2
# Chapter 2
Several hours later, when I regained consciousness, I was indeed in a hospital.
As I stared at the white ceiling of the emergency room, I blankly looked at the name written beside my hospital bed.
I couldn’t believe it, nor did I want to believe it.
I raised the wrist with the IV needle inserted into it and repeatedly struck my head with it.
Thud! Thud!
“Whoa! Patient, you mustn’t do that!”
“I’ve finally gone insane. I’ve gone crazy. This is a dream.”
Sex/Age – Male/16>
“Doctor, I think there must be a mistake with the name. Hyun Jaehyun is my younger brother’s name.”
“What?”
The nurse who had been trying to stop me frowned and tilted her head in confusion.
“It’s exactly as the patient’s guardian filled it out.”
“There must definitely have been some kind of mistake. And who is my guardian? There isn’t anyone who could be acting as my guardian…”
“You seem very confused. Just calm down for now…”
My questions were answered soon enough.
Screech!
A man pulled open the curtain around the bed and strode toward me.
When he saw me, he raised his voice.
“Jaehyun, what on earth is wrong with you? Have you already forgotten what you did to get this role?”
I opened my mouth wide, having even forgotten how to speak.
A familiar face was twisted with anger. The deep wrinkles around his mouth and the many spots that had appeared on his face were nowhere to be seen.
“…Father?”
“Haa, then who else would I be? Of course I’m your father. Enough. Let’s just go home.”
He was my biological father during his younger years, the version of him I had only occasionally seen when I was in middle school.
I listened to the conversation between the nurse and my father in confusion, completely stunned.
Only then did I realize the reality of the situation.
‘…No way. Did I become Hyun Jaehyun?’
---
“Hah, how does someone so young collapse from stress?”
“……”
“Fortunately, the director said they’ll reschedule the reshooting for two days later. We should be grateful for that.”
“Yes.”
I sat in the back seat of a black sedan and held my throbbing head.
So, I had become sixteen-year-old Hyun Jaehyun.
I had entered the body of my younger brother when he was sixteen.
‘If I became sixteen-year-old Hyun Jaehyun, then how many years have I gone back? About ten years?’
Apparently, the place where I had awakened in Hyun Jaehyun’s body earlier had been a drama set.
As far as I remembered, Hyun Jaehyun had also made his television debut at sixteen.
…If that was true, then the production he was filming now was his first terrestrial television drama.
‘Is that why Father is being so irritable? Because he’s worried that the terrestrial drama role he worked so hard to get will fall through?’
“You’ve already been a child actor for six years. How long are you going to remain unknown, huh? You kept insisting that you could do it, so I even made you quit your academy. Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to go around looking for auditions and getting you roles?”
I couldn’t find anything to say.
Even so, was this really how you treated your son after he had just fainted?
‘Was Father always like this? I was so young when we lived together that I can’t remember.’
“Jaehyun, are you listening?”
“…Yes.”
“Being an actor is your dream, isn’t it? Right? Let’s just keep working hard like you are now.”
“Yes.”
I turned my gaze toward the window.
The next day, after spending the entire night wide awake, I stepped outside.
It was early Thursday morning.
Only a few diligent people were passing through the quiet city park, either out for their morning jog or walking their pets.
I sat on a park bench and began sorting through my thoughts.
The cold morning air seeped into my respiratory tract, as though it might freeze my lungs.
Frowning, I swiped across the tablet screen in my hand.
Swipe, swipe…
‘Hoo… I came out because it was uncomfortable staying at home with Father, but it’s January, so it’s a little cold.’
I tightened my padded jacket and opened the script file.
A text filled with countless handwritten notes appeared.
“So this is what we were filming yesterday.”
<We Should Have Met Yesterday>
It was a romantic comedy drama that Hyun Jaehyun had appeared in when he was sixteen.
To put it nicely, it had been an average production. To put it less kindly, it had failed to live up to the expectations created by the popularity of its lead actors.
My character had practically no lines throughout the entire script.
And it wasn’t even a condensed shooting script.
When I finally found one or two lines, they were already marked as scenes that had been filmed.
But there was something worth noting.
‘His script analysis is incredible. He thoroughly analyzed even the episodes where he didn’t appear, including the other characters’ lines as if they were his own.’
Most of the paper script books Hyun Jaehyun had left behind were like this.
The pages were packed with notes, covered so densely with yellow highlighter and three-colored pen marks that they had become worn out.
Even at this age, it seemed his passion had remained unchanged.
As I looked at the intense traces Hyun Jaehyun had left behind, I covered my face with my hands.
My thoughts were being overwhelmed by a wave of concerns.
‘Haa. Right. This isn’t the most urgent problem.’
First, I needed to calmly look at reality.
‘…For now, I’ve entered the body from three years before Hyun Jaehyun’s death. And tomorrow, I have to act in Hyun Jaehyun’s place, something I’ve never done even once in my entire life.’
I didn’t know what words could possibly describe this situation.
Wasn’t this kind of bewildering scenario something you only saw in movies or novels?
Body swapping, returning to the past.
These were things that could never happen in reality.
‘…Wait. Body swapping?’
A thought suddenly occurred to me, and I took out my phone.
