Leave It to Me
"Wha— wait, why?!"
Her eyes went huge at the sudden appearance of a top star in her father's studio. She rubbed them and looked again, but Ryu Yeon-woo was still standing right there.
"Why?!"
For a moment, the scene in front of her simply refused to register. Director Lee Yong-su broke into a cold sweat as his daughter let out a strangled scream and pointed straight at Yeon-woo.
"Ahem— Seo-bin! You don't point fingers at your father's guests like that. Actor Ryu, I'm so sorry."
It was one of the more common reactions Yeon-woo got wherever he went, so he didn't mind in the least. Only then did Lee Seo-bin realize her mistake and quietly fold her finger away. The stunned look on her face, however, stayed put.
"Miss Seo-bin? So you're Director Lee's daughter. I'm Ryu Yeon-woo. Nice to meet you."
"Hwaah! H-hello…"
She was still in her school uniform, clearly just home from class. The moment Yeon-woo greeted her, she covered her flaming face with both hands, bobbed a quick bow, spun on her heel, and fled. Hearing her own name come out of Ryu Yeon-woo's mouth had blanked her mind completely white.
The studio door flew open, and the sound of frantic footsteps pounding down the stairs followed.
Bang—.
Mom—!
"Ahem. She's probably just embarrassed. She's always said she's a fan of yours, Actor Ryu."
Meanwhile, Seo-bin had flown down the stairs, thrown open the first-floor door, and gone hunting for her mother.
"Mom! Mom!"
"What! Mom's hanging laundry!"
Seo-bin tore full-speed toward the utility room and burst out,
"Mom!"
"You're going to blow out your mother's eardrums. What's with all the fuss?"
"Do you even know who's upstairs right now?!"
Director Lee Yong-su's wife shook out a towel without much interest.
"Hmm? He did mention a guest was coming earlier, I think."
"Ryu Yeon-woo is here! Ryu Yeon-woo came to see Dad and he's upstairs right now!"
The hands hanging laundry froze. Lee Yong-su himself might not have known it, but his wife and daughter had spotted Yeon-woo's potential all the way back in Master Plan and had been quietly stanning him together ever since.
Yeon-woo sealed a verbal agreement with Director Lee Yong-su regarding the film production. The finer details would fall to Executive Director Yoon Mi-yeon; for now, confirming the director's will to make the film and reviewing the screenplay was more than enough for Yeon-woo to handle.
He had meant to head straight back, but after coming all this way, Director Lee and his family insisted he stay for dinner. Somehow that left Yeon-woo and Kim Min-su seated at the log table in the backyard.
Seo-bin kept lifting her head to steal glances at Yeon-woo's face, then going back to fiddling with her phone. She fired off messages into a group chat with her four closest friends.
Seo-bin's heart felt ready to explode. She kept pouring messages into the chat, but none of her friends had even read them yet.
"Oh my goodness— so that means Yeon-woo is going to star in the movie my husband is making?"
"Yes, that's right. The second I read the screenplay I knew I had to make it, so I came and begged him myself."
At Yeon-woo's words, the tongs in Director Lee Yong-su's hands danced cheerfully over the charcoal grill. Looking at the director's back as he stood before the fire, his shoulders seemed to have climbed a full notch higher. For any head of a household, nothing mattered more than holding his head high in front of his family. His wife watched that back for a moment, then spoke again.
"It's an honor for our whole family."
"Not at all. You're too kind."
Yeon-woo turned his gaze back to Director Lee at the grill.
"Then we'll need to start scouting locations for the outdoor shoots ahead of time."
Finding the right spaces for a film's exterior work could take longer than expected, and it was one of the critical factors that decided the visual beauty of the finished product—work that had to be done with real care. Because the locations had to match the images already formed in the director's head, the process alone could stretch across several months.
Moon was the story of a male lead whose entire life is upended by a female lead who wanders into a quiet mountain village by chance. It needed to keep the strengths of a romantic comedy while simultaneously ballooning into a story of unexpected scale—so finding that mountain village, the starting point and primary stage of the film, was the key.
But Director Lee Yong-su just grinned.
"Hmm, as far as locations go, I've already found them all. The real problem is the opening and the ending. There's going to be a fair amount of CG, and even if we shoot most of it on a soundstage, I'm not sure we can properly pull it off in Korea…"
Yeon-woo's eyes lit up at the director's words. Whether or not he had known when the screenplay would ever become a film, he had clearly been working at it steadily all along. With the locations already locked down, they could go straight into production the moment casting was finished.
The sports drama Parabola still didn't even have a completed script yet.
Hmm. If we crank in on the film first…
Yeon-woo roughly ran the schedule in his head. Once drama filming started, they could simply pause the movie shoot for that stretch. The screenplay for this film required both summer and winter scenes anyway, so they would have to break and resume shooting no matter what. If the timing lined up well, they might even alternate between the film and the drama and finish both around the same time.
"If you've already found all the location sites, production should be that much easier."
"We do have some breathing room, time-wise. Music and graphics are the real issues, though."
"Leave the opening and ending CG to me. I'm pretty close with one of the best CG directors in the world. Oh—and leave the music to me too. I'm pretty close with one of the best music directors in the world as well."
