After Story 156

He stuffed some bloated oatmeal flakes in his mouth before sitting in front of the laptop. He set the timer for thirty minutes before starting to move his fingers across the keyboard.

He moved his upper body back and forth and muttered as he wrote before taking his hands off when he heard the beeps from the alarm. Thirty minutes passed by in a flash.

He gave a cursory scan over the words he wrote before closing the laptop. It wouldn’t get any better even if he clung onto it a little more.

He checked the camera battery before getting his luggage.

-Jungyeol, you’re going to go to journalist Jung’s wedding tomorrow, right?

He said into his phone, “Do I really have to when it’s his second wedding? That man would probably get divorced again anyway.”

-What a sharp tongue you have early in the morning. You really can’t hold back your words, huh? Don’t say that and let’s go.

“Forget it. Rather than that, have you departed yet? Today’s the premiere.”

-I’m on my way. But hey, it seems like Lim Hwanggeun has earned quite a lot of money, huh? He’s doing something that’s not a comedy.

“He’s probably trying his hand at a new genre, thinking of himself as a film director, but from how I see it, it’s just a waste of time. People’s preferences don’t change so easily. He should’ve just done the things he was confident in to earn money.”

-You never know. He might have made a masterpiece like Kang Sook did.

“Masterpiece? I’d be glad if it was half-decent. It’s excruciating to watch a terrible movie for two hours.”

Jungyeol put down his phone and grabbed the driving wheel.

When he arrived at the cinema where the premiere was happening, he could see a few familiar faces he interacted with often.

“Yo, Lee Jungyeol, what brings you here today?”

He showed Taejoo, who spoke to him with a cigarette in his mouth, the camera.

“So for journalism, huh? This is your first time seeing Miss Junghwa here, right? Miss Junghwa, this is Lee Jungyeol, who writes novels, news articles, and movie critiques. Jungyeol, you should introduce yourself. She just joined ‘Movie Street’ as a new journalist.”

Jungyeol shook hands with the woman.

“I saw your articles a lot.”

“I didn’t even write that many, so there shouldn’t have been that many to see,” Jungeyol said in a blunt tone.

He didn’t do that because he was displeased or uncomfortable. It was just his habit. He thought that he should fix it, but it ended up sticking with him like a habit.

“Miss Junghwa, don’t mind this guy too much, since that’s how he’s normally like. You probably know if you saw his movie reviews, but he’s a stiff guy and doesn’t get emotional easily. What a waste of the name Jungyeol[1], right?” Taejoo said as he put out his cigarette.

“I hate my name too.”

He blew his nose on some tissue before checking the time. There was about 20 minutes left.

“How do you think this movie is going to be?” Junghwa asked.

Jungyeol took out his glasses and put them on.

“I’ll be satisfied if I don’t fall asleep while watching.”

“I’m really looking forward to it. I really enjoyed all of director Lim Hwanggeun’s works.”

“If you find those things fun, then you probably enjoy everything. Good for you.”

Junghwa smiled awkwardly.

“Miss Junghwa, don’t talk to this guy. You’ll have to spend ten years with this guy if you want to adapt to his personality like I did. I always tell him to take out the cutting knife from his tongue, but he won’t listen to me.”

“I live off of it, so there’s no way I will.”

Jungwha, who was listening, cut in,

“He’s right. The brutal one-line commentary. While all the other critics write sentence after sentence, he finishes it off with just one sentence. Sometimes, even a word.”

“I don’t write that short all the time. I write long entries for the movies I like. It’s just people don’t read the things I wrote long reviews for. I heard that young fellows these days don’t read more than two lines, right? Maybe you didn’t read my long reviews either?”

“Uhm, err, haha.”

Junghwa made an awkward smile. He was going to say he was just joking but stopped because he felt like it would make him look pathetic.

“Are you going to skip the mic today as well?” Taejoo asked.

“I’ll see how things go.”

“So you are, huh? Well, I guess the director would pass out if you ask questions at a premiere.”

