Right Behind You
“He's right behind you.”
“Make just one good work. A single one. Then this seat is yours.”
“Father.”
“Now get out.”
After graduating from university, Cho Youkyeong had become the youngest department head in KE Entertainment's history — and she spent her days grinding her teeth in frustration.
Her good-for-nothing brother, whom she despised even calling oppa, had no ambition to create quality content the way she did. All he cared about was leveraging his position to chase after actresses.
One good work. Easy to say.
What did “good work” even mean? A box office hit? An award contender? A project that uncovered a rough gem worth polishing?
He wants me to build a track record, then.
It was her father's test. And it carried a sliver of hope — that if she distinguished herself even a little, she could finally sweep the useless brother out of the way.
Cho Youkyeong was frantically sifting through projects to invest in and produce when she received a call from Lee Youngchang, a junior who had just made his directorial debut with a short film. She had been keeping an eye on him — his instincts were sharp, and his directing skill was exceptional.
The scenario he sent her was unlike anything she'd read. She dropped everything she was doing, turning the words on the page over and over again in her head.
The script is good. But still...
Could this actually get made? The lead role, at best, belonged to an elementary schooler. And not just any child — a child playing a character with cerebral palsy.
Was there really a child actor alive who could carry that performance? Setting that aside — could any investor be convinced to fund a film led by an unknown kid?
“So why exactly did you send this to me?”
“...Do you, by any chance, have some money?”
Cho Youkyeong had entered the theater and film department out of pure passion for cinema, but she had kept her status as KE Group royalty rigorously hidden.
There were rumors, of course — she drove a nice car, carried designer goods, so people whispered that she came from money. Which meant Youngchang had almost certainly reached out grasping at straws, hoping against hope.
He has good instincts, though.
But this project looked impossible on its face. Even if their sensibilities happened to align perfectly and production went ahead, there was no guarantee of success.
And yet Cho Youkyeong never threw away the synopsis of The Child. It stayed on her desk, and her eyes kept drifting back to it. If it were made well, then perhaps...
“Find me your actor first. Then I'll decide.”
She put off giving an answer. Lee Youngchang was a trustworthy junior, but she couldn't judge the project on the script alone.
“Really?”
Years slipped by. Lee Youngchang established himself as a director, and the synopsis of The Child had all but faded from memory when, out of the blue, contact came again.
I've never seen him this worked up.
Even then, Cho Youkyeong still kept the synopsis of The Child. If a child actor appeared who could at least approximate the role, she was prepared to dig into her personal fortune to fund the film herself.
So she arrived on set carrying a modest flame of expectation — and found plenty of familiar faces. No investors, apparently. So the only thing left to lean on was the old school network.
“Oh! Senior!”
“Joohwan. So you're the assistant director now. Where's the kid?”
“Right over there.”
The faces of the seniors, classmates, and juniors she hadn't seen in years were all flushed with excitement. What kind of child could possibly have them this enamored?
“Alright — can you do it from here to here?”
“Yes.”
Cho Youkyeong watched Lee Youngchang crouch to the boy's eye level, speaking to him in a soft, unhurried voice.
I can't tell...
Judging by appearance alone was a mistake, but the boy was small and looked somber, withdrawn. Cho Youkyeong let out a complicated sigh.
As long as he managed the basics, it would be fine. She trusted Lee Youngchang's direction — if he could draw the performance out... Cho Youkyeong stepped forward.
“Hold on — I'll play the mother, if that's all right.”
“Go ahead. Donghwa, are you okay with that?”
The boy nodded. Lee Youngchang, who had been perpetually cowed from chasing down investors, looked utterly confident.
Is he really that good?
Cho Youkyeong sat down in front of the child.
“Hello.”
“...”
“What's your name?”
She kept talking, trying to loosen the boy's nerves — and then she stopped, her mouth going dry.
He was already immersed in the role. The question was: when had he started?
The boy stared silently into empty space, then slowly lost his balance. Cho Youkyeong moved on instinct to catch him — and her eyes went wide.
“...!”
The boy — Park Donghwa — did not fall.
