The Seagull and the Latecomer
Professor Geum Bit-gang yawned in the back of her car, stuck in traffic.
The start of a new semester, with its incoming freshmen, had always set her heart racing — but for the past few years, it had been nothing but tedious.
It might be about time to retire.
Geum Bit-gang. Once a household name, she had held her place among the nation's most beloved actors with a voice forged by decades of theater and expression work so rich it could pull any audience under its spell.
...Yes.
As the years piled on, standing on set had grown too physically demanding, so she had become a professor — and now even that felt spent.
This year is the last.
Whatever lingering passion she once had for acting, whatever drive to nurture a promising raw talent into something great, had all guttered out. She still wanted to act, but time had outrun her, and though she longed to pour everything she knew into a student worth teaching, no one had ever managed to keep up.
This year, maybe two of them were decent...
Geum Bit-gang mentally sifted through the incoming class. Not that any of them were worthy of becoming her protégé, of course.
About enough to dust off my hands and walk away.
Do Gyeo-ul, the only daughter of a famous actor and a former child star herself. And Myeong Je-ha, who just a year ago, at nineteen, had anchored a ten-million-viewer film.
Come to think of it...
Her eyes glinted as she finished cataloguing the freshmen in her head.
There was one rather interesting creature in this year's batch.
The Korea National University of Arts — Daeyejong — was famously the hardest school in the country to get into, and Geum Bit-gang, one of its central pillars, wielded more say over freshman selection than anyone. The student everyone else had called insufficient had been admitted thanks entirely to Geum Bit-gang.
"Now, we'll begin the freestyle acting exercise."
She smiled faintly, recalling the clumsy performance from back then — Han Yeo-reum, the raw, incomplete work she'd admitted on the strength of those eyes alone.
She didn't seem afraid of anything.
Those shining eyes, innocent of even the concept of stage fright, had been rather nice to look at.
No self-consciousness, either.
The girl could act on pure instinct, without once calculating how others might judge her. Geum Bit-gang added one final name to her list of freshmen worth watching.
Han Yeo-reum, who supposedly had less than half a year of acting experience to her name.
Of course, that will never happen.
But a idle thought crossed her mind anyway — if even one of these students learned everything Geum Bit-gang had to give, she might well put off retirement indefinitely.
It's been so long.
I took a deep breath in front of the school building. Back at school after all this time.
When I'd first heard I'd been accepted here, I'd been over the moon.
Not that I ever managed to graduate, of course.
Hyeong Chang-uk had told me back then: you have to debut through the proper, orthodox path. And back then, whatever a senior said, I took at face value.
"Well, in those days I would've swallowed anything a senior told me, so fair enough."
After being strong-armed into handing the lead role of our freshman-year stage production to Do Gyeo-ul, I took a leave of absence almost immediately. Then, following Hyeong Chang-uk's advice, I went to Daehangno and started at the bottom of a theater troupe, running errands as the baby of the company.
All I actually did was sell tickets, mop floors, and run lines with the other actors...
Yeah. I wasted my time. After that I kept grinding away at the troupe, occasionally landing a background extra role at best. I practiced like a madwoman on my own, but no significant role was ever handed to me.
I went to so many auditions, though...
And every single time, some disaster struck. Eventually I gave up and settled for whatever bit parts Hyeong Chang-uk could scrape together for me.
Well, all my luck had gone to Do Gyeo-ul, so of course I ended up like that.
And to think even those roles had only been slipped in because Do Gyeo-ul wanted to watch me perform.
This time, I am absolutely not repeating the same mistakes.
I let out a light sigh and reclaimed my composure. After all, I still carried every memory of the future. Misfortune was no longer my lot in life. I knew which films and dramas would be hits, which brands would be worth a commercial deal, which coordinators and social media strategies would be trending. With all of that in my pocket, there was only one direction left to go: up.
Oh, right. Add the webnovel-adaptation dramas to the list too.
Scrolling through my memories, I tried out a line of dialogue that suited the moment.
"Status... window?"
Ding—!
✦ Skill: Protagonist on Stage — Rank F
A panel displaying my current stats unfurled before my eyes.
Wait, what is this?
However you looked at it, those bottom-of-the-barrel stats belonged to a fresh newbie.
"...No way. Hold on. I've been acting for ten years and my report card is this... modest?"
How did I not have a single A? I pressed a hand to my forehead and groaned. The level was brutal, too.
"Unknown..."
I froze in place, unable to believe my eyes. And then, as if reading my expression, the status window offered a further explanation.
All of your current stats and skills are locked. The one and only way to restore them: focus on your missions!
Forget the fact that I was teetering on the edge of tardiness — I now had to expend considerable effort just to process this cold, hard reality.
