The Stage Where No One Knows Me
The woman who runs a business in America—why on earth is she coming all the way here to strut around on stage?”
“Shut your mouth. She paid us, didn’t she?”
The troupe leader scolded his son. In this small Italian town, their failing theater company had already finished its final performance. The woman had given them enough money to delay the demolition by at least a day.
All she asked in return was a stage for herself alone.
She was tall for an Asian woman, with strikingly pale skin and an alluring face. A deep melancholy lingered in her expression and tone, yet her appearance transformed even that into something uniquely atmospheric.
The passionate Italian son had tried flirting with her and ended up thoroughly scolded by her companion. Still sore about it, he grumbled about her at every opportunity.
The leader grabbed his son’s ear and whispered.
“Doesn’t look like she runs the corner store. I caught her scribbling something in German.”
“Oh—someone with a face like that running a global business? No wonder she’s loaded. Maybe I should try my luck again?”
“Do you have any idea how many businessmen are straight-up vultures, you idiot? Stop sniffing around and just take the money.”
Only then did the son’s bravado subside. The leader glanced warily at the woman’s companion and added a warning.
“I don’t know if he’s Asian mafia or a gangster, but he definitely has backing. Anyway, don’t get involved. We’ll gratefully take the rich people’s pocket change and call it a day.”
The son still looked disgruntled, but he nodded in full agreement.
They truly loved theater, but reality had forced them to close the company. Yet even giving up on a dream and taking the first step into a new life required money.
The sum the woman offered would put out their most urgent fires. Even if it stung that their beloved, well-worn stage would host one final show that was nothing more than a rich person’s amusement, it was time to face reality.
“The performance is starting.”
The woman, now in full makeup, stepped onto the stage. The leader and his son stood backstage with little expectation, watching her back.
Thankfully, or perhaps pitifully, only about a dozen people sat in the audience. Not a single young face among them—just elderly retirees with nothing better to do.
The leader clicked his tongue at the sight. The handful of visitors didn’t seem interested in focusing on the play. They had probably come just to kill time after hearing it was free.
The fact that they were still chatting even after the lights went down showed their expectations were already rock bottom. It would be a mercy if the clueless woman who had stepped onto the stage didn’t end up in tears from embarrassment. The son closed his eyes and turned his head away entirely.
Spotlight!
A single beam of light fell onto the stage, and—
“Do you know The Genius Who Became a Taxidermy Specimen?”
The woman’s performance began.
Her crisp Italian diction spread across the entire theater. The audience’s chatter cut off instantly.
“I am cheerful. Even love at a time like this is cheerful.”
With just three lines, the woman—no, the actress—captured every single gaze in the house.
“Only when my body is limp with exhaustion does my mind become clear as silver. When nicotine seeps into my aching stomach, a blank page always prepares itself in my head. On that page, I arrange wit and paradox like stones on a Go board.”
The actress’s body swayed, then slumped. The moment her tilted head snapped upright, the audience sucked in a collective breath.
“It is a detestable disease of common sense.”
Her eyes, sweeping across the seats from left to right, sent a chill down every spine.
Silence.
Not even the sound of breathing could be heard until the actress made her next move.
The leader couldn’t tear his eyes from her profile. His son bolted from backstage. He had to see this performance from the audience.
The script the actress had brought was an adaptation of a Korean novel. It was a one-woman show relying solely on lighting, sound, and narration—no other actors. She and her manager handled all the technical cues themselves while the leader and his son simply made sure nothing broke.
They should have read the script. If they had at least watched a rehearsal, they never would have been foolish enough to watch from backstage!
His head had been filled with regret as he ran, but the moment he sat down in the audience, his mind was wiped clean. Before he knew it, he was walking through foreign streets alongside the protagonist, utterly absorbed in the actress’s performance.
“Once again I asked myself: What desires do you have in life? But I didn’t want to answer that I had any, nor that I had none.”
Much of the story was difficult to relate to. The protagonist was incompetent and spewed disorganized, cryptic lines.
