Becoming Kim Su-han
Lee Jeonghyeon, an actor who had long earned the phrase "you can watch him with your eyes closed," transformed in an instant into Juwon — a man worn down and hollowed out by life itself.
Trudging forward, he picked the ball up off the bench and sank onto it with a heavy thump, and exhaustion radiated off him in waves. He'd hoped his little sister would get to do everything she ever wanted — but he'd never wished she'd throw a tantrum until she got her way, no matter what it cost. Even at a glance the whole thing reeked of something dirty. He'd told her over and over that this was not a mess a teacher fresh on the job could touch, and she hadn't even pretended to listen.
It was the first real fight since their parents died, and Juwon's sigh ran deep and long.
"Hey, mister! Is that ball yours?"
Just then, a boy in a yellow hat trotted up and spoke to him.
He wasn't particularly small, but his sunny, unguarded smile made it hard to see him as anything but a little boy — and the way his boyish voice rounded off the ends of his words made him look even younger.
"No."
Juwon answered without even looking at the child, irritation plain in his voice.
"Then can I borrow it for just a minute? I'll put it right back!"
But the boy didn't give up. He only beamed wider, and the way his lashes trembled ever so slightly caught the eye.
"Kid, quit bugging me and go away."
Kh — great diction! Great face!
Juwon's expression darkened into something nasty, and the boy's eyes went round as saucers as he stumbled backward.
Now the child actor slipped out of the camera angle, Juwon let out a weary sigh, and the scene was done. Kim Jo-han gazed at the monitor with a satisfied smile. The pairing — a Juwon brooding like storm clouds gathering on the horizon against that glaringly bright kid — worked better than he'd expected.
The child actor, who supposedly had never acted a day in his life, looked more natural than actual professional actors. Best of all, he had no greed for the camera whatsoever.
Good thing I refused to call in real actors.
The reason Kim Jo-han had stubbornly insisted on casting from the set was that he wanted extras to stay faithful to their own roles. Actors are hungry for screen time. Adult or child, anyone who calls themselves an actor can't help it. Give an actor two lines of dialogue, and they'll convince themselves of something absurd — something arrogant — that this is their golden chance to break through their limits and show the world what they're made of. He hated watching people cram profound, overwrought interpretation into a single short line, which was why he'd dug in his heels about casting on location right up to the end.
He must not scare easily, that one.
According to the staff member who'd brought the kid in, he was endlessly bright and bouncy by nature. Maybe that was why it didn't feel like acting at all — the boy simply seemed to behave as himself. There was something almost unnerving about it: a boldness in the way he spoke as though he had somewhere more important to be, completely indifferent to how he'd look on camera.
Kim Jo-han was smiling to himself, just about to call cut —
"Cheapskate…."
— until the extra threw out an ad-lib.
Oh. So that's what real acting looks like.
I stared at Lee Jeonghyeon in wonder the moment the camera started rolling and his expression changed. Those gentle eyes that seemed like they wouldn't know how to get angry turned fierce in a heartbeat, and from his deeply furrowed brow and dragging footsteps, a very specific bad mood came pouring off him.
Lee Jeonghyeon-as-Juwon shuffled over toward the bench.
All I had to do was slip in the instant Juwon sat down and drew a deep sigh. I focused on nailing the timing, and while I did, I turned over the words I'd been murmuring to myself this whole time.
I am Kim Su-han. I am Kim Su-han.
Kim Su-han had been my desk mate for the last semester of fifth grade — also the kid who once asked me to go with him to the PC bang on the last day of school. Charitable, you'd call him high-spirited; less charitably, a little flighty. He was always smiling, and the difference between him and Park Ha-eun was that his facial muscles worked overtime. Where Park Ha-eun's smile was neat and even, Kim Su-han's was loose and fizzy, crackling at the edges.
Once, curious about where that fine-edged twitchiness came from, I'd stared at him for a long stretch — and noticed it spiked whenever the subject of his older brother came up.
