The Line Between Role and Self
Don't act like that.
"Mom! Look, it's him... the TTN boy!"
"Oh my goodness, it really is those kids from the commercial."
I'd only come to the supermarket with my mom, and in an instant I was surrounded by a crowd of people, unable to move an inch in any direction.
Even back in my Wagle Wagle Kindergarten days, people would occasionally come up claiming to know me, but never to this degree.
Thanks to an escort from the store's security guard, I barely managed to escape to the parking lot.
"We just want a quick word. Oh, and a photo or two."
"Sorry, but no. Can't you see he's in the middle of class?"
Somehow the reporters had tracked me all the way to the kindergarten.
A notice banning interviews went up on the front gate, and the teachers took turns shooing away suspicious-looking characters.
"Hajin, is it true that leg thing appeared and disappeared? Taehoon said when he went to America that there was a leg that did that."
"Aren't you scared of the draining-water scene? I cried when I watched it."
Even the kindergarten kids kept trailing after me like I was some kind of curiosity.
"Hajin was all over the TTN commercial. I was shocked when I saw it on TV."
"He held his own right next to Han Sora, too. The two of them looked like they were made for each other."
The teachers were no different.
"Hajin, you are not going to the playground by yourself. Your mother is worried sick."
My mom's allergy to fame only intensified, and I entered a semi-voluntary house arrest.
.
.
.
"Dad got all mad. He asked why you hugged Hajin so tight like that."
I keep losing points with Director Han Jaeryong, the consummate daddy's girl devotee.
I'm supposed to appear in his movie later, after all.
"So I locked my door and said I wasn't eating dinner, and then Dad said he was sorry."
If I could just keep Sora firmly on my side, I might actually get to be in the film.
"He only says that because he loves you too much. Don't be so hard on him."
"Still, I don't like it when Dad says mean things about Hajin."
So this is why they say raising daughters is useless.
Six years old and already taking another man's side.
While I was paying my dues for this newfound fame, the movie deal proceeded smoothly along.
The problem of being swallowed up by my emotions, however, remained unresolved.
*****
"I'm going to the Cannes Lions, but I'm not betting on it."
"What? You seriously have no confidence?"
"Are you making fun of me? After shooting a commercial like that, you want a *bet*? Please."
"BWAHAHA! The fact that even you admit it means one of next year's gold, silver, or bronze is mine!"
"Go and do well. I've already gotten my prize."
"Your prize?"
"The Ohsung Techwin CEO saw your commercial, called Joo Se-hee in, and tore her a new one. He asked how she could've passed over a kid like this."
Apparently, even though the ad had turned out brilliantly, she got so much flak that the PR team's office had the atmosphere of a funeral home.
"Ten years of pent-up heartburn, gone in one gulp. See, this is what happens when you don't listen to me when I said to cast Hajin."
"Well, that's how this got made, so he's my benefactor, heh heh."
"You seem to have forgotten who introduced him to you."
"Which is why I'm paying for it right now. You have any idea how much this whiskey costs?"
"Being expensive doesn't mean it isn't tasty, I'll give it that."
He raised his glass and poured every last drop down his throat.
"Buy Kim Si-woon a round too. That guy is so insanely jealous right now."
"Why would Director Kim Si-woon come up?"
"You haven't heard? Hajin's going to be in Director Kim Si-woon's movie."
"What? Hajin is doing a Kim Si-woon film?"
"Yep. There's going to be a massive article about it any day now. The commercial blew up so hard that the production company's beside itself. With joy, I mean."
"I don't know about that. I know he shoots well, but all he ever makes is slashing and stabbing. That's no place for Hajin, don't you think?"
"Now that you mention it, all I can remember is scenes drenched in blood."
"Why Kim Si-woon of all directors? If you'd asked me, I'd have introduced you to a perfectly normal one."
"Talk to him about it when you meet him. He won't be shooting only that."
Sure enough, just as Director Lee Joo-young had predicted, a few days later the news of Kim Si-woon's new film flooded the internet and the papers.
With the afterglow of the TTN commercial still lingering, the announcement of my movie debut set the entertainment world positively ablaze.
"A script reading?"
"Yeah. A few of us are doing it privately, and I want you there too."
Something was off.
Director Kim was still polishing the screenplay.
Barely half the cast had been locked in.
And yet he wanted a script reading?
"Isn't that a bit rushed? The roles aren't even fully cast yet."
"The roles for the protagonist's childhood are all set. There's a senior who wants to see your acting, so we're starting early with that in mind."
So that was the real agenda.
"Who wants to see my acting, exactly?"
"Actor Jeong Dong-ho."
