Plum Candy, Twenty Years Overdue
“Because I've wanted to give you one for a long time.”
“Do I even get a say in whether you're allowed to be mad at me?”
“I'm mad.”
“No, you're not.”
It wasn't really anger — more like grumbling because she had no idea what she was supposed to say. Baek Da-eun let out a long sigh. She must have been drinking fast, because her cheeks were flushed red.
“I know. I know there's no reason you owed me an explanation. Honestly, me and that guy probably understand better than anyone that you had your own complicated situation — ever since you vanished and word got out about how you'd been treated.”
She gestured with her chin at Kwon Min-jae, who was visible through the window of the convenience store across the street.
The two of them had kept working steadily as child actors even after Yoon Jae-hee left for America, and they had been the greatest beneficiaries of the Yoon Jae-hee Special Act.
“I've thought about it a few times.”
“Thought about what?”
“What I'd say if I ever ran into you again.”
If she ran into Yoon Jae-hee again — what was she supposed to say? Thanks to you, I never signed a slave contract, and I'm doing fine?
Still tangled up inside, Baek Da-eun raked a hand through her hair.
“But you did shape who I am, so should I say thank you? Except that's not right either. Whatever's gone well for me, it's basically because you disappeared. It'd be the same as thanking you for vanishing.”
“I know.”
“Then should I say I'm sorry? That's not it either. So what am I supposed to do?”
Baek Da-eun, who had been avoiding Yoon Jay's eyes, finally turned her head and looked at him again. Somehow, from the very first time she'd met him, he'd felt strangely familiar.
“Ask me why I broke my promise.”
She caught her breath. The Yoon Jae-hee in her memory and the Yoon Jay sitting before her were overlapping.
[Are you going to keep acting?]
[Yeah. It's fun.]
[······Then promise me.]
So she remembered that too. And here I thought I was the only one. Whether it was the alcohol or not, Baek Da-eun felt heat rising to her face.
“······Why didn't you keep it?”
“I'm sorry. Back then, I didn't have the room in my head to think about promises.”
“And what else?”
“You say it's good to see me again.”
Yoon Jay smiled, soft and easy.
Back when filming for The Child had wrapped and everyone was waiting for its release, he had run into Baek Da-eun on a drama set. Neither of them was famous yet, so nobody compared the set to The Child, and it had been a warm, pleasant production — he remembered how well they'd clicked on camera, too.
A bond from the past, both of them grown up now, meeting again — wasn't that just a little bit romantic?
“How's Min-jae doing?”
“Who knows? He's not exactly going to just tell me.”
“That's tricky.”
Even though Yoon Jay had once been the object of her fresh, awkward first crush, Baek Da-eun was closer to Kwon Min-jae.
She knew how young Kwon Min-jae had suffered in Yoon Jae-hee's shadow, and she knew it was the re-release of The Child that had finally pulled him out of his burnout.
[Aren't you going to go talk to him?]
[In a bit.]
To Kwon Min-jae, Yoon Jae-hee had always been a complicated presence.
They had debuted around the same time, but Yoon Jae-hee had soared on the back of The Child, and Min-jae had been hounded by family and industry people alike, forever measured against him.
And when Yoon Jae-hee buckled under excessive attention and slid into a slump, the most convenient substitute on the market was Kwon Min-jae.
He wasn't called actor Kwon Min-jae back then. He was called the substitute. The stopgap. Even his own parents compared him to Yoon Jae-hee.
When Yoon Jae-hee vanished without warning and Director Lee Young-chang heard the circumstances from Yoon Su-heon, the director — uncharacteristically — unleashed his fury on the press, and the cameras caught every moment of it.
Whatever else you could say, that movement had brought deliverance. In a way, it was what had made the Kwon Min-jae of today.
If not for the Yoon Jae-hee Special Act, he might have ended up as one of those celebrities slowly wasting away, bankrolling their family's finances until nothing was left of them.
“If you two keep that up, someone's going to snap a photo of us.”
“Oh — you're here.”
Kwon Min-jae looked at Yoon Jay, who had been stealing glances at him, none too subtly.
If Yoon Jae-hee had been a tangle of jealousy and pity, Yoon Jay, from the moment they'd met, had been someone Min-jae simply wanted to be friends with.
“Both of you — if there's anything you're curious about, just ask.”
Back when Yoon Jay hadn't yet revealed who he was, Kwon Min-jae had often poured his heart out to him. He knew exactly the kinds of things young Kwon Min-jae had been forced to hear. And that was why he'd felt vaguely guilty, all this time.
“Well······.”
Kwon Min-jae watched his own breath fog in the cold air.
Yoon Jay was a man you could trust with any secret — nothing ever leaked. A dependable friend who had even gotten a stalker arrested when the police wouldn't lift a finger.
And also a rival who had stormed up the ranks out of nowhere and now threatened his seat — the very engine that drove him to work himself ragged so he wouldn't be overtaken.
Come to think of it, he's saved me twice now, hasn't he.
His feelings were still a complicated mess, but he could understand why Yoon Jay had hidden his past. Even close friends had secrets they wanted to keep buried.
“Give me your hand.”
“······?”
Kwon Min-jae rummaged through the envelope and placed a plum candy on Yoon Jay's open palm. The candy he'd once wanted to hand over, back when they'd only ever passed each other by.
“A candy?”
“I've wanted to give you one for a long time.”
“I'm a little past the age for candy, though······ Since when?”
“There's been a since.”
What, like twenty-some years ago? Kwon Min-jae swallowed the question. Following Yoon Jay's lead, he popped the candy into his mouth.
If he'd given me this back then, would anything have been different? He didn't know. But somehow, the fact that he could hand it over now, after meeting again, settled something strange and easy in his chest.
