Ten Signatures
Flipped it on with zero expectations and an hour just vanished, I'm not even kidding (┬┬﹏┬┬)
Woke up this morning still thinking about it, so I went straight into a rewatch… the afterglow is unreal…
The child actors can all actually act. I think the adults come in from episode 2 — kind of wish the kids stuck around a little longer, tbh (┬┬﹏┬┬)
The hate posts are disappearing in real time. If I'd trashed him like that and then watched yesterday's episode, I'd want to crawl into a hole…
First, full disclosure before I write anything: the OP is a third-year acting major.
I'd been binging dramas for an assignment, and yesterday's episode of The Butterfly Flower left me so shaken I had to make this post.
As the title says, the reason I'm shaken is Lee Yeonjae — the child actor better known as the Yellow Hat Kid.
(Tail_smile_clip1)
(Tail_smile_clip2_slowmo)
(Tail_smile_clip3_eyes)
Let's start with the Tail smile.
You can see his eyelashes begin to tremble first, and then the corners of his mouth lift into an easy, comfortable curve.
But here's where you need to look at his eyes. His jaw and the muscles around his mouth have gone slack — and yet his eyes are actually tightening. You see that?
Which means the character Lee Yeonjae played in that scene was "a boy for whom smiling is a habit."
When the man abruptly snaps at him, the kid shrinks back — but as an ingrained reflex, he keeps deploying smiles to smooth the air over. That trait is baked right into the performance.
He's smiling brightly, but he never takes his eyes off the other person, which gives the whole thing an intensely alert, perceptive quality.
(Butterfly_smile_clip1)
(Butterfly_smile_clip2_slowmo)
(Butterfly_smile_clip3_eyes)
This is the gif from yesterday's broadcast — Yu Hyeon smiling with pure, unguarded joy. Do you see the difference? I've watched it dozens of times and I'm still in awe.
Unless you're changing makeup or camera angles, it is extremely difficult to make the same person's smile look different.
And yet from his smile in The Butterfly Flower alone, anyone can tell that this is a completely different person from the boy in Tail.
Look closely at the eyes and something feels subtly off. Less natural than the Tail smile, right? That's because the muscles around his eyes are bunched together.
Which is how you instantly understand: this person has never once smiled like this before in his life.
And yet that gaze is brimming over with affection. The clumsy expression, combined with his breathing and delivery, creates "a boy smiling for the first time in front of the person he loves."
(omitted)
To be honest with you all, there was a moment when I heard Lee Yeonjae had joined Wooyeon Entertainment and had a full-on identity crisis.
I thought, of course a pretty face waltzes into a place like that.
But after watching yesterday's episode, I realized — that was just my inferiority complex talking…
Just from this comparison, you can see crystal clear how much that kid must have practiced.
Unless he's a genuine born genius, a performance like that can only come from repeating and analyzing the same thing over and over, endlessly.
A few days ago there were so many posts trashing Lee Yeonjae, and I'll admit I'd badmouthed him in my head too — that's what's pricking my conscience enough to write all this.
I hope he keeps showing us even better acting. I honestly think he's the most promising young actor in the game right now.
The premiere of The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree posted an average viewership rating of 8.7 percent, with episode two climbing to 11.6.
Measured by its instantaneous peak, the second episode had broken past the 13 percent mark.
Setting aside weekend serials with their fixed, loyal audiences, the prevailing trend was that a drama rarely managed to cross 10 percent no matter how spectacular its reception.
The spread of OTT streaming services was the biggest reason for that — and here lay the remarkable part: The Butterfly Flower was uploaded to its contracted streaming platform a single day after broadcast.
In other words, these insane numbers had been posted by a show with absolutely no reason for anyone to watch it live.
It stood shoulder to shoulder with Tail: Tracing the Traces — the most talked-about show of the year, the one nothing had managed to challenge since.
And behind that achievement stood Lee Yeonjae.
Of that, there was no one in the country positioned to argue.
He had left viewers staring slack-jawed at their screens with the now-legendary line — "I'm so glad you exist." — instantly imprinting himself as the show's hottest topic of conversation.
Before that resonance could even fade, the scene revealed in the episode two preview delivered a second shock.
Yu Hyeon, weeping among flowers of every color — the shot was breathtaking in its own right.
The moment the credits rolled, social media and the community forums caught fire, and articles poured in like a tide with no one even needing to write them.
The PTN post that had once gushed about the birth of a new star was flooded to the brim with a single comment: "Just here on pilgrimage to holy ground."
Even on the largest video platforms at home and abroad, videos with Lee Yeonjae's face as the thumbnail sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain.