Jeong Dong-ho? Why would he want to see me?
I'd had no connection with him in my previous life, but he was an actor who'd made his name as a master of both lead and supporting roles.
Gifted at teaching the craft, he'd run an acting academy for quite a long time.
No small number of stars had passed through his hands on their way up.
"He's a mentor to me, really — I owe him a lot. When I mentioned your acting, he said he wanted to see it for himself. You can come, right?"
I nodded.
I had to appear in the film anyway, so the script reading was non-negotiable.
The day of the script reading —
The venue was a conference room in the production company's building.
Just a handful of cast members whose roles had been confirmed, along with the director, screenwriter, and assistant director, was all.
Once the final script was done, cameras would come in to shoot promotional making-of footage, but for now there was none of that.
A rather bare, unglamorous place where nothing mattered but the script itself.
"So you're Hajin. I hear people say you're a handsome little thing quite a lot?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then hear it one more time. You really are handsome."
Actor Jeong Dong-ho said it with a hearty laugh.
He was the very man responsible for gathering everyone here today for this reading.
"Director Kim, this goes beyond good-looking. Where on earth did you find him?"
"At Han senior's daughter's birthday party. I took one look at him over dinner and brought him along."
"He's almost too good to be just Min-ho's younger double. A childhood like this on top of that face? Unbelievable."
"What's wrong with my face? I never hear anything but 'pretty boy' wherever I go."
Clearly close even off the clock, their back-and-forth banter was quite the show.
Figuring this wasn't a conversation for me, I sat quietly and waited for the reading to begin.
"Director Kim showed me the footage from your audition a while back. The acting itself — well, what can I say, it was beyond words — but something at the end caught my eye. That's why I asked to meet you."
"Something caught your... eye?"
"That's right. You couldn't get out of the role after you finished acting, could you?"
So he'd noticed.
Apparently it showed even through the camera lens.
"Losing yourself in a role happens to actors, but at your age it simply can't be allowed. You said you're six?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your body can't take it. In the footage your leg wouldn't stop trembling. Were you frightened?"
"...I saw a ghost."
"Oh dear. The boy walked straight into a horror film and walked back out."
Actor Jeong Dong-ho was speaking figuratively, but for me it had been literal.
I'd seen a ghost in that room, and heard a prophecy that I would be murdered.
In the beginning, Future Sight didn't cause my emotions to become submerged.
With days between each glimpse, all I had to do was faithfully recreate the performance I'd seen in the light or in my dreams.
Up to that point, it belonged to the realm of imitation — emotions left unmingled.
But at the last audition, something entirely different had occurred.
It wasn't watching and copying anymore — the acting had become reality.
I was supposed to play a boy who sees a ghost, and I became a boy who sees a ghost.
The role birthed me, I was the role, so the performance couldn't help but be perfect.
There was nothing awkward about me playing myself.
"It didn't feel like acting at all. You were just a boy hollowed out by terror. The role devoured you whole — so even after the scene ended, you couldn't tear yourself away from being that frightened boy."
The diagnosis was dead-on, befitting the acting teacher of countless performers.
"Grown actors take a long time to shake off emotions like that, and the aftereffects are no small thing. And a six-year-old attempting that kind of performance? Absolutely not. It wears down the body."
"Then what should I do?"
"Simply don't sink into the role. Watching you act, imitation alone would be more than enough — so why do you keep pushing deeper? Just copy what you saw. That's all."
I want to.
I want to separate the role from reality and simply perform.
But ever since that audition, the moment I try to act, I get dragged under.
The world the script describes takes shape around me, and inside it I speak and move exactly as written.
It's my own body, yet the role strips me of every ounce of control.
If this gets worse, I might never find my way back to reality.
Director Kim Si-woon held out a script of a few pages.
"This is the scene right after the one you performed at the audition. The ghost told you it would return in two days, remember? This time the stage directions are all included, so read through it first."
Actor Jeong Dong-ho had wanted to see my acting with his own eyes.
He'd asked, in particular, to see me perform the scene where the boy speaks with the ghost while still submerged in the role.
That was why Director Kim had handed me the next scene's script.
As long as the words were merely passing before my eyes, immersion didn't come.
If only I could work this way, I thought, I might avoid being swallowed by the role — I just didn't know how.
The method of focusing on the performance while keeping the role and myself apart.
Absorbed in that thought, I read straight through and found myself, before I knew it, on the last page.
Steadying my breath, I looked around the room at the people waiting for my performance.
"I'm ready now."
The instant I focused, a radiant light wrapped itself around me.
The same phenomenon as at the audition.
By now, I could be certain of it.
Future Sight is trying to trap me inside the performance.