Thank You, Seventeen Times Over
"How is my baby this cute, I simply cannot cope...."
The woman who served as president of the fan club let out a deep sigh.
She was a veteran of fandom — famous idols, actors, and at one point even a two-dimensional character among her list of loves. She had organized support campaigns and birthday cafes with her own hands, yet she had never once felt this satisfied. The only thought filling her head was the overwhelming urge to kidnap this adorable, precious baby deer on the spot.
Gift verification posts unlike anything anyone had seen before turned the entire fandom upside down. Screenshots spread to every community imaginable, and with comments flooding in in real time, the frenzy only kept swelling.
"Ah, I should have spent more money. The bouquet should have been bigger...."
The woman stared at the photo posted on Wooyeon Entertainment's official social media with enough intensity to burn a hole through the screen. Yeonjae, holding a bouquet of oxypetalums prepared to match the sky-blue theme, was impossibly cute.
The point that hooked everyone was the gap — a boy beaming as brightly as Bambi in the photos had written a post that stiff. And above all, out of twenty-eight photos, there wasn't a single ordinary selfie among them. The fact that he had focused solely on "verifying the gifts" was unbearably lovable.
What would he be like in person? Stiff like his writing? Or maybe, surprisingly, full of aegyo? No meeting between him and his fans had ever come together, so all she could do was speculate. She had already picked out the outfit she'd wear to a fansign, but the woman forced herself to focus. What mattered right now wasn't a fansign — it was Yeonjae's next project.
Judging by the momentum, a lead role was entirely within reach. The problem was his age. An awkwardly young age for a leading man. There couldn't be many scripts in Korea built around an actor who was only just becoming a middle schooler.
Maybe indie films would be the way to go? Or, child actor or not, perhaps this time the young version of the protagonist? She was aware she had waded in far too deep — but overthinking things to death was simply the natural state of any fan, that particular species of creature.
The woman, busy drafting the perfect plan that would place an Oscar in Lee Yeonjae's arms, let out a shriek the moment she checked the next article.
"Hello, Director."
I had said I would arrive as early as possible, but someone was already at the meeting venue when I got there. When I bowed at the waist in greeting, Director Yoon rushed over in a fluster and straightened me back up.
"Whoa, just your head. Just bow your head. Anyone watching would think I'm bullying you."
He was sweating buckets, his face a picture of panic, which struck me as odd — but I agreed anyway. Every time the Director hesitantly struck up a conversation with me, the assistant director who'd come along kept shooting him these strange sidelong glances.
"Director, why are you fumbling around like that? You look like a man atoning for his sins."
"There are things you don't know, kid...."
While the two of them whispered back and forth, the others began arriving one by one. This meeting was a session to hammer out the various terms of the contract. The nerves I'd walked in with proved unnecessary; things moved along without a hitch.
Perhaps because the script had sat in a drawer for years after it was finished, unable to find the right actor, Director Yoon flatly declared that if I wasn't in it, he wouldn't make this film at all. His tone was so forceful that the production company CEO and the rest of the room simply fell in line with nods of approval. When Team Leader Woo Hyunwoo of Team 1 mentioned he'd booked a Japanese restaurant and suggested we move the party there, the CEO, who seemed to be on friendly terms with him, rose from his seat with a booming laugh.
And so, at the Japanese restaurant, the drinking began in earnest.
"Hyung, please stop drinking. What are you doing matching him glass for glass like that?"
"It's quite all right. Don't worry about me, Actor-nim."
"I'm saying this precisely because you don't look all right at all."
The production company CEO drank like a hippo at a watering hole. Team Leader Woo, apparently a member of the same species, clinked glasses with a perfectly composed face, but Manager Ahn Jinbae had already turned red from head to toe. When he kept insisting he was fine, I pushed him out the door and told him to go get some fresh air.
Whereupon Director Yoon wriggled and squirmed his way into the empty seat beside me. Drunk off his face, as expected. Everybody, please just stop....
"The hedgehog is cute.... Is it yours?"
He was mumbling at the back of the phone case Noh Bihyuk had given me as a gift. I thought to myself: yep, he's completely lost it.
"Yes. It was a gift."
