Lemon Candy Shock Therapy
“Seo Jio. Hey, snap out of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Ha, this is driving me crazy.”
The sigh escaped me before I could stop it.
Seo Jio wore his usual expression, only his hand moving as it idly stroked my hair. If it weren't for his eyes—that faint, unfocused look about them—I might have concluded he simply enjoyed touching other people's heads.
Look at him like this and you'd think he's actually good at acting.
Even in the middle of all that tension, he was either unconsciously trying not to show it, or he hadn't even noticed he was nervous. I honestly couldn't tell.
I can't send him into the shoot like this.
Around us, the busy bustle of the crew preparing for filming was gradually dying down. It was as good as an announcement that the cameras would roll soon. But Seo Jio was quick-witted enough that a few words of conversation would shake him back to his senses. He always was.
“Seo Jio. We practiced a lot for this, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You're not going to mess up. There's zero need to be nervous.”
Even if he did slip up, it wouldn't matter. We could just shoot it again.
I caught the hand resting on my head and slowly lowered it, soothing him as gently as I could manage. Seo Jio gave a loose, careless smile.
“Yeah. Got it.”
“……Never mind. Just keep petting.”
Yeah, his eyes are even more gone than before.
I sighed, took his hand, and put it right back on my head. Seo Jio's fingers hesitated for a beat, then resumed their slow, rhythmic stroking.
I stared at him—a guy whose hands were moving while his brain had clearly gone out for a walk.
Was he this nervous at the last shoot too?
If so, that was a relief. The Killing Horn shoot had wrapped successfully, after all. Maybe this was just the kind of personality that got wound up tight beforehand and then plunged straight into the performance the moment the camera started. As long as it didn't interfere with filming, it wasn't my problem to worry about. Except…
Ugh.
This was his first time acting in a lead role. If he couldn't even remember how he'd acted because he'd been so out of his mind with nerves, that just wouldn't do. And maybe because I knew exactly how hard Seo Jio had practiced all this time, it bothered me even more.
After a moment's hesitation, I turned to Jinbae.
“Hyung, I'm really sorry, but could you buy me something I want? They sell it at the convenience store.”
Jinbae nodded at my request. When I told him I'd be right here and he should hurry back—and that under no circumstances should he move a single step away from this spot otherwise—he obediently agreed.
Well, no need to sprint.
I watched Jinbae's figure shrink into the distance and swallowed a sigh. This plan had better work.
***
Seo Jio was nervous.
And not just a little—overwhelmingly so. Honestly speaking, he was wound up to the point where he could have thrown up right then and there. Not that there'd be anything to bring up, since he hadn't been able to eat a thing since yesterday.
His father and stepmother had seen him all the way to the door with warm words of safe travels, and Seo Jio had smiled back at them with all the maturity he could summon. Even as he arrived on set and exchanged cheerful greetings with the staff, part of him felt as though one of the circuits in his brain had shorted out. The words coming out of his mouth, the expressions he was making—they all seemed to belong to someone else.
He'd been nervous for the Killing Horn shoot, too, and for every minor and supporting role he'd filmed before that. But never like this. Was it simply because this was his first lead? Even Seo Jio couldn't say. His stomach just felt sick.
……Mom's going to watch it, won't she?
He was co-starring as a lead in a project featuring Lee Yeonjae—the Lee Yeonjae, who was the talk of the town these days. Any way you sliced it, the odds that his mother would see it were high. Every role Seo Jio had played before was far too minor to notice, and Killing Horn hadn't even aired yet. Which meant this could be the very first time his mother ever saw him act.
The moment that thought took hold, his head started spinning. He was mid-conversation with Lee Yeonjae on set and had no idea what he himself was saying. He tried to pull himself together, but the thought drowned him—he kept sinking into the certainty that his mother would be watching.
The instant what if I mess up? crossed his mind, the negative emotions came crashing down like an avalanche. An unstoppable current.
No—messing up is fine. It's not live. We'll just shoot it again. Mom won't see my mistakes.
But what if they reshoot it over and over and my acting still isn't good? What if she laughs at me? What if I'm a worse actor than her?
No. I'm going to make her regret it. That's why I practiced. I can do this.
Do you know how hard I fought to get this chance? This is no time to act like an idiot. Focus.
On the outside, none of it showed. But inside, Seo Jio was on the verge of full-blown panic.
“Hey.”
That was when it happened.
A breath of air fanned across Seo Jio's face. He blinked his eyes open to find a pair of black ones right in front of him.
“Eat this.”
The moment the words ended, something was shoved into his mouth. He instinctively tried to spit it out—but a hand clamped straight over his lips. Sealed shut by that palm, Seo Jio couldn't get the thing out.
What is this? Small, hard, round… is it candy?
The next thought shattered against a vicious wave of sourness.
“Urgh—”
The composed expression Seo Jio had been carefully maintaining all morning crumbled on the spot. The brutal lemon flavor exploding across his tongue crumpled his face into a grimace entirely of its own accord. Lee Yeonjae pressed his hand down firmly, blocking every one of Seo Jio's struggles to spit the candy out.
“Just hold out for five seconds. Five, four, three…”
All Seo Jio could do was mumble incoherently. The truth was, he couldn't hear Lee Yeonjae at all. That's how merciless the sourness flooding his mouth was. The only thought he could form was: this is agony.
“Okay, spit.”
The hand left his mouth, and Seo Jio immediately spat the candy out. Even afterward, the sourness that filled his whole mouth left him dazed for a long while—so dazed that he never noticed he'd spat it into Lee Yeonjae's open palm, or that Lee Yeonjae was silently wiping his hand and Seo Jio's lips with a tissue.