"My brother teased me with his game console again yesterday. I nearly died of annoyance."
"That's just how older brothers are. I asked to borrow the PlayStation once and got wrecked for it."
"Doesn't that just make you so mad? Sure, he saved up his allowance for it, but he won't lend it to his own little brother once… what a cheapskate."
To focus my thoughts, I summoned every version of Kim Su-han I could remember. Kim Su-han, furious that his brother wouldn't lend him the console. Kim Su-han, grinning sheepishly even while getting chewed out for forgetting his homework. Kim Su-han, butt already bouncing off the chair before the bell finished ringing, desperate to bolt for the PC bang. The way he smiled with the corners of his eyes just slightly pinched, the way his cheeks puffed up when he was sulking, right down to that airy, drifting gait.
I chewed through it all compulsively, then took my position in the spot I'd been shown earlier.
"Hey, mister! Is that ball yours?"
By the time the words left my mouth, my thoughts had already shut off. One second I'd been buried in something deep — the next, I had become Kim Su-han, standing right there.
"No."
"Then can I borrow it for just a minute? I'll put it right back!"
The cold wind stinging my cheeks put me in a slightly foul mood. I'd forgotten I'd come out here to grab the ball, and I knew with total certainty that if I went home without it, I'd never come back out. I just wanted him to hurry up and hand it over… but for some reason the man holding it looked absolutely miserable. His scowl was so scary that a nervous, smoothing-things-over laugh came spilling out of me before I could stop it.
"Kid, quit bugging me and go away."
He didn't care one bit about my laughing — he just snapped at me instead. The look of him startled me into stumbling backward, and a flicker of embarrassment made me turn away.
Ugh, fine, I'll just go home. Not that there's anything to do there anyway.
And hyung will just hog the console again. What's so hard about lending it out once?
"Cheapskate…."
That word slipping out was never on purpose. But the man couldn't just shrug it off as a kid being a kid — his voice suddenly shot up.
"Cheapskate? Cheapskate?? What did you just call me, you little punk?"
The roar made me flinch. He looked genuinely wounded, genuinely furious. Before I could get a single word out, he came pouring out a whole tirade.
"You're just as much a mooch as my sister, huh? Hey, that's not even my ball — what if I hand it over and something goes wrong, huh? You gonna take responsibility for that?!"
"……"
"You and my sister, exactly the same, I swear! Won't take responsibility for anything, and I'm the cheapskate? The cheapskate??"
He fumed at himself for a good while, and when no reaction came back, he started to calm down a little. Watching him, something burst out of me unbidden.
"Do you not lend your stuff to your sister either, mister?"
"What?"
"My hyung always tells me I'm a bother too — tells me to go away. But he still won't lend me the console I ask for. Total cheapskate…. He always keeps the good stuff all to himself."
The man could only stare at me, dumbfounded. It was the first time I'd ever bad-mouthed my brother to a stranger, and honestly, it felt a little thrilling.
"You keep all the good stuff for yourself too, don't you, mister?"
"Hey, you… ha — just go. Please. You talk a lot, you know that?"
Wow, look at him. HE'S the one who talked three times as much, and now he's acting annoyed. I puffed my cheeks out as round as they'd go and pushed on, out of pure spite.
"When I grow up, I'm buying a better console than hyung's with my own money. And I'm never lending it to him. Not once."
"You do you, kid."
"You should lend the console to your sister before it's too late, mister. Once you regret it, it's too late."
At that, the man made a face like he'd seen every strange kid there ever was. And yet something indefinable flickered across his expression too — and somehow, strangely, he felt familiar.
"Cut!"
The voice yanked me back to my senses. I turned my head and found a crowd of people staring at me, slack-jawed. And the mustached man among them with his mouth hanging open the widest was… the PD.
Oh, right. We were filming a drama.
Only then did reason return. I'd gone too far. Way too far. What was supposed to be immersion had turned into far more intrusion than anyone asked for. The instant I came back to myself, I bowed my head and apologized.
