INTM Ch3

It had been three days since the broadcast aired, but the whole country was still buzzing with news about Yoon Yichae and Yoon Sookyung. It was largely because Yoon Yichae’s fans kept pouring fuel on the fire whenever the controversy seemed to die down. Soogyeom read a couple of posts related to Yoon Yichae, each with hundreds of comments, before closing the internet window.

As soon as he took out his earphones and got up from his chair, he heard a knock on the door. Soogyeom’s fingertips, which had been gripping the armrest of the chair, stiffened. Silence fell beyond the door where the knocking had stopped. Soogyeom held his breath and strained his senses toward the door.

“Soogyeom. Are you already asleep?”

Knock, knock, he heard the knocking again. Soogyeom slowly raised his heels. As if waiting for it, he heard the sound of skin peeling off the linoleum. Tsk, he clicked his tongue and finally strode over to open the door.

“What.”

Euigyeom, who had been standing with one hand raised, frowned and smiled. His sallow, dried-up face was devoid of life.

“Oh, no… I have to go to the hospital tomorrow…”

“I know. I gave you the taxi fare earlier.”

“Not that, tomorrow…. Can you come with me?”

Soogyeom almost sighed out loud. Fortunately, he managed to swallow it back down just in time.

“I have work in the afternoon tomorrow. I told you I’m going to a shoot.”

“The hospital is in the morning. I’m not asking you to stay until it’s over.”

“Hyung… The set is in Paju. If I do as you say, I’ll have to go from home to Seolleung and then to Paju tomorrow.”

Euigyeom closed his mouth. Every corner of his dry face was stiff and faded. It was the fatigue that had accumulated layer by layer from his long illness, settling like grime. Always sick, he was constantly plagued by fatigue and irritation.

“Okay, never mind. I was just saying.”

Euigyeom, who had been moving his lips for a while, smiled as if doing a great favor. Soogyeom rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

“It’s really okay. You’re tired too, so it can’t be helped. I don’t get upset about things like this, Soogyeom.”

“…Hyung, please.”

“I’m just scared about what they’ll say this time when I meet the doctor alone, and I’m worried about collapsing on the way there… That’s why I asked. But it’s really okay. Never mind.”

He was starting to feel suffocated. Soogyeom squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. He hated Sookyung’s way of talking like this. He would make unreasonable requests, and when rejected, he would repeat that it was okay with all sorts of reasons until he got an apology filled with guilt.

Since he was young, he had been selfish and violent, but at least he was someone who could take care of himself. When he was lucky enough to get a job at a big company, he would lecture Soogyeom, showing off. How long are you going to waste your time being an actor or whatever? You need to face reality and live your life….

Euigyeom collapsed at a company dinner less than half a year after joining that great company. It was acute renal failure. He couldn’t last long with medication alone. It had been two months since he started dialysis.

“There was that time before. I collapsed on the way from the subway station to the hospital, and no one helped me. I thought I was going to die like that, but you didn’t answer your phone….”

“Hyung.”

“That’s why I’m like this. I’m scared I’ll collapse again.”

Of course, he couldn’t continue working at the company. On the day even his girlfriend left him, Sookyung drank as much as he could and caused a ruckus. While trying to take the bottle away from Euigyeom, Soogyeom cut his hand on a broken piece of glass. The wound was so deep that it had to be stitched up. When Bongwon asked why his hand was like that, he said it was because of his drinking habit. As always, he said he was singing and hitting the glass with chopsticks when he broke it.

“…I have to leave right away as soon as we get to the hospital.”

Soogyeom squeezed out the words only after a long time. Only then did Euigyeom’s face brighten.

“Oh? Really? You don’t have to. I told you it’s okay.”

“Stop it and go to sleep. I have to leave early tomorrow, so don’t fail to wake up again.”

It took an hour of arguing to wake Euigyeom up. It was only natural since he was up until dawn playing computer games, whether he had to go to the hospital the next day or not. No matter how many hundreds of times he told him to live regularly, try to eat healthy, and do even the light exercise recommended by the hospital, it was useless.

“Okay. I’ll go to sleep soon. When have I ever not listened to you?”

His face was full of a servile smile as he rattled off flattering words. Soogyeom closed the door without answering and lay down on the bed. Not long after, he began to hear the thumping game sounds and frantic voices from beyond the thin wall. He was probably watching that Rescaper broadcast or whatever again.

He grabbed his phone while lying down. The top-ranked videos on the video site were all occupied by the Yoon Yichae controversy and compilation videos of Yoon Sookyung’s terrible acting.

Yoon Yichae was an actor who had never had a single dating rumor since his debut. Kim Jungwoo would repeat, with saliva flying, that Yoon Yichae was definitely gay whenever his name came up. The reason was that it was impossible to explain how a star of Yoon Yichae’s caliber could have never had a tabloid story unless he was gay.