“It's too sweet now. Can't eat stuff like this.”
“Works for me.”
“Right, you always did have a sweet tooth. You know that really doesn't suit you at all, right?”
Grinning, Kwon Min-jae clapped Yoon Jay on the back.
“It's been a long road. You did well.”
“······Yeah.”
That one sentence carried a whole tangle of feelings in it.
For some reason, Yoon Jay found himself laughing. Then Kwon Min-jae laughed, and Baek Da-eun laughed too. Nobody knew exactly what was funny, but it felt good anyway.
▶ Grand Prize, Best Film: Intermission
A work that proves the power of genre filmmaking. Impossibly fluid for a debut director, and at times daringly unconventional. He took something already done well and made it better. A delicate directorial hand shines through beneath the crowd-pleasing surface.
▶ Best Actor: Yoon Jay
He is neither the director's autobiographical stand-in nor simply rising star Yoon Jay. Utterly dissolved into his role, he rendered the anatomy of inferiority — the lingering regrets of a man who once fell — with astonishing fluency. It was a performance that made you believe the character exists somewhere in the real world, outside the screen, still making music.
▶ Best New Actor: Kang Hajun
If not for Kang Hajun, who else could have carried Jung Yi-hyun? His portrayal of the desperation of a man whose dream was broken, and of the wall coming down, was exquisite. An actor with a wellspring that promises much more to come.
The 2024 Hwangryong Film Awards drew a combined 17.9% viewership across its two halves — the highest ratings in the ceremony's history. Behind-the-scenes photos from the ceremony went up, and Moon Chang-min posted the after-party pictures on his social media.
The Hwangryong afterglow showed no sign of fading. Because he'd stayed behind for the winners' group photo instead of heading straight home, Yoon Jay had to oblige photo after photo from the other actors.
“We're all here — who knows when we'll get a chance like this again? Come on, let's get a picture.”
“Yes, absolutely!”
The after-party photo Moon Chang-min had orchestrated became a talking point all its own. Director Lee Young-chang, Director Park Hyun-seung of The Garden of Evil, the cast of Along Along and Daldongne, famous screenwriters — and plenty of others who hadn't attended the ceremony but had crossed paths with Yoon Jay on drama sets over the years.
The ones drawing the most attention, though, were Yoon Jay, Kwon Min-jae, and Baek Da-eun.
They'd always been known as inseparable best friends in the industry, with plenty of sighting stories to their name — but the revelation that they had direct and indirect ties going all the way back to their childhoods had people obsessively digging into the narrative.
Actor Yoon Jay's Wildly Unusual Past (updated)
Firefighter
Safety officer
Security guard
Carpenter
Bartender
Model
Soldier (Navy SEALs → Delta Force → recipient of America's highest military decoration)
Yoon Jae-hee >> NEW
If there were people even inside the industry who bristled at the consensus that The Child was now essential viewing, there was no way the general public would feel otherwise. The topic was bound to be noisy for a good while yet.
The aftermath of the awards ceremony crashed over Astra's offices like a wave.
“I'm terribly sorry, but his schedule that day is······ Ah — you can work around our availability? Well, yes, of course—”
“We are no longer accepting interview requests. Thank you.”
“His first-half schedule for next year is completely full as well. I'm so sorry.”
Han Jin-woo had come by the agency office, and watching the phones ring nonstop and the staff scramble back and forth, he quietly settled into a corner.
“Wow······ It's total chaos in here.”
“What are you doing here?”
“This. He told me to drop it off for you.”
Lee Da-hyun glared at Han Jin-woo — and then, at the mention of Yoon Jay, her expression melted into a warm, crinkling smile. The sheer dramatic shift gave Han Jin-woo goosebumps up his arms.
What Han Jin-woo had carried in with both arms was iced Americanos and an assortment of sweet pastries. The staff descended on them like a pack of zombies and made short work of it all.
“Ahhh······ I feel alive again.”
“He seemed really sorry about everything.”
“Sorry about what? This is the least the company should be doing.”
Honestly, being busy over something like this was fine by her. A coworker sitting next to Lee Da-hyun shook her head slowly.
“You remember Seong Ha-neul at my old agency, right? That one — the drugs, the dating violence.”
“Oh my god, seriously?”
“Compared to those days, what we've got now is an absolute angel.”
He hadn't caused a scandal. He hadn't caused one and then gone radio-silent, either.
What kind of celebrity goes this far — sending coffee and bread — because his own success is wearing the staff out? Whatever else, the man made work feel worth doing. The exhausted employees perked back up, energized all over again.
“Yes, this is Astra. I'm sorry, could you repeat—?”
The new hire who, on her first day here, had looked at Yoon Jay and thought I'm so glad I joined this company, had long since shed her rookie skin and could handle callers with practiced ease now.
But the person on the other end of this particular line was so out of the ordinary that her eyes shook without mercy.
“I'm sorry, um······ that is······.”
“Give it here. Yes, I'm taking the call now. This is Lee Da-hyun, team leader at Astra. Yes?”
Lee Da-hyun, taking over the phone, went wide-eyed and looked around at the staff.
Her first move was to glance toward Lee Seo-won's office. He was fighting his own battle, fending off a flood of favor-request calls from acquaintances.
“Come on now, our actor's health comes first, not whether we're friendly with you — that's not how this works, people?”
“Sir.”
“Hold on — is this about Jay again? I already had the response manual drawn up for you?”
“No, sir, it's not that······.”
Even after picking up the phone herself, Lee Da-hyun wore an expression of pure bewilderment. No — she worked at a celebrity management agency, and even so, she had never once imagined she'd be taking a call like this.
“It's······ the United States Embassy, apparently?”