Size Them Up
"You want me to size them up?"
Word reached him that a film by his junior, Kim Si-woon, had finally hit theaters. Curious what the man had managed to make after walking away from the stage, Na Kyung-man paid a visit to the cinema for the first time in ages.
The film was called Confession of a Pianist.
And there, Vice Principal Na Kyung-man encountered a child actor who defied all belief.
"The script for your free acting piece is from one of Director Kim Si-woon's films."
"Yes. Director Kim Si-woon's scripts seem to suit me especially well."
"Did you choose it with a dual role in mind?"
"Yes."
"Then you understand that the two characters' emotions sit in extreme opposition?"
"Yes. One character falls from rapture into despair, while the other climbs from despair into rapture."
"Good, you know it well. An emotional swing that steep is difficult even for a seasoned professional. Once a feeling takes hold of you, it isn't so easily shaken off. In film, you can shoot the two sides separately with time in between — but here, Ha-jin, you have to express that entire transformation within one minute and thirty seconds, standing right in front of us. I trust you understand what that means."
"Yes, Vice Principal."
"Very good. Then begin whenever you've found the emotion."
The boy closed his eyes and sank into the feeling.
Slowly, the air in the room began to change, and it started stripping away everything else that shared the space with him. First it claimed their gazes, then their sounds, and at last it seized their very breath, until simply inhaling felt like labor. Even the faintest noise wrapped itself around their ears like distant artillery, heavy and suffocating.
This room was no longer an examination hall. It was a narrow dead-end alley at the summit of some nameless fortress.
When he opened his eyes, the boy stood there wrapped head to toe in despair — an immortal who had climbed all this way searching for death.
Years of brutal hardship had warped that young voice into something that crawled up the spine. The glinting edge in his eyes left the whole room stinging, as if they were being sliced open without mercy by a length of sharpened steel.
That's how he portrayed the demon cursing eternal life. How did he pull out an emotion like that in so little time?
Rapture plummeted into the abyss of despair in the space of a heartbeat. The performance wrung the emotions out of everyone watching, not only out of the boy standing in the center of it, squeezing until breathing itself became a struggle beneath the crushing weight of the air.
This was not acting.
It was ruthless emotional violence.
Now he dragged that writhing wreck of despair all the way back up toward the rapture waiting at its height. His emotions surged and plunged like a roller coaster hurtling along its rails, beyond anyone's control.
That wasn't a one-off fluke. Compared to this, his role in Si-woon's film was barely an appetizer.
He tightrope-walked the razor's edge between despair and rapture, between dejection and rage — and then he detonated, properly. Energy poured out of that single small body until it was hard to believe it came from one person, and it swallowed the entire room. Every spectator swallowed at the same time, as if bound by a pact, their emotions siphoned away into him like a black hole feeding.
There was nothing left for any of them to do but stand in awe of that boy's performance.
The exploded emotion converged back into a single point, condensing into something thick and potent — the distilled essence of a ecstasy deeper than the abyss, its bottom nowhere in sight.
And so the boy's performance — one that had passed between heaven and hell — came to its close.
"…That's all. Thank you very much."
No one could muster a response to the child bowing so politely, catching his breath. The performance's lingering afterimage had blinded their eyes and plugged their ears.
It had been one minute and thirty seconds of such desperation it stole the air from their lungs.
Gaining the physical strength and mental discipline to somewhat control the aftereffects didn't mean the aftereffects themselves had vanished. Going all the way down to the very floor of an emotion for the free acting segment was guaranteed to carry a price. Which was exactly why I had deliberately chosen idol dance as my special skill — something that didn't demand heavy emotional investment.
Yujin had pushed for me to pick acting at first, but honestly, this was strategy on my part too. Free acting and the special skill were worth the same points, and as long as the acting portion was outstanding, the special skill would score well unless it was an outright disaster. Watching the judges sit there with their souls knocked clean out of them when the free acting ended confirmed it.
So for the special skill, all I have to do is not mess up.
The moment the dance ended, the judges' expressions returned to normal. Apparently the unremarkable routine had neutralized the lingering charge of that ferocious performance.
The final segment was a question-and-answer session with feedback folded in. The two outside judges asked safe, standard things — what had drawn me to acting, what mindset I performed with — and I answered each one with the material I'd prepared.
"Your emotional performance was excellent, but I wonder if you leaned into it a little too heavily. I also noticed a tendency to break slightly between lines of dialogue…"
"It felt as though you were trying too hard to feel the emotion. Honestly, with emotional acting, understanding the character's relationships and locking down their color comes first, before anything else."
The feedback and questions from the two outside judges — everyone but the Vice Principal — were pointedly ambiguous. I could see it plainly: they were praising me on the surface while hunting for a flaw to pin me on.
Whatever the reason, one thing was clear. They were not well disposed toward me.
Then it was Vice Principal Na Kyung-man's turn, and he asked something out of personal curiosity.
