The Screenplay

EXT. THE WAITING ROOM —

GORED MIDNIGHT

Screen fades to a bedroom past Vantablack.
Enter Narrator, 18ish, looks like a snake,
sounds more like a chain-smoker. Dim lights
sketch the crudest contours of his face.

NARRATOR

I have a recurring daydream
of performing at my high
school talent show, playing
Creep, acoustic with gui­tar. I don’t sing, and I
certainly can’t play the
guitar [laughs]. Nope, it’s
unrelated, except I was
hoping my fantasy would
reveal something that I’ve
yet to understand in
myself. This is the story
of how it really happened.
By this point, after going
to bed, odds were I’d wake
up here [gestures to noth­ing in particular], an
abstract preparatory cap­sule. My sci-fi tomorrow.

Close up of Narrator’s face as he scrunches
his nose. Pursed lips delay a smile.

NARRATOR (cont’d)

I thought that a film would
make you feel more comfort­able. My funds are a little
low right now, so this
screenplay must do. We are
in ‘the flat,’ an abstruse
zone that you might call,
‘the lightshow,’ ‘our
cybernetic Eden,’ ‘the
screen outside of time,’
etc. By ‘we’ I mean my
grandiloquent self, IU, and
the rest of you.

IU

Ah [waves hesitantly].

IU, age unclear, floats just behind our nar­rator. Her skin is practically translucent
though not ectoplasmic. The diffuse light of
an angel. One gets the feeling that she has
not asked to be placed here. She looks
almost like a projection or hologram, not
in the infinite frames of reality, chasing
~24 FPS.

NARRATOR

She speaks English here.

IU

Yes, and I can speak for
myself. [Narrator opens his
mouth] I’ve been traveling
[Narrator closes mouth].
You will recognize by now
my independence from him.
We were just hanging out,
as good friends do, as
they listen.

The narrator swoons, choreographed with the
camera as it pans up and over him, shifting
to her. IU is holding a mic in her right
hand. She crosses her arms, then with her
left hand feigns a mirror, to which she
blows a kiss.

NARRATOR

We love each other—

IU

Like siblings [cueing an
uncanny laugh track]. Do
you remember, for example,
the time we first met?

NARRATOR

Are you kidding? Like it
was seconds ago.

FADE IN WHITE:

We see a warm, sunny South Korea titled
‘Gyeonggi Province.’ A girl is dancing in a
pleated gray skirt overdraped by a sweater,
outlined by a featureless, fake blue sky.
Her black heels contrast with the floury
complexion of her skin. She performs like an
automaton given the gift of life.

Two equally rendered 4k lenses capture one
double-bonded, dovetailing vision, catheter­ized between realities. These cameras, by
some magic of editing, successfully portal
from a closeup of IU to the flat of the mon­itor, the narrator’s bedroom, and hands, and
then nose, yet further until we’ve com­pletely assumed the narrator’s POV, and
still out to one more screen, and your sur­roundings, and your hands, and the binocular
disparity of your nose, lips, and lashes.
You rewind to relive the effects of such a
stunning transition. You think it’s strange
that dreams have the impression of a com­plete world while you’re in them.

IU

Here I am at my
own audition.

In the style of found footage, flash cut to
IU auditioning for JYP Entertainment. She
has a bob, a short-sleeved checkered shirt,
a cross necklace centered right of her
nametag, and a voice disturbingly mature for

her 13 years of age. You search for the
video on YouTube and use the description
to confirm it. A second, older IU
runs voiceover.

IU (cont’d)

I was rejected from JYP
entertainment. It was a
disaster, and possibly the
best thing to have ever
happened to me. Aww, look
at me there. Oh. I was so
cute [laughs], so young,
and so eager to prove
that I wasn’t. I can’t
remember what she was
thinking anymore.

NARRATOR

Watching this now, I feel—I
love her more than I love
myself, and so it hurts all
the more. It’s overwhelming
proof of the unfairness of
life. And why one should
never give up, and one
should never believe that
suffering has no meaning.
Maybe she required a final
disgrace to enact her
vision. And the millions
who’ve watched her videos,

transfiguring their debase­ment, the cessation of
childhood nightmares,
all those sacrifices
validating—

IU

My fans would say I
deserved a contract then
and there. JYP claims his
heart broke upon seeing the
lost audition tape. I know
I was talented, but so are
many kids. I would get
lucky later. Really there
was no rush. I wish I
could’ve told her that.

