The Awards Ceremony
They say that after winning the Trojan War, King Agamemnon of Mycenae walked a red path as he returned to his homeland, in celebration of his victory.
From that origin, the red carpet came to be laid across the ground that celebrities walk at film festivals and awards ceremonies.
Watching famous figures strike poses amid the crowd's cheers and a hail of camera shutters from the press is one of the pleasures of any awards show.
In my previous life, I never once walked a red carpet.
Because I was never cast in a role significant enough to be invited to such an event.
So I used to watch the broadcasts and think, what would it feel like to walk down there?
I assumed it would feel like having the whole world in my hands.
"Ha-jin! Over here, this way, please…!"
"Give us a pose! Smile for us!"
It was absolute chaos. The flashes going off in every direction made it impossible to keep my eyes open.
I had no idea how I even made it to the photo zone, my head was spinning so badly. When I posed there, awkward and stiff, actor Choi Min-ho laughed and said,
"Kah, I dressed up so carefully today, and standing next to you I just look like a squid. You'll have to be reborn or something, honestly."
Why do you have to say things that make people flinch like that?
"You look more handsome, sunbaenim. I don't think I'll ever look like you, even when I'm grown up."
"Hahahaha, kind of you to say, at least."
Once we entered the venue, Yu-jin claimed the seat beside me. She had appeared in a romantic comedy that opened earlier this year.
"The people from your movie are all over there, you know?"
"They said I could sit here."
"That's not what I asked — why are you sitting here?"
"To keep you from looking at other women. Everyone dressed up so pretty today."
Ah.
Whether she was keeping her promise with So-ra, or simply wanted this herself, she had her eyes narrowed into slits and was glued to my side.
It was true that quite a few actresses had come over to get a look at me since earlier. He's even better-looking in person, he'll be terrifying once he grows up, I want to work with him someday — they each tossed out a compliment or two before leaving.
And with women swarming all around me like that, Yu-jin had come running.
"You're the prettiest to me, though?"
"Hmph, what… what are you saying?"
It was the truth.
She looked like a princess out of a Disney animation. That beauty that had captivated the entire world had been extraordinary even as a child.
Fastened in her adorably pinned-up hair was the pin I'd bought her.
"That's the pin I got you."
She raised her hand, fiddled with the pin, and her cheeks went red.
"I won't wear it next year."
Tsundere mode: activated.
"If you get me something else for my birthday, I might wear it."
And now she'd flipped to dere-dere mode.
Amid all this, the awards ceremony began.
.
.
.
The Red Dragon Film Awards are presented across eighteen categories in total.
Confession of a Pianist had been nominated in ten categories and took home Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Art Direction.
We'd hoped for Best Picture as well, but that went to the historical drama that had opened earlier in the year to glowing reviews.
Director Kim Si-woon, whose inner world is one of a kind, gave an acceptance speech that was anything but ordinary.
"Thank you for this enormous honor. In the past, I've made films that would make you recoil in horror at the mere sight of them, but this time I held back. So to those of you who dislike me — critics especially — I'd appreciate it if you'd finally let bygones be bygones…"
Actor Choi Min-ho, who won Best Actor, pulled me into his acceptance speech.
"I want to cut this trophy in half and give one piece to Ha-jin. He played my childhood so brilliantly that I scrambled just to keep from being outshone — and that scramble is what won me this award. Though I already lost in the looks department, hahaha. Ha-jin, thank you!"
Actress Go Eun-hye, winner of Best Supporting Actress, ended up in tears partway through her speech.
"It feels so different from when I won two years ago. When that scandal broke, I kept wondering if my acting had cast a shadow over the film itself, and it nearly destroyed me. Watching Ha-jin's interview — do you know how much I cried? It gave me such strength. I'll have to give him one more hug before I leave."
Yu-jin, sniffling beside me, said,
"You're allowed to hug Go Eun-hye sunbaenim."
How very generous of you.
The congratulatory performance was by NewRunG, the hottest group of the moment — the flagship girl group of YJ Entertainment, where Yu-jin's father is CEO.
So Yu-ri, the leader who would rather die than let me out of her sight, blew me an air kiss as she finished the performance.
Caught on camera were my flustered reaction and Yu-jin jumping up and down in a rage beside me, and the two of us gave the nation a good laugh.
"She did it at the Christmas party too… I'm not letting this go!!"
"Yu-jin, please…"
And so the last awards show before my hiatus came to an end, laughter and scolding alike.
"Ted keeps following me around and it's driving me crazy. He's this weird kid who acts so full of himself just because he's good-looking."
I was on the phone with So-ra.
Apparently there was a boy in her class who wouldn't leave her alone.
"Is this Ted kid actually handsome?"