He donated hundreds of millions of won to various places every year, and the only known thing about his private life was that he exercised every evening. He was a star who guaranteed at least a moderate hit with every project he took on. Yoon Yichae was someone who was already recognized as being on another level by the public and the industry and was not easily touched. That flawless image, which he had maintained for a whopping 16 years, was instantly tainted by allegations of nepotism.

[Myyy love has! Loved youuu!]

As soon as he clicked on the latest video, a shrill voice pierced his ears. Soogyeom, frowning deeply, held the phone away from his face. In the small screen, Yoon Sookyung was distorting his face as he practically yelled at the actress.

The biggest factor was probably this strange way of speaking. Yoon Sookyung pronounced all ‘ae’ vowels with a long sound. He couldn’t clearly distinguish between the pronunciations of ‘s’ and ‘d’, and he ended sentences with exclamation marks and question marks in the same way. In other words, he just shouted first.

Did he live abroad or something? It doesn’t sound like a dialect. Soogyeom skipped through the video with an indifferent expression. The next thing that popped up was a video of Yoon Yichae as a child.

“……”

Sixteen-year-old Yoon Yichae was shedding tears. Large eyes with deep-set double eyelids, eyelashes wet with tears and separated into strands, black and round pupils trembling like the moon reflected in water. His lips, beaten and bloodied, and his fingertips, turned blue, were pitiful just to look at.

If the quality had been better, he would have been able to see the camera lens reflected in his pupils. That’s how clear and deep his gaze was. A young boy who covered his mouth with both hands as white breath escaped, unable to call out to his mother as she walked away.

Brothers can be so different. Soogyeom concentrated on the screen with his mouth shut. Yoon Yichae was someone who was born to be an actor, anyone could see that. He had a beautiful appearance as if he had been sculpted, a natural talent, and even the luck to succeed. This was the kind of person who landed lead roles and became a star. Someone who had everything. Someone who could flaunt a talent that no one could doubt or dare to belittle.

The internet was overflowing with mockery of Yoon Sookyung and finger-pointing at Yoon Yichae. Anyone who said even a slightly different opinion was instantly branded as a Yoon Yichae fan and had to endure a barrage of attacks. A pebble-like question popped into Soogyeom’s head.

Did Yoon Yichae not know this would happen?

There were many cases of stars’ siblings or children entering the entertainment industry. But even if it was just a cover-up, they at least put up a minimal smokescreen. They would subtly slip into small roles, or reveal their family relationship as if it wasn’t intentional. At least, there had never been a case like this where they had deliberately deceived the public.

Yoon Yichae’s fans now had the task of making Yoon Sookyung into a ‘stellar new actor who succeeded solely on his own merits’ in order to protect their star. But even if they succeeded, they would not be able to restore Yoon Yichae’s image to its flawless state.

There was no way an actor as seasoned as Yoon Yichae wouldn’t have known. If there was a reason why he had done this despite that, it was probably…

“……”

Yoon Yichae’s face, as he constantly looked at his younger brother sitting next to him with a sweet gaze, came to mind, and he felt uncomfortable. Soogyeom put down his phone and pulled the blanket over himself. He needed to sleep a little more. The loud game sounds were still coming from Sookyung’s room.

When will it end? These tedious days.

He was only able to receive the script after arriving at the set. Soogyeom’s role was an extra who flirted with the female lead in a cafe and was stopped by the male lead. Soogyeom, who quickly memorized the few lines, fell into contemplation. ‘Hey, miss. You have a killer body?’ Not to mention how old-fashioned it was, if they broadcasted such a line, viewers would bombard the bulletin board, saying what kind of backward drama this was.

“Wow, the lines are amazing.”

An extra playing the role of a cafe employee who was nearby whispered with a laugh. Soogyeom smiled back at him.

“Hey, miss. You have a killer body? Why don’t you come have a killer champagne with me instead of this cheap coffee?”

“Seriously, this is crazy. Didn’t they say the writer is in their thirties? What kind of thirty-year-old uses these words these days?”

“‘Killer body’ and ‘killer champagne’ seem to rhyme in their own way.”

The voices grew quieter and quieter as it was a conversation that would be a big problem if it got into the staff’s ears. What’s more, after the lines were over, he had to be punched in the face by the male lead who rushed at him and fall out in a dramatic fashion.

“Isn’t that grounds for a lawsuit these days?”

“Easy money from the settlement.”

“I haven’t done much action, so I’m not confident… Oh, I’m Choi Soogyeom.”

“Shin Juho. Did you come after seeing it on the part-time acting hopefuls cafe?”

“Yeah, well.”

In fact, it was a position that a field staff member he knew had gotten him, but he glossed over it appropriately. It was better not to bring up stories about connections when they were in similar situations.

“We’ll start filming the cafe scene. Please wait, cast members.”

At the AD’s words, the crowd that would fill the cafe got up in a rush. Soogyeom repeatedly recited the lines he had memorized and fell into contemplation. How could he make these nonsensical words sound like words…? As Soogyeom rummaged through the numerous videos in his head, his eyes gradually lit up.