Why Now, of All Times?
No, why now?
"It's the best one, right?"
"Yes, miss. It's the newest model, and it comes with games boys like too. We matched the color to your preference as well."
Hajin seems to like green, but I'm going to change the whole thing to blue anyway.
Blue is the best color, and that's final.
[Why don't I buy him a phone while I'm at it?]
[It's okay. I'm still just a kindergartner.]
That's what I said, but if he just hands one over, of course I'll take it.
He'll only take my calls and read only the messages I send him. Perfect.
A phone I'd never seen before sat in Sora's hand.
It was obvious she'd bought it for Hajin.
Hmph, not a chance. I'll give him one first.
"Here."
He held out the phone as if it were a piece of candy.
"What's this?"
"It's a phone, obviously. Answer whenever I call. Reply right away whenever you get a message."
"I don't need a phone."
"I need you to have one. So carry it with you, always."
And with that, he walked off.
What am I supposed to do with this stubborn mule of a man?
I was standing there blankly holding the phone, watching Yujin's back, when Sora came up to me.
Holding a phone with a cute little green strap dangling from it.
"I felt bad asking my mother to keep swapping phones for me… so I won't call you very often. Okay?"
She held it out with an anxious expression on her face.
When she hands it over looking like that, how could I possibly refuse?
"The strap's pretty. It's my favorite color."
"You said you liked green before, so I put it on. I was going to get a green phone, but they didn't have one, so…"
Then she trotted off again.
After dealing with Yujin, seeing Sora felt like looking at an actual angel.
"Yujin and Sora gave me phones. Now Mom won't be calling anymore."
"O-oh, is that so? Mom likes it better when I answer her calls, though…"
"If you leave your phone off, she'll call Mom's. Pick up then."
You can never underestimate the cunning of a twenty-two-year veteran in a six-year-old's body.
The next moment, Mom scooped me up and nuzzled her cheek against mine, back and forth.
C-can't… breathe…
"Ahaha, look at Hajin, worrying about his mama. That makes me so happy."
My mom's inner fan had kicked in for her child actor, belatedly but with full force.
"Ma'am, I see you're still here. Could I have a word?"
"Of course, PD-nim."
Producer Cho held out a business card to Mom.
"A junior colleague of mine shoots commercials, and she asked me to introduce Hajin. Since he's still a minor and you're probably not familiar with this side of the industry yet, I told her I'd speak with you first. Here's her colleague's card."
At the word commercial, Mom was speechless — and honestly, so was I.
I'd barely appeared on a children's TV program a handful of times. What exactly did they think they saw in me?
"It's not an automatic casting, though. He'll have to do an audition. The advertiser wants to see him in person."
The word audition made my face crumple on the spot.
"Oh, Hajin, you don't like commercials? You've gone all sour."
Guess I was showing it too much on my face.
It was practically a trauma of mine, so I couldn't help it.
Getting run over by a car on audition day was one thing — an accident, bad luck. But spending my unknown-actor years chasing auditions until my mouth tasted like metal? That was the last thing I wanted to relive the moment I regressed.
If an audition had come up for Wagle Wagle Kindergarten, I wouldn't have appeared on it either.
I was just about to say I had no interest in auditioning when a call came in for Producer Cho.
"Oh, Jooyoung! We were just talking about the audition, actually…"
Jooyoung?
"Mom, could you show me that business card PD Cho gave you?"
I checked the name on the card she handed over.
Naeil Planning
Director Lee Joo-young
'So it really is Director Lee Joo-young.'
A few years from now, this man would claim he was going to make films and found a company called Mackerel Kidnappers.
Things wouldn't go well at first, but then a digital camera commercial he'd shot purely to pay the bills would become a runaway hit, and instead of a film studio, his name would be made — famous as a commercial production house.
'If I hadn't regressed, I could have watched the movies Director Lee Joo-young made.'
In my past life, I'd applied for a supporting role audition for the first film produced there — and been rejected.
Back then, Director Lee had told me it was a shame, that we had to work together next time for sure, and even given me his card.
Seeing the same man's business card twenty years in the past stirred up a strange feeling.
I walked over to Producer Cho, who was still on the phone.
"Ah, one moment… Hajin? Did you want to say something?"
"PD-nim. I'll do the audition."
No matter how much I hated auditions, Director Lee Joo-young was the exception.
He was the kind of virtuoso whose absurdist, blindsiding comic instincts and one-of-a-kind storytelling could make even a ten-minute ad impossible to skip.
Before I regressed, my dream had been to become a star fast enough to shoot one of his commercials.
And now that opportunity had just walked up and offered itself to me. There was no way I was letting it go.
"…The director kept saying I looked fine, but I couldn't stop crying. My eyes were all puffy, and my manager unni rubbed them with a cold towel. What if it made me ugly?"
"That's never going to happen, so stop worrying. You're the prettiest there is."
"Heehee."
On days when a shoot wore her out, Sora would call me just to have someone comfort her.
The question of whether she'd been made ugly must have genuinely rattled her, because she needed that reassurance every single time.
"Doesn't everyone around you tell you you're pretty and you act well? You hear it all day — and you still want to hear it from me too?"
"It's different when Hajin says it."
"How is it different?"
"Hmm… when you say it, it's like cotton candy blooms in my chest and I feel all warm. It doesn't happen with anyone else."
