A Star Is Born
―PWAHAHA! This is amazing, right?! Ah, I wish I could see your face right now—what a waste.
Not a single word of Noh Bihyuk's chattering reached Yeonjae's ears.
His entire attention had been hijacked by a single image Bihyuk had sent him.
It was a screenshot of an article posted five minutes earlier. The headline read:
'An actor who pulls the eye: Lee Yeonjae's bewitching first words.'
……Bewitching what, exactly.
"What is with all these headlines."
And that one had actually been one of the tamer ones.
With every screenshot Noh Bihyuk flicked through one by one, Yeonjae's mouth hung open a little wider. Had the reporters been fed something collectively, or what? A parade of words he'd never once seen in his life crowded the screen. An elusive gaze. An overwhelming presence. Peak-tier visuals…. Peak-tier visuals? What does that even mean.
Another first for the vocabulary archive, apparently.
―Isn't this hilarious?! An hour just flew by taking all these screenshots. I was laughing so hard it never got boring, I swear.
Well, it's not hilarious to me.
Yeonjae had been scrolling through each one with a grave expression until he hit 'a handsomeness that crosses the line' and shut the phone off. He shouldn't have looked.
"This is why you sent me fifty messages? I thought something had actually happened."
―Wait, was Bihyuk actually worried? Sorry, sorry. For not caring about your feelings….
"I'm hanging up."
―Haha! Fine, fine. But you have to read the last article I sent. That one was actually well written.
Yeonjae gave a half-hearted reply to the voice still dripping with laughter and ended the call.
Read it, my foot. Ugh, that call was a waste. Whatever energy I had left is completely drained now.
"Was that a friend of yours?"
"Yes. Bihyuk. …When did you talk to him, though? I heard you told him I liked that book."
"That day you got called back to school by your teacher, remember? I was parked in front of the gate waiting for you when he suddenly came up and knocked on my window."
According to Ahn Jinbae, the moment the window rolled down, Bihyuk had casually propped an arm on the frame and started asking this and that about him. When Jinbae added that the boy had even asked for his phone number, a strangled laugh escaped before Yeonjae could stop it. That's so him. So, so him.
On the way home, he picked up two servings of samgyetang—whole young chicken soup—from a famous restaurant nearby. After filling his stomach with the warm broth and showering, he was on the verge of sleep when another message from Noh Bihyuk lit up his phone.
Haa, this kid is seriously relentless. Even his emoticons are just like him.
He suddenly remembered something Park Ha-eun once said: "His eyes have gone. It's easier to just do what he wants."
Fine. Check it fast, then sleep.
Yeonjae swallowed a sigh and tapped the link Noh Bihyuk had sent last.
[COLUMN] Are stars born, not made? My impressions upon seeing the talk of the town, Lee Yeonjae, for the first time
"Star"—a word that means a celestial body. We have encountered and loved countless stars in our time. The moments of their birth are all wildly different. Some actors spend decades in obscurity before a single performance wins them recognition; some idols, barely out of childhood, bend whole crowds to their will with a stage command that borders on domination. And it isn't only entertainers—athletes, influencers—start listing the 'shining' ones and the list never ends.
Recently, one figure became the center of a controversy over whether the title of star had been rightfully conferred: the actor Lee Yeonjae (12), who became a hot topic as an extra more eye-catching than the lead in Tail: Tracing the Traces. Word had it that he filmed the extra scenes through a chance casting, then abruptly announced his debut as the child actor in MBN's highly anticipated drama The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree. Not long after came the news that he had been signed to Wooyeon Entertainment, the agency of actor Lee Jeonghyeon. To many, it was stitched together far too neatly to call coincidence—more like a scenario. This writer went today to meet, in person, the boy surrounded by question marks.
From his very entrance, he was anything but ordinary. Called to the stage, the attitude he displayed was a composure no rookie actor could hope to find. The unhurried gaze meeting the cameras, the unself-conscious ease of his bearing. That confidence carried straight into the interview. The unruffled expression no matter what question arrived, and the immaculately composed smile, stirred a strange sense of déjà vu—the very feeling we have long since learned from so many stars before him.
To be frank, this occasion had not carried nearly enough weight to bury or confirm his rumors. Neither the character reveal video nor the briefly edited clips offered a single scene where his acting could be properly judged. Kim Minseok, the main PD of The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree, stated only that "the shoot went so smoothly it was hard to believe it was his first time acting," yet one wonders—if such a scene truly existed, would they not have shown even a glimpse of it?
But regardless of those doubts, this writer came away with one certainty. Whether it was a masterfully written scenario or pure coincidence, the fact remains: a star has been born. Yes—a star has been born. And a genuine one at that. Our eyes were stolen by Lee Yeonjae as he listened to the questions; our focus was stolen by Lee Yeonjae as he answered, slowly and deliberately. Even remarks of no consequence whatsoever left us speechless the moment they left his mouth.
His charm overflowed so relentlessly that even those of us who live at a star's side found ourselves unsettled. Today, this writer glimpsed someone's innate talent. Whether the scenario is real or fabricated no longer matters. Everyone in that room must have felt that a star was born. Some will no doubt read this column as exaggeration or light bluster. I ask only this: on the day episode one airs, verify my words for yourselves.
Column/Contributed by: Kim Yeon-doo, PTN
"Who even is this? Kim Yeon-doo? Never heard the name."
"New hire, I think. That tone of hers is PTN house style to the letter. Can't have been out of training for long."
"This is the first time since I joined that PTN has run anything like this…. Ugh, I can't adjust to this."
The employees of the Wooyeon Entertainment PR team were buzzing.
