Outside Influences
The years that followed were not tragic.
Claire would remember that later.
Not everything important in life arrived through catastrophe or destiny or ancient dreams beneath black water. Sometimes life simply… continued.
School assignments.
Dance rehearsals.
Late-night ramen.
Inside jokes.
Missed flights.
Group chats exploding at three in the morning because Imogen refused to sleep like a normal person.
And somehow, in between all of it—
Claire grew up.
—
America suited her more than she expected.
Not because she stopped missing Korea.
She never did.
But because distance gave her room to breathe.
No temples.
No ceremonies.
No elders watching quietly from the corners of rooms.
Just crowded dance studios filled with mirrors and exhausted students stretching sore muscles while instructors shouted counts over blasting music.
Five, six, seven, eight—
Again.
Claire loved it.
Loved the ache in her legs after rehearsal.
Loved disappearing into choreography until her thoughts went quiet.
Loved music so loud it drowned out memory itself.
When she danced, resonance became rhythm instead of burden.
And that—
more than anything—
saved her.
—
“Your face is too serious.”
Claire looked up from the floor immediately.
Imogen stood above her holding two iced coffees and wearing oversized sunglasses indoors for absolutely no reason.
“We’ve discussed this,” Claire sighed. “You’re not famous enough yet to behave like that.”
Imogen gasped dramatically. “First of all, rude.”
She handed Claire a coffee anyway before collapsing beside her in the hallway outside rehearsal.
Around them, exhausted students sprawled across the corridor floor recovering between classes.
Claire leaned back against the wall gratefully.
Imogen studied her carefully over the rim of her drink.
“You stalked him again.”
Claire nearly choked.
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Claire looked away immediately, which only confirmed it further.
Imogen grinned victoriously.
“How’s Seoul’s mysterious golden boy doing?”
Claire groaned softly into her coffee cup.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Unfortunately, that was true.
—
Evan had become difficult to ignore online.
Not globally famous.
Not yet.
But successful enough that clips circulated constantly through the same entertainment and arts circles Claire and Imogen quietly followed.
Dance collaborations.
Film appearances.
Training showcases.
Interviews.
Always calm.
Always humble.
Always looking slightly uncomfortable during attention.
Claire found that strangely reassuring.
“He still bows at literally everyone,” Imogen laughed one evening while scrolling through videos beside her.
“That’s normal.”
“No, Claire, the man bows like someone’s grandmother personally trained him in etiquette.”
Claire smiled despite herself.
That part hadn’t changed.
—
She followed all of them eventually.
Not just Evan.
The entire scattered constellation of their generation.
The twins working production internships in Seoul.
Imogen entering modeling and media programs with terrifying confidence.
Lou moving silently between companies and international projects like some kind of corporate ghost.
Even online, the circles stayed connected.
Carefully.
Quietly.
As though invisible threads still tied all of them back to Busan somehow.
—
Eli hated video calls.
Not because he disliked people.
Because they exhausted him.
Still, he always answered for Claire.
Usually wrapped in blankets somewhere in Australia while sketchbooks covered every visible surface around him.
“What are you drawing now?” Claire asked during one call.
Eli held up a page silently.
Imogen nearly screamed.
“That is INSANE.”
The drawing stretched across multiple pages:
towering crystalline creatures moving beneath oceans,
cities floating inside mountain caverns,
birds made entirely of light.
Claire stared quietly.
The dreams were evolving again.
But Eli drew them effortlessly now.
Like memory instead of imagination.
—
Years passed strangely fast after that.
Eli’s webtoon unexpectedly exploded online.
At first it was small.
A niche audience.
Fantasy readers.
Art communities.
Then suddenly—
millions.
People became obsessed with the emotional depth of his creatures and worlds, unable to explain why the stories felt strangely real.
Eli himself remained hilariously unaffected.
“I still don’t understand why people care,” he muttered during one family call.
Imogen looked personally offended.
“Because your traumatizing dragon children have emotional complexity, Eli.”
“They’re not dragons.”
Claire nearly dropped her drink laughing.
“You literally just proved everyone’s point.”
—
The separation from Korea hurt less with time.
But never disappeared.
Sometimes Claire missed it so fiercely it physically ached:
the mountains,
temple bells,
humid Busan evenings,
the pavilion by the lake.
Mostly—
she missed being together.
—
Military enlistment had arrived
Claire’s first film was painfully average.
Not terrible.
Not brilliant.
Just… small.
An independent coming-of-age drama with muted lighting, emotionally unavailable characters, and exactly one fight sequence the producers insisted on advertising far more heavily than they should have.
Claire played a supporting role.
Quiet girl.
Sharp eyes.
Complicated family life.
Ironically, it required almost no acting at all.
—
Still—
she loved the process.
The early call times.
Hair and makeup trailers.
Watching lighting crews work silently before dawn.
Actors rehearsing scenes half asleep while holding terrible coffee.
Film sets felt strangely familiar to her.
Not because of fame.
Because everyone on set was pretending together.
And somehow, that honesty inside fiction comforted her more than real life sometimes did.
—
“You looked dead inside during the red carpet photos.”
Claire groaned as Imogen flopped dramatically across her apartment couch.
“I was tired.”
“You blinked like a hostage.”
Claire threw a cushion at her immediately.
Imogen cackled.
“Relax, you looked pretty.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
“It is worse.”
—
The military enlistments arrived quietly after that.
One by one.
The twins went first.
Then others from the wider circles.
Suddenly the group chats that once exploded constantly with memes, edits, music recommendations, and chaotic midnight conversations became quieter.
More restrained.
Everyone was growing up.
Moving.
Disappearing temporarily into adulthood.
