Theater Group Myeongseong
He had left Han Hae-un with the task of building a recruitment list—field agents who would serve as the hands and feet of Yeon-woo and Hae-un in the fight against Baeksol.
And that was work that took a very long time.
Every candidate had to be investigated so thoroughly that even if you turned them inside out, nothing more would surface. Any possible connection to Baeksol, no matter how faint the suspicion, had to be dug into with relentless persistence and tracked to its end.
And because nearly all of it required boots on the ground, there was little Yeon-woo could do to help now that he could no longer walk outside freely.
Hmm. What should I do in the meantime?
Just then, Yeon-woo’s smartphone rang.
“Hmm? So-hyun?”
Not Han So-hyun—his little sister, Ryu So-hyun.
“Yeah. So-hyun.”
“Oppa, what are you doing?”
“Nothing much?”
“Then come down home. Mom and Dad want to have a meal together for the first time in ages.”
Filming White Blood had kept him away from the family house for quite a while, and there was nothing particular holding him in Seoul.
“Alright. Got it. Tell them I’ll come down today.”
He hung up and got ready to head home. “Getting ready” amounted to little more than putting on clothes and walking out the door; he had no luggage to pack.
While they sat around a home-cooked meal for the first time in ages, catching up in easy conversation, his little sister So-hyun grabbed his arm and shook it.
“Oppa! Get me some autographs!”
“Whose? Jin Yu-han? Dong-ha?”
So-hyun shook her head hard from side to side.
“No. Ella!”
“…Han Byeol?”
Yeon-woo tilted his head at the unexpected request. She used to call herself a Jin Yu-han fan… Suddenly wanting Han Byeol’s signature was a surprise.
“You like Han Byeol?”
“Yeah! She’s so cute—like a kitten.”
“What’s a kitten. A baby gangster?”
“…A baby cat.”
Yeon-woo stroked his chin. If she had asked earlier, he could have gotten it at the last wrap party. He remembered the conversation Han Byeol had shared with her mother during the script reading.
She said she wanted my autograph. Trading would have been perfect. What a shame.
Then again, they had grown fairly close by now; whether she still wanted one was another question.
“Hmm. Filming’s over and I don’t have any particular reason to see her right away. But I’ll run into her someday. If it really doesn’t happen, I’ll call and get it for you.”
“Yes! Oh—and Oppa, you need to do like a hundred autographs too? For my school friends.”
“…A hundred?”
His parents sitting across the table chimed in at once.
“Dad needs about that many too.”
“Mom doesn’t need that many—just about fifty.”
After catching up with the family he hadn’t seen in so long, the next morning arrived.
“Hmm. What is this. Even firing an automatic shotgun on full auto never made my forearm pull like this.”
Yeon-woo rose groggily, massaging the right arm that had gone slightly stiff from signing autographs late into the night. Once he was ready, he left the house and headed for Jeong Cheol-min’s academy.
He rode the elevator up to the academy floor, but the morning hour meant the place was empty.
Good. I was worried it might get swarmed like last time.
He remembered coming right after wrapping Summer’s Closet, looking for advice on his cameo in Spring’s Lover. That had been evening peak—students pouring in after school—and he had been surrounded from the entrance on.
Yeon-woo crossed the quiet lobby and carefully opened the door to the director’s office.
Creak—.
“Is Teacher Difangdal in?”
“Huh? Yeon-woo?”
Jeong Cheol-min looked up at the suddenly opened door and found Yeon-woo stepping inside. He had shown up without a word of warning, so the surprise was total.
Yeon-woo grinned at him.
“I came down yesterday.”
“You punk. You could’ve at least said you were coming!”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Jeong Cheol-min had actually seen Yeon-woo at the wrap party, yet even after only a few days he was glad to see him again.
“Teacher, how’s the academy these days?”
“What is there to say. Absolute peak. There are even students coming down here from Seoul.”
Being left behind in the competition with Seoul was the usual fate of the provinces, but the title of “the academy that produced Ryu Yeon-woo” had flipped the current the other way.
They talked about this and that for a while before Yeon-woo looked at Jeong Cheol-min and asked,
“Teacher. About the small theater the academy runs. There are days the troupe members don’t use it, right?”
“Small theater? Why the small theater all of a sudden?”
“Well…”
Yeon-woo laid out the whole story from the beginning.
“…Hmm. You’re saying with your current stature you want to do a play in a small theater? And with Jin Yu-han too?”
“Is it too much?”
Jeong Cheol-min thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“No. It sounds completely fun.”
Right now, to stretch the truth only a little, the world wanted Ryu Yeon-woo. His market value was climbing through the roof, but when they contracted White Blood they had structured it as a running guarantee—profits taken in proportion to success—so if money had been the issue, there was no need at all to accept other offers. That was why, aside from the ads already locked in, he was doing no additional filming whatsoever, and variety shows were the same. He was thinking of doing one variety appearance soon purely for fan service, but it was never about money or promotion.
And because he was still young, there was plenty of room left to build his filmography—yet it would not have been an exaggeration to say his career high had already begun; his standing had risen that far.
And now he wants to do small-theater plays—the very bottom of the ladder?
Not even with a proper troupe, just with amateurs?
Of course there was no high or low in acting itself, but looking only at social and economic terms, it was walking from the highest position down the lowest path. Paradoxically, it was a choice possible only because he had already secured both the social and the economic heights.
