The MILM employees who came in to work in the morning were startled when they saw Taylor.
Next to Taylor was a huge pile of energy drink cans, and from her body came the smell of meat, a thick garlic smell, and even the smell of alcohol.
Covered in all sorts of smells, she was addressed carefully by one of the employees.
“Taylor?”
“I am busy. You do not have time to be standing around either. A guest is coming soon, so hurry up and clean or do something.”
Without even looking at the employee who spoke to her, Taylor kept her red bloodshot eyes fixed on the monitor as she spoke.
“If someone looks at your face right now, they will think you are about to die. Did you not say you had some kind of appointment yesterday. I wondered if something had happened, since someone who works overtime like it is a daily meal suddenly went home early…”
“Move quickly. We have to show him something. Tell everyone to move.”
“Even so, it is only three of us, including you, Taylor. Anyone watching would think we had more than ten people.”
Grumbling, the employee started by clearing away the empty energy drink cans next to Taylor.
“Who is even coming that you are like this?”
“Director Gyeong Chanhyeon.”
“Gyeong Chanhyeon…? Who is that?”
Hearing a name he had never heard before, the employee stopped just as he was about to step on an empty can to crush it and asked Taylor in surprise.
“A Korean film director and our lifeline. He might even be our savior. Hurry up and move. I still have things left to do.”
Taylor glared at the employee who kept talking to her with her hair all clumped together, then quickly went back to moving the mouse and tapping on the keyboard.
After crushing all the empty cans and throwing them into the trash can, the employee spoke to Taylor.
“But if you look the way you do today, the person who came to sign a contract will run away. At least wash up before you come or at least wash your face a bit. Unless you want to watch our lifeline die of a heart attack. We see this look every day, so we are fine, but compared to how you looked yesterday, you look so different that he will jump out of his skin when he sees you now.”
Taylor looked once in the small mirror in front of her, then let out a sigh.
“Is it that serious?”
“Yes. I am already putting it mildly.”
The employee answered with a grave expression.
“Right… well, appearances are important too. Then I will go wash up first, so finish this for me. I was checking the movement of the dinosaur legs again. The rendering is almost done, but look over it once more and see if there is anything strange.”
“Got it. Go scrub yourself hard. I held back as much as I could because I did not want to hurt your feelings.”
Taylor took clothes out of her drawer.
Another space outfit.
This time it was a shirt with the Milky Way drawn on it.
“You do not think of wearing a suit when a guest is coming. Should you not look a bit more proper…”
“With the money for a suit, I can buy dozens more of these. What we have to prove is our ability, not our outer shell, right?”
Holding her clothes, Taylor headed to the bathroom to wash.
Watching her, the employee let out a sigh and shook his head.
“Good grief… if things worked out just by overflowing with guts like that, the world would be a nice place…”
But the world was not so easy that you could live on guts alone.
Even so, Taylor was someone whose charm lay in her determination to overcome everything with passion and ability.
However, that charm was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.
Because in this world there were not only problems that could be solved by her passion and ability, but all sorts of other problems lined up as well.
Especially the situation MILM was facing right now was not something that could be resolved by her passion alone.
With those thoughts making his head feel complicated, the employee finished the cleaning roughly and sat down in front of the computer Taylor had been working on.
“Huh…?”
The movement had become far more natural.
He already knew that for the past few months she had been going around trying to convince other film companies, while also working on fixing the already ruined <Jurassic Park>.
But to think she had remade it to this level of quality.
Wondering if he had seen wrong, the employee checked it again.
In the past, the biggest problem had been the movement of the dinosaur legs.
Rather than running, their movements had looked like they were flailing helplessly in mid air, yet now the dinosaur movements had become noticeably more natural.
“At this level… it might really be possible…”
That same day.
Yesterday, Taylor had said she had something to take care of at home and hurriedly left, and Chester, Sanghyeon, James, and I drank heavily.
We fell asleep without knowing how we got back to the hotel or what time we arrived.
Because we had drunk so much, I could not clearly remember what we had talked about, so I closed my eyes for a moment and thought.
Jean Taylor.
She had watched my films on Chester’s recommendation and said they were really fun, and she had also said that she really wanted to work together.
I remembered how, even though my films <Night>, <Desirelessness>, and <Jawol> were not films that properly made use of CG, she had looked at me with eyes full of excitement as she spoke.
“Visual effects that use computer graphics ultimately need a good story too. A film that just crams in flashy computer graphics without a story deserves to be thrown into the trash can.”
Those words were enough to stir my curiosity.
“If visual effects themselves become the story, that means they have lost their way.”
Words once spoken by Steven Spielberg.
Her words were in line with Steven Spielberg’s view.
And hearing this from a CG designer, not a film director, gave me a different sort of feeling.
She was clearly a CG designer with passion for film.
If her skills were good on top of that, there was no reason not to ask her.
“Ugh…”
Lying in bed, I barely managed to open my eyes and let out a breath, and I could feel the stench of alcohol rising with it.
When I looked at the clock, it was ten o’clock.
There was not much time left until the time I had said I would go to Taylor’s company.
“Sanghyeon.”
“…”
Sanghyeon was sleeping as if dead to the world, and it was almost time for James to arrive.
I left a note and my credit card where Sanghyeon would see them when he woke up, then quickly washed and got dressed.
