How a Loan Shark Survives as an Actor — Episode 37
The moment I got home, I started searching the internet.
At first I had no idea what to even type into the search bar, but after a while of fumbling around, I got the hang of it.
It was when a search that began with 'parents who hate their children' wound its way, link by link, to 'characteristics of narcissistic parents' that I finally got a handle on Yoo Seul-ho's parents.
Ah.
So both Yoo Tae-ho and Lee Seul-myeong were… narcissists?
Narcissist.
A person who loves themselves excessively and exploits others as tools.
The fancy English label made it sound more complicated than it was, but the reality was simple.
So they're just selfish bastards.
Self-centered, zero empathy. I'd seen that type until I was sick of it back in my loan shark days.
And yet I was a little surprised.
I'd assumed even the most selfish people would be different with their own flesh and blood.
So there really are people who matter more to themselves than their own kids, huh.
Deep in my reading about narcissistic parents, I found myself thinking the search had been well worth it.
They don't say know your enemy and know yourself for nothing.
To fight properly, you had to understand your opponent first. All the more so when it was someone you didn't know well.
Not that I'd know — I never had parents to begin with.
To be honest, if you'd told me to go up against Yoo Tae-ho or Lee Seul-myeong themselves, I'd have done it without a second thought. It was fighting Yoo Seul-ho's parents that somehow felt like a different animal entirely.
Still, after spending more than two hours poring over the search results, I had a rough sense of how to handle things going forward.
The moment my thoughts were more or less organized, I picked up my phone. Then I left a short message on the number saved as Mother: "I'll be visiting home this weekend."
It was the first contact I'd sent in the several months since I'd landed in Yoo Seul-ho's body.
Scrolling back through the message history, I saw that he'd dutifully checked in with his parents about once a week, whether they replied or not. That good son was dead, and they had no idea. So how much must they hate me — months of silence, and on top of that, leaving their messages on read over and over?
Before long, the phone rang shrilly.
Needless to say, I had zero intention of pressing the answer button.
As I ignored the phone shrieking at me to pick up, it apparently decided enough was enough and a stream of texts came pouring in one after another.
I chewed through the messages — each one twisted with some barbed jab or other — without letting a single word land.
Got a script to read.
His parents were one thing, but tomorrow's shoot was the more urgent matter. I'd read the script countless times already, yet the more I went over it, the more new things I caught. There was no room for carelessness.
After cycling through the script several rounds like that, Yoo Seul-ho's parents had vanished from my head entirely.
"Yu-na. You know what?"
"Yes?"
Today's shoot was at a park. Woo Jun-seo was off in another district for a separate shoot, so the only ones in front of the camera were Choi Ran and me.
"I… I've been thinking about you a lot lately?"
I spat out Kang Min-woo's line, the one where he comes sniffing around the female lead Seo Yu-na. For that one moment, I wasn't thinking about Choi Ran or Yoo Seul-ho or anything at all. There was only the woman in front of me, a man hungry to win her over, holding his breath so she wouldn't catch how desperate he was.
Holding my breath like that made it come out uneven, and before I knew it, my face had gone red. I figured it might read as a little perverted, but I grinned anyway, thinking, Men are all perverts, what can you do. She might even like it.
It was the smile of a man who didn't harbor a single speck of doubt that she might turn him down.
"Ah… um…."
And the moment Seo Yu-na answered with a stiff face—
"Hey. What kind of reaction is that?"
"I'm sorry?"
—I flipped the expression instantly and came at him with a blade in my voice. The sudden shift in temperature made him flinch. I stared in silence at his pupils, trembling like a frightened rabbit's.
"Cut!"
PD Jang's voice snapped me back. One blink, and the frightened rabbit from seconds ago was gone, replaced by a drowsy lion standing in front of me.
And the words that came back to me were….
"You make trashy lines work disgustingly well, Oppa."
"…That was a compliment, right? Thanks."
Choi Ran was undeterred by my less-than-thrilled expression.
"Of course it's a compliment. You don't often find an actor who sells a garbage character as well as you do."
"Is that so."
"Even a bad line reads a little better when a handsome guy delivers it, you know? So making lines that are unforgivable even with that face actually land — that's real acting skill. Truly garbage. Good job."
"…Thanks."
My tongue tripped over itself, but I forced out a reply. Whether I was flustered or not, Choi Ran was busy blinking her eyes at a rapid clip, looking worn out.
"Your eyes are dry, huh. Let me get some artificial tears in there."
"My makeup will come off, so no."
"We'll do it so nothing runs. Want me to do it?"
She hesitated but didn't exactly refuse, so I called over the stylist. I cracked open the single-use artificial tears she handed me and leaned in close to Choi Ran.
"Putting in contacts for every single shoot must be rough. They dry your eyes out even more, right?"
Dropping artificial tears into someone else's eyes wasn't exactly rocket science. You can't go manhandling a girl's face, though, so I eased one careful drop in at a time.
