The Words He Never Said
“Senior Seul-ho and I were both child actors who started in this industry when we were young. We never ended up in the same production, but we'd known of each other for a very long time.”
The one holding the microphone was Choi Ran.
With those calm, level eyes, she went on as flatly as if she were remarking, 'I had fried tofu sushi rolls for dinner last night.'
“I never actually got to watch him act, so I'll admit I had my prejudices. There was plenty of talk floating around the internet, and I had my own impressions from the work he'd done before. But watching him perform in person, with my own eyes…”
Choi Ran paused, choosing her words.
At that moment, me, Woo Jun-seo, and PD Jang all stared at her with the same anxious eyes.
'You'd better nail this.'
To be fair, Choi Ran had been in the industry just as long as Yoo Seul-ho himself, and with barely a scandal to her name, her media training was bound to be airtight. And in practice, she'd spent the entire press conference answering sweetly and demurely, matching the pure, innocent image the public knew her for.
Even so, I'd been genuinely terrified she'd do what the Choi Ran I'd seen so far always did—something like, 'If you're that nervous, don't watch the drama. Even trash talk has limits, you know.'
But thankfully….
“I found myself ashamed of the prejudice I'd been carrying.”
She was, truly, a professional.
“I'm not unaware of what viewers have been worried about. Some of you probably think it's absurd for someone like me to be saying this at all. But I'm certain that once our drama airs, today's reactions will flip one hundred and eighty degrees. His acting is that good.”
The words came out with such quiet confidence that they were impossible to dismiss.
Until now, Choi Ran had maintained a haughty, look-down-from-across-the-river distance from other people's affairs, and that very posture now gave her words the weight to shift the whole room.
PD Jang piled on right after her—“Casting Actor Seul-ho was the single best decision I made for this drama.”—and Woo Jun-seo offered his own contribution, a slightly vague, “I can't count how many times Seul-ho surprised me on set.”
With everyone in the room lining up on Yoo Seul-ho's side, the reporters faltered, presumably too embarrassed to push the attack any further.
The emcee seized that exact moment, smiling as she slipped in a pointed remark.
“Yes~. Thank you for those thoughtful words. It feels like we've had a string of very similar questions for a while now, so I'd appreciate it if we could move on to something different.”
Translation: if you had any sense, wrap it up with a decent question already.
While the reporters traded glances, sizing each other up, a hand shot up like a bolt.
“This is Kim Dong-woo. I have a question for Yoo Seul-ho-ssi.”
The same reporter who'd fired the first shot of the day at me.
Even the emcee had caught on, and was cutting in—“Ah, we'd like to give the floor to reporters who haven't asked yet—”—but he barreled straight over her.
“Yoo Seul-ho-ssi, how do you respond to the controversy that you've been exploiting the fame of actors Yoo Tae-ho and Lee Seul-myeong to receive special treatment throughout your career in the industry?”
Wow.
The instant the question landed, I nearly burst out laughing, and fought the urge with everything I had. On the outside, an awkward, troubled smile must have been creeping up my face.
“Yoo Seul-ho-ssi is quite popular today, isn't he? Every reporter keeps coming straight to him.”
Having clearly concluded that words were wasted on the man, the emcee cursed him with her eyes alone.
“Thank you for the question, but this is an event prepared for the work~. Rather than personal matters, we'd love questions about the drama itself, please.”
She steered the flow back on track so I wouldn't have to open my mouth at all. Smooth handling, honestly.
I deliberated for a moment, then turned my head to the side.
PD Jang had been watching me the whole time, and our eyes met directly.
'Not answering is the best move here.'
Of course, even that silence would end up in the papers. Some people would curse the overstepping, insolent reporter on my behalf, while others would feel a satisfying thrill watching Yoo Seul-ho flounder.
'If I answer that question, the fallout will be enormous—and the drama could end up buried under it.'
But bad viral was viral all the same. Plenty of people would seek out the drama just to confirm with their own eyes whether my acting was truly as awful as advertised.
'It's a topic I'll have to address at some point if I want to keep working anyway.'
Even so, throwing ashes on the feast meant for the drama was a separate matter entirely—so I asked PD Jang for permission with my eyes.
I wasn't sure he'd get it, but PD Jang nodded as if he'd been waiting for exactly that. So it does get through.
“May I answer the question just now?”
The emcee stared at me, startled, then glanced over at PD Jang before giving me time to raise my microphone.
I took a small, deep breath, and opened my mouth slowly.
“I have never once stated a position on the nepo baby controversy—not until today. The reason is… honestly, I was afraid. What should I say to a question like this? How could I phrase it so I'd take less hate? I spent so many nights turning those thoughts over and over.”
The eyes of the reporter who'd asked went round.
Whether he did or not, I kept picking my words to sound as earnest and measured as possible.
“Saying 'I worked hard too' here would be the worst possible answer, I know. Everyone else works hard as well, and they didn't get the advantages I got. If I'd had even a fraction of skill as an actor, none of this would have been a problem at all. It's because I didn't that it became a controversy—and that's probably where the word Useless came from in the first place.”
These weren't the standard canned lines trotted out to paper over a situation.
At my startlingly blunt, unvarnished honesty, the clatter of the reporters' keyboards sped up to a speed that made earlier sound like nothing.
— Clackclackclackclack!!!
For all that frantic typing, the faces of the reporters holding cameras were a study in variety. Some stared at me with blank, dazed expressions. Others wore hollow, uncertain smiles.
And Hyun Jin-gae's face—my manager's—was, by far, the most spectacular of the lot.
As I read the full sentence plastered across his features—'You crazy bastard, what the hell are you trying to do????'—I held my head high and kept talking.
“I'd like to say I'll prove it with my skill, but I believe that promise lost the right to be trusted a long time ago. I've had more than enough chances, after all. I'm sure some of you are thinking—even knowing all that, what confidence do I have to be sitting in this seat?”
I hesitated for just a beat. What would the real Yoo Seul-ho have said?
The Yoo Seul-ho who entered the industry because of his parents. The Yoo Seul-ho who was handed only the good, harmless roles, by their will. The Yoo Seul-ho who prayed for three days straight, trying to turn his parents' hearts, until he collapsed. The Yoo Seul-ho who never spoke his heart to a single soul, and walked his last road lonely, to the very end.
If, for the first time in his life, a stage were laid out where he could lay his heart completely bare—what would he have said?
Slowly, I lifted the gaze I'd held down toward the floor.
I looked straight into the camera in front of me, and performed a Yoo Seul-ho I had never once met.
“I'm throwing myself into this as if it were my last chance. So that many people can notice the change, so that I can keep proving it—I will give this everything I have. Thank you.”
And with that, the production press conference came to an end.
The articles came flooding out in a torrent.
The modest promotional pieces the production company had painstakingly prepared were rendered laughable by the sheer, insane velocity of the coverage. The portal sites' 'real-time search rankings' and video sites' 'trending now' charts had long since been discontinued, but the trend-dominated media landscape itself hadn't gone anywhere.
Yoo Seul-ho's answer at the press conference carried staggering force, and every SNS feed and online community was wallpapered with it.
In the end it became a full-blown trend, and the clip of the press conference began surfacing—surgically cut and packaged—even in the algorithms of people who couldn't care less about dramas.
The comment sections were, as expected, all over the map.
In a word: a total mess.
At that very moment when public opinion had turned on its head overnight, Yoo Seul-ho was busy—not searching his own name, but someone else's.
'Reporter Kim Dong-woo of OO Korea, is it….'