NARRATOR

Humility is her greatest
strength—If she’s just like
us, then she’s saved us. If
I can love her, then what’s
stopping me from loving
myself? If she suffers,
couldn’t I appreciate the
same fate?

[Lost Puppy plays; IU sings the hook
with IU]

IU

I think the sound of dis­tortion is beautiful.
This song is special to
me. I wrote it to help
soothe myself.

‘Ooh please look at me/
please gush over me/ I
don’t know my way back.’
Eventually I’ll be replaced
by someone younger and
prettier. I hope to have
the strength to accept when
I’ve overstayed my welcome.

Photographs of IU and the narrator as chil­dren flit past the screen. They are distin­guishable, though both nostalgically deteri­orated, like memories ought to be. IU as a
baby wrapped in white blankets beside the
narrator thin and hairless. IU in a dance
troop sea of blue floral dresses, golden
pom-poms, and green headbands. The
narrator’s toothless grin decelerating on a
red slide. One family shot, and another
that, with its differences, doesn’t seem
too different. Without context they were
only children experiencing the magic of
growing up.

IU (cont’d)

I used to hang my fan mail
on my bedroom walls. My
fans were the most adorable
—like children? Shh, don’t
tell them. It’s one thing
to appreciate their intima­cies, and another to
request them. [She becomes
stern, then sings] Please
keep the li-li-line [she
laughs, frowning].

IU steps in front of the camera and peers
inside. Her eyebrows are raised, her
face expectant.

IU (cont’d)

I’ve been very, very…
very tired recently. So has
my team [the shuffling of
feet around her become
audible]. We all work dili­gently, I think sometimes
the credit doesn’t, what’s
the word, pollinate? Is
that a word that translates
well [laughs]. They’re not
going to see—so cut it then
[laughing]. We have enough!
Hahaha [she’s covering her
mouth], we’ve all been
very tired since the last

tour. I don’t say this as
an excuse.

I would like to be trans­parent with you, my fans. I
think I’m going to be tak­ing a break soon. So. It’s
a short break, I promise
it’s only a short goodbye.

FRIEND 1

Annnd cut. Got it? Yes! Yes
[high-fives become hugs in
the background]. Someone
fetch her a chocolate. [IU
offscreen corrects it to
‘chocolates’]. Yes,
chocolates.

IU

I can redo the end. The
cuts will be awkward. Do
you remember, I used to say
‘Uaenas I love you…’ [IU
stares into the camera] I
love you. Uaenas! I love
you. You-ay-nahs—

FRIEND 1

It’s getting late. They
wouldn’t want you to shoot
things again—and your mis­takes are cuter. You did
very well.

IU

You’ll cut it out! But will
you cut it out though?

FRIEND 1

I’ll ask. [IU observes
them, revealing nothing.]

How big of a deal is it for
you? If it’s not that big—
we’ve found that these mis­takes, they don’t do what
we once thought. I can find
the numbers and show them
to you.

Do you know that your
bloopers get some of our
biggest views? And bloopers
aren’t for composing.

IU appears lost in thought. We are to wonder
if anyone is honest with her, or rather, if
her friends—the employees—have the same con­cerns as her.

IU

I believe you, though I
must confess that I’m con­fused about why they like
my mistakes. I don’t want
them to waste time on
my behalf.

The company didn’t train me
for this. I don’t know, I
was trained for something
else. What if they trust us
too much?

A team appears and removes her microphone,
and the audio warbles against her clothes.
They take off her make-up and costume with
such dexterity that it’s as if the cameras
were still rolling, and this was a part of
her glamour. She says something that the
audio doesn’t pick up.

MANAGER

Go home and rest. You have
nothing scheduled for what,
the next nine days? When
are you ever getting a
chance like that. [IU opens
her mouth] Uhp up op [he
places an index finger on
his mouth]. Nothing could
be better than resting for
the next project. It’s for
them too [this time he
winks at the camera that
they shot with].

