The Moment the Room Went Still
“I’m truly sorry to have kept you waiting. We meant to leave early, but we were delayed on the way.”
Five men entered in a line, bowing deeply from the waist in a textbook display of respect.
All of them were flushed bright red.
The corners of their mouths were slightly lifted, but it wasn’t a smile.
They were the youngest ones, arriving last in front of their seniors, and their faces were filled with the awkwardness of people who didn’t know what to do with themselves.
From the very beginning, O Su-ja’s gaze had been fixed on the tallest young man walking in front, the one at the head of the line.
Before she realized it, the corners of her own mouth had curled upward.
She couldn’t help it.
At first glance, he had already captured her favor in a single stroke.
No, not just O Su-ja. He had the kind of face that would make anyone feel better the moment they looked at him.
With a sidelong glance, O Su-ja confirmed that the people who had been talking were naturally letting their attention drift toward him.
“Wow—just showing up makes this whole room brighter.”
O Su-ja leaned toward Jang Mi-ran at her side and whispered softly.
Jang Mi-ran, who had been flipping through her script, lifted her eyes and followed the direction O Su-ja was looking.
Her gaze passed over Han Seo-jun, who had now taken his seat and was taking his script out of his bag, and a faint smile touched her lips.
“It does, doesn’t it? There were rumors that his acting wasn’t up to par, and he must have really suffered because of all the hate comments... but once that audition video aired, the mood changed a lot. It’s a relief. Besides, he’s in the same agency as me.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Yes. We’re even in the same Team 1.”
As Jang Mi-ran smiled with evident fondness, O Su-ja glanced at her sideways.
“Still, he’s my son.”
She lightly tapped Jang Mi-ran’s arm, pretending to be jealous.
“Oh, I gave birth to him myself, you know?”
Jang Mi-ran replied with playful indignation, and the people nearby who had been listening to their exchange all burst into laughter.
At the sound, the young actors seated opposite them lifted their heads.
The moment their eyes met, a strange smile flickered across Han Seo-jun’s mouth.
It couldn’t be helped.
They were still before the main reading had properly begun, so everyone had been absorbed in their own lines.
And yet the “biological mother” and “adoptive mother,” who were supposed to be bitter enemies in the story, were now sitting side by side and laughing brightly.
It must have seemed strangely out of place.
Just as the laughter was passing back and forth, the conference room door opened.
Director Kang So-hee stepped inside, and behind her the writer who had adapted the original work followed quietly.
Greeting the people around her as she entered, Director Kang So-hee naturally headed first for O Su-ja.
The moment their eyes met, neither of them needed to speak first; both their mouths curved upward at once.
“Honestly, I don’t even know what to say. Anyway, thank you so much. You’d only just finished filming that movie, and you probably haven’t had a proper rest, but you came all this way from LA.”
“What can I say? There were probably plenty of people who wanted this role. I should be the one thanking you for asking me. But come to think of it, I’m a little hurt.”
As O Su-ja spoke with a cute little wrinkle of her nose, Director Kang lifted the corners of her eyes slightly.
Jang Mi-ran and the other actors nearby naturally turned their attention to the two of them.
“What is? Is something uncomfortable?”
“...Nope.”
O Su-ja shook her hand with a bright smile.
“My screen time is way shorter than I expected. And when I heard I was playing the protagonist’s adoptive mother, I honestly had some expectations, you know? Before I got the script, I thought the biological mother would be horribly vicious, the kind of woman who uses even her son to feed her own greed, so I figured there’d be at least one scene where we’d grab each other by the hair and go at it... But once I saw it, it was way too bland.”
That remark set off a roar of laughter all around the room.
Director Kang So-hee laughed too and shot O Su-ja a sideways look.
“Aigoo, you really are something, sis! You think I’d make a K-pop idol film into a makjang drama?”
At O Su-ja’s joke, Director Kang let out a snort of laughter.
Then she got to her feet and took her seat.
And at last, the script reading everyone had been waiting for began in earnest.
A female actress in her early thirties looked down at her script, the corners of her mouth lifting as she began in a prim, cool voice.
“Ha...! Not just the song, but the choreography is painfully cliché too. If you go onstage without any strategy to set yourself apart, of course the result will be like this. You don’t have any originality of your own, do you? Then it has to be boring.”
Someone let out an impressed “Whoo.” at her cynical delivery.