Yeon-woo thought of Director Jeong Yo-han and Chrissy Monroe. At Yeon-woo's offer to handle everything, Director Lee tilted his head, and his wife spoke up.
"Then has that friend of yours already agreed to play the female lead?"
Director Lee reacted first.
"Hmm, honey. That friend might be hard to use. Casting is something the production company will have to weigh carefully from a lot of angles."
Listening to the two of them, Yeon-woo tilted his head.
"The female lead?"
Director Lee waved his meat tongs as if it were nothing.
"No, there was an actress I had in mind when I wrote this screenplay, but as far as I know she stepped away from the industry quite a while ago… You don't need to worry about it."
Yeon-woo stroked his chin. An actress the director had pictured while writing the screenplay—that meant a persona already woven into the work itself, the way Director Park Chan-hong had discovered Yeon-woo inside Sketch. And Yeon-woo knew better than anyone how much synergy a work and its actor could generate when they melted into each other, because he had lived it himself.
"Hmm. Who is she? If there's an actress you had in mind, we should cast her if we possibly can."
"You probably wouldn't know her even if I said the name, but… it's an actress called Hong A-yun."
Director Lee began to explain. Hong A-yun was an unknown actress he had used as a model several times about five years earlier, back when he was steadily building his reputation as a commercial director. She had been strikingly beautiful and a strong performer, but at some point she stopped landing even minor roles, ran into trouble with her agency, and left the entertainment industry entirely.
She was the actress he had been saving for the day he finally got to make a feature film, so later, out of regret, he had quietly asked around about her. Fortunately she hadn't fallen into anything bad—after retiring from show business she was working part-time jobs while attending university.
As he talked about Hong A-yun, Director Lee's wife nodded and added,
"Of all the commercials my husband shot, the ones with that girl were always my favorites. She had this bright, fresh energy that seemed to lift the whole frame."
"She'd be in her mid-to-late twenties by now, so she'd fit the role perfectly too."
From the moment he heard the name Hong A-yun, Yeon-woo had been certain it was familiar, and he kept turning it over, trying to place her. But no one came to mind.
"Hmm. Would she come up if I searched a portal site?"
"Doubt it. A handful of commercials was all she ever did, and she retired right after, so she's basically a raw newcomer. I heard she appeared in a few short films for festival submissions, though…"
Yeon-woo searched the name Hong A-yun, but the only result was a violinist who happened to share it. Given that she had retired over agency trouble, she probably hadn't had the bandwidth to manage even basic profile listings.
Then Seo-bin—who had been cycling between popping a piece of meat into her mouth and staring at Yeon-woo's face—spoke up.
"Dad, then if we search for the commercial on YouTube, we could at least see her face, right?"
"Hmm, that's true."
"Which brand was the ad for?"
Curious now, Yeon-woo pulled out his phone.
"I shot several with her, but the first one that comes to mind is the commercial for SL Electronics' X-7 laptop from six years ago."
"Hmm? If she was the face of an SL Electronics campaign, wouldn't she have been fairly well-known?"
Yeon-woo typed "SL Electronics X-7 laptop CF" into the search bar as he asked, and Director Lee shook his head.
"At the time we wanted the ad to focus on the laptop's features, so we deliberately cast an unknown newcomer."
Yeon-woo found a video and held it out to the director.
"Is this the one?"
"Yes, that's it. That's Hong A-yun. It's been a long time since I've seen her myself."
Yeon-woo watched the commercial playing on his phone. The actress played a college student using a laptop in a lecture hall and a studio apartment, but because the product was the focus, there weren't many clear shots of her face. Even so, in the brief moments she did appear, her sharp features and calm presence were remarkably close to the female lead Yeon-woo had pictured while reading the screenplay.
But it was definitely a face he was seeing for the first time. Ever since his agent days, Yeon-woo had been famous for never forgetting a person once he had seen them even once.
Hmm. Then where have I heard this name? Hong A-yun…
If he didn't recognize the face, they had never met. He must have seen the name somewhere.
"You don't know her either, right, Min-su hyung?"
"Huh? No, I don't. Before I started managing you, Actor, I only handled idol friends. I know a fair number of obscure idols, but actors? Honestly, I still don't know many."
Yeon-woo nodded at Kim Min-su's answer, then lifted his phone and messaged Han Hae-un.
Yeon-woo read the reply and tilted his head.
That was when Yeon-woo remembered. She had been on the list he and Hae-un had compiled when they were preparing to take down Plus10's CEO, Byeon Hak-gyu.
If I remember right, she was attending university and doing some theater and musical work with a small troupe…
Yeon-woo skimmed the materials Hae-un sent over and smiled faintly.
Plus10, huh…
She was already in the database he and Hae-un had built—and at the same time, she was Director Lee Yong-su's persona. Looking at it that way, she was an actress—no, an aspiring actress—with quite a few threads of fate already tying her to them.
Whether she would join the film, and whether she had the ability to match, was still unknown. But if she did come on board, the conditions would be ideal. Someone who had given up her dream because of Baeksol might, in some small way, help tear Baeksol down.
A commercial director making his first feature, his personal persona—and that persona turns out to be an unknown CF model forced into retirement…
From the very start, this romance film already had a rather interesting shape.