Don't Accept Anything

The mock shoot had ground to a halt, and it had done so in the middle of an enormous commotion.

An actress had fainted. That was reason enough. Her manager, the medical team, and everyone else with a reason to run came charging in at once to look Park Dohui over.

Fortunately, she had not been out for long.

A damp towel across her face and a few presses along her arms and legs were all it took. Park Dohui pushed her eyelids up almost at once.

"Dohui. Park Dohui! Do you know who I am?"

"...Manager?"

Her face, still slack with exhaustion, as if she had not fully come back to herself, flooded a moment later with sheer horror. What had just happened came rushing back, and she jerked her head around, scanning the set.

"The police—did somebody call the police? That murderer bastard..."

But Park Dohui never got to finish.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"...Huh?"

The Lee Sua caught in her sight was nothing like the one in her memory.

Lee Sua stood there with her arm given over to the medical team, perfectly indifferent. Every trace of the madness she had worn like a suit cut exactly to her measure was gone. It was as if nothing at all had happened.

Her own condition was just as startling. From the Sua in front of her now, Park Dohui could not feel a shred of killing intent. She was not afraid.

"Dohui. What's wrong with you? Are you still dizzy?"

Park Dohui ignored her manager and thought for a moment.

"...Acting? Don't tell me that was all acting?"

"What? What is she going on about now."

The moment she checked it against the script and turned it over again, she was certain. Sua had only been acting, and she herself had been swept up and mistaken the whole thing for real. She had even fainted.

Park Dohui's face burned red. Shame, and a rush of admiration for Sua, welled up in her at the same time.

That's impossible. Can acting really be that vivid?

While she was retracing Sua's performance, the medical team came around again.

"Ms. Dohui, how are you feeling? If we can help it, let's rest for today. This isn't even the real shoot, only a mock, so don't push yourself."

"I'm all right now."

"Are you sure you're really all right? You went down so hard earlier..."

"I'm all right. I'm really all right."

The medical team checked her over again and again. For Park Dohui, though, there was only a question. At what moment, and how, had she fainted? Her last memory was a blur.

After that she went, timidly, to find Director Choi Heewon.

"Director, I'm sorry for NGing every single take today. I don't even know why I'm like this. If I could just try once more..."

"An NG? What NG are you referring to?"

"Well, obviously..."

Park Dohui thought of the script. She was never supposed to have fainted. The role of Lee Garam was a woman who begged, ugly to the very last, for her life, and then died.

"I fainted. That wasn't in the script."

"No. This is much better, and the writer has already gone into revisions. All you need to do, Ms. Dohui, is apologize to Ms. Sua."

"Apologize?"

"Yes. The ad-lib was good, but it was rather extreme, was it not."

Ad-lib? What ad-lib?

Perhaps because she had fainted in such a panic, the memories left in Park Dohui's head were not clear in the slightest. Only this remained: that Sua, in that moment, had seemed like a murderer.

"...So the shoot went well, then?"

"It did. It was excellent."

Little by little Park Dohui came back to herself, her mind growing sharp. Only then did the situation around her begin to come into focus, at the same moment the sound of people talking started to catch, one by one, in her ears.

"So she took an ad-lib and answered it with an ad-lib, is that it?"

"She was thinking about acting even while her arm was being bitten?"

"...I couldn't. No—nobody could, not in their right mind."

"What even is she?"

People were strangely uninterested in Park Dohui, the one who had actually passed out. Or rather, they did not seem to have any room left to be interested.

A monitor sat on a folding table, and it had robbed every one of them of their attention. They kept playing one particular clip over and over, talking it through this way and that. Park Dohui drifted over as if it were the natural thing and slipped into the crowd.

What was playing was the footage of herself and Lee Sua acting.

Soon she, too, had no choice but to lose every bit of her attention to it.

No one could take their eyes off the monitor.

Not a costume or a prop was in place, and the actors had not received so much as makeup. Even under conditions like those, Lee Sua's acting was the only thing that shone at full strength.

"Writer Lee. Director Choi."

Hwang Myung-pil, the man they called a luxury supporting actor, was the one who spoke. His voice was thick with nothing but bewilderment.

"...What is that lunatic? What are we supposed to do if she actually brings Kim Yu-han in here?"

No one contradicted him.

Until now, there had not been a person who knew exactly what "Kim Yu-han" was. It was only natural. How was anyone meant to understand a role the writer herself had left unfinished from the start? Nothing could have been more ordinary.

