Most people thought he'd never excel into anything special. Even following the plastic surgery and all of the exhausting auditions that finally started to lead somewhere, the military service and the comeback - regardless of what he did, there were always voices claiming that he was too short, too thin or too average-looking for Korea to let him into their hearts. There were so many young men out there with better looks or more talent, they said. Most of those young men used to be bullies, and Joon-ah used to be the boy they bullied.
He had been standing in a hallway on the third floor of Jangchung middle school for boys, spitting his own teeth out in a trash bin, while awaiting a beating by the head principle. He had been running until he threw up, hunted down through his neighbourhood by a hoard of relentless young boys. His mother had to chase those boys off with a broom. Afterwards, she scolded him. Joon-ah was a child that not even a mother was capable of loving, and he accepted that as a none-debatable fact. Looking at himself in the mirror, there was no question why. His face was unsymmetric, he had an overbite and his default facial expression was one of bashfulness and anxiety.
Joon-ah's grandmother sometimes used to tell him that he had beautiful eyes. Even as a small child, he clinged to those tiny words of encouragement.
Deep within him, an impossible dream was slowly awakening. He wanted to perform on stage, as a singer or actor. Because of Joon-ah's decent voice and natural sense of comedic timing, his mother finally decided to take his college funds and invest them in a series of surgical procedures, so that his face would become sufferable to look at.
"Joon-ah, you can be charming and funny when you want to", she told her son. "You probably shouldn't work with numbers or with people, or do any other sort of honest job. Just keep being funny and embarassing, and make a career out of it."
The fact that his grandmother agreed, finally convinced Joon-ah to start going to real auditions.
But even though his destiny was decided by two women, he never managed to grasp the ways of women. Those he encountered either found him unattractive for being short, or they would rather be attracted to his stage persona, Goodwin, than with Joon-ah himself.
Of course, Joon-ah is a very average guy, whereas Goodwin is cocky, loud and confident. The things that Joon-ah shy away from or don't have the energy to do, Goodwin will take on with a grin on his face. When Joon-ah stays at home, smokes too much and drinks soju in order to fall asleep, Goodwin will set out to hike and camp, drink with his friends and won't fall asleep until dawn. Preferably by the campfire in the arms of a young lady.
No wonder Goodwin got all the gigs, too. He ended up a permanent cast member of a variety show, Hazy Dayz, filming two days per week. Sometimes in a studio with guests and crazy games, sometimes on the road, driven around the country together with his five cast colleauges and a huge camera team.
Things were going great for Goodwin. Joon-ah on the other hand, got to release a song here and there or were casted to the occational play. Sometimes he managed to meet women who were actually interested in him instead of Goodwin. Being Joon-ah turned out to be... not half-bad. And at the end of the day, he realized that him and Goodwin were the same person. Goodwin picked up on things and allowed Joon-ah to thrive. He became a good lover and learned about fashion, wine and food. He even ended up learning a little about friendship, which ultimately allowed him to show bits and pieces of his true personality to his variety show cast colleauges.
But women kept coming and going. Just like Joon-ah's mother once pushed him into fame and then turned her back on him, the women in his life insisted on a lot of things only to quietly leave in the end.
Maybe this was Joon-ah's and Goodwin's destiny, to live as scarred bachelors together, right until the end of the party. Or so he thought.
Senghi was 19 years old the first time she arrived in Korea. She went there to try and find out more about the birth country of her father. She stayed a little too long, and returned home with a broken soul that didn't belong neither in the place she left behind, nor where she was headed. Korea traumatized her, because she found the piece of her puzzle that she always felt had been missing. But even in Korea she had felt lost, like a little kid who gets stuck at the mart's toy shelf, and whose mother is getting more and more furious while looking.
She had no business there, but she belonged there. How was that possible?
Growing up, Senghi was constantly told she was funny (well, for a girl at least). The classic narrative of "the clown crying behind the mask" applied to her well - between pranking friends and being a nuisance, she shed a lot of tears in private. She was contemplating the possibility of being trans, of maybe wanting to live as a boy, one day. The next day, she convinced herself that she was mentally ill. When she finally got a chance to leave for Korea, she simply had to, just to get a break from her busy thoughts and step out of herself for a while.
Seoul swallowed her whole. The steep hills, the weird mix of ugly and beautiful buildings, the modern and the old parading hand in hand along Han river, painting the water surface with neon lights and the tears of workers on strike. It was all but depressing, and still, an intense awakening. It was the taste of tteokbokki, jeon and japchae. It was the scent of thick, honey-dripping pancakes prepared on a gas flame by the road. She would've stayed there forever, but she ended up homesick.
And when she came home, she got homesick all over again - missing Seoul and Korea.
Acting on loneliness and lack of direction, Senghi started dating early on. From age fourteen up to thirty-one, she gathered an impressive amount of ex-boyfriends. That is, until she had enough and decided to stop engaging with men, returned to Korea and actually pursued a career as a screenplay writer.
Senghi became quite successful, for a short while. But success is perishable, and as it ages, it becomes more of a liability than an asset to once have had it.
Anyway - that's how they eventually ended up in the same office, on that winter's day of 2023.