The Right to Feel
After that, Minho began looking for ways to talk with his brother even when he was around other people.
When he heard Minho out, the brother declined, saying it wasn't necessary.
Still, he seemed quietly pleased that his younger brother was thinking of him, because after turning him down a few times, he hesitantly spoke up.
What about talking in Korean Sign Language?
"Korean Sign Language? What's that? You mean sign language? You know how to do that?"
"…Aren't you paying way too little attention to your own brother?"
That was when Minho finally learned that the orphanage where his brother had done volunteer work while alive was home to children with hearing impairments.
And that years of volunteering there had led him to learn Korean Sign Language naturally.
The brother put on a wounded act — how could you not have known any of this? — while Minho, thoroughly flustered, scrambled to make amends.
"I mean, I thought you just took care of kids. It's not that I didn't care about you, it's just that I—"
"Haha! I know, I know. Why are you so worked up?"
"Because you keep saying weird stuff."
Why on earth wouldn't I care about you?
Minho pouted.
It was the face of a young child sulking over a mischievous tease.
Seo Jio, playing the brother, watched that expression and thought, God, this kid…
How is he this good at acting?
Lee Yeonjae is a great actor.
It was a sentence that now felt too obvious to even say.
Anyone who had performed alongside him, as Seo Jio had, couldn't possibly fail to know it.
And yet, here he was, marveling all over again at Lee Yeonjae's skill.
It's like he's possessed.
Throughout the shoot, Minho had carried an air of gloom and stagnation.
Hollow eyes. Flat emotions. A voice drained of light.
Like death given human form — a boy who seemed utterly empty.
But the fragments of despair inside Minho had vanished one by one during his time with his brother.
One melted away at the brother's gentle smile. One at his endless nagging. One at the touch of a hand that never quite landed.
The way Lee Yeonjae depicted those wounds healing, faintly and gradually, with such painstaking detail, was enough to give Seo Jio chills.
Doing his best to ignore the goosebumps rising on his arms, Seo Jio moved as the script dictated.
"You know how much our Minho cares about his big brother. Of course I know that."
He smiled softly as he stroked Minho's hair.
Minho beamed at the touch of a hand he couldn't actually feel.
"Glad to hear it."
The way his mood lifted instantly at that one remark, only to catch himself and grumble feebly to hide it — that was Minho, through and through.
Thanks to Lee Yeonjae's acting, Seo Jio found himself sinking into the script as if he truly belonged there.
The two agreed to learn Korean Sign Language together, one sign at a time.
"Cut!"
At the PD's loud call, Seo Jio let out the breath he'd been holding.
He must have been clenching his body harder than he realized — his shoulders ached.
I keep tensing up when I act without even noticing.
He knew he needed to fix it; unnatural tension was one of the things that made acting feel stiff. But it wasn't an easy habit to break.
Fortunately it never showed badly enough to earn him an NG, but it was something Seo Jio himself wasn't satisfied with.
"Okay~! Moving on to the next scene!"
The moment the PD finished speaking, the staff sprang into motion.
With the shooting schedule this tight, there was no time to waste.
While stretching his shoulders, Seo Jio noticed that Lee Yeonjae was still blinking, over and over.
"Yeonjae, you okay?"
"Yeah…"
Lee Yeonjae answered in a voice drained of all strength.
It did not sound okay at all, but Seo Jio didn't press further.
Lee Yeonjae wouldn't want anyone meddling more than that — and even if he did, Seo Jio knew all too well that he wouldn't be the one Lee Yeonjae turned to.
And Seo Jio's read was exactly right.
"Actor-nim, are you all right?"
Lee Yeonjae's manager, Ahn Jinbae, came over with a blanket in hand.
He draped it over Lee Yeonjae's shoulders, and Lee Yeonjae blinked a few more times before sinking snugly into his chest.
"I'm dead tired."
When Lee Yeonjae mumbled the complaint, Ahn Jinbae patted his back, murmuring that he'd worked hard.
Seo Jio watched the scene for a moment, then turned away.
Guess they're some kind of epic love across the ages.
He was a little put out.
Right up until a minute ago, it was like he'd been the only one who existed.
The 'Minho' who had gazed at him so blindly vanished the instant the cut was called.
It wasn't as if he didn't understand that it had been Minho looking at him, not Lee Yeonjae.
He wasn't some earnest kid like Noh Bihyeok, and he wasn't jealous — not at all.
It's just…
His feelings were a little hurt, that was all. He couldn't say why.
He was sitting in his chair, mood slightly deflated, going over the script, when Lee Yeonjae wandered over a few minutes later.
He slumped into the chair beside him, utterly boneless.
Seo Jio watched him for a moment — Lee Yeonjae, buried in the chair like a sack of wilted cotton — then asked, "Yeonjae, sorry to keep saying the same thing, but are you really okay?"
He didn't actually expect Lee Yeonjae to open up to him even if he wasn't. It just felt like he had to say something.
"I'm fine. Just a little worn out."
"Worn out by what?"
"Just…"
Lee Yeonjae let the words trail off, as if it would be awkward to say more.
Exactly the response Seo Jio had expected.
We're not close enough for this kind of conversation, the two of us.
They'd gotten close in the first place for mutual benefit.
He wasn't one of those wide-eyed kids who just latched onto Lee Yeonjae.
Seo Jio nodded, satisfied with the explanation, and was about to return to his script.
"Seo Jio."
"Hm?"
"…What do you think? About Minho loving his brother."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
When Seo Jio made a baffled face, Lee Yeonjae hesitated.
"Doesn't it feel naive? Kind of greedy, even?"
"Greedy? Why?"
"The one who died is the brother. The one who's lonely is the brother. The one who was wronged is the brother. Whatever Minho's going through is nothing compared to what his brother endured."
