At a quiet steakhouse just down the road from the Fox Studios lot, the mood was warm but filled with the undercurrent of ambition.
Plates clinked, low jazz hummed in the background, and at a corner table sat three men whose lives were about to become tightly intertwined—Nolan, Jihoon, and Peli.
The meeting with Fox had just wrapped, and everything had surprisingly gone in their favor.
Fox had agreed to handle Peli's film distribution, which was a huge win for a first-time filmmaker with a $15,000 horror film shot on handheld cameras.
Jihoon had managed to negotiate his way into the deal as an investor—Peli was more than happy to accept, especially since Jihoon had shown an uncanny understanding of his concept.
To Peli, it wasn't about the money anyway—it was about being seen.
As for Jim from Fox, he hadn't paid much attention to the tiny horror film itself.
In his eyes, Paranormal Activity was a footnote in a larger business arrangement.
The real meat of the deal was locking in Jihoon's new company and Nolan's creative support.
From a studio standpoint, if Peli's film tanked, it was a small loss. But if Jihoon and Nolan delivered on their promises? That was worth far more.
Back at the table, the three men had finally loosened their ties and poured themselves glasses of red wine.
"I don't know how your movie's going to turn out," Nolan said, casually slicing into his steak. "But I'll be honest—winning an Oscar? That's going to be tough. Especially for a film like yours."
He said it without malice, just honesty.
Nolan had been in the industry long enough—since 2002, in fact—to understand the twisted tastes of the Academy.
He'd been nominated a few times himself and knew how much of it was politics, timing, and just pure dumb luck.
Jihoon chuckled and leaned back, swirling his wine thoughtfully. "Isn't it all business anyway? I mean, sure—I've got a little ambition for Best Director. Can you blame me?"
He grinned. "But hey, don't we have you, Nolan? You're practically a legend now. You'll help me, won't you?"
He raised his glass playfully, took a sip, and watched Nolan over the rim.
Nolan gave a tired smile. "You really think having me is going to be enough?"
"I think having us is enough," Jihoon replied. "But we'll need to play it smart."
Truth be told, Jihoon wasn't just being ambitious—he was being calculative.
In his previous life, he remembered clearly: the 81st Academy Awards in 2009.
That year, Slumdog Millionaire had taken home Best Picture and Best Director.
A great film, no doubt. But Jihoon believed that his film—Inception—could stand toe-to-toe with it.
In fact, he believed Inception could win. It had the high concept, the emotional depth, the technical brilliance.
And most importantly, this time around, it had Fox backing it.
Slumdog had been produced by Pathe SAS, a respected but relatively modest French company.
Fox, on the other hand, was a Hollywood titan with deep pockets and serious influence—especially when it came to Oscar lobbying.
That mattered more than people liked to admit.
So when the time came, Jihoon wasn't going to be shy.
He was going to ask Jim and Fox to pull some strings, open the doors, and help position Inception for award season glory.
After everything he'd poured into the film—traveling across continents, fighting production delays, pushing himself creatively—was it too much to want an Oscar?
But Nolan's words echoed in his head.
"Being nominated is already a win," Nolan said, more seriously now. "You know how the Academy is."
"They love stories about humanity—real stories, emotional journeys, biographies, dramas that make people cry. Inception?"
"It's cerebral. It's a dream within a dream. It's… brilliant, yeah. But it's not what they usually go for. It's commercial. And commercial rarely wins."
Jihoon nodded slowly. "Then we make it more than commercial."
"We can make it nore human. We double down on the emotion. We push Cobb's story—the guilt, the grief, the love—up front."
"And lobby hard," Nolan added.
"Exactly. Jim will help us open the door. But it's up to us to make them care once they step in."
Peli blinked between the two of them, clearly amazed—and a little overwhelmed—that the conversation had jumped from his scrappy horror movie to Oscar politics within a single dinner.
"Uh… I just wanted to make people scream," Peli mumbled, scratching the back of his neck.
He wasn't being modest—just honest.
As a horror guy with one scrappy film and a camcorder, he knew Paranormal Activity wasn't the kind of movie the Academy would ever glance at.
But that didn't matter. He didn't dream of golden statues.
He dreamed of shadows behind doors and the sound that made a theater go dead silent.
Jihoon chuckled, leaning over to clap him on the back. "And you will. You'll be the guy who terrified the world with a fifteen-thousand-dollar budget and a home security setup."
Nolan smirked, raising his glass. "And who knows? One day you might make them cry, too."
Peli blinked again. "Let's get through the screaming part first."
The three of them laughed, the kind of laughter that loosens shoulders and shifts the night into easy camaraderie.
They spent the rest of dinner not talking about awards, but art—real art. Lighting styles, sound design, camera angles.
Nolan waxed poetic about visual paradoxes—how he loved using light to trick the audience's perception of space and time.
Jihoon explained how he used light more like a scalpel, surgically cutting into emotion, revealing something raw in a quiet scene.
Peli, ever the practical one, admitted he mostly used whatever lamps were available at Walmart.
"Light is light, man," Peli grinned. "Just as long as it casts a creepy enough shadow."
By the time dessert was done and the check was covered—by Jihoon, despite Nolan's gentlemanly protest—the stars were out, and so were they.
But that night wasn't a one-off dinner. It became the beginning of something more.
Over the following weeks, Nolan and Peli became regulars on Jihoon's film set.
Not just as friends, but as fellow filmmakers who had something real to offer.
Peli, despite being the new kid, had an incredible instinct for tension.
His notes on atmospheric dread during dream sequences surprised even Jihoon.
Nolan, of course, was in his element—he helped sharpen the philosophical core of Inception, pushing Jihoon to dig deeper into the characters' human regrets and subconscious fears.
"You want the Academy to listen?" Nolan had said during one rooftop conversation. "Then the dream isn't enough. Show them the cost of waking up."
It was strange, surreal even, to think that Jihoon—who once worshipped Nolan's work from afar—was now reworking Inception side-by-side with the very man who had originally inspired it.
In his past life, Nolan had made the film.
Now, in this second chance at life, Jihoon was the director… and Nolan was helping him.
If there was ever a poetic twist to reincarnation, this was it.
Meanwhile, news of Jihoon's Hollywood shoot spread like wildfire, especially back in Korea.
Downtown Los Angeles, where the bulk of 'Inception' was being filmed, turned into a strange hybrid between a film set and a flea market.
Locals gawked, paparazzi lingered, and reporters buzzed around like moths to a spotlight.
But no one swarmed harder than the Korean press.
The moment word got out that Jihoon—the prodigy of Korea's film industry—was shooting a blockbuster in Hollywood, reporters practically set up camp around the set.
Some even flew in just to snap a blurry photo of him walking to set with a cup of coffee.
JH HQ in Seoul wasn't spared either.
Crowds gathered. Rumors swirled. Articles with headlines like "Korea's James Cameron?"
"Jihoon Shoots Hollywood Sci-Fi Epic" and "The Ambition of Korea's filmmaker" popped up hourly.
To Jihoon, it was both flattering and absurd.
He was just trying to survive 5 a.m. call times and coordinate with a crew across the different time zones.
But the pressure only reminded him of how high the stakes were.
He wasn't just making a film.
He was rewriting history—with a camcorder kid, a paradox-loving mentor, and a dream buried in the folds of his past life.
And this time, he wasn't going to wake up until he had that golden statue in hand… or at least gave it everything he had chasing it.
[Author's Note: Heartfelt thanks to Wandererlithe, JiangXiu, Daoistadj and Daoist098135 for bestowing the power stone!]