The Director's Gaze
The twins were busy squabbling until they finally ran off to Kim Gi-yeon. I crept closer, studying the Wetube creator who looked every bit as exhausted as my own mom and the terrified child beside her.
When the little girl started to teeter, I dashed forward and caught her with my body before she could fall.
“Huuuuh, kyaaak!”
“Oof.”
I’d wanted to catch her gracefully, but instead I landed hard on my backside. The child who’d buried her face in my chest lifted her head in confusion. I gently wiped away her tears to calm her.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?”
“I-I’m not a baby…”
“Oh? Then what’s your name?”
While the girl hesitated, the Wetube creator hurried over, breathing hard.
“Thank you so much for catching our Rin, sweetie. Rin, say thank you to the nice sister and come here.”
“Huuu…”
The child called Rin didn’t go to her mother. Instead she clung tighter to me. I stepped back, dodging the woman’s outstretched hand while keeping the girl in my arms.
I fixed my eyes on the camera with a wary expression.
“Excuse me, who are you?”
“Oh dear. Don’t misunderstand, sweetie. I really am her mom. She throws tantrums like this sometimes.”
“When are you going to turn the camera off?”
“Ah, you don’t like being filmed? Don’t worry. I’ll blur your face completely.”
The woman, clearly drained, forced an awkward smile meant to be reassuring. Maybe I’d been too roundabout with someone so tired. I shook my head.
“That’s not it. If you’re her mom, you should be holding her when she’s crying. She just fell.”
Only then did the guardian finally look away from the camera.
“Is your name really Rin? Rin, do you want to go to Mommy?”
Rin’s mother stared blankly at the scene before her. The child who had just dropped a verbal bomb on her was now gently soothing her daughter. Rin clung to the unfamiliar woman as if she were her real mother, staring at her—at the camera—like it was some kind of monster.
Ah… this isn’t why I started all this.
At first she had simply wanted to capture her precious child growing up, so she picked up the camera. But at some point, she had begun paying more attention to the daughter inside the lens than the one right in front of her.
“Why was Rin crying?”
“Because the camera scared her…”
Rin’s mother, Yu Ha-jin, turned off the camera and slipped it into her bag. Then she opened both arms toward her daughter, whose wet eyes were looking up at her.
“Mommyyyyy!”
The little girl happily threw herself into the embrace.
“…Once I took a break from work, I ended up sinking completely into parenting. It’s good to be able to focus on the child, but all my other relationships slowly faded away and I started feeling lonely.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“But when I upload videos to Wetube, the subscribers respond and that feels nice, so…”
The children played beside us while the mothers seemed on the verge of becoming friends. Kim Gi-yeon wore an expression of deep empathy—she hadn’t been able to return to work after giving birth either. My mom, who was raising me while still working, also seemed to relate to the loneliness.
“But at some point the priorities got completely flipped. I should have been looking my child in the eye and smiling instead of hiding behind the camera… That’s why I’m thinking of taking a break from Wetube.”
“That sounds like a good idea. If you ever feel lonely, reach out. I’ll give you my number. I’ll hang out with you.”
“Wow, really?”
Yu Ha-jin exchanged numbers with Kim Gi-yeon, then glanced cautiously at my mom. Mom wasn’t usually the type to make friends so eagerly, yet she surprisingly entered her number into Yu Ha-jin’s phone without any sign of reluctance.
That’s about wrapped up here.
Now it was time for today’s main event.
I whipped my head toward the direction where I’d been feeling a gaze for a while.
“Huk.”
The middle-aged man who had been sneaking glances our way and hovering nearby while I talked with Yu Ha-jin met my eyes. He gave an awkward smile, clearly trying to look friendly, and waved a little.
I smiled back, then lifted Mom’s phone and showed him the screen.
112.
I beckoned him over. The man’s eyes widened like saucers, thinking I was really calling the police, and he rushed straight to us.
Mom, who noticed his presence first, wrapped her arms around me protectively.
He immediately held out a business card to her.
“Hello. This is who I am…”
[KBC Drama Division PD Cho Yeong-gil]
“Would you be interested in your daughter appearing in a drama?”
This is it. I smiled inwardly.