"No. He's a hundred times uglier than you, Ha-jin."
Am I even a person at this point?
With a fourteen-hour time difference, we couldn't call each other as often as I would have liked. Just lining up our schedules was hard enough.
But getting to hear her voice at all like this made me so happy.
Her life in America was bound to be more eventful than mine, so I mostly just listened. Whether she was doing well at school, what Director Han was up to, how Mom's health was holding — So-ra's everyday moments, big and small, came over the receiver like a song and settled on my ears.
"Yu-jin says she's doing a good job keeping other women away from you. But don't you dare cheat before I come back."
"Do you even know what cheating means?"
"Yes. Director Han explained it to me when Mom was cheating."
…Excuse me, what?
When I pressed her, it turned out to be about a movie. The last film So-ra shot before leaving for America had cast her as a daughter born of an affair.
These days, Yu-jin ends her calls by declaring that if I ever betray her and So-ra, she'll never forgive me.
Apparently she periodically reports on my activities — especially my relationships with women — to So-ra.
The two of them, for their part, seem entirely unaware of their own worth.
With the two of you right beside me, how could I possibly look anywhere else?
.
.
.
PD Jo Seung-yeon got his wish — he would be moving to the drama division early next year — and a successor was chosen for Wagle Wagle Kindergarten as well.
The empty spots Yu-jin and I left behind were promptly filled with new faces.
"Ha-jin, sweetheart~ You don't have to keep acting, but couldn't you manage to appear in the drama I'm debuting with next year?"
"I'm sorry, PD-nim."
It was a request from PD Jo Seung-yeon, the man who had discovered me — but I couldn't waver.
The hiatus wasn't just for my sake; it was a promise I'd made with many people.
There has to be a reason the aftermath happened.
Ever since I resolved to take the hiatus, no matter how many scripts I read, none of them pulled me in. It was almost as if my Future Sight wanted me to take this break.
I had always received nothing but good things from acting — if side effects appeared so suddenly, there had to be a cause.
Until I found out what it was, I had no intention of acting against whatever it was my Future Sight wanted.
Even without acting, there was plenty to do.
"Ballet?"
"That's right. Learning it now will help you enormously down the road."
My teacher said it with a smile.
"How does ballet help with acting?"
"Naturally. For an actor, even walking is acting. Whether someone can act or not, you can tell just from their gait. When an actor hasn't properly trained, it's like their arms and legs are moving independently of one another."
Ballet was so devoted to graceful movement and gesture that people called it poetry written with the body.
"Theater and musicals go without saying, but there are surprisingly many moments in film when you have to express emotion through the body alone. And if your body is stiff, can you really express what you're feeling? If you loosen up now and learn a wide range of movements, you'll spare yourself a lot of grief later."
He had a point.
My hiatus was long as it was — if I didn't lay down my fundamentals now, I wouldn't be able to produce proper acting when the time actually came.
Once I became an adult, physically demanding roles would only multiply.
"Mom. I want to learn ballet."
When her eyes went wide as saucers, I explained that it was part of my acting training.
After looking into it, I found that about a year of intensive lessons was enough to learn basic standing posture, turns, steps, and the like. Since there were other things I needed to do besides ballet, I decided to stretch out the timeline — but to commit to it steadily.
And the thing I needed to do besides ballet was intense exercise.
"You know exercise is good for your mental health, right? If your stamina is poor, it's even harder to climb out once you've been swallowed by an emotion. So pick something now and train consistently. It'll help you a great deal when you're doing action scenes later, too."
Even without my teacher's advice, I'd been planning to exercise.
In my previous life, before acting consumed me, baseball had been my greatest love.
But doing acting and baseball together seemed like a stretch, so this life, I planned to switch sports.
"Mixed martial arts?"
"Yes. My teacher says a trained body produces a disciplined mind. If I want a proper mindset, I have to train my body."
When MMA came up right on the heels of ballet, Mom looked utterly bewildered.
"C-couldn't you do taekwondo instead? Isn't MMA just… brawling around?"
"Taekwondo would be great, but they say with MMA you get to learn all kinds of disciplines — boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, jiu-jitsu. If I'm going to do it anyway, wouldn't it be better to learn more?"
She hadn't expected this one at all — her confusion tipped over into flustered panic.
"It's practical combat, so I think it'll help my acting too. When I'm grown and acting, I'll have to shoot action scenes, won't I?"
"Did your teacher say that?"
"No. My teacher just told me to exercise. But even if it's exercise either way, isn't it better to do the kind that helps my acting?"
Looking around with Dad, we found a good gym a little ways from home — a solid place run by a head coach who was a former MMA fighter.
And so, step by careful step, I began preparing myself so that when my hiatus finally ended, my acting would bloom in spectacular fashion.
