Inside the rattling car, Song Hyunsoo stretched his body forward and squinted his eyes.
“There’s nothing to see.”
The navigation system was announcing that they were almost at their destination, but in front of the headlights, there was nothing but darkness.
“Are we really at the right place?”
“You can hear it, can’t you?”
Carefully steering so the massive car wouldn’t smash into the narrow alley’s walls, Yoon Jooho answered.
Song Hyunsoo paused the music.
He was right.
Shwaa, shwaa. Even though it was gentle, it was unmistakably the sound of waves. It was getting closer and closer.
As they went down the winding alley a bit more, an open space appeared. They had arrived.
“Wow… It took a little over two hours.”
Checking the clock, which pointed past midnight, Song Hyunsoo spoke in a surprised voice.
“It’s always a bit slower the first time, even with navigation. Plus, it’s night.”
Yoon Jooho parked the car in a suitable spot and turned off the headlights.
A complete night, impossible to find in the city, was there. Along with the gentle sound of waves.
For a moment, it felt as if all the lights in the world had been switched off and only the two of them remained in the universe.
Gazing into the endless darkness before him, Song Hyunsoo turned his head to find Yoon Jooho. He, too, was looking at Song Hyunsoo.
In the thick darkness, the only things clearly visible were each other’s faces and eyes.
With this atmosphere, surely…
Swallowing dryly, Song Hyunsoo licked his lower lip slightly.
And just as he unconsciously leaned his upper body toward Yoon Jooho, Yoon Jooho’s lips moved.
“We’ve come all this way, we should get out and see.”
Yoon Jooho reached into the back seat. Picking up his own coat, he handed Song Hyunsoo’s jumper to him as well.
“What are you doing, put it on.”
“Yeah…”
It was my mistake expecting anything romantic from that guy.
Grumbling to himself, Song Hyunsoo loosely threw on the jumper and followed him out of the car.
“Whoa, damn, it’s freezing!”
The moment he opened the door, the chill of the midwinter sea night immediately assaulted him. Song Hyunsoo turned his back to the wind and quickly zipped up his jumper.
As he came around to the front of the car, Yoon Jooho, putting on his gloves, shook his head with a little laugh.
“Seriously, so sexy.”
You’re just as good at ruining the mood.
Rolling his eyes at Yoon Jooho’s back as he took the lead, Song Hyunsoo followed after him.
The place where they parked was an open lot right in front of the sea. It was a low, steep embankment pressed close against the narrow beach.
Shining his phone’s flashlight here and there, Yoon Jooho found stepping stones leading down to the beach. Someone had stacked stones like stairs along the slope.
“I guess that’s why there are no tourists. It’s not a beach you can play and swim at.”
Maybe it was because of high tide, but the beach looked less than two or three meters wide.
Plus, there were so many rocks that it wasn’t a place where crowds of tourists would come and set up parasols.
There were two major requirements for ‘Myeonghaeri’ in the script.
A west coast where you can see the sunset.
A quiet village that tourists don’t visit.
He had already braced himself that the location would be far from Seoul. Most beaches within two or three hours from Seoul were packed with pensions and sashimi restaurants.
“That’s probably how it could become Myeonghaeri.”
Turning off the phone’s flashlight and sticking his hands in his jumper pockets, Yoon Jooho looked out at the sea.
“So this is Myeonghaeri…”
Song Hyunsoo quietly listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the sea.
“I can’t see anything.”
He couldn’t even tell if what was in front of him was really the sea, or just endless, boundless darkness.
But the sound of the waves proved the existence of a sea he could not see. There really was a sea there.
Wouldn’t it be nice to leave the car headlights on, since it’s so dark? he had thought.
But now, somehow, he felt comforted by this darkness just as it was.
The place where Sol-i, San-i, and Kang-i were born and grew up together.
Like three little puppies. Or like the kittens of Gukine.
Clinging tightly together, relying on each other, learning love and how to protect, and… learning how to let each other go.
“It’s a strange feeling.”
He turned his head and looked at Yoon Jooho standing beside him.
His hair was wildly blowing in the sea wind. His hair’s gotten longer.
Seeing his complicated profile, Song Hyunsoo could tell he was feeling the same emotions.
Lee Sol, Lee San, Baek Kang. Their presence was growing even clearer.
Yoon Jooho turned to look at him and, letting out a breath, spoke.
“Want to walk around the village a bit?”
Song Hyunsoo let out a soft, helpless laugh and nodded.
“Why?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Why are you laughing?”
He suddenly wanted to say he wanted to walk holding hands. But he couldn’t say something like that.