In my previous life, Cho Yeong-gil had secretly taken my photo without permission and gotten caught, which infuriated Mom. Naturally, she hadn’t even accepted his card and had chased him off. Because of that terrible first impression, she never looked favorably on him even after my debut.
“A drama? You’re saying something like that so suddenly…”
“Um, have you perhaps heard of The Doctor’s Diagnosis? I’m the assistant director there…”
“Gojin-gi?! I love that drama! Su-a’s mom, this is the hottest drama right now! I’ve told you about it several times.”
“Ah… now that you mention it, I think I have heard of it.”
Unlike before, this time he had properly introduced himself from the start, so Mom accepted the card and the first impression wasn’t terrible. Kim Gi-yeon’s enthusiastic reaction seemed to help as well.
But Mom still looked suspicious.
“What exactly do you mean by appearing in a drama?”
“We need one child actor for our drama, and your daughter would be perfect for the role!”
“A child who has never learned acting or even tried it? You didn’t even ask if she had any experience.”
“That just shows how perfectly her image fits our drama. Um, if it’s all right, could I take just one photo of your daughter? I’d like to show it to our main PD…”
Why was this man in such a hurry? We were still in the middle of persuasion and he was already asking for a photo.
Well, that same impatience was probably why he had tried to snap a picture without asking in the first timeline and caused a scene.
Before Mom’s wariness could reach its limit, I gently tugged on her sleeve. She glared at Cho Yeong-gil but leaned down toward me and offered her ear.
“Mom, it’s okay.”
“Okay? How is this okay? It could be a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. I saw it.”
My eyes have never been wrong, right? You know that. At my tiny whisper, Mom’s suspicion eased considerably. She knew better than anyone how sensitive I was to lies.
That didn’t mean all her reluctance had vanished, though.
“Even if he takes your photo and shows it to another man? Do you know what happens after that?”
“I know, I know. It means being on TV. I’m saying it’s all okay because it really is okay.”
I understood what she was worried about. But Mom also knew that simply showing my face wouldn’t cause any major disaster.
She studied my face for a moment, then let out a small sigh.
“All right. Please take a pretty picture of my daughter. And after you show it to the main PD, I’d like you to delete it immediately.”
“Of course! Thank you.”
“You promised to delete it, right?”
“Y-yes. I’ll delete it!”
Hmm. That was definitely a lie. If I said so, Mom might chase him off again.
Mom looked at me with her eyes asking if it was true, but I had nothing to say.
Just as her expression was about to harden again, Yu Ha-jin suddenly raised her hand.
“Since the guardian seems uncomfortable, how about putting the promise in writing?”
“Pardon? In writing?”
“I think that would help the guardian feel more at ease. I can even notarize it for you.”
“N-notarize? What exactly do you do for a living…?”
Yu Ha-jin answered shyly.
“I’m a lawyer.”
Huh. Even I hadn’t known that.
Yu Ha-jin immediately drafted a written agreement on the spot and handed it to Mom and Cho Yeong-gil. When Mom signed it with a bright face, Cho Yeong-gil hesitated for a moment before signing as well.
“Okay, sweetie. Can you give me a pretty little smile…!”
His hand holding the camera was trembling quite a bit, but that wasn’t my concern.
Since it had come to this, I might as well give it my best shot.
I straightened my posture and adjusted my expression. Cho Yeong-gil let out a small gasp of admiration.
“Here we go. One, two, three, cheese!”
Click!
Cho Yeong-gil, assistant director of the currently popular medical drama The Doctor’s Diagnosis, hurried to find the main PD.
“Senior, take a look at this.”
“You little…”
Gu Su-min, who had been buried in the editing room, glared at Cho Yeong-gil with bleary eyes. Where the hell had this guy been? The schedule already had holes in it, and now his scalp was about to get holes too!
But he had to save every ounce of energy for editing, so Gu Su-min only rolled his eyes toward the phone Cho Yeong-gil held out. He swore to himself that if it was another worthless meme, he would throw the phone across the room.
Fortunately, the screen didn’t show a cat with a funny face photoshopped on or a duck shooting laser beams from its eyes. It showed a little girl. A perfectly ordinary composition taken with Cho Yeong-gil’s outdated phone camera.
“…Who is this kid?”
It was a photo impressive enough to make Gu Su-min’s half-lidded eyes snap wide open.