Chapter 77….
A Friend in a Dream (2)
“Phew. Glad we finished before it got dark.”
“Right!”
“You can head out now! Thanks for your cooperation!”
Gam-dong took off his headset, stood up from his chair, and stretched. Then he closed his eyes and slowly rubbed the corners of his eyes as if giving them a massage. His eyes were tired from staring at the monitor all day.
“Glad it finished quickly, Director.”
“Yeah.”
Putting aside whether it was fortunate, he wanted to review the edited footage as soon as possible. It had exceeded expectations. What Su-han showed in the main shoot was more than what Gam-dong had imagined while writing the script. Gam-dong walked over to Su-han, who was removing his makeup, and rubbed his shoulder.
“Oh my, Actor Woo. Good work.”
“Oh my, Director. It was an honor.”
As Gam-dong massaged him, Su-han made a joke and Gam-dong continued with a smile.
“But do you actually have dreams like that? Honestly, while writing the script I tried lucid dreaming, but it didn’t work well. I couldn’t tell if I was asleep or just imagining, so it was more tiring.”
“One of the side effects might be that. They say it’s not good to do it for too long.”
“But how did you even learn it while living like a bum?”
Su-han said it was ironically one of the methods he’d tried when he dreamt of escaping. He hadn’t recognized it as lucid dreaming at first. He’d simply struggled to escape reality, to be free from nightmares while sleeping, and discovered it that way.
Hearing that, Gam-dong nodded. Lucid dreams. At first Su-han hadn’t known it by name. He’d just found it in the desperate attempt to escape. Because of that memory, when Gam-dong read the script he’d thought, “This can be done,” and he wanted to try it.
“Well, Actor Woo, you did have a tough time, after all.”
When a staff member who was removing makeup spoke, Gam-dong gave an awkward smile—he couldn’t exactly explain it as being because he’d started seeing ghosts.
“Heh heh heh, right. It’s actually kind of fun when you get into it. You can even imagine a world where only beggars exist!”
“Huh?”
Su-han’s odd remark made the nearby staff burst out laughing.
“Think about it. You’re sitting in the street, not getting any money, people avoid you and make it awkward—wouldn’t you get angry? So I made a dream world where only beggars exist, equally.”
“You could’ve just imagined being rich.”
“You only come up with the idea of rich if you’ve experienced being a beggar. Human imagination is limited—if you imagine a rich person it feels kind of unreal, you know?”
“Hmm, I think I get it. Like that question: ‘If I gave you a billion won, what would you do?’”
“Right… I tried imagining having that money and thought about what I’d spend it on, but surprisingly I didn’t really know where to spend it. Maybe buy a building, at most?”
“Puhahaha! Exactly!”
Laughter bloomed before they knew it. Su-han, sitting among them, led the conversation on.
“So! So when I made everyone beggars…”
“It got fairer?”
“No. It got more miserable.”
Everyone looked puzzled at Su-han’s comment. They couldn’t understand how making everyone beggars could make things worse.
“Why?”
When someone asked, Su-han lifted one corner of his mouth and answered.
“Money doesn’t circulate.”
“……Oh.”
“Pfft!”
“Look—if in real life you barely make money, and you make everyone beggars, no one gives alms anymore!”
“Puhahahaha!”
Gam-dong couldn’t help but laugh genuinely. It sounded like something Su-han would say. Amid the laughter, Su-han continued.
“So when everyone was rich, huh? I tried making a dream where people gave me alms in my sleep… people got lazy. But even if you ignore that, when I woke up I got hit by reality so hard…”
“Why did you get hit by reality?”
“In the dream I imagined that begging would work well, so wouldn’t that be great?”
Everyone burst out laughing again. But Gam-dong saw a lack within Su-han—the sort of lack you notice when you live with someone. It was the deficiency of someone who hadn’t lived like others. Only after he’d been freed from seeing ghosts could he look around.
“Let’s all go eat samgyeopsal tonight!”
“Oooo!”
At Gam-dong’s declaration everyone cheered. Su-han looked at him with bright eyes and asked,
“Shall I call Mansoo?”
“Stop milking that guy, will you? We still have funds from that ritual gathering left.”
“Why! Can’t he just come? My mom said next time he comes, find out about my brother’s luck for college!”
“I want fortune luck!”
As everyone chimed in, Su-han blurted out,
“All right! Not today though—next time I’ll call him for a fortune-telling on a business trip!”
“Waaaah!”
At Su-han’s bold declaration, Gam-dong already felt sorry for Park Mansoo.
Park Mansoo, his eyes hollow, looked over at Jo Gam-dong standing to one side and spoke brusquely.
“What’s with that pitying look? You pity me?”
“Well… you looked like my imagination of you.”
Mansoo sighed at Gam-dong’s words.
“Damn it, I want out of this damn beggar abuse.”
“Think of it as original sin.”
“Ugh. Next time, stop me.”
Mansoo’s words were met with Gam-dong sitting down in the chair in front of him that the crew had recently vacated.
“Have some iced Americano.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. When you get a fortune read, you have to give something, so consider this a fee.”
“…….”
“Well, do you feel any great luck?”
