The Paper Door
“Huh? Yes, he’s my friend.”
Well, technically speaking, he was the one who trailed after me, but a classmate was a friend either way.
I’d shot him a puzzled look at the out-of-nowhere question, only to find actor Lee Jeonghyeon wearing exactly the same expression I had.
“No, wait… what you’re talking about isn’t really a friend, how do I even put this.”
He hesitated for a long while, head cocked, before finally speaking.
“It’s like… apologizing for phoning your celebrity friend during a company dinner because your department head told you to?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
What on earth did that mean? When I stared at him in disbelief, he looked like he didn’t understand himself.
The countless blinks of his eyes betrayed how tangled his thoughts were. After a moment of frowning, actor Lee Jeonghyeon shook his head.
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it too much. If your friend’s dream is to be an actor, then sure, he might bring it up or steer the conversation that way. You didn’t ask him to, and it’s not like Bihyuk was being rude about it. If he’d hated the idea, he wouldn’t have told him to come in the first place.”
Only when I saw him smile reassuringly did I finally relax.
After parting ways with actor Lee Jeonghyeon, I slipped inside the orphanage and, thankfully, found the hallway empty of children. Certain that they’d come bounding out at any second demanding to hear about the audition, I scurried to my room.
“Yeonjae, aren’t you having dinner?”
“Oh, I ate way too much at lunch, so I think I’ll skip it. Good night!”
The rice cakes still felt packed all the way up to my throat, so I passed on dinner and climbed into bed early. Lying under the covers in the dark room, I could hear the kids raucously chattering on the other side of the wall.
Soon I would be going to meet someone just that loud.
To fall asleep, I set sheep loose in the pasture of my mind.
“And that settles the child roles. Han Seyeong as Nabi, Seong Ijun as Hyowon, Lee Yeonjae as Yuhyeon. No objections, everyone?”
At Director Kim’s words, the assembled crowd chimed in with a harmonious round of “Yes.”
The audition might have been over, but the hell was only just beginning. Pre-production was entirely off the table, so they could consider themselves sleepless for the next six months. Not a single person gathered here was unaware of that fact, which was why the mood was anything but bright.
“Team Leader, who’s Lee Yeonjae? I’ve heard of Han Seyeong and Seong Ijun, but.”
“You know, that kid. The one from Tail.”
“Oh. Whoa, the Yellow Hat kid? My friend is obsessed with him. I thought he wasn’t an actor—apparently he can act, huh.”
“Would be a waste to let that face go to rot, honestly. But he’s still not with any agency?”
“Huh? Lee Yeonjae doesn’t have an agency?”
A writer who’d been eavesdropping on the broadcasters’ whispers cut into the conversation. Despite the abrupt intrusion, the staffer, who had worked with this writer many times before, answered without missing a beat.
“Right. The paperwork came in through Wooyeon, but he’s not officially signed to them. Word is, actor Lee Jeonghyeon is Wooyeon, you know? His manager apparently submitted the kid separately.”
“Lee Jeonghyeon? Wow, are the two of them close? I’d love it if he made a cameo in our drama.”
“Have the kid ask him sometime, why not. Though would he even do it? Someone at Lee Jeonghyeon’s level charges just for picking up the phone. Friends or not.”
“Oh, right—Wooyeon’s people are seriously expensive. When I was working on that variety show, I called them like two hundred times, and the son of a—, they never read a single email.”
One person after another piled on, and before anyone noticed, the conversation had begun to overheat. As unrefined language scattered through the air, Director Kim hurried to wrap things up.
“Whoa whoa, everyone, calm down. You all know what happens if this becomes a habit, right? Watch your mouths in general, people.”
At Director Kim’s clowning, the staff laughed and mimed zipping their lips shut, then rose from their seats one by one. Director Kim shook his head at the writer whose face practically had pathetic written across it.
Word was these people cursed out even the king Himself when no one was watching—why on earth would they hold back from badmouthing celebrities, who were merely human? Fifteen-plus years in this business had taught him one thing: the people who trash-talked actors the most weren’t keyboard warriors. They were broadcast station employees.
