Not in the Final Cut
The scene to be shot that evening was the climax that came in the final act of the film.
Shooting everything in the story's chronological order would have made immersion easier, of course, but the reality was that the production schedule made it impossible.
It was a cut that demanded we leap over the entire plot and perform the peak of the story outright, so there was no way around being tense.
Nam Inhoo and I had talked endlessly about how to play this scene, ever since the day we first met.
Which was why, when he said what he said, I couldn't help but furrow my brow.
"Just phone it in. I'm not in the final version anyway."
"I'm sorry?"
What did he just say?
"Hyung, do you know what you're even saying right now?"
"……"
A heavy gloom had settled over him like a swamp as evening fell.
This wasn't something I could just wave off with the assumption that he'd sort himself out eventually.
I asked Director Yoon—who had strolled over beaming and asked if we were ready—for a few minutes, then led Nam Inhoo into the tent.
"If you don't tell me why you're upset, I won't know. If it's something I did and you're hurt by it, tell me and I'll apologize."
If you simply hated me, that would at least make some sense.
We'd gotten along fine this whole time, and then out of nowhere this—it was strange, wasn't it?
"……You didn't do anything wrong."
"Then why did you say it like that?"
"Because it's true, isn't it? That I'm not in the movie. So I just…."
Nam Inhoo bowed his head low.
I swallowed back the sighs welling up inside me.
I had a rough idea of what must have been going through his head.
If you gave it your all, aching bone-deep all day long, only to be cut from the finished film, of course the wind would go out of you.
It was a natural feeling. But still—
"You came here to act, hyung."
"……"
"Whether you end up in the film or not, acting is still acting. I wouldn't want to work with anyone who half-asses it no matter the reason, either."
I didn't add anything like I understand how you feel.
Whatever I said, I was going to be the face filling the screen throughout the entire running time, and from Nam Inhoo's point of view it would only breed resentment.
"And there's no need to bring up the nobility of the craft or anything like that. We get paid to do this. You can't slack off on work you're being paid for."
I deliberately spoke in a flat, indifferent tone, the way one might address something of no consequence.
There was a great deal more I wanted to say, but it would have sounded like nagging, so I held it in, and silence stretched on between us.
The moment I decided it might be better to give him time alone and turned to leave the tent, a small muttering reached my ears.
"What do I have to do to act like you?"
"What?"
"You know. You practice a lot. There's no way I don't know that. It's not that I don't know… is practicing a lot all it takes? If I practice too, could I act like you?"
Without my noticing, the rims of Nam Inhoo's eyes had gone red.
I stared at him for a moment, then answered slowly.
"I wouldn't know. Even about myself."
"……"
Watching those eyes dampen with disappointment faster than I could blink, I went on, unhurried.
"But I like your acting right now. Even as-is."
"Hearing that just makes it more miserable."
"I mean it. I've liked it from the start. I was the one who suggested they cast you, you know."
"…? That was you?"
The voice that had been sinking into a damp low place shot straight up.
"Yeah. You were the best one there."
"……"
"There are plenty of actors who act well. People better than you—and better than me—are overflowing out there. But… liking something is reason enough on its own, isn't it?"
I met the eyes that had widened in surprise, calmly, evenly.
"You were already good at the audition, and you're far more grounded now. Haven't you noticed yourself how much your acting has grown?"
"……"
"I think your acting is good. I like it. However it might come across—don't rush yourself."
Still watching his preoccupied face, I added, "And no more phoning things in," at which point his face flared red in an instant.
I soothed him as he apologized, his entire being dyed with shame, telling him it was fine.
"Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"
"No…. Nothing."
"All right. You can come in now!"
When I called loudly toward the outside of the tent, Nam Inhoo's eyes went round.
The owner of the footsteps that had been pacing back and forth out there for some time shuffled in, sheepish.
"Sorry to interrupt. So… did you two talk things out?"
"We didn't fight, sir."
"Who said anything about fighting?"
