What the Violin Meant
Plenty of people praised the acting itself, but most of the current buzz fixated on the group dynamic of the work and the characters rather than on individual performances.
Yoon Jay's situation right now was similar. Everyone knew he was famous and could act, but his past was so extraordinary that some people simply couldn't stop staring at the past itself.
What can I do about what's already out there?
Two years ago, the Yoon Jay who had just come back from America would have found all this attention unwelcome. People were looking at him for reasons that had nothing to do with his acting—if he had wanted this kind of interest, he would simply have started using the name Yoon Jae-hee again.
Though the attention on Agitato and Yoo Tae-hyuk does mean I played the role well enough.
But things were different now. Shooting film after film had lightened the weight on his chest and taught him something.
He was no longer a man hiding in the shadow of The Child. He was an actor who worried about a film's quality and its box office. He hadn't yet realized himself how much his own mindset had changed.
Today's schedule combined a stage greeting with a GV—the post-screening talk with the audience.
"Let me begin with introductions. I'm Shin Ji-won, director of Intermission."
"Waaah!"
"He's handsome!"
Even inside a movie theater, you could feel the same heat as a live concert hall. While he stood there introducing himself into the microphone, a woman in the front row waved a bouquet in his face with desperate, pleading eyes—as if begging him, please take this.
"Oh? We meet again."
The bouquet-giver was a fan whose face he recognized. Wasn't she one of the fans who'd organized his birthday café? The moment Yoon Jay recognized her, she flushed scarlet and dissolved into giggles.
"Wow... there are a lot of people with their hands raised."
"How about her over there? She looks pretty desperate."
"Is there anyone in here not desperate?"
Once the greetings wrapped up, the proper GV began. The audience member called on leapt to her feet.
"Hello. I loved the movie. Truly."
"Thank you. Please, go ahead with your question."
"In interviews you mentioned the story was partly autobiographical, Director. I understand Tae-hyuk is your self-portrait, but watching the film, Yi-hyun felt like... how should I put it... your color was mixed into him too?"
Those who knew, knew—the audience could see both the film's solid direction and the strength of its message.
"My color? You mean the sense that something of mine is blended in there? You're right about that."
Director Shin Ji-won let out a long breath. It wasn't a fond memory.
"Do you know what I heard when I put down the violin?"
"What was it?"
The actors slipped in easy interjections so the silence wouldn't grow awkward.
"'That kid got packaged as a genius, and look how his life ended.'"
"Seriously?"
"That's awful."
"There were plenty of people who tore into me, saying a man named Shin shouldn't even be able to beat a slump. So I wandered for a long time."
The fall of a celebrated genius is more than enough prey for the hungry crowd.
Even his own family had called him weak. If he couldn't hack it, they said, he should go teach kids—and they went on to decide his future for him, without asking.
"What Yi-hyun hears from his parents in the film is a lightly rearranged version of what I heard while I was wandering. And a lot of the people who've seen it told me they related to those scenes."
"That scene was the moment I fully melted into Yi-hyun, too."
"That's right. Our Ha-jun is simply a wonderful actor."
"All thanks to your direction, Director."
The warm little exchange between Shin Ji-won and Kang Ha-jun brought smiles to the other actors' faces.
"Most people get swept along the track society has laid out for them. I imagine those of you who felt something watching this film have heard words a lot like what Yi-hyun heard."
Someone in the audience shouted, "That's so true!" The raw emotion in the voice set off laughter across the theater.
"When I told people I was going to be a film director, I got more of the same. You're in your thirties—what's going to change by starting over now? Just stick to what you're good at."
"..."
"Does the man who overcame all of that and became a director look more pathetic to you than the man who used to play the violin?"
In the film's final performance, the image of Yoo Tae-hyuk and Jung Yi-hyun tearing down the wall between themselves and their past had shone brighter than anyone.
And so Intermission entered its second week of release. The cumulative audience had passed three million. Every film that had hit a similar trajectory had gone on to cross ten million.
"I poured what I'd learned into Intermission. Yi-hyun smashed the window, Tae-hyuk sold the violin to buy himself a future—so don't weigh those words so heavily, and do the thing you actually want to do. Life's short."
"That was awesome!"
"Give the director a round of applause!"
Baek Do-kyung and Nam Chan-hee hyped up the room. Kang Ha-jun turned toward Yoon Jay and whispered.
"Hyung, what are we supposed to do if he answers like that from the very first question?"
"Tell me about it."
Yoon Jay chuckled and nodded. Before long the next questioner stood and took a microphone from the staff.
"I'd also like to ask the director something..."
"The director really is the most popular one here."
Shin Ji-won scratched the back of his head. Honestly, what had gnawed at him was how much of the attention had pooled around Agitato and its members rather than the film itself.
But whenever he heard a question like this one—proof an audience member had truly understood the movie—the sinking feeling bobbed right back to the surface.
"This is because of what you just said. I'm curious what made you decide on film directing as a fresh start. Aren't violin and film direction such completely different fields?"
"Another excellent question."
His mouth had gone dry, so Shin Ji-won took a sip of water before continuing.
"During those wandering years, I didn't leave the house. What's there to do in the corner of your room? I read, and I watched movies."
"Then what film made you decide to become a director?"
"Hmm... if I had to pick one, it would be Director Lee Young-chang's The Child."
Yoon Jay very nearly spit out the water he'd been drinking, then covered it with his superb acting as if nothing had happened.
"Our actors know that film too, right? It's quite old, but..."
"Oh come on, Director. That's a mandatory watch for anyone with a film degree."
