Chapter 4

Unlike the laptops of the future, Yoon Seul turned on the clunky laptop with its thick bezel and searched online for the drama competition hosted by DBS Broadcasting Station.

When she checked the deadline, it was next Friday.

In the past, one week before the deadline for the DBS drama competition, Min Sara had taken Yoon Seul’s laptop without saying a word. She later returned it damaged, claiming she had gotten into a minor accident.

The laptop wouldn’t even turn on, and Sara claimed that the USB drive Yoon Seul had plugged in for backup had been destroyed so completely that there wasn’t even a trace of it left.

That was how Yoon Seul’s chance at the DBS drama competition was lost for nothing.

But one month later, when the winning entry was announced, Sara’s name was displayed prominently.

[Grand Prize]

Insomnia – Min Sara

Only then did Yoon Seul realize that Sara had deliberately stolen her work.

Yoon Seul could never forgive her for taking away her chance to achieve her dream.

When Yoon Seul contacted the broadcasting station and said she would reveal the truth, it was Jung-hee who stopped her.

She tearfully begged Yoon Seul to let it go, saying that if the truth came out, Sara’s award would not only be revoked, but they would also have to pay damages.

Unable to refuse Jung-hee’s desperate pleas, Yoon Seul had no choice but to remain silent.

However, there was no way Sara, who had won with stolen work, could properly write the rest of the drama.

‘Yoon Seul, can’t you help Sara just this once? It would be such a waste to throw it away like this. And it’s not just because of Sara. Mommy really wants to see a drama you wrote on television.’

After winning the competition, the copyright to Insomnia had already become the property of the broadcasting station and Min Sara.

Therefore, if Sara couldn’t write the drama, Insomnia would simply disappear without ever seeing the light of day.

‘Isn’t that better than having the work never see the light of day at all?’

After Jung-hee repeatedly persuaded her through tears, Yoon Seul had been forced to become Sara’s assistant writer and continue writing the drama.

“Haa…”

Yoon Seul shook her head vigorously, banishing the horrible memories from her mind.

With eyes that had turned cold, she opened the laptop and clicked on the Insomnia folder.

She quickly read through the synopsis and scripts.

The script on the screen was an early revision.

The version that had actually aired had been revised countless times over nearly a year of meetings with the broadcasting station’s producers and endless rounds of edits.

Fortunately, after returning to the past, the contents remained vividly preserved in her now-clear mind.

Yoon Seul spent the entire weekend rewriting Episodes 1 and 2 of Insomnia from scratch, even sacrificing her meal times to finish it.

Finally, she submitted the completed final version—not to the DBS drama competition, but to a storytelling competition hosted by Hansan Media, a subsidiary of Hansan Group.

At the same time, she uploaded the enormous amount of material for Insomnia, along with every backup file, to an online cloud service.

She left only the early revised version of the script on her laptop—the exact version Min Sara would steal.

“Steal it again this time, too, Min Sara.”

Bzzzz.

Yoon Seul’s eyes flew open in surprise at the vibrating alarm.

For an instant, she thought she could smell disinfectant.

Fear immediately slammed into her.

“Hah… hah… hah…”

Breathing heavily, Yoon Seul quickly turned her head and stared at the wallpaper pattern on the wall.

It wasn’t white.

Tiny square patterns were arranged at regular intervals across the wallpaper.

“It’s not a hospital. This is my room.”

Yoon Seul whispered to herself as though reassuring her own heart.

Only then did her heart, which had been pounding at a terrifying speed, gradually begin to calm down.

She reached out and turned off the vibration before looking at the screen of her phone.

[Is our Seul awake? There’s no fine dust today, and the weather is amazing. Have a good day at school and enjoy your day ♥]

It was a message from Tae-kyung.

In the past, he had sent her messages several times a day.

She had been deeply touched by how thoughtful he was, contacting her every single day despite being a busy working professional.

She had believed it was proof that he loved and cared for her.

But it had merely been bait to keep his fish from escaping his fishing grounds.

[Have a good day too, Tae-kyung ♥]

Yoon Seul furrowed her brows deeply and reluctantly pressed the send button.

She needed to appear to be the innocent Min Yoon Seul in Woo Tae-kyung’s palm.

“I’m off to school.”

After leaving the house, Yoon Seul took the bus to Korea University, her alma mater.

The campus she encountered again after traveling ten years back into the past was filled with all the fresh and youthful memories of her college days.

As she walked down the hallway toward her classroom, a familiar and welcome voice called out from a distance.

“Yoon Seul!”

