Translator: Dreamscribe
The perspective of ‘Henry Gordon’ or Kang Woojin in ‘Pierrot’ shifted. It was no longer the dingy bus where the horrifying ‘Pierrot’ was laughing. Instead, it was a bustling area in New York. Broad daylight. This was his past. Woojin was walking down the sidewalk. However, his steps were listless.
Truly dragging his feet.
The madness-filled expression he displayed on the bus was nowhere to be seen. Both inside and out, he was different. The current ‘Henry Gordon’, or rather, Woojin’s state of mind, was… how to describe it, a damp rag, soaked and heavy. His body felt weighed down, and his heart was drenched in muddy water. It was as if all the energy had been drained from his entire body.
“……Hah-”
Walking down the street, Kang Woojin let out a small sigh. Among the many passersby who brushed past him, some gave him odd sideways glances. Most were dressed neatly in suits or clean attire. Woojin noticed their stares. But he didn’t care.
-Ssuu.
As he walked, Woojin stopped in front of a mart and looked at his reflection in the glass window. A worn-out hoodie, jeans, shoes with worn-out soles, disheveled and slightly long hair, a slightly hunched back and shoulders, and an overall skinny frame.
This was his current form.
Just then, the door of the mart opened, and a chubby man who appeared to be the owner stepped out. He was bald, but his mustache was thick. As soon as he saw Woojin standing idly in front of the mart, his expression turned suspicious, and his brows furrowed deeply.
“What is it?”
Woojin’s already hunched shoulders shrank further in surprise.
“Ah, no, I was just.”
“Forget it, just keep moving.”
“It’s a misunder-”
“I said get lost!”
The chubby owner’s loud bellow, almost like a roar, caught the attention of nearby pedestrians, and Woojin, who had been hesitating for a moment, reluctantly moved on. When he glanced back, the chubby owner was still glaring at him.
Contempt.
It was something that clearly upset Kang Woojin, but as he resumed walking, he chose to ignore his feelings. This sort of thing had happened too often.
“It’s fine. As long as I erase the thought from my mind.”
For a moment, Woojin’s inner thoughts resonated starkly with his emotions. It was meaningless. The world he saw, the things that existed in it, even the chubby man behind him.
All of it was indifferent.
As Kang Woojin trudged forward, his emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and state of mind, all were hollow. At this point, Woojin felt an indescribable sense of loss. It wasn’t hot or cold, neither comedy nor tragedy. Just meaningless and indifferent.
As he walked, Woojin entered an alley.
A small pizza shop came into view. This was the place where he worked as a deliveryman. For a brief moment, Woojin, with his hunched posture, gazed at the pizza shop and let out a sigh before opening the door.
At the same time.
“Hey!!”
A loud shout came from the kitchen inside the pizza shop. A burly man wearing a flour-stained apron glared at Woojin as soon as he saw him. He was the pizza shop owner.
“I just got a call from a customer!! They said you were 7 minutes late!! Why the hell are you working like this?!”
“I-I-I’m sorry!”
Overwhelmed by the owner’s anger, Woojin immediately apologized, but the pizza shop owner showed no intention of letting it slide as he stormed over to Woojin, fuming.
“Did you collect the payment for the pizza?”
“I… couldn’t collect it.”
“Unbelievable.”
“T-The customer gave me the wrong address, so-”
“What? Are you blaming the customer now? Are you saying you did nothing wrong?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
The pizza shop owner, who had been glaring at Woojin as if he wanted to kill him, gritted his teeth.
“Damn bastard, I gave you work because you kept begging, I must have been crazy. Fine, get out.”
“W-What?”
“I said get out.”
“S-Suddenly, you can’t just-”
“I said get lost!!”
The sharp contempt turned into a roar. Woojin endured it. His shoulders and back hunched even further, but he clung to the pizza shop owner with everything he had. So desperate was he that even his words trembled.
“I’m so-so-sorry! I’ll really work hard to make sure this never happens again!”
“Are you going to leave while I’m still asking nicely, or do you want to leave after getting something broken?”
“……”
Hope had just been extinguished. Woojin had been barely scraping by, living off the money he earned from this pizza shop. Shrinking even further, he spoke again with difficulty.
“…Then at least the money for the work I’ve done so far-“
-Pak!
The pizza shop owner threw a few bills and coins at him. Of course, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Deducting what for your mistakes and the unpaid money like today! Now get lost!”
Woojin looked down at the money scattered at his feet and slowly reached out his hand. His pride told him not to pick it up. His self-esteem hit rock bottom. But reason and reality corrected him. Pride and self-esteem don’t pay the bills. When his hand reached for the floor, frustration surged. Yet, as soon as he picked up the crumpled bills, an overwhelming emptiness swept over him.
