Duck Confit and Other Differences That Don't Exist
So this was because of the mianju.
While the most common disguise technique in Murim was the classical art of reshaping one's features, I had always relied on skin masks instead. And that was entirely the Sichuan Tang Clan's fault — those bastards would hurl scatter-poison at the slightest whiff of suspicion.
Unless you were a supreme master on the level of the Heavenly Demon, taking a hit of scatter-poison would inevitably disrupt a qi-based disguise, even if only a little. So wearing a physical face mask was the safe bet.
The upshot was that my acting had always been built on the premise of wearing a face mask — and no matter how masterfully a mask was crafted, it could never be truly identical to a bare face. That became especially obvious during moments of delicate facial expression, where even the smallest difference would magnify.
Yet here I was, mask-free, still performing as though I had one on. Of course my expressions came across as exaggerated.
"I'll need to practice this."
Now that I'd identified the cause, all that remained was to overcome it through training. That said, decades of ingrained habit meant retraining would take some time.
Looking back, choosing the Elder Yoon persona for my first role was a real strike, wasn't it? I hadn't picked it with any of this in mind, but luck had been on my side.
"Also, it was fine just now, but during the drama shoot there were a few awkward moments, weren't there? Something to do with the cameras."
"Yes. The lens kept staring at me, so I couldn't help being conscious of it."
The camera issue — the last item on the list. Honestly, this was the whole reason I'd asked for acting lessons in the first place. My instincts were apparently so sharp that I kept registering every one of the cameras circling around the set.
This was another occupational hazard, of sorts. In Murim, when someone fixated on observing you that intently, trouble was guaranteed to follow. I knew full well things didn't work that way here, but habits carved into the body aren't so easily discarded.
During today's practice there'd only been one camera, locked in place more or less, so it hadn't been a real problem — but this too needed correcting.
"Let me take that one up with the company. We'll ask them to deploy multiple cameras. There's no fix for this other than getting used to it, you know."
"I suppose that's true."
Cheon Yua's suggestion was sound, so I decided to put in the request. We'd gather several cameras similar to broadcast equipment and have them film me at every practice. If we then repeated today's feedback loop over the footage, something would surely come of it.
"That covers your end, Siwoo. How about mine? My acting — any feedback for me?"
"Hmm... uh. Excellent?"
"Oh, come on. That's not feedback."
"Well, you asked, and honestly there's nothing to say."
With feedback on my performance wrapped up, Cheon Yua now wanted me to evaluate hers — to offer advice if I could find anything to criticize. But I had nothing. Even by my own exacting standards, hers was flawless, master-class acting.
Cheon Yua hadn't reached the top on her looks alone. Her acting had been recognized first. This was a woman who'd won Best Actress at Cannes at a remarkably young age — internationally acclaimed, no less.
Come to think of it, the Heavenly Demon had also been terrifyingly good at the art of performance. After all, my own acting prowess wasn't the only reason I'd gone thirty years undetected while wandering the Central Plains.
That final outing — the one where I died — I doubt it was our side that gave us away. It must have been someone inside the Righteous Sect...
Ah, never mind. A hypothetical that means nothing now.
Anyway, both Cheon Yua and the Heavenly Demon were extraordinary performers. And the texture of their acting, too, was subtly, unsettlingly similar. Does all great acting just look alike?
I'd started these lessons to confirm the differences between Cheon Yua and the Heavenly Demon, and now I'd uncovered yet another unexpected commonality. It made me gloomy.
After finishing the feedback, we ran the same script again with several adjustments. I paid particular attention to my expressions and vocal delivery, and whenever something felt off, Cheon Yua flagged it on the spot. Through several rounds of revision, we produced a polished, finished performance.
"That's remarkable."
"What is?"
"How do you apply feedback and correct yourself right there on the spot?"
"I'm just doing what I'm told, that's all."
"Well... hmm, that's a good thing, I suppose. Faster corrections are better, after all."
I was simply making the changes she asked for. What exactly was so impressive about that? This woman was softer than I'd given her credit for.
And the way she gave feedback — thorough, generous, and explained point by point — made it clear she was nothing like the Heavenly Demon. Our Heavenly Demon had been such a genius that she simply couldn't teach anyone else her martial arts. No matter how meticulously she explained, not a single soul understood, so at some point she'd just given up on trying.
I'd say that counts as a one-point gain, wouldn't you? No — this had to be a guaranteed point. With one point docked for the acting-craft gap, the score currently sat at zero. My mental state could only survive if that number went up, so one point, minimum. Absolutely mandatory.
Roughly two weeks had passed since I began studying acting with Cheon Yua. Through repeated feedback, I'd been filling in my weak points at a rapid clip, and eventually I reached the point where the critiques had all but stopped.
Despite the results, the lessons hadn't ended — because she and I were both enjoying them. This was a discovery I hadn't anticipated: performing a character with no restrictions, no interference, and no worries was more fun than I'd ever imagined.
"So you build the character directly from the stage directions and dialogue on the page? And fill in the blanks with pure imagination?"
