CHAPTER 037: A Tale of Valor
CHAPTER 037: A Tale of Valor
With the set busy preparing for the shoot, Director Ji Seongwoo sat in front of the monitor and swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It felt like his heart was booming like a speaker.
The tension of the first shoot came over his whole body.
In his head, the teachings of his mentor, Baek Junbong, kept looping.
‘If the director wavers on set, the actors lose their way. Trust the actors. And become the vessel that can fully capture their acting.’
He’d repeated it hundreds of times in his mind, but the trembling in his heart wouldn’t stop.
Baek Seonggeon, a heavyweight of Korean theater.
And Ryu Sunho, who had shown monstrous growth in a short time.
Could he truly contain the energy of those two?
An uncontrollable surge of anxiety rose up.
That was when—
“Director.”
A calm voice reached his ear as he was lost in thought.
When he looked up, Ryu Sunho was already standing in front of him.
“I’m going to trust you and go all the way, Director. The picture you have in your head is the right answer.”
“……!”
That single line gently loosened Ji Seongwoo, who had been frozen stiff.
His mentor’s teaching—trust the actors.
But now the actor was trusting him first.
In Ryu Sunho’s eyes was quiet, solid trust without the slightest doubt.
‘Right. I can’t waver. Pull yourself together. You’ve been waiting for this moment.’
Without realizing it, Ji Seongwoo clenched his fist tight.
The anxiety vanished, and something hot surged up in its place.
The responsibility, as a director, not to betray this actor’s trust and expectations.
And the resolve that he would capture these incredible actors’ performances in the best picture possible.
The staff on set couldn’t hide their anticipation either.
“A monster rookie and a heavyweight from theater—this is basically a cheat key, isn’t it?”
“Teacher Baek Seonggeon is insane at acting. I heard they barely managed to persuade him to come.”
“Exactly. People don’t know because he’s in theater, but there aren’t many who can act as well as Baek Seonggeon in this industry.”
“It’ll come down to how much Ryu Sunho can return fire.”
“If he does even as well as he did with actor Park Dusim, it’ll be great. That shrine scene was really good.”
Ji Seongwoo nodded as he listened to the staff’s excited voices.
Then he checked the scene they would shoot today again.
A past flashback scene of the protagonist, Jeong Dogyun.
An important sequence showing why he became a reclusive loner.
All of it stemmed from psychological abuse by his adoptive father, Jeong Gijun.
After entering politics, Jeong Gijun built a humanitarian image on the surface, leading with welfare and children’s rights.
But in reality, his words and actions didn’t match at all—he voted against bills related to orphanages and childcare.
When criticism surged, he publicly adopted Jeong Dogyun to silence it.
That choice was purely for image-making, with no sincerity from the start.
In front of the world, he acted like a kind and devoted father.
But at home, he thoroughly ignored Jeong Dogyun and forbade even calling him by name.
How would this vicious chill, which had existed only as ink in the script, be brought to life through the two actors’ breathing?
With swelling anticipation and excitement, Director Ji Seongwoo shouted,
“Ready… action!”
Ryu Sunho closed his eyes and recalled Teacher Jo Sangdeuk’s lesson.
‘Not with adjectives—use verbs.’
Jeong Dogyun wasn’t simply sad.
He craved love from his father.
He tried to earn his acknowledgment.
The moment he thought that, his body reacted naturally.
The back that had been straight began to curl inward ever so slightly.
His shoulders shrank a little under the contradictory mix of expectation and fear.
His hands fidgeted on his knees, not knowing what to do.
In a world where he couldn’t even take a full breath, he became the smallest existence alive.
“Hoo……”
He slowly opened his eyes.
Then the camera began to roll.
The living room.
On the small TV screen, the politician Jeong Gijun continued an interview with a gentle smile.
A neat suit, a soft voice.
Subtitles scrolled beneath the screen.
[Family is at the center of my political philosophy. Adoption, in particular, became an opportunity to learn how to love someone completely.]
At the next line, Dogyun’s eyes stopped.
[Family begins the moment you call someone by their name.]
That single line stabbed deep into Dogyun’s chest.
Not like a small needle, but like a rusted awl slowly forcing its way in.
