Stars of the Small Theater
Yeon-woo headed to the high-end restaurant he always frequented, summoned by CEO Kim Ju-seong for a shared lunch.
The door slid open with a soft rattle.
"There you are, Yeon-woo."
"CEO. It's been a while."
He visited LN Entertainment's headquarters often enough, but crossing paths with Kim Ju-seong himself was rare. Between that and the long shoot for White Blood, it really had been quite some time.
Kim Ju-seong smiled and gestured him toward a seat.
"Sit. Actor Ryu never takes a break — he films something every year — so coming here for a meal has practically become an annual tradition."
"Now that you mention it, you're right."
Yeon-woo smiled back and sat down.
"As an investor and as the head of your agency, I'm delighted by this project's success. But as a viewer, I enjoyed it too. White Blood was genuinely fun."
"Thank you, sir."
Kim Ju-seong had been the one who greenlit production after reading that early, still-unpolished script. Yeon-woo had pushed for it first, of course — but the series was clearly going to cost a fortune to make. Without the CEO's approval, the whole plan would have been impossible.
"Hmm. A true monster of a script, that one. The draft Director Hwang first brought in."
"It really was. Dinosaurs and spaceships, the whole lot."
The Macrophage's design had shifted from dinosaur toward tentacled horror, but a space vessel still appeared in the end, and the core story hadn't changed much. Yeon-woo and writer Kim Jin-ju had simply sat through meeting after meeting, shoring up the logic and refining the whole thing into something more elegant.
"From here on, LN's publicity strategy team will be working hard. Not the old, stuffy kind of promotion — marketing tailored to the times, something fresher. The series may be over, but the response is only going to get hotter."
"I see. Our people are all veterans, after all."
Kim Ju-seong huffed a quiet laugh at that, then spoke again.
"Ah — the outside director you recommended last time. Professor Kim Tae-gyeong has been approved. I met him. Quite an interesting man."
"Don't tell me he brought up the rock band with you too…?"
Before Yeon-woo could finish, Kim Ju-seong was already nodding.
"Mm. A man with a very distinct character."
"He does, doesn't he."
Kim Ju-seong nodded, continued eating for a stretch, then opened his mouth again.
"Yeon-woo. Keep slamming into things with full force and something will crack — and eventually, it will break. Everything needs rest. I suggested it once before you started White Blood, and this time I want you to listen. Take a break."
It came out of nowhere, but Yeon-woo understood perfectly.
Looking back on his previous life, the man wasn't wrong. No one had slammed harder into the world than he had — and in the end, he had shattered into exhaustion.
Yeon-woo nodded without resistance.
"Understood. I'll rest for a while."
"Oh?"
Kim Ju-seong studied him with a spark of interest.
"You accepted that more easily than I expected."
"Haha. I do need to rest, after all."
He would ease off on a certain kind of activity, yes. Resting from acting, though — that was never on the table.
Just as Kim Ju-seong had said, White Blood had finished airing through its final episode — and public interest only kept growing.
Domestic or abroad, if you asked most industry experts to name the most successful work of the second half of the year, the overwhelming majority picked White Blood.
And while the fire was still roaring, LN Entertainment's publicity team threw on more wood: they released making-of footage and on-set clips for White Blood through YouTube.
Film YouTubers seized the material, reworked it, and uploaded almost immediately. It was already the hottest content of the moment, and the special-effects set footage — so completely different in feel from the finished scenes — was more than enough to win the algorithm's favor.
"Hello, everyone. This is CineTube. White Blood, which used CG for over eighty percent of the entire series, has been a massive topic lately. Today we'll take a detailed look through the on-set footage LN Media released themselves."
On screen, Yeon-woo hung from wires against a chroma-key backdrop in special costume.
Staff in tights shoved green Styrofoam walls in from both sides while Yeon-woo, fully inhabiting Jeong Do-jin, forced his way into the gap and held it open with both arms.
Then Han Byeol, twin-tailed, came tumbling in a roll and slipped through the space between the arms bracing the gap.
"I'll open it with you!"
The next shot cut to a close-up of both their faces as they forced the barrier open together.
The left half of the frame showed the raw, unedited take; the right half showed the finished, fully post-produced scene from the series — a side-by-side comparison.
On the right, a blue barrier tore open and crackled with discharging current. The original footage on the left was nothing but green Styrofoam.
The heart of the video was Yeon-woo's face.
In reality, staff in cheap tights were simply shoving unimpressive green Styrofoam boxes at him. And yet Yeon-woo controlled every detail — eyelids, cheek muscles — as if he were feeling the current from a ripping barrier, delivering a trembling micro-expression of electric shock.
Method acting. Total immersion in the role.
"Did you see that, everyone?"
The YouTuber slowed the playback and walked through each fine-grained piece of the performance.
"Details this fine wouldn't be written into a script. My guess is Actor Ryu Yeon-woo was so fully immersed in the role that he simply delivered them."
He flipped back and forth between the split before-and-after footage and continued.