IU

It helps me relax to do a
good job [she is faintly
audible on the manager’s

mic]. The people need to
know. If trusting them
means trusting you… Okay.
I’m going now.

I will rest, I swear.

FRIEND 2

Thank you. You’ve provided
us with vacation too.

They usher her down a white hall. Someone
hands IU chocolates; she responds with a
partial bow. The door opens to almost dusk—
or maybe early morning. The driver helps her
into a car.

IU

If you need me [she yawns]—

MANAGER

That is the point. We need
you to rest. Maybe you can
dream up more songs.

The room was dark, with a glare shaping the circular window and glazing off an unsounding piano. Shadows licked a black felted couch while light caught dust as if it were a butterfly mounted in time.

A fan ticked unevenly, and a wet compression was faintly audi­ble. This other sound was the percussion, maybe, of a shower head changing pressure levels. But the shower wasn’t running, and the hiss broke with a coughing force. A dark mass roused on the bed, only it had never slept.

She thought that crying sounds too much like laughing—that it must’ve been so by design. Sometimes, at the conclusion of a tour, she returned to her apartment and cried. The ritual seemed neither odd nor explainable to her. Storing unnecessary memories was the fuel that kept her going, and she would exhaust them like a sickness. When there’s no time. And then suddenly there’s so much of it that the body curls in pain, as it was doing now, as if weeks of tensional debt were being offloaded. Maybe the greater mystery was how her body knew when to break.

A fog hung across her face, shimmering under phantom lights of a stage sharing confetti, and then it was all gone. Her curse was her gift was her constant inward turning. Long ago, she had to conquer reality. Now, past and future performances leaked com­pulsively from her. This was why she couldn’t sleep at night; she had to learn how to will the world back from her own idea of it. Her house would finally belong to her when she moved out, only then could she stop processing the performance.

One moment she hated it all. She wished she could become someone else while IU continued living. She had complex fan‐

tasies of replacing herself with an identical double, wondering whether her fans would be offended if they ever found out.

She cried because it felt deliriously euphoric to cry. She had discovered this years before she’d ever dared to imagine the possi­bility of her own fame. And she liked crying to herself because it wouldn’t be shared, and so she could feel it in its entirety and think of nothing else, not even herself. Even she had secrets. That she wasn’t able to go out before a live audience and explain to them this joy of tears was one of the many truths she’d been forced to yield under contract. Proverbial contract, a moral soul-bond to society. Like the belief that there was no such thing as an appro­priate compensation for one’s job; she accepted her wealth with reluctant surrender. And when she splurged on luxuries (such as this apartment), it was because she needed to look the part, for too frequent donations, however well-meaning, would surely be inter­preted as a bid for praise, while splendor infused her art with a cer­tain human credibility, and it was her art, not her wealth, where she could give back most in the world.

Or take her unshakeable intuition that every human has a soul, and that each soul must be immortal by virtue of its obvious brightness, and her songs were a call which could rouse these souls to share in one-another’s awareness. She didn’t often ruminate on how her successes castigated those without, nor would it have been appropriate to vocalize unbecoming critiques given her role as an idol. She was not an existentialist, even if her favorite novel was The Brothers Karamazov, which it was.

So she cried alone in her room, feeling achingly close to all those people who in her day to day, given a million reasons, she

couldn’t perform the myriad momentary proofs of love. There was a gift in allowing others the freedom to think of her not as a person. Artified, a mutusocial activity yet to be rendered by science or systematicity yet nonetheless appreciated by those millions; she gave them what she learned they wanted.

And now, as was her right, she could cry alone to no one’s cognizance.

Her pillow tasted of wet cotton, salty with snot and curiously tepid, resurrecting the old flavor of her bath towel after chewing on it as a child. Sliding its ribboned edges between her lips, she had a passing, hysterical thought that she was considered beauti­ful. If someone saw her sucking on her pillow as she cried, they might understand it as a pose ready for modeling when really it was raw and ugly. Which was a pity—the whole not being ugly, the unrequited need to be as outwardly unattractive as she some­times felt. In truth, occasionally she would catch herself sitting for an imagined audience, sensitive to her most flattering positions, posing alone.

