By Zephyria 
It usually takes four or five years for a film to be made. The mental strain during that time is beyond description.
In the process, one often receives subtle help from various places, and when these helpful people later push their actors, asking for just one favor, one has no choice but to cast them.
In this process, removing already cast actors happens frequently. Even after filming has begun, there are actors who quit citing sudden traffic accidents or going abroad to study, so changes at the casting stage were nothing.
“Will you be okay?” Park Hae-jun spoke in a slightly kinder voice. And he lightly placed his hand on Lee A-gon’s shoulder. “Don’t worry too much. Just do your best. Understood?”
Lee A-gon slowly raised his gaze from the hand on his shoulder to Park Hae-jun’s face. Staring at Park Hae-jun with an unwavering gaze without blinking, Lee A-gon suddenly made a sad expression.
“I’m not okay.”
“Lee A-gon.”
“I don’t know if I can do well. I’m worried.”
“Oh dear.” Park Hae-jun clicked his tongue briefly.
As if it weren’t enough that he was nervous about his first shoot, after being openly asked by the director to step down, Lee A-gon’s confidence seemed completely shattered.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do fine.”
“But the director just…”
“Don’t listen. Ignore it.” Park Hae-jun cupped Lee A-gon’s face with both hands and tilted it toward himself. “Listen. You can do well enough. I’ll watch you from here. I’ll be watching how well my Lee A-gon does.”
“Hyung.”
Lee A-gon looked at Park Hae-jun with eyes swimming with emotion. Park Hae-jun gently bumped his forehead against Lee A-gon’s and then pulled away.
He mouthed “Fighting” and clenched his fist in encouragement, and Lee A-gon finally smiled.
“Actor, we’re getting ready to start. You’ve reviewed the script thoroughly, right?” The floor director approached and asked.
Lee A-gon ignored him and continued to look only at Park Hae-jun.
“Actor? Aren’t you Actor Lee A-gon?”
“Yes, that’s right. Lee A-gon, go with him.”
“You need to get your makeup done. Please come this way.”
The floor director gestured to follow and walked away.
Park Hae-jun gave a small “Fighting” once more to the hesitant Lee A-gon, and only then did Lee A-gon reluctantly follow the floor director.
“Every End of the World” was a zombie apocalypse story, a Korean-style disaster drama series with melodramatic elements about paternal love.
After South Korea is destroyed by zombies, a father and daughter appear in Busan. They are looking for tickets to Anrakdo. Anrakdo was the only zombie-free shelter in Korea. The father and daughter had come all the way to Busan based on that rumor.
After the zombie outbreak, there was no longer law and order in the world. Honest people died, and only the unscrupulous survived. To send his young daughter to the shelter, the father did not hesitate even to kill.
To get tickets, one needed not money but food and necessities. Among them, medicine was the most precious.
The father enters a hospital teeming with zombies to obtain medicine. After much hardship, he successfully brings back the medicine, but while the father was away, the daughter was bitten by a zombie.
When bitten near the head or heart, the transformation happens immediately. The daughter was bitten on the ankle. The time left until the daughter becomes a zombie is about 24 hours. The daughter cries and tells him to abandon her, but the father cannot give up on his daughter.
“Let’s go to Anrakdo. Everything will be resolved then. They say there’s medicine in Anrakdo. If we go there, I can save you.”
The survivors mock the father, “Anrakdo doesn’t exist. It’s a government lie. They spread such false rumors because they don’t know what people would do without hope. So give up. Your daughter will eventually become a zombie.”
After beating up the man who said such things, the father returns to the hideout.
But when he returns to the hideout, his daughter is gone. Leaving only a note asking him not to look for her, the daughter has disappeared.
This is when Lee A-gon’s character appears. Lee A-gon plays a pleasure-seeking serial killer who, unlike other people, cannot bear the thrill of this zombie outbreak situation.
In the original world, he was a serial killer. Just before being arrested by the police, the world collapsed, and he quickly adapted to the changed world.
To him, zombies and humans were not very different. He repeatedly captured female zombies, brought them home, and tortured them to death in various ways.
