Under the Orange Sunset
We had arrived in Venice, the city they call the city of water.
It had already been a week since we came to Italy.
Four more days, and I'll be back in Korea.
I'd never known a week could feel this short.
The time I spent with Seong Ijun had been calm and peaceful.
Even with the cameras rolling, somehow.
He really is a good kid.
Seong Ijun was a genuinely decent person. The unhurried way he talked, the mole under his eye that rose along with his smile, his quiet little laugh—there wasn't a single thing about him that was hard to look at.
"Yeonjae, the water's not even that cold…!"
Especially the way he smiled like that in front of the sea.
Seong Ijun was crouched on the sand with his hand dipped in the water. Laughing, I grabbed his shoulder.
"Hyung, get a grip. It's almost December."
"……"
Ever since yesterday he'd been going on about things like it'd be nice if we dipped our feet in the water when we got to the sea, so I'd assumed he was joking.
Guess I didn't realize he meant it.
It was moments like this that really made him seem like a kid. I swallowed a sigh and handed him a handkerchief.
"You'll catch a cold. Dry your hands."
"It's seriously not cold…! It's sunny out, look!"
Well, he had a point there. The weather had been too chilly for traveling this whole trip, but today, of all days, the sunlight was pleasantly warm. That mild weather was exactly why Seong Ijun had been tearing around like an overexcited puppy, too.
"You heard what the Guide said. Days like this are so rare!"
"I did. But when exactly did that become permission to get in the ocean?"
"I never said I was getting in. I was just… dipping my feet."
Haah.
I couldn't bring myself to smack a hyung two years my senior, so I barely held it in.
"Fine, hyung, then tonight let's soak our feet in the bathtub. Deal?"
"……You know, sometimes I get the feeling you treat me like a kid."
Took you this long to notice?
When I silently wiped the water off his hand for him, Seong Ijun snapped at me in a way that was unlike him.
"I can do it myself."
He yanked his hand away and turned his back on me. I stared after him as he stomped across the sand.
……Is he doing this on purpose?
I glanced over at the staff, and the PD immediately shook his head.
"We didn't tell him to."
He was snickering like something was hilarious, which didn't exactly inspire confidence, but the PD had no reason to lie about it either.
So he's actually sulking?
Really? Over that? No way. Even if I did treat him like a kid, Seong Ijun was seventeen. A senior actor with seven years in the industry under his belt, at that.
I couldn't tell whether Ijun had schemed this out and set the stage on purpose, or whether he was genuinely sulking.
Well, might as well play along for now.
Decision made, I trailed after him. Even sensing my approach, he refused to turn around, so I poked his back.
"(Why are you pretending not to see me?)"
"…?"
"(Even I'd be hurt if you blatantly ignored me like that.)"
I said it while twirling my eyes playfully. Seong Ijun stammered, flustered.
"Wh… what, what? Why are you speaking English??"
Watching him gape back at me in total bewirth drained the wind right out of my sails.
So it wasn't intentional after all.
I immediately stripped the amusement from my face. Dropped the corners of my mouth, too. The way I switched expressions made him even more flustered, as if I'd swapped personalities.
"What…? Did I miss something?"
"No, it's nothing. I thought you were doing it on purpose."
"Doing what?"
At his what are you even talking about expression, I shrugged.
"This is where they shot Under the Orange Tree, isn't it?"
"……Ah."
"The spot from the scene where the male lead chases after the female lead when she pretends not to know him and walks away."
The way Seong Ijun was stomping around was so similar to the heroine that I'd assumed he was deliberately setting up the scene for a nice bit of cross-cutting later.
So he really was sulking.
I dropped the male lead's signature expression at once and apologized.
"You were genuinely upset just now, weren't you. Sorry—did that hurt your feelings?"
"No. You don't have anything to apologize for. I was just sulking on my own…"
Seong Ijun answered blankly. Well, at least he knows.
After a long stretch of silence, Seong Ijun suddenly spoke up at full volume.
"That thing you said in English just now—it was from the movie, right?!"
"Yeah."
"When did you memorize that? Do we have to film it? Was that in the script?"
Seong Ijun looked over at the PD with a completely bewildered face. The PD, once again, shook his head vigorously. I replied without much feeling.
"No, there's nothing like that. I just memorized it myself."
"Why?"
"It's the movie the PD mentioned, so I figured I might as well."
I couldn't exactly show up to Italy empty-handed. Even at that, Seong Ijun wore a look of sheer incomprehension. I hadn't been trying to explain it to him, so I let it go.
The one who broke the silence that followed was the PD.
"Wow~ how are you that good at acting? Do actors really slip into it that easily?"
His feigned innocence was practically an art form.
Feels like acting is something you should be doing yourself, PD-nim.
I'd already caught what the PD was angling for back when our eyes met earlier. But it was innocent Seong Ijun who shook his head.
"No, it's not me. Yeonjae's the incredible one…"
"Well, since we're here, how about you two act out a scene from the movie? Now that I think about it, Yeonjae's hair is orange too! Wow, what a coincidence!"
He sure does love his coincidences.
I snorted at the sly old fox of a PD. I'd half expected it, so I was about to brush him off with a vague answer when an unexpected response came first.
"Ah… I don't remember the lines exactly."
Seong Ijun floundered, looking panicked.
"I'm sorry. I should've memorized them in advance, but I didn't think―"
"Hyung, don't apologize over something weird."
I cut him off as he instinctively started digging his own grave. The PD, too, apparently hadn't seen this turn coming, and hurried to apologize with a startled look.
"Oh no, Ijun, I'm sorry. I was just saying."
"No, I'm the one who's sorry…! It would've been better if I'd learned them ahead of time."
