A House That Would Not Welcome Him
Hwang Dong-jun, who was buckling his seat belt in the driver’s seat, glanced back at me.
“You’re really sure about this?”
His eyes held a trace of doubt.
What was this?
Where had all that bold swagger from the office gone?
Was he never really certain I’d get the part in the first place, and had only been bluffing because the situation called for it?
Well, I supposed it made sense.
After all, I—or rather, Han Seo-jun—hadn’t exactly produced results worth bragging about until now.
“Of course. Why would I have talked such a big game if I wasn’t confident? What was I supposed to do afterward if I couldn’t back it up?”
“...Right.”
Only then did Hwang Dong-jun’s mouth curl, a grin breaking across his face.
The car, which had been moving slowly, slipped out of the building.
Outside the window, darkness had already settled over the city, and neon signs along the roadside were beginning to flicker on one by one.
By now, the conversation I’d had with Team Leader Ju Tae-hwan was probably spreading through the entire agency.
Hwang Dong-jun had said he kept his mouth shut, but there had been two employees in the office.
There was no way our conversation hadn’t already been relayed in real time through the group chat.
By now, Lee Hwa-young had probably heard about it too.
So why had I made such a reckless bet when I knew it would spread?
The answer was simple.
Because I was certain.
I had built a career first as an idol, then as an actor, and I had been through auditions countless times.
Whether on stage or in front of a panel, I’d stood before judges well over a thousand times.
In those situations, most judges kept a perfect poker face.
They said it was because a single expression could influence a contestant’s performance, but the truth was simpler: they believed they stood above the people auditioning.
So no matter how skilled the applicant was, they never let their faces change.
They enjoyed the power of it—the fact that the decision to choose you or discard you rested in their hands.
Only on broadcast audition programs did they exaggerate their reactions for the sake of entertainment.
In ordinary auditions, a slight lift of the chin or the faintest twitch of an eyebrow was usually all you got.
And this round’s first-pass applicants were all top-tier idol candidates in their own right.
Among the ten people who made it to the second audition, there was practically no difference in skill.
That meant the result would be decided by the smallest of margins.
That was another reason the judges’ expressions had to have shifted so subtly.
And in that situation, I was the final performer.
The key point of this audition was performance and vocals more than acting.
And yet the actor had shown up last.
This is a waste of time.
Let’s just get this over with and go home.
I had no doubt that was what the judges were thinking.
But once I began acting onstage, their expressions changed in an instant.
When I started the assigned song, they covered their mouths with their hands, eyes wide as saucers, and when the choreography kicked in, the middle-aged man seated second from the right actually fell backward out of his chair.
He had been the only judge who kept his poker face, and even he couldn’t resist the tide in the end.
After the stage was over, I could tell from their faces.
They were going to choose me.
Possessed acting,
powerful vocals,
dynamic choreography.
And above all, Han Seo-jun’s unreal visuals, which tied everything together.
“Still,”
Hwang Dong-jun said as he kept his eyes on the road, one hand steady on the wheel.
“If it doesn’t work out this time, you’re quitting with me. Got it?”
What was that supposed to mean?
Fine for me, but why him?
“Why would you quit, hyung?”
“You asking because you don’t know?”
He said it flatly as he took a left at the intersection.
“No, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just be the complete and total abandoned child here, but Team Leader said it himself. You’re the agency’s ultra-captain, or whatever.”
“...Hah.”
He snorted.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to spend my life babysitting some brat and cleaning up after him just because I’m—”
He swallowed the rest of the sentence before it could slip out again, then glanced back at me.
“—old enough to be doing something better with my time, you know?”
Come to think of it.
There was a huge gulf between the Lee Hwa-young I knew from the past and the woman she was now.
To people who didn’t know her former self, the current Lee Hwa-young would only seem like a wild, sharp-tongued witch.
“You and I can make a go of it on our own once I’m out there, all right?”
“Really?”
“Of course. Why would I be talking nonsense with you sitting right in front of me?”
“......!”
“Besides, I haven’t been living this long by half-assing everything. You think I can’t land one decent role to handle you with?”
The expression he turned on me was full of confidence.
“There’s a new drama starting at TvM. You know how the lead role that went to Ha Ju-young got snatched away because the kid couldn’t keep his body in shape? There’s still one pretty good supporting role open there. We can start with that audition.”
“Sounds good.”
At my easy answer, he let out a little laugh.
Meanwhile, the scenery outside the car changed.
One moment there were modest neighborhood homes, and the next, the mansions ahead were on an entirely different scale.
Palace-sized estates lined the road, and walls the size of fortress ramparts cut across the view.