Claire noticed how hard it hit Imogen especially.
She hid it well publicly.
But privately—
not as much.
“I hate this,” Imogen muttered one night while sprawled beside Claire on the floor of her apartment.
Korean takeout containers surrounded them like battlefield casualties.
Claire looked over softly. “I know.”
“It feels weird.”
“It is weird.”
Imogen stared at the ceiling.
“We spent our whole childhoods together and suddenly everyone’s just…” She waved vaguely into the air. “Gone.”
Claire understood exactly what she meant.
Not lost.
Just scattered.
Like constellations drifting further apart while still belonging to the same sky.
—
Eli hated it too.
Even though military service would never apply to him.
Even though his condition exempted him completely.
Claire noticed the guilt sometimes creeping into his voice during calls.
“You don’t need to feel bad about it,” she told him once.
“I know.”
“You still do though.”
Eli sighed softly from the other side of the screen.
His apartment in Australia was darker than usual, storyboards and concept art pinned across every visible wall behind him.
“I just…” He hesitated. “I wish things were easier for everyone.”
Claire smiled faintly.
“That’s because you’re painfully kind.”
“That sounds insulting somehow.”
“It is.”
He laughed quietly at that.
—
Then everything changed.
Not gradually.
Immediately.
—
The webtoon was getting adapted.
—
At first Claire thought it would stay small.
An animated series maybe.
Streaming distribution.
Limited release.
Instead—
the industry exploded around it.
Production companies began circling almost overnight.
American studios.
Korean investors.
International distributors.
Everyone wanted a piece of it.
Because Eli’s story had become bigger than anyone expected.
The emotional depth.
The mythology.
The visual worldbuilding.
People didn’t just want to watch it.
They wanted to own it.
—
And that was where the problems began.
—
“It’s too expensive.”
“It needs simplifying.”
“The lore is too dense for mainstream audiences.”
“Can we make it more commercial?”
Claire sat silently during one of the early production meetings beside Lou while executives argued through video conference screens across three different countries.
Eli looked exhausted already.
His fingers tapped anxiously beneath the table while studio representatives discussed his life’s work like a product waiting for repackaging.
Claire hated it instantly.
—
“They want dragons,” one executive said bluntly.
Eli’s expression tightened immediately.
“They aren’t dragons.”
Silence.
Claire nearly smiled despite herself.
Some things never changed.
—
Her uncle’s production company in Korea fought hard to keep creative control.
That mattered.
Because unlike the outside investors—
they understood what the story actually was.
Not just fantasy.
Inheritance.
Memory.
Loss.
Protection.
The problem was money.
Fantasy on this scale required enormous funding.
And funding always came with influence.
—
Lou became essential almost overnight.
Claire had always known she was intelligent.
She hadn’t realized how dangerous he could become inside negotiation rooms. She moved quietly through companies and contracts like a chess player ten moves ahead of everyone else.
“SHe’s terrifying,” Imogen whispered after sitting through one investor dinner.
Claire nodded calmly.
“SHe learned from Grandfather.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
—
Production shifted constantly.
American studios stalled agreements.
Korean alliances strengthened.
Japanese distributors expressed interest.
European streaming platforms wanted international rights.
What began as a small adaptation slowly transformed into something massive:
A multilingual production.
Large-scale practical sets.
International filming.
Hybrid casting.
Eighteen months of development planning.
Six months minimum filming.
And underneath all of it—
politics.
Always politics.
—
Claire began noticing the fractures quickly.
Not everyone wanted the project to succeed.
Not truly.
Some wanted control.
Others wanted Eli removed entirely from creative authority once contracts finalized.
And some—
some seemed far more interested in the mythology than the production itself.
That part frightened her quietly.
Because certain questions during meetings felt too specific.
Too informed.
Questions about:
ancient symbolism,
crystalline mythology,
the crater imagery hidden inside Eli’s designs.
As though some people recognized fragments of truth buried beneath the fantasy.
—
One night Claire found Eli sitting alone inside one of the unfinished production warehouses in Seoul.
Massive concept art panels surrounded him:
flooded temples,
black lakes,
crystalline obelisks beneath twin moons.
His world.
Or rather—
their inherited memory disguised as fiction.
“You should sleep,” Claire said softly.
Eli laughed tiredly without looking up.
“So should you.”
She sat beside him quietly.
For a while neither spoke.
Then finally:
“They’re changing things,” he admitted.
Claire already knew.
“They have to compromise a little.”
“No.” His voice remained calm, but wounded beneath it. “They want spectacle without meaning.”
Claire looked toward the massive production sketches pinned across the walls.
“They don’t understand what it means to you.”
“They don’t understand what it is.”
That silence lingered heavily.
—
Eli rubbed exhausted hands across his face.
“If they strip away the emotional truth…” he said quietly, “then it becomes empty.”
Claire understood immediately.
Because the webtoon had never really been fantasy.
It was resonance translated into story.
Memory translated into art.
The dragons.
The crater.
The obelisks.
The second moon.
None of it had been invented.
Only softened enough for the modern world to consume safely.
—
“They’ll ruin it,” Eli whispered finally.
Claire turned toward him fully then.
“No.”
He looked unconvinced.
“They won’t,” she repeated more firmly.
“How do you know?”
Because she had watched her family survive generations without losing themselves completely.
Because she understood now why the society hid descendants inside art and entertainment.
Stories survived where truth could not.
Claire looked around the warehouse slowly.
At the impossible worlds Eli had built from inherited dreams and ancient resonance.
Then back at her brother.
“You made people feel something real,” she said quietly.
“That part can’t be stolen.”
Eli looked down silently.
And for the first time since production began—
some of the fear inside him eased.