The Jury Special Award
Myeong Je-ha blinked for a moment. The shift from a listless gaze to one brimming with admiration took only an instant.
“Hello, everyone~. This is Yoon Hyun-jo, co-MC for the second half of the Seoul International Drama Awards.”
“I'm Hong Soo-ryun.”
With the earnest posture of a respectful rookie, Myeong Je-ha applauded his seniors. Do Gyeo-ul, seated beside him, did the same. Both of them acted as if the conversation they'd just had had never happened at all.
Must be suffocating, sitting here having to face forward the whole time.
From the very start of the first half, Myeong Je-ha had known exactly where Do Gyeo-ul's gaze was drifting. At some point, following the line of her eyes always led straight to Han Yeo-reum.
Where Do Gyeo-ul could only read the surface of people's emotions, Myeong Je-ha could read all the way down to the bedrock.
I had no idea Gyeo-ul carried feelings like these.
Before the regression, Do Gyeo-ul's position had been so prominent that he'd seen plenty of her face—she'd appeared in at least one production per cycle alongside him, after all.
Do Gyeo-ul had never once lost her grip on the summit, and Myeong Je-ha had accepted that fact as simply the way things were.
Hm….
Han Yeo-reum, who had never once been anything but a nobody. Do Gyeo-ul, who had never once been anything but the top.
The thought occurred to him that there might be some invisible thread connecting the two of them. The way Do Gyeo-ul looked at Han Yeo-reum was enough to invite that kind of hypothesis.
“Do you think Yeo-reum could win something?”
Myeong Je-ha asked it in the flattest of tones. It sounded like an offhand remark, but it was thoroughly deliberate.
“…Why? Did Yeo-reum say she's expecting an award?”
He listened to her answer, then studied Do Gyeo-ul's face for a moment. Myeong Je-ha knew something she didn't.
He knew that sometimes the truth doesn't come out of a person's mouth—it lives in every scrap of nonverbal evidence around them.
“Yeah, it seemed that way.”
“That's a shame…. I'm worried for her. She's going to be so disappointed.”
And so he caught it immediately—the odd behavior in Do Gyeo-ul, all the little things he might have overlooked until now. Han Yeo-reum's strangely visceral dislike of her.
He couldn't pin down the exact cause, but it had probably started with Do Gyeo-ul's inferiority complex toward Han Yeo-reum. Whatever that something was.
So she thinks Yeo-reum won't win anything, huh….
Myeong Je-ha turned his eyes to the stage, where an actor from Taiwan, freshly honored with a special Asia award, was delivering an acceptance speech through tears. Even by his standards, the lineup was formidable.
Well, anyone would think the same, really.
Do Gyeo-ul wasn't alone. Nobody in this hall would expect Han Yeo-reum to take home a trophy. Even a back-of-the-envelope calculation could tell you that.
The math Do Gyeo-ul had done wasn't entirely wrong, either.
Dress up a domestically held drama awards show by scattering trophies across foreign productions, hand the shiniest ones to the more famous faces to boost the ceremony's own name recognition, and hoist whichever drama drew the best global response to the very top of the pile.
“Our next award is the Jury Special Award. The categories are Newcomer, Popularity, Screenplay, and Directing, spanning both single-episode dramas and miniseries without distinction….”
But there were things ordinary calculations couldn't account for.
In this day and age, ten million views on InTube means exactly one thing, doesn't it?
Global reach. That was territory where Han Yeo-reum had plenty to spare. And if the ceremony wanted to pump up its own buzz metrics, it could hardly afford to overlook her—especially since this very broadcast would be uploaded to InTube as-is, recording untouched.
With four separate appearances on the trending charts in the first half of the year alone, Han Yeo-reum had been handed, at minimum, a legitimate pretext for an award.
She made for excellent packaging.
And then there was one more thing.
The odds were slim that a rookie who'd filmed a single one-act drama on a pretext alone would walk away with a trophy. So let's turn our gaze in the other direction, shall we?
“Let's meet the nominees for the Newcomer Award, shall we?”
