Zero Hour

There was no doubt about it: Baek Ga-yoon's evil spirit had recognized her own — the little monkey-like creature that now served her.

The spirit went tumbling and swooping through the air in loops as it talked. "Recognized you all it liked — so what? Nothing gets through unless Baek Ga-yoon looks into a mirror to communicate."

It was the same spirit that had spent a brief stretch at Baek Ga-yoon's side, and it knew her habits well. Baek Ga-yoon summoned it before the mirror only when she truly needed it — and those occasions amounted to nothing more than the times her acting refused to climb as fast as she wanted.

Hm. But I've told her I won't be taking any work for a while, so there'll be no reason for her to face a mirror at all, will there?

"And even if she does figure out it's you, she'll just decide there's nothing you can do about it. Won't she?"

Annoying as it was, the thing had a point. Ga-yoon clicked her tongue, twisting up the corner of her mouth. "But that cuts in my favor, doesn't it?"

Being able to predict Baek Ga-yoon's every move was genuinely useful. So was being dismissed and ignored by her — it left all the room in the world to exploit.

Which meant she could milk it for all it was worth, couldn't she?

"Fair enough," the spirit conceded, hopping up and down like a monkey.

"You really are just like a monkey."

Monkey it is, from now on. The thing would doubtless go springing about in protest, but she could live with that.

One question kept nagging at her, though: why hadn't Manager Lee Jeong-han told her everything? If he had known she was cast in Whistle, he couldn't possibly have missed the audition that came before it — or who she'd beaten out for the role. Nor that Butterfly was producing Whistle for release on Netplay.

So why keep quiet about all of it?

Ga-yoon found herself recalling the Lee Jeong-han she'd seen on the set of The Terms of Inheritance — scurrying about, forever reading the moods of everyone around him as he catered to Baek Ga-yoon's every demand. What if he didn't much care for Baek Ga-yoon at all, and simply had no choice but to work beneath her?

"I'll have to take a closer look at Manager Lee Jeong-han sometime," she murmured.

And if he can be used — well, then, he'll be used.

The spirit, which had been rolling around idly, snickered and rustled itself a little bigger. Just a very little. "And here I thought you weren't going to do anything wicked? Do you have any idea how hilarious you look right now?"

It sneered as though only outright crimes counted as sins. Leaving it to its mockery, Ga-yoon lifted her mirror and checked the time engraved at her collarbone. It had stretched by roughly the width of a fingernail.

"Whether I look ridiculous to you or pitiful, does it matter? You'd enjoy it either way, wouldn't you?"

"True enough—" In visibly high spirits, the evil spirit went bobbing off to drift around the room again.

Her thinking had changed, that much was true. She didn't want to become the same kind of creature Baek Ga-yoon was. She had simply come to understand that as long as she stayed different, there would be no paying her back — she would only keep absorbing the blows.

Ga-yoon watched the drifting spirit for a long moment, then lowered her eyes to the script in her hands. The script for Whistle.

If she wasn't evil herself, could she ever truly understand evil? Could she play a villain? Evil, it seemed to her, sprang from selfishness. Look at that thing floating around her room — wasn't everything it did driven by its own need to survive?

Choi Mi-so of Whistle probably wouldn't be so very different.

Don't hesitate to become wicked.

Somewhere inside her she heard something that sounded like the gnawing of teeth, but she feigned ignorance and tightened her grip on the script. To understand Choi Mi-so to the marrow — to understand her entanglement with the protagonist, Ha Ji-hyeok — she began dissecting the script.

Tick, tock—

Jung Ga-yoon, who had drifted off on the living room sofa mid-analysis, snapped awake with her eyes flying wide.

A strangled gasp ripped out of her.

Tick, tock, tick—

The clock sounded deafeningly loud. I'm soaked in cold sweat. Rubbing her face with a weary hand, she ran her fingers over her neck.

The feverish heat wouldn't die down. Her heart was pounding in a rhythm no human pulse should have, and the second hand went on, and on, and on. Her throat had gone bone-dry.

Ga-yoon dragged her trembling body upright and headed for the bathroom.

Tick, tock, tick, tock—

Even with the living room clock far behind her, that damned second hand refused to fade. This is going to drive me out of my mind. She could feel a full-blown neurosis coming on.

Her eyes were rimmed bloodshot red, but it was something else that seized her gaze — the handprint on the nape of her neck. She flinched and pressed her palm over it.