But the situation had changed.

Now there was not a soul who could not get a feel for the role of Kim Yu-han. The performer had unpacked it in such fine detail. No one could pull back the glances they kept stealing, openly, at Sua.

"I thought casting someone of a different gender was out of the question..."

"...It makes sense now."

Even in that crowd, there was one person watching the monitor with particular care: a figure you might easily have mistaken for a young girl if you only glanced and passed on. Kim Iseo, CEO of Mystic.

To the outside, she had made the excuse that she had come along to look in on her signed actors, Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil. The truth was different. Kim Iseo had come today to see Lee Sua act.

And now her expectations had not been betrayed.

...An ad-lib, there? Without a tremor, without a hesitation?

The greatest reason, without rival, was Lee Sua's ad-lib.

What Kim Iseo valued above all else in an actor was scent. The world already overflowed with people who could act well; the crux was not to be colorless and scentless. An actor, in CEO Kim Iseo's creed, had to possess a character that was theirs alone.

And now she was certain.

She has a color of her own, and a scent. A very deep one.

The moment Sua went into the ad-lib, the expectations Kim Iseo had been holding swelled past all reason. Enough that she seriously wondered whether the person in front of her might truly be Kim Yu-han.

Wild, and raw as it comes. You don't often find a scent like this.

Acting schools, art centers, academies, private lessons... There were plenty of renowned ways to be taught acting, but Sua's performance carried the tint of no institution at all. It was something that had appeared only after she carved, whole and unborrowed, an interpretation she had found for herself. Nothing more than Kim Yu-han's true form, manifested out of nowhere.

Bitten on the arm out of nowhere, Sua blinked for a moment, and then the outer corners of her eyes drew an arc like a crescent moon. In the space of an instant, the look that held Park Dohui turned aching and tender.

She even began to stroke Park Dohui. Like a lover. Or like a pet.

When Sua at last lowered the mask and revealed her face, the director stopped the playback and rewound in the same motion.

"Here. This part."

Director Choi Heewon pointed at Sua's face. The line of her mouth, in particular.

"Look closely. When the arm is bitten, Ms. Sua hurts at first, too. That is why she never lowers the mask, and keeps the lower half of her face hidden. But the moment she grows accustomed to the pain, she puts the face to work."

"...She knows how to use the way she looks on camera?"

"Then she meant that costume from the start, and prepared it?"

Listening, Kim Iseo caught at her own mouth without realizing it.

Does she have a third eye? What kind of objectivity is this?

It was not simply the acting out of Kim Yu-han's actions. Sua had controlled, with precision, even the image of herself being taken by the camera.

And besides.

If a mock shoot is at this level, then on the real shoot...?

Thinking it over, what Kim Iseo had confirmed today was probably not even Lee Sua at full strength. What on earth would she show when it was real?

At the same time, one line of Sua's flickered through Kim Iseo's mind.

Put another way, a raw stone that had not even settled on a direction for her acting had just proven it could shine like this.

Kim Iseo suddenly pictured what Lee Sua might be a few years on.

If a creature like this keeps acting for, say, another three years...

Her skin itched. That was potential, truly formidable.

In the end, Lee Sua had stamped her first impression in spectacular fashion. Lee Sua, in the role of Kim Yu-han. A joke that would once have drawn a snort from anyone who heard it no longer came to them like a mere joke. The proof was that every face had lost its words.

When the footage at last played through to the end and stopped, they traded looks a few times, then turned their eyes somewhere other than the monitor. The turning heads all pointed the same way, because every last one of them was aimed at Lee Sua.

Sua herself, of course, was somewhere else entirely.

Why is she suddenly doing something that wasn't in the script? Did she hate me that much? I absolutely cannot let them tear up my contract—no, forget all of it, I don't know anything, it hurts so bad I could die. It hurts...

If she had to liken how she felt right now to something—no. Sua soon gave up on likening it to anything at all. The moment she tried to invent a comparison with that brain of hers, she got dizzy.

She had even left the mask she had taken off somewhere on the set.

I have to go get the mask back. The mask. My mask...

She no longer had any way to hide her face. With no other choice, she held the blankest expression she could manage and gazed wistfully at the mask lying on the floor—and even that, to the people watching, meant something else entirely.

She doesn't have the slightest sense that she just did something incredible. She's already worrying about the next shoot. Is a mock shoot nothing but a warm-up to her?

Those eyes are insane. The eyes of someone who's gone crazy from wanting to act.