On average, critics had to watch hundreds of productions a year. Masterpiece or garbage, once a thing landed in front of their eyes, it stole their time whether they liked it or not.
And statistically speaking, it was the dreck that drama critics ended up staring at longest.
PPL plugs, cliffhanger endings, plot threads never resolved, actors swapped out mid-run after scandals, slapped-together same-day editing, quality that wouldn't pass a first draft… and the list goes on.
These were people who had entered the field out of love for the art. To have completed products that even a casual viewer would laugh at shoved in front of a critic's finely tuned eyes—it was enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
And so.
How irresistibly a masterpiece would gleam amid the sea of dreck.
Sometimes reason is ruled by sentiment. Critics, committee members—everyone in this industry, at the end of the day, was a romantic at heart.
It can't be helped.
So much so that they would invent an entirely new standard, one that had never existed before—
“The Jury Special Award, for Newcomer, goes to….”
—just so they could press a trophy into the hands of whoever had made their hearts pound.
“Playing Jung Yeon-doo in Not Interested At All—Han Yeo-reum.”
Thunderous applause swept the hall. Myeong Je-ha clapped with clean, poised form. Then, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, he opened his mouth once more.
“Oh, right. Seonwoo Seon-uk is on the jury this year.”
Do Gyeo-ul's expression stiffened, just slightly.
* * *
Did they really just call my name? For a moment, I could only stare blankly at the stage. Director So pulled me into an embrace, and someone nearby patted me on the back.
Yoon Hyun-jo, the MC, caught my eye as if to say, get up here already. Only then did my trembling legs carry me forward.
This can't be real….
Seriously—me, winning an award? Even climbing the steps, it refused to sink in. I felt like I was floating somewhere above that wide, sprawling stage.
Only after receiving the trophy and clutching the bouquet to my chest could I finally stand before the microphone.
Far off in the distance, my eyes met Director So's.
“First of all… this award is far too great an honor….”
It felt as though So Ye-sol, giving me a small nod across the hall, were speaking the words for me.
“Honestly, I practiced my acceptance speech so many times, just in case I might somehow win. But now that I'm actually up here, I was so nervous I've forgotten all of it.”
You did well, her nod seemed to say.
“First, I want to thank Director So Ye-sol for creating such a wonderful work and such a beautiful character for me. And thanks to every member of our staff who poured themselves into it alongside me, I was able to receive this award.”
My mind went completely white, and the words tumbled out in no particular order. It wasn't difficult, though—I'd seen enough award shows in my time. I was an acting major, and I'd watched more film festivals than I could count. I'd endured those long years of obscurity by picturing myself standing exactly here.
“And to my beloved mom… and my little brother. And also….”
But perhaps I'd panicked too badly. My mouth, moving on pure instinct, began to slow. I couldn't find my footing on what to say next.
I took a brief, deep breath, lifted my head, and turned my eyes toward the audience.
“Uh….”
A woman came into view, hands clasped over her mouth, overcome with emotion.
Where had I seen her before? I was sure I had—and recently, too. Just as I was racking my memory—
Music N! The front row!
She was the one I'd kept locking eyes with from the very front row. I'd assumed she was a fan of Seo I-deun, standing right beside me, but—
Could she be… a fan of mine?
My mouth moved faster than my judgment. To wrap up the speech, I tacked on one final line.
“And lastly….”
Is she really my fan? Did she come here just to see me? Has she watched Find Cheon Pyeong-hwa too, or only Not Interested At All? Will she keep liking me from now on? Will she watch whatever I film next? Is she celebrating this award with me right now?
“To all the viewers who gave Not Interested At All so much empathy and love.”
I turned to face the camera lens once more. Because maybe—just maybe—there were fans of mine out there beyond that one woman.
“I believe everyone has a moment in their life when they feel the impulse to run away to somewhere no one knows them. And yet, just like Yeon-doo, I hope that for all of you, a moment arrives when you care about one another, deeply.”
If more people like her kept appearing, I felt I could go on existing as an actress for a long, long time.
“I'll show you even better things going forward. Thank you.”
I want to act. For longer, for more of it. I want to live every minute, every second, as an actress.