Chapter 16: GV
Busan Station had been crowded since morning.
Among the people dragging suitcases, carrying coffee, and hurrying toward the platforms, Geonwoo and Hyunsoo stood beneath the departure board.
Hyunsoo had been staring at his phone for several minutes.
Geonwoo asked,
"You're checking it again?"
"Yeah."
"You already said it was sold out."
"I know, but..."
Hyunsoo refreshed the page.
[Before the Light Reaches - 3rd Screening]
[GV after screening]
[SOLD OUT]
The moment he saw the words, the corners of his mouth lifted again.
"What if I'm dreaming?"
Geonwoo chuckled.
"Stop looking at it. You're going to wear out the screen."
Hyunsoo reluctantly lowered his phone.
"Hyung, isn't this crazy?"
"What is?"
"The first screening had so many empty seats. But today's sold out."
Instead of answering, Geonwoo looked toward the station exit.
Among the crowd, he spotted a small boy.
The boy held one strap of his school bag in one hand while holding his mother's hand with the other.
It was Lee Dogyeom.
Hyunsoo noticed him as well and immediately raised his hand.
"Dogyeom!"
Dogyeom looked up.
His face, which had been tense for a moment, brightened slightly.
"Director!"
Dogyeom quickly approached with his mother.
Geonwoo bowed first.
"Thank you for coming all this way."
Dogyeom's mother bowed as well.
"Not at all. We're the ones who should thank you for inviting us."
Hyunsoo lowered himself until he was almost squatting in front of Dogyeom.
"Our movie's Seoyoon has officially entered Busan."
Dogyeom smiled awkwardly.
"Hello."
"Did you eat on the train?"
"A little."
"A little isn't enough. Today's an important day. You need to eat properly."
Instead of answering, Dogyeom fiddled with the strap of his school bag.
Geonwoo noticed his hands.
He was obviously nervous.
Geonwoo deliberately spoke lightly.
"Did you get any sleep on the train?"
Dogyeom shook his head.
"No."
"Why?"
"Just..."
He couldn't finish.
Hyunsoo immediately held out his phone.
"Because of this, right?"
Dogyeom looked at the screen.
[SOLD OUT]
He stared at the words for a while.
"Is it really sold out?"
"Yep! Completely sold out."
Hyunsoo enlarged the screen.
"This assistant director checked more than ten times, so it's definitely true."
Dogyeom's mother also stared at the screen in surprise.
"So many people are coming."
Hyunsoo nodded proudly.
"The theater will be completely full today."
Dogyeom's face became even stiffer.
Geonwoo lightly smacked Hyunsoo's shoulder.
"Stop making him more nervous."
Hyunsoo immediately lowered his phone.
Geonwoo looked at Dogyeom.
"Dogyeom."
"Yes."
"You don't have to try too hard to do well today."
Dogyeom looked up.
"What?"
"You didn't come here to take a test. Today's just the day the audience gets to watch the movie we made together."
Dogyeom silently looked at him.
Geonwoo continued.
"If they ask you something during the GV and you don't know the answer, you can just say you don't know. You don't have to give a long answer either. Just tell them honestly what you felt while filming."
Dogyeom slowly nodded.
"Okay."
"And don't hold the microphone too close to your mouth."
Hyunsoo immediately jumped in.
"Right. If it's too close, you'll get popping sounds."
Dogyeom smiled slightly.
Only then did some of the tension leave his face.
The atmosphere in front of the theater was completely different from the first screening.
The line was long.
Audience members were already lined up along the wall, and there were several people wearing festival passes.
Some who looked like reporters carried camera bags. Others held festival pamphlets and quietly talked about movies.
"I heard this one's really good."
"Cha Myunghoon praised it. It has to be interesting, right?"
"I'm curious. I wonder how good it really is."
Soon, the audience began entering.
Hyunsoo, who had arrived before the screening started, looked around and muttered,
"There are really a lot of people."
Geonwoo also looked toward the entrance.
People kept filing inside.
The image of all the empty seats from the first screening was still vivid in his mind.
Today was different.
The audience just kept coming.
Then Geonwoo's gaze moved toward the back of the theater.
Moon Taeseok was there.
Their eyes met.
Moon Taeseok gave him a very small nod.
Geonwoo bowed his head in return.
Hyunsoo asked quietly,
"Hyung, Professor Moon Taeseok came?"
Geonwoo kept his eyes on the audience.
"Yeah."
Moon Taeseok remembered the early version of Before the Light Reaches.
The script Baek Geonwoo had shown him before graduation.
It hadn't been bad.