He leaned instead on the walking frame looped around his forearms, as if his motor control had been stripped away entirely. Each labored step forward landed with a tap, tap of the frame against the floor. The right corner of Park Donghwa's mouth twisted, his gaze darting this way and that. To anyone watching, he looked like a child suffering from severe hemiplegia down one entire side of his body.
“Mom. Don't... worry, okay?”
Even the slurred pronunciation, bleeding naturally through rigid muscles. And then — the small hand trembling fitfully as it brushed against Cho Youkyeong's cheek.
The immersion spread from Park Donghwa's expression into her own.
The Child was the story of a mother raising a child with cerebral palsy alone — and, in the end, of the child left utterly alone. It had been directed with a paradoxical, almost happy brightness, and Cannes had loved it for exactly that.
Woven throughout were layers of craft that only people who truly knew film would come to find.
“Because you have... me, don't you?”
That line was not a simple comfort offered to a mother. It carried a deliberate double meaning.
Park Donghwa knows that his mother tried to abandon him. The line holds a trace of consolation, a child's petty grievance — and beneath them, guilt and fury all at once.
Because of me, Mom struggles. I'm different from other kids, so Mom will throw me away. Why did you do it? You still have me, don't you?
Park Donghwa's voice and expression held that entire tangle of emotion. Framed large on screen, that face would cross beyond the camera and make every audience member feel the dissonance.
But the only thing the “mother” feels in that moment is guilt.
As she stared into Park Donghwa's eyes, Cho Youkyeong felt her chest seethe and ripple, her nose stinging with the threat of tears.
Part of it was that she knew the script inside and out — but the boy had a strange, uncanny gravity that pulled even his scene partner all the way under.
The small hand on her cheek slipped away, spent.
Cho Youkyeong wanted to catch it and hold on — and only belatedly realized, from the boy's blank expression as he stared at Lee Youngchang, that the performance had ended.
“HAH!”
“He really is unbelievable.”
The onlookers let out their awe like people sighing over the first spoonful of a hot stew. Cho Youkyeong stared, as if under some spell, at the child being patted and fussed over by the crowd.
“So, Senior. What do you think?”
“...You directed him?”
“No, all I did was tell him 'act from here to here.'”
“What?”
So that was a performance the boy had built himself, alone, from nothing but the script?
“Does he have experience?”
“No. He's not even from a kids' modeling background — they say this is his first time acting.”
“Then his family—”
“Ordinary office workers, both parents.”
“Good grief.”
Lee Youngchang chattered on as if the boy were his own flesh and blood. The child, he boasted, could absorb a scene after a single read-through and reproduce it perfectly — and when they'd run tests in front of several cameras, he hadn't shrunk back even a little.
“So, Senior. About that investment?”
Cho Youkyeong nodded, dazed. Lee Youngchang's fist clenched tight.
“Yes! Now we just need the other investors and—”
“How much do you need?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Write down the budget you need right there. No — forget it. All of you, follow me. My company will fund this, so let's start production over from the beginning.”
“...Excuse me?”
Shaking off the lingering haze, Cho Youkyeong grabbed Lee Youngchang's shoulder and pulled out her business card. She could not let this slip away. This was material for a truly great work.
“KE Group...?”
“I'm the second child.”
“What?!”
You've been hiding that all this time? Youngchang felt betrayed — but the joy of finally, after years of honing his craft, getting to produce this film outweighed it entirely.
While Lee Youngchang and the classmates who would one day rise to the top of their every field whooped and cheered, Cho Youkyeong knelt down to meet the boy's eyes.
“Now — can I finally get your name?”
“It's Yoon Jae-hee. It's nice to meet you...”
The boy laid both hands on his belly button and bowed with perfect formality. When his head snapped back up, a smile was spread across his whole face.
“Go ahead. Donghwa, are you okay with that?”
So even the somber air from earlier had been nothing but immersion. Lee Youngchang had known it all along — that was why he'd deliberately called the boy by his character's name.
If he grows up well, he'll become a great actor.
A smile bloomed at the corners of Cho Youkyeong's mouth. This one would work. Without a doubt.