Mansoo didn’t answer Gam-dong’s question; instead he spat out a curse.
“Damn it! Fall flat on your face!”
“You jerk!”
Kraaack!
“Ugh!”
But the shaman’s curse was undone by the former beggar who saw ghosts delivering one sharp slap.
“I told you this is a running guarantee!”
“Hey! You didn’t have to trick me like that!”
“Old man, is that how you teach kids? Ordering shamans to spit curses like that?”
“Why are you talking like that!”
Mansoo felt wronged. Being dragged to the set and offering free readings for a thousand won per reading was killing him.
“Anyway, do it properly. Okay? Maybe write a talisman too and bring it.”
“A talisman too…”
“You don’t want that?”
“It’s not that I don’t want it. So, about this time…”
“Ah! I almost forgot, I have to do makeup?”
Before Mansoo could finish his sentence he watched Su-han disappear and made a glum face.
“I’ll contact you quietly during the break after filming, okay?”
“You’re the only one, as expected.”
Had Mansoo already forgotten the curses he’d just spat? Tears formed in his eyes as he admired Gam-dong. Gam-dong nodded as if to say he understood that feeling and said,
“So, will it be a big hit?”
With a slight smile, Gam-dong posed the question, and Mansoo exhaled and began to scatter rice grains on the table.
“Let’s see…”
At that moment Gam-dong had a hunch he, not Su-han, was the one with the influence.
“Good job.”
I patted Mansoo’s shoulder. How kind. Loving one’s enemies, as they say.
“Phew… what good does that do?”
“This is all for Hongbo. Who are all these people here?”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t they movie people? They always do a ritual at the start. You can tell, can’t you?”
Mansoo’s eyes widened slightly. Tsk. Short-sighted as usual.
“They’re walking billboards. You gave a proper reading, right?”
“Of course I did.”
[Yeah. He grumbles, but he does what needs to be done.]
“Then that’s a relief.”
It seemed the spirit-protecting elder had guaranteed it, so he must have given a good reading.
“Set a date.”
“A date? What date?”
“That time we go see that evil spirit.”
“Oh… that?”
[Geez. It’d be better not to go near it at all.]
“Old man, are you scared? Scared?”
[How dare you think I’m afraid!]
“Whoah! How dare you!”
The elder snapped right back. Being a spirit-protector and all, Mansoo bristled in turn. Simple folk in times like this, both of them were easily riled. Maybe being around each other so long made them similar.
“Oh, right! I forgot to ask— I saw something strange.”
“What is it?”
“When we saw that evil spirit, you said a dark aura was rolling around, right?”
“That’s right.”
Mansoo looked at me with a curious expression; the spirit-protecting elder looked curious too.
“Could that… be contagious?”
“What?”
“The senior who came last time came back with a darkish energy on them. Of course I shook it off, but every time they came to the set it stuck again. Why’s that?”
“…….”
[Ha… give me a break.]
What was this? Why were they both serious and not answering? Was it highly contagious?
“The evil spirit’s influence seems to carry a lot.”
[If that’s the case, it’s more influential than we thought. This won’t be something we can just watch.]
“I wasn’t planning to just watch. Why are you so serious?”
Seeing both of them with faces like someone who’d bitten into feces made him more anxious. The spirit-protecting elder spoke.
[It affects not only those nearby but even those who are apart. If that’s the case…]
“It affects people even when they’re apart? Hmm, now that you mention it, I think I did notice something. People looked a bit off, and they seemed drained.”
At the elder’s words I described what I’d seen. As he said, they’d been influenced, so they looked that way.
“It’s not just that they look different. Do you know what’s scary about an epidemic?”
“That it spreads?”
“That it spreads and is harmful. If it spreads but people are fine then it’s not a disease, right?”
“Oh… so it means they get worse? Like health declines?”
Mansoo, who had been explaining after the elder, answered with a grave face.
“Health is secondary. Think of it as amplifying emotions.”
“Emotions?”
“Like making someone manic and more irritable or, on the contrary, plunging them into deep depression.”
“Hmm.”
A sigh escaped. Mental illness. That was my area of expertise. Where I’d been locked up as a child? A psychiatric hospital. I didn’t only see human patients there. I saw ghosts with mental illness. If ghosts had gone insane, there was no way the child version of me had been sane.
“If it gets bad, it pushes you over the edge.”
“If it pushes you over the edge…”
I could guess where this was heading, but I didn’t want to hear it, yet I felt I had to.
“If someone gets angrier, they’ll hurt others; if depression deepens, they’ll hurt themselves. Worse…”
“They die?”
“If it’s severe.”
As expected. They said severe cases could lead there. The senior’s expression earlier had looked pretty worrisome. If it got worse, who knew what might happen. When a person is driven to the extreme, the easiest choice to come to mind is death—I know that better than anyone.
“But when I brushed them off, it disappeared… am I some kind of human vaccine? If I keep brushing them off often, will it be okay?”
[You’ve received a blessing, so of course you can shake it off. You can even touch ghosts now.]
“Well…”
It was true I could push ghosts away by my will. Lately I’d become bolder because of it.
“So is it okay then?”
I asked cautiously, imagining the answer would be reassuring.