However, zombies were no fun because they didn’t die even when strangled or drowned. They didn’t scream or beg for their lives like real people.
Then, a woman catches the killer’s eye. She is infected with the zombie virus but not yet a zombie. So she still has enough intelligence to feel fear, scream, and beg for her life. The killer captures the woman and takes her home.
The killer’s house is crawling with captured zombies. They crawl on the floor with their entrails spilled out, howling toward living people.
Please don’t do this. The daughter pleads with tears, but her tears only excite the killer more. The killer locks the daughter in a prison and turns on a video camera. It was time to play with a fun body that wouldn’t die even if killed.
“Boom shadow is in the frame. Please lift it.”
“Props team, the iron bars here won’t close.”
“Going for a shot test!”
“Please standby.”
Before the world ended, the killer used his identity as a medical student to lure women, bring them to his hideout, and repeatedly murder them. The house contains tools used for murder, from scalpels to axes, and zombies are in large dog cages surrounding the area.
Lee A-gon, having finished makeup, appeared wearing a blood-splattered white doctor’s coat. With his disheveled hair and glasses, he looked like a mad scientist.
“All standby.” The director shouted into the speaker.
The assistant director called out the scene number, cut, and take number, and soon after, clack, the slate was hit.
“Hello.”
The killer greeted the daughter with a gentle smile. His face with a kind smile was so friendly that the daughter did not understand for a while what had happened to her.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“…Yes.”
The killer offered the daughter a drink. The daughter absent-mindedly takes the cup, takes a sip, and then hesitates.
“What’s wrong? Not to your taste?”
“What is this?”
“Cerebrospinal fluid.”
The killer answers sweetly. The daughter looks up at the killer with a dazed expression. The killer tilts his head.
“Why? Doesn’t it taste good? That’s strange. Other zombies all liked it. You guys love human brains the most, don’t you?”
The cup falls from the daughter’s hand and breaks.
The killer expresses regret. “Oh dear. What a waste of something precious.”
“Who, who are you?”
“Hmm. Me? Don’t move. Be careful there.”
The killer, who was picking up the broken cup with halfhearted movements, raises his head and stares at the daughter. As the smile disappears from his face that had been gently smiling, the daughter feels chills all over her body.
A stare like that of a wild animal. Without even murderous intent, with a gaze like looking at meat for sale, the killer looked at the daughter.
“I am King Shahryar.”
The killer placed his hand on the daughter’s neck. And he pressed the daughter’s neck, which had developed disgusting veins as the zombification progressed.
“The king who kills a woman every night.”
A hand holding a scalpel flies toward the daughter. The daughter’s scream echoes, and her widened pupils are shown in extreme close-up.
The scene ended there. But the director didn’t say cut. Silence followed for a while.
Finally, an assistant director who had been watching nervously said in an awkward voice, “It’s over…”
Only then did the director call cut and beckoned Lee A-gon over. Lee A-gon approached the director with a timid expression.
“About the part where you say you’re King Shahryar. We need to go again. It should sound like the delusion of a basement-dwelling loser, but right now it fits you too well. Instead…”
She passionately explained while pointing at the monitor, and Lee A-gon quietly listened to her words. Whether he understood or not, there was little reaction.
“He’s better than I expected.”
“If he could act this well, why did he behave like that before?”
“Anyway, it’s good that he’s doing well…”
The staff dispersed, murmuring. Until then, only Park Hae-jun remained silent. Park Hae-jun stared at Lee A-gon with a dumbfounded expression before hastily rubbing his face with his hands.
“We’ll go once more!”
“Please get ready.”
The scripter radioed the filming team. They seemed to be planning to shoot the same scene again. Lee A-gon, having finished his conversation with the director, entered the set. The actress playing the daughter also sat down in the same place. Soon, the slate was hit with a clack.
“Action.”
With the director’s shout, Lee A-gon approached the daughter with even more gentle gestures than before.
He wiped the moaning daughter’s face with a handkerchief and asked, “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
As he asked this, in Lee A-gon’s left hand was a cup containing cerebrospinal fluid.