I Want to Save Them, No Matter What
"I want to save them. No matter what it takes."
Jeong Dong-ho watched Ha-jin as he wandered the practice room with his mother, looking around at everything.
As he did, a conversation with Director Kim Si-woon from a few days ago resurfaced in his mind.
"Senior, let me buy you a drink."
"Sure. You worked hard today too, Director Kim."
The two men clinked their glasses and drank.
"Ha-jin's acting was incredible, wasn't it?"
"Don't even get me started. He just sinks straight into the script. I was so absorbed I completely forgot he was a six-year-old. It honestly gave me chills."
"Same for me at the audition. I didn't even give him a script back then. But he pulled everything I'd imagined in my head right out — no, he pulled out two hundred percent of it. I couldn't believe my eyes."
"And then what? After he finishes a take, he can't pull himself together."
Jeong Dong-ho clicked his tongue and accepted the refilled glass.
"Is there really no way? It's such a waste of his talent. I want to nurture him properly."
"Acting skill can be improved, but an acting style is nearly impossible to change. That's not technique — that's something you're born with."
"Plenty of actors overcome that and do emotional acting beautifully."
"And they pay for it themselves. When your emotions get buried like that, there's no way there aren't aftereffects. The only answer is rest — a good, long break, while managing your mental state. Why do you think some actors have such notoriously long hiatuses? It's always because of that."
"……"
"And that's talking about adult actors. Ha-jin is six."
"He is young."
"The younger you are, the truer you stay to your own emotions. What six-year-old can regulate their feelings? That regulation builds through adolescence, then hits a wall around high school. By then the brain has matured — the kid's getting ready to taste the waters of the adult world."
"So what I'm hearing is, he shouldn't act until he's in high school."
"Exactly. This film was already splashed across the media before we could stop it, so that ship has sailed — but until he develops the strength to shake off his emotions, he can't act. His body simply won't endure it."
"If that's your read on it, then that must be right. Still, what a shame. He's the kind of talent that might come along once in a century."
"With the talent he has now, starting later won't be too late. Ten years from now, Director Kim, you'll be well established — what is there to worry about? You can cast him then."
"How can you promise my future so confidently?"
"I've watched how you make films. If you don't succeed, the fault won't be yours — it'll be the Korean film industry's."
"Haha. Thank you for the kind words."
"I'd like a word with Ha-jin alone. Why don't you go to the office, ma'am — or would you rather sit in with us?"
"Actually, a friend of mine lives nearby, so I was going to meet her. Ha-jin, listen well to your teacher, and call me when you're done."
"Okay, Mom."
Once his mother had left, the two of them took new seats facing each other.
"This is your first acting academy, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Right now I only teach a few students who've been referred to me, but I plan to grow it. Turns out teaching is nearly as fun as acting itself."
Don't worry, teacher. Soon this place will be one everyone's desperate to get into.
"First, I need to explain what's happening to you. I'm not sure how well I can put it into words, though. I've never tried explaining something like this to a child before."
"That's okay. I read difficult books just fine."
"Really? Then I'll give it a shot — if you don't understand something, stop me right away."
"Yes, sir."
The teacher explained the post-performance psychological strain that actors so often suffered — what he called PDS — and even compared it to PTSD, the stress disorder that followed trauma.
Naturally, it was difficult material for a six-year-old. But I was a six-year-old with twenty-two years under my belt.
Recalling the acting lessons from my previous life, I listened to his every word with the most serious face I could muster.
"Ha-jin, you're fascinating. You have the look of a child taking in every single word."
"Not every word. At first it felt like a medical journal — hard to follow."
"That's because it's pulled from the abstracts of medical papers. I had no idea you'd think of something like that. Are you really six?"
"I'm really six. A six-year-old who reads difficult books."
He ruffled my hair, amusement written all over his face.
"Will knowing all this actually help fix it? I want to go back to normal once the acting is over. Right now my head is such a mess it makes me dizzy — like I might throw up."
"What you're feeling is an aftereffect of sinking too deep into your emotions while acting. Doctors write academic papers about it — that's how common it is among actors. A kind of occupational hazard."
"Have the doctors found a cure?"
"No. There's no silver bullet yet."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"What are you supposed to do? I brought you all the way here so we could figure it out together, didn't I?"
He smiled like a kindly grandfather.
Seeing that, I decided I couldn't afford to let my face fall into gloom. He was putting in all this effort for a kid he'd only known a few days.
"That said, it's not as if there are no solutions at all…"
He walked me through how famous actors — especially the great emotional performers — managed their mental health.
In my previous life, I'd never struggled like this with emotional acting, so it was all new to me.
The one catch was that none of it was really something a child actor could pull off.
