I'm Not Going to Act Anymore
“I'm not going to act anymore.”
Go Eun-hye, cast as the mother, was a luxury supporting actress.
Hers was a face where good and evil coexisted, letting her glide effortlessly from a warm-hearted countrywoman to a vicious mother-in-law tormenting her daughter-in-law.
“Director Kim, has something I've done disappointed you lately? You know how fond I am of children.”
Vicious mother roles were her bread and butter, but what Director Kim was asking of her was the part of a woman who abused her young son.
Between adult actors, she would have gone at it with everything she had — but no matter that it was only acting, laying hands on a child made her uneasy.
Then she watched the audition footage Director Kim showed her, and her mind changed.
“We didn't give him any direction, just handed him the lines and told him to try. An opportunity to act alongside a kid like this doesn't come around every day.”
As an actress, she was curious.
Curious what it would be like to find her rhythm with a child actor radiating that kind of emotion.
How do I explain this? It was definitely just a meeting room a moment ago…
She rarely did emotional acting, because she knew exactly what happened when you let yourself be swallowed whole by a role.
With her level of experience and skill, surface acting — impersonating the character from the outside — was more than enough.
But while she acted opposite the child in front of her, the scenery around them changed beyond recognition.
An image…?
A gloomy room where the dreary set decorations seemed to radiate a chill,
the child resting his hands not on a script but on the piano keys, trembling,
and watching him, she bit down hard on her lip.
Why is this so infuriating?
The Go Eun-hye who loved children and spoke only sweet words to them was fading away.
In her place settled the ruthless mother, desperate to wring every last drop of talent out of her boy.
He hasn't put in his practice hours, so no sleep for him tonight, obviously.
And if he pulls this again, should I starve him next time?
Maybe slapping his cheek works better than the switch?
Wh-what am I doing?! Why am I thinking things like this…
When she came back to herself, the child was looking up at her with an indifferent gaze.
Cold sweat broke out across her skin.
She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes.
Why would I… think something so terrible…
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
One look into actress Go Eun-hye's eyes and I understood.
That was guilt.
Or perhaps, regret.
It's just acting — there's no way she should be feeling those emotions.
She was in exactly the same situation I was.
We had entered the script together. I was being abused, and she was the abuser.
Which was why she felt guilty, and regretted it.
My Future Sight had dragged not just me but my scene partner into the script as well.
Pouring raw emotion into every beat, the two of us delivered a perfect acting chemistry.
The price of that was splitting the aftermath between us.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
So that's how it gets solved.
I'd wondered what would happen if someone else got pulled into the script with me — but instead, we entered it together and found our rhythm as one.
Both of us had literally become our characters, trading performances back and forth, so a flawless scene was inevitable.
Director Kim Si-woon's grin stretched from ear to ear, and the cinematographer wore the dazed expression of a man whose soul had left his body.
“Actress Go, you were terrifying. I honestly thought you were going to eat the kid alive.”
“I got oddly deep into it. I might need to take a break from villain roles for a while.”
So that was why Director Han Jae-ryong had made such a point of age and experience.
I was still struggling, but actress Go Eun-hye had already returned to her usual self as if nothing had happened.
That wasn't a level of skill you could fake with technique.
It was a state only reachable through years of slow, deliberate seasoning.
Now I'm certain. I need that hiatus.
Once this shoot wrapped, I planned to tell my parents what I'd decided.
Come to think of it, maybe the aftermath itself was the Future Sight's signal — telling me to take a break.
A sign to fold inward for a while, so that I could flourish later.
“Barely tired today, hmm? Was the training helpful?”
Worried about me, my teacher came over the moment the table read ended and asked.
“Yes. Definitely better than last time. Though it still feels like all the strings are tangled up in knots.”
“Just standing upright again is real progress. You adapt fast — it's good to see.”
He smiled, ruffling my hair.
“I'm more worried about Senior Go Eun-hye, honestly. She seemed to be struggling.”
“She looks fine now. She's an external actor like me — she just hasn't submerged herself in raw emotion in a long time, that's all. And from what I saw, you're the one who lit the match.”
“Me?”
“Yes. An actor can tell the instant they watch their scene partner. You can't afford to fall behind someone like that, you have to receive what they give and push back hard, and yet you kept getting driven back… She must have seen your emotional acting and thought the same thing.”
In other words, I had drawn out actress Go Eun-hye's emotional performance.
It wasn't entirely wrong.
That was exactly what we'd done when we fell into the script together.
Which means I can elevate not just myself, but my scene partner's emotions and acting too.
It was an ability I had never even imagined.
Wasn't this a complete cheat code — a body, no, a acting cheat through and through?
Used well, it could rival Future Sight itself.
“Hey, Director Kim. I'm starving. Let's get moving.”
