If Only I Weren't Me
“You weren't asleep?”
It was too dark to see properly, but the voice alone made it clear the speaker was flustered.
“You got up, so I woke too. Were you going to the bathroom?”
“Ah… yeah.”
Lee Yeonjae answered hesitantly.
Was he trying to catch me watching something?
“I'm going back to sleep. Don't mind me—take care of your business.”
Feeling like I'd needlessly embarrassed him, I lay back down and deliberately turned away. Only then did Lee Yeonjae slip into the bathroom.
A thin line of white light leaked out from under the door.
Great. This is awkward.
I'd made a show of going back to sleep so he wouldn't feel self-conscious—and yet here I was, someone who could only fall asleep in total darkness.
Should've packed my eye mask.
The regret came too late, but it was a problem I could solve by simply waiting until he came back out.
Even after ten minutes, I wasn't worried. At the thirty-minute mark, I just figured he was constipated. But as it crept toward the hour, concern started gnawing at me.
Don't tell me he fell asleep in there?
Absurd—yet remembering the face of a boy who'd slept so deeply a person could've carried him off, it didn't feel entirely impossible.
So I knocked to check.
“Yeonjae. Everything okay in there?”
A few seconds of silence, then the door swung open. Blinking against the sudden flood of light, I found Lee Yeonjae standing there, sweat beading on his forehead.
“……You weren't asleep?”
“Nope. Couldn't sleep. Don't tell me you were exercising in there?”
Why would he? In the bathroom? At this hour of the morning?
I knew he was a strange kid, but wow, he's really strange.
I must not have hidden my exasperation well enough, because Lee Yeonjae scratched the back of his neck and answered.
“No. I was practicing acting.”
“Acting practice?”
“Yeah. I usually wake up at dawn and practice for about two hours.”
“Ah… so the bathroom helps you concentrate?”
I only asked to be careful, and got hit with a look of pure pity. Okay, don't be that obvious about it.
“What are you talking about? It's because I didn't want to wake you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I did it in the bathroom so it wouldn't disturb your sleep.”
Only now did his careful, tiptoeing crawl out of bed make sense.
Watching him wipe the sweat off roughly with his hand, I shrugged.
“I'm already awake anyway. Come out and practice comfortably.”
“I still have another hour to go.”
“That's fine. Can I watch from next to you?”
Lee Yeonjae replied in a flat, indifferent tone that it was fine.
I switched on the main room's light. In the middle of a dark, sleeping dawn, a pool of brilliant light—as if ours was the only lit room in the world—and the first thing I saw in it was his black eyes.
“I'll stay quiet. I won't bother you.”
Afraid of making even the faintest sound, I sat on the bed without pulling back the covers. But it turned out my caution was unnecessary.
“Please don't do this…. I won't tell Father. All right?”
Tears had already pooled and trembled in Lee Yeonjae's eyes as he murmured toward empty air. A voice that had been perfectly normal moments before was now hoarse, as if it had been crying for hours.
The brittle metallic cracks that slipped in every few lines made the character's fragile air sing—ready to shatter at any moment.
“You'll come to regret it. Please, stop this.”
“…….”
“Please. Mother…. Go back home. Please—don't go.”
Of course, the other side of the conversation was silent. But between Lee Yeonjae's line of sight, his twitching fingertips, his steps swaying on a razor's edge, the other character's cold cruelty seemed to materialize right in front of me.
The scene ended, and Lee Yeonjae abruptly closed his eyes. A few seconds later he returned to his mark and ran the same scene again. Same lines—but this time, a completely different tone.
“You'll come to regret it. Please, stop this.”
The voice was bone-dry, stripped of all expectation. The desperation was gone, replaced by the despair of a future already known. And though the delivery was flat, the hollow emptiness of those eyes made him look even more precarious than before—ironically so.
……He really is a genius.
Goosebumps ran down my arms.
For an entire hour, Seo Jio forgot even to blink, his gaze fixed on nothing but Lee Yeonjae's acting.
It was only after Lee Yeonjae silenced the beeping alarm on his wristwatch that Seo Jio finally came back to himself.
“Practice is done.”
“…….”
Lee Yeonjae's eyes had already returned to their usual, careless calm. The question burst out of me before I even realized I'd gathered my wits.
“How do I act like you?”
“Huh?”
Dawn was slowly breaking. The faint light spilling in from the window washed over Lee Yeonjae's face like a tide. He answered flatly, as if the question were ridiculous.
“Practice.”
“Not that kind of answer.”
“Then what?”
“Obviously I have to practice. But to act the way you do—what kind of practice is that?”
Watching him for an hour had taught me something: all the one-on-one acting lessons I'd received until now had been worthless.
To be fair, technique could improve plenty with practice. But Lee Yeonjae's acting went beyond being merely technically excellent. It was the feeling that a real person was being born before your eyes—immediacy, vividness, life.
What kind of state of mind does it take to immerse yourself that deeply?
The need to know the answer made me anxious. Without realizing it, Seo Jio's brow creased. Whether or not he read that anxiety, Lee Yeonjae studied him for a moment, then spoke.
“When you play a character, act with the intention of truly becoming that person.”
“That's obvi—”
“It's less obvious than you think. The roles we'll take on could be anything. A spoiled rich boy with no sense of the world. A street thug raised in the gutters.”
“…….”
“You might have to play a homeless man who has to dig through food waste. Or a student who gets nothing but looks from his parents, his friends, his teachers—everyone—as if they'd rather he were dead.”