"If an actor prepares and delivers this kind of detailed work in advance, the post-production specialists take that performance and build the effects around it. Let's keep watching."
It wasn't just that one scene. Nearly every clip that followed carried the same high-immersion acting that made you wonder how anyone could pull it off.
Between LN Entertainment's publicity strategy team scattering fan-service material like feed and the YouTubers dissecting every frame into secondary content, the fandom was on the brink of happy death.
And at that very moment, Yeon-woo was in a cramped studio apartment.
"Why do you always come to my place when Yeon-woo has that huge house…"
Woo Seong-sik grumbled as he hastily scooped up clothes strewn everywhere and stuffed them into a storage cabinet.
Jun-su dropped heavily onto the floor as if the mess were nothing new and shrugged.
"This is closest. We're just having some chicken and beer — no need to cross all the way to Gangnam."
Today had been the opening performance of Jin Yu-han's musical Deyandor.
The old Survival Shooting Range crew had been invited, watched it together, and now Jin Yu-han himself — the lead — had joined them afterward.
"But Yu-han, are you sure it's okay to hang with us? Don't you have a cast dinner or something?"
Jin Yu-han smiled and nodded.
"I don't usually go to after-parties or dinners anyway."
The doorbell rang.
Ding-dong—
"I'll get it!"
"Pension Part-Timer" Ju-hyeong jumped up, ran to the door, and came back carrying chicken.
They sat in a circle on the floor, tore into the freshly delivered chicken, and the conversation naturally drifted to the musical they had just seen — Deyandor.
"Honestly, that was my first real musical, and it was actually so good."
Seong-sik said it while stripping a chicken wing. Ju-hyeong nodded.
"You guys never saw Yeon-woo and Yu-han act together, right? I went to cheer them on during rehearsals last time and caught it."
"Huh? You went to cheer and Yeon-woo was acting?"
"Dunno. It just kind of happened. Anyway, it was insane."
Jun-su tilted his head.
"But it's a musical. This guy's singing is trash-tier."
"…Trash-tier."
Jun-su's complete lack of filter left Yeon-woo visibly deflated. Ju-hyeong stepped in to defend him.
"There was no singing in that part. Oh — and I've seen Yeon-woo do stage acting one other time, too."
That had been Yeon-woo performing a script Ju-hyeong himself had written.
The memory must have surfaced for Yeon-woo as well; he nodded and asked Ju-hyeong,
"Have you written much more since then?"
"…I've pretty much finished it, actually."
The other three froze mid-bite, eyes going round.
"What script?"
"Ju-hyeong's been writing a stage play."
"Wait, for real?"
"Ju-hyeong, you had that kind of talent?"
Under their reactions, Kim Ju-hyeong scratched the back of his head, embarrassed.
"Nah, nothing that grand. Just scribbling for fun as a hobby."
Yeon-woo shook his head.
"I tried performing a test draft he wrote, and for a hobby piece the quality is seriously high. I don't know how it'll turn out yet, but Teacher Jeong Cheol-min's acting academy runs a small theater, and there are aspiring actors there — so I've been thinking we might put a production on stage someday."
Woo Seong-sik's eyes lit up.
"Yo. Then do you need bit parts or crew or anything? Watching Yu-han's musical today, I started thinking I want to try something like that at least once before I enlist."
Kim Jun-su considered for a moment, then raised his hand.
"If you're doing it, throw me in too. I'm shipping out soon same as him, and I want to do something productive before I go."
"What's the call, Playwright Kim Ju-hyeong?"
Yeon-woo prodded Ju-hyeong in the side. Ju-hyeong stammered in panic.
"Uh — uh? I'm fine with all of it…?"
"Oh, nice. This could be fun."
"Hey. Even if it's just a bit part with a couple of lines, don't we still have to learn how to act? Can we even do that?"
Kim Jun-su fretted. Woo Seong-sik pointed straight at Yeon-woo as if the worry were ridiculous.
"The god of acting is right here. What are you worried about?"
"Ah. Fair point."
As the mood among the friends shifted toward actually trying something, Jin Yu-han — who had been listening quietly — calmly raised his hand.
"Put me in too."
"……"
Silence hung for a beat. Then Kim Jun-su looked at him and asked,
"When you say put you in, you mean going on stage… right?"
"Yeah."
"You just started a musical! Today was the premiere!"
"Well, we're not starting right away, are we? My musical wraps in about two and a half months anyway."
Jin Yu-han looked at Yeon-woo and continued.
"And Yeon-woo — don't just direct. Come up on stage with us. We said before that doing a play together would be fun."
Yeon-woo rubbed his chin at Jin Yu-han's words.
He had already decided to take a rest from entertainment activities for a while. There was no real problem.
"Hmm. Should I?"
Kim Ju-hyeong's jaw dropped so hard it looked ready to unhinge.
He had always known that once the play script was finished, Yeon-woo would perform it for him — but that had been for corrections and directing tests. No one had said anything about actually going on stage.
"Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han… performing a play I wrote…?"
Without warning, colossal stars began to fall onto the stage of a small theater.