The mark that had vanished had come back to life.

Why is this happening?

A ringing rose in the ears of the flustered Ga-yoon. A shrill electronic tone split the air — beeeep — for all the world like a machine pronouncing a death sentence.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—

The time carved above her collarbone was plummeting.

Why now? Why all of a sudden?

She tried to summon the evil spirit — but she hit the bathroom floor faster than the summoning could come.

Thud!

She could only sprawl there as though she'd plunged into a freezing sea, staring at the time shrinking in real time. Her nape seared; her breath strangled in her throat.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick—

Why is the time suddenly speeding up? Why are you doing this to me?!

And in that instant — ting. A clear little chime, like a wind-up spring running dry—

"No!"

Ga-yoon shot upright, breathing hard and ragged. A dream? She wasn't in the bathroom at all. She was on the living room sofa.

She scrambled up in a panic and ran headlong to the vanity in her bedroom. The script went tumbling to the floor, and the coffee table rattled in her wake. Standing before the mirror, she groped along the nape of her neck, searching. The handprint that had burned and spread so hideously—

"It's... it's gone......"

The timer, too, was flowing normally again. But what if this was a dream as well? Anxiety came bubbling up her throat. Thump, thump— Her erratic pulse seemed to hammer right against her eardrums.

Only moments ago she'd been certain she'd woken from a dream — but that had been a dream, hadn't it? So how was she supposed to know that now was reality?

Glancing wildly around the room in a rising panic, her gaze snagged on the eyebrow razor lying on the vanity. And then—

Shhk—

Blood welled up, drop by drop, from the shallow nick on her fingertip. Never had a stinging pain been so welcome. This hurt — nothing like the fever-heat of the dream — filled her with something very close to joy.

"Thank goodness."

Her strength drained right out of her. Ga-yoon sank down where she stood and had to spend a long, long while simply breathing.

"So much for the public's discerning eye. Infuriating, really."

Baek Ga-yoon had been scrolling through the public's reactions online; she spat a curse and set her phone down as if flinging it away. As if the acting of that nobody Jung Ga-yoon were anything special.

"Right. This, too, is just a phase."

Feeling good, are you? Of course you are. Nose stuck so high in the air at last. Enjoy it while it lasts, Jung Ga-yoon.

Snorts of laughter leaked out of her. She turned to Lee Jeong-han, who stood at her side. "So Seong Jin-ung habitually drives drunk?"

"Yes. He routinely screamed verbal abuse at his former manager — and beat him, too."

As the words verbal abuse and assault left his mouth, Lee Jeong-han's eyes settled on Baek Ga-yoon, studying her closely. She registered nothing at all.

"This here is an interview with Seong Jin-ung's former manager."

Lee Jeong-han explained that he had kept recordings of his conversations with the man. Whatever legal battles might come later, if this ever broke, the blow to the drama would be devastating.

Oh, this is delicious. Scrunching her nose, Baek Ga-yoon burst into a delighted laugh and gave her order. "Keep it safe for now. Set it off one week before Whistle premieres. Throw a little kindling on the fire."

The drama would already be fully shot and days from release. If splashy articles broke the news of Seong Jin-ung's habitual drunk driving, and then the manager's recordings and the like were dripped out a day or two apart—

"It'll burn up beautifully."

That pitiful little drama. No matter how entertaining it was, it would end up buried face-down in the mud.

Ever since that godawful dream, Ga-yoon had developed a habit of toying with her eyebrow razor.

"Ah, that stings. So... drunk driving, of all things."

Staunching the blood welling from her cut thumb, she replayed the conversation she had just witnessed between Baek Ga-yoon and Lee Jeong-han.

"Oh no! Whatever will you do? Sounds like your drama's about to crash and burn?"

The evil spirit taunted her, swishing its long tail — as though none of this were its business too.

Actor Seong Jin-ung drank often. That much she knew firsthand, from the times she had borrowed the evil spirit's eyes to study him. She'd watched him seize the wheel with the absurd excuse that his home was just around the corner.

It had always been a bomb bound to go off someday, and it had kept her quietly uneasy all this while. And now, at last — here it was.

"Well, well. What to do about this."

Tap, tap. As she rapped the table lightly with the short little razor, her mind kicked into gear, wheels turning fast and busy.