"Keep them closed for about thirty seconds."
"Yes, sir."
While Choi Ran obediently followed instructions, I handed the artificial tears back to the stylist. Only, the stylist flashed me a smile so shy it bordered on strange, then scurried back to her spot.
"…?"
What was that about?
As I tilted my head, PD Jang finished reviewing the footage and called out the okay.
"Let's move to the next scene!"
At that, the staff began hauling equipment around with visibly brightened faces. Word was we'd be wrapping earlier than expected — hard not to be pleased about that.
"Actor Seul-ho, you're really finding your form, huh?"
While the staff buzzed around us, PD Jang came over wearing a satisfied smile.
"The crazy bastard who beats his little brother suited you perfectly, but the trash who hits on his little brother's crush suits you just as well!"
"…Thank you."
"The contrast with the scene Actor Jun-seo shot the other day makes it even better. I wondered why he asked me to send him yesterday's footage — turns out he was studying it and practicing, huh?"
He caught on, all right.
Just as PD Jang said, I'd deliberately played it in a way that invited comparison with Woo Jun-seo. In the drama's order of events, today's scene came right after the male lead told the female lead, "I've been thinking about you a lot lately," and the two of them entered the full-blown mutual-crush stage.
Unlike the male lead's trembling, earnest confession, Kang Min-woo's oily pickup lines were meant to feel somewhere between sleazy and outright perverted. I'd paid close attention so that when the female lead wrinkled her face in disgust, the female viewers would squirm right along with her.
"You always come so well prepared, Actor Seul-ho. I'm a lucky director when it comes to actors!"
PD Jang guffawed. It was the most relaxed I'd seen his face in a while.
Guess things look a lot easier without Woo Jun-seo around.
Of every actor on this drama, the pickiest one by far was Woo Jun-seo. Even he wouldn't deny it — the problem was that knowing it changed nothing.
He really is a handful.
Woo Jun-seo was genuinely good at acting, and exactly that good at being high-strung. Above all, his pride had taken a beating from his lead drama being treated as a filler slot and rushed to air early, and with the brutal schedule piling up sleepless night after sleepless night, he'd grown more and more irritable by the day.
These days he doesn't even care that the behind-the-scenes cameras are rolling.
I understood being exhausted. What I didn't get was taking it out on everyone around him. Either he didn't realize they were all victims of the same mess, or he didn't care — either way, the number of times he blew up at fellow actors and crew members kept climbing.
For my part, I was confident I could laugh off whatever tantrum Woo Jun-seo threw, so I kept stepping in between him and the others to make sure the innocent Choi Ran didn't catch any stray heat.
But PD Jang, the head of the entire production crew, had no one to shield him, and so he'd been saddled with the fate of absorbing days' worth of Woo Jun-seo's bullshit in full.
"Actor Seul-ho, next time, come do a drama with me as the male lead. I think it'd suit you perfectly."
"If you say so, I'd be honored."
While I was trading pleasantries with a cheerful PD Jang — positively giddy in Woo Jun-seo's absence — Choi Ran opened her eyes; thirty seconds must have passed — and cut into the conversation.
"Then who would you cast as the female lead?"
"Female lead? Hmm, good question. Who'd fit the part… Oh! What about the two of them, together? I was just watching, and they make a great pair standing side by side!"
At PD Jang's bright exclamation, the assistant writers who'd been pretending not to listen came running over in a pack.
"I second that!"
"Me too — I think a romance between Seul-ho-ssi and Ran-ssi would be great. Honestly, I think they suit each other better. If only Seul-ho-ssi had been our male lead this time…."
The remark took a not-so-subtle dig at Woo Jun-seo, and I wanted so badly to join in — but I laughed it off and drew the line.
"Aw, Jun-seo would be hurt if he heard that. Our drama's male lead is Jun-seo, after all."
If this conversation reached Woo Jun-seo's ears and he threw another fit, dealing with it would fall on me. So after subtly setting the boundary, I wrapped things up with a smile.
"Still, thank you for thinking so kindly of me. Next project, you have to cast me, no exceptions. Making me the male lead then would be even better."
"Oh, of course, Seul-ho-ssi!"
"Me too! Do one with me too! Save a spot for me!"
PD Jang's aegyo-laced voice cracked everyone up.
I could have chatted longer, but we still had shooting to do, so everyone drifted back to their places. I looked at Choi Ran's eyes — brighter and clearer than before, whether the artificial tears deserved the credit or not.
"You okay with it? Doing a romance with me?"
"Oppa, honestly, I wouldn't mind if the male lead changed today, right now."
There was nothing but sincerity in that even voice. She really can't stand Woo Jun-seo either, I thought, and a laugh slipped out.
"Let's hang in there a little longer, then."
"Yes, sir."
So this was camaraderie, huh? Something about the way she answered so game made me fond of the kid.
I was smiling and heading off toward the next shooting location when Choi Ran spoke up carefully.
"Um, there's something I'm curious about."