Hwang Dong-jun stopped the car in front of a massive iron gate, turning around a towering wall that seemed to stretch endlessly upward.
“We’re here.”
“Thank you. I’ll call a taxi on the way back.”
“...You will?”
At my answer, Hwang Dong-jun’s brow creased slightly.
“Aren’t you just going to say hello and come right back out?”
“......!”
I avoided his gaze and got out of the car.
Before I turned away, I let out a quiet sigh.
Then I changed my expression, bent at the waist, and looked through the open door at him.
“I don’t know how long this’ll take. I’ll head home on my own afterward. I’ll message you once I get there.”
“...All right. Fine.”
He nodded, lifting a hand in farewell before turning his eyes back to the road.
Then his car passed in front of me and slowly disappeared into the distance.
I stood before a giant gate designed with patterns reminiscent of ancient Egyptian motifs.
I wonder what kind of world is waiting for me in there...
Even if something enormous was waiting for me, it honestly didn’t matter much.
Because I wasn’t truly Han Seo-jun, after all.
None of this had anything to do with me directly.
To me, that place was just another stage.
And since it was my first time stepping onto it, all I had to do was improvise brilliantly according to the situation. That was all.
I had already memorized everything I could about this family from the articles posted online.
I’d learned the family members’ faces from photographs in those articles, and I had carefully cross-checked them against the few pictures stored on Han Seo-jun’s phone so I could piece together the outlines of their relationships.
Now it was time to go onstage.
I raised my hand and pressed the intercom.
And a moment later—
Tick.
The sound of the gate lock releasing reached my ears.
Now I was stepping onto the stage.
I tightened my stomach and steadied my breathing.
***
It had been a bold entrance onto the stage, but I hadn’t even managed to properly take in the scenery.
To be honest, I had been practically cut off at the door.
I hadn’t even seen Han Seo-jun’s father, let alone the man who was supposed to be his brother.
As expected, I was an unwelcome intruder whose very existence had been denied in this house.
After crossing the carefully tended garden and stepping into the entrance hall, two bodyguards blocked my way as if they had been waiting for me.
The place where they led me, almost as if dragging me along, was the guest lobby.
Not long after, a woman who had to be “my mother” appeared before me.
She was only my mother in the family registry, with not a single feature in common with Han Seo-jun—a face that belonged entirely to a stranger.
She waved the two bodyguards out of the room.
Then she glared at me again, her eyes sharp enough to cut.
“How dare you set foot in here!”
Her voice was fierce, openly threatening.
Contempt dripped from her eyes as though I were some kind of leech.
What was this?
Wasn’t it normal, if you were family, to at least get invited to a birthday party?
I smiled faintly at the corners of my mouth and spoke in a relaxed tone.
“I came to congratulate you on your birthday, Mother.”
“Congratulations?”
Her brow shot down hard.
Her glare seemed to burn.
“And who said I was your mother?”
“......!”
The air in the guest lobby froze over in an instant.
“...Who’s here?”
A young woman appeared at the doorway.
The moment she spotted me, one corner of her mouth seemed to lift before her lips twitched.
She looked like she was desperately holding back laughter that was about to burst out.
I gave a slight bow toward her over the middle-aged woman’s shoulder, and she swallowed a laugh with a soft “pfft.”
The middle-aged woman, still staring at me as if she were a still photograph of pure hostility, spoke again.
“You could have just shown your face to Director Hwang and left. Why did you have to step into the entrance hall? Who do you think is welcoming you?”
“Director Hwang? No one was there.”
With a look that suggested her harsh tone had landed nowhere at all, I answered her with utter composure.
“What did you say?!”
“Ah, and the drama I appeared in is starting to air this week. I thought I’d come by to say hello and, while I’m at it, to meet Father and tell him myself.”
I gave a faint smile, my face innocent and open.
It carried no trace of mockery or provocation.
After all, I wasn’t truly Han Seo-jun.
Even if I cut ties with a family like this, there’d be nothing to regret.
All I needed to know was how this family and Han Seo-jun were entangled.
Since I was about to start running as an actor, the last thing I needed was for them to use the director or some other channel to pressure me.
“Haa...!!”
As if she’d suddenly realized something, the woman let out a short sigh and folded her arms.
“You must have heard something somewhere and come here acting like this, but your father wasn’t the one who told the director to make things difficult for you.”
“......!”
So the guilty dog yelped first.
I hadn’t even asked, and yet she was being this helpful.
“You still seem to think you’re someone important in this house, but your father couldn’t care less what you do.”
Her eyes were full of scorn.
“He said he’d cut you in on the inheritance if you’d just sign an agreement promising to live quietly, and you still can’t understand that? He’d let you idle away and live off the money for the rest of your life.”
