Acting Demonstration
The members of Theater Group Saebyeol headed back down to the basement.
"You ever done any acting?"
"As if. Of course not. Have you?"
To Jun-su's surprise, Seong-sik nodded.
"...Huh? You have?"
"Yeah. Back in middle school, at the festival—we did that weird thing, remember?"
Jun-su tilted his head.
"Not really. We weren't even that close back then."
"It was some slapdash play for school violence prevention."
Yeon-woo had been listening quietly. Now he spoke up.
"Forget acting experience—have either of you ever watched a play?"
"A play? I went once with Yu-ri. But we'd just started dating, so honestly I don't remember a single thing about it."
"I don't even have that much."
Yeon-woo rubbed his chin, then climbed onto the stage.
"Then take a seat in the audience. You're members of a theater company now—if people heard you'd never even seen a play, they'd laugh. Yu-han, give me a hand."
"Okay."
Jin Yu-han nodded and joined him on stage. The rest of the members took their seats, eyes gleaming.
"Ohh! You're gonna show us a demo?"
"Dude, think about what this would cost."
"Right? You couldn't even buy a ticket for this."
All three looked eager, but none more so than Kim Ju-hyeong.
"Man... getting to see this again."
He'd been nothing more than a film-loving college student. What had drawn him into acting—what had driven him to write a play script—was the performance those two on stage had given once before.
Jin Yu-han approached Yeon-woo on the stage.
"We don't have a prepared script, though. Going improvisational?"
Yeon-woo grinned.
"We do have one. Let's do Deyandor. Just skip the songs."
"Ah. So the part we did back then?"
Yu-han was thinking of the scene they'd performed when Yeon-woo had come to support him. Back then, Yeon-woo had played Ezel, the workers' representative, while Jin Yu-han had taken the role of Shane, a 1930s Detroit mafia figure.
Shane, Yu-han's character, had witnessed his father's tragic death and come to curse industrialization—then forcibly seized the factory where Ezel, the role Yeon-woo had briefly played, worked. What followed was a life-or-death confrontation. In that scene, Yeon-woo had perfectly delivered the original's "Five Steps."
Doing that part again would have been fine, but since this was just for fun, trying something different seemed better.
"Hmm. While we're at it, how about a different scene?"
"Huh? You've never even read the rest of the script."
The corner of Yeon-woo's mouth curled up.
"I watched your premiere a few days ago. And I'm a Deyandor fanatic—I can do any scene. The dialogue might not match the script word for word, but we'll improvise to fit the story."
"Really? That could be fun. Which scene, then?"
As the lead currently performing the musical, Yu-han could handle any scene without issue. He thought it over carefully, but no suitable scene came to mind.
"Outside of that scene, there aren't many two-man scenes. It's mostly Jane and Shane, or else Ezel and Jane."
As Yu-han spoke, Yeon-woo ran through the plot of Deyandor in his mind—and one scene immediately surfaced.
"How about this, then? Jane's final moments."
Yu-han cocked his head.
"Huh? We're both guys. How do we do that scene? There's no Jane."
"Jane's final moments" held deep meaning for Yeon-woo. In his past life, it was the scene that had always drawn him to a seat in the right-side terrace box whenever he watched Deyandor.
In Deyandor, the heroine, despairing of her love, stabs herself with a knife and dies—and in that expression, every emotion a human being can feel flickers past. Watching that face from the highest right-side terrace box... it's extraordinary.
Words Yeon-woo had once spoken, in his past life, to the past-life Han Hae-un. The highest right-side terrace box had been a tip for fully appreciating this scene—and Hae-un's memory of that tip had become the very thread that led him to find Yeon-woo in this life.
The problem, as Yu-han had pointed out, was that this was a scene for Jane—Shane's younger sister and the musical's heroine, the role currently opposite Yu-han's Shane.
"What if we make Jane a man? Not siblings of opposite sexes—a conflict between brothers."
Interest sparked in Yu-han's eyes.
"I've never thought of it that way. Hmm... interesting."
"We'll call Jane 'Alex' for now, and swap the original male lead Ezel for a heroine named 'Angel.'"
Yu-han nodded, something clicking into place, and added his own thoughts.
"Ohh. Then in that final struggle..."
"Okay. So we swap the knife at the end for a gun, and I'll go first..."
In an instant, the two had exchanged ideas—and their eyes lit up at the same time.
"All right, let's begin. We've adapted a scene from Deyandor a little for the stage."
His friends in the audience nodded, faces full of anticipation. Meanwhile, Yu-han fetched a stool, set it center stage, and sat down.
Yeon-woo steadied his breath, reached into empty air with the motion of opening a door, then approached Yu-han. With those two simple gestures, the space around them became, unmistakably, some kind of interior room.
Yu-han opened with a solid, resonant delivery.
"Alex. Finally come to your senses and shown your face?"
At the first line, the friends in the audience tilted their heads.
Alex? Who's that?
