pointed at her own face, still swollen and mottled. "Can't you see this? Did you go blind or something?"

"Oh, please. If someone's being strangled and doesn't fight back even once, is that a person? That's a doll."

"What?"

No wonder she'd seemed so sharp-edged. As An Ji-ho sat there aghast at the depth of the animosity, Baek Ga-yoon let a laugh leak out of her, short and sharp.

"Ahh, back then I was a little blind with it. You were..."

She let the words hang, then raked her gaze down Jung Ga-yoon from the corner of her eye.

"I just couldn't stand you. Enough to want to kill you."

"Uh... yeah. You two keep talking. I'm gonna go say hello to some people over there."

An Ji-ho, who had been poking at the meat, set down his tongs and made for a table across the room, his face gone white as a blank sheet of paper.

Sizzle, sizzle. Jung Ga-yoon watched the pork belly grilling so appetizingly for a moment longer, then switched off the flame.

Then, as though the thought had only just occurred to her, she spoke up.

"I was curious about that anyway. What exactly did I ever do to make you hate me so much? Enough to want to kill me."

"That's none of your business."

Twisting the corner of her mouth, Baek Ga-yoon planted an elbow on the table and swiveled toward Ga-yoon, washing down one hollow laugh after another as though the whole subject were beneath contempt.

"You just have to take what's handed to you. Like when you died strangled under me — and from now on, too."

Jung Ga-yoon met her gaze. She really had died — baffled, blindsided, at this woman's hands. Never once in her life had it occurred to her that she could die like that.

"Even an earthworm wriggles, you know. When you step on it."

Her eyes slid to the scratch on Baek Ga-yoon's cheek. As though the sting of her fingernails still smoldered there, the wound gave a little flinch.

"Pff-hah! Hahahaha!"

After a beat of silence, Baek Ga-yoon burst out laughing, loud and unguarded.

The restaurant's clamor cut dead in an instant, leaving nothing behind but the sizzle of meat on grills. Everyone was watching their table with uneasy faces, half-afraid Baek Ga-yoon was about to wreck something again.

"Wriggle? Oooh, I like that. Wriggle. Go on, then — wriggle!"

Chuckling as if she'd just heard the funniest joke in years, Baek Ga-yoon pressed on.

"A no-name actress clinging to the title of 'the second Baek Ga-yoon' — and her little wriggles, backed by some second-rate agency?"

Soju bottle in hand, she poured a drink into Ga-yoon's glass.

"Aigoo, how terrifying."

Dabbing at the corners of her eyes as though the joke had moved her to tears, Baek Ga-yoon picked up her own glass and knocked it down onto Ga-yoon's, flattening it.

"I simply adore my juniors, you see."

Then she tipped the last of her own drink into Ga-yoon's glass as well.

"It won't matter how many times you come back from the dead. You will never make a name for yourself in this industry. Doll was where it started, wasn't it?"

Glug-glug-glug — not a drop left behind, she set the emptied glass down as though flinging it away.

"Rot as a nobody for the rest of your life."

Kicking back her chair, Baek Ga-yoon headed for the entrance as if to walk straight out of the restaurant.

"Well, at least I stopped that disaster in time. Imagine if the finale itself had gone up in flames — ugh! I can't even bear to think about it."

Just then, Director Kang was walking in; the final episode of The Terms of Inheritance had already aired. He brightened at the sight of Baek Ga-yoon coming toward him.

"Actress Baek! You came out to meet me? Kya. Live long enough and you'll see anything. You've worked har—"

"I'll be leaving first."

Baek Ga-yoon brushed straight past Director Kang without so much as a glance.

"Aw, damn it."

It took only an instant for Director Kang's beaming face to crumple.

"Director, come sit over here."

An Ji-ho, the drama's male lead, sprang up from his seat and steered Director Kang to his own table.

"Aigoo. Not a shred of respect, right up to the very end."

"Still, you're free of it now, aren't you? Free! You worked hard, Director."

And so, kicking off with a round of gossip at someone's expense, the dinner table warmed back up to a merry glow.

…

Even though Baek Ga-yoon's retreating figure had long since blurred beyond focus, Jung Ga-yoon went on staring at the restaurant entrance.

Tick. Tock.

Was it her imagination, that the tick of a clock's second hand rang louder than anything else in the room?

Quietly, she replayed what Baek Ga-yoon had said.

"Doll was where it started, wasn't it?"

So she'd been deliberately blocking my casting ever since then? Why on earth?

It was a hard story to believe. Back then she'd been an aspiring hopeful who hadn't even debuted — wasn't that a time when the two of them had never so much as crossed paths?

A hollow laugh pried its way between her teeth and burst out.

So little time left. The reason I have to scrape and claw my way through and survive is, without question — you.

"Baek Ga-yoon."

I'm not dying before I've hit her back — once, with everything I've got. Never. Absolutely not.

"I'm dead."

A week had passed since the company dinner.

In that time, every one of the nearly twenty casting offers that had come flooding in on the strength of The Terms of Inheritance's success had been canceled.

