Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Seo Hayoung looked at him over her glasses and spoke.

“Sounds good. Tell me.”

Park Songmin swallowed hard.

“...So.”

As he spoke, it felt like his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth.

He was trying as hard as possible not to stammer.

“This man, Kang Yunho, spent five years in hiding.”

“Right?”

“During those five years, he might’ve survived on anger, or on the desire for revenge... but I don’t think that’s it.”

“...”

“I think what really allowed him to endure was the thought that ‘someday, it’ll end.’ Hiding will end, the truth will come out, and he’ll be able to step back into the world. So when he’s sitting in the interrogation room, what he feels isn’t anger or resignation... it’s relief.”

Seo Hayoung’s eyebrow twitched.

“Relief?”

“Yes. The freedom of knowing he doesn’t have to hide anymore. More precisely, trembling layered over relief.”

“Trembling layered over relief...”

The PD watched Seo Hayoung’s reaction.

They were already working together for the second time, so he had learned to read changes in her expression.

And that expression right now.

‘...She likes it.’

Seo Hayoung picked up her tablet again.

She deleted the final line and began writing something new.

Her fingers moved quickly, like a faucet that had finally been unstuck.

Yoo Yeonjae glanced at the tablet screen from beside her.

As he read the newly written dialogue, his eyes gradually narrowed.

“That definitely gives it life. It feels like the character is actually moving.”

Seo Hayoung stopped typing and looked at Park Songmin.

“That phrase just now. Trembling layered over relief.”

“...”

“I really liked it. Songhu-ssi, your ability to read subtext is no joke.”

The staff around them began murmuring.

“I’ve never seen Writer Seo make that face before.”

“Wow, insane. So Writer Seo, with that massive ego of hers, actually accepted someone else’s opinion?”

And then.

“Good. Let’s go in this direction.”

The added dialogue had appeared on the screen in the form of a revised on-set script.

A new exchange between the detective and Kang Yunho.

‘Wait, if this happens...’

The shoot had suddenly gotten longer, and he had more acting to do.

Park Songmin, who was still acting as Park Songhu even at this very moment, felt like dying.

It meant he had to survive that much longer without getting caught.

At that moment, Yoo Yeonjae met Park Songmin’s eyes.

The corner of his mouth curved upward.

“This looks more fun than before.”

“...”

...Only for you!

***

The interrogation-room set.

The fluorescent light came back on.

The cameras took position, and the boom mic lowered.

The two men sat facing each other again with the metal table between them.

Park Songmin repeated the added lines in his head.

The dialogue itself wasn’t long, but compared to the original two lines, the depth was completely different.

Kang Yunho’s responses to the detective’s interrogation.

And a final line of monologue at the end.

‘A star writer really is different...’

The instant he read the lines Seo Hayoung had written for him, Park Songmin couldn’t stop admiring them as a novelist himself.

‘You can see the character’s entire life in every line. I need to write like this from now on too.’

He closed his eyes.

Kang Yunho’s five years came flooding back again.

The study-room ceiling.

The names written in the notebook.

Convenience-store triangle kimbap.

His mother’s funeral.

Louis’s betrayal.

‘?’

No, not that last one.

Anyway, on top of all that came the new layer Seo Hayoung had written today.

“Ready... action!”

Yoo Yeonjae opened the file.

“Kang Yunho. Five years ago, you wrote an article about corruption surrounding development along the Han River. Right after that article went out, you died.”

Yoo Yeonjae’s gaze stabbed down like a blade.

“So how exactly am I supposed to interpret the fact that you’re sitting here alive right now?”

“Interpret it exactly as it looks.”

A low voice followed.

“A dead man appeared again.”

“...You were hiding? For five years?”

“Hiding?”

Park Songmin slowly raised his head.

The murky fluorescent light pooled in his eyes.

“No. I was preparing.”

“...”

“For five years.”

Yoo Yeonjae’s eyes shook.

“...Then what were you preparing all that time?”

“Everything.”

Kang Yunho’s hands rose onto the table.

The handcuffs struck the tabletop with a metallic clink.

“Names. Amounts. Dates. Call records. Who gave how much money to whom. It’s all here.”

He tapped his temple with one finger.

A gesture showing that Kang Yunho had carved five years of evidence into his own mind.

Seo Hayoung, sitting in front of the monitor, tilted her head.

‘...I didn’t write that.’

Personally, she hated actors straying from the script on their own.

Most of the time, what they came up with didn’t match the picture in her head and the tone became excessive.

But... that gesture just now felt more scripted than the script itself.

It looked simple, but one tap of his temple burned the idea into the viewer’s mind that all the evidence was inside his head.

He had conveyed information that would’ve taken ten lines to explain with one gesture.

“Good. Fine.”

Yoo Yeonjae continued with the next line.

“So? Are you going to spill everything?”

Kang Yunho lowered his head slightly.

His chin dipped, and his gaze fell to the table.

His wrists visible between the handcuffs.

Then came the monologue.

“...I had to die.”

His voice caught.

The sentence slipped out through a fractured breath.

“That was the only way I could live.”

The air on the set froze.

Someone sniffled.

‘He had to die in order to live.’

Kang Yunho’s five years had been compressed into that single line.

A death staged as an accident.

An existence erased from the world.

