It felt as if the smell of blood was gushing out beyond the screen.
Cha Seo-ah saw Seo Gwang-il collapsed, bleeding from his head.
Breathing roughly, she felt the pain in her waist.
「…….」
Cha Seo-ah saw the shattered window.
It was the trace of Seo Gwang-il snatching Cha Seo-ah's hammer and breaking the window.
And, except for Seo Gwang-il who was letting out faint breaths, there was no one else.
Because while Seo Gwang-il was blocking her, Han Ye-hwa had escaped through the shattered glass window.
「Ha.」
Cha Seo-ah tied him up with the remaining blue tape before the unconscious Seo Gwang-il woke up.
「Not enough.」
It was because she had used too much blue tape when binding Han Ye-hwa.
Then the screen reversed, and the escaped Han Ye-hwa hid in a nearby convenience store.
Because she had been pierced by the glass, making it difficult to run any further.
「Aigoo, what on earth happened here. Go inside and take care of your wounds first. I'll call an ambulance.」
The convenience store ahjumma looked at Han Ye-hwa with startled eyes and pushed her towards the back of the storage room.
And while Han Ye-hwa went into the storage room to catch her breath and reported to the police.
「Oh my, oh my, Seo-ah. Why are you so hurt!」
A new customer arrived at the convenience store.
It was the convenience store part-timer, Cha Seo-ah.
She had come to get tools to kill Detective Seo Gwang-il, and blue tape.
At that moment, the convenience store ahjumma's gaze turned to Cha Seo-ah.
The audience thought for a moment, 'No way.'
And.
The convenience store ahjumma opened her mouth towards Cha Seo-ah with a worried face.
「What on earth is going on today. This is already the second time.」
At those words, Cha Seo-ah's hands came to a sudden stop.
A collective gasp filled the movie theater.
Forgetting that they were in a packed theater, they let out a gasp without even realizing it.
What followed was exactly as everyone expected.
Cha Seo-ah kills the convenience store ahjumma as soon as she receives the tools.
However, what was unexpected was Cha Seo-ah's reaction afterwards.
For the first time, a 'readable' emotion appeared on Cha Seo-ah's face.
Pain.
Regret.
Emotions that Cha Seo-ah herself didn't seem to fully comprehend appeared vividly on the screen.
It was suffocating.
Biting her lower lip, Cha Seo-ah made an expression that was hard to tell if she was crying or laughing.
'Wow.'
I almost let out a gasp for a completely different reason this time.
A face crying while smiling.
Not even realizing it herself, Cha Seo-ah kept touching her face over and over again.
The suffocating frustration and desperation felt from Cha Seo-ah.
For the first time, people empathized with the pain emanating from Cha Seo-ah.
At the very end.
The face of the dead convenience store ahjumma and the faces of her parents overlapped like phantoms.
As if she couldn't bear to see it anymore, Cha Seo-ah turned away.
The storage room where Han Ye-hwa was.
The moment she slowly opened the door, Han Ye-hwa, who was holding a soju bottle, struck Cha Seo-ah on the head.
***
Detective Im Seung-cheol ran.
He had chased after Detective Seo Gwang-il, who entered the scene first, and found the unconscious Seo Gwang-il.
Feeling Im Seung-cheol's presence, Seo Gwang-il, with a clouded mind, spat out only a single phrase.
「Esc, escaped. Went to cha, chase.」
Escaped and went to chase.
At first, he thought it meant Cha Seo-ah had escaped, but belatedly noticed that Han Ye-hwa was nowhere to be seen.
Detective Seo Gwang-il had desperately saved Han Ye-hwa.
And Cha Seo-ah had gone to chase after that Han Ye-hwa.
Or, she went to get tools to kill Seo Gwang-il.
Either way, it didn't matter.
Im Seung-cheol ran.
He kept running, to the point he didn't even know how many times he'd run today.
His breath caught in his throat, and sweat poured down like rain.
Searching the nearby areas, he finally reached the convenience store.
A weekday afternoon.
A convenience store with its blinds drawn so the inside couldn't be seen.
Since it was a store he frequented, Im Seung-cheol knew.
That the ahjumma here wouldn't close the store without a word.
「You crazy bitch!!」
As he kicked the door down and rushed inside, he saw Cha Seo-ah strangling Han Ye-hwa.
Han Ye-hwa collapsed, bleeding from her head.
And Cha Seo-ah, her head covered in blood.
Seeing that, Im Seung-cheol ran over and kicked Cha Seo-ah just like that.
Bang! The convenience store rack toppled over.