"There is nothing for me to critique in your acting, Ha-jin. Performances that arrive through the eyes give a judge something to feed back on — but a performance that strikes you in the chest is enough of a struggle just to savor. So I'll only ask one thing I'm genuinely curious about."
"Yes, sir."
"Your appearance in Confession of a Pianist was your last credit. Is there a reason you didn't act for the next ten years?"
Ah.
"If it's difficult to talk about, you don't have to answer. It's personal curiosity, nothing more."
He was wondering why I'd quit when, had I kept going, I might have become a star to rival Hong Jung-woo. I'd assumed the world had forgotten I existed entirely — he was the first person ever to mourn my gap in activity.
"It's nothing I can't speak about. Back then, it was simply too hard to come out of a role once the filming was done. A teacher advised me to step back from acting for a while and train systematically instead."
"A teacher?"
"I've been continuously attending actor Jeong Dong-ho's acting academy."
"Ah — Dong-ho."
The look he gave me softened considerably. Apparently watching his friend's student perform at this level was a source of quiet pride.
Judging by the reactions of the two outside judges and the Vice Principal, I'd clear the exam without trouble — but the other two panelists wore distinctly sour expressions. Their displeasure didn't seem aimed at me so much as at the Vice Principal for rating me so highly.
If he was feuding with someone, my money was on the chairman's faction — though at this point I had no way of knowing for certain.
"So you passed?"
Yujin was busily picking at me in exchange for teaching her the choreography. That's just how it goes — the one doing the feeding always collects.
"The correct question would be, did you pass?"
"Like there's any chance of you failing. I'm just asking to confirm."
"I'm the one who took the test, so what gives you the right to guarantee anything?"
"I taught you that hard. You failing wouldn't even make sense."
She said it while gnawing away at an absurdly expensive slice of cake. I would never understand how something cut so tiny could cost so much.
"Would it kill you to wipe your face before you eat? You're not a toddler."
I dabbed at the cream smeared around her mouth for her.
Ever so helpfully.
"Wh-what — don't just lean in out of nowhere!"
She shouted, face flushing scarlet.
Was that really something worth getting this angry about?
Seorim Arts High School — the Chairman's Office.
Kang Ji-hoon, a third-year, opened the door and stepped inside.
"You called for me?"
"Get in here and sit down."
Chairman Park Jaehyun said it while sweeping back the few strands of hair he had left. The kindly grandfather impression sat in jarring contrast to the murky gleam visible in the slits of his narrowed eyes.
He flipped through the list of admitted students for a moment, then tossed it across the desk at Kang Ji-hoon.
"Look through the Performing Arts admits and see if you recognize any names. Byun Ha-jin excepted."
"Byun Ha-jin?"
"What, you know him?"
The humiliating memory flashed through Kang Ji-hoon's mind — the time that kid had seized his wrist back in their child actor days. He'd been carefully avoiding him at every broadcast station ever since.
"We ran into each other a few times in studios when we were both doing child roles."
"Not close, though?"
"Why would I bother being close with someone who's not even on my level?"
The chairman stroked his chin and sank into thought.
"Why would the Vice Principal take an interest in a nobody like that?"
"Vice Principal Na Kyung-man, you mean?"
"That's the one. Our panel members told me he fawned all over the kid during the exam. He failed every single one of the three I specially asked him to pass, then let in some nobody instead — which means there's something between those two."
Kang Ji-hoon recalled that the boy had ended his career with a film appearance back in kindergarten and hadn't worked in the ten years since. Which made him, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary civilian — so the idea that he had some connection to Vice Principal Na Kyung-man didn't add up.
The question crossed his mind, but one look at the chairman's thoroughly convinced face and he kept his mouth shut.
Chairman Park Jaehyun had absolutely no tolerance for anyone talking back to him.
"When the Vice Principal digs his heels in, even the principal handles him with kid gloves. And I have zero interest in watching those two old men coddle their little favorite while he sails through this school. You understand what I'm telling you?"
"You want me to go size them up myself?"
"You're a third-year, and you're the student council president. You're about to enter the debut group, so don't go stirring up pointless noise — just set aside a few useful first-years for me. Kids squabbling within their own grade is common enough, isn't it?"
"That's true enough. But what's this about a debut group?"
He'd only joined the company as a trainee recently, and he'd heard nothing of the sort from his agency.
"I'm close with your agency's CEO. Do right by me, and something like a debut spot is hardly a challenge."
And with that, the chairman smiled — thin and oily.
Kang Ji-hoon understood instantly what that smile meant.
"What would kids who just enrolled even know? I'll vet a few of the second-years."
"That part's up to you."
Stepping out of the chairman's office, Kang Ji-hoon placed a call to somewhere. When it ended, he smiled a smile every bit as oily as the chairman's and hunched his shoulders with a shrug.
"So this is what it takes to catch the chairman's eye… This one's not on me, Byun Ha-jin."