While those separate thoughts snarled together in the air, Hwang Myung-pil, the luxury supporting actor, walked up to Park Dohui and spoke.

"Dohui, you did well too. It was pretty rough, I'll give you that, but luckily the person across from you was skilled enough to take it. You knew that, didn't you?"

"Y-yes? No, the thing is, actually..."

"...But are you going to be all right?"

Hwang Myung-pil asked it with worry written all through his face.

"Sorry?"

"Can you do this much on the day of the real shoot, too?"

For some reason, Park Dohui wanted to cry. Just as the road ahead went dark and hopeless as a bank of storm cloud, Seo Yeon-ju cut in.

"...Isn't there something else to worry about first?"

She asked it in a voice packed full of sincerity.

"Dohui, do you think you can handle having bitten Sua?"

"What?"

"Sua is—well, hmm, how should I put this. You get the feeling, right? Starting with the kind of personality that just points out how lacking someone else's acting is, out of nowhere, all the way to the pride that won't lose even while her arm's being bitten..."

That was when Kim Seonil opened his mouth.

"She's crazy, in all sorts of ways."

"...Yeah. Right. You saw. Even Seonil admits it."

That was the finishing blow.

"Ah..."

Dohui's legs gave out, and she sank to the floor. It was very nearly another faint.

And the people beside her carved it firmly into their heads. On this mock-shoot set, a rookie had appeared who was not to be touched lightly.

The mock shoot went on after that.

This time it was a scene with none other than Kim Seonil and Lee Sua together. For the two of them, though, it was an extremely familiar one. The day Sua had first picked the script out at the café, the passage they had run together for the very first time was this very scene.

Yes. The scene in which Lee Kang-cheol and Kim Yu-han meet for the first time.

The start was no different from before. Natural acting from both of them.

But suddenly Kim Seonil grew curious. Lee Sua. Would she take an ad-lib of his, too?

There was no reason to think it over for long. He moved at once. What he did had never been in the script: with his brow drawn tight, he ran his eyes over the other person's arm. Sua's arm was wrapped, at present, tight in bandages.

And what would Lee Sua's answer be? Just as Kim Seonil waited for it—

The moment Kim Seonil's gaze was stolen by the arm Sua held out, the track of her eyes cut a swift, jagged zigzag. She checked every corner with meticulous care, then slipped the car key from Kim Seonil's waist in one clean pull. The whole thing happened in a flash. Afterward she dangled the key as if to make sure he saw, and wore a wicked little smile.

A return of the ad-lib with nowhere to find a fault. She had not bent the spine of the script, and there was not a hitch in it.

As expected.

Kim Seonil was certain all over again.

Lee Sua. Worth bringing in, even if I had to get down on my knees.

His choice had not been wrong. Lee Sua was an essential piece, the one that would bring the work to completion.

By the hour the moon hung in the sky as if showing itself off, the mock shoot finally came to an end.

They had spent an enormous amount of money to make the environment as close to the real thing as possible, and the scenes they had shot today on a trial basis were many. But rather than looking exhausted, everyone looked excited only now. The awkwardness had at last come undone. It was a pleasure of the set that all of them knew: shoot a few times, and the stiffness loosens, and you grow close. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠One pot, one family.

Director Choi Heewon, massive as a boulder, spoke.

"We will conclude today's mock shoot. A staff dinner is scheduled afterward at the outdoor set, but anyone with urgent business may go home. It is absolutely not mandatory."

But, as expected, no one went home. The reason was simple. The lead had not left.

Everyone only kept sneaking glances at that lead. They had shot a great deal today, and still only one person remained in memory, and that person was, without question, Lee Sua.

"She didn't drop a single NG today, did she?"

"Nope. She didn't even get one note from that nitpicky Kim Seonil. That says it all. She can really act."

"I wondered why they'd revive a show that had completely fallen apart, and there was a reason after all. Who could have predicted this? Not if you died and came back."

"...But isn't she too scary?"

Then someone said it.

"She introduced herself as Kim Yu-han, didn't she. So doesn't that mean her real personality is like Kim Yu-han's?"

"Kim Yu-han's personality means a mad dog?"

"Looks better not to touch her. You could tell just from her face."

Right after, the eyes of the people talking turned toward Sua once more.

Sua sat far off by herself, quietly stroking her bandaged arm. For all the world like a sword saint who had grasped the way of things, caressing his blade with regret gathered in his hands.

