Chapter 2: BINX Arrives in Hongdae

The production vans arrived at seven forty-five, which Ellie considered an act of aggression.

She was at the second-floor window with her coffee going cold in her hand before she had consciously decided to look, which she subsequently decided didn't count as looking. Below, Hongdae was doing the thing it did on ordinary Thursday mornings—students in oversized jackets, the pojangmacha on the corner assembling itself with practiced ceremony, a delivery scooter threading the narrow gap between a parked car and nothing in particular—and then the vans materialized and the ordinary morning was retroactively canceled. Three vehicles. The first two were unremarkable: production crew in matching gray windbreakers, equipment cases on wheeled dollies, a woman with a clipboard and the expression of someone who had started managing variables at six AM and would not stop until midnight. The third van was black and kept its windows tinted and didn't open for several minutes after the other two disgorged their contents.

Ellie watched the crew set up blocking cones. Someone unrolled a cable across the pavement and someone else immediately tripped on it, which gave her one moment of unguarded satisfaction before the clipboard woman pointed and it was resolved.