‘Yeah. This is how it’s supposed to be.’
He endured. Woojin accepted the perpetual, subdued persecution, as he always did. After picking up all the money, he left the pizza shop. From behind, he could hear the sound of the pizza shop owner spitting on the ground. He pretended not to notice.
Kang Woojin started walking again.
After a few steps, he came across a store with multiple TVs displayed. On the screen, a woman in a suit was speaking.
-[“Control your anger, uncontrolled anger explosions are an illness. It needs treatment. Anger becomes the source of many problems.”]
The woman, dressed elegantly in a suit, seemed to be some kind of expert in psychology. And it felt as though her words were directed at Woojin right now, at ‘Henry Gordon’. Woojin, filled with a sense of loss, muttered to himself as he walked on.
“Right. If I’d gotten angry, I wouldn’t have gotten any money.”
Suddenly, a light drizzle began to fall. People without umbrellas started running. But Woojin?
“……”
He simply pulled the worn hood of his jacket over his head. As he stood at a crosswalk, a bus came to a stop in front of him. In the bus window, he saw a child smiling brightly. Woojin forced a smile in return. It didn’t last long. The child’s mother quickly covered the child’s eyes with her hand. Woojin’s smile disappeared as quickly as it came.
It was because he had grown used to excessive prejudice, repeated over and over again.
In his head, various words swirled. Endure, tolerate, ignore, move on, close your eyes.
Suppress the anger.
“I need…… to find a job.”
At home, his mentally unwell younger sister was waiting for him. He had no time to rest. Frustration soon bubbled to the surface.
The rain began to pour harder.
-Shaa!
Woojin grabbed a newspaper from a trash can in front of him. He was about to use it to cover his head but paused when he saw the headline on the front page.
『Bank robbers who had been missing found unconscious in front of a police station! Who is the hidden hero?』
‘Hidden hero’. Recently, articles like this had been popping up often. Soon, Woojin let out a small scoff and threw the newspaper back into the trash can.
Hero. It sounds nice. But even heroes only exist because there are villains, right?
When he thought about it, how many villains had Kang Woojin encountered just today? But Woojin hadn’t been able to take down a single one. Why? He arrived at home. A tiny place with just one small room and a bathroom. His younger sister, lying on the worn-out bed, was asleep. Woojin pulled the blanket over her and went into the bathroom. He looked into the mirror.
“……”
He tried smiling again. But for some reason, anger surged inside him. His face smiled, but his chest burned with fury. I didn’t do anything. So why? Why only me? The kindness he had shown the world all day was nothing more than a defense mechanism for survival.
Woojin clenched his fist.
On the verge of an outburst, he almost shattered the mirror with his fist. But he held back, as always. Instead,
-Smash!
He threw the soap onto the floor. That was his limit.
A few days later.
Kang Woojin’s view changed once again. Now he was jumping around at the entrance of a large mart’s parking lot, holding an advertising board. He had found a new job.
However, his appearance and attire were unusual.
Lightly reddish hair, a face painted white, sharp red triangles drawn around his eyes, and thick lips painted to resemble a long, exaggerated smile. His clothes were that of a clown through and through.
The ‘Pierrot’ shaking the advertising board.
As he was energetically shaking the board, a familiar male voice called out to him from behind.
“Hey- Henry.”
The ‘Pierrot’, Henry Gordon, or Kang Woojin turned his head. A burly man was chuckling. It was the owner of the pizza shop he had quit.
“Hehe, it’s really you, huh? Hey, Henry. With your slightly hunched back, this look suits you perfectly.”
“……”
“Or is it because you’re so scrawny? Come on, dance. Dance! A ‘Pierrot’ is supposed to move the customers, isn’t it?”
Contempt, oppression, discrimination, prejudice, scorn. Perhaps even more. A vortex of vile sensations swirled around Kang Woojin. Anger surged. But what could he do about it? In the end, Woojin just stood there dumbly. The pizza shop owner chuckled for a few minutes before disappearing toward the mart.
The ‘Pierrot’, who had lowered the advertisement board, could only stare at his retreating back.
“……”
His expression was peculiar.
And then, on a night when the rain poured down.
The burly pizza shop owner was sitting alone in his shop, drinking beer while watching TV. It seemed like he had just finished wrapping up for the day.
-Rumble!
The sound of thunder mixed with the rain. At that moment, the door to the pizza shop creaked open. The pizza shop owner, slightly startled, turned his head. A figure drenched in rain, a ‘Pierrot’, stood there. As soon as he saw the ‘Pierrot’, the pizza shop owner immediately recognized who it was and jumped to his feet, shouting.
“Henry?! You bastard, what are you doing here!”
Simultaneously, thunder and lightning struck.
