A Savior With a Price
“After getting beaten half to death yesterday, this is all you managed to scrape together today? Guess you didn't get hit enough.”
“Aren't you scared of us? Honestly, that just pisses me off.”
The faces in front of me snickered.
One of them pulled money out of my wallet and stomped it into the ground with his heel. Another hocked a thick glob of spit at the floor. A third slapped my shoulder in mock friendliness.
Three pieces of trash.
And counting me — too terrified to say a single word to them — that made four.
“……I'm sorry.”
Damn it all, I wanted to bring more.
There was no money at home. What exactly did they expect me to do about that, you bastards?
“Sorry for what~? You should be apologizing to your own face. You knew you were coming here to get beaten, didn't you?”
The hand pressing down hard on my shoulder made my body tremble on instinct.
I'd rather they just hit me and get it over with.
Just as I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for the moment to end—
“What the hell are you three?”
“…?”
“Wow. I thought your lines were garbage from a mile away, but now that I see your faces, it's even better than I imagined.”
A man who looked even more like a thug than the three pieces of trash came strolling over, grinning.
I felt it instinctively.
That man is going to win.
Being on the receiving end of beatings day after day taught you things. Fights came down to momentum, and by that measure, this one had already been decided.
“Y-you, who the hell are you? Son of a—”
The trash fumbled his own words, got embarrassed about it, and took it out by smacking my innocent head.
I'd done nothing wrong and still caught the beating. I clenched my teeth and swallowed the sound.
I just hope he finishes this fast.
I wasn't curious about why he was helping. Maybe he couldn't stand watching weaker things puff themselves up pretending to be strong. Besides, it wasn't as if I was in any position to ask.
“Okay! S-sorry! Stop hitting me!”
The fight ended more anticlimactically than I'd expected. The three of them flung the money at my face and bolted.
“…….”
Only after the sound of their running feet had faded into the distance did I kneel down and pick up the bills.
No matter how carefully I smoothed them out, they were already filthy. Just like me.
It was violence so familiar that feeling wretched over it all over again seemed almost quaint.
……And yet.
Still, meeting someone who appeared like a savior out of nowhere — that, I wasn't used to.
I stole a glance at the man wiping the blood off his hand without a second thought.
Could I ever be that strong someday, too?
He was a stranger, but a strange sense of relief washed over me. Which was also why a laugh slipped out of me, in a moment that was nothing to laugh about.
“Um… thank yo—”
“You owe me for the favor, you know?”
“Excuse me?”
I felt the awkward smile on my lips freeze in place.
The man held out one hand. Surely he wasn't asking for a handshake at a moment like this.
One pointed flick of his eyes toward the bills clutched in my fist made his meaning crystal clear.
“…….”
Funny, isn't it? I could take a beating every single day and be fine — but this was the moment I truly began to feel wretched.
They would have taken this money anyway if he hadn't shown up. So I shouldn't have felt the loss at all.
What did I even expect?
My mind had already decided the money was as good as handed over, but the bills were still sitting in my palm.
Then came the click of the man's tongue.
“Hey. Look up.”
“…?”
It was a tone I knew all too well — commanding, casual. My head rose before I could think.
The instant my eyes met those pale brown ones, strength drained from my whole body.
Hypnotized by something unknown, I felt my mind slip away from me.
It felt as if my body no longer belonged to me.
And that was — it was utterly, intoxicatingly blissful.
“Give me the money.”
“…….”
His voice, bored to death, glittered like something radiant.
As if pulled along by a string knotted around my wrist, my hand rose on its own.
The moment I carefully laid the crumpled bills into those precious hands, I realized I was smiling, faint and far away.
I was speaking with someone this noble.
It felt like I'd achieved something monumental in my life.
A face I had no right to look at — and still, I wanted to burn it into my eyes one more time. I slowly lifted my head, and there he was, gazing back at me with a dazed expression….
“Cut! NG!”
The sound shattered the scene like breaking glass.
After a moment of confusion, I opened my eyes to find the set sunk in total silence.
“…….”
What? I didn't mess up.
But judging by the atmosphere, everyone was staring at me as if I had.
And Seong Ijun was staring at me just as blankly.
“Hyung.”
“Uh, yes?”
“…?”
What's gotten into him this time?
The scene was supposed to end with Han Seungmin picking up the bills without a second thought and turning his back. Instead, Seong Ijun had simply stood there staring at me with a vacant look — and that was the NG.
The main PD came rushing straight over.
“Was our Ijun very tired?”
“Ah… yes.”
“It's fine, it happens. Should we take a short break?”
“Yes… thank you.”
Seong Ijun wore the face of a man whose soul had briefly left his body. Why on earth was he acting like that all of a sudden?
At the PD's call for a ten-minute break, the staff snapped back to themselves and began moving at last.
I was about to ask Seong Ijun if he was okay when the actors playing Thugs One, Two, and Three came up to me first.
“Your acting is seriously incredible! You really startled me!”
“Thank you.”
“Um, what did you think of my performance? Even just a word would mean a lot….”
The actors — around my own age, by the look of them — had slightly flushed faces.
For some reason that made me feel oddly sour, and I stepped back without meaning to.
“Sorry? What do you mean…?”
“Acting advice. Like things I should fix in my performance.”
“Ah. It was good. You did well.”
“You can be honest with me. No, please be honest! I'm asking you earnestly!”
Confronted with three pairs of burning, earnest eyes, I did my best to hide the stiffening of my smile.
“Hmm, I don't think I'm really in a position to give acting advice. But I think it might help if you loosened up a little.”
“Loosened up?”
“Yes. When you said the line, 'Aren't you scared of us?' you put the stress on 'scared.' If you let it flow out a little more instead, I think it would feel more natural.”
