“Riiight!!! We’ll be holding the entrance exam heeere!!! If you fail to pass!!! Get off the mountain!!! And you too, you bastard next to her!!!”

Han Yohan had absolutely nothing to do with the title of Ja Sokhwan Kid, so why?

Startled, I turned to look at Han Yohan beside me.

Han Yohan, who had been listening to the two of them with his fingers calmly interlocked, didn’t appear shaken.

“Senior, what do we do?”

“It’s alright, Hubae-nim. If fate connects us to it, this project will become ours...”

As always, Han Yohan spoke calmly.

“And if not, then we’ll simply miss out on it.”

Bang!!!

That was when it happened.

“Cut the bullshit!!!”

The conference room door burst open.

It was the CEO of Management Yeonggwang, carrying coffee.

His furious face was bright red.

“There’s no way I’m giving up! We’ve already sent out all the press releases and worked our asses off promoting this thing, and now you’re talking about getting off the mountain? Get off the mountaaain? There’s no law like this in the world! Good lord, I’ve never seen this kind of power trip before. Just because you two are doing well these days, you think there’s nothing left in the world to fear?”

Slamming the coffee carriers he held in both hands onto the table, he pointed at Galdaeguk and Ma Eungyo and shouted.

“I know this industry swaps actors out the day before a script reading all the time, but this ain’t it. Dropping out? You’re kicking them off the project? Look at this poor kid. She’s so shocked she can’t even talk. Look at the tears in her eyes.”

Maybe Han Yohan was secretly soft-hearted....

“Our little Baby Melon Bread is about to burst into tears!”

Huh?

The one with tears in her eyes was me?

“Don’t cry now. Ahh, you poor thing.”

CEO Yeonggwang grabbed my cheeks with hands the size of pot lids and squished them repeatedly.

It looked exactly like he was comforting a crying child.

‘As expected of a veteran who’s survived decades in the entertainment industry.’

The quality of the performance was on a different level.

“I oughta just call Director Ja right now and tell him these Ja Sokhwan Kids or Ja Sokhwan Cheeses or whatever they are have been bullying a young actor and just—!”

As he pulled out his phone from his coat, two hands hurriedly landed on top of his.

“...”

“...”

Judging by how frantically they were shaking their heads, CEO Yeonggwang’s threat had worked.

“Master...”

“Nooo...!”

“Told us to take good care of them...”

“If he finds out we disobeyed...!”

I didn’t know Galdaeguk’s voice could become this small.

CEO Yeonggwang looked at me.

His eyes spoke.

‘Want me to wreck this whole test thing or not?’

‘...Let’s just do it.’

At this point, threats about replacing me or kicking me off the project no longer worked.

‘Though earlier I was honestly a little scared the two lunatics might actually do it.’

A genius on Ja Sokhwan’s level wasn’t someone you could easily come across.

Delivery: S

That was writer Ma Eungyo’s stat.

<Move the Heart> S

And this was Director Galdaeguk’s skill.

Ma Eungyo, whose writing ability rivaled Writer Hwang’s.

Galdaeguk, who ranked even higher than Director So Yesol.

Before stepping onto set, I wanted to clash with these two and analyze the work together.

‘The script is exactly the same.’

Exactly the same as the one I had seen before.

Completely identical to the 〈Code Name: Time Seven〉 that Do Gyeoul had filmed.

Therefore, what these two were demanding from me now was an entirely new scene.

‘Because I, Han Yeoreum, became the protagonist.’

My heart burned with greed for Im Ria, a greed Do Gyeoul had never been able to confront.

‘This is my project.’

What you cannot see.

What only I can see.

As I savored that fact, a thrill unlike anything I had ever felt before ran through me.

What kind of scene could truly reveal the foundation of Im Ria?

What hidden scene existed beneath the surface?

* * *

‘Can she do it?’

Ma Eungyo watched Han Yeoreum as she read through the storyboard from the beginning.

‘To figure that out, she’ll have to understand the character all the way down to the bottom.’

Ma Eungyo specialized in romance.

Love between men and women.

Heartbreaking emotions.

Popular, emotionally engaging themes.

There was no one better at handling them.

Which ultimately meant love.

Because every romance story stretched toward that emotion as its final destination, the genre could easily become exhausting and emotionally draining.

‘Romance pulls people in far more strongly than other genres.’

And although he didn’t quite understand it himself, both audiences and critics always said the same thing.

Ma Eungyo’s works were exceptionally immersive.

Yet everyone willingly wanted to enter Ma Eungyo’s world.

Even after the curtain fell and the story ended, they didn’t want to leave that state of immersion.

To borrow the words of critic Sunwoo Seonuk:

Sunwoo Seonuk

The meticulously planted foreshadowing woven into every joint of the narrative. The dignity of romance reveals itself only when those threads begin turning in harmony with the emotions of the characters.

Ma Eungyo was perhaps the only writer worthy of attaching the word “dignity” to the romance genre.

Romance was a genre that thoroughly explored the very bottom of human emotion.

Only when the characters breathed and lived within the story with absolute precision could viewers become immersed.

“People don’t create situations.”

That was what Ja Sokhwan had taught him.

“Situations create people.”

Then the world surrounding those characters had to be built in meticulous detail.

If you simply gathered settings you liked and built a story from them, cracks would inevitably appear somewhere.

And the moment those flaws became visible, viewers would draw a line between the world on the screen and the world they lived in.

The unconscious belief that these people might truly be living somewhere.

That was the essence of Ma Eungyo’s writing.