Lee Yeonjae, their most recent signing, was the person the PR team had been agonizing over more than anyone. For one thing, CEO Jang Wooyeon had personally gotten involved—and Lee Jeonghyeon had once shown up at the office arms laden with coffee and desserts, begging them to take good care of his Yeonjae.
"How's the reaction?"
"Split straight down the middle. Some say he looks promising, some say she got paid to write it."
The 'Lee Yeonjae debate,' which had ignited with a cunningly engineered post, had been dying down of late.
And it was PTN's column that had set the fading embers roaring back into flame. The outlet was famous—famous to the point of pity—for publishing articles of absolute, glacial coldness about celebrities. Being a newspaper household even among ordinary readers, it drew all the more attention.
As the column spread across every social platform and community in a matter of minutes, buzz volume ballooned beyond all comparison with the artificial push Wooyeon had staged.
Summarizing the reactions, people divided into two camps: the 'if even PTN says this, the kid must genuinely have something' camp, and the 'if even PTN took money, he must have one seriously powerful backer' camp.
In truth, Wooyeon Entertainment had never once contacted PTN—which made the whole situation doubly baffling.
"At least the part about PD Kim vouching for him at the official audition got buried, at least."
"That was meaningless to begin with. Though the haters will probably just say the PD was paid off too?"
To the employee's worried tone came an easy, unhurried reply. It was Team Leader Min, head of the entire PR operation.
"My, my. Twenty-plus years in this business and this is the first time I've ever seen a case like this."
Team Leader Min let out a deflating wheeze of a laugh. A place packed with top-tier actors naturally attracted top-tier staff, and they had worked the campaign meticulously on the CEO's direct orders, judging the effect fairly good. Never had they imagined a dead ember would catch fire like this. Who'd have thought PTN—not even a partner company—would go write its own article?
With this much, does he actually have a real backer?
No one alive knew better than Team Leader Min that he didn't. Her disbelief had simply reached that point.
Do people have any idea how hard it is to launch a celebrity?
Stunning beauties and stunning faces failed to rise for no reason at all—that was this industry. You could flood the press with articles, farm community posts, hold marketing meetings until you dropped; the ones fated not to rise would not rise if their lives depended on it. Who could have guessed that a few days of playing with words would turn into an issue this hot?
People were picking sides and going to war over a single actor not even in middle school yet, whose entire résumé consisted of one extra appearance. There were those crying, "Handsome male talent is a scarce resource in this country—why are we crushing the kid?"; those scoffing, "An actor's job is to act. Does a pretty face settle it? If so, why not just declare Lee Yeonjae the future of the Republic of Korea and be done with it"; and still others arguing, "Nothing's even aired yet—declaring he can't act is the real baseless hype here."
At this point, wasn't Lee Yeonjae the one being used?
The person at the center of it all, meanwhile, thought absolutely nothing, while social media and the forums turned themselves inside out. And no wonder—
"But how does a kid even look like that? What's he planning to do when he grows up?"
"I don't think he'll even hit that cursed seventeen-year-old awkward phase."
The reactions burned hotter than during the planned campaign, yet the overall atmosphere was far more favorable. The reason was simple: the photos the reporters had snapped like mad at the production announcement were, frankly, works of art. The official profile photos uploaded to the portal sites right on cue rode the wave too.
Team Leader Min studied the Lee Yeonjae floating on her employee's laptop screen. A photo of a young boy gazing quietly into the camera.
"……He really is absurdly good-looking."
"Right? A face like that doesn't even pick favorites—it transcends taste. Everyone around me is already begging me to get his autograph."
Buoyed by her own agreement, the employee's shoulders started bouncing. In fairness, anyone with no interest in the entertainment world didn't know the behind-the-scenes maneuvering at all—they'd simply marveled at the photos that had suddenly begun circulating on social media. The discourse was sliding toward 'Wait, a kid this handsome exists? Oh, is he the yellow hat one? Drama's coming out soon, right?' territory.
The boy had caught the wave of his life.
"Handsome really is everything…."
Team Leader Min nodded along to another employee's murmur. Oh, absolutely. In this country, handsome and pretty is everything. The dilemma, of course, was that handsome alone guaranteed nothing. Looking at it that way, maybe stars really are born.
"Though all this chaos is outside our plan, isn't it?"
"If things stay like this, people will talk no matter how well he acts."
As the employees whispered with faces clouded by unease, Team Leader Min shook her head firmly.
"The CEO told us not to worry about that part, remember. We do our share, that's it. Now! Everyone back to work, come on."
When Team Leader Min gave a light round of applause, the employees who had gathered to chat scattered back to their desks.
Sinking comfortably into her chair, she looked again at Lee Yeonjae's profile photo. Strange—my eyes keep drifting to it. It's not just the face, I don't think.
Is he really that good at acting?
Team Leader Min pictured the CEO's face, so full of conviction, and shrugged. We're salaried workers—when the boss says jump, we jump. Just do the job.
……Still, it did make her curious.
And then came the fateful Wednesday: episode one of The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree aired.
A woman who had, so to speak, been 'converted into a fan' of Lee Yeonjae by Tail: Tracing the Traces was waiting for the broadcast. She had shoved her younger brother—protesting that he had something to watch—clean out of the living room without a shred of mercy.
Even accounting for his status as a child supporting role, Lee Yeonjae's screen time in the teaser had been criminally short.
'If you're that curious, watch the live broadcast ^^'—she could picture the words so vividly it hurt. Lowering the opacity like that—do you call that fair?!
When was the last time I watched a drama live like this?
Try to disappoint me, I dare you. The woman's eyes gleamed bright.
And sixty minutes later, tears were streaming down her face in sheets.
"YEONJAE!!! From this day forward, I am your MOTHER!!!!!"
The moment she confirmed her instincts had not misled her, she felt the euphoria only the most devout otaku among us can ever know.