"Ahh."
I let out a deep sigh. But hearing that voice resonate from deep within me and ring all the way out, confidence began to bubble back up.
"Doesn't matter, anyway!"
My stats might be locked, but my voice was exactly as it had always been.
A voice that had earned its worth through daily practice on empty stages. I decided to trust the path my past self had walked.
"Now, before I explain what my course will cover—"
The professor's voice, carrying from the front of a lecture hall washed in soft morning light, reached every corner of the room without effort. Geum Bit-gang, explaining the syllabus with diction more precise than any broadcast announcer's, caught a freshman slipping in through the back door on tiptoe.
Well, look at that?
Late to Geum Bit-gang's class on the very first day, of all things. A smile laced with displeasure spread across her face.
"Student."
She pointed at the top-scoring admittee seated in the front row.
"And."
Having summoned Do Gyeo-ul, Geum Bit-gang turned her gaze to the insolent freshman who had just barely settled into the very last seat.
"Student. Up front, please."
The latecomer was exactly the interesting student Geum Bit-gang remembered — Han Yeo-reum.
The moment the two walked forward, every freshman's attention snapped to them. Unlike Do Gyeo-ul, who wore the weight of other people's stares like a second skin, Han Yeo-reum seemed slightly nervous, scanning the faces of the students one by one.
I need at least one person here with Focus of B-rank or higher to complete the mission. Freshmen, though... their stats are hopeless.
Of course, Yeo-reum wasn't nervous at all — she was merely appraising the freshmen in front of her as potential mission targets, nothing more.
Geum Bit-gang, watching the two of them, finished greeting the class.
"I trust there isn't a single freshman here who's never seen a play!"
A voice far too robust for her age thundered through the lecture hall.
"Theater, you see, is exactly what the word means — explaining a story to the audience with nothing but speech and movement. Not like film! Not like a drama either! A musical? Even less so!"
In other words, there was no power of editing to lean on. Without fundamentals, theater was precisely the discipline that would strip you bare.
"You have to walk right up to the audience, shove your conviction into their faces, and make them believe!"
Everyone seemed to understand, settling into grave expressions. Geum Bit-gang flashed a grin, then jerked her chin at Do Gyeo-ul.
"Anything you like. Recite a passage for us."
The freshmen who recognized Do Gyeo-ul's face from her child-actor days locked their eyes onto her at once. Those features already practically radiated celebrity — her mere existence was a spectacle.
Despite the sudden demand, Do Gyeo-ul showed not a flicker of panic and opened her mouth like the seasoned performer she was.
"The Seagull. We begin."
She launched straight into the performance. Not the slightest hesitation, even before a grande dame like Geum Bit-gang — the sheer nerve of it left her classmates reeling.
Do Gyeo-ul bowed her head, then slowly raised it again, and her eyes had transformed.
"You weren't late.... You really weren't late, were you? I've been worried sick all day. I was so, so afraid!"
Not on Geum Bit-gang's level, granted — but her diction was precise, her expressions natural, and her hands were surprisingly well handled. Her fingers, gathered above her heart, trembled almost imperceptibly. Staring into empty air on the stage, Do Gyeo-ul spoke toward someone beyond it, as if pleading her case.
"I was completely out of my mind... I drove and drove, one thought after another."
She bowed her head slowly, letting the words trail, and a torrent of pure, undiluted concentration poured toward her. It was only natural — everyone in the room had rehearsed that famous play at least once themselves.
"Look at me. I'm so — out of breath."
Even the way she panted and gathered her breath exceeded expectations.
Then came the moment she lifted her listlessly drooping head once more. Some unknowable force seemed to operate within that languid movement.
"But still, like a seagull..."
Do Gyeo-ul paused for a beat, then breathed — an actress who knew what a stage was, who understood the push and pull of volume and silence.
"...I'm drawn to this lake."
Everyone held their breath and waited for that final line.
Do Gyeo-ul, who had been gazing into the air with burning eyes, slowly lowered her gaze to close the scene.
"My heart is completely full of you."
Silence hung for a beat — and then, with the sound of someone's first pair of hands coming together, applause rippled outward into a full cheer.
"There, you see? An actor's single greatest weapon. Theater is decided by skill and nothing else. However lavish a set may be, it has limits. This is an age of CG, of 3D and even 4D. If an actor wants market value, there is exactly one thing that matters. Skill. Non-negotiable."
Geum Bit-gang then turned to Han Yeo-reum, whose eyes still darted uneasily. It was her signal to begin.
"Um..."
Yeo-reum opened her mouth carefully.
"Does it have to be a line from a play?"