Chapter 1097: I am New Black, Class of ’18 (21)

Everyone burst into laughter as we watched Jiho practically sparkle while clutching his tteokbokki.

It reminded us all of something.

Slurp—

That seventeen-year-old maknae who used to squat on the dormitory stairs with a gloomy face, quietly sniffling over his tteokbokki.

Smiling like a proud mother, Biju reminisced.

"Jiho was so adorable back then."

"He really was."

Jiho frowned in confusion.

"Why are you talking about me in the past tense? Does that mean you don't think I'm cute anymore?"

"...?"

We all answered with equally puzzled expressions.

"Isn't that obvious?"

"I think Jiho buried his conscience in a sweet potato field."

"Hey. Go look in a mirror."

Honestly, he wasn't someone you could call "cute" anymore.

He stood nearly six feet tall, with long, lean limbs.

His jawline had sharpened into something clean and masculine.

At twenty-one, Jiho was unmistakably handsome.

But there's no way we're telling him that.

Watching Wang Jiho get all pleased with himself? Absolutely not. Hehehe.

Ri Hyuk and I exchanged deeply satisfied looks.

Only Jiho pouted.

"Wow. You guys used to call me cute all the time. Now suddenly I'm not? I can't believe you betrayed me."

As the youngest continued grumbling, everyone quietly hid affectionate smiles.

He's adorable.

Maybe it was because we'd practically raised him since he was a kid, but even now that he was an adult, he still looked like the adorable youngest brother to us.

He puffed up like an angry little sparrow, eyes wide and round as he chattered away.

"When I become a famous actor later and give my acceptance speech, I'm not going to mention any of your names. Except Wooju hyung. I'll thank my dad instead."

Well... obviously.

"Ugh! Why are these plastic forks so useless?! They won't even stab properly!"

The sight of him taking his frustration out on an innocent piece of tteokbokki made everyone burst out laughing.

I beckoned him over.

"Come here. Sit next to me."

"Hmph."

"Come on, Jiho."

"Hmph..."

Biju patted the sofa beside him.

A moment later, the maknae squeezed himself between the two of us. As he poked at his tteokbokki and ate, he broke into a cheerful grin.

By then, the setup seemed complete.

The projection screen descended with a soft mechanical whir.

"All right. Here we go."

As Mingi hyung pressed play, the darkened cabin lit up.

Ba-bam, ba-bam!

The logo of Silver Screen Pictures appeared.

[Silver Screen Pictures]

"Oh. That's the studio your father works with."

"I heard this one's Silver Comics or something. It's different from Wonder Comics, where Jiho appears."

"Huh? Doesn't everyone already know that?"

"I didn't. I figured if they wore skin-tight suits, they all belonged to the same company."

[SILVER COMICS]

The comic company's logo appeared next.

Slurp—

Jiho noisily gulped down some tteokbokki sauce.

"Why are you already like this?"

"Seeing the logo makes me jealous. I'm only making a cameo, while you're playing a villain."

"You really are astonishingly petty."

"Who do you think taught me?"

The answer came immediately.

"Ri Hyuk."

"...!!"

"The movie started, Ri Hyuk. Quiet, please."

Smiling at our dumbfounded main vocalist, I turned my attention back to the screen.

Ratatatatatatat!

Bang! Bang!

Gunfire echoed across a desert battlefield.

Iraq. 2005.

The opening combat scenes looked familiar.

American soldiers shouted, "Medic!" while enemy guerrillas sprayed AK rifle fire.

In the middle of the firefight, one of the guerrillas fired an RPG toward the American soldiers taking cover.

BOOM!

The ruins exploded.

A high-pitched ringing filled the air.

A CIA agent sheltering beside the soldiers was buried beneath the collapsing debris and lost consciousness.

Then the flashback began.

CIA Headquarters, Langley.

An elite spy, Elena Walker, was summoned into a briefing room for her mission.

The camera showed only the back of an agent standing with his hands clasped behind him while several superiors spoke.

"Agent Elena Walker."