Amidst the fall, Cha Seo-ah grabbed the hammer that had dropped to the floor.
「Alright, sure~. You wanna do this.」
「…….」
Glancing at Han Ye-hwa's condition out of the corner of his eye, Im Seung-cheol slowly stood as if blocking the space between them.
He aimed the taser gun in his hand at Cha Seo-ah.
Towards such an Im Seung-cheol, Cha Seo-ah's lips twisted.
As if, she were smiling.
An unpleasant smile that didn't look like a human smile.
As that hardened like stone.
Cha Seo-ah lunged at Im Seung-cheol.
「Ugh!!」
He fired the taser gun, but she hid her body behind the tilted rack and avoided it.
And just like that, Cha Seo-ah leaped towards Im Seung-cheol, swinging the hammer.
Dodging that, Im Seung-cheol resisted by throwing things that had fallen on the floor.
He kicked with his foot and punched Cha Seo-ah in the face, but.
Cha Seo-ah's hammer struck Im Seung-cheol's side hard.
「Gah!」
Im Seung-cheol's body bent, and a scream echoed in the movie theater.
Even though she was already a wreck, Cha Seo-ah, who charged like a beast, seemed as if she didn't know pain.
To finish it off, the moment Cha Seo-ah raised the hammer.
「!!」
Cha Seo-ah's knee buckled deeply.
The impact caused by Han Ye-hwa, who had confirmed Cha Seo-ah's arrival through the CCTV, striking Cha Seo-ah on the head with a soju bottle.
The blows received from Seo Gwang-il, and then Han Ye-hwa, had buckled her knee.
Bewilderment.
Staring at the emotion vividly visible on Cha Seo-ah's face at that moment, Im Seung-cheol's fist struck her face hard.
The unconscious Cha Seo-ah, and the people gathering at the convenience store due to the sudden commotion.
The sound of police cars could be heard.
As the screen gradually faded to black, the audience was finally able to relax.
Breathing a sigh of relief.
***
"Did you see
"Phew, I saw it. I seriously almost cursed out loud without realizing it during the convenience store scene."
"Wow, me too. That scene was seriously insane."
The small ripple became word of mouth like a wave and began to spread everywhere.
First, the advertisement.
And combined with the buzz from the entertainment show, people started heading to the movie theaters one by one.
"Wow, look at my sweaty hands."
"Joo Seo-yeon?? Is that right? Wow, her acting is no joke."
"Cha Seo-ah's crying-while-laughing acting? I almost really cried watching that."
"Agh, fuck. But more importantly, she's our age."
"Who? Cha Seo-ah? Really?"
Was it because there were no movies to watch lately?
Even though it was a thriller movie, the footsteps of people visiting the theaters didn't stop.
The movie tickets were already completely sold out, to the point they started expanding the screenings.
Since such words were coming out offline, it was a natural course for internet communities to start buzzing as well.
==
[Post: Waaaah The Chaser is gonna hit 10 million????]
Isn't this Joo Seo-yeon's first movie?
A 10-million actor from the start???
Replies
- Agh
- You Akas, please go back to the main board
- Absolutely can't reach 10 million lmaooo
- Do you think it's easy to hit 10 million with a thriller
==
The first day of the movie's release.
As the audience numbers rose, such posts went up.
The community's reaction was generally negative.
Just people who like thrillers watched it because there were no movies to watch lately.
Roughly that nuance.
However.
3rd day of release 1.2 million.
- Hmm.... Is this gonna hit 10 million???
- Utopia also has good reviews so it'll go up soon
- lolll It can't hit 10 million at that speed
- If that hits 10 million I'll dance naked in Gangnam fr
- Really???
- But that alone is definitely impressive
Such reactions came out.
After the weekend passed, the 7th day of release.
- Wait a minute
- No, this is really gonna hit 10 million? 5 million????
- I saw it and the acting is insane, all the actors act so well
- For real the tension is crazy lol Whenever I see a convenience store now only curses come out lmaooo
- But Joo Seo-yeon is so pretty for real lol I started watching Dream Future because of that lmaooo
- Dream Future?? To the point of watching that?
- Dream Future is surprisingly watchable
- But Joo Seo-yeon's screen time is jack shit
- She's gonna get popular now, peace out
The wave of box office success was now starting to become a tsunami.
With the encouraging results of
[Director Bae Jin-hwan 'Thank you for 3 million!!']
[
[Who is the number one contributor to the box office success? 'Cha Seo-ah']
There was one place that was secretly nervous about the continuously uploaded articles.
