The Unspoken Distance
The next morning, I heard that the drama PD had called.
Having left word that he would come find me no matter what, the PD actually showed up at the orphanage that afternoon. He'd brought a sharp-featured man along with him, who introduced himself as the main writer.
"The PD showed me the scenes you were in, Yeonjae, and I found them really striking."
"Thank you. Please, speak comfortably with me."
"Oh no, I can't. I've just never been able to talk casually with actors."
Whether he wanted to seem kind in his own way, the writer folded his eyes into an awkward smile. I knew right away that he didn't usually smile like that, because the muscles at the corners of his eyes were trembling far too pitifully.
"Ah... I'm not actually an actor, though."
"Oh come on, of course you are! You shot that absolutely mind-blowing scene yesterday. Even if that's just how your personality is, do you have any idea how hard it is not to freeze up in front of a camera?"
I'd argued back out of guilt at being called an actor, but the PD just waved it off with a grin.
"Ahh, this coffee is delicious! Thank you, Teacher. But is something the matter? You were all smiles running around yesterday, and today you're so quiet."
The PD drained his coffee in one gulp and turned to me with a worried face. Distracted by the droplets of coffee clinging to his mustache, I hesitated for a moment, and Teacher Lee Sihyun answered in my place.
"Oh my, Yeonjae has always been a quiet one. He's the most mature and well-behaved of all our children."
"Ah... I see~. Is that right."
There was a knowing warmth in his gentle smile — the unspoken addition of well, teachers always say that.
Teacher Sihyun must have caught it too, because she continued with a puzzled look, and the PD's expression slowly turned strange as he listened. An impassioned conversation unfolded beside me, but I couldn't tell you what it was about. Ever since earlier, the writer had been staring holes into me, and I had no spare attention for anything else.
Something about that burdensome gaze felt familiar, and the moment I met those eyes — madness just barely mixed in — one name came to mind at once: Angae.
"May I ask how the line 'cheapskate' came about?"
"Sorry?"
"It's just so fascinating. Even when the PD showed it to me yesterday and called it an ad-lib, I couldn't believe it."
As it turned out, there was a scene where the younger sister screams at Ju-won, "Why are you acting like such a cheapskate?!" After their parents' accident, Ju-won had been living tenderly alongside his sister, and hearing those words sends him reeling in shock and bolting out to the park.
The writer was delighted that my line hadn't felt the least bit unnatural — that, if anything, it had brought the scene vividly to life.
"We plan to keep every single cut from your shoot yesterday, Yeonjae. Not one of them will be thrown away."
"That's good to hear."
When I added my thanks, the writer fidgeted restlessly, as if that hadn't been the reaction he'd expected. Then the PD, who had been quietly wrapped up in conversation with Teacher Sihyun for a while, put on a serious face.
"Would it be possible to film just one more time?"
"I'm sorry?"
My eyes went wide at something I never could have anticipated. When I didn't answer right away, the face in front of me turned earnest, almost pleading.
"Looking back at yesterday's footage, those incredible scenes keep coming to mind. And you're exactly what we need. There are no difficult scenes — just one day! We only need a few more takes... Would that really be impossible?"
It was the look of a man who, if I said no, would grab me by the cuff of my pants and talk me into it. I was a little less than thrilled, but I said yes. After all, I'd already decided that more opportunities to practice would be a good thing.
"Ha! Thank you so much! The shoot will be the day after tomorrow, then? I'll send you the script tonight. There's nothing you need to prepare separately — oh, right, and since it's a night shoot, you'll have to come with a guardian. The location is—"
The moment the words yes left my mouth, the PD spat out the shoot date and location in one breathless stream, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that. He talked fast, but there was nothing hard to follow.
After seeing the PD and the writer off, I was heading back to my room to prepare when someone suddenly called out from behind me.
"Yeonjae."
It was Teacher Lee Sihyun.
"Yes?"
"...Will you be all right at the shoot? With the location and all."
"Yes. I'll be fine."
Teacher Sihyun wore an expression like something was gnawing at her. I had no idea what was bothering her, but I couldn't quite bring myself to ask. If I got any closer, it would only make her uncomfortable.