The Child Wins the Grand Prix — a First for Korea at the Cannes Film Festival
Who Is 'Yoon Jae-hee,' the World's Youngest Winner of the Newcomer Award and Best Actor?
KE Group Stock Surges on the Box Office Success of The Child
So it went: Cho Youkyeong pushed the project forward relentlessly, and Lee Youngchang unleashed his full talent without reserve. With every shoot, Yoon Jae-hee grew by leaps and bounds, delivering performances no one could find a single flaw in.
I've been living too fast, all these years.
Cho Youkyeong won recognition on the strength of The Child's box office and its haul of awards.
She refused to stop there. Leveraging the film, she fought to bring new treatments for single-parent support, polio, and rare childhood diseases under national health insurance coverage — and drastically transformed the company's public image in the process.
Thanks to all of it, she swept the useless brother aside and took the Vice Chairman's seat.
Lee Youngchang became a master, and every member of The Child's production crew rose to the very top of their respective fields.
Still — even so, he should have stayed in touch. He should have.
But Yoon Jae-hee was gone. He had simply vanished.
Cho Youkyeong, in the middle of a vacation Stateside while supporting an awards-season campaign, received a most welcome message.
A re-release? Now? This, from the man who had refused every such request for years?
You said it could only happen with his consent...
And what did that mean, if not that he'd found Yoon Jae-hee? Cho Youkyeong shot to her feet.
“I'm going to Korea. Make the arrangements.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Doesn't KE Group have its own security detail, though?”
“I hear they spend more time abroad than in Korea. And apparently she came in on short notice.”
Yoon Jay let his teammates' chatter wash over him as he waited for the arrival gate to open.
“There she is.”
As KE Group's secretarial staff moved in to greet Cho Youkyeong, the atmosphere shifted, and the Wings Company bodyguards fanned out to their positions, security protocol engaging around her.
“Ma'am.”
“Paju, please.”
With the sudden arrival, there'd been no time to arrange a private exit. The sight of a cluster of black-suited men converging drew every eye in the terminal, but Cho Youkyeong moved with practiced ease.
“One moment.”
Her gaze, already turning toward the car, swung to Yoon Jay.
“Why is that man wearing sunglasses?”
“He stands out, ma'am.”
“I'm about to entrust my safety to him for days. Shouldn't I at least see his face?”
She wants them off. Yoon Jay stepped forward and briefly lowered his sunglasses. Something in Cho Youkyeong's eyes shifted.
“Oh — worth noticing, all right. Your name?”
“Yoon Jay, ma'am.”
“Don't those get uncomfortable? Just leave them off.”
There was nothing lecherous in her gaze. It was the same look one might give a finely carved work of art — appraisal and appreciation of craftsmanship. In fact, collecting and admiring fine art was one of Cho Youkyeong's hobbies.
“I feel like I've seen you somewhere before...”
But what held Cho Youkyeong's attention wasn't his looks. It was the sense of déjà vu.
He feels... familiar.
And Yoon Jay felt it too. He tilted his head for a moment, puzzling over it, then climbed into the security vehicle.
“Hey, what are you up to?”
“Working on a script, of course.”
“I'm in Korea. Open the door.”
“...Sorry?”
The mystery resolved itself easily enough — because the very first place Cho Youkyeong had gone upon landing in Korea was Director Lee Youngchang's studio.
Lee Youngchang flung the door open at her call, breathless — and his eyes went wide at the sight of the senior he'd thought was still in America standing on his doorstep, and at the familiar face standing behind her.
“Ahem... Senior. I mean — what on earth brings you here?”
“What on earth? I came about the re-release of The Child, obviously.”
The re-release of The Child? Yoon Jay stole a glance at Cho Youkyeong's back.
Ah. So that's her.
The investor and producer who had come to set without missing a single day, always full of praise for his acting. The one who had kept him company so often, so generously, back then.
“Have you been in contact with Jae-hee?”
“Well... yes.”
“You found him? That's it, isn't it? Where is he? I have to thank him properly — I owe him that much.”
“Well, you see...”
Lee Youngchang darted a glance past Cho Youkyeong's shoulder. Yoon Jay's expression didn't so much as flicker at the sound of his own name.
He's standing right behind you, Senior...