#30
Even if they'd started acting because they loved it, on set the actors ran along the very edge of their nerves. And when the person they always envied was their scene partner, that edge cut twice as sharp. This shoot was sure to be the hardest one yet for Park Ian, or so everyone had predicted. The prediction missed.
“Once we get to Seoul, that's the end of the schedule?”
Park Ian asked, his gaze doggedly tracing the side of the other man's face.
“Yes. I just need to take you home.”
“No. You worked yourself to the bone, you've got to blow off some steam.”
Park Ian slipped into casual speech at his polite reply, then tacked the formality right back on. However you sliced it, the man was ten years his senior. And he was truly the kind of person who gave off a “hyung” sort of feeling.
“Where should I take you?”
“You want to come with me, hyung?”
Park Ian asked in a secretive tone.
“No.”
But he answered without even asking where. Cold as ice. Park Ian's mouth twitched again.
“You don't even know where I'm going.”
“If it's personal business, shall I clock out?”
At Mun Heeseong's businesslike question, Park Ian brooded for a moment, then whipped his head aside like a man in a sulk and answered.
“No. Stay on standby.”
He knew it was an unreasonable demand, but Mun Heeseong replied exactly as Park Ian expected.
“Understood.”
Without a trace of irritation or disappointment. With that trademark impassiveness, as if nothing in the world could possibly matter to him. Never knowing that this very look only made Park Ian more restless.
**
Thanks to how smoothly things had gone, the mood on set was excellent. The truth was, a good mood on set was rare. Unless the leads were actors famous for their good character, it was pretty much always thin ice. And in that rare, pleasant atmosphere, Yoo Shinju, who had set the tone for it, was by contrast on the verge of erupting.
The moment the plane touched down in Seoul, Yoo Shinju headed for his usual gathering. Drink himself into the ground, take something, and this muck of a feeling might just wash away. This shoot had demanded an extreme degree of focus. The reason was a single one: because he'd felt that someone was watching him, constantly. Yoo Shinju had thrown himself into the acting all the harder, conscious of him. At the very least, while he was working, he didn't want to look pathetic in front of him. If he ever met him again, Yoo Shinju wanted to stand before him looking genuinely impressive. Unlike that humiliating figure he'd cut the time they met again.
Maybe it was pride. Yoo Shinju never once acknowledged Mun Heeseong throughout the shoot, but every nerve in his body was turned toward him. That fact drove Yoo Shinju sharp and raw. Because being so aware of him disgusted him.
“Shoot go well?”
Seo Jaeha, who knew Yoo Shinju's schedule inside and out, was the first to welcome him. Beyond that, the others tossed Yoo Shinju light greetings too. Yoo Shinju took none of them and simply started throwing back whatever drink was in sight.
“Why's he in that mood again?”
A famous producer beside Seo Jaeha glanced at Yoo Shinju and asked. Seo Jaeha smiled, glass pressed to his lips.
“He's always like that, isn't he. Isn't it sexy?”
“What?”
“Not caring about a single soul, doing whatever the hell he pleases.”
“...Your taste, honestly.”
“Of course, it's only sexy because it's that face doing it.”
Seo Jaeha grinned. People who wanted Yoo Shinju were everywhere, but most of them dropped away over that trash personality. Right now, Seo Jaeha alone stood firm at his side. Sure, there were those who tumbled into bed with him lightly enough, but the moment Yoo Shinju turned vicious they took fright and fled. Seo Jaeha, though, was different. He was a deviant whose taste ran to finding that side of Yoo Shinju all the more appealing. Granted, when Yoo Shinju was especially savage even he couldn't approach easily, but the instant the tiniest gap opened, he was the sort who'd burrow straight into it, hungry to roll around with Yoo Shinju.
The producer shook his head as though the persistent Seo Jaeha revolted him, and left. Seo Jaeha, looking well used to it, went over to Yoo Shinju.
“The usual?”
“Whatever.”
Perched on the edge of a sofa where he'd already flung his clothes about in careless heaps, Yoo Shinju drank Russian vodka like water.
“Shoot must've been rough.”
...It was rough.
Yoo Shinju thought without answering. Not so much that his body was worn out, more that his mind had been in disarray. Throughout the shoot, Park Ian and Mun Heeseong had been stuck together. Of course, being stuck together was only natural. Actor and manager, after all. But it gave off a different air than that. To be precise, it would be more accurate to say Park Ian clung to Mun Heeseong relentlessly, one-sidedly. On top of that, knowing he was summoned to the man's room night after night, Yoo Shinju had killed time again and again in the lounge on the floor of Park Ian's hotel room, watching.