[18 Things We Never Knew About Lee Yeonjae]
[The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree "I'm so glad you exist" — 1-Hour Loop]
[⌈Playlist⌋ You Were My First Love.]
Judging by screen time alone, his role hardly qualified as a lead — but its impact far exceeded one.
The comments still came, of course: the ones sneering that a face like that must have lived an easy life.
But the number of people chiming in to agree had shrunk to roughly the amount of squid you actually get in a squid rice bowl at a cheap gimbap shop. Which is to say: practically none.
The people thrown into the greatest panic by this firestorm, more than anyone else, were the production team of The Butterfly Flower.
According to the original plan, Lee Yeonjae was to wrap up early in episode four and not appear again for the remainder of the series.
And the production team was not foolish enough to cling to that plan in the face of the ratings.
They scrapped the already-completed edit and went back to work, and with a far more meticulous cut, they performed the small miracle of stretching Lee Yeonjae's screen time all the way to the middle of episode six.
For a supporting child actor in a fourteen-episode series, it was a startlingly meaty amount of screen time.
As Yu Hyeon raised his voice, so consumed by rage that he did not even realize he was angry—
—and as Yu Hyeon forced his bitterness down his throat and spoke, viewers fell headlong into him.
With every episode that aired, Yu Hyeon's charm, gilded by Lee Yeonjae's acting, climbed without end.
And Kim Seokjun, who picked up the baton directly afterward, earned his own share of acclaim.
His gaze had once been called too heavy for a romance drama lead — but this time, the verdict was that his acting had found its waterline.
Han Seyeong, Seong Ijun, Lee Seonghye, and Jang Inho all found themselves swept up in a wave of attention as well.
Cast, director, writer, network, investors — not a single soul involved was without a happy smile on their face these days.
And amid all of it, the one drawing the hottest attention of all — Lee Yeonjae — was making a deeply troubled face.
"Sorry to bother you, but could I get an autograph?"
"I don't really have an autograph. Is just my name okay?"
"Yep! Right here works! Make it ten copies!"
"……"
Barely managing to hide my bewilderment, I opened the notebook some nameless kid held out to me.
The moment I wrote my name ten times and handed it back, he hopped in place with a face lit up like a festival and vanished in a blink.
Why would anyone need ten of them, I muttered, and Noh Bihyeo answered, "Obviously he's planning to sell them online."
"…People would actually buy that?"
"People who like you that much would. Krehh — see, a genius actor really is built different~, right?"
Noh Bihyeo slung his arm around my shoulder right on schedule, snickering.
On profile photo day, the photographer had mentioned that my left shoulder sat a little lower than my right. Mystery solved. It was this guy's fault.
"Yeonjae, could you come by the staff office for a minute?"
I was strolling down the hallway still half-shackled to him, too lazy to shake him off, when my homeroom teacher called me over.
Only then did Noh Bihyeo peel away, and I followed the teacher, leaving him behind.
The moment I stepped into the staff office, I felt hot gazes glomming onto my face from every direction.
That, lately, was the thing I'd been working hardest to get used to.
I didn't realize even the teachers would stare.
Episode six of The Butterfly Flower on the Zelkova Tree had aired yesterday.
I wasn't even in it anymore, and still the kids' stares only grew sharper by the day.
Granted, the orphanage teachers had been in an uproar too.
I'd visited over the weekend, and Teacher Lee Sihyun had looked at me with an awkwardness I couldn't quite place.
She didn't come anywhere near me. She just stood off at a distance.
Is she feeling distant from me again? Fair enough, I was thinking quietly to myself when the other teachers filled me in.
Since yesterday, apparently, they'd all been fussing and gushing that they could now "meet Yu Hyeon." They'd watched him on screen, and now the real thing was standing in front of them — too much to believe, hence the staring.
My expression management failed me entirely. I didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.
Hurry up and ask him for an autograph before it's too late, the teachers teased her mercilessly.
When I quietly handed a sheet of paper with my name written on it to a flustered, red-faced Teacher Lee Sihyun, she gathered it up with her whole face burning.
"Don't forget to submit that paperwork we talked about last time. Understood?"
"Yes, I'll take care of it."
My homeroom teacher explained the arts high school application forms all over again — the ones I'd already heard about in full.
Why the repeat? I wondered, but I just nodded along obediently, and the teacher hesitated for a long moment, wearing the expression of someone with something still left unsaid.
"Um, Yeonjae…"
"Yes?"
"Could you sign this for me?"
"……"
What is wrong with everybody.