The First Audience
Meeting Myeong Je-ha so soon after our strangely serious conversation made me straighten up and go all formal without even realizing it.
"Je-ha recommended her, actually. Yeo-reum. Said she's way better than Do Gyeo-ul. Right?"
No, wait, cancel that. Myeong Je-ha is a genuinely good guy. Five stars. Honestly, I feel bad for ever feeling even slightly uncomfortable around someone like him.
"Of course. You saw it on set today, didn't you? What did you think, sunbae?"
At Myeong Je-ha's question, Yoon Hyun-jo nodded without hesitation.
"Ohh~. She's good. I figured she'd be nervous her first time, but she wasn't nervous at all."
"Haha. Sunbae, please, speak comfortably. Yeo-reum and I are both your juniors by a mile."
Yoon Hyun-jo really was a wonderful senior. Five stars.
"Alright~. I'll drop the honorifics. Though I still can't say whether you're better than Do Gyeo-ul. I actually worked on the same production as her back when she was in middle school."
...And there it is. That's exactly the verdict I expected. Wrong guess, Detective Yoon. You're just that kind of senior. One star!
"That's right, you did a sageuk with Do Gyeo-ul, didn't you! Five years ago, was it?"
"Haha. And how was she back then?"
I hid my attempt at dead-fish eyes and lit up my gaze as if I were dying to hear the story.
'Honestly, I am not even remotely, even slightly, curious. Not one bit.'
Yoon Hyun-jo mulled it over for a moment, then delivered his answer clean and simple.
"How do I put it~. She'd be acting, but it felt like there was a wall? Like she'd put something up so the other person couldn't keep pace with her. You remember that monologue scene of hers that blew up, right~? Five straight minutes of her carrying the whole thing alone. I was on set that day."
Ah, I remembered. The clip titled something like The Dignified Rage of a Fallen Noble Family's Son—it made the rounds everywhere. Even though the child actor's part was a mere four episodes, from premiere to finale the only thing anyone talked about was Do Gyeo-ul.
"Her everyday acting is pretty ordinary~. But when she does anger? Genuinely brilliant. Like there's nothing there to see."
For the first time in a while, I felt the true weight of Do Gyeo-ul's standing. This was a woman who had spent more than half her life acting.
When I stayed quiet, Yoon Hyun-jo poured cider into my empty glass and said,
"You should try a sageuk someday too~. I think you'd be great at it."
"...Thank you!"
"Oh, right. Yeo-reum, I never told you to drop the honorifics, but I went ahead and did it anyway~. Sorry about that."
"Not at all. Please, speak as comfortably as you like."
Still, I couldn't help the faint bitterness creeping in.
'When will I ever get to do a sageuk...?'
I stared into the glass and willed the clear cider inside to turn into soju.
"We'll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, so both of you relax, alright? Yeo-reum, you ARE better than Do Gyeo-ul, even by my eye! I, Gong Mu-jin, guarantee it! Don't let it get to you! Drink, drink! Drink that and forget about it! Don't think about it a second time on the next shoot!"
Is Director Gong called Director Gong because he's so good at gong-gam—empathy? Before Director Gong, who was genuinely worried I might feel small, I performed a one-shot of cider.
"One more glass!!!"
On the van heading home, Myeong Je-ha popped a mint candy into his mouth. Drinking liquor that wasn't even to his taste, just to match Director Gong, had put him in a slightly foul mood.
'Still, there was a harvest.'
It was the first time he'd ever seen Yoon Hyun-jo attend a private, small-scale dinner like this. The man never even showed his face at wrap parties unless reporters were coming.
Je-ha looked over at Yeo-reum dozing off in the seat beside him, nodding little by little.
'Which variable is this one, exactly?'
He ran through every flow he'd recorded so far. It had been a kind of axiom that nothing changed unless Myeong Je-ha himself moved. An unbreakable law, like gravity.
But this time was different.
'I've only been twenty for the second time...'
Every previous cycle, Myeong Je-ha had always restarted from age twenty-one. With this, half of it was now certain: Han Yeo-reum had to be the master key to this endlessly repeating regression.
"Yeo-reum."
"Mm...?"
"You're doing great."
"Yes... sir..."
Answering crisply even mid-sleep, Yeo-reum seemed to still be dreaming of a film set somewhere.
Myeong Je-ha thought of Not Interested At All, the shoot Yeo-reum would soon begin.
Though he'd never said a word, it hadn't been Myeong Je-ha who passed Yeo-reum that single-episode drama script.
