Life, Once Again!

Chapter 901. Crank Up 2

The kal-guksu race that seemed to drag out thanks to Joongjin’s stubbornness and the owner’s shamelessness seemed like it was going to be ending soon. Maru looked at the two women receiving autographs from Joongjin. They were women who had been staring for quite a while. The women came over when the fourth round of kal-guksu came around. They tilted their heads before asking the director if he was Park Joongjin. Then, the lady who put down the food in front of them looked around before taking the bowl back into the kitchen. Joongjin told her to just put it down, but the lady just smiled awkwardly.

“Please take a photo with us.”

A woman who introduced herself as a movie fanatic hooked arms with Joongjin. Her friend, wearing a white t-shirt, also stood next to him. Maru accepted the phone from them before the one in purple told him to. Behind the two women creating Vs with their hands, he saw a man peeking out from the kitchen. He seemed to be the owner or the cook of this place.

“Director, when are you shooting your next movie? I’m waiting.”

“I’ll start shooting soon.”

“Really? Can you tell me who you’re shooting with? An internet café I frequently visit said that you’re doing it with Kang Giwoo.”

“I think I’ll do one with Mr. Giwoo later. For this piece, I’m going to do it with this fellow here.”

Many pairs of eyes suddenly looked at him. Maru put on an awkward smile. He thought that the director would gloss it over, not introduce him directly. The ladies in purple and white t-shirts quickly scanned him. They seemed to be discerning if he was a famous actor, a new one, or just a joke.

“Chatterbox!”

The one in white clapped in realization and shouted. The one in purple asked her to elaborate.

“You know, that entertainment show. That corny guy.”

Corny. That word went straight past his eardrums and shook his very brain. He wanted to leave the director here and leave this place immediately. Back when he was recording the show, he had the sense of duty to get attention on himself and the desperation to not miss that opportunity, so he threw his whole body into the show. He felt proud at the end of the shoot, nay, even when he reached home and reported it proudly to Gaeul. That sense of satisfaction dissolved like cotton candy in water on the day the episode aired. It was a new method of torture to watch himself singing surrounded by loud music and large subtitles. Gaeul played back the clip whenever she was bored. Maru wanted God to have given him the ability to delete clips instead of the ability to read other people’s minds.

Even the purple t-shirt woman recognized him. Inside his head, recognition and face – these two words clashed violently. Sometimes, he missed his nearly fifty-year-old self.

“I’m sorry, customer. There seems to have been a mistake with the order.”

The man who was watching from the kitchen came around. The man’s expression had been changing ever since he had seen Joongjin give out autographs. He was originally planning to drag this fight out, but when it looked like the director was a famous person, he seemed to have admitted his loss. Maru thought that things would go better now.

“The mistake was with the kal-guksu, not the order. I think you’re mistaken.”

Maru lowered his head and scratched his eyebrows. Did the director not like dramatic stuff like coming to a harmonious ending at the very end? It seemed that even the owner seemed flustered as he was originally intending to lower himself. He probably expected that there would be a harmonious ending with both sides admitting that there had been a mistake.

“Since you’re here, please take our order. That person over there took away our kal-guksu. It seems like there was a mistake there.”

“Uhm, mister, it’s not like that. The thing is….”

“I know it’s not like that, so bring us the kal-guksu.”

The kal-guksu race, which he thought was over, had begun again. Maru pulled his chair out slightly and looked around inside the restaurant. The customers in this wide space had all put down their spoons and were looking towards them. They seemed like they weren’t going to miss this fight. Watching fire burning from across the river was the most fun thing after all. He could see what the owner was thinking without having to bother peeking into his heart.

“You’re the one who came out on Chatterbox, aren’t you?”

“You’re Bigfoot from Doctors.”

More and more people started recognizing him. There were even people who looked him up and showed him to other people who didn’t know him. People started gathering. The owner was glaring at him. Why are you famous too? – his eyes seemed to say.

“Uhm, sir, it looks like I’ve made a mistake due to being busy.”

The way he called Joongjin turned from mister to Sir. The owner spoke in a begging tone, saying that he would bring proper kal-guksu.

“So ours wasn’t even proper kal-guksu, huh.”

“He’s discriminating.”

The people who were docile when apart no longer held back when they gathered. The owner, who had received heavy bashing, waved his hands around in the air while explaining circumstances no one here wanted to even know about before saying that he would make them again. The lady who received the order at first repeatedly apologized while bowing.

“He didn’t do that with bad intentions.”

“I’m fine as long as I can eat good kal-guksu.”

The lady ran off to the kitchen as soon as the director said those words. The kal-guksu incident had died down, but there was a different problem now. It was the people who had gathered around. Maru was smiling back at everyone while saying ‘yes, yes’ like a politician during an election when he heard a snippet of a song that made his entire body flinch.

“Can you do this once?”

It was a girl who looked like she was in high school. She held her phone out, and on the screen was his own face, with the big subtitles that said ‘I’m the crazy guy around here.’

“This?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“Yes!”