All three had seen Yu-han's performance not long ago. The story was still fresh in their minds—and no character named Alex appeared in it.
Without answering Yu-han, Yeon-woo spoke—his eyes hollow.
"Brother. You remember Mr. Fisher, who lived next door when we were kids?"
"Fisher? You mean the doctor? Dr. Fisher?"
The friends caught on.
Talking about Mr. Fisher—that's from Jane's final scene.
In the original, it was a scene between Shane—Yu-han's role—and his younger sister Jane, the musical's heroine. It began with Jane, resenting the mafia brother who had killed the factory worker she loved, spiking the liquor he always drank with poison and handing it over.
So instead of younger sister Jane, it's younger brother Alex?
As the friends leaned in, Yeon-woo spoke again.
"Yeah. We used to play catch with him all the time. I ran into him the other day at a bar on Kercheval Street. He was proud of how far you'd come."
"That so? Why bring him up all of a sudden?"
But Alex paid no mind to Shane's words, pressing on with his own.
"But that man—he's been studying the brain inside this skull of ours. He says love is nothing more than a chemical reaction triggered by hormones. All an illusion. Every bit of it a phantom. Just another appetite, same as eating, drinking, sleeping."
He finished the long speech in a single breath, then looked at Yu-han for the first time.
"What do you think? Do you agree?"
Meeting that gaze, Yu-han was struck once again.
I thought this last time too—the lines Yeon-woo delivers have a rhythm no one else has. There's a kind of musicality to them that drives them straight into your ear.
And that difference, having just seen Yu-han's performance, registered with the friends in the audience as well.
Yu-han faltered for a beat, then picked up his line.
"I was wondering what nonsense you'd come spouting—it's about that Angel woman again, isn't it? Whatever you're feeling right now comes from the same place. Fisher had it right."
At his brother's words, Alex burst into laughter.
Hahaha—
The way Yeon-woo played it—he looked like a madman. Mouth wide open toward empty air, laughing so hard his throat trembled—from Yeon-woo radiated a charisma that felt almost untouchable.
Then he shifted his gaze and locked eyes with Yu-han. And Yu-han, overwhelmed by the atmosphere, rose from his stool without thinking.
...Huh? Why did I stand up?
He hadn't planned to leave his seat until this short scene was over. The atmosphere had simply pulled him to his feet.
Yeon-woo spoke again.
"So what if one little thing died? Just a small sacrifice for the greater good. That's what you want to say, isn't it?"
It was Yeon-woo speaking—yet the voice and manner that came from his mouth were unnervingly close to the Shane that Yu-han himself performed on stage. The uncanny shift in tone put even the friends watching from the audience on edge.
Yu-han was overwhelmed for a moment too—but the lines he'd practiced countless times were glued to his tongue, and the next ones came out on their own.
"That's right. You dense bastard. I told you. We have to get stronger. To survive in this jungle called Detroit, we have to become wolves without blood or tears."
He shook his head as if in pity and continued.
"And what? Love? Don't waste time on something that worthless. There's a lot you need to help me with."
Yeon-woo took one step forward.
The expression work Yeon-woo was about to deliver with his next lines was, in the original, spoken with the gaze angled upward into empty space. That was why it had always been best viewed from the right-side terrace. But this little theater had no right-side terrace—so Yeon-woo looked toward his friends in the audience and began.
"You always said the machines the factories churned out would kill everyone. I think I finally understand what you meant."
As he spoke, Yeon-woo's face shifted—from hollowness to rage, from rage to pity. Confronted with that raw, unfiltered emotion from the seats, his friends' mouths fell open without them realizing it.
Then his expression hardened into something resolute—a face that had made its decision.
"A machine moves only for its purpose. A machine without feeling is dangerous. Those were the words you always had on your lips."
He spun and faced Yu-han head-on.
"A machine built in the factory of a competitive society. Just like you."
What Shane, Alex's brother, had ultimately destroyed by bombing that factory wasn't merely the woman he loved. It was the last remaining thread of his own humanity.
Yeon-woo mimed drawing a pistol from behind his back—and pulled the trigger.
Bang—!
It was only the sound of Yeon-woo stamping the floor—but his friends, fully immersed by now, flinched hard as if a real gunshot had cracked through the air.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Yeon-woo turned back and smiled faintly.
"That's it."
Acting is the craft of spinning lies—and in the end, of persuading the people who watch them. In that brief span, the friends in the audience had been completely persuaded. So thoroughly that they'd forgotten even the space they occupied, pulled under in an instant of total immersion.
They'd watched countless films and dramas—but nothing had overwhelmed them like the vividness of what they'd just felt, right in front of their eyes.
Kim Jun-su, barely surfacing, spoke in a daze.
"...So this is what acting is."
At those words, Jin Yu-han on the stage gave a small shake of his head.
His friends were mistaken. This wasn't ordinary "acting."
This was simply Ryu Yeon-woo.