"Even setting this film aside, it's best you avoid any acting that buries you in your emotions for a while — until you can control them to some degree."
"Until when, exactly?"
"You'll have to get through puberty, so… high school, give or take?"
"That's not 'a while' at all. 'A while' means six months at most."
"Ha! You're a sharp one, Ha-jin. I won't be able to get away with loose talk around you from now on."
The wording didn't matter.
What mattered was that a ten-year gap had just been laid out before me.
If this had been before the audition, I would have laughed it off as absurd.
But now my thinking had changed somewhat — no, a great deal.
It wasn't just because letting myself drown in acting was wearing my body and mind to rags.
As long as I avoided emotional roles, I could shoot commercials and appear only on children's programs.
And as long as my Future Sight didn't pull me toward a script, I could keep acting one way or another.
That was definitely a signal.
The signs had begun appearing after the script reading, once I'd talked things over with Mom at home.
My memories of my previous life had started resurfacing.
Just like when I'd stopped Teacher Jo Ha-rin's accident.
Why those memories, of all things?
My memories of elementary, middle, and high school — my school days — had grown vivid.
The problem was, those memories were utterly useless.
They came from the most meaningless period of my life.
I'd lost my parents in an accident and taken up baseball in elementary school. Sweating through training dulled, if only a little, the ache of missing them.
Thanks to that, I'd stood out from middle school, gone on to a baseball powerhouse high school, and planned to go straight into the pros the moment I graduated.
Right up until the day I shattered the jaw of the senior who kept sneering "orphan brat" at me.
So roughly ten years of school days remembered as nothing but training and fighting.
Almost exactly the span of time the teacher was telling me to stay away from acting.
Call it coincidence if I liked — but the timing of these memories resurfacing was far too precise for that.
Is it telling me to live an ordinary school life?
Three misfortunes from my previous life.
The acting career that never properly bloomed had been changing dramatically since the day I regressed.
As for the baseball career I never got — well, if I learned acting from the teacher and lived through an ordinary school life, I'd be compensated some other way.
A chance to lay the brilliance called youth over that bleak, barren stretch of years.
"What are you thinking about so hard? Your head doesn't hurt, does it?"
"Nothing much. Just… thinking about the past."
"The past? And when exactly would my boy's 'past' be?"
Mom asked with a smile.
After I die, rose all the way to my throat — but a tear slipped out, and I swallowed it down in a hurry.
Why won't the memory of the accident come back? I don't want to relive it — but still.
Only the date stayed with me. December 24th.
Whether it was this year, next year, or the year after — I had no idea.
As the 24th drew closer, I prayed to a god I didn't believe in, night after night.
Let me remember before that day comes, please.
Let me save them this time, the way I saved my teacher. No matter what it takes.
"Hhk— uck… huaaaaah!"
"Another scary dream? Come here, Mommy's got you."
I sobbed in my mother's arms for a long while.
Even through the tears, I couldn't have been more grateful for this exact moment.
Because I remembered my parents' car accident all too clearly.
They died this year — no, they were going to die this year.
— KBC Annex Studio —
"Ha-jin, is something wrong today? Why are you so low on energy?"
Crying myself out that morning had left me in a wreck. I'd tried hard to hide it during the recording, but apparently a PD's eyes were impossible to fool.
"I'm sorry, PD-nim."
I bowed my head without a single excuse.
The truth was, I didn't have the strength left to make excuses.
My head was filled to the brim with nothing but thoughts of the accident on the 24th.
Strangely enough, my reaction flustered PD Jo Seung-hyun instead.
"N-no, I only asked because you were fine during the shoot and then suddenly looked so worn out."
"I'll cheer you up!"
Yujin marched over with a supremely confident look on her face.
What is she up to this time?
"Here, take it."
"What is it?"
"An invitation to my Christmas party. Come to my house on the 24th. I'm inviting So-ra and Jeong-woo too."
In that instant, my mind snapped wide awake.
The 24th!
I'd been racking my brain over how to keep Mom and Dad in one place — and Yujin had just handed me the perfect excuse.
Before I knew it, I had grabbed her hands.
"Yujin! Thank you — thank you so much!"
"Huh? U-um… yeah."
Yujin's expression turned odd, but I was already moving on to the next step.
"I'm supposed to have dinner with Mom and Dad that day, but I really, really want to come to the party. So — could they come with me?"
"Really? Then I'll tell my mom and dad to stay home too. So-ra can just come with her dad, right?"
Just like that, the party turned into a full family gathering.
Having Director Han Jae-ryong there felt a little intimidating, but this was no time to be picky.
And so, the first stitch of Operation Save Mom and Dad was finally in place.