“......!”
“Just breathe and lie there quietly, that’s all he wants. So why do you hate that so much? You useless idiot with nothing in your head—how can you be this unbearably brazen and still not know your place?”
As she snapped in frustration, the young woman beside her leaned in and whispered into her ear.
After a brief murmur, the middle-aged woman shot me one last venomous look and disappeared out the door.
Now that we were alone, a strange glint began to gather in the young woman’s eyes.
“Long time no see, little brother.”
Unexpectedly, she addressed me like that.
“I told Mom the guests were looking for her and slipped her that excuse.”
Ah.
So that was the whisper.
“She’s got her nerves even more on edge because all her business acquaintances and friends are here inside right now.”
She went on in a casual tone, as if it were nothing at all.
“Those people already know about you, too, but she doesn’t exactly want to show you off in plain sight. You know how it is, right?”
She curved her lips and let out a faint smile.
Wasn’t Han Seo-jun the son their father had brought back from outside, born to another woman?
Then of course his stepmother, and even the woman standing before me now—his sister—wouldn’t be happy to see me.
“But why are you here again? Every other time you’d just stop by to let Director Hwang know you’d come and then leave...”
“I came to tell you to watch the drama I filmed this time.”
“...Ah!”
At my words, her eyes sparked.
“I know. But you said you’d be in it, so I watched the teaser when it came out, and you weren’t there?”
She studied my face with an odd look in her eyes.
“I mean the one-minute teaser. Even the extras flashed by, but somehow you weren’t in it at all, even though you were supposedly a supporting actor? I thought maybe I’d missed you and watched it over and over...”
“Isn’t it obvious? That was Mother’s doing.”
For an instant, one of her eyebrows rose.
“...Ah...”
Then she understood and nodded.
“A while ago, I was watching a TV drama and Mom saw you on screen and completely lost it.”
“Then you’ll have to keep Mother from watching TV from now on, sister.”
“What?”
She stared at me, then suddenly burst out laughing.
“Oh my! You sound so unfamiliar today. Your whole vibe is different too... I thought it was just the clothes, but your eyes have changed as well.”
Her gaze sharpened as she looked me up and down.
Of course they had.
A completely different person was sitting inside this body.
“We weren’t exactly the closest siblings, but we still spent time together when we were young, didn’t we? Don’t you remember? When you were in middle school, I took you to my school and introduced you to my friends. You were insanely popular with them back then. I was so proud to say you were my little brother...”
“......!”
“And when you were in high school, you told me you’d been offered a modeling job and asked what you should do, and I told you to go for it, that with a face like yours, modeling was nothing, and that becoming an actor would be easy as pie. I practically pushed you into it.”
She narrowed her brows slightly, studying my expression.
There was a faint shadow in her eyes now.
“And then when you were actually struggling, I was busy with my residency and didn’t pay you any attention. I’m sorry.”
I was just thinking, what is this? when she made an apology I hadn’t expected.
Her eyes even looked a little wet as she tapped my arm lightly with her hand.
“It’s fine.”
“Fine? And yet you’re still speaking so formally to me? If you ever got hurt by something I said or felt upset, you always switched to polite speech so I’d feel like I was the one walking on eggshells.”
As she said that, she stuck out her lower lip.
Was that so?
If what she said was true, then at least there had been one ally in this family.
Or maybe she was simply hiding her true colors like a fox.
I’d find out later.
“Still, isn’t it true you got a proper win over Mom today?”
She lifted the corners of her mouth and went on.
“Director Kim sent Mom a video. We played it during breakfast this morning before the guests arrived. Mom was thrilled, telling everyone to watch how terrible your acting was. But the moment we hit play, the whole atmosphere went cold.”
Playfulness and excitement mixed in her eyes.
“I was completely shocked. No, not just me—everyone’s jaws dropped so hard we couldn’t even speak. I had no idea your acting had improved that much. How did you turn into a different person overnight?”
She took a breath and continued.
“And then, at the end, when you got hit by the truck, Dad shot up in alarm. Was that a stunt double? It looked so real that both Dad and I thought it was actually you.”
“I really did that myself.”
I answered lightly, as if it were nothing.
“...Really?”
Her eyes went round as she stepped closer and reached out toward me.
“I knew this day would come. You said it yourself, didn’t you? That you would definitely show me the moment you became the best. I’ve been living all this time with my heart in my throat, and now it’s finally here, little brother. I’m so, so proud of you.”
“Well, I haven’t exactly become a successful actor yet.”
“That doesn’t matter. That’s enough for me already. I’m just so grateful.”
Holding my hand, she gave it a gentle shake.