Thirty Minutes in Rome
“Wow…! This is incredible, Yeonjae!”
“I know. So cool.”
“They say the Trevi Fountain is down that way. Wow, it's gorgeous even from far away. It looks exactly like it did in the movie…!”
“I know. Exactly like it.”
The words spilled out of my mouth with no soul behind them whatsoever.
Forget the fountain. I just want to sleep.
Italy really was stunning. The sunny weather, the exotic scenery, the lively streets. It was the kind of view that lifted your spirits just by looking at it — if only I'd had the energy to enjoy it.
I'm exhausted.
The flight from Seoul to Rome had taken thirteen hours. Which meant, naturally, I'd had to spend a full day on the plane — which also meant the acting I needed to strip away my misfortune factors had to happen on the plane too. I'd slipped in and out of the bathroom all night, practicing in stolen scraps of time. Sleep-deprived and now jet-lagged on top of it, I felt half dead.
“Hyung, don't run. You'll get hurt.”
“Okay!”
And on top of everything else, I had my hands full reining in Seong Ijun, who was bounding around like an overexcited puppy. I was managing my expression as best I could, but honestly, I was just so tired.
My head feels foggy.
…This won't do. I stopped walking and looked around. The moment I spotted a gelato shop, I called out to Seong Ijun.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
“Come here for a second.”
I held out my hand, and Seong Ijun trotted over. When we stepped into the shop, the clerk looked up at me in mild alarm — understandable, given how many cameras were trained on us. Normally I would have started by explaining the situation, but all my fogged-up brain could manage was a greeting.
“(Hello.)”
“(…! Hello!)”
Italy, a country that was itself a patchwork of city-states, uses all manner of languages — Italian, Roman, Venetian, and so on. There was no way to learn them all, so I'd memorized just a few sentences of standard Italian. Apparently my pronunciation wasn't half bad, because the clerk's face brightened and he said something I couldn't understand at all.
“(Would it be alright if I ordered in English?)”
“(Of course. What flavor would you like?)”
“Hyung, what flavor do you want?”
I turned my head to ask, and Seong Ijun answered, dazed, that he wanted pistachio. I thanked the clerk as he handed over the pistachio gelato. He looked like he wanted to strike up more conversation, but I pretended not to notice and walked out of the shop.
“Yeonjae, aren't you getting one?”
“No. I'm…”
…going to sleep while you eat that, was what I'd meant to say. But standing there in front of that old weathered building, holding his gelato with a blank look on his face, Seong Ijun made a surprisingly good picture.
Sleepy or not, this one I had to capture.
“Hyung, let's take a photo before we go.”
“Where'd this come from…?”
“Yeah. Stand right there.”
Though he looked utterly baffled, Seong Ijun obediently struck a pose. Celebrities really are celebrities, I suppose.
“Great shot.”
“Thanks. I'll take one of you too—”
“No need. Now let's head over there.”
“Huh?”
I pointed at a bench I'd had my eye on for a while now. Then I took hold of Seong Ijun's bewildered arm and steered us both over to it, and said without preamble:
“Hyung, I'm going to nap here. Just thirty minutes.”
We were still a long way from our lodging. If I gritted my teeth and held out until then, I could probably manage — but filming was another matter entirely. What if I end up in a controversy over my attitude? The PD was apparently close with Team Leader Woo, which was at least some comfort. But if someone who'd just arrived in a travel destination looked like this, even the editors would have a hard time salvaging it.
“Oh, you're tired? Sorry, I had no idea—”
“Don't apologize.”
What I wanted wasn't an apology. It was sleep. I sat Seong Ijun down and stretched out carelessly on the rest of the bench.
“You want me to sleep here?”
“Yeah. Just thirty minutes, I promise. You eat your gelato in the meantime, okay? You remember how.”
I set an alarm on my wristwatch. Even thirty minutes would help. Seong Ijun's face clouded with worry.
“But… it's really noisy here.”
“It's fine. I can sleep anywhere. Good boy. Just bear with me for a bit.”
I was so drowsy my thoughts had gone to mush. I vaguely registered Seong Ijun saying something after that and answered him, but I couldn't have told you what either of us said. And just like that, I met the fog.