On screen, Jeong Gijun smiled like the kindest man in the world.
To Dogyun in reality, that smile was deception.
Just then—
The sound of the front door opening.
Jeong Gijun came in.
A suit with a perfectly straight tie knot, shoes without a speck of dust.
Everything was immaculate.
But the moment the door closed, the smile slid off his face.
His facial muscles stiffened—cold and expressionless like ice.
Without a word, he took off his coat, hung it up, removed his watch, and placed it neatly on the table.
Even the brief sound of his breathing rang strangely in the room.
The indifference—never once looking at his son—turned Dogyun into something transparent.
Dogyun carefully opened his mouth.
“…Father, you’re ba—”
“Don’t use that word.”
Jeong Gijun’s voice cut in sharply.
“That’s something you say only in front of reporters.”
At that short, icy sentence, Dogyun flinched.
The air in the room sank heavier.
It felt like his heart dropped out, and the tip of his tongue went dry.
He bit his lip for a moment, then said in a trembling voice,
“Then… at least call my name.”
Jeong Gijun said nothing.
The soft scrape of fabric as he straightened his coat.
The metallic sound of zipping up a briefcase.
Only sounds without warmth rang clearly through the room.
They felt like they were saying, instead, I don’t care what you say.
Dogyun’s breathing sped up.
His fingertips began to tremble, and something hot boiled up inside his chest.
“…Just once. Please say it once.”
It sounded less like a request and more like a scream.
There was no answer.
“…It’s a name you made.”
His lips twisted, something between a laugh and a sob leaking out.
“Ah, right. You didn’t make it… your secretary slapped something together and stuck it on me.”
Jeong Gijun’s back didn’t move an inch.
That indifference tore roughly at something deep inside Dogyun’s chest.
Hot blood surged up, his heart tightened, and his breathing choked.
His throat burned, and at last what he’d been crushing down burst out.
“But! Even if it’s something you slapped on, can’t you just call it properly once?!”
It was a scream that felt like it tore his throat.
All the resentment he’d held back poured out like a waterfall.
“Is it that hard?!”
His hands shook violently.
The corners of his eyes reddened.
“Those three syllables that don’t even take one second to say—why are they so hard?!”
He poured it all out.
The hot things inside his chest spilling—
But—
“……”
All that came back was an echo, crashing into empty air.
Jeong Gijun’s silence stabbed Dogyun more cruelly than any humiliating words could.
Just as he began to give up,
Jeong Gijun turned his head and looked at Dogyun.
“……!”
For an instant, Jeong Dogyun held onto a sliver of hope.
But Jeong Gijun’s gaze was viciously sharpened.
What Dogyun wanted was just three short syllables, but—
“Hey.”
What came back was a single syllable. And then—
“If you need something, tell the secretary.”
The sharp voice that followed carved out Jeong Dogyun’s heart.
The air inside the set froze.
The staff, who had been watching the two actors’ performance while holding their breath, didn’t move, as if time had stopped.
Director Ji Seongwoo was the same.
He stared at Ryu Sunho’s collapsing face on the monitor, completely spellbound.
It was only when the assistant director tapped his arm that he snapped back to himself.
“C-c-cut…! Cut!”
Awe at the goosebump-inducing acting.
Euphoria at the two actors’ perfect chemistry.
And the swelling, overwhelming feeling of witnessing a character he’d written come alive and move.
Ji Seongwoo’s thoughts had short-circuited under the weight of all those emotions.
When the director finally forced out the call for cut, the frozen set erupted like a furnace.
“Wow…”
“T-this is insane…”
“I forgot to breathe just now.”
“This is the first shoot, first take, right? And you’re telling me they built a scene like that from the start?”
“Seriously… seriously incredible. Actor Baek Seonggeon too, but Sunho… how is he not intimidated and still this good? Is he really a rookie?”
“They said he didn’t flinch at all even in front of Teacher Park Dusim. He’s got the fundamentals and the guts.”
“Wow, the phrase ‘matched rivals’ pops right into my head.”
“This is a perfect scene that could never have come out without both of them.”
While the staff’s excited praise poured down like a waterfall,
Ryu Sunho was also slowly coming out of the emotional afterglow.
‘I can’t breathe.’