He couldn’t dare to teach this little girl that people could spit on smiling faces if they were cornered to a wall. The eyes of a robber demanding money would be less scary than this. This student, who was just playing back a video, was asking him to do what was in the video without a shred of malice, however, with the sole purpose of watching something interesting, she became too strong of an opponent. Maru rolled his eyes around. When he did, he saw another student who had the same video playing back on her phone. Was this a new endemic? An endemic where people had to play videos on their phones? One person after another started playing back the video. Maru thought that smartphones had to be a gift from the devil.

“Mr. Maru. You did something like this before? I was just doing the interview back then, so I didn’t know the atmosphere was like this.”

The director, who Maru thought was an ally, was now kindly explaining the situation to the people around: you can look up ‘Han Maru princess song.’ Maru recalled a famous line from a comedian: laughs bring people together. You were right, goddammit.

“Our actor Han over here does not know shame. But why aren’t you doing it? Oh, it must be because there is no applause.”

“Uhm, director.”

Maru tried calling out in a soft voice, but it was to no avail. The applause spread around in an instant. Just moments ago, he could have finished it off with a few words while smiling, but now, it looked like he had to go up on the table and take his top off or something.

“Please watch the movie when it comes out later.”

Maru took off his shoes and climbed up onto his chair. The people around him pointed their phones at him.

“He won’t be able to do this if he becomes more famous,” Joongjin said.

Funnily enough, it sounded persuasive.

“Please don’t spread it on the internet and just keep it to yourselves. I can already feel my lifespan decreasing whenever I watch Chatterbox. If this goes around, I might end up crying.”

He started enjoying it after all these camera lenses were pointed at him. He would regret it dearly afterwards, but for now, he felt rather joyous. Perhaps he had an innate talent to show off if he was given the stage for it. He pushed aside the forty-five-year-old man smiling calmly. This was time to sing ludicrously cutely. He spoke while leaving the shame to the depths of the heart of his future self.

“You know.”

* * *

“This is a blunder. I never knew you had such a side to you. Should I do away with all the violence and go with a cute little high school boy story for the movie instead? A high school boy aspiring to become an idol.”

Maru skipped past the speed bump right in front of him without slowing down. The car jerked once. Joongjin grabbed the handle on top of the window and became silent.

“Or how about playing a high school girl who has her body switched with a boy’s?”

The silence broke in just 10 minutes. Even if Jung Haejoo didn’t exist, the relationship between president Lee Junmin and the director must have ended badly. The love fight between two men that Ahn Joohyun told him about was probably just one of the reasons. The director’s teasing skills were at the very top out of all the people in Maru’s life. His title of oddball probably didn’t come from the way he worked.

“Director.”

“Yes?”

“You see that wall over there, right? Don’t you think we can directly go to heaven without pain if I crash into it at 160 kilometers an hour? A liberal paradise where no smartphones exist.”

“You have a great talent for making jokes sound real.”

“Should I experiment with it? I do have something I can count on.”

Even if he crashed and died, he would likely just start over from his first year of high school. If he goes back in time, he would decide not to go to Chatterbox, ever. The director, who was laughing to the point of crying, said that he would stop and let go of the handle.

“It’s been a long time since I had a laugh like that. Thinking about how I’ll be working with you makes me overjoyed already. When I talked to you six years ago at the restaurant, you were fun because you were rather old-fashioned, but I was convinced that you weren’t the type to be funny. I never knew you could make people laugh so much.”

“If you keep talking about it, I’ll mess up my acting.”

“I’m not worried about that part at all. I know that you would never do your work carelessly. You can bet on it. Oh, by the way, even president Lee Junmin doesn’t make bets with me.”

“Then it looks like I shouldn’t either.”

“I don’t usually take bets that I’ll lose.”

The GPS navigation system announced their arrival. They were in a mountainside village in Jinju, South Gyeongsang province. Gu-op-myeon. It was a place he had never heard of before.

“It’s about time.”

“What are we doing here?”

“We’ve emptied our minds in Suncheon Bay, so it’s time to fill it up again. This is the place you must watch. This is where the movie started after all.”

Joongjin got out of the car. Maru followed the man holding a light baton in front of him and parked his car in the parking lot. A long line of cars filled the parking lot. Even though this place was no special tourist attraction, there were quite a lot of people.

As soon as he left the parking lot, he heard dogs barking in the distance. It wasn’t one. The sounds were loud, sharp, thick, and ferocious. The growling got louder as though they were competing. Maru saw a gagged dog being dragged somewhere. He realized the moment he saw it. That dog wasn’t raised to be petted by people.

“Shall we go?”

Joongjin took the lead. It was a steep slope. Behind the wall that looked like it was going to cave in at any moment, there was a house that was more like a shack. This was a neighborhood without many people living in it. Men holding light batons started joining one by one. They walked across the neighborhood in a single line as though it was a military march. The procession stopped in front of a wide clearing that had been shaved down from the mountain. The sounds of barking dogs could be heard like thunder. The gagged dog he saw before was taken right next to him. Someone said that Gwang-chun seemed to be in a good condition.

“Have some rice wine, people.”

A woman with a toilet roll hanging off her neck was walking around with bowls and rice wine. Behind her was a metal net that had been installed as a round fence. It was too narrow to call it a cage. It was just enough to fit two fierce dogs in.

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