“Thinking about it again, it sounds too fun. Suddenly Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han doing a play in a small theater.”
“Right?”
“So are you going to promote it and all that?”
Yeon-woo shook his head.
“No. It’s still a long way off, but we won’t even put names or faces on the posters or tickets.”
Jeong Cheol-min pictured future audiences who would stumble into a small theater by chance and suddenly find Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han walking onto the stage, and he laughed.
“Youth really is something else. Doing such novel things.”
Then he scratched his head as if troubled and went on.
“But there’s a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Our small theater. Ever since the flood last summer, water keeps leaking from the ceiling wherever it cracked. We’re in the middle of repairs, but the leak just won’t get fixed.”
So even the academy students couldn’t stage anything right now.
“Is that so? Hmm. Then I’ll have to try renting one in Seoul.”
Jeong Cheol-min clapped his hands.
“That’s right! If you’re going to rent in Hyehwa-dong, I have a place to recommend.”
“A place Teacher recommends?”
Jeong Cheol-min nodded.
“The theater group where I first started acting. Right now it’s on the verge of closing—you could say it’s almost disbanded.”
Theater Group Myeongseong, where Jeong Cheol-min had taken his first steps, had, contrary to its name, almost no reputation left. For five years its condition had been so poor it was hard to keep afloat. This year it had not mounted a single performance.
“But the small theater itself is pretty decent. It’s a small stage that doesn’t even seat a hundred and fifty, but the lighting and sound are pretty usable.”
“Then I’m good with that. I can pay the rental fee and take it long-term.”
After a few days at the family house, he came up to Seoul today with Jeong Cheol-min.
“So Teacher last visited two years ago?”
“Yeah. But it shouldn’t have gone under yet.”
Following the route Jeong Cheol-min guided, they parked. Administratively it was Hyehwa-dong, yet it sat a fair distance from anything people usually pictured when they said Daehangno.
Pointing to a basement entrance in a secluded corner, Jeong Cheol-min said,
“Here. In the old days there were quite a few theater groups around here too, but now only the ones on the main strip survived. The rest fell away.”
Yeon-woo looked around and nodded. Given the conditions, it was no wonder business had dried up.
“Actually good. For amateurs to start.”
“With you and Jin Yu-han, what’s amateur about it.”
“Hey, it’s my first time with theater too, so I’m an amateur. Ah—Yu-han might count as a pro.”
While they bantered, Jeong Cheol-min went down the stairs with familiar steps and Yeon-woo followed.
“What. No one’s here. Yeon-woo, look around the theater first. The second floor is the office. I’ll go up and check.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
Jeong Cheol-min climbed back up the stairs, and Yeon-woo began to explore the theater. The chairs set along the slope looked in better shape than he had expected. For a place tucked away like this, the facilities were surprisingly solid. He stepped up onto the stage.
“Ah ah.”
His voice bounced off the roundly carved ceiling and rang out large.
“At this level we might not even need separate sound equipment.”
Amateurs were doing the work; the less gear they used, the better. Standing center stage and looking out at the seats, he felt an indescribable force rising from the space itself. He had felt it at the last awards ceremony too, when the audience’s eyes fixed on the stage—a stage held a special power. It was a distinctly different sensation from acting in front of a camera.
“Hmm, but he’s not coming down?”
Quite some time had passed while he looked around, and still there was no word.
Meanwhile, on the second floor, Jeong Cheol-min had run into an old theater-group peer and was deep in lively chatter. They had started out together, shared every kind of hardship, and then the other man had given up on acting before Jeong Cheol-min and taken a company job. He had never expected to find him here.
“Hey you bastard, how long has it been. I never dreamed you’d taken over the theater group.”
“Tell me about it. I retired early, had nothing to do, so I’m just sitting here. Old memories—whatever they are—kept calling me back.”
The man who had been staring out the window looked at Jeong Cheol-min again.
“By the way, good to see you’re doing well these days. You punk. Got a good disciple and living large? About to become a celebrity yourself.”
Jeong Cheol-min scratched the back of his head, bashful.
“What celebrity. Just did one small role.”
“By the way—you taught Ryu Yeon-woo? I still can’t believe it. The guy who used to get hit with sticks with me all the time. Heh heh.”
“Talking about ancient history. What sticks.”
“How’s Ryu Yeon-woo? Movie or drama, his acting is killer.”
Only then did Jeong Cheol-min remember he had left Yeon-woo downstairs.
“Ah, right. Just a sec.”
Creak—.
The door opened and Yeon-woo stepped in.
“Ah, Teacher. I was waiting downstairs and you weren’t coming down, so…”
“Hup.”
The peer shot to his feet at the sight of him. The hottest star in the country had just walked through the door; of course he was startled. Jeong Cheol-min snorted a laugh.
“I brought him with me anyway. Yeon-woo, introduce yourself. This is my theater-group peer and the current owner of this place.”
Yeon-woo bowed his head in greeting.
“Hello. I’m Ryu Yeon-woo.”
“Oh my, yes yes. Of course I know. I’m Yu Ho-cheol, running Theater Group Myeongseong. Though ‘running’ it mostly means watching the flies buzz around.”
Yeon-woo grinned at him. Was there any need to say more? For the owner of a theater where only flies kept company, this was the best news possible.
“Then perfect timing. I’d like to rent this theater for about half a year.”
“Ah, yes yes. …What?”