“Writer Han, keep writing and writing until the table read. I can trust you on that, right?”
“You bet? You just focus on doing your own job well.”
Writer Han snorted and was the last to leave the room. Left alone, Director Kim rolled a ballpoint pen around halfheartedly, and when the stubborn thought refused to leave, he finally thumped his forehead down on the desk.
Ugh, a Lee Jeonghyeon cameo would be a monster hit….
In the end, he, too, was nothing more than a broadcast station employee.
“Hello?”
—Honestly, I’d rather have told you this in person than over the phone. Unfortunately, I’m in Florence right now.
“Florence? No, wait—that’s not the point… did I really get in?”
—Haha, of course. I’ve already told you three times, haven’t I? They don’t call me a genius actor for nothing.
I was so shocked—so genuinely shocked—that the feeling simply wouldn’t translate into words. Actor Lee Jeonghyeon’s voice hummed buzzily through the receiver, while my own responses sounded, even to me, disturbingly level.
And so I received my explanation—about the table read schedule, about how the shoot would unfold overall. But if this was what international calls were supposed to be like, then not a word of it was reaching my ears.
I’d just kept droning out a robotic “Yes, yes” on autopilot, until actor Lee Jeonghyeon finally noticed something was off. Laughing, he told me to hurry up and grow, and that he’d explain everything in detail once he was back in Korea—then hung up.
Even after the call ended, I sat on the bed in a daze. I was absently fiddling with the frayed hem of my blanket when I suddenly bolted upright.
I had to tell the Director first. What about school? Filming was in July, so it should finish within summer break, right? I’d heard child actors didn’t get that many scenes, and on top of that I was only a supporting role, so mine would be even fewer. In that case, maybe I wouldn’t even need to tell my teacher.
Lost in this and that, I flung the door open—then, seeing the pitch-black hallway with not a single light on, finally came to my senses.
……Why was I rushing like this? Telling them tomorrow would have been plenty.
I stumbled back to bed. Sleep first. Priorities.
One sheep… two sheep… three sheep….
Only after counting my way to a hundred and seventy-six sheep did I grudgingly admit it to myself: I was worked up right now. My eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling, and I still felt unmoored. Wow. I actually got the part.
Maybe because I’d never once imagined what would come after the audition, now that I’d actually passed, the vague vertigo of setting foot in an unknown world for the first time dwarfed any pure joy I might have felt.
So now I was really going to act? Like actor Lee Jeonghyeon? …Me?
Just like that, I’d be acting?
How was this any different from heading into space with nothing but my bare body, no equipment at all?
They said that if you went out into space without a suit, you’d suffocate and die—longest anyone lasted was a mere two minutes, apparently. Could I hold out for twenty seconds?
Suddenly, the air around me felt insufficient.
I scrambled up and yanked the door open, but the hallway was still dark. My heart began pounding abnormally fast, fast enough to be alarming.
……Pull yourself together.
I tried to breathe slowly. It’s fine, it’s nothing. Just a mild panic response from being too surprised. What was it they said to do when this happened?
A paper bag. Right, breathe into a paper bag—like there’d be one in this room.
Stay calm. What mattered most was acting as calmly as possible.
I deliberately made my breathing loud, drawing air in and pushing it out with force. But no matter how diligently I made the sounds, the racing pulse refused to settle back down.
“Hoo.”
The pounding was too fast; I couldn’t bear it. Somewhere near my ear came the sound of someone panting for breath. Was that… was that me, right now?
No, seriously? I was losing my composure over this?
Nobody knew better than I did that this was nothing to panic over. And yet my breathing would not do as I told it. Even the thought that I needed to get a grip grew hazy, dissolving into the blurring edges of my vision.
Gripped by the premonition that something was about to collapse inside me, I clenched my jaw and squeezed my hand into a fist.
It’s okay.
I felt the flat edge of my nails bite into my palm, and when I pressed harder still, a dull ache spread outward from the pressure. It was fine. No one would notice something on this level anyway.