-Rumble!
And then, gunshots overlapped with the thunder.
-Bang! Bang!
The ‘Pierrot’, or Kang Woojin, stood there. In one hand, he held a gun. On the floor lay the pizza shop owner, sprawled out. Blood was slowly pooling on the ground. At this moment.
“……Ah.”
Kang Woojin regretted it. At the same time, he felt the anger he had been suppressing burst out in an instant, and oddly enough, his hunched shoulders straightened. So did his back.
Just then, lightning flashed.
Thanks to the lightning outside, the shadowy face of the ‘Pierrot’ became clearly visible. Though still wearing the face of a ‘Pierrot’, the rain had caused the red makeup around his eyes to streak downward.
At a glance, it looked like he was crying tears of blood, wailing in despair.
Kang Woojin laughed.
“Heheheh! Hahaha! Hahahahaha!”
It wasn’t forced. Then Woojin’s eyes caught something. It was one of the items that had fallen to the floor when the pizza shop owner collapsed. Among the various cards scattered on the floor, Woojin picked up one that had blood smeared on it.
“Hmm-”
On the card was a picture of a clown, or a ‘Pierrot’.
-‘JOKER’
How much time had passed?
Kang Woojin who had been living in the world of ‘Pierrot’ as Henry Gordon was now back to reality, inside a van. Snow was still falling heavily outside the window. Just like when Woojin had entered the Void Space, nothing had changed.
However.
‘Hoo- Feeling a bit stiff?’
After experiencing and carrying out the bizarre life of a villain, Woojin had gone through some extraordinary events. Or perhaps it would be better to say that he had just lived through the ‘origin story’ of a villain. If it weren’t for his concept, Woojin might have been grinning from ear to ear right now.
It was because the lingering traces of the clown, the ‘Pierrot’, remained.
But as a seasoned veteran of the Void Space, Woojin erased the mania and madness he had briefly embraced. Then, maintaining his poker face, he looked down at the ‘Pierrot’ script resting on his lap.
‘This is, how should I put it- the script is interesting, but experiencing it directly is on a different level?’
Because the script itself had numerous hidden emotions, and subtext was scattered throughout the dialogue and stage directions. Subtext was like a secret landmine left behind by the writer or screenwriter. It carried the true meaning behind the lines or directions.
The protagonist, Henry Gordon, was peculiar in his own right.
At the beginning, he was feeble, with low self-esteem, a textbook example of a weakling. But the anger and fury building up inside him were more intense than anyone else’s. However, as the story progressed, ‘Henry Gordon’ became saturated with madness and pleasure, leaving no room for anger or fury.
After reading (experiencing) ‘Henry Gordon’ multiple times, Woojin thought to himself.
”Freedom of the role’ and ‘role synthesis’- I could probably use ‘Beastification’ too.’
He was referring to unleashing the villain from ‘Pierrot’ into reality.
‘Or maybe other abilities too. Hmm, this could be fun.’
Of course, in an upgraded state.
Meanwhile, in LA.
While it was morning in Korea, it was afternoon in LA. Among the bustling streets of Hollywood, which were several times noisier than Korea, in a medium-sized conference room at ‘Columbia Studios’, where ‘Pierrot’ was currently a hot topic, Director Ahn Ga-bok and an interpreter sat on one side, while executives from ‘Columbia Studios’ sat on the other. A total of four people. Director Ahn Ga-bok had been attending to some work at a nearby set when he was suddenly summoned.
Thus.
‘What’s this? Their expressions are… serious.’
He glanced at the expressions of the ‘Columbia Studios’ executives seated across from him, including the bald man who was deeply involved in the movie ‘Pierrot’. Their demeanor was calm yet solemn, giving off the impression of a secret meeting.
At about this point.
“Director.”
The bald man, one of the executives who had been speaking, handed a transparent file to Director Ahn Ga-bok.
“There’s something you need to be aware of.”
“……”
Director Ahn Ga-bok, the director of ‘Pierrot’, took the transparent file without a word. At the same time, the bald executive spoke again.
“‘Pierrot’ will have a title change before its release.”
“…Title change?”
“Yes. It’s similar but slightly different. As you’ll see, it will be changed to ‘Pierrot: The Birth of a Villain’.”
The bald executive, who was announcing the new title ‘Pierrot: The Birth of a Villain’, continued.
“And the movie ‘Pierrot: The Birth of a Villain’ will serve as the starting point for a major project we’ve been secretly planning and preparing for quite some time. A hero series where multiple movies are organically connected. In other words, a cinematic universe. The male lead of ‘Pierrot: The Birth of a Villain’, Henry Gordon is.”
He spoke plainly and with conviction.
“Going to be the first villain character to introduce our cinematic universe to the world.”