"That's right. Once a character is fully formed, acting them becomes much easier."
"Easier, sure, but there's far too little on the page to build anything complete."
"Imagination is what fills the gaps."
"Your imagination is... remarkably fertile."
"Is it?"
"Even a character built from an on-the-fly script comes out sturdier than it has any right to be. I couldn't mount a challenge against it if I tried."
These days, rather than me learning from Cheon Yua, our sessions had become more of an exchange — trading our philosophies of acting, our methods, our approaches. Which was a good thing. It meant my acting had reached the level where nothing more could be taught to me.
Even so, I still couldn't fathom why Cheon Yua had volunteered to oversee my practice in the first place. The whole thing had started because she wanted it. There had to be a reason, and not knowing what it was left me uneasy.
"Senior, are you preparing for a new role by any chance?"
"A role? What brought that on?"
"Your hair. You dyed it recently, didn't you? Black."
This had been maybe a few days into the practice sessions. I'd asked her, casually enough. Because try as I might, this was the only explanation I could come up with for why she'd bother with my acting.
Cheon Yua, about to enter a new production, was selecting her co-star, and her attention had landed on me. So she was watching me perform firsthand, testing whether I was an actor worth sharing a screen with. At her level, proposing a co-star wouldn't have been strange at all, and it would've been good for the company too — a perfectly coherent rationale for these lessons.
And my evidence was that freshly dyed black hair. Cheon Yua's blonde hair was undeniably beautiful, but it wasn't a visual that lent itself well to acting in Korea. She'd dyed it black for her debut, and her most recent role had featured black hair as well. In that light, her turn as Yuh Seoeun — blonde hair and blue eyes and all — had actually been the exception. If the character hadn't been a foreigner, she'd have had to dye it black, cameo or not.
"Ah, the dye? I just like black, that's all. A change of pace, nothing more. Who knows if a good role comes along, but I have nothing in mind for now."
But Cheon Yua's answer was a flat no.
Which left me completely at a loss.
"Then why are you supervising my acting at all?"
"Practice? Hmm... just for fun? Is that not fun for you, Siwoo?"
"It is fun, but..."
Too frustrated to circle around it, I'd asked her point-blank, and the answer that came back was: just for fun. For fun. Was this woman a genuine acting fanatic? They say among actors there are occasional eccentrics who relish the act of performing itself — apparently she belonged to that tribe.
And to be fair, the delight on her face at every session was unmistakable, so she wasn't lying. It just didn't compute for me. She was supervising the acting of a rookie she'd met practically yesterday, for no better reason than that.
These lessons were genuinely useful to me, that much was true. But I was now certain of one other thing: this woman was no ordinary person.
While the practice sessions sailed smoothly along, my mood was anything but pleasant. My grand plan — to observe her and catalog the differences between her and the Heavenly Demon — was not unfolding smoothly at all.
Absurdly enough, beyond the single point I'd scraped together on that first day of practice, I had no results whatsoever. Was this even plausible? She was clearly a different person. How could this be?
Once the lessons began, the time I spent in her company had ballooned. She and I both lived and ate at the lodge, and our dawn training hours overlapped, so a growing familiarity was only natural. Dawn training, breakfast, lunch, dinner, acting practice — that was just our shared schedule. Unless you were a social catastrophe or a recluse, rapport was inevitable.
As my time with Cheon Yua multiplied, so did my opportunities to observe her. Which was exactly why I'd believed the differences between her and the Heavenly Demon would be easy to spot. Instead, the results were dismal. For reasons I couldn't begin to explain, all my eyes could find were the similarities.
For instance — this. The Heavenly Demon had a few unconscious habits, tics even she didn't know about. When she was truly furious, her left eyebrow twitched two or three times. When she was pleased but hiding it, her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. These were things you'd only ever catch under the closest observation — my secret alone, as her de facto childhood friend. Even the leadership of the Righteous Sect had rarely had the chance to study her face head-on, so not one of them knew.
And by some cruel coincidence, Cheon Yua displayed the very same subtle tells.
Thanks to which, Cheon Yua's anti-Heavenly-Demon score had plummeted straight to minus one. And the more time I spent alongside her, the further it kept falling.
Take today, for one. At dinnertime, Cheon Yua and I had gone to the dining hall, where our shotgun-wielding landlady served a special dish to Cheon Yua and Cheon Yua alone. Even at a glance, it looked like a bird's leg, cooked.
Why our landlady had suddenly doted on Cheon Yua with a special dish was a question for another day. What mattered to me was what, exactly, this dish was that Cheon Yua welcomed so sincerely.
A vague unease pricked at me, so I asked her what it was.
"This is confit. One of my favorite dishes."
"Ah, confit? Confit... is that duck, by any chance?"
"Yes. Duck leg, prepared in confit style."
Confit, she explained, was a French dish — made from goose or duck, and this one was duck leg. And with that, she broke into a beaming smile.
It grieves me beyond words to report this, but the woman's palate, too, was just like the Heavenly Demon's.