An Audition Performance
The audition hall was thick with tension.
This was where the competition had gathered, after all. Though in truth it was less a contest between children than one between their parents.
Even for a short film audition—nothing like a commercial or a network drama—the same held true. No one could say what the future held, and plenty of parents figured that since their child was going to act anyway, this could serve as the springboard to push them into a bigger world.
And so, all pretense of indifference aside, everyone stole glances at one another's children while fussing over their own, wholly absorbed in primping and steadying their nerves.
Then a child came into view.
Even on that scruffy, utterly bare face, her features stood out in sharp relief. A high-bridged nose commanding attention on skin so pale it needed no shading, and thick dark lashes that stood out against the white like strokes pressed down by an ink brush. It was the kind of face that left no room for doubt—no need to pick it apart feature by feature—that a great beauty was in the making.
Except for the eyes.
There, at least, she was already finished. Cold, weary eyes that seemed ready to give up on the world and vanish somewhere—utterly unchildlike, and all the more striking for it.
Their dumbstruck staring lasted only a moment before everyone sniffed.
Beautiful, certainly. But that was all. For all that beauty, she had none of an actor's aura, none of that overwhelming presence.
Donga, who had been scouting out where the sunlight fell best, found the stares directed at her merely puzzling.
"They must see you as a threat. Everyone's keeping you in check. You'll be getting looks like this from time to time now."
"What is there to look at?"
"Your face."
"Just a face?"
"It hands out useless pressure, that's all. Get used to it. A beauty's life is a hard one. Plenty of people out there looking to pluck a flower."
Hwang Dongbun had quite the attractive face herself. Even with an eyepatch hiding half of it, people still came trailing after her now and then.
"Then I'll just not think about it."
And Donga closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
At the sight, the other parents breathed quiet sighs of relief.
'To throw away the last moments before an audition like that.'
She should have been reviewing the script, steadying her nerves. Just as expected, the child—and her guardian both—were clearly banking on her face alone.
"Looks like just about everyone's here."
Director Lee Changseop checked the people gathered in the hall. Not one of the child actors his senior had requested from the agencies had shown.
The one child he'd most wanted had come, so he was content—but his senior clearly wasn't.
"You should've fudged the script and called them in first, at least."
The senior saying this was the man who, for his graduation project, had tricked the government into granting a filming permit by promising to shine a light on the sacrifices of civil servants—then bared their corruption and pecking order for all the world to see, and very nearly got sued for it.
True to form, the man's whole way of thinking ran differently.
"Taeseong-hyung, they're children. Are you serious?"
"I'm just saying, is all. I'm upset, that's all. Upset. How does not a single top-tier kid show up?"
He'd thrown himself into it the moment Changseop mentioned the casting troubles, and he looked genuinely deflated now.
"You knew they wouldn't come."
The pay was too low to attract top-tier child actors, and there was no payoff worth haggling the rate down for.
Between the two of them, the conclusion was the same: there was simply no reason for one to show.
"Well, I held out hope. You never know. Maybe some kid would fall for the script and come anyway."
Where Kwon Taeseong was bitter, Lee Changseop still nurtured hope.
"Still, the kid you were waiting for did show, didn't she?"
Kwon Taeseong glanced toward the waiting room.
"So that's Hwang Donga? Certainly pretty. Suits the role, too."
It was a face that made the shoe-leather Changseop had worn out touring child-actor auditions entirely understandable.
"Whether she can act, though."
She was a complete unknown—no commercials, no dramas, no music videos to her name. No acting academy on record either, not even the ubiquitous workshop credits.
Forgivable for an extra, perhaps, but hardly reassuring for a supporting role. And she wasn't even an adult—she was a child.
Plenty of people ace an audition only to freeze solid once the cameras actually roll. All the more so for kids.
Where Kwon Taeseong harbored doubts, Lee Changseop answered flatly.
"She can. Act, I mean."
"Yeah? If she's that good, shouldn't she have shot a milk commercial by now?"
"She nearly did, actually. The director there wanted to cast her."
If the advertiser hadn't been nitpicking over nothing, the commercial would have been Hwang Donga's.
"Can't speak for Donga, but I'm the one who got lucky."
"Yeah? If you say so. You didn't quietly decide on her from the start, did you?"
"Of course not. It goes by skill."
"Here's hoping she acts as well as you say."
The audition began.
With each child actor's performance, their faces stiffened a little further.
"They imitate the shape of it, vaguely. It never lands."
At Changseop's disappointment, Kwon Taeseong let out an incredulous little laugh. His junior pretended otherwise, but his standard for actors was mercilessly high.