“What do you mean by that?” Junghwa, who had been listening, asked.

Usually, people would stay quiet after getting fed up with his personality, but she kept standing back up, perhaps because she was young. Taejoo smiled.

“There are only two cases when Jungyeol asks questions at a movie premiere. Either he absolutely loves the movie, or it’s utterly terrible. But he’s a picky guy so rarely anything satisfies him. So if he asks anything, it means that it’s one of the most terrible things he has watched. Not only that, you heard how he’s like with his words. He asks brutal questions that make me feel ashamed even when I’m not the one he’s asking. Once, he almost got into a fight with the director he asked a question to.”

“It’s that bad?”

“He says he doesn’t suit his name Jungyeol, but at times like that, nothing else suits him better. He attacks without looking back.”

Jungyeol glanced at Taejoo speaking.

“I’m sure half of the rumors about me came from you.”

“Hey, I’m not the one you’re talking to, am I? There are tons of directors waiting to duke it out with you, you know?”

“If they feel so wronged, then they should have made it better. They used the wrong actors to create a terrible mess, so if they want to hear good questions, then they’re the ones in the wrong.”

He pointed at the screen room and spoke,

“It’s about to start.”

Before he went in, he turned on the camera to check the status. He sat on his designated seat and looked at the stage. The host came up and grabbed the mic.

“To the journalists from various news outlets, as well as critics and bloggers, welcome.”

After a round of applause, the host explained the schedule briefly.

“The movie will have a runtime of two hours, and after that, there will be a Q&A session with the director and the actors. As for photos, we’d appreciate it if you take them after we signal you. As you probably know already, you must use the video materials we provide for you instead of shooting anything here. There are some light snacks in the plastic bag we handed out at the entrance, so please watch comfortably while you eat them. Then, the movie will start.”

Jungyeol looked at the pamphlet that would be distributed across the whole country next week.

‘Depths of Evil.’

He looked at the names of the actors: Kim Hyuk, Jung Beomseok, Jung Gayoung, Kang Chaejoo, Han Maru.

By his standards, Kim Hyuk was a good actor. He was good at acting and possessed considerable skill in creating characters.

He would become a flower in a flower field and a piece of scrap plastic in a heap of trash plastic. The only downside to him was that he didn’t possess anything unique, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a good actor.

Jung Beomseok was a little more difficult to judge. His opinion of this man varied dramatically depending on the work. Sometimes, he couldn’t hold back his admiration, and sometimes, he would wonder if that was all he could do.

The combination of Lim Hwanggeun’s thriller and Jung Beomseok, huh? He felt like this was a precursor to a terrible ruin.

Jung Gayoung. He had heard of her name, but he had never seen a movie she appeared in. He had a few opportunities to watch them, but he didn’t want to. From what he could hear, she was someone who received good opinions, but her eyes in choosing a movie seemed non-existent seeing as how she decided to appear in a movie written by Lim Hwanggeun.

The other two, he never even heard of their names. Usually, a movie’s poster would only place the lead character’s names on the front, but there were names of actors he had never heard of before on the front page.

Maybe they did this because it might look lonely with just Kim Hyuk and Jung Beomseok on the front?

As for the poster, it came out pretty decently. If there was a superstar actor, then that actor’s face would take up the majority of the poster, but since the combination of actors was awkward, they took a pretty moody-looking photo.

A broken car window, rain, a totally drenched man, and faint blood on the ground.

The light turned on and the video screen scrolled down. He could hear a high-pitched noise from the screen room behind him.

Jungyeol leaned back against the chair.

An image appeared on the screen. The logos of the production company and the distribution company went past.

From how one of the three major distributors grabbed his hand, it seemed that they seemed to believe in Lim Hwanggeun’s name value and ticketing power.

However, this movie was a thriller, not a comedy that the director was strong in, and a crime thriller at that.

A man’s monologue started off the movie. It was Kim Hyuk’s voice. It was then followed by the back figure of a man walking forward.