Leaves a bitter taste, honestly.

The realization had finally sunk in: Baek Ga-yoon had been strangling her career in the cradle ever since Doll.

So that was why, every time before, they'd all raved — your acting is incredible — and then never once called back.

Tick. Tock.

The time etched around her neck like a pendant on a chain ran on fast, utterly heedless of her.

About ten days left.

Even if she seized an opening and performed a villain's part at some audition, that would buy her a few more days at most; even if the heavens smiled and her casting was locked in on the spot, actual filming was still a month or two away.

"What are you hesitating for? Go right now, grab Baek Ga-yoon by the hair, and give her a good shake. Revenge — what's not to love?"

As if she couldn't see for herself just how seductive that malice was. The evil spirit had gone well beyond egging her on — it had gone and manifested a body. Never mind that the body was a fist-sized ball with a piddling little set of eyes, nose, and mouth stuck on.

By the way — it had a real form now? There was a time it seemed like a shadow, then like mist.

Ga-yoon stared at the wings jutting from either side of the fist-sized orb and the thin, whip-like tail trailing beneath, sighed, and spoke.

"You do realize Baek Ga-yoon isn't someone you can just meet whenever you feel like it?"

Filming was over, so there would be no chance encounters. The woman lived behind serious security, and whenever she stepped out, bodyguards were sure to shadow her every move.

And far from friendship, theirs was a relationship steeped in mutual venom — as if Baek Ga-yoon would ever grant her a meeting.

Her lukewarm answer sent the frantic spirit into a full-body shudder.

She reached out and poked it with a fingertip. Tap, tap. Oh — so it could be touched, too. The way it spun in circles, moving as though clinging to something invisible, really did make it look like a monkey.

"Hey, monkey."

"M-monkey...?!"

"You know, you do keep trying to talk me into this."

Formless, it had at least been a little unsettling. Now that it had a body, it looked utterly ridiculous.

"That's not the revenge I want."

Baek Ga-yoon, at this very moment, stood in a very high place — the summit. A top-tier actress in her twenties whom no one could deny, having climbed step by careful step from child roles.

"Then what kind of revenge do you want? Tell me."

At the mention of revenge, the spirit's little eyes glittered. She was almost starting to find it cute? Letting the corner of her mouth curl, Ga-yoon sank back deep into the sofa.

Not the cheap catharsis of seizing someone by the hair and shaking.

"That seat she can't bear to come down from, trembling with dread the whole time she sits on it. Someone has to drag her down from it — face-first, into the mire."

For that, she had to climb. Reaching up from below would never touch them — the ground those people stood on was too high, too solid.

"One question first."

She gave the spirit's wing a light tap as she went on.

"You're an evil spirit, aren't you? No superpowers or anything? You brought a dead person back to life, after all. Rewriting the past, seeing the future — anything like that? Hm?"

She had been itching, one way or another, to milk this absurd existence for all it was worth.

"I'm not a god. More to the point — go do something, anything at all. Only ten days left on that clock, you know."

"Fine. Then how about sneaking off and stealing me a weakness of Baek Ga-yoon's? Or some evidence that could bring her crumbling down?"

The spirit flapped its wings and tumbled lazily about the room.

"Can't do that."

"Utterly useless, aren't you."

"Hey! You seriously...! Fine — this I can do! Who's where right now, and what they're doing. That much, I can go look and report back!"

Oh... and what, exactly, would I do with that. What irritated her more was how breezily the thing looked about it.

Apparently it assumed that once her time ran out, she really would go berserk like someone truly possessed and do whatever it took. Because she'd want to live. Naturally.

Tsk. She clicked her tongue and turned her gaze to a small frame hung on one wall.

A photograph of her mother, who had passed away a few months ago. Come to think of it — I nearly followed you, Mom.

Her mother had been an unmarried mother, and had raised her alone. When, back in high school, she'd said she wanted to become an actress, her mother had looked at her with a strange, unreadable expression — and then murmured, barely above a whisper:

"Blood will tell."

Could it be her father had been an actor? That was all her mother ever said — no blessing, no objection.

Afterward, too, she never interfered. Not when her daughter fought her way into the lead role of Doll. Not when that role withered into nothing. Not even when she scraped by from one bit part to the next, acting for barely enough to eat.

She never once stepped in — as if it were all somebody else's life.

And that had hurt, in a quiet way she couldn't quite shake.

Her mother showed so little interest in her daughter's career, yet had been exquisitely tuned to every scrap of news about Baek Ga-yoon. The moment Baek was announced for anything — drama or variety show — her mother couldn't rest until she'd hunted down every last episode.

Of course, by now she missed even that heartless indifference.

She let out a breath, turned the problem over for a long while, and finally asked the spirit.

Well, thank goodness there was at least one use for the thing. It can see who's where, and doing what, right now?

"Show me screenwriter Yang Bo-hyeon — where he is right now, and what he's doing."

If Baek Ga-yoon meant to interfere at every turn, then the answer was simple: she just had to take hold of a card Baek Ga-yoon couldn't touch.