Even without seeing the acting, just hearing it was enough to paint the expression in one’s mind.
When her line ended, the man in his early forties seated next to her took over the baton.
He looked down at the script, now heavily worn with fingerprints and smudges.
“Right now, that’s about the level you’re at. No character, no distinction, no hidden weapon. Just the same obvious rhythm everybody else is doing, and the uncharismatic vocal tone of some generic rapper.”
Speaking with the lazy, sneering tone of someone lightly mocking the other side, the man slowly turned his head toward the opposite row.
Then, with a teasing look full of provocation, he fixed his gaze on one of the idol members.
“And you there—the purple-haired one who sings the chorus!”
At his line,
“...Huh?”
the idol member with dark blond hair answered awkwardly, and the actors around them burst into laughter.
He looked flustered, running a hand through his hair as he turned to Director Kang So-hee.
“Uh, I still have performances left. I promise I’ll dye it purple as soon as the last show is over.”
“Oh, you only need to dye your hair before filming. But that part where you answer ‘huh’—could we take one more pass at that? Actor Park Jun-taek, let’s do your line again from before.”
At the director’s words, the idol member swallowed hard.
Then the middle-aged actor’s line started again, and—
“...Uh... huh?”
At the words that blurted out in confusion, laughter broke out around the room once more.
Director Kang wore a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s hard to even answer with a simple ‘huh,’ isn’t it?”
“...Yes.”
“That’s because trying too hard to make it sound natural just makes it awkward.”
“.....!”
“Just say it. Without thinking.”
“Understood.”
Without thinking, she said.
He stared blankly at the director, not understanding what she meant.
Then, from the seat beside him, Han Seo-jun’s line rang out.
The man turned his head, and Han Seo-jun came into view.
He had lowered his head slightly.
But his eyes weren’t on the script.
There were traces where the white space had been filled black with notes, but for now his hand simply rested over the page.
His focus wasn’t on the script but somewhere above it.
As if something only he could see were floating there.
And then,
as he continued his lines, Han Seo-jun’s eyes and expression changed.
“....!”
Every time the lines left his mouth, it felt as though even the air around him changed.
Han Seo-jun had already become a completely different person.
The golden-haired man who had casually turned his head saw the actors filling the conference room, all of them holding their breath.
The laughter that had filled the room only moments before was gone, replaced by a silence in which everyone stared at Han Seo-jun with wonder and astonishment.
Even O Su-ja, the world-famous actress who had come all the way from the United States, could not tear her eyes away from him, her gaze sparkling with emotion.
He looked back at Han Seo-jun beside him.
Han Seo-jun was still facing the air, completely merged into the character from the script.
The corners of his mouth were faintly raised, and his eyes moved gently as if responding to the other person’s line.
...Damn.
He swallowed his admiration inwardly.
There was such an overwhelming gap between them that there wasn’t even room for jealousy or rivalry.
He just... felt a crushing sense of defeat for no good reason.
To the point that effort itself seemed meaningless.
He had realized it clearly several days ago, when they were practicing the choreography and vocals together.
Han Seo-jun was someone in whom raw talent and instinct had merged in perfect balance.
He himself had been an idol in every waking moment for years, from the second he opened his eyes.
He never skipped vocal or dance practice, not once in a single day.
It was through that blood-soaked effort that he had climbed to where he stood now.
But watching Han Seo-jun, he felt painfully, unmistakably how pitiful all that effort looked before true genius.
He had originally been someone already at the top as an idol.
He was versatile enough to be chosen as the main MC of a TV music program, and within his agency he was called “the man who commands the stage.”
Thanks to that reputation, he had joined this miniseries through nothing more than a simple audition.
The same was true of the other three sitting with him now.
For the final center position, the lead role had drawn a crowd of top-tier main vocalists determined to win it through a true showdown.
But the one who had been chosen among them was none other than actor Han Seo-jun.
The moment the five of them first stood onstage and tried to sync for the first time, he had already tasted despair.
Han Seo-jun had shown such a different class of skill.
He knew the rumors going around—that Han Seo-jun was the “king of terrible acting,” that the videos had been made with the help of AI.
But if his singing, choreography, and now even his acting were all at this level, then the only honest conclusion was that this person himself must be AI.
Really, at this point, Han Seo-jun’s body was the only thing here.