She had a way of making her crush sound utterly adorable.
Whatever the case, having a genius child actress say things like that about me — felt pretty good.
"I wish I could be on set with you."
"I'm not an actor yet, though."
"You act on Wagle Wagle Kindergarten, don't you? Then why aren't you an actor? You're better at it than I am."
Being better at acting than a child actress gave me zero satisfaction.
What's the point of a pro team beating a kids' baseball team?
"You've been in dramas and movies too. This is my first time doing any of this — how could I possibly be better than you?"
"But I heard you really were good…"
"Who said that?"
"My dad did."
Ah.
If it's Sora's dad, then it counts.
If you can't trust the word of Director Han Jae-ryong, winner of Best Director at Cannes, whose word can you trust?
"The director saw my acting?"
Sora said she'd bragged about me, and they'd watched my Tiger Teacher segment together.
Apparently he'd praised my vocal delivery and emotional range as better than Sora's, and she'd been thrilled about it.
Why on earth would she be happy to hear someone acts better than she does?
"That was the first time Dad ever praised another kid's acting!"
In my past life, I never once appeared in a Han Jae-ryong film.
He was a director I revered — if he'd called me in for even an extra's part, I would have sprinted there. But that chance never came.
By the time my acting career began, he'd already retired and left the film world behind.
'Could this life be the one where I earn Director Han's choice?'
It hadn't even been that long since I'd resolved to act again, and already a grand new goal had taken shape.
The moment I hung up, Mom appeared mid-call herself, her mouth moving a mile a minute.
Calls had a habit of coming in while she was already on the phone, so whenever Mom was talking, Yujin's phone stayed off.
Sora would wait quietly and patiently — Yujin simply called Mom's phone right away.
Today, too, Mom had been waiting for her call to end while fending Yujin off.
Mom said she enjoyed talking to Yujin, but I found it a nuisance.
Why can't this kid learn to wait like everyone else?
I told Mom to hang up and switched my phone on immediately.
"You were talking to Sora!"
"She called first, so I answered. If that's so unfair, then you call first."
"When does Sora ever call?"
"How would I know?"
"Then when am I supposed to call!"
How could someone so tiny have eaten a whole train's worth of steam whistle?
"Don't be like that. If you can't get through, it means I'm on with Sora, so just wait a bit."
"No! I want to talk right now, so why do I have to wait!"
Behind the irritation, tears were starting to mix in.
Just like Sora, Yujin's threshold for crying was awfully low.
And I'm someone who absolutely hates seeing a girl cry.
"On the days I'm talking to Sora, I'll always call you too. So don't cry."
"Sniff… you promise?"
"I promise. I'll call you, guaranteed."
Her sniffles, now laced with laughter, lingered in my ear like background music.
"Anyway, so today, you see…"
Then she chattered on and on about everything that had gone well, every compliment she'd received.
Yujin used me in a way entirely different from Sora.
Sora melted away her sadness by talking about the hard things.
Yujin grew her joy by talking about the fun things.
And somewhere in between, I weighed the happiness and sorrow of these two children.
What did this emotional weight actually mean to me?
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Hm?"
"You keep letting me do all the talking."
Apparently a woman's radar operates with pinpoint precision from a very young age.
How could she catch that so accurately without even seeing my face?
"Sorry. I was thinking about something else."
"About what?"
With Yujin, vague dodging simply didn't work.
She'd keep asking, never hanging up, until I gave her a real answer.
Saying "I was comparing you to Sora" seemed like a good way to get yelled at, so I told her about the audition news I'd heard from Producer Cho instead.
"A commercial?"
And with that, she began 'happily' holding forth on the commercials she herself had shot.
Yujin, who loved standing out, appeared regularly in ads and magazine spreads.
She'd even filmed commercials alongside adult actors, not just kids' toy spots.
"What kind of commercial is it?"
"No idea. Someone the PD knows asked him to hold an audition."
"That's how it went for me too — someone the PD knows told me to appear on Wagle Wagle Kindergarten."
Wait. What?
"Is… this person you know someone who makes commercials?"
"How'd you know?"
Apparently the director who shot the ice cream ad was the one who'd recommended the children's program to her.
When I asked if I knew the name, Director Lee Joo-young's name popped right out.
'So this is how everything ties together.'
Thanks to that, I got a vivid, first-hand account of how Director Lee Joo-young actually shot his commercials.
Enduring Yujin's chatter had paid off after all.
"I'm sorry, PD-nim. I should've prepared something like this myself."
"Oh, don't be silly. It's nothing difficult — just wait over there a moment. This'll be quick."
An audition required submitting a portfolio beforehand, but since filming an introduction video on a digital camera felt like a hassle, I'd mentioned it to Producer Cho — and he'd offered to shoot it for me.
"You can use the clips from here for your acting footage, so let's just film a quick greeting. Now, let me think — that backdrop over there would work best. Go stand there."
Just as I moved to where Producer Cho had pointed, my eyes met those of someone standing in a corner, watching me.
It was Director Lee Joo-young — the very man who'd proposed the audition.
It was his face from twenty years ago, but whether thanks to the way memory smooths things over, I recognized him instantly.
'What's he doing here?'
In that instant, everything before my eyes went white, and a bright light wrapped itself around me.
'No — why now, all of a sudden?'