The person running toward her with a bright smile was her classmate and best friend, Joo Ah-rin.

In the past, they had been close enough to openly show each other their writing and exchange honest feedback.

But their relationship had begun to deteriorate after Min Sara won the DBS competition.

Ah-rin had also been against Yoon Seul marrying Tae-kyung.

‘You’re only twenty-three. Aren’t you rushing into this? You’re going to spend the rest of your life with him, so you need to be careful.’

Back then, Yoon Seul had been blinded by Tae-kyung’s sweet lies and couldn’t hear what her friend was saying.

Eventually, she became completely estranged from Ah-rin after getting married.

Even so, Ah-rin had kept Yoon Seul’s request to remain silent about Sara’s actions until the very end.

Looking back, Ah-rin had been a precious friend who celebrated Yoon Seul’s happiness even more enthusiastically than Yoon Seul herself and cried alongside her whenever she was sad.

This time, I’ll never let go of that hand.

“Ah-rin!”

Yoon Seul stretched out her arm and waved enthusiastically.

She sat beside Ah-rin during the lecture and ate a school cafeteria meal with her in the noisy student hall.

It was the ordinary, dazzling daily life Yoon Seul had longed for while trapped inside the locked psychiatric ward.

“Yoon Seul, are you going to the special lecture today, too?”

“What special lecture?”

“It had something like ‘global platform’ in the title, but…”

“Ah…”

At this point in time, even the concept of global OTT platforms was unfamiliar.

People were skeptical about dramas and movies being released through mysterious platforms rather than terrestrial broadcasting stations or movie theaters.

Yoon Seul in her previous life had felt the same way.

Moreover, she had been distracted immediately after Tae-kyung’s proposal and had missed the special lecture entirely.

“This one! Look.”

Ah-rin showed her the announcement for the lecture on her phone.

[Storytelling in the Age of Global Platforms]

[Lecturer: Do Ian, CEO of Deflix Korea]

Do Ian.

Yoon Seul’s eyes widened when she saw the name.

She knew exactly who he was.

When she was a freshman, she had worked with him on a short film as part of a group assignment for the course Media Content Production Practice.

She had later used part of the script they wrote for that project as the movie-within-a-drama featured in Insomnia.

Perhaps that was why, the day after the first episode aired, she had received a call from an unfamiliar number.

He had been the only person besides Ah-rin who realized that Insomnia had actually been written by Yoon Seul.

—Wasn’t Insomnia written by you, Min Yoon Seul? If something unfair happened to you, tell me. I’ll help you.

He had reached out to help her, but Yoon Seul had lied and told him that everything had been her own choice.

Then he had coldly snapped at her.

—Min Yoon Seul, do you realize that what you’re doing is deceiving the viewers? Your writing seemed so pure, but you’ve gotten awfully tainted since I last saw you.

His harsh criticism had savagely scratched at her heart.

Several months later, he contacted her once again.

—If you’re seriously thinking about writing something as Min Yoon Seul, contact me. It’s a place you can trust.

He had tried to introduce her to a production company.

But Yoon Seul had been uncomfortable and uneasy knowing that he was aware of her disgraceful situation, so she had ultimately never contacted him.

Why did Do Ian reach out to me twice back then?

It was a question that had never occurred to her in her previous life.

Now, it suddenly came to mind.

“Yoon Seul, what are you spacing out about?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing.”

Yoon Seul shook off her thoughts at Ah-rin’s words and stood up.

After promising to attend the special lecture together, they headed toward their respective classrooms for their next classes.

Yoon Seul’s destination was the College of Humanities building.

Since her classroom was on the sixth floor, she approached the elevator and quickly stepped inside just before the doors closed.

I should have waited for the next one.

The reason she regretted getting on immediately was because of the man already inside.

Do Ian.

The man who had been occupying her thoughts just moments ago was standing right in front of her as if summoned by fate.

Nearly 190 centimeters tall, with an imposing physique and a body as solidly built as an athlete’s.

And a handsome face capable of immediately stealing attention even among a crowd of actors.

He looked exactly as he had when she was a freshman.

The only difference was that, unlike his casual appearance during his college days, he was now a fully grown twenty-eight-year-old man who looked perfectly suited to a modern, classic suit.

Without realizing it, Yoon Seul lowered her head and moved to a corner diagonally behind him.

Fortunately, Ian’s indifferent gaze remained fixed on the elevator’s floor indicator.

But when she thought about it, there was no way he could possibly remember her face.

He might remember her writing.

But her face?

Then—

“Ms. Min Yoon Seul?”