So I sent one of them on his way, only for another to lean right in.
I don't generally enjoy picking apart other people's acting, so I rarely do it — but they clearly weren't going anywhere, so I just told them what I thought.
After a few minutes of conversation, the actors bowed deeply in sincere gratitude, and I bowed back.
I'm exhausted.
Time to finally get some rest.
“Alright, back to filming!”
Ha… Fine. Let's just act.
The NGs kept coming, over and over, at the exact same spot.
All he had to do was turn his back exactly as he'd done before, and Seong Ijun kept slipping into that dazed expression.
The main PD couldn't bring himself to say anything to Seong Ijun, so he quietly kept rolling takes. Then his irritation seemed to boil over — and the sparks flew onto me instead.
“Yeonjae, you did come in as an extra, didn't you? I don't care how well you act, you don't get to imitate the lead.”
“…….”
When exactly did I imitate the lead?
With nothing I could politely say, I just stared at him, and the main PD's face went red, then white, then red again.
“Do you not understand what I'm saying? We've already gotten all your close-ups, so know your place. You could at least be considerate of the actor opposite you!”
“I'm sorry. I'll be careful.”
Honestly, I still had no idea what he was talking about, but I bowed my head deeply all the same.
Once the main PD stomped out grumbling, the set grew even quieter. Every gaze that landed on me stung.
Did I actually do something wrong?
No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't find a single fault on my part. Wondering if I'd somehow lost the capacity for self-reflection, I scanned my surroundings — and locked eyes with a pair of mild, gentle ones that had been on me the whole time.
And those eyes were telling me clearly: I hadn't done anything wrong.
Once I caught Jinbae hyung's signal too, I settled into my chair with a much lighter heart.
It was a script I'd already memorized down to the last period, but I read it over again anyway. It wasn't as if there was anything else to do.
Under normal circumstances I'd have been chattering away with Seong Ijun, but after that first NG, I could see he felt awkward around me.
Well, once he got comfortable again, he'd come talk to me on his own.
“Um… Yeonjae….”
Right. Just like that.
“Yeah?”
“Would it be okay if I sat next to you?”
It had been quite a while since anyone asked me something like that.
Still, I nodded as if it were nothing. Seong Ijun took the seat beside me with stiff, careful movements and fidgeted in place.
If I gave him my full attention, I was sure he'd never get the words out, so I simply kept my eyes on the script and waited.
“……I'm sorry. I'm the one who messed up, and you're the one getting scolded for it.”
“It's fine.”
“I don't want to keep making mistakes either…. It's just not easy.”
The voice that spilled out of him sounded half like a lament, worn down to the bone.
They'd been repeating the same scene for hours now, so it made sense.
I almost asked why he kept flubbing it, but it didn't feel like my place given the mood, so I held my tongue.
What was the right comfort here? It's okay to make mistakes?
Still, I shouldn't go overboard.
Every NG Seong Ijun took meant everyone else's schedule slid further behind. It wasn't as if I could just pat his head and offer nothing but sweet words.
After turning it over, I decided it was better to tell him what I genuinely thought.
“What if you made it not-a-mistake, then?”
“Sorry?”
“I know it's not the expression you intended. But Han Seungmin wearing that kind of look honestly doesn't feel out of place to me.”
“R-really?”
“Yeah. Han Seungmin's a thug, but he's not irredeemable trash. If you assume most of the people he's been extorting were also thugs like him, then shaking down an ordinary kid would be a first for him — so guilt creeping in tracks.”
“……I suppose you could look at it that way.”
Seong Ijun slipped into that dazed expression again.
“I mean… doing it that way wouldn't break his character build-up either. Han Seungmin's rough around the edges, but he has a fragile side.”
“Right. Set it up so that he's the one who feels bitter about himself — having cowed a kid who looks like a victim to anyone, all for a handful of cash. Then the dazed expression stops being a mistake.”
“…….”
Admittedly, the easiest and most sensible path was simply to do it exactly as the script said.
But that was precisely what Seong Ijun couldn't do right now — which was why I'd brought it up.
He fell silent for a moment, then nodded and said he'd do it that way.
“I'll go talk to the PD…!”
“Sure. But tell him the idea came from you.”
“Huh? Why? It's your idea….”
Because the main PD doesn't like me, that's why.
Saying it outright to a man he'd been calling 'Uncle' since childhood felt like a bad idea, so I fudged my answer.
“Who came up with it doesn't matter. It's just an opinion.”
An opinion was, after all, nothing more than an opinion.
Unless the subject was as extreme as murder, no one could say with any certainty that a given opinion was right or wrong. Opinions could shift at any moment as new information came in — that was what made them opinions.
But far fewer people accepted that than you'd think.
So many people confuse their opinions with their identity.
Once an opinion becomes someone's identity, constructive conversation dies on the spot. Too many people take any counterpoint as a personal attack the second it leaves your mouth.
And the main PD was exactly the type to dig his heels in on his own views. If I claimed to hold an opinion different from his, he was guaranteed to take it badly.
Why take the long way around when I already knew it would end in a headache?
Seong Ijun looked utterly unconvinced, but he did as I said. Just as I'd predicted, the main PD lit up at the idea — how had he never thought of that? — and the shoot wrapped on the very next take.
“Yeonjae, thank you so much for today…. I'm sorry I racked up so many NGs.”
“Don't be. Hyung, thank you for calling me. I had so much fun.”
In the privacy of my own honest heart, what I'd truly hoped — whether it was Seong Ijun or anyone else — was for enough NGs to push the shoot into another day.
Getting attached to the idea of today ending was the reason my feet had been so slow to carry me away.
Which is to say: had I known the production team would call me again the very next morning, I'd have gone straight home without a second thought.