"Your mission is to recover an artifact from a temple currently occupied by Iraqi insurgents."

Their voices continued over a montage.

The protagonist boarded a military transport plane carrying a duffel bag while the propellers roared overhead.

"Whatever it takes. Whatever sacrifices are required. You must bring back that artifact."

She attended a tactical briefing inside a tent in the middle of the desert.

"This operation concerns the national security of the United States."

"Headquarters wishes you good luck."

The scene briefly returned to CIA Headquarters.

A tall, handsome male CIA agent entered through the door and took his place beside the protagonist.

"This is Tim. He'll be your administrative support officer."

He smiled warmly at her.

Elena didn't even glance his way.

"He doesn't look like an administrative officer at all."

"Guys who look like that always end up betraying everyone."

"He definitely has 'early-game traitor' written all over him."

We kept eating popcorn as the movie continued.

The caption switched back to Present Day, Iraq, and the unconscious protagonist's fingers twitched.

Her black hair was matted with blood and dust.

"...Urgh..."

With superhuman determination, she dragged herself out from beneath the rubble and began fighting as a CIA operative once again.

She rescued the bewildered-looking Agent Tim and eventually captured several Iraqi insurgents.

As the prisoners watched the group head toward the temple, they shouted curses after them.

"Sir! What are these bastards saying?"

The special forces commander swallowed hard.

The protagonist slowly turned toward the enormous entrance that resembled the gaping jaws of some gigantic beast.

A deep, ominous wind echoed from within.

"...They say there's a demon inside."

Yet when the soldiers entered the temple, they found nothing but sand.

"Agent, there's nothing here."

"..."

"Agent?"

While the soldiers took a break to drink water or relieve themselves, the protagonist quietly pieced together the clues and discovered an entrance leading underground.

They descended into the dark passage.

The comic-relief Black soldier muttered,

"I've got a really bad feeling about this. I think I might actually pee myself."

Footsteps echoed through the darkness.

At last, their lights illuminated a vast underground temple.

Gold and treasure filled the chamber, guarded by an enormous eagle statue.

"My God..."

Ri Hyuk commented,

"Something that's always fascinated me... whenever there's an underground temple in a movie, sunlight somehow finds its way inside."

"You have to ignore realism for it to be fun, Ri Hyuk."

The protagonist finally located the artifact Headquarters had ordered her to retrieve.

A massive golden urn beneath the eagle statue.

"Damn. This thing weighs a ton."

As the soldiers struggled to move it, the lid accidentally slipped open.

A strange liquid seeped out.

"Uh-oh..."

Ri Hyuk immediately scooted closer to me as ominous background music swelled.

The living-looking liquid slowly crawled toward a soldier who was smoking a cigarette.

Meanwhile—

"Something's wrong."

The protagonist frowned at a mural on the wall.

Tim, absentmindedly fiddling with his pistol, asked,

"What is it?"

"According to this mural... whatever's sealed inside that urn predates even Mesopotamian civilization."

Just as the movie leaned fully into the classic Hollywood trope of ancient civilization equals aliens—

"AAAAAH!"

Screams and gunfire erupted.

The protagonist and Tim rushed toward the noise.

A grotesque eagle-human creature was slaughtering the soldiers.

Gunfire.

Profanity.

It took half the squad just to bring down a single monster.

"This artifact can't leave this place."

At that moment, Tim drew his pistol, revealing his true identity.

"That's unfortunate."

"I knew from the beginning you weren't really an administrative officer."

A familiar Hollywood sequence unfolded.

The hero chose to do the right thing.

The agent assigned to monitor her sighed.

"So this is as far as we go."

The two fought.

Then an explosion shattered the urn.

"No!"

Everyone fled from the strange liquid pouring across the floor.

The protagonist, however, was trapped beneath falling debris.

"Did... did she die?"

"No, Biju. She's not dead yet."

Since Biju rarely watched movies, he alone looked genuinely horrified.

"The protagonist... died..."