“…You're actually asleep.”
Seong Ijun let out a soft breath as he gazed down at the sleeping Lee Yeonjae. That has to be uncomfortable. One of the boy's legs had slipped clear off the bench, dangling in a way that looked anything but restful. He started moving carefully, intending to shift over and give him room — until the PD waved him off, emphatically.
When Seong Ijun looked up, startled, the PD whispered, “Don't move! The shot is perfect right now!”
…Honestly, this uncle.
Seong Ijun sat back down with an awkward smile. The staff bustled about quietly, cameras drifting this way and that, straining to capture Rome's beautiful streets and the easy warmth between the two of them all at once. And through all that commotion, Lee Yeonjae slept like a rock.
Once his gelato cup was emptied and set down beside him, Seong Ijun looked down at the sleeping boy again. His hair color really came out beautiful. Lee Yeonjae's hair was a piercing, vivid orange, and under the fierce Roman sunlight it glittered like a jewel. A gleam that proved the PD's suggestion had been right all along.
“Any plans to dye it a different color before we leave the country? Say… orange?”
“Orange?”
“Yes. We're stopping through a small provincial city on the trip — it's where a famous film was shot. You know Under the Orange Tree, right?”
Under the Orange Tree was a film no actor could claim not to know. A story of a boy with orange hair falling in love with a girl traveling through Italy. Thanks to its rich, color-saturated cinematography that captured the tenderness of first love so perfectly, it had been a hit in Korea as well.
“Since both Ijun and Yeonjae are actors, we built the itinerary around locations from the film. If we cross-cut the footage with actual scenes from the movie, wouldn't that come out beautifully?”
The PD had been kind and thorough about it. But Lee Yeonjae's face had been full of questions. He'd looked like he wanted to ask, exactly, what any of that had to do with him dyeing his hair orange. Even when the PD carefully pointed out that bleaching his hair only to cover it straight back with black seemed like a waste, he'd still looked puzzled. In the end, he'd simply replied flatly that if the company said it was fine, he'd do it.
And a week later, he really did show up with his hair dyed.
…
Seong Ijun, the staff, everyone had stared at Lee Yeonjae in stunned silence. You couldn't have filed it under a light “huh, it suits him” — it suited him. Genuinely, dramatically suited him. A playful, mischievous look from the loose perm he'd gotten on a whim, set against an expression that was as impassive as ever. The contrast only drew the eye more.
And he has absolutely no idea, does he.
Italy had been the same. The moment Lee Yeonjae stepped out of Rome's airport and pulled off his hat, every gaze in the vicinity snapped to him. A slightly red-tinged orange was not an easy color to pull off. Not staring at a boy who wore it with such careless indifference was the harder task. Locals and tourists alike turned to look, and through all of it Lee Yeonjae just looked spaced out.
When Seong Ijun asked if all the attention bothered him, the answer had left him speechless.
“Nothing I can do about it. I'd stare too if there were this many cameras pointed at me.”
“…Yeah.”
Seong Ijun had known for a long time that Lee Yeonjae wasn't an ordinary kid, but even so, that particular reply had made him answer rather stiffly. The Lee Yeonjae of any other day would have caught that hesitation in an instant and asked what was wrong. Instead he'd just stood there blankly, saying nothing, and Seong Ijun had wondered what was going on with him—
He was sleepy. That's all it was.
He'd been dragging an exhausted kid around all day without realizing it. A pang of guilt and embarrassment washed over him. I'm supposed to be the older one here. He knew Lee Yeonjae was gentle by nature — the type to look after other people to a nearly excessive degree. But the kid was still two years younger than him, wasn't he?
Watching Lee Yeonjae sleep quietly on the bench without shifting so much as an inch, Seong Ijun made up his mind. I'll take the lead. This was only Lee Yeonjae's second time abroad, he'd said. A strange country, a different language — of course he'd feel out of his element.
…Though for someone so supposedly out of his element, he did walk into shops awfully comfortably.
Seong Ijun resolved to steer the rest of the schedule himself. And that resolution was promptly smashed to pieces by Lee Yeonjae acting as though Italy were his hometown.