"Je-ha. Director So—she's your classmate, right? You know her. She's been asking about that girl, Pi Chae-won? Apparently she said she wanted to work with her no matter what. Strange, honestly."
"...Team Leader. Could you connect me with Director So? She's close with me and Yeo-reum. I'll call her right away."
Director So had sought out Han Yeo-reum first. With that, one of the hypotheses Myeong Je-ha had calculated had matched perfectly.
Without Myeong Je-ha lifting a finger, the present was already reshaping itself.
For the first time, Myeong Je-ha had become an audience member. An audience member of a world whose protagonist was Han Yeo-reum.
'Fascinating.'
As far as Myeong Je-ha could remember, Not Interested At All was a production Do Gyeo-ul had starred in several times over.
'Of course, the results were always middling.'
Every so often, really out of nowhere, Do Gyeo-ul would thirst for roles like that. As if to prove she was no different from anyone else.
'But it won't work. This time... not even close.'
As he recalled the Do Gyeo-ul he had watched for lifetimes upon lifetimes, Myeong Je-ha rendered his verdict with cold precision—that wall she could never, in all those repetitions, reach.
"Work hard."
"Yes... sir..."
Myeong Je-ha found himself laughing at Yeo-reum, still dutifully answering in her sleep. In the driver's seat, his manager shot him a look through the rearview mirror that plainly asked what on earth was wrong with him.
"I'm in a good mood, that's all."
"Je-ha. It's not one of those dating rumor things, is it? Your noona believes in you."
"Hard to say..."
"Hey! You should be too busy picking your next project to have time for this!"
Thinking back to Yeo-reum lighting up so brightly at the izakaya part-timer who'd greeted her with I loved Find Cheon Pyeong-hwa!—when had she even looked gloomy?—set him laughing all over again. He couldn't for the life of him remember ever feeling an emotion like that.
"Je-ha... it IS Je-ha, right? Huh?"
Je-ha made no particular effort to soothe his manager's anxiety. The laughter kept bubbling up, and keeping his face in order was hard enough as it was. Meanwhile, Han Yeo-reum slept like the dead.
At last, every last bit of pre-production was complete.
PD Hwang and the production team had finished the location scouting and locked down the full schedule. Vehicle dispatch, additional equipment checks—all of it, done.
And so, on a day that could not have been more perfect for an outing, the Not Interested At All team kicked off their crank-in.
Before the sun had even risen, the filming crew and Director So boarded their cars and set off for the destination.
"Wooow~. I hope we get there soon..."
Seated in the cargo van, Director So hummed a tune under her breath, brimming with anticipation. The lush green summer countryside she'd taken in on the location scout—she could already picture how beautifully it would look on screen.
'It's all exactly as I imagined it.'
A quiet village. A blue sky, and green leaves that glittered with life every time the sunlight touched them. And layered over it all, Yeo-reum's voice from the script reading they'd held a little while ago.
'I can't wait.'
It was only a single-episode drama, but So Ye-sol's heart was pounding. So what if it was one episode? What did forty episodes have that one didn't?
'It's going to be... a good work. A really good one.'
A work that lingers in the audience's hearts for a very, very long time—that was what a true winner looked like. So Ye-sol wanted to make that kind of work, and she had every confidence she could.
"Don't go..."
Someone who cried like that—someone like that would surely stay in the audience's hearts for a long, long time, and become their comfort.
A different flavor from Find Cheon Pyeong-hwa, which had ended light and lovely, she thought of the Yeo-reum who would come to viewers as a modest, simple pleasure—and the location they arrived at was...
"The weather is KILLING it. The scenery too—this is just, mwah. Perfect."
"Right?? The sun is so crisp and everything around here is just so pretty—"
"NO!!! Who the hell is worried about that? This is prime weather for a base tan to melt in slow and smooth!!!"
"Ugh. Come on, Director, you're one to talk about looking good."
A person who stood roughly zero centimeters close to the word modesty had arrived, brandishing a handheld fan.
"...Isn't that Dokgo Gyeol?"
"Yeah..."
"Didn't you say Yeo-reum doesn't even have an agency?"
Standing in the middle of this rural village wearing designer sunglasses with a glinting logo was the first-tier makeup artist—the one said to work only with first-tier A-list actors.
"Babe, isn't that the filming crew?"
"Director So~! PD Hwang! Hello there~!!!"
It was Dokgo Gyeol.