"Don't tell me even this wasn't good enough for her?"

"I don't think there's anything in her head but acting."

"Let's watch ourselves. You heard Seo Yeon-ju and Kim Seonil earlier."

"In all my life, I never thought I'd be walking on eggshells around a rookie..."

Of course, it was nothing but a snowball of misunderstanding. Because Sua herself felt like crying.

God, she really bit down. What is she, a piranha.

She retraced her day. She thought, and thought, and thought again, and the result was this.

...Am I being left out?

This was bad. She was definitely being shut out of something. They had bitten her arm out of nowhere, forced her to keep acting while she was dying of pain, and she had not even been able to refuse, for fear of having her contract torn up. And why was Kim Seonil saying lines that were not in the script again?

Is he still trying to test me? Is that it?

What was she supposed to do. It was karma. As the price for failing to watch her mouth, she had become the outcast of this set.

...Right. I'm an outcast again.

Sua's mood only grew darker, and the darker it grew, the more the people around her watched her and did not dare act carelessly.

A virtuous cycle, if you could call it that.

Anyway, things stayed the same after that. Everyone wanted to say something, but Sua was so frightening they could not bring themselves to approach, and only worked their mouths. Like meerkats.

That was when it happened.

Step. Step. Timid footsteps.

There was a group advancing on Sua, hesitating like birds just out of the shell, and in their hands were a handicam, a microphone, things of that sort. The show's marketing team.

"Um..."

When Sua, sensing someone there, looked up, they all smiled as if desperately proving they were harmless. The beads of sweat on their brows caught the moonlight and gleamed.

"Hello! Mr. Yu-han! We're the marketing team!"

A deep breath, and then a bright, sturdy voice. Sua answered only briefly.

"I'm Lee Sua."

"Ah, look at me. Of course! Yes, of course, Ms. Sua! Right now Mr. Yu-han is playing the role of Lee Sua, so that's what we ought to call you!"

The name of marketing team was not an empty one. Their skill at steering a thing along gently was no ordinary skill, and for Sua it was deeply awkward.

"Cookie clips, NG compilations, making-of films... all of them are things you need if a drama is going to be complete! You're the lead, Ms. Sua, aren't you? We won't be rude. We'll ask only a few things!"

"...Go ahead."

From Sua's position, there had been no choice to begin with. Turn them down cold, and she would only be left ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out worse, wouldn't she. And more than that, why was a marketing team coming to her? A documentary team, maybe, but this...

"There are so many things we want to ask, but we mustn't bother you, Ms. Sua, so just one for now! We'll ask just one!"

The woman from the marketing team looked as if she were choosing her words with great care.

"Kim Yu-han was an unfinished role to begin with, and the gender is different from yours, too. There probably wasn't a single easy part, from the first thing to the last—so what led you, a rookie, to take it on?"

That was when it happened. Seo Yeon-ju, who had been watching while she ate snacks, tapped Kim Seonil's arm.

"Hey. What do you think she's going to answer?"

The moment a hand dusted with snacks touched him, a vein stood up straight in Kim Seonil's temple. A moment later, wiping his sleeve with a wet tissue, he said it.

"She'll spit out whatever comes to mind. And don't touch me."

At that, Seo Yeon-ju wiped her hand on Kim Seonil's clothes. A slow swipe.

Kim Seonil's face twisted like a vengeful ghost's. He was very nearly a killer.

"I know that much, but what I'm saying is, is it all right to just let her answer as she is. Even you act sweet with your fans, at least. But Sua seems like she'll be too honest, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that's what scares me."

"I'm scared of myself. Scared I might kill you..."

"Ah, what are you saying? Did you even hear me?"

Anyway, Kim Seonil agreed with what Seo Yeon-ju was getting at. How would she be seen by the public? For an actor, it was a question that had to be chewed over. Kim Seonil, at least, was the sort to be deeply grateful to his fans, and he had long since earned the image of a tender man—toward his own fans, anyway.

...Well. What about Lee Sua.

...Or actually, even if she does it that way, is it a problem?

...There might even be people who like exactly that.

Just as every eye focused, Sua herself grew comfortable. Choosing what to say had not been difficult.

"I guess, the acting I did was, really, ah..."

One careful word at a time. Sua went on, piling caution upon caution.

"It was easy."

She was proud of herself for having run humility all the way out to its end. A satisfying answer.

In the next instant, lightning came down over every head.

"...It was that easy?"

The woman asked it back, startled.