The Rumor Mill and a Top Star's Texting
The second semester... no—spring had arrived, but even with winter shrugging off its blanket, the March wind still cut cold, closer to winter than to the season it was supposed to be.
“Yeonjae! Hello.”
“...? Hello.”
I was walking up the hill to school when a girl I didn't know greeted me out of nowhere. I greeted her back in a daze, and she smiled shyly before running off to join her friends.
“Ohhh~ Lee Yeonjae. Popular first thing in the morning, I see.”
“Ah, Bihyuk.”
While I stood there blinking in confusion, Noh Bihyuk came strolling up behind me. He slung an arm over my shoulder, snickering like some mischievous old man, and even after a week I still hadn't gotten used to this kind of skinship. I quietly tensed my shoulder, and Noh Bihyuk threw both hands up in exaggerated surrender.
“Okay, okay, I get it! Seriously, so unfair~. You're all sweet to Park Haeun, but your own best friend can't even touch you.”
“Who exactly is this 'best friend' supposed to be?”
“See? Why are you so cold? You're only ever cruel to me. You're a difficult man, you know that...?”
“I told you to stop watching internet videos.”
Despite my scolding, Noh Bihyuk just kept grinning. He goofed around the entire way to the classroom—honestly, this past week he'd drained me dry. Worse, because Angae had apparently taken a liking to him, even in my dreams he wore Noh Bihyuk's face. It felt like Noh Bihyuk's face was floating somewhere nearby twenty-four hours a day.
Noh Bihyuk had been close with Park Haeun since kindergarten, but the two of them only ended up in the same class for the first time this year, in sixth grade. I, for my part, had to sit through Noh Bihyuk's self-introduction as punishment for sharing a class with Park Haeun, and Noh Bihyuk—claiming I was the only person who hadn't laughed at his name—had trailed after me like a puppy ever since.
“Don't forget your best friend just because you're popular, okay? Friends you make in elementary school last a lifetime, you know.”
“Whatever. And where is this 'popularity' coming from?”
“Modesty stops being modesty at this point and becomes an act. The whole school talks about nothing but you. Come on.”
“About me?”
When I frowned slightly at the out-of-nowhere remark and looked at him, Noh Bihyuk gave me an oddly puzzled look instead.
“You filmed a drama, didn't you? The whole school knows by now.”
What?
(Photo 2)
(Photo 3)
“Choi Sanghoon.”
I walked into the neighboring class and called out to the kid sitting on the teacher's desk, and the snickering lump of a boy flinched.
“Um... what?”
“Don't you have something to say to me?”
I hadn't meant to, but the words came out harder than I intended. Choi Sanghoon glanced around nervously, then climbed down from the desk.
“No... I wasn't actually going to tell anyone... I'm sorry. It just sort of slipped out.”
Choi Sanghoon kept darting glances at my face, at a complete loss. All the while, the stares clinging to me from every direction stung. It hadn't been this bad even last week.
Two months ago, I'd filmed a drama—and Choi Sanghoon had gone around telling everyone it was a drama starring that Lee Junghyun, no less, and the whole school had erupted. Kids I'd never so much as exchanged a word with were coming up to talk to me all day.
“I'm not saying you shouldn't have said anything, but be more careful, okay?”
“Sorry... are you still mad?”
“Huh? I'm not mad.”
It had been inconvenient, finding out the way I did at the wrong moment, but I wasn't angry. Had I been too harsh just now? I replayed my own words, but nothing I'd said had really crossed a line.
Choi Sanghoon seemed to have more he wanted to say and hesitated—but the moment Noh Bihyuk slung an arm around my shoulders, he shut his mouth again.
“Lee Yeonjae~ That's enough, let's head back to our class. The bell's about to ring.”
“Ah, right. See you later, Sanghoon.”
We'd be seeing each other at the orphanage after school anyway, so I gave him a light nod. Whether it was the "see you later" that reassured him or something else, his frozen expression eased considerably as I left.