Watching him kick himself, I couldn't help but sigh.
I should've told him in advance.
The PD hadn't asked me to dye my hair orange for nothing. Rerouting the whole schedule through a complicated course just to stop by an actual filming location? To me, it could only read as one thing: a request to reenact a scene from the movie at the place where it was actually shot.
I'd figured Seong Ijun must have caught on too, so I'd left him to it.
And now I just look like a smug show-off.
I considered apologizing to Ijun, but it seemed like it would only make things more awkward, so I let it be. I watched Seong Ijun start searching for the lines on his phone, swearing he'd memorize them now, and the PD scrambling to talk him out of it.
"Ijun-hyung."
"Hm?"
"You remember some of the male lead's lines, right?"
Under the Orange Tree unfolded from the male lead's point of view. Most of its most memorable, iconic lines were his, too. I asked because Seong Ijun had a good memory, and sure enough, the answer came back positive.
"Yeah. Not perfectly, but…"
Good enough.
"I'll take the other role. You play the male lead."
"Huh? I— can I, really?"
"What's stopping you?"
He mumbled something about the orange hair technically being mine, and I laughed.
"It's basically washed out by now. What of it."
Just a week ago it had been a carrot-deep orange, but after only a few days it had faded to a pale shade where the orange only hinted through.
"Still…"
Seong Ijun hesitated. What on earth was he so hung up on?
"It's fine. The sunset's got your hair orange too, hyung."
"……What does that even mean."
That earned me a scolding to make sense when I talk. When I told him to say the word whenever he was ready, Seong Ijun gave me an odd look.
"Then did you memorize the other lead's lines too?"
"Yeah."
"Why? The male lead's, fine, I get it. But why would you memorize the girl's lines?"
He asked with such genuine bafflement that I found myself baffled in return. Was I not supposed to?
To strip away my misfortune factor, I had to act every single day, and to stretch out how long I could sustain it, I had to keep studying different characters. Switching out the script every time was a colossal pain.
Was there really any reason to only practice the leads?
So I practiced every character in the script. Regardless of gender or age, all of them.
It turned out better than I expected, honestly.
It started as pure laziness, but the more I did it, the more I felt I'd lucked into a good habit. Sometimes the side characters' lines sharpened and refined the main character's build more than anything else. By that logic, there was really no reason not to.
At my flat, matter-of-fact answer, Seong Ijun's lips parted and closed a few times.
"You're seriously strange…"
"Me?"
"Yeah. The way you talk about everything like it's nothing—that's the strangest part."
He stared at me like I was some extraterrestrial life form.
You're the strange one.
It was honestly fascinating how he startled like a rabbit at every little thing. I started to say he was the weird one, then just nodded instead.
"Then let's act, you and this strange person."
At this rate the sun's going to set on us.
Time to wrap this up and head back to the lodging.
It wasn't a properly staged shoot, so I only loosely mimicked the tone and the lines. I didn't pitch my voice up or exaggerate anything just because the character was a woman. The PD probably wasn't expecting us to fully disappear into the roles anyway.
One thing was certain: Seong Ijun could act. He picked up the male lead's signature sheepish grin in no time, which made our rhythm click right into place.
The problem was…
Nobody's calling cut.
We'd both missed the moment to stop. Seong Ijun was in the same boat, his smile stiffening just slightly at the edges.
What an experience.
I never imagined I'd come all the way to Italy to botch a scene this spectacularly. It was absurd, it was ridiculous, and a helpless laugh bubbled out of me.
"(I have no idea what we're doing anymore.)"
The words slipped out before I knew it, and Seong Ijun faltered for a beat.
"(Tell me about it. But isn't the sunset beautiful?)"
The voice that answered wasn't the male lead's. It was Seong Ijun's.
The same English, but I knew it in an instant. That subtle shift announced the end of the scene better than any clapperboard could.
Laughter came up unbidden.
That's hilarious.
Every staff member with a camera was watching us. With this many people around, the only ones who could tell the acting had ended were the two of us.
It was like passing a secret code in broad daylight.
Smiling, I said to Seong Ijun:
"(Let's come back in summer next time. That way we can at least dip our feet in.)"
"(……We don't need to dip our feet. I told you, I really was just talking back then.)"
"(You weren't.)"
"(I was, though….)"
The conversation carried on naturally in English. Seong Ijun and I had been chatting comfortably, faces relaxed, for quite a while before the PD finally cut in.
"Um, are… are you two done acting?"
The moment I heard that careful question, my eyes met Seong Ijun's.
"Hahaha!"
We burst out laughing at exactly the same time.
I could feel the staff staring at us, utterly lost.
"Yes. It ended a while ago."
When I delivered it through the laughter, the obvious question came back—what was so funny? Fair enough. What was so funny?
I just shrugged, the feeling too slippery to put into words.
"You'd understand if you tried acting, PD-nim."
"……Are you telling me right now that I'm not an actor?"
The PD smoothed it over with some line about how non-actors deserved better than living in sorrow, but the laughter wouldn't die down. It was true—this feeling was nearly impossible to share with someone who didn't perform.
This is genuinely so much fun.
How could anything be this fun?
Acting was thrilling to a degree that felt almost uncanny. The idea that a brief pause, a subtle shift in tone, could carry you into a character and out again—it was a strange, heady sensation.
One moment I felt like a ruler clutching an entire nation in his fist; the next, like the most insignificant person alive.
Uh oh.
I sat there on the sand, bathed in orange sunset light, and thought it through. By this point, this wasn't something I could wave off as just for fun.
Could I really live without acting?
I answered the question I'd raised inside my own head with a smile.
The answer was no.