Everyone else calmly watched as the mysterious liquid flowed into the unconscious heroine.

Life gradually returned to her body.

Whoooosh...

A standard superhero DNA-transformation montage played before the title card appeared.

GUARDIANS

CIA recruits trained at Headquarters.

The protagonist's profile appeared on-screen.

"This woman's codename is Eagle. A rogue spy. She possesses extremely dangerous abilities..."

The movie showed her constantly fleeing from intelligence agencies tracking her through satellites and surveillance systems.

Jiho frowned.

"This is weird."

"Hm?"

"It's actually good."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. It's genuinely pretty good."

I had to admit it was enjoyable.

The story of Guardians went something like this:

The protagonist acquires eagle-like powers through a mysterious artifact.

She encounters others who have gained animal-based abilities through similar circumstances, all of whom are now being hunted by intelligence agencies.

"Are they after you too?"

The heroes, each possessing the powers of a different animal, unite into a team to uncover and defeat the mastermind lurking behind everything.

Slurp—

Jiho silently drank another mouthful of tteokbokki sauce while watching the first part of the movie.

But only for a moment.

"Wait..."

Without warning, the protagonist suddenly began kissing Agent Tim—the man who had been chasing her.

"Pffft!"

"W-What?! Why are they kissing?!"

Even our staff looked bewildered.

"Out of nowhere...?"

"Am I the only one who has no idea what's happening?"

A completely random romance.

"I've loved you from the very beginning."

"Cut the bullshit, Tim!"

"You shoot the people you love?! Seriously?!"

"Damn! Headquarters has sent reinforcements! Go! Hurry, Elena!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"...I've always loved you."

"Don't try to act romantic while you're dying!"

"Why is there suddenly a romance plot?! And why is the protagonist crying?!"

"Wasn't he the one who tipped Headquarters off to her location in the first place?!"

"Seriously! This doesn't even fit her character! She's supposed to be the world's greatest spy—a cold, calculating woman! Why has she suddenly turned into a sunshine heroine?!"

While Jiho clutched his head in agony, things somehow became even stranger.

As the movie entered its middle act, the other heroes began behaving completely out of character.

"I still hear their screams every night."

One hero had spent the beginning of the film wracked with guilt over his past as an assassin.

Yet as soon as a chase sequence began, he started firing indiscriminately into enemies in the middle of a crowded public square.

"What..."

"He says civilian deaths haunt him every night, so why is he driving a hundred kilometers an hour through a crowd of civilians?"

It wasn't just that.

Scenes that could only be described as outright character assassination kept coming one after another.

"I'm left-handed."

Then, moments later...

...he threw his weapon with his right hand.

The villain, who had initially been compelling, suddenly transformed into a bargain-bin cartoon bad guy.

"Unlimited power! With this power, I shall conquer the world! Mwahahaha!"

Now I understood why superhero movies cared so much about their villains.

Once the villain lost all credibility, the heroes opposing him instantly felt less impressive as well.

And then—

"Come on! Action is the lifeblood of superhero movies!"

Jiho practically exploded.

"None of the powers actually feel unique! Flying through the sky doesn't automatically make someone eagle-themed! This is entirely on the cinematographer! Scenes that need speed are filmed with static camera work, while the flashy fight choreography gets ruined by constant close-ups!"

"Exactly."

"Totally."

As the members and staff all chimed in with their own complaints, I quietly took out my phone and searched Guardians in English.

★★★☆☆ 5.5

IMDb's score.

Tomatometer: 23%

Audience Score: 45%

Rotten Tomatoes greeted me with rotten tomatoes and an overturned popcorn bucket.

"..."

"..."

The end credits rolled.

A completely unnecessary sequel-teasing post-credit scene played.

Then—

"Hyung."

Jiho silently held out his tteokbokki.

I quietly accepted it.

Slurp...

...I see.

So this is what it tastes like.

After the screening of Guardians, which had left an unforgettable impression for all the wrong reasons, the members and I huddled together over our phones.

Someone had compiled a collection of reviews on an online forum.