The flat, uninflected voice was perfectly calm—as if he were talking about someone else's life. Then, just as casually, Lee Yeonjae looked at Seo Jio. Those unshakable black eyes settled on him.
“Whatever the character is, just practice as if you wished it were your real life.”
“……Can you do that?”
The answer came instantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Yeah.”
“…….”
“I just….”
Lee Yeonjae's gaze drifted to the window. Even facing the full morning sun, his eyes stayed black. The eyes of someone who had spent too long shut away in darkness.
“I just have to be anything but myself.”
“…….”
Words spoken without a moment's hesitation—and they sent a chill down my spine. And yet, somehow, they also sounded unbearably sad.
“Seo Jio.”
“…….”
“Jio.”
“Huh?”
Seo Jio was oddly spacey today. I started to wonder what was wrong with him, then remembered he hadn't slept properly because of me. I felt bad for no reason.
“Should we skip the last movie? Let's rest a bit over there.”
“No. I'm fine.”
“You look anything but fine. We've got plenty of time anyway.”
The film festival was more crowded than I'd expected—everyone from people out for a casual stroll to what looked like industry folks, down to booth operators in matching uniforms. We bought chicken skewers from one of the food stalls along the way.
“Here, eat this.”
“What about you?”
“It'd be a little awkward for me to pull my mask down.”
Sure, it might have looked like an extreme case of Celebrity Sickness, but caution never hurt anyone.
People are looking at Seo Jio more than I expected.
He was an aspiring actor, after all—by any ordinary standard, he was good-looking. That must have been why I could feel eyes gathering on him as we walked the grounds.
“Still, just one bite. Come on.”
“I'm fine.”
“You just have to put the mask right back up.”
I said I'm fine, you idiot.
No matter how many times I refused, Seo Jio kept pressing the chicken skewer toward my face. It seemed like the only way to end it, so I hastily pulled my mask down and took a bite.
At that exact moment, someone spoke to us.
“Excuse me….”
I yanked my mask back up. When I shot Seo Jio a glare, he smoothly turned so his back shielded me.
“Can I help you?”
“Actually, our booth is running a little experience activity. It's free, so feel free to stop by! We're near that movie theater over there!”
“Ah, thank you. *Cough.*”
Seo Jio, politely accepting the flyer, barely swallowed a laugh. At least laugh openly, jerk.
“Yeonjae, you're not hurt that I didn't recognize you, are you?”
“…….”
I couldn't exactly hit the guy who was smirking with his eyes, so I just swallowed a sigh.
“We've got time to kill anyway—want to check it out?”
“What kind of activity?”
“They say you can actually act on a small stage. They have masks too. Ooh, sounds fun. Should we go?”
Wait—what if we got noticed, though? But that would've been an embarrassing thing to say right after my earlier overreaction. So I followed Seo Jio in silence.
“Hello. We got a flyer and came by.”
“Welcome~!”
The booth was buzzing. Packed in here.
“Mom, I want to try on this mask!”
“If you'd like a mask, please let us know! We'll give you a script to match your mask~.”
There were more children than adults. Dodging a pair of kids fighting over who got to wear the cooler mask, I headed for a corner. The masks on display had a rustic, old-fashioned charm—as if traditional folk tales were the theme. When I picked up one with a long dangling mustache, someone who looked like a staff member approached.
“That's a mask from Tale of Heungbu and Nolbu. Heungbu and Nolbu—you know the story?”
“Yes. Do I perform it alone?”
“Nope! Actually, we're all actors here—me included! We'll play the opposite role for you. Reading from the script is totally fine.”
So it was a theater experience, in a nutshell.
I'd been wondering why a film festival would run a stage-acting booth when I overheard a staff member sweet-talking a parent nearby.
“If you'd like, we can film it with the same cameras they use for movies! Just leave your email address and we'll send you the footage.”
“Is that free too?”
“For the low, low price of ten thousand won, ma'am!”
The staff member's voice was unfailingly kind. Ten thousand won for a high-quality video of your kid acting adorably—that was a decent deal, honestly.
I don't need filming, though.
Mustache swaying, I looked up at the staff member.
“Can I just do the acting without the video?”
“Of course! Then there's no charge at all.”
For an instant, something like regret flashed across the staff member's face and vanished just as quickly. An actor really is an actor. Swallowing a laugh, I nodded.
“I'll go with Heungbu and Nolbu. Seo Jio, did you pick one yet?”
“I'll watch you.”
You're the one who said it'd be fun, though….
Well, if he's not doing it, no need for me to force it—I was about to put the mask down when another hand thrust a script toward me.
“Just read the lines highlighted in yellow. Shall we head up to the stage?”
With no chance to say no, I was herded behind the stage by the staff member, shuffling along helplessly.
When they asked me to take off my cap and mask, I froze for a second.
“I'm—sorry, but I'd rather not do this after all.”
“Oh, come on~! No need to be shy. It's over in under five minutes, and you barely have any lines!”
“No, that's not it—”
“It's fine! We'll handle all the comedy for you. Don't worry!”
Watching the staff member smile even brighter, as if to say trust me, I swallowed a sigh.
I don't even know anymore.
Quietly, I took off my cap. Then, slowly, the mask.
The moment our eyes met, the face that had been grinning froze solid.
“…Y-you're Yeon—!”
“Shh.”
I pressed a finger to my lips just in time, and the staff member clapped a hand over their own mouth in a panic.