The moment he saw it, he felt that it was a boring progression. It was only bearable thanks to Kim Hyuk’s good voice.

The movie seemed to be set in the early 2000s. He became sure of this after seeing the cars.

Kim Hyuk, a traveling salesman, went into a company while holding a briefcase.

He introduced a product with a submissive smile, but no one listened to him. There were a few scenes like that in succession.

After that, Kim Hyuk was shown losing everything after a scam.

The plot was everything on screen. There was nothing to think about nor were there any eye-catching visuals. The word ‘boring’ echoed in his mouth.

He could name five movies off the top of his head if he was asked to name domestic crime movies that progressed like this.

It was exactly on the level he was expecting. It was just five minutes, but he felt like he had finished watching the whole movie already.

Had it been any other director, he would’ve had some expectations left, but the one in charge of production was none other than Lim Hwanggeun; someone who couldn’t even replicate his own work and only became a popular director because he was born at the right time.

Jungyeol crossed his legs. He kept losing his strength in his eyes. He knew that dozing off at a premiere was rude, but wasn’t the production company in the bad here for holding a premiere for a movie like this?

He thought that the remaining hour and fifty minutes would be hell.

Just then, Kim Hyuk stabbed the person he was facing with the knife he was holding. Although he kept giving off the signs, Jungyeol did not expect something so extreme to happen so quickly.

The Kim Hyuk on the screen looked down at the person writhing to death. It was a rather raw portrayal.

Jungyeol frowned. This wasn’t a style of production he preferred. Expressing evil by continuously displaying cruelty was something he considered a poor level of production.

However, he did think that it was rather refreshing. Although it was not a production technique that could raise the entire level, it was a type of image that people who like the genre would be interested in.

It was a secretive cruelty that could only be experienced through a screen. Above all, now the story had power. It showed that the innocent traveling salesman Kim Hyuk at the beginning of the movie was just his way to survive in this society.

The weak character build-up was now more fleshed out. Kim Hyuk did a splendid job of displaying the expression of a murderer.

He went through his options and chose the most efficient and quickest method of killing. He was one of the most feared people in modern society - a sociopath.

Jungyeol uncrossed his legs. He straightened his back and waist. It seemed that he needed to focus a little more.

Having cut off the strand of morals, Kim Hyuk started looking for easier methods. In that process came another victim. It was a friend of Kim Hyuk.

-I can’t help it, so be understanding.

Kim Hyuk said indifferently in front of a corpse.

The director put a lot of effort into capturing the process of erasing the traces and taking care of the aftermath. He imbued into the audience the notion that Kim Hyuk’s murder was perfect and flawless.

The murderer appeared again wearing clean clothes. It seemed that he thought that murder was easy, but not so efficient.

Kim Hyuk started gathering a team.

Jungyeol thought as he looked at the people forming the team: How many of these people would survive in the end, if any?

Everyone in the theater probably thought the same thing.

In most crime thrillers, the meticulous plotting of the crime as well as the mistakes that happened during the operation were bound to lead the whole story.

However, in ‘Depths of Evil,’ crime was only a secondary device. Jungyeol could predict that there wouldn’t be any fancy and detailed crime plotting.

The only thing that produces tension would end up being Kim Hyuk’s eyes and hands; who would be dealt with when things go wrong?

A person nicknamed Gomchi appeared. From how he was named Gomchi even in the pamphlet, it seemed that he was going to be called Gomchi throughout the whole movie.

By comparing the faces on the pamphlet with the actors’ names, he found out that Han Maru was the actor who played Gomchi.

His first impression was that the actor looked pretty young. Wasn’t he too young to act in tandem with actors who are over thirty?

-Over there.

Just as he was thinking that this was a mistake in casting, his thoughts disappeared when he saw the two acting together.

Gomchi’s sense of weight in the plot was pretty decent, against his expectations. The young impression he gave off disappeared when his expression and tone started being more pronounced.

[1] Jungyeol can mean ‘passion.’