"Lower your bar a little. What'll you do if none of them pass?"
"Then I'll rewrite the script."
There was room to be flexible, but Lee Changseop looked like he had no intention of compromising an inch.
"Next, please come in."
A child shuffled in alongside the woman with the eyepatch. Hwang Donga.
Kwon Taeseong, seeing her for the first time—and even Lee Changseop—studied her carefully.
Unlike at the milk commercial shoot, her face was completely bare of makeup, and her clothes were a little rumpled. If the outfit was meant to suit the role, it was exactly the right call.
A girl tormented day and night by the demon inside her had no room to mind her appearance.
'Seeing her again, she really is a perfect fit for the part.'
That strangely world-worn gaze in so young a face. It fit the role of a demon-possessed girl to the letter.
"Lovely to meet you. Thank you for coming, Donga."
"You gave me a milk donation—well, you've done things for me—so of course I'd show up for something like this."
"Have you prepared the script?"
Lee Changseop walked her through the audition scene once more.
A girl battered this way and that by the demon consuming her from within—hurling vile abuse, striking terror into a family that had begun to sense something was wrong with their daughter.
It was the moment the family realized their daughter was no longer herself, stricken as if by some strange illness—the spark that set them moving to save her in the film's opening act.
The scene began with the child being devoured by the demon.
"Yes, I remember it."
"I'll play the family. Just act naturally."
"Understood."
Donga bowed, then turned a slow circle, taking in her surroundings—gauging her distance from the judges.
Was she planning to adjust her performance based on how far away they sat? The judges watched with interest.
"I'll begin now."
Krrrk—
At the grating sound of teeth grinding, Hwang Donga tilted her head back.
"…!"
On the left half of her face was a girl paralyzed with terror; on the right, a demon savoring that fear like something delectable.
"Please… please…! Somebody, anybody, come!"
A little girl's voice, thick with tears. Hearing it, the family set out to find her.
All the while, slow as a snake swallowing its prey, the demon consumed the girl.
The family found her too late. Ask if she was all right, and the demon that had swallowed her whole only let out a long, deep sigh.
A stench seemed to come pouring off her, and Lee Changseop wrinkled his nose.
That was the moment. The very instant his nose wrinkled—
the demon's eyes met his.
"Enjoying the show?"
Changseop was overwhelmed; his breath stopped. Some instinct told him that if he spoke, he would break the scene's flow. So the line he was meant to deliver never came.
He'd acted before—in classmates' projects, in his senior's short films—but nothing like this. No comparison at all.
"Goddammit. What the hell are you gawking at?!"
Like something still learning its new body, the demon had been wrenching itself sideways at odd intervals—and now it was right under Changseop's nose.
"What're you staring at, huh?! You bald-ass bastard!"
In the end, Changseop never got his line out at the right moment.
The pressure. The demon was still glaring at him from inches away.
Drool dripped from its lips, soaking into the scrap of his application form.
The standoff stretched, tension pulled taut.
And from within that pose, Hwang Donga asked:
"Um—may I stop now? I'm not sure how much longer I'm supposed to hold this pose…"
Only then did Lee Changseop come back to himself.
"Ah—thank you for your trouble. Please return to your seat."
He saw the bowing Donga off, then looked over at Kwon Taeseong. He seemed less shaken than expected.
He just said, flatly:
"You sure she's not actually possessed?"
Then he closed his eyes and traced the sign of the cross over his chest. Changseop gave him a look of utter disdain.
"Don't be absurd. It's acting."
"Just acting, was it? Then how come you couldn't get a single word out? Why were you sitting there, pinned silent?"
"..."
He had no answer to that. The air really had been squeezed out of him.
"She's genuinely good."
"I told you."
"No, that wasn't 'good.' That's not something a child can do. You heard her voice change, right? Scared the hell out of me. Either that's a demon, or there's a full-grown man stuffed inside her."
Kwon Taeseong was in a proper flap.
"She got the script later than any of the others. Just switching vocal tones like that takes people forever—and she performed like that on top of it."
He clapped, visibly shaken.
"Wow, Changseop, you hit the jackpot. An actor like that, showing up at an open audition."
"The audition isn't over yet."
His senior muttered, unimpressed.
"Is there any point in seeing the others?"
"We watch them anyway."
These were people who had taken an interest in a script he'd written and applied of their own accord. They were waiting for their turn.
"If they were all at that level, I'd watch. But they're not."
"You never know."
At that, Kwon Taeseong cocked an ear.
"Now that's a line you don't mean."
The auditions carried on after that.
Even though the outcome had long since been decided.