What drove a story forward was the world where the protagonist lived and the era that shaped them. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The events that could not help but happen.

The characters who could not help but become who they were.

Yet the protagonist must never simply submit to those circumstances.

How will they change things?

How much will they change?

What direction will they move toward?

‘If you understand why it had to be that way.’

When circumstances and people intertwined, a new era emerged.

In this story, viewers would follow the narrative through the eyes of Taeo, played by Han Yohan.

Taeo could make people understand him without saying much.

Because from beginning to end, he expressed a single unwavering purpose through his actions.

‘Because staking your life means exactly that.’

In that regard, casting Han Yohan had been a stroke of genius.

An actor capable of expressing both good and evil, while performing action sequences no one else could imitate.

The advantage of placing him on stage as Taeo.

It was that he didn’t need to awkwardly explain his emotions.

‘As straightforward as his face.’

Even when the camera captured him from so far away that viewers couldn’t make out his features, they would still understand Taeo’s heart.

‘Because he’s staking his life on it.’

There was an overwhelming emotion contained within the attitude of someone willing to sacrifice even an arm or a leg without hesitation.

Desperation.

Yearning.

Desolation.

If Taeo embodied all of those things, Ria was different.

‘But because of that.’

She possessed a single impact powerful enough to take your breath away.

To be precise, the one who overturned the entire board was Im Ria.

Unlike Taeo, who could be understood even from a distance, Ria had to be expressed through close-ups.

Handled poorly, it could become excessive.

Pitiful.

Overdone.

Yet this was precisely the form of expression Ria required.

‘If she truly became Ria from the roots up.’

Han Yeoreum’s face overlapped with the countless sketches of a woman covering the storyboard.

‘She’ll find it.’

Ma Eungyo watched Han Yeoreum, who was concentrating with near-maniacal focus.

* * *

As I scanned the chaotic spread of storyboards, I recalled what Galdaeguk and Ma Eungyo had said.

‘A medium that should not exist.’

The clue had to be there.

What kind of scene had Ma Eungyo prepared?

Countless thoughts tangled inside my head.

“In my opinion, Yeoreum, that’s the thing you’re weakest at.”

I remembered Myeong Jeha telling me that talking about love was my greatest weakness.

“Immersion means existing as the protagonist.”

I also remembered Hong Suryeon saying that to become the protagonist of a romance, I had to exist solely as someone who loved the other person.

If I could understand the world created by Ma Eungyo, who was watching me with interest, and Galdaeguk, whose legs were trembling nonstop, then I would finally see it.

‘Then how?’

Let’s return to the beginning.

I had to start from the perspective of the person who made the question.

The answer was always hidden within the intentions of the examiner.

How had Ma Eungyo created a stage that treated digital devices with suspicion in a modern-day spy story?

That was where his genius revealed itself.

‘An Interpol intelligence agent should be closer to electronic devices than anyone else.’

Wiretapping should be second nature.

Accessing people’s private information should be routine.

Before an operation, they would identify targets through CCTV.

Hack phones.

Gather information.

Yet there was one flaw.

‘An Interpol intelligence officer capable of knowing classified information from the other side of the planet is strangely indifferent to her own past?’

It made no sense.

‘But that’s the very foundation of Im Ria.’

Foundation.

The center.

The basis.

In other words, the essence of a person.

Through that foundation, viewers had to understand actions that otherwise seemed incomprehensible.

Then what was Im Ria’s foundation?

She was intelligent.

Had an excellent memory.

Dreamed vaguely of one day building a warm family like her parents.

Enjoyed making light jokes.

And above all—

‘She’s deeply religious.’

At present, Ria had no memories of her childhood.

After ‘that incident’ during her youth, she developed amnesia.

Even though she had been adopted into a wealthy and loving family, there was no way she wouldn’t be curious about her past.

Curiosity about one’s identity was one of humanity’s most fundamental desires.

People built a sense of safety by confirming their origins.

‘And on top of that, she became an Interpol intelligence officer who gathers information as naturally as breathing, organizes it in her head, and understands everything around her...’

She was not the type of person who lacked intellectual curiosity or investigative instincts.

She was an elite.

Who am I?

There was no way she hadn’t asked herself that question countless times.

I opened the synopsis.

‘Solved a cybercrime case affecting the United States and rose through the Central Bureau line at an extraordinary speed.’

If she had risen through the Central Bureau line, then the cybercrime in question had been far beyond ordinary.

The sort of achievement capable of launching a young officer upward at incredible speed.

And Im Ria had led that investigation.

So why was she not curious about the hidden truth of her own life—the thing she should have wanted to know most?

‘Ma Eungyo chose faith as the means to bridge that gap.’

Then I had to consider how faith—the foundation of Im Ria—affected choices that would otherwise be difficult to explain.

I skimmed through the early part of the script.

Ria’s Father | Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34. (He smiles as he looks at Ria.) Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for sending us our Ria. Please do not lead this little lamb into suffering or temptation. Let her remain only in the happiness of today. Please allow the happiness of this child, who came to us like destiny beneath the shelter and love of her parents, to continue forever.

‘She must have vaguely guessed why she developed a firearm trauma.’

Mass shootings were no longer particularly shocking events.

The surface-level explanation in the script was probably that she assumed she had been involved in one of them and therefore avoided investigating it further.

Ria | (Her hands tremble slightly.) I’m an intelligence officer. I only needed the minimum firearms training! It’s not like I’m going into the field!

That scene alone could explain it.

But beyond that outward reason, there had to be a deeper foundation buried within Ria’s heart.

I had to find it.