Glad I took that nap.
When I woke up, most of the fog had cleared. Moving around with a body that felt freshly rinsed, I wandered here and there. In the mid-afternoon, when a reddish dusk glow swallowed the heart of Rome, the production crew handed us a slip of paper.
“It's about time for dinner, right? Time for a mission.”
The PD put on a villainous expression.
“You have one hour to get to the place written on that paper. If you don't make it in time, dinner is cup ramyeon. No searching the internet!”
Written on the paper was not English, but an unfamiliar language entirely. As I stared at it, Seong Ijun rallied and shouted, “Yeonjae! I'll go ask that lady over there!”
“It's fine. I know where this is.”
“…?”
Seong Ijun tilted his head. The gesture — practically shouting how on earth do you know that? — was honestly rather adorable.
“I read about it.”
“A book?”
“Yeah. What I was reading on the plane.”
I couldn't show up empty-handed for my first trip here. Over the past week I'd read three books about Italy, including a guidebook with a list of good restaurants.
“You read it in a— wait, no, you… memorized the location…?”
Seong Ijun asked with a blank face. Did that even make sense?
“I'm not a genius, how would I memorize it.”
I gave a little laugh and poked his cheek. “I only remember which street it's on. And it happens to be a street we already walked down earlier.”
“………”
“All we have to do is go back the way we came.”
Grabbing the stammering Seong Ijun, I turned us around. I could see despair creeping across the production crew's faces, but I did my best not to notice.
“Yeonjae-ssi. How could you do this to us….”
I also pretended not to hear the despair-laced voice of the PD. Still, I figured I owed them some material, so I made as much use of what I'd read as I could.
“Hyung, if we go this way there should be a fountain. Let's take a quick stroll before we head over.”
“Huh? Can we? Won't we be late?”
“The walk won't take more than twenty minutes. Fifty-seven minutes left on the clock. We're fine.”
I glanced at my wristwatch and answered flatly. Why do they all keep making that face? For some reason, none of the crew looked happy. They were practically trembling, like people forcing down some deep humiliation, and I couldn't help but find it strange. Maybe they need more footage? Figuring the content must be lacking, I rattled off more of what I remembered. That gelato shop was supposedly the most popular one around. They said busking was held often in that plaza. And so on. I was doing my best to be helpful, but their expressions only got darker. What was wrong with them?
“There it is.”
“…You're unbelievable. Seriously.”
Seong Ijun said it in a dazed voice. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself too, so instead of brushing it off, I just smiled. The PD murmured in a gloomy tone:
“Yes… you took a stroll in the middle of it… did some sightseeing… bought a snack… and somehow you still have time to spare. You arrived ten minutes early.”
Weren't you supposed to arrive ten minutes before an appointment anyway? I'd budgeted the time on purpose.
The PD looked so mournful that I scratched the back of my neck, awkward. Should I start pretending I don't know things from tomorrow? Once tonight's filming wrapped, I'd have to ask Jinbae-hyung how I ought to handle this.
For now, the answer that came back was: mission accomplished, so enjoy dinner to your heart's content. We were ushered inside with the waiter's courteous guidance. Italian seafood stew, pizza, pasta, dish after dish arrived at the table.
“Hyung, this one's a little spicy. Careful.”
“Okay…!”
I was in the middle of warning Seong Ijun — who couldn't handle spicy food — when someone came up behind his shyly smiling face.
“Hi there!”
“…? Hello.”
A kindergartner? An elementary schooler? She was a little girl who looked even younger than Han Haram. What were the odds of a small child approaching us mid-meal at a restaurant in Italy? In Korean, no less?
Must be a mission.
I was just about to glance over at the staff with that thought in mind when—
“I fell in love with you at first sight! Will you marry me?”
…
Goodness, that's a set of lungs.
Thanks to the girl practically shouting it, the whole area around us went quiet. Even the foreigners who couldn't understand a word of Korean had turned to look. So I looked back at the girl, who was staring directly — pointedly — at me.
I don't recognize her face.
No matter how I turned it over in my head, this was our first meeting. So I answered, politely:
“No.”