The party was being held in a converted warehouse, and the punk music was so loud it made your ears ring.
The air was thick with the mixed stench of beer, sweat, and cheap perfume—sticky, suffocating, hard to breathe.
Frank Darabont's eyes gleamed in the dim lighting as he stared straight at Link.
"The script's in my car," he said in a low voice, like he was making a black-market deal. "Ten minutes—no, five. Just give me five minutes. I'll be right back."
Link smiled and set his empty glass on the bar.
Clink.
The sound cut clean through the music.
"No need," he said, pushing his chair back and standing up. "I'll go with you."
Frank froze.
He'd slammed into closed doors more times than he could count, but this was the first time anyone had trusted him without even reading the script.
Cameron frowned and spoke up, clearly annoyed. "Link , Bender's still looking for you—"
"Let him wait," Link said without turning around, already following Frank through the crowd.
Cameron started to stop him, then hesitated. Watching his back disappear into the mass of people, she suddenly felt something unsettling—
This man had a dangerous kind of obsession.
After a moment's hesitation, she followed.
Outside, the night air was cool, cutting through the alcohol haze.
Frank pulled a battered cardboard box from the back seat of an old Ford. It was worn nearly to pieces. He opened it and took out a script so thick it looked like a brick.
On the cover were a few handwritten words.
— The Shawshank Redemption.
Link's pupils shrank.
Damn.
The word exploded in his mind.
Not excitement.
Shock.
Like casually digging a hole in your backyard and unearthing an ancient lost civilization.
The party noise, distant sirens, even Frank's breathing faded away.
The world went quiet—except for his heartbeat.
This was it.
The legend that would sit at the top of IMDb for twenty straight years.
He reached out, moving as carefully as if he were defusing a bomb. The moment his fingers touched the paper, it felt almost hot.
Leaning against the car door under the warehouse lights, he opened the script.
Frank nervously twisted the hem of his jacket. Cameron stood silently a short distance away, arms crossed, watching.
Link flipped pages.
Fast.
He wasn't reading the story—he was verifying the images already burned into his mind.
Page fifty-something. Rooftop. Drinking beer. There it was.
Page one-hundred-plus. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. There it was.
The final pages. Crawling through the sewage pipe in a thunderstorm, screaming at the sky—
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things."
"Get busy living, or get busy dying."
Every line was a key, sliding perfectly into a lock in his memory.
His heart pounded violently against his ribs. Blood rushed to his head. His body trembled uncontrollably.
It was real.
The story. Unchanged. Perfect.
Then another voice rose up—colder, sharper, brutally rational—like ice water poured over his head.
—This movie lost money.
He remembered it clearly.
1994. Universal acclaim. Box-office disaster. Didn't even make back its budget.
And what shape was Pangu Pictures in right now?
Titanic was a bottomless pit, burning cash every single day. The Mask was eating through post-production money. A Beautiful Mind was an Oscar gamble with an uncertain future.
Every dollar of cash flow was stretched tight—like a violin string about to snap.
And now spend tens of millions to make a movie destined to lose money?
That wasn't passion.
That was suicide.
He slowly turned the pages, his fingertips going cold. Watching his movements slow, Frank's eyes dimmed little by little.
Link looked up at the glowing sprawl of Los Angeles in the distance.
Every day, countless people poured into this city with their scripts, their dreams—only to be ground up by the machinery of capital.
Just like him, in his previous life.
Suddenly, he remembered—
Sitting alone in a cramped rental apartment, watching The Shawshank Redemption for the first time.
On the screen, Andy crawled out of the sewer and raised his arms to the rain.
He cried then.
Not because of the plot—
But because of this thought:
So someone really made a movie like this.
A movie that wasn't just a money-making tool, but something that—thirty years later, in a foreign country—could give a complete stranger the courage to keep living.
Back then, he'd thought:
If one day, I could make a movie like this…
He closed the script, took out a pack of cigarettes, and handed one to Frank.
"This script," he said quietly, "is something very few people in Hollywood would ever buy."
Frank froze. His heart sank.
"But—" Link paused, a slight smile forming.
"I'll buy it."
Frank's head snapped up, eyes blazing.
"You… you finished it?"
"No need," Link said, flicking ash away. "Those words on the cover are enough."
He patted Frank on the shoulder.
"Tomorrow morning. Ten a.m. Pangu Pictures. We'll talk contract details. Any conditions you have—name them."
Frank took a deep breath, his voice trembling. "I don't need an upfront fee. I'll take five percent of the box office. And…"
He paused, eyes firm. "The original author is a friend of mine—Stephen King. He said his rights fee is one dollar. One condition only: the spirit of the story must be preserved in full."
One dollar.
Link froze for a beat.
That was Stephen King—a man who could sell a million copies by sneezing.
And yet, for this story, he asked for just one dollar.
In that moment, Link understood why this script had sat in a battered cardboard box for so long.
Not because it wasn't good.
But because it was too good.
So good that people who only understood money couldn't see it.
All they could see were numbers on a box-office forecast spreadsheet.
They couldn't see the soul standing in the rain with its arms outstretched.
Link smiled. No sarcasm—just a quiet sense of alignment with fate.
He held out his hand. "Here's to working together."
Frank gripped it tightly. "Here's to it."
Link turned and headed back toward the party.
Cameron stood nearby, watching everything unfold.
She saw Link shake hands with the unknown screenwriter. She saw the man cover his face, shoulders shaking.
She suddenly remembered—
The first time she'd met Link, months ago.
He'd looked exactly like this—like a man betting on a game he was destined to lose.
Back then, he'd bet that she could carry a role.
Now, he was betting on a script no one believed in.
She didn't know why this man always chose the hardest possible road.
But she knew one thing—
She liked idiots like this.
Cameron steadied herself and hurried after him. The two of them walked side by side into the night.
—
Frank stood alone, watching their figures disappear around the corner.
He lowered his head and looked at the script in his hands.
On the cover, the word Shawshank was soaked at one corner with sweat.
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
It wasn't sadness.
It was—
That someone had finally seen it.