It was
The company that had entrusted the cosmetics advertisement to Seo-yeon.
"Excuse me, Director."
"What now."
"That's the sales..."
"Why, did it go up?"
"No, it's not that, but it is being maintained."
At the words that it was at least being maintained, Director Baek Min-chan breathed a sigh of relief.
To think she would appear in a movie as a murderer.
They hadn't put in a clause preventing her appearance, but they never expected her to take on such a role in a movie.
"Still, her acting was excellent. If you haven't seen it, Team Leader Jung, you must watch it."
"Ah, of course I saw it. Wow, I really couldn't think of her as the same person."
"Make sure to watch Dream Future, too."
"Ah, I'll think about that."
Team Leader Jung Tae-soo coughed awkwardly at Director Baek Min-chan's words, then continued speaking.
"This, but it's strange that it's being maintained. It's a bad image, right? Normally it should drop."
"But? It didn't drop?"
"No, it did drop."
"Then well, isn't it as expected?"
"No, but it really dropped just a little. Enough to consider it a margin of error."
"Ah, really? Really? Why?"
"That's, probably if I were to guess."
Thinking of the image Seo-yeon had shown, it was enough to significantly affect the advertisement.
However, the drop was much smaller than expected.
Why would that be.
He pondered, but the reason was simple.
"Isn't it because she's pretty?"
"...It's about time to change the team leader position."
"No, really, there's no reason other than that. And, surprisingly, it seems another reason is that Cha Seo-ah gained sympathy from the female demographic."
Certainly, Cha Seo-ah in the movie suited that cold image very well.
Moreover, despite being a murderer, the decadent atmosphere flowing from her body ironically seemed to mesh well with Eclat Etoile's advertisement.
And, just as Team Leader Jung Tae-soo said.
15 days after
Eclat Etoile's sales began to rebound.
***
8 million in 15 days.
While 10 million was virtually becoming confirmed.
Not everyone was smiling.
"Is this, right?"
"No..."
"You said it would be a success. You said we got the investment."
A sharp voice was heard.
There was another movie that was released alongside
A movie that opened on the same day as
Its lead actor, Hwang Min-hwa, with a distorted face, lashed out at the fellow actress who starred alongside her.
The actress from 'Horizon Company', with whom she had now become part of the same family.
Hwang Min-hwa had participated in this
"I, it didn't flop."
"It's 2 million."
"……."
"Yes, if it does well, it could reach 4 million. There's also a growth trend."
However, no one mentioned
Both online and offline, it was all just talk about
It was humiliating.
In particular, it was annoying that she was devastatingly defeated by an actress belonging to Nova Entertainment, the company she had kicked herself out of.
'Joo Seo-yeon.'
She recalled the young actress she had briefly encountered.
Hwang Min-hwa bit her lower lip.
Certainly, she had an aura.
She could feel a dazzling talent.
But, she thought she was just a kid.
Crack.
Hwang Min-hwa ground her teeth.
She would never forget about this incident.
While Hwang Min-hwa was making that resolution.
"Congratulations, Director Bae Jin-hwan!"
"Oh my, not at all."
"You're a 10-million director now."
"Not yet. Not yet!!"
Bae Jin-hwan was clinking glasses with a beaming smile.
It was going to be 10 million soon.
Today? Or tomorrow.
'I'm finally becoming a 10-million director.'
He was going to attain that glorious honor.
At a young age among directors.
"I think I should be grateful to the actors who really worked hard."
"It's a shame Seo-yeon couldn't make it to the company dinner today."
"She's a high schooler."
"At that young age, to that extent... wow, isn't she really going to Hollywood?"
"Of course, it's possible. I, Bae Jin-hwan, guarantee it!"
Clink!
As they clinked glasses, actor Kim Dae-heon, who played Detective Im Seung-cheol this time, said to the smiling Bae Jin-hwan.
"Director, I think you're getting a call?"
"A call?"
Now that he looked, he could see a phone vibrating on the table.
"Man, who's calling at this time..."
Putting down the glass with a tap, Bae Jin-hwan's eyes widened as he checked the screen.
And, springing up from his seat, he answered the phone.
"Ah, yes. This is Director Bae Jin-hwan. Oh my, how have you been, Director?"
The Director of the Cultural Business Division of GH Group.
The person who had provided unsparing support for the filming of
At the call from someone he couldn't afford to treat carelessly no matter how much of a 10-million director he was, Bae Jin-hwan felt his drunkenness completely vanish.
And.
"Yes? Seo-yeon?"