The nails that the court physicians always kept neatly trimmed could never, no matter how hard I pressed, manage to draw blood.
…? Why am I thinking about physicians.
Something was off, but was that because my breath was running short? I couldn’t tell what. My throat seized up entirely, and once more I dug my clenched fist tighter.
The dragon robe that the royal craftsman had stitched for the Crown Prince, thread by careful thread, fit him perfectly—because it swallowed up most of young Yuhyeon’s hands.
And so, no matter how hard he squeezed his fist, no one could ever catch him doing it. It was a precisely chosen habit, and far too trivial a thing to honor with a grand name like self-destruction.
The tailored robe was neither too small nor too large, and yet to Yuhyeon it always felt enormous. A sinister sense of being swallowed whole by the fabric. A dizzying fear that the slightest movement would send him toppling over.
It was yet another expression of the power Yuhyeon had known all his life. Paralyzed by that pressure, unable to move freely, yet never allowed to properly fall—his desperate, thrashing effort to stay upright existed for the Queen alone.
‘You do know, don’t you, my Crown Prince? You are the one and only, a being of singular nobility—beyond any comparison to those lowly concubines.’
‘Yes, Mother… sob.’
‘Then you must dry those tears at once.’
‘Hhic… yes….’
‘Come now. If not for your own sake, then for mine, your mother’s.’
Ah, how exhausting.
The memory of his mother’s stiff face, her hand gripping his and squeezing, made his throat go dry at once.
‘Nabi….’
He missed Nabi. Those transparent, clear eyes; the innocence of knowing nothing at all. Summoning the image of her hair, braided neatly into a single plait, the violent pounding in his chest slowly quieted.
It was an indescribable steadiness, ordained as if by some revelation. The tension drained from his shoulders, and the joints that had been locked into rigid angles went loose. The brows that had been drawn up fiercely softened into gentle lines, and the glint of a cornered, terrified beast vanished from his eyes.
Picturing the girl smiling beautifully, blossoms blooming on her cheeks, Yuhyeon slowly opened his eyes.
The moment these eyes opened, he would go at once to wherever Nabi was—
And what appeared before mine was not a flimsy paper door of oiled hanji, but a sturdy wooden door.
For an instant I wondered where I was, and then a sharp sting shot through me and everything went blindingly white.
“Oh my, Yeonjae. You’re not asleep?”
An unfamiliar young woman’s voice—no, actually, it was Teacher Lee Sihyun, rushing over with a startled expression.
“Oh dear! Are you sick somewhere? You’re soaked in sweat—what on earth…, but you don’t have a fever.”
Worry spread rapidly across Teacher Lee Sihyun’s face. When her cool hand wiped my forehead, only then did I register the cold sweat that had drenched my back.
Everything felt unreal, so even with her waiting anxiously before me, my lips opened sluggishly.
“…I’m not sick. I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Really?”
Suspicious eyes swept carefully over every inch of my face. My mind was a little foggy, but I was definitely far better than before. Nodding instinctively, I answered as clearly as I could manage.
“I’m really fine. Nothing hurts.”
“…All right. But if you do feel sick, you have to tell me. No hiding it, promise?”
“Yes, I promise. Don’t worry.”
Facing those eyes shimmering with concern, I managed a faint smile. Only after watching Teacher Lee Sihyun turn away with an uneasy expression and disappear down the end of the hallway did I quietly close the door.
“Wow….”
Then my legs gave out and I sank to the floor.
What had that just been? I hadn’t even been trying to get into character, yet that was the first time I’d ever slipped into a role so seamlessly. Thanks to it, my hyperventilation—which could have spiraled much worse—had passed without incident.
So this is how you use it.
Feeling my heartbeat lying calm and settled, as if it had never once raced, I slowly opened my hand.
Crescent moon nail marks met my eyes—ferociously dark in color, and yet impossibly faint.
You weren’t just some man out of his mind, after all.
I’d thought you were simply an addict obsessed with one woman. I felt a little sorry.