The moment I stepped into the hallway, I felt every gaze in the room snap toward me. I let out a small sigh, and Noh Bihyuk, arm still draped over my shoulder, snickered.
“Why so stressed? Just enjoy it, man. I'm honestly jealous.”
“Would you shut up. Get your arm off my shoulder, it's heavy.”
“Huh? My arm's heavy? That's right! All that working out is finally paying off. Ahh, so proud of myself!”
“Haah....”
Wrong crowd. I picked the wrong crowd.
I ignored Noh Bihyuk as he clowned around, referring to himself in the third person, and walked into the classroom. Why on earth was Park Haeun friends with a guy like that? Why did I have to end up in the same class as him?
I shot Park Haeun an SOS signal the second our eyes met, but she took one look at Noh Bihyuk hanging off my back and slipped quietly away. Don't go....
“Oh, right. The premiere's on the eighteenth, isn't it? Wanna watch it together at my place that night? You can do a sleepover, right?”
“Watch what, exactly? It's rated 15. We can't watch it.”
“......I know you're young like me, but you really are a weird one, you know that?”
I did not appreciate being told that by a kid who was currently gazing at his own forearm in the mirror hanging at the back of the classroom. I shoved Noh Bihyuk's face away as it came clinging to me again and sat down at my desk.
He fidgeted around in front of me a while longer and only returned to his seat when the bell for first period rang. First period already? Impossible.
“Alright then, everyone, raise your glasses—and Junghyun-ssi, come on, do your part!”
“Ah! Yes, sir!”
Lee Junghyun hastily stuffed the phone he'd been fiddling with under the table into his coat and lifted his glass.
“When I shout Tail, episode one!, you all shout let's make it a hit! Ready? Tail, episode one!”
“Let's make it a hit~!”
Glasses clinked, and the barbecue restaurant instantly grew rowdy. Lee Junghyun swallowed his obligatory single shot, then immediately turned his gaze back to his phone.
“Junghyun-ah. It's way too obvious your head's somewhere else. At least pretend to care.”
“Where else would my head be? The only thing in my brain right now is Tail.”
“Put some lip service on those lips of yours, you rascal. Isn't that kid you're texting—Yeongjae? Yeonjae?”
Lee Junghyun's manager answered in a bored tone as he flipped the pork belly on the grill. Even with that half-hearted flipping, the meat glistened a perfect golden brown. The rich, smoky aroma would have made anyone's mouth water, but Lee Junghyun was, just as his manager said, miles away.
Ding—.
“Oh, it's here!”
Lee Junghyun hastily pulled out his phone at the notification sound. His manager clicked his tongue at the sight.
“PFFT—hyung, are you seeing this? Ah, I can't take it. He says he's not old enough to watch. How is he this cute, what am I supposed to do?”
Lee Junghyun laughed so hard he was practically sobbing as he showed the text to his manager. The reply had taken almost twelve hours, and yet it was cute enough that texting him was genuinely fun.
As Lee Junghyun smirked down at the screen, his manager gave him a look of mild disbelief.
“Is it really that great?”
“Ah, come on, isn't he adorable, hyung? What kind of kid is this cute?”
“He's cute? Honestly I found him a bit... hard to approach. Too quiet.”
Yeonjae certainly was quiet. But that was exactly what made him cute.
“See, hyung, you've got no eye for this.”
“Excuse me, punk?”
Lee Junghyun was genuinely taken with Lee Yeonjae. The way he looked at celebrities without a flicker of interest and just turned away. The way he'd said he couldn't watch his own first drama because of his age. There wasn't a single ordinary thing about the kid.
And yet for all his deadpan reactions to everything, the moment someone hugged him or touched him, he'd stiffen up like a board—that was the cutest point of all. He'd get hopelessly awkward while desperately trying not to let it show on his face, and watching that barely-contained squirm, not developing affection for him was simply impossible.