Guardians – Critics & Audience Reviews

It contained some truly savage comments from critics and ordinary moviegoers alike.

"This film's greatest achievement is that it flopped. The fact that it kept so many people from seeing it deserves genuine praise."

"When the kissing scene started, the entire theater groaned. Fuck... do these idiots even know what love is?"

"The theater erupted in cheers during the first twenty minutes. Then those cheers slowly became screams once everyone realized the movie had gone irreversibly wrong. The following ninety minutes were pure hell."

"It felt like Satan himself spent two hours torturing my eyes and ears. Dear God, please save me."

"The trailer tricked me into asking a girl out to see this movie. You bastards..."

"Silver Comics finally got the boom fans had always hoped for. Unfortunately, it was the KA-BOOM kind."

"The director must have licked his own asshole before making this movie. Nothing else could possibly explain why it tastes like this."

If I had been a complete outsider, I would've laughed myself silly reading those reviews.

Instead, they somehow left me feeling rather uneasy.

Ri Hyuk stared in disbelief.

"I don't think it would even be easy to make a movie this bad. How did it end up like this?"

"The production process sounds like it was a disaster."

Jiho searched through article after article on his phone.

Normally he barely read anything in English, but movies were his passion, so he flew through them effortlessly.

The Production of Guardians: More Terrifying Than Any Horror Film

The articles explained exactly how the movie had fallen apart.

An inexperienced first-time director whom everyone had already worried about.

A production studio infamous for constant interference.

"Where did the romance even come from?"

"The studio insisted it had to have a romance because they thought a female lead wouldn't attract investors otherwise."

"...What kind of logic is that?"

That wasn't all.

Silver Screen had repeatedly demanded reshoots and kept interfering in bizarre ways.

"They originally wanted a much more serious tone, but the studio insisted on a family-friendly rating, so they forced the villain to become more childish."

"..."

"Wow. There's even more."

The more Jiho read, the more unbelievable it became.

They managed a multi-hundred-billion-won project like this?

Even the TF team staff—people known for their competence—looked increasingly horrified as Jiho continued.

"...Anyway, things seem to have changed after Director John Edwards came onboard. Remember how your father's movie had its marketing budget cut because Silver Screen's big superhero movie bombed?"

"Yeah."

"Apparently, after that they changed company policy and started leaving things up to the directors."

Even though the studio had continued interfering after Guardians, the failure of this year's superhero blockbuster had finally forced them to change.

That was at least reassuring.

I looked around.

"Has there ever been a superhero franchise where the first movie failed, but the sequel succeeded?"

"There are quite a few."

Seokhwan hyung nodded.

"Some first films performed poorly both critically and commercially, but the sequels turned things around. Superhero movies usually build larger shared universes, so studios are willing to give them another chance."

"Yeah. I've seen a few like that."

That was good news.

Jiho nodded encouragingly.

"You can do it, hyung."

"...You seem strangely excited about this."

"Absolutely not because you're probably going to suffer from now on. I'm just happy you're getting to appear in such a huge movie."

Cheeky brat.

I clicked my tongue.

Ri Hyuk nudged me.

"Just do it. They've replaced the director with someone capable, and honestly, how often does anyone get a chance to appear in a Hollywood movie?"

"True."

"And do you know the best part?"

"The best part...?"

"They already hit rock bottom. There's nowhere lower to fall."

Everyone laughed and nodded.

Then Biju smiled.

"Exactly. Besides, your role probably isn't that big. Just have fun with it, hyung."

"Hm? What do you mean, not that big?"

"...Aren't you just playing one of the villains?"

Only then did I realize there was something else I hadn't told them.

"I'm not playing one of the villains."

"...?"

"I was offered the role of the main villain."

Everyone stared at me in shock.

"The main villain?"

Just then—

Jiho quietly stood up.

"Jiho? Where are you going?"

"I'm reheating the tteokbokki."

As the maknae drifted away with a distant, haunted look in his eyes, everyone doubled over laughing.