A Plain Comfort
"Actor-nim! Come sit here."
"……What is all this?"
The next evening, I came home from school to find the dining table buried under a sea of papers.
"You remember what you told me yesterday? These are the materials I organized on the subject."
"You put all of this together while I was at school?"
"Well… honestly, I did some of it last night too."
Unbelievable, this man.
When I shot him a sidelong glance, Manager Ahn Jinbae just smiled—asking me to give it one look, that was all—and handed me a lemon tea.
Last night. No, to be precise, it had been the small hours of the morning. I'd come out of the shower intending to go straight to bed, but Manager Ahn Jinbae had been waiting for me.
When he asked, ever so politely, if I could tell him why I hadn't seemed all right on set, I hesitated for a moment—then told him.
That while playing Kim Su-ho earlier, I had nearly reached out to stab comedian Lee Ho-seop in the eye.
Thankfully nothing had come of it, I explained, but the emotion from that instant—when my hand had moved without a shred of hesitation—was still so vivid that I couldn't quite settle down.
Manager Ahn Jinbae listened quietly, and the moment I finished, he patted my back and thanked me for telling him.
He must have been mindful of the bruise on my shoulder, because his hand had gone light as a feather—yet even so, it took me a long moment to realize the pat had happened at all.
So he did something again, behind my back.
He told me it was late and I should get some sleep, and I'd agreed without a second thought—only for him to stay up instead, digging through sources. That was what bothered me.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have brought it up in the morning.
"Please don't do this again. You need to sleep on time. You're the one who told me to go to bed because it was late."
"At your age, Actor-nim, late nights are out of the question. I'm a grown adult, so I'm fine."
"Being a grown adult doesn't mean you're exempt from sleeping."
"Understood, Actor-nim. Now, please start with this."
Manager Ahn Jinbae steered the conversation away gently, the way you'd soothe a child who wouldn't listen.
Excuse me—who is the one not listening here?
It was absurd, but I couldn't quite bring myself to get angry at someone who'd gone to all this trouble, so I swallowed it.
"These are excerpts from an interview with actress Kang So-jung. She says she couldn't sleep the entire time she was filming Psychopath Boarding House, and that she was deeply anxious. Apparently the aftereffects haunted her even after shooting wrapped."
"Her role was… a murderer, wasn't it?"
"Yes. She says her most terrifying moment came while performing a killing—when she found herself genuinely understanding the character. There's a lot in here that resembles what you described yesterday, which is why I included it."
Right. I nodded and pored over the highlighter-marked pages.
The interviews about the aftereffects of playing villains had been distilled into clean, concise summaries. The actors came from every background—different names, genders, ages—but what they said was the same.
"Coming to understand an act that should never, by any ethical measure, be understood—that's what actors who play villains struggle with most, apparently. In other words, what you went through yesterday was completely natural, Actor-nim."
Thanks to his calm, steady explanation, the tangle in my head loosened considerably. I'd been wondering what on earth was wrong with me—when in fact, this was simply the kind of doubt that had to come with playing a villain.
And knowing I wasn't the only one who felt that visceral unease brought a measure of relief. Nothing about this job is ever easy, is it.
After combing through the very last page, I swallowed a sigh and spoke.
"Honestly, even if Kim Su-ho had his reasons, that doesn't mean anyone else needs to know them. Whatever his circumstances, he still took part in the fraud. And it's still true that people got hurt because of him."
"That's right."
"But when I'm immersed in him… even though I don't want to, I keep catching myself making excuses for him. And every time, it makes me sick."
I had already experienced what it was like to come to understand another person, back when I played Yu-hyun.
Like I'd said at the production press conference, it had been a wondrous experience. This performance had been wondrous too—the difference was that this time, disgust was mixed in.
That didn't mean, of course, that playing Kim Su-ho had been miserable.
It was still fun but… how should I put it? Like driving a sports car far beyond my ability to handle. The raw speed was exhilarating, but one lapse in concentration and I'd crash—and that fear never let go.
"Like I said yesterday… the biggest problem is that I tried to stab Ho-seop hyung's eye."
The disgust was my problem to endure. I couldn't very well dig in my heels and refuse to play anything but wholesome characters because I disliked it.
But harming someone else was another matter entirely.
"Even thinking about it now, I believe Kim Su-ho absolutely would have done it. The problem is…"
"…that you are not Kim Su-ho."
I nodded at Manager Ahn Jinbae's words. In the end, the problem was that I'd immersed myself too deeply in the role.
It hadn't even been a few months since I'd agonized over how to immerse myself, and now here was a whole new problem. Well—at least I knew what was wrong. Now it was time to look for a solution.
"Then what should I do going forward? How did these actors deal with it?"
"Unfortunately, that's everything I could find on the internet."
"I see…"
A little disappointing, but at least it had made the cause clear, and for that I was grateful. I was thanking him for putting the materials together, and just beginning to think I should have An-gae run a search for solutions, when—
"Don't worry, Actor-nim. We have something better than the internet, don't we?"
"…? What's that?"
Manager Ahn Jinbae didn't answer right away. He just smiled.
I was puzzling over his expression—he seemed to be waiting for something—when the doorbell chimed.
I'd never once heard it since moving into this house, so all I could do was blink—until Manager Ahn Jinbae opened the door.
The person who stepped in, trailing the full bite of the cold night wind behind him, was no stranger at all.
"How's my genius actor been holding up?"
"Hyung?"