Come to think of it, she's been talking to me a lot more lately.
Precisely speaking, ever since the day the Myeong-u Group director had visited. Judging by her expression, she still felt awkward around me — and yet she kept reaching out. Why, though? The way she acted as if the past few years of near-total silence between us had simply never happened left me puzzled.
"Then hurry inside and get some rest."
"Yes. You rest too, Teacher."
I gave a small bow and turned my back on her. The gaze pressing against the back of my head followed me all the way until I turned the corner.
Agh. I wish I knew what she was thinking.
At that very same moment, Lee Sihyun was thinking that she wanted to die.
"Haaa..."
"Teacher Lee, why all the sighing? Is something wrong?"
"I just... feel pathetic about myself."
Hearing the murmur, Director Yu gave a wry smile and patted Sihyun on the back.
"Try approaching him again, slowly this time. It's not as if you were only planning to try for a day or two anyway."
"Whew. Yes! You're right!"
Sihyun took a short breath and cried out with fresh vigor.
The conversation between the two women had circled back to Lee Yeonjae because of the Myeong-u Group director's visit. When they'd asked him for a photo, Yeonjae had answered with a smile:
'Sanghoon would be fine — he's cheerful and cute, and, hmm, there wouldn't really be any sudden accidents with him, either.'
The child had worn a faint smile that didn't suit his age at all. He'd phrased it obliquely, but there wasn't a single person in that room who failed to understand what it meant.
'Wherever Lee Yeonjae goes, trouble follows.'
Four years ago, they would have soothed him without a second thought — why would you think such a thing about yourself? But Director Yu and Sihyun both faltered. And the silence settled in almost immediately.
After seeing Yeonjae off, Director Yu finally let out the sigh she'd been holding in the entire time. Sihyun, her face blank, whispered, "Could he... remember it all?"
Probably, Director Yu answered in a small voice.
The truth was, with a child that clever, Yeonjae might remember not just four years ago but things from far further back. He was a boy who read books endlessly — so endlessly that the word voracious hardly seemed adequate. There had been a time when his obsession with books drew worried looks from everyone around him.
Back then it had been madness. Yeonjae truly read like a boy possessed. It never felt like reading for pleasure — there was a compulsion to it, a desperation. It looked like a body struggling for its life. Like someone searching for an answer—
"Director! Where's Yeonjae oppa?"
A girl who had arrived at the orphanage not long ago came up to Director Yu, lost in these reflections.
"Hm? He should be in his room, shouldn't he?"
"W-well... I have an origami assignment, and... would it be wrong to ask Yeonjae oppa to help me with it?"
It took real effort not to laugh at the child, her cheeks flushing scarlet with embarrassment. Director Yu held her laughter in and told her to go ask him. Watching the girl dash off, her whole face lighting up in an instant, Sihyun murmured blankly,
"...He really has changed so much."
"Hasn't he."
He had changed. Lee Yeonjae had changed.
First of all, the number of accidents breaking out around him had dropped dramatically, and their severity was worlds apart from before. He still wore that blank expression when he sat alone with a book or kept quietly to himself, but the quality of it was different now. The sharpness that used to seep out of him without his noticing had dulled into something strangely, almost serenely at ease.
The ones to pick up on that change first, quick as anything, were the children. Sanghoon and a few of the others from his school began hesitantly striking up conversations with him, and the teachers watched with their mouths hanging open. When Yeonjae answered them — a little awkward, but gentle — something about that ineffable poise, so rarely seen in children his age, only drew the kids' attention in further.
Every so often, Yeonjae would stare at one child for no discernible reason — and sure enough, he'd appear right before they took a bad fall, saving them, or taking the injury in their place. The kids, who had treated him like he didn't exist all this time, forgot it completely and hung around nearby, wanting to befriend him.
But Yeonjae never took things further than conversation. He would smile warmly and talk with them, yet always kept a certain distance — as though there was a line he would not cross. The children read that unpermitted distance as something special, and their affection for him swelled by the day.
"Director, then for this shoot — is it all right if I'm the one who goes with Yeonjae?"
"You think that's a good idea?"