“What the hell was…”
It took Seo Jio quite a while to open his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to rinse out the sourness still clinging to every corner of it. Lee Yeonjae just happened to hand him a water bottle, and Seo Jio snatched it and gulped the water down. After draining nearly the whole bottle in one continuous stretch, he glared at Lee Yeonjae.
“You… what the hell was that about?”
“You back with us now?”
“What?”
Seo Jio's face was twisted with unconcealed irritation. Lee Yeonjae regarded him with perfect detachment.
“If you're not back yet, say so. I've got plenty of candy.”
Lee Yeonjae shook a fistful of lemon candies at him, held in one hand. He was hamming it up like a man brandishing a live bomb—and it should have looked ridiculous. Instead, it landed on Seo Jio with devastating effect. Seo Jio informed his captor that he was perfectly lucid now, so would he please get those candies away.
Lee Yeonjae obediently handed the candies off to his manager.
“Why would you even do that?”
“You seemed like you couldn't snap out of it.”
At Lee Yeonjae's flat answer, Seo Jio let out an incredulous snort. It had, admittedly, jolted him wide awake.
“And how did you know I hate sour things?”
“I wasn't sure, actually. But you'd scrunch up your face every time I had lemonade at school, so I figured you weren't a fan of sour.”
“……”
Seo Jio was struck speechless.
How did he notice that?
He had no memory of ever openly frowning in front of Lee Yeonjae. Even when Lee Yeonjae drank lemonade or green grape soda, all Seo Jio had thought was, weird taste, that guy—he'd never once said it out loud or asked why he'd bother drinking something like that.
Lee Yeonjae plopped down beside the dumbfounded Seo Jio.
“I did it just in case you kept wandering around like a zombie after the cameras started rolling. I can't stand watching you ruin the shoot.”
It was a remark so cold it went beyond indifferent and bordered on frosty. And yet, somehow, it didn't reach Seo Jio's ears as cold at all.
“Every time you get nervous like before, I'll stuff a candy in your mouth. So keep your head in the game.”
“Never been threatened like this before…”
Seo Jio laughed in disbelief, and Lee Yeonjae shrugged.
“I don't know why you're this worked up, and I don't care. There's only one thing you need to worry about from here on. The moment you get nervous, candy goes in your mouth.”
Which was his roundabout way of saying: act the way we practiced. Seo Jio gave a hollow laugh.
“I'm too scared to concentrate now.”
“Good.”
“What?”
At the baffling reply, Seo Jio looked at Lee Yeonjae. Lee Yeonjae looked right back. Those black eyes met Seo Jio's, with nothing filtered out between them.
“Be scared of me, and only me. Don't waste your fear on anything else.”
“……”
Does he know what I was thinking just now? Is that why he's saying it?
For a split second, Seo Jio was genuinely afraid of Lee Yeonjae.
He doesn't actually read minds, right?
He was still entertaining that absurd thought when a staff member's voice rang out across the set.
“Filming prep is complete! Everyone to your places, please!”
Lee Yeonjae rose to his feet at once, and Seo Jio scrambled up after him in a fluster. Walking onto the set bristling with cameras, he swallowed hard without meaning to.
The PD walked them through the scene, and they ran their blocking. The realization that filming truly was about to begin made his heart pound—and just like that, the thought of his mother came creeping back…
Ugh, gross.
But even that thought got cut short by the sourness still lingering in his mouth. Seo Jio gulped down more water, forgetting to keep his expression composed. And then Lee Yeonjae entered his field of vision. Their eyes met, and Lee Yeonjae spoke.
Still nervous?
They were too far apart to hear anything, but the shape of the words triggered an automatic playback in Seo Jio's ear. And knowing that the slightest hesitation would earn him a candy crammed straight into his mouth, Seo Jio shook his head hard, over and over.
Lee Yeonjae snorted a quiet laugh, then mouthed: Then go nail it.
“Rolling!”
At the call, the bustling set fell silent in an instant.
Lee Yeonjae stood in his mark, eyes closed, utterly still. Seo Jio watched him.
The web drama February 3rd, true to its title, was set to be released online on February 3rd—the very day designated as Korean Sign Language Day. The story followed a protagonist devastated by the sudden death of his older brother in an accident days earlier, until he discovers his brother's ghost—a spirit that never made it to the afterlife and has been wandering the world ever since. No one else can see the brother, and after drifting alone for so long, the ghost is overjoyed to find someone who can. For the protagonist, simply looking at his brother again, simply talking to him again, is happiness. But the protagonist has a life to live: family at home, friends at school. He can't go around murmuring at empty air. So the two brothers settle on their chosen means of conversation—Korean Sign Language.
Lee Yeonjae would play the protagonist; Seo Jio would play the protagonist's older brother. The ghost.
Lee Yeonjae's vision for the character was strikingly clear. Perhaps because he'd written the script himself, every conversation with him brought the details into sharper relief.
I've practiced more than enough.
Seo Jio had rehearsed until he was thoroughly sick of it. Surely that was true—Lee Yeonjae had watched his performance and given a satisfied smile. He would do well. His mother would watch him act, and she would be amazed.
And then, at the same time, the thoughts that began with but what if… came flooding in—until every time they did, his mouth would sting. The sourness of a candy that should have disappeared ages ago still lingered there, as if to say: stay focused.
“Ready—”
Seo Jio looked at Lee Yeonjae, still standing with his eyes closed.
He really is a strange one.
He'd always known the guy was far from normal. But Lee Yeonjae was stranger than even that. And as he stared at that strange boy, the corner of Seo Jio's mouth curled upward, just slightly.
“Action!”
And when the PD's shout rang out, Seo Jio suddenly realized it.
His mother's presence was gone from his mind entirely.
All that remained was the clinging taste of lemon.