"I'm so sorr—"
"I got chills! PD-nim, did you see that?! Wow, kid, you have to become an actor. For real!"
Talking straight over me, Lee Jeonghyeon came bustling over. He demanded to know whether I'd truly never acted before, grabbed my cheeks and pulled as he marveled at how anyone could ad-lib that naturally — and the intimacy of it, arriving at full speed, left me flustered. While even the staff looked on at the two of us with fond little smiles, the PD approached wearing the expression of a man about to make a decision.
"You… did you happen to read the script?"
"Sorry?"
"The script! The pages you got! Is that where this came from?"
While I stood there unable to answer because I had no idea what he meant, the photographer who'd brought me in came running over. He explained that I had been given a script, but only a single page covering this one scene — at which the PD kept glancing between me and empty air like he couldn't believe his eyes.
Lee Jeonghyeon, for his part, ignored all of it, scooped me up into the air, and hailed me as a genius actor.
"Um, Mr. Actor?"
"Hyung! I told you to call me hyung."
"Ah — yes. Hyung… could you put me down now?"
Unaccustomed to the position, I didn't know what to do with myself and ducked my head. His hands hooked under my sides, holding me up off the ground. The grip was firm enough that I wasn't scared, but it felt deeply strange. Then Lee Jeonghyeon, cooing that I was adorable when I got shy, ruffled my hair into a complete mess.
"PD-nim, that ad-lib was fantastic, right? It even ties into the fight scene with the little sister earlier. I think we should roll with it, honestly?"
"No. Let's take it again."
Just as Lee Jeonghyeon's face began to fall at the flat refusal, the PD lifted his head sharply. Somewhere along the way, a gleam had entered his eyes, and it was fixed on me.
"Dialogue stays as is — we'll just reset the blocking. Kid, in the middle, you—"
"PD-nim. Yeonjae, it's Yeonjae."
"Right, yes. Yeonjae climbs up alongside the bench and throws out the rest of the lines, and Juwon stares at him in disbelief. You can do it like before, right, Yeonjae?"
And so I wormed my way up onto the bench mid-scene, tossed out the remaining lines, and the shoot wrapped on the shot of Juwon staring at me with a look caught between exasperation and something harder to name. Unlike the earlier takes, where every camera but one had stayed on Lee Jeonghyeon, this time they broke the scene into chunks and worked the angles from all sides.
Some moments required me to speak straight into the lens, but the thought that I had to sink into Kim Su-han all over again at a moment's notice left no room to feel the pressure. Aside from Lee Jeonghyeon scooping me back into his arms at the end, declaring we absolutely had to act together again someday, the shoot went off without a hitch.
"Test success~! Amazing! Heehee!"
"Okay, okay, I get it — now put me down…."
My utterly drained voice came out limp. An-gae, still wearing Lee Jeonghyeon's face, paid me no mind whatsoever and kept swinging me back and forth like a prize at a festival. That's enough, you lunatic.
"Every single day since I met you has been so fun! How is this even possible?! You're the best, truly!"
The test had been a smashing success. The moment I acted as though I were Kim Su-han, the misfortune factors came pouring off me in a downpour — or so I was told. Of course, they clung right back on the instant filming wrapped, but because the flow had already been tangled by that one shedding, none of the misfortune scheduled for me came to pass.
"So what's the plan from here? How about imitating a different person every single day?"
"Hmm. It's not as simple as it sounds."
Playing at being someone else was far more exhausting than I'd imagined.
"And doing it in daily life — outside of cameras — there's a limit to that."
"Really? Sounds fun to me!"
"Maybe fun for you. The Director wouldn't find it funny at all."
Was there truly no way to dodge misfortune without everyone around me looking at me like I'd lost my mind?
It'd be nice if I got one more chance like this….
I leaned against the chair An-gae had conjured for me and let my thoughts drift. And that chance arrived the very next day, from a direction I never saw coming.