"That's nice.... I have a cat... and I think mine's cuter.... He's ugly."
"……."
I was still years away from being old enough to drink legally, and already a healthy dose of vigilance was setting in. I really must only ever drink as much as I can handle.
I was giving vague, half-hearted answers to words I could barely make out when Director Yoon, who had been silent for a long while, murmured:
"Um... I'm sorry. I've been doing a lot of reflecting...."
The apology came so out of nowhere that for a moment I wondered what on earth he was talking about.
"That was the first time I'd ever heard anything like it... it snapped me wide awake. Every time we did a test, everyone just kept telling me it was fine...."
"……."
"I'm sorry if I hurt you. Going forward... honestly, I'll probably slip up a few more times, but I'll try. I won't ask about your family carelessly ever again...."
The words came slowly, but they were clearer than I'd expected. When I lifted my head to study him, he averted his eyes. There he goes again. Acting. I nearly clicked my tongue, thinking that at this rate the man should be an actor, not a director.
"I didn't know, either, Director."
"Mm...."
"What you said that day hit me harder than you'd think."
The body slumped in drunken languor flinched, just barely. I looked away from the face buried in his deeply bowed head and went on.
"It's the truth, after all. I figured there was no reason to feel bad about stating facts."
Because it was true that my biological parents had abandoned me. It seemed stranger to me to feel hurt when someone was simply talking about facts.
But only after I'd snapped at Manager Ahn Jinbae did I belatedly come to understand — that Director Yoon's smiling remarks, and all those moments I'd had to answer without so much as blinking, had not been fine at all. So the moment my tangled head finally cleared, I went to Manager Ahn's room.
'Actually, hyung, I was irritated with you that day. It felt like you were deliberately not talking properly, like you were getting back at me.'
'I see.'
'But... it wasn't payback, was it. I was already irritated to begin with, so that's just how it felt.'
I had been annoyed. At Director Yoon, for prying into my family history when we weren't even close. But what annoyed me most of all was myself — myself, who couldn't even recognize my own feelings in time and went off to vent them somewhere else entirely. So this is what I said to him:
'Hyung. Thank you for taking my temper that day.'
Truthfully I'd wanted to apologize, too, for venting at the wrong person — but I'd already said that once, so I chose my words with care. Fortunately it wasn't the wrong answer; the face that looked up at me was brimming with a smile. He came out with absolute nonsense, too — that he was actually glad I'd vented at him, that he'd have been hurt if I'd done it to anyone else.
What a genuinely strange person.
"I was truly rude to you. I'm sorry...."
"It's all right now. Honestly, I'm grateful, too. Because of that day, I learned something important."
I knew better now. Burying things, or pretending not to see them, wasn't the answer. Some emotions can only be untangled by colliding head-on like that — even if the process that gets you there isn't a pleasant one.
I didn't say anything more, but my expression must have looked steady enough, because Director Yoon studied me for a moment before asking carefully:
"Um... I'm really, really sorry, but could I ask one last thing?"
"If the question is 'do you resent your parents,' then seriously, don't."
"......How could you not?"
He had a point. If I were any other kid, resentment probably would have been the norm. It was just that I knew far too much to feel that way. As long as I knew about the Misfortune Factor, I couldn't very well play the part of a perfect victim.
"I just don't want to."
In the end, that was all the answer I had to give.
"Unconsciously, I might. I can't rule that out."
"……."
"But I'm going to choose to believe I don't. I simply don't want to."
The moment I finished speaking, a deep shadow fell across the face in front of me. He'd apparently forgotten he was supposed to be drunk; lost in thought, he sat utterly still, and I turned my gaze toward the door instead. Manager Ahn Jinbae, hovering by the wall, too wary of the mood to come sit beside me — the sight wrung a laugh out of me.
It was a pleasant ending, in more ways than one. And a pleasant beginning, too.
"In any case, thank you for apologizing, Director."
"Huh? Ah, yes."
"Let's make a wonderful film together."
Smiling, I lifted my glass of water, and Director Yoon, who had been watching me in silence, broke into a grin and raised his own. The clear, crisp chime of the glasses meeting rang out around us, sweet as anything.