For a few days, I hadn’t seen Jun. My sense of time had changed a bit. Days when I met Jun, and days when I didn’t. But one thing remained unchanged. Whether I saw you or not, I was always thinking of you.
Working with you on the screenplay was a good excuse. It was my job to reminisce about our memories, and you were always there in those memories. So I could deceive myself into believing that thinking of you wasn’t due to some lingering attachment.
But nine years ago, I was scared of deceiving myself about the me in our memories. I thought the best I could do for you was to help you distance yourself from the me in your memories. But every time I tried to translate those memories into words, my fingers trembled.
Was it right for me to ruin these beautiful scenes I remembered? The right answer for you was not necessarily the right answer for me. I wanted to do right by you, yet I also wanted to preserve us in those memories. It was contradictory from the start. Deep sighs lingered around my lips before scattering away.
I briefly gazed out the window next to my office seat. It was around this time that I started to realize how professional Jun really was. I recalled the words he said to me before we parted after he carried my laptop-filled bag to my house.
“Iharu. Have you finished the screenplay?”
“Not completely. Just a bit.”
“Just a bit. Well, I guess I’ll know once I check it. You didn’t just write a bunch of dialogue and stage directions, did you?”
“…….”
“Looks like you did, judging by your face.”
“But a screenplay is mainly dialogue and stage directions, right?”
“Not really. I already know the content. I was there building those memories with you.”
“That’s true.”
“And I already told you why I wanted to write the screenplay with you.”
“Right….”
“Then I won’t explain it again.”
“…….”
“So just dialogue and stage directions aren’t enough. If I wanted to write down what I already know, I could have written the screenplay myself.”
“So… what more do you expect me to write?”
“The unseen sincerity. The thoughts and emotions you might have had between those memories.”
“……So, the sincerity you could never have seen back then.”
“Yes. That sincerity. The one I need to know now.”
“…….”
“That’s why narration is important in a screenplay like this, especially for people like us. That’s also why I suggested we write it together.”
“You’re quite serious, Jun.”
“I have to be. I’ve been waiting nine years.”
That was why my fingers couldn’t leave their place on the keyboard. The blank spaces between the quickly written dialogue and stage directions seemed unnecessarily wide. There was so much more to fill in than what I had written.
The vast space that showed no signs of narrowing.
Despite knowing everything, my eyes began to trace the first scene’s stage directions and dialogue again. The memory of our first encounter, where Jun found me asleep on the sunlit living room sofa and sighed in disbelief, stirring slowly and waking up.
I kept adding inconsequential stage directions between our exchanged words of that scene. “The sun was unusually warm that day, making Iharu deeply fall asleep,” or “Jun soon turned his back on Iharu with a displeased expression.”
The sincerity Jun wanted to know wasn’t in that scene, yet I diligently crafted the description of that first scene like an artisan.
I was scared. To have those scenes where Jun believed in my false sincerity displayed on the screen. Unable to detach you from this memory, nor could I leave you trapped in this scene. I couldn’t pretend with false sincerity, nor could I show my true feelings.
Like someone playing a cruel game with our precious memories.
Then suddenly, I scrolled down rapidly and clicked on a point. It was a scene from the middle of the screenplay.
A mundane afternoon when Jun, having finished showering first, opened the sliding doors wide and was drying his hair dampened by the sunlight in the living room. The day I sat next to him, sipping the orange juice he left unfinished, and kissed him as if mesmerized. The page filled with memories of that day floated before me.
It was deliberate, choosing this scene among many. Hesitating for a long time about inserting my true feelings as narration between the dialogues and stage directions.
If the reason for my hesitation was to pinpoint the moment where you and I’s true feelings diverged with my own hands. Then, I decided to choose a scene that blatantly revealed my true feelings.
Rather than adding a false memory that split off from us, I wanted you to endure the pain of this finished love just a little longer with the memory of that day where our true feelings were one.
So, I changed the direction of what I was doing for you. Not to help you escape from this memory, but to show you my sincere love for you in it. That’s how I decided to do something for you.
Male lead is a Love-Obsessed Merman
When he discovers she has gone, he risks everything to pursue her on land, enduring agonizing pain to transform his tail into human legs…
One-line summary: Male lead chases female lead. The male lead’s love is a bit sick, an invincible love brain.
Synopsis
During a voyage at sea, Jiang Yang accidentally captures a merman.
Servant: I heard that mermen are fierce and brutal.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman obediently rubbing her palm like a puppy: “You call this fierce and brutal?”
Servant: I heard that mermen have no human nature.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman with wet puppy eyes, obsessively calling her ‘A Yang’ like a childish infant: “You call this having no human nature?”
With great difficulty, she releases the merman back into the sea and returns to shore.
Who would have thought that in less than half a month, the merman, who should have been freely wandering in the South China Sea, would shed his scales, endure the pain of losing his tail, transform into human legs, and come ashore to find her?
He kneels at her feet, rubbing her palm, with merman tears rolling down: “A Yang, don’t abandon me.”
_____
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