Lee Yeonjae brushed his fingers against his lips.
"But there he is, grinning away because his brother says it's fine. It's like… how do I put it, like he's only thinking of himself. That's what keeps coming back to me."
"Hm. So that's why it's hard every time you act?"
Lee Yeonjae wavered, then slowly nodded.
"I think so. When I'm playing Minho, I really do love my brother. Seeing him makes me happy. It's fun."
"Mm."
"But once the shoot ends, I start wondering if I have any right to feel that way. From the brother's point of view, it must be absurd. And yet, at the same time—"
Lee Yeonjae kept talking, on and on without pause.
Seo Jio was taken aback.
So he can actually talk this long.
It was the first time Lee Yeonjae had ever said this much to him, acting aside.
Nodding along at intervals, Seo Jio thought, Is there some overlap between him and Minho?
This scenario was one Lee Yeonjae had written.
He'd heard that the other writers had adjusted some scene transitions and locations to make the shoot go more smoothly.
Which meant everything else had come entirely from Lee Yeonjae's pen.
Everyone had been stunned by how polished his script was.
The premise itself — a promotional video for Korean Sign Language built around a boy communicating with the ghost of his dead brother — was striking enough, but the emotional arcs of the characters were remarkably true to life.
People who could really exist. Conversations that could really happen.
Because of that, the usual stiffness of a public-awareness short had vanished, and everyone was murmuring that Lee Yeonjae really was some kind of genius.
Seo Jio had long since acknowledged Lee Yeonjae's brilliance, but the script had still left him puzzled.
He couldn't fathom how such realistic dialogue had simply sprung from someone's head.
If he'd lived through it himself, that would explain it.
But hadn't he said he grew up in an orphanage?
Had there been a brother there, someone he was unusually attached to?
So was he projecting himself onto a character like Minho?
Knowing nothing of the circumstances of Lee Yeonjae's adoption, Seo Jio made a rough guess of his own before speaking up.
"Yeonjae, I'm in no position to talk about what you feel playing Minho."
"Yeah."
"But if you're asking about what I feel playing the brother…"
Seo Jio delivered it in his usual unhurried drawl.
"I like my little brother."
"…"
"Minho doesn't strike me as naive. I don't think he's being greedy, either. Obviously I don't feel any sense of absurdity about it."
Sure, the one who died had it worst. That went without saying.
But did that make it wrong for the person left behind to struggle too?
He's bad at accepting his own feelings, isn't he.
Seo Jio let out a quiet sigh.
"I've told you before. You have a tendency to worry about everyone but yourself."
Sometimes Seo Jio simply couldn't understand Lee Yeonjae.
Why live so consumed by other people? Wasn't the important thing me? Everyone lives for themselves. You have to put yourself first.
"Whether the dead brother feels wronged or sad, whatever — that's the brother's business, isn't it? Me grieving and hurting because he died? That's just natural."
The owner of an emotion is the one feeling it.
Resentment, grief, blame, pain.
Any human being is capable of all of them.
But the Lee Yeonjae Seo Jio saw seemed far too obsessed with justification.
Is it permissible for me to feel this way?
To Seo Jio — who, no matter what anyone said, put himself above all — it was a way of thinking he would never understand in this lifetime.
Watching Lee Yeonjae blame himself struck him as foolish, and yet it nagged at him all the same.
"Yeonjae, I just wish you wouldn't be so stingy with yourself. Put yourself first before anyone else's feelings. Whatever the brother is thinking — if you're Minho, then Minho's feelings come first."
Worried it might sound like overstepping, Seo Jio tried to phrase it as gently as he could.
Somewhere in the process, he caught himself speaking in the exact cadence of Minho's brother — the line he'd been rehearsing for days.
Seo Jio realized his mistake the moment it left his mouth, but Lee Yeonjae was staring at him, riveted.
"Then what if Minho is the reason his brother died? Would you still feel the same?"
"Huh?"
Wasn't he killed by a drunk driver?
When Seo Jio asked, puzzled, Lee Yeonjae just told him to answer and pressed on.
"I mean, Minho didn't kill him directly, but he died because of Minho? Does that even make sense?"
"Say it's roughly that. Whatever — assuming that's how it happened… do you still think Minho's allowed to love his brother?"
Black eyes fixed on Seo Jio.
Seo Jio found the earnestness soaked into Lee Yeonjae's question strange, but the answer he was going to give had been settled all along.
"Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?"
"…"
"Unless he's a psychopath who killed his brother with his own hands and then felt affection for him, it's just love. Sadness is sadness."
It wasn't as if he was doing anything.
It was literally just a feeling he carried inside him — how could that alone be a problem?
Seo Jio still didn't get it.
But when he saw Lee Yeonjae crack a small smile, he figured his answer hadn't been half bad.
"Right. Thanks for answering."
"Did that help you sort things out?"
"Yeah. It did."
And it was no lie — Lee Yeonjae looked far better than he had before.
When Seo Jio smiled in relief, Lee Yeonjae smiled back and said, "By the way, you need to relax your shoulders when you act."
"…Is it showing?"
"Not a lot, but a little? When the tension goes into your shoulders, the muscles around your jaw stiffen up too. Especially right here."
When Lee Yeonjae pressed near Seo Jio's jaw, Seo Jio nodded quickly.
"You're right. It keeps tightening there."
"Mm. You have to release the tension in your shoulders first. That's the root of it."
"What do you do about it?"
"Well, I—"
The two kept talking until the next scene was ready.
Ahn Jinbae, who had been about to walk over to Lee Yeonjae, stopped in his tracks at the sight.
He looks happy.
Ahn Jinbae watched Lee Yeonjae with a smile.
There, before he knew it, were two boys absorbed in their craft, laughing as they talked.