“Hello? Hello, brother. Haha how are you! My favorite, my demon in rebellion, my scholar and soldier and saint. My little adult brother, I’m missing you. I’m well. I thought I’d give you a call now that I’m on break. You’ll like my last project—I would say if you watched my acting anymore! No, I know. Ha, a hard one. I think… It seems it’s been a much harder time for everyone than expected. I thought that after the long break because of the virus we would all be refreshed. It seems, even years later, that peo­ple are both more tired now and less open to the possibility of doing those things they need to do. Yes, I’m talking about all that

you do for me. If only you could get on stage and dance in my dresses, that would be so much better! Haha, I think they would like it more than seeing my old face…”

“I am, yes, I’m getting a little worn out—I’ve done this now for the majority of my life! Then I remind myself of what I get to do. Yes, also a bit tired of being on the move. I’ve been thinking about getting a cat again, though for now it would be too cruel. And maybe I will finally get around to decorating these walls which protect me. Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker. Can you hear that? I’ve gotten better at chopping. Maybe someday I’ll be marriageable. Onions and carrots. Nowadays my motivations for getting out of bed are, one, proving that I’m a capable older sister so that my brother doesn’t have to worry I’m becoming a spinster. And, two, not embarrassing my brother with the upcoming project. You know I’m like a spy with confidentiality, eventually it will be released—for you not to watch it. I can say this: the direc­tor is one of the most mysterious men I’ve ever met. Hahaha not in an attractive way, trust me. He’s a foreigner, I shouldn’t say more. Changing the subject…

Oh, Jong-hoon… I must say… I think I believe in magic. No, listen for a second. A kind of magic. So I’ve been thinking of an idea for a song, and you’re going to be the first to hear it. As I’ve continued my career, I find myself drawn to alternatives of the love song. It’s not that love songs no longer interest me, rather, there are many kinds of love worth exploring, like the love between siblings! However, this one is about two people across time—don’t laugh! Okay, are you comfortable? Now close your eyes.

First there’s a famous scientist, Copernicus, back when every­one used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe, and he’s a madman singing to the sky. Yes, about our smallness. His is a love maybe of how truths are necessary though painful messages to bring us together. And then it skips to the present day. I’ve been thinking about who’s perspective. I keep imagining a boy across the ocean. He looks up in America to try and see all the stars, but he can’t see any.

It’s going to be a sad song—it’s like we’re still pretending the Earth’s the sun or something with all the light we shoot out to— sorry, into, you see what I mean? Into space and, you know that it’s poetic that we struggle to see the stars because of all the lights we turn on for ourselves. And how strange it is that we’ve made the sky so bright that it only looks dark. So the boy travels out to the middle of nowhere, and it’s a cold cool moonless night, and he realizes, ‘Oh? We’ve almost forgotten the stars. And all this time, I’m a part of something so much greater, and yet, I’m nothing…’

Oh, I’m okay, just sniffles hahaha. The thought of stars makes me shiver. I haven’t seen them in a long time, not since the weather was nice in Jeju. I haven’t figured out how to bring this back to the scientist, except that I want the scientist’s discovery to be the less severe of the two, and maybe I’ll write about the short­ness of time, or the courage to disagree with society in search of what is right, or how music is like a spell or a dream that connects all of these things: space, time, loneliness, and revelations of light.

Anyways, well. I’ll keep working on it. I’m glad you picked up. I know you’re very busy. And that you’re okay. You can keep laughing at me, but I do think it’s magic—that’s what you’re sup‐

posed to tell me! Because I have to believe it. You know, that’s my secret, no one else has someone grounding them like me with you. There are no other brothers in the world, you are unique, you are special and one-of-a-kind. Take care please. I’m always missing you.”

She finished eating, then stretched and cleaned her face before bed. She set two white pillows off to the side, where she’d crook her neck—she needed both pillows layered below a soft blanket to sleep—and massaged her sore neck once again while humming the start of maybe a new melody, playing with G minor.

“When I dream of the stars/ When I can’t find them/ Why am I close to them now?/ They’re closer to me, mm hmhm mm, they’re closer to me… they shouldn’t be/ Closer to me, than me to you.”