The irony of someone who could only survive by dying.

It had been a miserable life.

But Kang Yunho did not cry.

Those emotions had long since faded over the past five years.

So what remained in this moment was.

Relief.

Relief that he could finally tell everything.

The exact emotion Park Songmin had described to Seo Hayoung was now visible on his face.

“...”

“...”

The cameras alternated between the two men’s faces.

The interrogation-room fluorescent light buzzed.

That sound alone floated through the silence.

“...Cut.”

The PD’s voice dropped.

Unlike before, applause didn’t come immediately.

Clap—

Only after Yoo Yeonjae cleared his throat did the first clap sound.

Then it spread instantly, like flames catching.

Clap clap clap clap clap—

Seo Hayoung muttered blankly in front of the monitor.

“...So this is trembling layered over relief. Just how far did he see into the character Kang Yunho?”

As always, Park Songmin’s legs were trembling.

It took even longer than before to pull himself out of Kang Yunho, because the added lines had made him sink deeper into the character.

‘...Was I pretty decent?’

That was what he thought after stealing a glance at the reactions around him.

Jo Yonggi rushed over and handed him a towel.

“Hyung, that was insane. Seriously!”

“...”

“How can a person be like this? Hyung, you know I fucking love you, right? Kang Yunho endured five years, but damn it, I’ve endured five years too!”

“...You’re noisy.”

Please, enough...

He was already completely drained.

Yoo Yeonjae took a sip of bottled water and glanced once at Park Songmin.

When their eyes met, he gave a light nod.

Park Songmin reflexively nodded back and let out a long breath.

“Hoooo...”

‘...I survived.’

He had come back alive.

Just like Kang Yunho.

***

At the same time.

Park Songhu was lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling.

Louis was curled up like a doughnut on his stomach, sleeping, and he was heavier than expected, leaving Park Songhu unable to get up.

‘Wonder if he’s doing okay.’

The shoot should have started by now.

Since it was only a cameo, it would probably end quickly.

‘...He’ll be fine, right?’

Suddenly, unease crept in.

Park Songhu picked up his phone to call Jo Yonggi, then stopped.

His thumb hovered over the call button.

‘Holy shit, that was close.’

Right now, Park Songmin was at the set as Park Songhu.

He had almost caused a disaster.

‘Right. He’ll contact me when it’s over.’

He set the phone down.

Louis squirmed and shifted positions, making the weight on Park Songhu’s stomach tilt to the left.

“Hey, you’re heavy.”

“Purr.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you getting mad?”

“Prr.”

“...Fine. Just stay there.”

Louis went back to sleep.

His tail lightly slapped Park Songhu’s side.

‘There’s nothing to do.’

No schedules, nowhere he could go.

If he went outside for some fresh air, there was always the chance something unfortunate might happen.

The world didn’t know he had a twin brother, much less that said twin brother was pretending to be him.

So he had no choice but to wait at home until Park Songmin returned.

‘Is this going to happen a lot from now on? If so, I need something to kill time...’

He opened social media, then closed it.

Opened the news, then closed it.

Opened YouTube, then closed it.

There was nothing stimulating enough to give him a dopamine hit.

‘Well, my hikikomori twin brother is currently pretending to be a top star.’

What could possibly be more stimulating than that?

And this was real life.

Maybe that was why everything else felt dull now.

‘Ah, right.’

NovelJoA.

That site Park Songmin was always writing on.

Park Songhu opened NovelJoA on the laptop.

It was set to log in automatically.

[MiniSong] Author Page.

One ongoing series.

The genre was fantasy hunter fiction.

The title was <​The Dungeon That Never Sleeps>.

‘I stopped reading halfway last time.’

He continued.

“...”

The pacing was frustrating as hell.

Once the protagonist awakened, he should have moved straight to the next stage, but useless episodes kept getting wedged in between.

‘Why does going out to eat with a companion take an entire chapter? Literally nothing happens. They just talk to each other until the chapter ends.’

The cliffhangers were weak too.

Every time a chapter ended, the tension dropped straight off a cliff.

‘No wonder he can’t gather readers.’

But the characters were a different story.

One line from the sub-heroine who stayed by the protagonist’s side caught his eye.

-Getting stronger is good... but what if you break in the process?

That one line contained the heroine’s position, emotion, and anxiety all at once.

Even the villains had circumstances of their own.

Maybe that was why, instead of catharsis, Park Songhu felt bitterness when the protagonist defeated one of them.

Two people who had no choice but to fight crossing paths.

‘He definitely writes characters well.’

Park Songhu opened the comment section.

There weren’t many comments, but he saw reactions similar to what he’d just been thinking.

-If the pacing were faster this author would seriously have potential, what a waste

-An author who dumped all his stat points into character appeal

-I complain but I can’t drop it because of the characters

-Please speed up the plotㅠ when is the protagonist who ate the enhancement stone actually going to get stronger?

-This is frustrating as hell

Plot progression was the lifeblood of web novels. If you failed there, good characters alone made mainstream success difficult.

‘Well, looking at current trends, dramas aren’t that different.’

Then, suddenly, he noticed the [Write] button.

‘Should I try writing something too...?’

For some reason, he felt like he could write better than Park Songmin.

No, seriously.

The Genius Actor Is Hiding Twins