As Director Yoon's gaze flicked between Nam Inhoo and me, I could already read exactly what he was thinking.
Looking like a man caught red-handed, he told us to come out when we were ready and fled first.
I was following him out obediently when someone grabbed my sleeve.
"Let's do well today. I'll give it everything I have."
Those two bright, unwavering eyes looked almost comically desperate.
I held down a laugh and nodded.
"Yeah. So will I."
"You… you can take it a bit easy."
?
Kang Tae-il's whole body was trembling, yet he gritted his teeth and held on.
He was taking the full force of the rain that hammered down as if the sky itself had torn open, but the shivering had nothing to do with the cold.
Kang Tae-il was angry.
He had been betrayed.
"Hey, you—you ☓ing bastard!"
That was the same reason he'd bellowed the instant he spotted Inyoung sitting alone on the riverbank.
He scrambled up the bank, slipped, and even sprawled flat in the mud, Kang Tae-il stretched out on his stomach and hauled Inyoung down by the hand from where he'd been sitting.
Lee Jin-woo's clothes, until then wet with rain but otherwise spotless, were sullied with muddy water for good measure.
"You ☓ing dog, you knew. You knew all along, didn't you. That's why you did it."
"……"
"You ruined everything. Everything's ☓ing finished. Happy now?"
Kang Tae-il seized Lee Jin-woo by the collar and slammed him down hard against the ground.
Jin-woo swayed like a paper doll, offering not the slightest resistance.
Kang Tae-il's face, twisted to its very limits, looked furious; Lee Jin-woo's expressionless, tightly closed mouth looked bored.
The two men wearing such different expressions were feeling the same emotion.
They were wretched. They were hollowed out.
"Say something, you ☓ing—"
Kang Tae-il's voice had begun to shake.
At that note, so like a lost child, Lee Jin-woo slowly raised his head.
The gazes of the two men with identical faces crossed in the rain.
"Could you just… kill me?"
"…What?"
"I've tried, but it turns out I can't manage suicide after all. I told Mother she could do whatever she wanted with me, and she says she can't go through with it either. Haha, ☓…. So what was all that performance for, all this time."
Kang Tae-il thought there could be nothing in the world less suited to a person than the curse words spilling out of Lee Jin-woo's mouth.
The two vacant eyes staring back at him curved into a hazy smile.
"Still, dying at your own brother's hands—that's got a certain drama to it, doesn't it?"
"You insane bastard!"
Kang Tae-il thought his eyes were unbearably hot.
It felt as though someone had poured oil inside him and set it to boil over, slow and searing.
So he screwed his eyes shut.
Not because he was about to cry. Just—his eyes burned.
"If that's what you want, I'll do it."
The hand, splayed into five clawed prongs, closed around the soft throat.
Kang Tae-il did his best to ignore the horrifying sensation of flesh compressing wherever his fingers tightened.
"There's no way in hell you're my family. Don't say things that make my skin crawl."
"Ugh—"
Lee Jin-woo gulped air in ragged hitching breaths.
Pressing down harder on the body that writhed without meaning to, Kang Tae-il did not release the strength in his grip.
Bloodshot threads spidered across Jin-woo's eyes. The thrashing of his body gradually slowed.
"……My family is somewhere else."
"……"
"The people you killed today… ☓, they were my real family."
Wetness began to bleed into the quavering voice at last.
Strangling the man who had taken those lives, Kang Tae-il wept like a child.
"Cut!"
The moment Director Yoon called it, the downpour from the water truck cut off mid-roar.
The staff came running toward the two tangled boys.
"Khh—hck."
One of the staff hauled Nam Inhoo up quickly and dropped a towel over him.
After a few coughs, he signaled that he was all right.
Wiping his face a few times and glancing around, he saw Ahn Jinbae holding something in his arms.
"Buddy, are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine, but—"
Before Lee Yeonjae could get out that he clearly wasn't, Director Yoon's gaze locked onto the same spot as everyone else's.
The figure wrapped in a blanket was barely visible.