For a student film, it had actually been very well written.
The work had atmosphere, and the subject matter was good.
But that was all.
It lost strength after the middle, and the character Minjae was too easy to read.
Even the truth behind the incident was trapped within one person's guilt.
At the time, Moon Taeseok didn't believe it could become a truly good feature film.
But once the festival began, strange things reached his ears.
Several judges who had already watched the movie brought up Before the Light Reaches first.
"A remarkably polished debut feature."
"The tension kept me on edge, but the emotional line was what stayed with me."
"I honestly forgot I was supposed to be judging it. I was completely absorbed."
Moon Taeseok had listened with a smile.
But inside, he hadn't been convinced.
That script?
So today he had come to see it for himself.
"Let's see how entertaining you managed to make that script."
Soon the lights went out.
The first image appeared on the screen.
An old camcorder recording.
A shaky alley.
An empty house with a demolition notice posted outside.
From the beginning, it was different.
The script changed...?
Moon Taeseok couldn't take his eyes off the screen.
Seorin appeared.
A woman with a tired face who prepared food for her younger brother, folded moving documents, and placed them into her bag.
When Seoyoon kept talking to her, she answered briefly.
Then once, unable to hold herself back, she raised her voice.
Even the characters changed... The skeleton of the story is the same, but he turned it into a completely different story.
The ending credits rolled.
A few seconds later, applause erupted.
With the theater completely full, the sound was nothing like before.
Dogyeom looked at his mother in surprise, while she tightly held his hand.
Hyunsoo lowered his head and rubbed his eyes.
Taejun didn't joke.
Yura kept staring at the screen.
Moon Taeseok also applauded.
His expression was calm, but there was tension in his fingertips.
Soon the moderator stepped onto the stage.
"We'll now begin the audience conversation after the screening of Before the Light Reaches. Please welcome the director and cast with a big round of applause."
Applause filled the theater again.
Geonwoo, Han Yura, Kang Taejun, and Lee Dogyeom walked onto the stage.
The moment Dogyeom saw the audience, he froze.
Geonwoo gave him the smallest nod.
Dogyeom held the microphone with both hands.
The moderator introduced Geonwoo first.
"Director Baek Geonwoo, who directed the film."
Geonwoo bowed.
"Hello. I'm Baek Geonwoo, the director of Before the Light Reaches. Thank you for watching until the end."
Yura and Taejun introduced themselves one after another.
When Dogyeom's turn came, the applause grew a little louder.
His face flushed as he lifted the microphone.
"Hello. I'm Lee Dogyeom, and I played Seoyoon. Thank you for coming."
It was a short greeting.
But the audience applauded again.
The moderator smiled.
"Then let's take questions right away."
A man in the front row raised his hand.
"I'd like to ask about the script. I heard filming had already started when the script underwent major revisions. I'm curious about that process."
Geonwoo lifted the microphone.
"There were revisions. Quite a lot of them."
He could see Hyunsoo in the audience trying not to laugh.
The moderator asked,
"How extensive were they?"
Geonwoo glanced at Hyunsoo.
"Enough to make my assistant director angry."
Laughter spread through the theater.
The moderator spotted Hyunsoo.
"Is the assistant director here today?"
Hyunsoo raised his hand with an embarrassed expression.
When someone passed him a microphone, he awkwardly stood.
"Hello. I'm Assistant Director Jung Hyunsoo."
He looked at Geonwoo once.
"Honestly, when the director said he wanted to throw away what we'd already filmed and rewrite the script, I felt hopeless. We had to redo the schedule and convince the actors all over again."
Hyunsoo paused before smiling.
"But after I read the new script, I couldn't even get angry."
The theater became quiet.
Hyunsoo adjusted his microphone.
"Because the quality of that script was absolutely insane."
Laughter and applause broke out together.
The next question was about the funeral scene.
"The characters' gazes and movements during the funeral sequence felt very calculated. Was there a lot of adjustment on set?"
Yura raised her hand.
"May I answer?"
Geonwoo smiled and nodded.
"Of course."
Yura faced the audience.
"There was some adjustment on set, but most of the basic design had already been prepared. The director had extremely detailed storyboards. Camera positions, actor movements, eyelines, prop locations... everything had been organized."
She smiled faintly.
"As an actor, it was very comfortable. You knew exactly what the director wanted."
Taejun nodded.
"He was seriously a storyboard monster."
The audience burst into laughter.
Geonwoo adjusted his microphone awkwardly.
"We had very little money and very little time, so I thought we couldn't afford to wander around on set. I tried to prepare as much as possible beforehand."