Above all—twelve years old. No, wait, he'd just turned thirteen. And he acted like that.
The shock of watching Lee Yeonjae act was still vivid. First of all, the kid had been perfectly quiet through every moment of waiting downtime, and then suddenly started performing as though a different soul had entered his body. His speech changed. His walk changed. Above all, the muscles he used to form his expressions were different.
Lee Junghyun could say this with certainty: moving one's facial muscles with that kind of complete control was impossible without practice. He knew because it was practice he himself had done every single day, without missing one, for ten years. He'd known instantly: ah, this kid's acted before.
So when filming began and Lee Yeonjae delivered a performance far too polished for a first-timer, Lee Junghyun had only thought, figures.So he really did want to be an actor. Pretending he didn't care, huh—guess he practiced a lot on his own.
The moment Lee Junghyun's jaw truly dropped came during the seemingly endless run of ad-libs he'd traded with Yeonjae.
That had been something else entirely. Impossible, really. Unless you were fully fused with your character, you could not deliver lines without stumbling even once.
And the kid wasn't even a named character. Junghyun's own character, Juwon, had a rich backstory you could infer from the script alone—but the character Lee Yeonjae played had nothing defined. Nothing at all. He'd simply conjured the whole person out of the void.
That was not something an experience-free thirteen-year-old could do.
Listening to lines flow out of him without so much as a blink, Lee Junghyun had at first assumed it came from lived experience. But the answer to the question he'd asked after filming wrapped was mind-boggling. Apparently he'd just imitated a friend.
'There's a kid in my class who smiles really beautifully... so I figured acting like him would feel natural.'
Lee Yeonjae said he'd simply copied him—and the fact that he could say something like that as if it were nothing at all was, in itself, not normal.
Among actors whose names were known, finding a sane one was hard. Lee Junghyun was no exception, which was precisely why he liked Yeonjae all the more.
I have to get his number, immediately—that thought took over Lee Junghyun's brain, and he'd asked for it right away, only to be told Yeonjae didn't have a phone. There are elementary schoolers without phones these days? The question resolved itself naturally when Yeonjae answered that he was signing an autograph for an orphanage teacher. And so, on the day of their second meeting, Lee Junghyun gifted him the newest smartphone he modeled in ads.
He'd expected Yeonjae to accept, but the kid refused flatly. Only after Lee Junghyun rattled off a stream of complaints—I want to contact you, so what, I'm supposed to leave notes at the orphanage gate? Where's your school? Can I come visit whenever I miss you?—did Yeonjae finally accept the phone with a sulky expression.
After that, Lee Junghyun texted diligently, but replies came hours later at best, a full day at worst. When he asked why so slow, Yeonjae said the other kids at the orphanage didn't have phones, so it felt awkward to take his out in front of them. The moment that text arrived, Lee Junghyun had opened a shopping window to buy phones for every single child at the orphanage—only for frantic messages to come pouring in one after another.
Lee Junghyun had laughed for a good long while at the urgency he could feel radiating from the typos. And so Genius Child Actor Yeonjae became Adorable Genius Child Actor Yeonjae.
“Ahem—here we go, it's starting!”
Lee Junghyun fired off a quick reply to Yeonjae and turned his eyes to the TV set up in the middle of the restaurant. The drama they'd spent months filming was finally opening its doors. There wasn't a single competing production worth worrying about, so ratings anxiety was unnecessary. Every staff member sat relaxed, without a trace of tension, warming their stomachs with soju.
Having already watched the finished cut several times, Lee Junghyun leisurely popped a slice of pork belly into his mouth.
Once episode one ends, everyone will be talking about Lee Yeonjae.
Ordinary viewers might not know it yet, but the people in the industry would move fast. Lee Junghyun finished the calculations in his head and smiled.
'Right... better grease the wheels early.'
Thinking a thought that Yeonjae, were he to hear it, would not appreciate in the slightest.