His mind was probably inside the scene he himself had created.
There was even a chance that, in his own head, a camera was already rolling.
And then, just as the scene shifted and his line ended, Han Seo-jun’s faraway gaze returned to him.
Han Seo-jun lowered his eyes and glanced lightly at his script.
Then he turned his head and met the dazed stare of the man beside him.
With one eyebrow lifting slightly, Han Seo-jun looked at him and spoke.
“What is it?”
After the script reading ended, he headed to the office before going home.
That was because, a few days earlier, MG Construction—one of the so-called Big 3 among Korea’s major construction firms—had sent in an advertising proposal.
Over the past two weeks, the name mentioned most often online had been mine, without question.
Thanks to my handsome face, I’d never quite been a total pariah, but because I was always at the center of controversy, people were now beginning to see me as an icon of favorability instead.
And now, not only this construction company but menswear brands and cosmetics companies were lining up to contact me as well.
Life really was amusing that way.
On the drive to the company, Hwang Dong-jun kept sneaking glances at me even while holding the steering wheel, and the corners of his mouth wouldn’t come down.
“Man, seriously! The ones who used to look at us, drop their eyes, and sneer behind their hands every time they saw us? Look at how they’ve flipped their attitude the second you blew up.”
He chuckled, then jerked his chin toward the back seat.
“Look at that. They even sent fruit and drinks again today, saying it was just a little something for us—piled up like a mountain. They even wrote their names on the Post-its. Seriously, they went all out.”
He spoke with mockery in his voice, but underneath it there was both the frustration he had been holding in for years and a sense of relief.
Well, of course.
How much had he been simmering inside all this time?
The actor he managed had been a laughingstock to the whole world.
Now that he could finally breathe a little, life must have started feeling worth living again.
If the opportunity came later, maybe I should go on that show The Omniscient Drinking Point of View with him sometime?
Have a few rounds of soju together on-air, let him show his face on TV, and maybe give him a chance to let out some of the words he’d been keeping buried.
He was a veteran, after all, so he wouldn’t cross the line and say something he shouldn’t on broadcast.
The car stopped at the entrance of the company building.
“The team leader’s waiting for you, so go on up first. I’ll park and come up right after.”
“Then I’ll head up first.”
I’d been about to suggest we go together at an easy pace.
But I was feeling a little like I needed the restroom, so that had to wait.
Getting out of the car, I went into the lobby.
A man’s back standing in front of the elevator caught my eye.
Ha Ju-young.
He looked like he’d just come from the gym, wearing a loose shirt stretched at the elbows, yet even from behind his frame still held up well.
They said he’d lost a role because he’d gained too much weight, so he seemed to be straining desperately to recover his old shape.
That drama, which had gone to someone else, was already drawing public attention before filming had even begun.
Just looking at the cast lineup was dazzling.
The comments saying it already had the feel of a hit were hanging under every piece of related material like clusters of grapes, so he’d have every right to feel sick about it.
If only I could get my hands on a script from somewhere,
I might even be able to know in advance whether it would really become a success.
“Hello, Senior Ha.”
“Oh, Han Seo-jun. I heard today was your script reading day?”
“Yes, it just finished.”
“...Is that so?”
Ding.
The elevator opened.
“Hello.”
As I greeted them first, three employees from Team 3 getting off inside all dipped their heads, their faces turning red as they passed us.
Once we stepped into the elevator, Ha Ju-young pressed the floor number with his finger and spoke.
“By the way, Han Seo-jun. Was there really such a gathering?”
“...Pardon? What gathering?”
“I heard there’s some kind of secret meeting where the hot male actors get together and network.”
“.....!”
“I mean, someone at my level would surely qualify, right? So why didn’t I even know there was such a thing?”
He turned to the mirror and ran a hand through his hair.
Ah, right. That?
Had the excuse I gave Lee Hwa-young already come back around and reached Ha Ju-young’s ears?
News really did travel fast.
“That’s a misunderstanding. It’s just... ”
As I tried to gloss things over with Ha Ju-young, who was looking at me, the elevator happened to stop.
“Ah, our team leader was telling me? That Lee Hwa-young actress said something like that...”
Just as he was about to step out through the open doors, he swallowed the rest of his sentence.
Right in front of the elevator, Lee Hwa-young was standing with her arms folded, staring straight at us.