Moon Taeseok narrowed his eyes as he listened.
It wasn't only the script.
The directing had been prepared too.
The next question went to the actors.
"Independent film shoots aren't easy. Was there a moment on set that stayed with you the most?"
Taejun immediately raised his microphone.
"The director's cringey speeches."
Geonwoo turned toward him at once.
"You're really bringing that up here?"
"We have to. It's a GV."
Yura lifted her microphone too.
"I agree."
She smiled.
"We were always exhausted during filming. And whenever that happened, the director would suddenly gather everyone around and say something extremely embarrassing."
The theater laughed.
"But strangely, it gave us energy. I think everyone on set would agree."
Geonwoo lowered his head slightly.
"This is embarrassing."
The laughter grew louder.
Taejun added,
"We called it 'the Director's Curse' on set. We'd be completely exhausted and desperate to go home, but once he gave one of those speeches, we'd somehow regain our energy and focus on filming again. It was honestly strange."
Laughter and applause filled the theater.
Moon Taeseok watched Geonwoo from among the smiling audience.
The actors trusted him.
This time, someone in the middle row asked Dogyeom a question.
"I'd like to ask Actor Lee Dogyeom. I loved the scene where Seoyoon asks, 'Does our home disappear too?' How did you prepare for it?"
Dogyeom froze.
His hand tightened around the microphone.
Geonwoo didn't answer for him.
Dogyeom swallowed and slowly opened his mouth.
"At first, I thought I had to act sad."
A few people laughed softly.
That gave Dogyeom a little courage.
He continued.
"But the director told me Seoyoon isn't a child who already understands sadness. He said Seoyoon is just genuinely curious."
He glanced at Geonwoo.
"And he told me not to say the line right away. He said I should wait until my sister was ready to listen. So I looked at Yura noona and tried to ask her like she was really my sister."
Dogyeom's mother, sitting at one side of the audience, took out a handkerchief.
A moment later, Cha Myunghoon raised his hand.
A small murmur passed through the theater.
When the moderator gave him the microphone, Cha Myunghoon spoke without standing.
"I'm Cha Myunghoon. I enjoyed the film."
That single sentence made Hyunsoo's shoulders stiffen.
Cha Myunghoon looked at Geonwoo.
"This film follows the structure of uncovering the truth behind a crime, but by the end, what stays with you more than the pleasure of exposing the culprit is what the people left behind chose to ignore."
Geonwoo held his microphone.
Cha Myunghoon continued.
"You could have pushed the genre elements much harder. Why did you choose this kind of ending?"
The theater became silent.
Geonwoo raised the microphone.
"While rewriting the script, I thought about what true fear really is."
The audience listened.
"Is it scarier when bad people do bad things? Or is it scarier to discover that the people who always smiled at you, the people you trusted, were lying to you?"
Silence.
"If the story had simply been, 'Minjae was bad, and there was a culprit,' then yes, I could have pushed the genre more strongly."
Geonwoo's voice remained calm.
"But that fear would have been one-dimensional. I wanted to touch something more complicated. At the same time, I wanted to ask the audience what trust between people really means."
Cha Myunghoon watched him for a moment.
Then he gave a short nod.
Several more questions followed.
Why Seorin did not cry in the final scene.
Why Minjae was never portrayed as completely evil.
Geonwoo answered each one.
He didn't overexplain.
But he didn't avoid anything either.
Moon Taeseok listened while gripping the armrest.
Why did that bastard grow so much in such a short time after graduating?
The old Baek Geonwoo would never have answered like that.
Even when explaining the strengths of his own movie, he would have checked his teacher's expression.
If a question became even slightly sharp, anxiety would show on his face.
Now, he was different.
Near the end, Moon Taeseok raised his hand.
The moderator hesitated.
"Director Moon Taeseok."
The audience stirred.
Moon Taeseok smiled gently and took the microphone.
"I enjoyed it. Director Baek Geonwoo was also my student, so this feels personally meaningful."
Geonwoo tightened his grip on his microphone.
For an instant, memories of college surfaced.
Whenever Moon Taeseok, one of Korea's great directors, asked a question, every student became nervous.
Geonwoo had been no different.
But now he was a completely different person.
There's no reason for me to be nervous about his question.
Moon Taeseok continued.
"I remember Director Baek working on this story even before graduation. It's nice to finally see it completed like this."
Moon Taeseok was smiling.
It was the exact same smile he used when evaluating students' scripts in class.
Geonwoo's fingers tightened around the microphone.
Moon Taeseok slowly continued.
"However, there is something I'm curious about."
The laughter in the theater gradually died away.