Yet somehow, it pulled you in. The actress’s fluid gestures, the subtle shifts in her eyes, her natural breathing, the expressions that vividly bloomed with emotion from within emptiness—every delicate detail brought the character to vivid, breathing life.
The audience felt the protagonist’s wry smiles, tears, small joys, despair, and desperate longing for freedom as if they were their own.
“Let’s fly. Let’s fly. Just once more, let’s fly. Just once more, let’s try to fly.”
At last the protagonist delivered the final line, and every member of the audience woke as if from a dream. They rose to their feet, offering thunderous applause and cheers.
The son dashed out of the audience again, sprinting backstage. Before the leader—who had been wiping away tears from the lingering resonance—could stop him, he caught the actress as she descended from the stage and asked,
“Why didn’t you go to Broadway instead of coming here?!”
The actress, sipping water handed to her by her companion, answered,
“Because the audience is here too.”
Lee Su-a stepped down from the stage, barely wiped off her makeup, and climbed into the car. Kwon Jin-ho slid into the driver’s seat moments later, glancing at her cautiously.
“Feeling any better?”
“Yeah. I think I’ll live.”
I think I’ll live. A rather dry answer, yet her expression looked quite content.
Having watched her perform for the first time in a while, Jin-ho became unusually talkative.
“The assistant director practically begged for one more show. Looked like he was ready to get on his knees. The director stopped him, though.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. I think the director figured out why you came all the way here.”
Su-a had only paid for a single performance. If they wanted an encore, the theater company would have to pay this time. But she had no intention of agreeing, and finding another actor of similar caliber would be nearly impossible.
Even if they bought the script and tried to stage it themselves, audience expectations were now sky-high. Even if the company didn’t close and somehow put on another show, satisfying both the crowd and their own standards would be impossible.
In a single performance, Lee Su-a had completely severed the troupe’s lifeline. That was precisely why she had sought out a theater on the verge of closing, paid them, and stepped onto their stage.
“I can understand how the assistant director feels. Even I…”
Jin-ho trailed off. Once or twice a year. Whenever Su-a took a vacation, he helped her with this secret indulgence. Running his agency kept him busy, yet he always made time—because this was the only chance he got to see Lee Su-a truly act.
The rising star of acting. The genius child actress. The next-generation talent. Lee Su-a.
And the victim whose only family was murdered by someone in the industry. Lee Su-a.
At just fourteen years old, Su-a had watched her mother die right in front of her. She left the entertainment world behind. Many mourned the tragedy that had befallen her and the talent that would never fully bloom, but no one could stop her.
Everyone in South Korea knew what had happened to Su-a. As long as people focused on the actress rather than the character, it was impossible for her to continue performing.
Some claimed Su-a had fled Korea, unable to overcome her guilt. After all, her mother had been killed on a film set—surely the stage would now be unbearable to look at.
Kwon Jin-ho could not agree with that.
“So, about that new project by Director Hong Il-beom I mentioned before—”
Vrrrr—
Su-a’s phone began to ring. Seeing the caller ID, she frowned slightly.
“Sorry. I need to take this.”
“No, no. Go ahead, talk comfortably.”
Rapid German poured from the receiver. Su-a, who understood the language that was neither Korean, English, nor Italian, replied in flawless German.
Kwon Jin-ho watched his exceptionally talented friend for a moment, then started the engine and carefully pulled the car away.
Lee Su-a still loved acting.
After the incident, she had been adopted in Germany and lived an ordinary life. She even took over her adoptive parents’ business. Yet she still sought out places where no one knew who she was, paid her own money, and stepped onto the stage.
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
“Oh, Director Hong decided to submit his new film to Cannes.”
“I thought he might. The script was really good. Must have turned out well.”
Vrrr, vrrr—
Su-a’s phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. Her vacation wasn’t even over yet, but work calls were already flooding in. She mechanically checked the messages and replied.
The flush that had colored her cheeks from the afterglow of the stage cooled to a deathly pallor, and her expression became that of a corpse.