"Oh come on, of course it is. Back then... I was the one who thought wrong. Truly."
Director Yu nodded quietly, watching Sihyun force herself to sound even brighter than she was.
"Then go carefully. Take good care of Yeonjae."
"I told you, don't worry."
"How could I not worry? Of all places, it had to be..."
"..."
The two of them sighed at the same time.
Two days later, the moment I arrived at the set, someone bellowed my name.
"Yeonjae~!"
"Hello, hyung."
Actor Lee Jeonghyeon, dressed in funeral attire, came toward me with a beaming smile. At the same time, I heard Teacher Sihyun beside me swallow hard.
"So good to see you again. Ah, hello. I'm Lee Jeonghyeon."
"Of course I know you! I'm Lee Sihyun. And I'm Yeonjae's teacher."
"I heard. That you're a huge fan of mine, Teacher. Haha."
"Oh my, Yeonjae told you that?"
Teacher Sihyun looked at me with wide, astonished eyes, and with nothing to say for myself, I managed only an awkward laugh. When I'd gotten his autograph before, Actor Lee Jeonghyeon had asked, "These are for your teachers? You get along well with your school teacher, huh?" When I answered that they were for the orphanage teachers, he'd laughed and said is that so with an easy face — but I'd caught the faint tremor at the corner of his mouth, the flicker of being caught off guard. To reassure him, I'd started chatting about this and that, and somehow ended up on the subject of Teacher Sihyun.
"Thank you, truly, for liking my work. And thank you as well for driving us to the set today."
"Don't mention it. Plenty of the teachers wanted to come, but I won fair and square."
Teacher Sihyun beamed with pride. Yesterday, when I heard she'd won rock-paper-scissors for the job, I'd assumed the teacher accompanying me would be someone different. The director would never have let it stand otherwise. But instead, the director had said nothing at all — just told me to go carefully, and patted my head.
It was the first time the director had patted my head in four years.
"Yeonjae, shall we go?"
"Yes."
Smiling, I walked with Actor Lee Jeonghyeon into the funeral hall, his hand extended toward me.
We began filming according to the script I'd received the day before. This time, too, I tried calling Kim Suhan to mind, but given the location, I couldn't exactly grin brightly the whole way through, so it didn't come easily. As I played my actions to match the somber atmosphere, my final line came out tinged with my own natural temperament.
And the PD loved it. Far from asking for another take, he just kept saying how incredible it was, eyes shining. Well — if the PD says it's good, then it's good.
Unlike me, whose entire craft amounts to copying other people, Actor Lee Jeonghyeon's acting was genuinely superb. He conveyed the emptiness of his sister's death through the faint parting of his lips, and the wretchedness of being left alone through his eyes alone. He was a completely different person from the rough-edged man of the last shoot.
Watching him, I decided that I should stop describing what I do as acting as if I'm someone else.
"Yeonjae... you are seriously good at acting! My goodness. I'm honestly shocked."
The moment my take wrapped, Teacher Sihyun came running up with a stunned face. I smiled sheepishly, hoping that the person who was truly acting — that he — would never have to hear those words.
My embarrassment only doubled when Actor Lee Jeonghyeon came charging up from behind and lifted me clean off the ground.
"That's our genius actor! Now what do we do? Since when have you been this good?"
"My feet. They don't reach the ground."
"Want to come down? Say, 'Hyung, put me down,' and I'll let you go!"
"...Hyung, put me down."
When I answered in a voice drained of all energy, Actor Lee Jeonghyeon set me down and laughed for a good long while. He was the first person since Angae to tease me this relentlessly, and I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. He'd seemed fairly kind to me last time, too. Is this just who he is?
"Jeonghyeon, stop tormenting the kid and go fix your makeup already."
"Does this look like tormenting to you? Do you have any idea how much I adore him right now?"
"Look at the kid's face first, then say that, you rascal."
At his manager's words, Actor Lee Jeonghyeon doubled over, took one look at my face, and burst out laughing. He swept me up into his arms as he guffawed — and through the gap of his arms, I saw someone approaching. The PD, camera in hand, filming the making-of footage.