Shin Ji-won had been captivated by The Child—by Yoon Jae-hee radiating an enormous presence from a tiny frame, and by direction that still looked polished even now.
Films and books mean whatever the viewer makes of them.
In The Child's ending, Park Dong-hwa waits for a mother who never comes, then runs off playing wildly with the other children—and Shin Ji-won read it this way: stop waiting for the warm words of the family that crushes you, and seize your own happiness.
He followed The Child—the film that had pulled him back out into the world—and walked the road of a film director.
"It had a re-release not long ago, too."
"It's a film I love personally as well. What about you, hyung?"
At Baek Do-kyung's ambush of a question, Yoon Jay just smiled sheepishly.
Fortunately, time was short, so things moved on to the next questioner.
"My question is for actor Yoon Jay—the scene where Tae-hyuk stares at the violin. What were you feeling when you played it?"
"A question for me at last, everyone."
At Yoon Jay's little joke, laughter rippled through the room.
"Hmm... you all know what the violin represents, right? The past, lingering attachment, things like that."
"Yes!"
"Those who've followed me know my own history isn't exactly ordinary. So it was easy to lose myself in the role."
The theater, which had been buzzing with chatter, went quiet all at once as everyone hung on Yoon Jay's words. People had said all sorts of things about his past, but this was the first time anyone was hearing it directly from his mouth.
The actors—and even the director—set their microphones down and waited for his lips to part.
"Doesn't everyone have a past they'd like to escape? How about you all?"
"I do! I threw up on stage during the elementary school talent show, and..."
"Whoaah..."
"That's some serious dark history right there."
Nam Chan-hee's comment lightened the mood in an instant.
"Tae-hyuk felt his skills slipping, yet he couldn't let go of the violin—and the result was the tragedy of his father and mother."
"..."
"I'm much the same. Things I still haven't settled in my heart sometimes burst up out of nowhere. Anyone with a military background knows the feeling... you understand what I mean, right?"
"Yes!"
He said it so casually that hardly anyone marked the words.
But the faces of Jung Seung-woo, Choi Tae-yang, and Han Jin-woo, watching from the back, had gone dark.
"Our circumstances are different, but there's a lot in common, so... rather than acting some feeling deliberately, I just fell into it on my own. My vision went hazy at the time—I felt like I had become Yoo Tae-hyuk himself."
"And that's how the famous scene was born."
Agitato's popularity had somewhat obscured it, but when critics praised Yoon Jay's performance in Intermission, the moment they always singled out was the one where he stared at the violin.
"The violin just fell over by itself in that take, didn't it?"
"Pure accident. Nothing the direction put there. You could argue God pitied him and gave him enlightenment—and honestly, that reading holds up. It startled me too."
"It was insane."
Shin Ji-won remembered it then, and goosebumps ran up his arms. Yoon Jay went on.
"Tae-hyuk shook off the question of 'what if I'd quit the violin sooner—would anything have changed?' The same way, a painful past might become a fond memory someday, too."
"Hey, did you just plagiarize my answer?"
"No matter how I thought about it, I couldn't come up with anything better than the director's. You were too good."
Before setting down the microphone, Yoon Jay murmured quietly:
"If any of you are carrying that kind of pain, I hope you'll overcome it the way Tae-hyuk did. I hope this film can be a moment of healing for you."
As if he hadn't yet managed it himself.
While the Intermission team fanned out beyond the capital region, burning through a packed stage-greeting schedule, Soldiers K finally hit the airwaves.
Plenty of people were already waiting for Yoon Jay's appearance. Jung Seung-woo happened to catch Yoon Jay just as he was coming out of the bathroom.
"Hyung, it's starting."
"Oh yeah?"
Sitting down on the sofa, Yoon Jay toweled the water from his hair.
Jung Seung-woo and Choi Tae-yang stole a glance at him. They weren't watching his every shift for nothing—something had happened back then.
That day was seriously intense.
The two men replayed the Soldiers K recording they'd done alongside Yoon Jay. To promote Intermission and burn through the program's leftover investment money, Yoon Jay had scheduled a visit to the filming set. This time the set wasn't the parched desert backdrop—it had woods, and even a swimming pool.
"Fancy set again today."
"Thanks to you, Jay, we've got capital to spare."
This was the investment money that had been meant for Yoon Jay and no one else. The ad revenue the program earned from its success had been poured in as well. And with news that Yoon Jay would appear again, they'd even accepted an offer from Hong Ji-woong—the investor who'd lent them the land.
With the recording already underway, it wasn't the trailing cameras that got under Yoon Jay's skin so much as the burning stare of PD Han Kook-young.
"PD-nim, that look in your eyes is a lot."
"Did it show? So—what the articles said is true, then?"
"Think whatever you like."
Figures. They said men from that unit never spill to the very end... PD Han, a military otaku to the bone, had been too excited to sleep.
"You're here!"
"It's been a while."
"I watched the drama. Instructor... ah, wait, I can still call you Instructor, right?"
Lee Min-gyu and Ha Eun-sung came up warmly, and PD Han Kook-young's head whipped around.
"Instructor? Why do you call him that?"
"I saw him briefly during my service."
"Oh, so that's why he and Seung-woo are so close, too—?"
Yoon Jay simply nodded. To only just now figure that out. PD Han's face fell into despondency. The former cast members gathered in front of the cameras.
"So, what's on the agenda today?"
"Everyone gathered like this—must be a cooperation mission?"
Before, Yoon Jay's existence had been shrouded in a veil. But this time, from before the mission even began, he was with them.
Everyone waited for PD Han to open his mouth.