With an expression that said he wouldn’t move until he got an answer, Yoon Jooho stood his ground, so Song Hyunsoo forcibly pushed his back.
“It’s really nothing. Let’s go.”
Behind the open lot where they parked were about five or six houses.
At a glance, most of them seemed empty.
And across the one-lane road was a small field, and about thirty houses were gathered around the field at the foot of the hill.
With the empty winter field on their right, the two of them started walking slowly along the fan-shaped road.
“Looks like there are some empty houses.”
“They’ll probably renovate one of those for Sol-i and San-i’s house.”
“Then Kang-i’s house would have to be closer to the beach, so it’d be by the lot.”
The more they talked, the more Song Hyunsoo felt his spirits lift.
“Baek Kang’s house might end up in a totally different location.”
“But our Director doesn’t like shooting like that, right?”
“You know that kind of thing?”
With a hint of surprise, Yoon Jooho gave a small laugh and glanced at him.
“What do you take me for?”
He stared a little longer than usual, and then Yoon Jooho closed the distance between them. His hand reached toward Song Hyunsoo’s face.
“Wh-what is it?”
“You think I’m gonna hit you?”
As Song Hyunsoo shrank back, Yoon Jooho clicked his tongue and reached for the collar of his jumper.
He pulled out the hood that had been tucked inside. Song Hyunsoo, surprised, looked over his shoulder.
“Huh? There was a hood in there?”
“You wear that every day and never noticed?”
“It didn’t have a zipper.”
“It’s folded up inside.”
After putting the hood on him, Yoon Jooho even tightened the drawstrings himself.
Song Hyunsoo glanced at his focused face nearby and hesitantly spoke.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
“Because right now, I’m Baek Kang.”
“Can’t you be nice even when you’re just Yoon Jooho?”
“When have I not been nice to you?”
That’s true.
He just doesn’t get my feelings, but it’s not like he doesn’t do things for me. Honestly, he’s really good to me.
Song Hyunsoo looked back and forth between Yoon Jooho’s face and his gloved hands tying the strings.
If Baek Kang always treated San-i like this, then maybe it wasn’t just San-i’s fault he developed that twisted obsession with Baek Kang.
“San-i…”
“……”
“I bet he once spied on Kang-i and Sol-i being affectionate.”
“That sounds like him.”
Yoon Jooho shrugged his shoulders and laughed softly.
Then, after tightening the strings and putting the hood on Song Hyunsoo’s head, he laughed again at the sight of his face. The two started walking again.
“He probably didn’t mean to, just saw it by chance. The three of them were always together anyway. There weren’t even any real walls between their houses.”
He had to fill in the characters’ backstories that weren’t in the script himself. When he’d played minor roles with just a couple lines, he never needed to do this. But Song Hyunsoo enjoyed imagining Lee San, Baek Kang, and Lee Sol on sleepless nights.
Like a secret he could tell no one, those thoughts kept piling up inside him, and Yoon Jooho silently listened to those secrets.
“At first, seeing that would have made him angry, hurt, and feel left out. But weirdly, he couldn’t look away.”
“……”
“And then San-i would pleasure himself.”
“He wouldn’t get excited watching his sister, so that bastard must’ve gotten off on Baek Kang.”
“Who knows. Maybe he was just aroused by seeing intimacy between a man and a woman for the first time.”
Immersed in the conversation, before he knew it, Song Hyunsoo was five or six steps ahead of Yoon Jooho.
“San-i has a twisted obsession with the two of them. To the point he wishes he could be their child.”
He stopped walking, not hearing Yoon Jooho’s footsteps behind him. At that moment, a voice came from behind.
“Scene number 93. You remember the lines, right?”
S#93. Myeonghaeri, alley in front of Jeon Yoojung’s lodging (late night)
He had memorized every single line perfectly. Even the other actors’ lines and the stage directions.
Since they practiced together, Yoon Jooho knew that well.
“Lee San. Hey, where are you going, you punk?”
Song Hyunsoo turned around.
Within the space where they’d be filming the movie, Yoon Jooho— no, Baek Kang in the alley of Myeonghaeri— was standing there.
A big figure with both hands in his pants pockets, shoulders hunched high. It was Baek Kang.
The person who’d been with me since birth.
The person who taught me how to whistle, how to blow bubbles with gum, how to flip ttakji, how to ride a bike, and how to stand up to punks who looked down on me.
The person who, from the beginning, was always supposed to be my sister’s husband. As naturally as I am myself, the person who was meant to be the father of my nephews.
That way, a person who could never be separated from me.
Lee San’s twisted obsession with Baek Kang was writhing inside him.