Chapter 3: For the Final Draft
"I'll need some time if I'm going to rewrite the script."
Geonwoo calmly organized the ideas in his head.
If he completely revised and rewrote the script, he would need at least a week.
But once the script changed, he would also have to rebuild the filming plan and rethink how he wanted to direct it.
"I'll probably need another week for that..."
Which meant delaying filming for two weeks.
Geonwoo quickly picked up his phone.
He immediately called his assistant director, Hyeonsu.
"Hyung? Did you get home okay?"
"Yeah, I got home."
"Are you feeling all right? That was seriously dangerous earlier. I still get chills thinking about that light."
"Same here."
Geonwoo remembered the moment he'd lost his sight in his previous life.
Realizing that he'd avoided that accident made him sigh in relief again.
"Hyeonsu."
"Yeah?"
"Let's delay filming by two weeks."
"What? Two whole weeks? Why? Are you sick?"
Hyeonsu sounded genuinely shocked.
Geonwoo had expected that reaction.
Hyeonsu was the assistant director.
His position required him to think about schedules and people before anything else.
Geonwoo knew exactly how burdensome it was to suddenly suggest a two-week delay.
"It's nothing like that."
"Then why? Hyung, delaying by two weeks isn't simple. We have to reschedule the actors, check the university equipment room again, and rebook the locations."
"I know."
Geonwoo took a breath.
"That's why I'm asking you. Let's delay by two weeks. I'm going to rewrite the script."
Hyeonsu went silent.
"How much are you planning to change?"
"Probably a lot."
"Do you really need to revise a script you've already finished?"
"I think I can write a much more interesting story now. Give me one week and I'll show you a script that's genuinely much better. Then we'll spend another week rebuilding the filming plan and directing approach."
"You're saying you'll finish the whole script in a week... You're going to stay up all night writing again, aren't you?"
Hyeonsu let out a half-amused sigh.
Geonwoo laughed quietly too.
"I want to make this film properly. Not just for me, but so it becomes something useful for your filmography as the assistant director, and for the juniors acting in it, and for all the other staff too."
"Does that mean we might have to throw away what we've already filmed?"
"Yeah. I'm planning to rewrite it from the beginning."
"Haa... this won't be easy."
Hyeonsu paused.
"Hyung, you said you wanted to submit this movie to the Busan International Film Festival, right?"
"Yeah."
"All right."
Then Hyeonsu's voice became firm.
"Let's do it properly and submit it. I'll handle the actors, staff, and university equipment schedule. You focus only on rewriting the script."
"Thanks."
"Now I'm curious. I want to see how good this new script of yours is going to be."
Geonwoo heard Hyeonsu chuckle.
"Thanks for trusting me."
After ending the call, Geonwoo created a new folder on his laptop.
[Before the Light Reaches Revision v5]
It was a folder that had never existed in his previous life.
"This time, I'll finish this movie no matter what."
Geonwoo immediately opened his word processor.
The cursor blinked.
"The younger brother can't just randomly witness the incident."
Tap, tap, tap.
A new sentence appeared.
The younger brother was walking through the alley with an old camcorder.
He wanted to record the neighborhood before it disappeared.
He was simply a child who wanted to preserve a place that would soon be gone.
But his camera captured something the adults wanted to hide.
Geonwoo smiled faintly.
"Yeah. This makes his death much more unfair."
He didn't stop typing.
The old camcorder their late father once used.
The neighborhood awaiting redevelopment.
The alleyways he wanted to preserve one last time.
Geonwoo rewrote the younger brother's first scene.
The faded sign of an old grocery store.
A cracked wall.
A closed laundromat.
An empty house covered with a demolition notice.
And a black car stopping in front of it.
"At first, he should only feel that something is strange."
Geonwoo wrote the younger brother's dialogue.
["Noona. Didn't you say nobody lives in that house?"]
["Yeah. Why?"]
["Someone went inside yesterday too."]
["Maybe they're construction workers?"]
["Do construction workers come at two in the morning?"]
["You went outside before dawn again?"]
["No. I just... went out for a little while."]
["A little while, my foot. Didn't I tell you not to go outside before dawn?!"]
Geonwoo stopped typing.
He reread what he'd just written.
The younger brother's curiosity.
Seorin's worry as someone practically raising him alone.
The ordinary feeling of their life together.
All of it came through.
"Good. This works."
He moved on to the next scene.
Originally, the younger brother's death would have come immediately after this.
But Geonwoo shook his head.
"His death happens too quickly."
The death needed to hurt.
For that to happen, the audience first needed to know what kind of child he was.
A boy who refused to put down the camera even after Seorin scolded him.
A boy who said he was afraid but still went back outside to film the alley.
A child trying to hold onto a disappearing neighborhood in his own way.
Geonwoo added a new scene.
["Noona. If this neighborhood disappears, our house disappears too, right?"]
["Probably."]
["It makes me sad to think it'll disappear. It means all our traces will disappear too."]
["Don't think so deeply about everything. You'll exhaust yourself living like that. And even if it disappears, we can remember it. Right?"]
["But memories fade. That's why I want to film it. Maybe I'll want to see it again someday. Then I can watch it with you."]
["Stop saying pointless things and go to sleep. If you go out again before dawn tonight, I'm seriously going to get angry."]
["But we're moving tomorrow."]
["Exactly. So sleep. Moving takes energy."]
["But it's the last night..."]
["Listen to me. Please!"]
Seorin raised her voice before realizing it.
After their parents died, taking care of her younger brother almost like a parent had been much harder than she'd expected.
Preparing for the move.
Dealing with school.
Unpaid utility bills.
All the emotions she'd forced herself to endure through the day finally burst out at him.
Her younger brother didn't say anything else.
He simply hugged the camcorder to his chest and crawled beneath the blanket.
Seorin instantly regretted yelling at him.
Tomorrow morning, I'll make him his favorite side dish.
And I'll apologize first.
Thinking that, she switched off the light.
But that night, her younger brother got up again.
Quietly, he picked up the camcorder.
Geonwoo's hands stopped.
"Yeah. This is it."
He had rewritten the final conversation between the siblings before the boy's death.
"Good. Now let's keep going."
His fingers flew across the keyboard.
It was dawn on the fourth day after he began revising.
After typing the final sentence, Geonwoo slowly removed his hands from the keyboard.
"Whoa! I'm done!"
A shout of excitement escaped him.
He threw both arms into the air, then leaned back against his chair.
His neck was stiff.
His fingers were sore.
His eyes felt dry.
But he felt strangely good.
"I actually wrote the whole new version in four days."
Writing a full script in four days.
No matter how he thought about it, it was ridiculous.
The reason he'd pushed himself this hard was because he wanted to raise the script's quality as much as possible within the one week he'd promised Hyeonsu.
Script Appraisal could only be used three times per script.
He had already used it once on the first day.
That meant he had two chances left.
His plan was to revise the script, use Script Appraisal to evaluate it, then make one final round of changes to maximize its overall quality.
Geonwoo looked at the file name on the screen.
[Before the Light Reaches Revision v5]
It was called version five.
But in reality, it was almost a new first draft.
The foundation of the story had changed.
The meaning of the characters had changed.
Even the direction of the ending had changed.
"There's no such thing as a perfect first draft. There have to be weaknesses."
No matter how talented the writer was, objectively judging something they'd only just written was difficult.
But that wasn't a problem for Geonwoo anymore.
He now possessed an ability that allowed him to examine his own writing coldly.
Script Appraisal.
The moment he thought of it, words appeared.
[Script Appraisal has been activated.]