And that wasn't all. Every so often he'd even trailed him in secret. What he'd come to feel doing so was that Mun Heeseong wore a truly unreadable face. Ordinarily he went about like nothing more than an indifferent man, but every night, late, he'd step out of the hotel and, exactly as before, gaze at the sea while he smoked a single cigarette. Very slowly. With a face that gave away nothing of what he was thinking. That gaze, staring out at the sea so emptily every time, muddled Yoo Shinju's head more than anything.
Just then the entrance grew clamorous once more. At Park Ian's arrival, Yoo Shinju finally realized that he too belonged to this gathering. In that instant his already-frayed nerves bristled another notch.
“...Park Ian.”
When a low growl escaped him without his meaning it, Seo Jaeha replied with a clueless face.
“Ah, you two shot together this time, right?”
At Seo Jaeha's question he gave no answer, only staring at Park Ian. The man came in somehow in a fine mood. And he leaned in naturally against someone he knew, pressing their bodies close as he threw back the vodka they handed him.
“You look like you're in a good mood?”
When someone nearby asked, Park Ian gave a shrug.
“Yeah, I'm good.”
Park Ian answered, humming a little tune. The exact opposite of Yoo Shinju.
“Huh? So you clocked out here too, sunbaenim.”
Park Ian recognized Yoo Shinju at once and curved his eyes into a smile. The hand gripping Yoo Shinju's glass trembled. The urge to rip apart that grinning, smirking mouth twisted his insides.
When Yoo Shinju gave no reply, Park Ian drifted naturally back to his own crowd, pressing close against a man and letting a laugh spill out.
“What is it. You land a blockbuster?”
When the man beside him wrapped an arm around Park Ian's waist and asked, Park Ian shook his head.
“There's someone I've taken a liking to.”
“Who? Here?”
“As if. I don't deal with sluts.”
“What's this? A self-introduction?”
The man laughed faintly and ran his hands over Park Ian's body, clinging. Yoo Shinju didn't turn his eyes that way, but his every nerve was strained in that direction, and Park Ian's voice kept jabbing into his ears.
“There is one. Good-looking.”
Swaying his body to the dreamy music, Park Ian went on a phrase at a time.
“And dependable.”
Somehow Yoo Shinju felt he knew exactly who Park Ian was talking about, and thick cords of tension stood up one by one along the line of his jaw.
“So. You dating?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Gonna have him tonight.”
Yoo Shinju, mid-sip of vodka, choked and coughed it back up. When he sputtered, something gone down the wrong way, Seo Jaeha looked at him in alarm.
“You okay?”
“Cough! Cough!”
At the sight of him coughing as if to bring it all up, Seo Jaeha, flustered, patted his back, and Yoo Shinju slapped the hand away fiercely and fixed his attention back on Park Ian's voice.
“Then just bring him up.”
“He's downstairs. Figured I'd kill a bit of time here first.”
“You really have to?”
“Grab a sparkling water for me later.”
“What for.”
“Gonna spike it with a little something to put him in a good mood.”
When Park Ian said it with a grin, the man shook his head.
“That kind of game, you can't be playing it out in the open.”
“He's a block of stone, that's why.”
“Guess he's straight.”
“Right? So I've got to have him while he's out of it. It's my side doing the fucking anyway, so once you're the one going in, what does it matter if the other's a woman or a man?”
Park Ian laughed nastily and teased his lips against the man's neck. It was lewd and dissolute, yet the smiling face looked sincere. He was smiling happily, with the face of a man truly fallen for the one he spoke of. Yoo Shinju was seized by the sensation of thousands of insects crawling all over his body. It felt like someone was raking their nails raw down his throat.
“So very you, that idea. So you're just heading off today, then?”
The man caressed the area around Park Ian's chest and whispered secretively.
“Yeah. That person's waiting for me.”
“You're acting like you've really fallen for him.”
“I'm telling you it's real. I like him.”
“I'm getting a little jealous.”
“He's the first person I've liked this much.”
Even as he said it, Park Ian pressed his lower body to the man's and rubbed against him. Yoo Shinju rolled his stiffened neck and drained the rest of his drink. Seo Jaeha had always found him strange, but lately he sensed a change in this ever-stranger version of him. There had always been an edge to him, but on the whole Yoo Shinju was a listless creature. He acted like a man sick of everything, to whom everything was a nuisance and a bore, without a shred of attachment left to the world.
Yet lately, while he seemed sharper than usual, there was a vitality thrashing in him that wasn't like him at all. He wore all sorts of faces, like a man ranging across extremes of emotion. For the most part he looked angry or annoyed, but even so he carried himself like a person whose inner feelings could actually be felt.
Seo Jaeha, who had watched him a long time, found this version of him unfamiliar. The man who had always worn the eyes of a dying beast wore, these days, living eyes.