After fumbling through the contacts, I moved my finger around, searching for a name that should have been there.
‘This is impossible.’
My name was nowhere to be found.
Hyun Woohyun, my original identity, had completely disappeared.
As I searched through my messaging app and even my gallery, I felt cold sweat running down my back.
In the photographs of Hyun Jaehyun and me together in the past, there was only a strange emptiness.
It was as if my existence had been meticulously erased.
Only then did I roughly piece the situation together.
In other words, in this world, the original me did not exist.
‘Forget about my existence disappearing. That film director I met before being hit by the truck definitely…’
He had spoken as though Hyun Jaehyun’s death had been a murder.
Looking back, the cargo truck that had struck us had also been extremely strange.
There wasn’t even a proper construction site nearby, and that wasn’t a road where a cargo truck should have been driving at such a high speed.
Most importantly, even though I had tried to get him away from the spot…
‘It actually changed direction and hit us.’
…No way.
That was impossible.
How could something like that happen in reality?
Had someone really driven a nineteen-year-old child actor to take his own life, and then, seven years later, murdered the man who came to pay his respects at Hyun Jaehyun’s grave?
Who had done it, and for what reason?
‘If that death really was a murder.’
My cold body began to tremble.
‘…What kind of bastard did it?’
Not because of some vague fear.
But because of the clear anger rising inside me.
---
The day of the reshoot arrived without giving me any time to rest.
“Have you memorized your lines?”
“I’ve memorized them sufficiently.”
“What about your blocking?”
“…There isn’t really any blocking to remember. It’s not that kind of scene.”
“Right. At least memorizing things is something you’re good at.”
Soon, the car stopped in the parking lot of the filming location.
When the door opened, the cold wind instantly snapped me awake.
The doctor had told me to get plenty of rest until the day of the reshoot.
I hadn’t followed that advice at all.
The reason was simple.
‘You expect someone like me, whose only experience with acting was pretending to be a respectable human being during job interviews, to become an actor overnight?’
What actor?
I had absolutely nothing to do with acting.
But with the schedule already set, I couldn’t run away either.
In the end, during my twenty-six years of life, I had only started practicing acting for the first time yesterday.
Still, there was one somewhat bittersweet but fortunate thing.
‘Hyun Jaehyun at this point in time was terrible at acting anyway.’
No matter how poorly I performed here, no one would find it strange.
It would simply be someone who had always been bad at acting being bad at acting again.
When I entered the filming location with Father, filming was still underway.
Since the drama already had a scheduled broadcast date, the production schedule was extremely tight.
Even so, they were going through the trouble of reshooting my scene that had been disrupted.
‘My character only has two lines, and it isn’t even an important scene. They could have just removed it altogether…’
I had worked hard to memorize the script and had watched videos while practicing my vocal delivery.
But if I could actually get the hang of acting in a single day, wouldn’t that make me a genius?
“Jaehyun, are you feeling better?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for causing trouble, Director.”
“Okay.”
The director waved his hand without much reaction.
His attitude was extremely ambiguous.
Well, if I were in his position, I would probably want to finish filming as quickly as possible if an actor with terrible acting skills collapsed during filming and then came back.
I wandered around the set while waiting for my turn to film.
I could more or less understand basic terms such as “cut” and “action,” but most of the terminology was unfamiliar to me.
Aside from that, it felt strange watching the famous male lead acting and matching scenes with the other actors.
‘Oh… It’s Kim Shinil. I knew Kim Shinil was the lead in this, but I didn’t know he was filming today. Oh. And over there is Nam Dohwa.’
The set was filled entirely with famous people whose faces made my eyes dart around.
Considering that, it was almost surprising that the drama had only managed to achieve moderate success.
‘And I’m supposed to act among these people? This isn’t the time to think like that. I need to watch and learn.’
I had about an hour left.
I watched the other actors perform as closely as possible, taking in every detail.
Their gestures.
The volume of their voices.
The tone of their lines.
Even the changes in their expressions.
And then, I suddenly saw something from one of the actors.
‘What is that?’
It was Kim Shinil, who played the male lead in this drama.
He was performing his role so vividly that it seemed as though he wasn’t in front of a camera at all, but was a real person facing an actual situation.
‘…A flow?’
Following the direction in which Kim Shinil moved, a mysterious red flow appeared in the air.
I blinked several times, suddenly remembering something.
‘Come to think of it, I think I saw something similar right before the traffic accident. If I’m not hallucinating… then what does that mean?’
The wavering movement, which could be described as a kind of flow, brushed past Kim Shinil.
Sometimes Kim Shinil missed the flow entirely.
At other times, he moved along exactly the same path as the flow.
After watching it for several dozen minutes, I realized one thing.
“Shinil, shall we do it again?”
“I’m sorry.”
Whenever Kim Shinil completely missed the flow, he and the director would redo the scene.
“Cut! This works.”
“Good work.”
Whenever he perfectly followed the flow, both of them were extremely satisfied, and the scene was completed in one take.
‘Hooh…’
I watched Kim Shinil gulp down bottled water before looking away and returning my attention to the script.
‘Could it be that I can see the flow of good acting?’
It was still only a hypothesis.
But it was a rather plausible one.