It was our first company dinner, but I didn't attend and headed straight home instead.
It was Director Kim's consideration — with this many drinkers in the crew, he knew full well the dinner would turn into a drinking session.
“Sorry about today. I'll make it up to you — I'll buy you something delicious later, sunbae.”
“Don't worry about it, Director. I'll be heading in, then.”
Sitting in the car, I stared out at the passing scenery and sank into thought.
Why did the film change?
It was a horror film about a genius pianist.
The protagonist learns through a ghost that he is destined to be murdered, and to escape that fate, he becomes the killer himself.
All because of the premise that death must be covered with death.
At first he kills others to survive, but he grows addicted to murder and loses his humanity.
Once everyone his fate demands he kill lies dead and no targets remain, the film ends with him killing himself — taking his own life.
He escaped the fate of being murdered, only to end in death anyway. A deeply unsatisfying ending.
It was an R-rated film, so the graphic scenes came thick and fast.
The actors' performances were excellent, but the dialogue was clunky and the editing was choppy.
In a word, it was a film where the director tried far too hard to look stylish.
The result, well — it became Director Kim Si-woon's first box office failure, despite his usual cost-to-quality ratio.
…That was the Confession of a Pianist I knew.
Barely any time had passed since the final script was delivered, and today I saw the full synopsis for the first time.
But the film had changed somewhat — no, a lot.
The rating had dropped from R-rated to 15-and-over.
Thanks to the lower rating, most of the graphic content had been softened.
The protagonist had changed from a serial killer into an investigator trying to uncover why he was fated to die.
With the protagonist transformed, the genre had shifted from horror to an occult-flavored thriller.
The ending had changed too — now the protagonist survives to the very end, leaving the audience with lingering resonance.
This is practically half a different movie. Did something go wrong?
I knew nothing about internal matters, so I couldn't even begin to guess.
I considered asking Director Kim directly — and then, conveniently, the perfect person came to mind.
Since I'd be there tomorrow, I decided to ask after class.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The next day, at the Jeong Dong-ho Acting Academy —
“Teacher, I have a question.”
“Go ahead, Ha-jin. What is it?”
“About the movie we're filming. Did Director Kim Si-woon write the screenplay himself?”
“He did. Why do you ask?”
“Dad's a huge fan of Director Kim Si-woon. He's watched everything from his debut onward, and he says his films are super violent and full of curse words.”
“That's true of him, usually. But this one does seem different, doesn't it?”
“Yes. I saw the script and did the table read yesterday, and there were barely any swear words — I didn't even see a fight scene.”
My teacher looked at me in silence.
His eyes said he found it fascinating.
“Did I… say something wrong?”
“No — your powers of observation are just sharp. Most child actors your age can barely follow what they're told, let alone notice anything. But you caught that something was off just from what your dad said.”
There is something to it, then.
“At first, this was an R-rated film. Ah, R-rated means…”
“Restricted to adults. A movie minors can't watch, right? All of Director Kim Si-woon's films are like that.”
“Goodness. I can't get away with careless talk in front of you, can I? Where do you learn all this?”
Six years old, twenty-two years of experience. That's why.
“The protagonist used to be a murderer who killed people left and right. It was way more violent, and full of swearing. The priest helps him partway through, right? There was no priest in the first screenplay at all.”
So he added the priest when he retooled it into an occult story.
“The rating was out of the production company's hands, but the screenplay changed a lot after your audition. If it hadn't, shooting would have started last month.”
“The screenplay changed… because of me?”
“He said watching your performance as an abused child changed his mind. The wretchedness came through so vividly that he couldn't picture the story of a man trying to escape his fate through murder anymore.”
He had talked things through with my teacher a great deal, ever since he first wrote the screenplay.
He may as well have been a script consultant.
“When he swapped out the protagonist and the genre, I told him to strip out all the dialogue that was just posturing. The first script he showed me — good grief, the sheer pretentiousness of it…”
Every question I had was finally answered.
My audition had become a massive butterfly effect, changing the film itself.
The Future Sight had pushed me into it, certain the film wouldn't flop.
I had no idea how big a success it would be — but it would certainly not be the failed ending I'd witnessed in my past life.
“Your part grew a lot bigger too. Those flashback scenes in the middle didn't even exist before.”
Even without being the protagonist, I'd been handed a chance to stand in the spotlight.
More than enough for a final work before my hiatus.
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A few days before the crank-in, I sat down with Dad in the living room.
“I talked it over more with Yujin's dad, and we're pretty sure you need an agency. It's getting to be a lot for your mom, driving you around everywhere all the time — so how about we start looking for one?”
My parents didn't know about my decision yet.
It was time to tell them.
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“After we finish shooting this movie… I'm not going to act anymore.”