Inside it, Ahn Jinbae was whispering you're okay, you're okay to the blanket that shook and shook.
The director and the staff, reading the room, quietly backed away, and Nam Inhoo—who had missed his window to get up—fiddled with his collar for no reason at all.
My throat's the one that got strangled here….
But he couldn't even afford to feel awkward about it.
The expression Lee Yeonjae had worn as Kang Tae-il in the final moments still raised gooseflesh on his arms just thinking about it.
That look of confusion, unable to tell whether what streamed down his face was tears or rain, went beyond anything that could be called merely excellent.
It felt blissful, almost, to witness it there in person, without a frame of film between them.
However deeply Lee Yeonjae sank into a role, he'd always resurface within a few seconds—but this time, a full minute had passed before he emerged from the blanket.
Looking at the actor's face, utterly spent, Director Yoon felt an inexplicable pang of guilt.
"You all right? We've got plenty of time, so say the word if you need more."
"No, I'm fine now. Hyung, are you okay? I think I lost control of the pressure."
"You didn't. You played it exactly the way we practiced."
It had gotten a little stronger at the end, but it still wasn't too much.
Over the past few days, Lee Yeonjae and Nam Inhoo had agonized over how to portray the person being strangled.
It had also been the period when Lee Yeonjae was reminded, all over again, that he was no ordinary human being.
Without a moment of preparation, Lee Yeonjae would raise veins at his temples in an instant, roll his eyes back just short of excess, and produce the choking, airless sound of a throat being crushed—then come back to himself with a perfectly ordinary face and say:
'Wouldn't this work?'
'……'
Unfortunately, it wasn't a method that resonated with Nam Inhoo at all.
Taking into account his costar's position—that only actual pressure on his throat allowed him to immerse himself—Lee Yeonjae had spent days steadily calibrating and practicing a level of force that stopped just short of dangerous.
And he had succeeded.
"Don't worry about it. It wasn't excessive at all. By the way, you slipped on the bank and I panicked for a second. You okay?"
Kang Tae-il slipping as he climbed the riverbank had not been in the script.
It was a mistake born of the wet mud, but before Director Yoon could even call an NG, Lee Yeonjae had already hauled Nam Inhoo down.
The intensity in Lee Yeonjae's eyes as he lunged out, teeth clenched, hand shooting forward, was enough to make the onlookers momentarily forget to breathe.
Instead of the original blocking—scaling the bank and shoving Jin-woo down—the two of them went rolling in the mud together, and the scene transformed into something even more savage and desperate.
Director Yoon scrapped the original blocking without hesitation.
"Should we push the shoot back? We have the water truck for two more days anyway. We can move it to tomorrow if you like."
Exhausted down to the bone as he was, Lee Yeonjae shook his head at once.
And everyone present had known he would.
Happily, with each successive take, Lee Yeonjae surfaced from immersion faster and faster.
"Great work, everyone~!"
The results matched the effort they'd poured in.
Reviewing the footage, both actors broke into proud smiles.
Watching Ahn Jinbae shepherd Lee Yeonjae toward the car as if carrying him bodily, Director Yoon quietly called Nam Inhoo over.
"Inhoo. You worked hard today."
"Sir? Oh—yes! You too, Director, thank you."
Director Yoon had initiated a conversation with him so rarely that Nam Inhoo was caught slightly off guard, but he quickly cranked up his social graces.
Then the next sentence dismantled them all in one stroke.
"Your acting today was genuinely superb. So superb it's a shame we can't use it in the final cut."
"……"
"I was even thinking we could put out a director's cut with your version in it. I'll talk to the production company. Ah—still, don't get your hopes up."
Director Yoon had been speaking without thinking, and when no response came back, he turned his head.
And froze at the sight of Nam Inhoo's face, grotesquely crumpling.
Seeing the director falter, Nam Inhoo tried valiantly to hold it in—but in the end, he burst into tears.
Only after the staff behind the flustered director had jeered—what did you do to the kid, making him cry like that?—did the day's commotion finally come to an end.