The moment I saw Jung Hyun hyung, an envelope clutched in each hand, my feet moved on their own.
"Didn't you say you had a shoot today?"
"Wrapped a while ago. That's why I'm only now making my housewarming visit. You haven't eaten dinner yet, right? I ordered Chinese food. It'll be here soon."
"Then what are you holding right now?"
"Who shows up to a housewarming empty-handed? A gift, obviously."
I received the paper envelope from Jung Hyun hyung in a daze, then startled at its weight—heavier than I'd expected. I peeked inside and found it stuffed full of books.
When I carefully slid one out, a glossy cover caught the light, and the distinctive paper smell of brand-new books rose up around me.
"……Thank you, hyung."
"Oh, it's nothing. Here, this one's Jinbae's."
"Thank you. Let me take your coat—I'll hang it up for you."
Jung Hyun hyung vanished into the bathroom declaring that he was washing his hands first, and Manager Ahn Jinbae disappeared into the clothes room, saying he'd put the coat in the garment steamer and be right back.
Left standing alone in the living room, I quietly carried the envelope into my own room and began slipping the new books onto the shelf, one by one, beside the book Noh Bi-hyeok had given me.
After a few trips, a shelf that had stood empty was full. As I gently straightened the spines, still crisp with their sharp new edges, my eyes drifted to the black watch on my left wrist.
Come to think of it, this was a gift too.
I'd worn it out of habit for so long that I sometimes forgot I was wearing it at all. I fiddled absently with the watch and stared at the shelf.
I felt strange.
"Exactly. That's the real dilemma. But you can't only take the good-natured roles, can you?"
When I nodded along eagerly, Jung Hyun hyung smiled and spooned chili shrimp onto my plate.
"I think it's an actor's fate. Even when you're not playing a murderer or a criminal, there's an unavoidable, subtle discomfort that comes with embodying a role. There are times I feel like the person I'm playing is devouring me."
"What do you do when that happens, hyung?"
"I try to air myself out, I suppose. Even if it's a bit of a hassle, once a shoot ends I'll take a trip somewhere, or just go for a nice long drive… Honestly, just following the everyday habits I already had is enough to slip out of a role pretty easily."
You remember that ranch we went to a while back? That's half the reason I go there every time a shoot wraps— he added warmly. I found myself recalling the ice cream and the sweep of blue-green scenery from a few months ago. That had been pretty wonderful, actually.
"We mostly act out drama, right? Film or television, a drama always centers on some particular event."
"Yes."
"And once you've been through an event like that—chaotic, disorienting, all-consuming—sometimes the ordinary days afterward feel unbearably plain by comparison."
"Yes. I think I know exactly the feeling you mean."
A film or a drama is like a highlight reel—every scene assembled from the most pivotal moments of a life. If all you perform are those searing stretches and then return home, of course daily life feels flat.
In fact, unlike yesterday, when I'd come back still soaked in Kim Su-ho, today had passed in a strangely slow crawl. I was sunk deep in thought when I felt a soft gaze settle on me.
"But sometimes that plainness becomes a comfort."
"A comfort?"
"Mm. The person I'm playing gets buffeted from every direction, running themselves ragged—while my actual life hasn't changed one bit. That contrast draws a clean, unmistakable line between us. And somehow, it makes me love my ordinary days even more."
As I listened, my fingers found the watch on my wrist without my noticing.
When I couldn't manage any reply, the face across from me broke into a grin.
"Honestly, though, I'm not worried about you. It doesn't seem like that serious a problem."
"Sorry?"
"The eye thing was a genuine scare, sure, but in the end you didn't go through with it. Yesterday was a special circumstance, and normally, even when actors improvise, there's a limit to how far it goes."
"That's true, but…"
"Usually the worry is that someone can't detach from a role even after the performance is over—and from everything I hear, you don't have that problem at all."
Looking at that gentle, smiling face, I nodded slowly. He was right—once I got a grip on myself, separating from a role had never been the hard part.
"Yes. Getting out of a role isn't a problem for me."
"That's a relief."
"That part's fine. It's more that… I'm afraid of crossing the line, the way I nearly did yesterday."
"Ah, but that's a worry you'll carry for your whole life no matter what. Anyone who's never crossed the line has to spend their entire life keeping one eye on it."
Jung Hyun hyung added, and that's not a lesson limited to acting.
I felt like I understood what he meant, and at the same time couldn't understand it at all. While I quietly turned the words over in my head, he laughed as though I were adorable.
"Haha, Yeonjae. You don't need a contingency plan for everything. That's what life is—no matter how well you prepare, the unforeseen still happens."
"……That's true, I suppose."
"Besides, I think you'll navigate it just fine."
His eyes, settled in easy certainty, curved warmly.
"However you slice it, yesterday ended well, didn't it? And even so, here you are, racking your brain so you won't make the same mistake twice. Honestly, that's more than enough for me."
He gave a little shrug of his shoulders, then asked, so—dessert now? with a playful grin. Because of that breezy, untroubled tone, the problems I'd been agonizing over suddenly felt like no big deal at all.
"By the way, I've got nothing scheduled tomorrow. Should we all go out somewhere together?"
"I have school tomorrow, though."
"Ah… then what about Jinbae?"
"I have a meeting scheduled with Team Leader Woo."
"……So I'm the most free person in this house."
At the sight of him muttering that with a sulky face, laughter burst out of me.
And then it occurred to me, out of nowhere—that this moment, too, might one day become a plain kind of comfort.