A Night of Drizzling Mist (1)

"Director Seo. Are you seriously not going to do this for me? Even after I'm begging you like this?"

"…."

"How long are you planning to stay cooped up in your little room, staring at penguin butts all by yourself?"

Do-gyeom, who had been listening with indifferent detachment the entire time, let his displeasure show plainly as the corners of his eyes narrowed. It's the same words every time…. Does she have to flaunt that she consumes broadcast content like everyone else? Why does her wording have to be so sensational?

"Noona."

"What."

"…Haah. Never mind."

Do-gyeom, who had been glaring at Yi-seo with a twisted look, waved her off and turned his head when she answered back with shameless ease. God, exhausting. Facing someone who was dumping energy in excessive bursts after so long, his migraine—which had stayed quiet for days—began reasserting its presence. Even for Do-gyeom, who wouldn't do something he didn't want to save his life, coldly refusing Yi-seo's earnest pleading was no simple matter.

Still, a drama OST is too much. And it's the main theme, sung by the female lead herself. After a long hesitation, Do-gyeom finally shook his head. Setting aside the difficulty of the work itself, the mere thought of being crammed into a cramped studio with a stranger for days on end was already setting his nerves on edge.

"Noona. I've genuinely thought about this, and no matter how I turn it over, it doesn't work. I've been doing documentaries exclusively for over four years—barely watched any dramas. I don't listen to pop music at all anymore…. My instincts are completely gone. How am I supposed to touch a genre as trend-sensitive as a drama?"

"But you can do anything when you put your mind to it. Your music isn't the kind that chases trends anyway. You still pop up on broadcasts now and then. I checked on my way here—one of your songs is still on the charts. Wasn't it sixty-fourth…?"

The long fingers that had been pressing at his throbbing temple stopped dead mid-motion. Though she hadn't intended it in the least, the 'one song' Yi-seo mentioned went rummaging wildly through Do-gyeom's memories, which had lain settled and quiet like sand at the bottom of a deep river. In an instant the placid water turned to roiling mud, and Do-gyeom, flung defenselessly back five years, could only drift helplessly, grain by grain.

The song they had poured love and passion into during their early twenties, the greenest and most beautiful season of their lives, had been wrapped in the story of an unexpected accident and became far more famous than anyone anticipated. To escape voices that drifted in from every direction whether he listened or not, Do-gyeom had been unable to leave his home for nearly half a year.

They say the things you try hardest to forget only imprint themselves more vividly. To sink a memory that still lingered down to the sound of someone's breathing, Do-gyeom took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes, then opened them again. The years hadn't flowed by for nothing—the emotions hadn't dulled, but he'd at least learned to keep them off his face.

"That was…. It just happened to catch the right timing by chance…. Anyway, I can't do it. Lyric-writing feels awkward to me now, and I hate compromising by dragging in a non-professional and making do. Having an actor sing purely for buzz? Personally, I hate it."

"Ro-a isn't a non-professional. Even if you've stopped following pop music, you know Cerael, right? She was the main vocalist. She can sing. She's been through every hardship this industry has to offer, so she's sharp and quick on the uptake, too. She'll work hard and do whatever you ask."

"Noona…."

"Think of it as saving a person's life and help her out. For Ro-a, this might be the last chance she'll ever get. If she can't break through this time, a girl who's only twenty-five could vanish from this industry forever."

Do-gyeom, staring at Yi-seo's suddenly earnest face, made a mildly baffled expression. Were one or two people vanishing without a trace from that world such a rare thing? If you had talent, you shone; if not, you got weeded out. That was only natural.

"Why are you telling me this…. It's not like one song of mine can make or break an actress. If she was cast as the lead in a drama directed by the great PD Kang Yi-seo herself, isn't she already pretty well established? What's with the life-or-death act?"

"This is the first drama I'm directing, and it just so happens her role is a singer, so I fought the production company to force her in…. But I can't keep dragging her along on every project I make with other people's money, and I certainly don't have the power to place her anywhere else."

"Why do you have to look after that girl so devotedly? You're the one who always judges auditions with surgical precision. Did she catch you in some weakness or something?"

At Do-gyeom's question, Yi-seo's brow furrowed hard, and she spat out a few rough curses. Right. I should never have seen that filthy little spectacle. Then I wouldn't be playing righteous avenger in a drama that isn't even mine to play. Why did that appointment have to land, of all days, in a hotel lounge I never even set foot in? How a person can make things so desperate.

"I was planning to avoid trotting out sob stories, but…."

"Then don't. Not interested."

Even the sordid personal business he already knew about had his brain at full capacity. He had zero desire to add useless gossip on top of it. Do-gyeom cut her off with genuine revulsion, waving his arm as if swatting the words away, but Yi-seo, a lifelong devotee of her own way, paid him no mind.

"I'll keep it short. You know Ji-enter, right? One of the members of Cerael, Ro-a's old group, is the daughter of Ji-enter's CEO. Ji Hae-mi."

"Oh, come on…. You're starting with insider information? You said you'd keep it short!"

"She's fairly pretty, I'll give her that. Anyway, she threw a fit—bawling and screaming—about wanting to be a celebrity, so Ji-enter put her in a team they'd assembled with considerable care. But her position was awkward. Her dancing and singing were both passable at best, and when it came to putting a face at center, Ro-a was prettier. They trained her ruthlessly and managed to get her on stage somehow, but with no real specialty to showcase, she never caught on."