Not because of anything else—because of Baek Seonggeon’s acting unfolding right in front of him.
Restrained movements, split-second handling of gaze, a heavy voice that dominated the space.
All of it brought the person ‘Jeong Gijun’ into existence right before his eyes.
A thrilling shiver ran through his whole body.
The fact that he was acting with someone like that.
And then ambition rose in him.
This film—he had to make it succeed, no matter what.
Ryu Sunho looked at Baek Seonggeon with a moved gaze.
Baek Seonggeon still stood there without the slightest movement.
“……”
He hadn’t escaped ‘Jeong Gijun’ yet.
It was a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time.
The raw energy Ryu Sunho was emitting made him forget he was even acting.
The explosiveness of bursting out suppressed emotion.
A voice that didn’t boom so much as it shook sharply.
That imperfect vocalization, if anything, made the character Jeong Dogyun perfect.
‘Was even that calculated…?’
He’d grown another step compared to when Baek Seonggeon had seen him on TV not long ago.
At an impossible speed.
Hadn’t it only been a few months?
‘That kind of growth isn’t possible on talent alone.’
That was the product of grinding time down like blood.
And then, the things Ryu Sunho had been saying to his manager before filming started flashed through his mind.
—You look tired.
—I haven’t been sleeping at all lately.
‘So he doesn’t even sleep and just practices…’
In reality, it was because mosquitoes kept swarming out of the semi-basement.
Every dawn, the buzzing in his ear made him lose sleep.
But Baek Seonggeon completed his misunderstanding all by himself.
‘Innate talent and a vicious hard worker…’
In that instant, a fighting spirit stirred inside Baek Seonggeon.
The pride of being Korea’s best theater actor.
He couldn’t accept that he was doing nothing but admire a mere rookie.
His pride flared and lifted its head.
To seize control of the restless atmosphere, the next take began to be calculated in his mind with precision.
‘In the next take, I’ll lay my sneer on top of the tiny breaths with which that kid stacks up emotion. Right before the scream bursts out, I’ll throw indifference like a dagger.’
As he calculated that precise interlocking of emotion,
Baek Seonggeon startled himself.
‘What? I’m waiting for the next take?’
He was a man who despised the word “take.”
On stage, there was no second chance.
From the moment the curtain rose, every breath and every line had only one life.
That was why he’d despised screen acting, where the same scene was repeated.
And yet now—
He wanted the next take so badly it drove him mad.
The acting just now had left him thirsty.
‘One more time. Just one more time, and…’
Pride didn’t matter anymore.
What roared inside him now wasn’t a “theater actor,” but the fierce desire of a pure “actor.”
After a brief hesitation, he moved his feet.
He walked up to Director Ji Seongwoo and spoke.
His eyes were burning hotter than ever.
“Next take. Let’s go again right away.”
After a few more takes passed, Director Ji Seongwoo’s trembling voice rang out across the set.
“Okay, cut! That was good… no, it was perfect.”
The moment his words ended, every staff member on set stood up and burst into applause.
It was praise, like they’d just watched a perfect stage play.
Then—
Baek Seonggeon walked up to Ryu Sunho.
Without warning, he raised his hand up.
Ryu Sunho was briefly startled, but then he understood and raised his own hand too.
Smack—
Their palms met with a crisp sound.
It was recognition and praise for each other’s acting.
Keeping their hands clasped, Baek Seonggeon pulled him in, hugged him, and patted his back.
“You monster of a kid. You did well. Really.”
“Thank you, Teacher.”
That day’s filming ended, leaving behind a powerful memory.
And this “war story” began spreading quickly through the staff’s mouths.
“Man, I did a truly insane shoot. I’ve never seen acting like that in my life. First shoot day, first take—Ryu Sunho and Baek Seonggeon were acting like two crazy people…”
Stories passed mouth to mouth always end up getting a little distorted.
“I heard on the first day they had Ryu Sunho and Baek Seonggeon go head-to-head and they did insane acting…? They even high-fived so hard it made a smack sound, the staff went crazy—apparently it was no joke!”
And at some point, the rumor had turned into something completely different.
“What? Ryu Sunho and Baek Seonggeon went crazy and got into a fight on the first day of shooting?”