I put on the neat shirt and black pants I had brought along just in case, then went outside, where James greeted me with a smile.
“Is Sanghyeon not coming today?”
“He is sleeping like a log. We are only going to talk about work today anyway. I left him a note.”
“Ha ha, you are a good brother.”
Being called a good older brother made me laugh first.
Maybe because it was the first time I had received such a compliment, my heart felt pointlessly buoyant.
“Chester is coming today too, right?”
“Ah, Chester?”
James started the car with an awkward smile, as if it was difficult to answer.
“He cannot make it…?”
“It seems he has not even gotten up yet. Ha ha, he sent a text at dawn. If he does not answer, I should just bring Director Gyeong over.”
James started driving with even more energy, as if it did not matter that he had drunk so heavily yesterday, and I selected an album from the glove box and listened to music, something I was now used to doing.
“You looked completely gone yesterday too, Director Gyeong. Are you all right?”
“I feel like I am going to die, but work comes first.”
“Ha ha, you really are a pro.”
As we drove with lively music playing, the car stopped in front of a building.
The building was much shabbier than I had expected.
The walls had not been cleaned for so long that I could not even tell what color the building had originally been.
Dust was piled thick on the windows visible here and there.
Rather than a place where CG work was done, it looked more like the sort of building that would be full of loan sharks, so I asked James,
“Is this the right place…?”
“Ah… according to the address, this is it… Logium Building. It is written there. They said it is on the fifth floor of this building.”
When James and I entered the building that looked like it might collapse at any moment, the first thing we saw was giant cockroaches scurrying away to hide.
At the sight, something I had been holding back inside almost surged up.
“Urgh…”
At my reaction, James asked in concern.
“Are you all right?”
“Ha… yes. Whew…”
We got into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor.
Clunk. Screeech. Creak creak.
The elevator, which seemed old, made suspicious mechanical noises as it crawled upward at a very slow speed.
Every time something clunked and caught in the middle, I gripped the handrail tightly, worried that it might suddenly drop.
Ding.
When the elevator finally arrived, so slow that it would almost have been faster to take the stairs, James and I wiped the cold sweat from our foreheads with the relief of having arrived alive.
MILM.
The company name, written in a font that did not match the building.
When we carefully knocked on the company’s door, an employee inside opened it and glanced once at James before speaking.
“Uh… where are you from? If it is about money…”
“Ms. Jean Taylor invited us.”
Only then, with a relieved expression, the employee looked at me.
“Ah, you must be Director Gyeong Chanhyeon.”
“Yes.”
“Please come in. It is shabby, but… ha ha.”
Following the employee inside the company, a musty smell hit my nose.
I did my best to keep smiling as I went in so that it would not show on my face.
Something had been spilled on the floor, and every time my shoes stuck and peeled away, they made a sticky squelching sound.
“The director is washing up right now, so she will be here soon. Could you wait a moment. Please have a seat. Ha ha…”
Seeing the thick layer of dust on the table and chairs, the employee hurriedly took out some wet wipes and wiped them down in a rush.
“Ha ha. We usually clean, but… we have had a lot of staff cutbacks.”
“It is fine.”
“May I at least get you something to drink…”
“I would appreciate that. Ha ha.”
As hospitality for guests, I received an energy drink.
Was I supposed to drink this and then work here or something?
A little taken aback by his choice, I glanced at the refrigerator, but when I saw it crammed full of energy drinks, I could only nod.
“Oh, Director Gyeong, James. You came a little early.”
At Taylor’s voice, I turned around and saw Taylor with a towel wrapped around her hair.
Wearing yet another space outfit, she smiled brightly, and I could feel an immense fatigue from her face.
Her dark circles were even deeper than yesterday, and her eyes were completely bloodshot.
Worried by the sight of her, which looked like she could collapse at any moment, I asked,
“Are you all right?”
“Pardon? I do not have any problems.”
“You look extremely tired. You look like a completely different person compared to yesterday.”
“Being tired is just everyday life. Now it would feel strange not to be tired. Ha ha.”
As if she was holding on purely by mental strength, Taylor even put force into her bloodshot eyes as she answered.
“Just like you said, Director Gyeong. It is better to show you once without explanations, right?”
Taylor drew all the curtains shut, then lowered the screen that had been installed.
Perhaps because it had been a long time since the screen had been lowered, it stopped partway as if it had caught on something and would not come down all the way.
“Uh… what is wrong with this…”
After Taylor smacked the remote she was holding with her fist several times, the screen finally came down properly, and she smiled.
“Machines only listen when you hit them, as expected.”
At Taylor’s innocent smile, I also smiled awkwardly and nodded.
Just as the thought began to creep up that nothing much could come out of working in such harsh conditions, she projected the dinosaurs she had worked on onto the screen.
“These are the dinosaurs from <Jurassic Park> that I finished polishing.”
With a bright smile, Taylor showed us the dinosaurs filling the screen.
And every time a new dinosaur appeared, she added an explanation of what kind of dinosaur it was and even talked about what techniques she had used and how she had worked on it as she introduced them.
“Hmm…”
When the introductions of the dinosaurs were over, Taylor’s eyes were full of expectation that had pushed aside her fatigue, as if she was very curious about my reaction.
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