According to Yi-seo, Hae-mi, born the only daughter of a wealthy family and waited on hand and foot her whole life, had viewed Ro-a—superior to her at everything—as a thorn in her eye from the very start and picked fights over every little thing. The one saving grace was that even she had enough sense to know that for the group's survival, Ro-a couldn't be pushed out of the spotlight.

"They spent a little over three years promoting together without exchanging a single word offstage, and then Her Highness finally grew bored of playing celebrity. It was far harder than she'd imagined, the agency pushed her with everything they had and she still didn't hit it big, and she got plenty of flak about riding in on connections. So she'd flit in and out of hospitals moaning about being unwell, then jet off overseas at the drop of a hat."

In an entertainment industry where rookies poured out by the day, a group that disappeared from the public eye for months at a time was bound to be left behind. The company never arranged a single personal schedule for Ro-a, whose presence had become an inconvenience to the owner's daughter, and even the occasional work that did trickle in received no proper support. Worse, they sometimes withheld schedules that had already been confirmed, leaving her to no-show events she never knew existed.

"How do you know all these tedious little behind-the-scenes details? A gossip-averse person like you?"

"I put in a lot of legwork to find out. She was a child actress before, and I liked the vibe she gave off, so I'd been keeping an eye on her—then she dropped off the radar for a while and I started wondering. Then I went to a meeting with the production company and happened to overhear some of their executives talking about Ro-a. Sneering that a nobody with nothing to her name actually had the pride to refuse sponsorship."

"About a twenty-five-year-old?"

"She was twenty-three at the time."

Do-gyeom's handsome face twisted grotesquely in an instant. He'd thought five years had hardened him well enough to human ugliness, but a violent surge of revulsion rose so sharply it nearly turned his stomach. This is exactly why I can't get attached to that world.

"I couldn't sleep that night. The industry overflows with far filthier stories, and I'd never once felt this way no matter what sordid tale I heard before—but I swore to myself I'd somehow give this girl one chance. Just one."

The morning after, Yi-seo woke and mobilized every journalist she knew to scrape together every rumor she could find. And when the fragments gathered from here and there assembled into a single picture, Yi-seo's expression looked exactly like Do-gyeom's did now. The methods a major entertainment company had used to bury one young woman were so cruel and so cowardly that merely hearing about them made your face burn.

"There was nothing I could do for her right away, so I only caught wind of things now and then. The agency blocked her from working but wouldn't release her, she'd just finished a settlement and had no money for penalty fees, and with her face already out there she couldn't take just any job…. She kept her head down and washed dishes in a restaurant kitchen for two years, and last month her contract with Ji-enter finally ended. It happened to line up perfectly with my schedule, so I asked her to work with me."

"…That was good of you."

"She cried for a whole hour."

"…."

The story of someone who learned life's weariness far too early never sat well, no matter how many times you heard it. The moment Yi-seo sharply registered the slight softening of Do-gyeom's cold face, she let her voice grow a little more pleading.

"Since I've started doing something I never used to do, I want to make it turn out as well as it can. I want this chance to stamp her face firmly into the public's memory, and I want her picked up by a powerhouse agency that Ji-enter wouldn't dare mess with. Thankfully, the script came out brilliantly, and the male lead went to a genuinely talented actor. We'll hit at least a mid-level success. All that's left is the OST."

"Fine, I understand the situation. Your dedication as a director—running around personally on errands this trivial, all to save one person—is truly admirable. But why on earth would you hand it to a documentary music director? The industry's crawling with famous composers who'd chart the moment they released anything."

"Ro-a says she wants it to be you."

"…What?"

"When I told her to name whatever composer she wanted, success or no success, she said she wanted to work with the person who made The Day I Confess. And as luck would have it, that happens to be someone I know. I don't usually say things this embarrassing, but—doesn't that feel like fate?"

Why that song, of all things…. Do-gyeom, lips parting to respond to Yi-seo's theatrics, ended up saying nothing at all. Mouth pressed shut, head tilted back, he wrestled fiercely with himself as Yi-seo watched him anxiously—and the moment a sigh like a groan escaped his lips, the corners of her mouth slowly lifted.

"Do-gyeom…."

"Bring her in once, just to hear her voice. But send me the script first."

"Thank you so much, Director Seo! I'll bring her tomorrow. Just text me the time."

"I'll be in the studio all afternoon. Just call ahead."

"Yes! You're going to be so blessed for this. You'd better go to heaven someday, no doubt about it."

Watching Yi-seo carry on at ten times her usual clamor, Do-gyeom smiled faintly to himself. Well, let's see. To reach Cheongye, I'd have to be reincarnated six more times—and I'm not at all sure I can live all six of those lives well and virtuously.

As Yi-seo scrambled to pack her bag, grumbling about being late, Do-gyeom watched her with a smile—then his eyes narrowed when she rose from her seat in a fluster and, for one instant, averted her gaze with terrible awkwardness. What is this ominous feeling?

"What now."

"Oh, right—did I mention? The songs Ro-a sings in the drama? There are five in total. See you tomorrow! I'll send the script right over."

"What?! No, hold on. Just now it was one main theme…. Hey there, PD Kang! You'd better stop right there?!"