The First Fan
Drama is a strange hobby.
Some people watch for the lead actor whose face fills the entire screen. Others flip channels on nothing more than the three-syllable name of a director known for stylish mise-en-scène.
Still others tune in out of loyalty to a famous novel they once stayed up all night reading. Or they simply have nothing better to do on a weekend evening, turn on the TV in a daze, and somehow end up binge-watching the whole thing.
But the reason first-year high school student Kim Yu-na was sitting in front of her laptop tonight was a little more unusual than most.
"Unnie. Don't tell me this is about that kindergarten kid again."
"Oh, come on."
A lazy weekend evening hung over the living room. Yu-na lay sprawled on her stomach across the sofa, mindlessly rubbing her phone screen, and glanced up at her older sister eating a late dinner at the table, one eyebrow raised.
Her sister, a kindergarten teacher, had lately developed something like a religious ritual: the moment she got home from work, her mouth would open and the same story would pour out, over and over.
"Did you not see the teaser that dropped a few days ago? I'm telling you, it's no joke. Get over here and look at this!"
Kim Hana scraped her chair back from the table and charged the sofa before Yu-na could even answer. Then she shoved her phone right up under Yu-na's nose. On the screen, a video progress bar sat frozen—clearly something she had already rewound dozens of times.
"Ugh, seriously, how many times are you going to show me this? I could recite the lines by now."
Yu-na jerked her head back in pure exasperation, but her sister ignored her completely and jabbed the play button. A lonely, majestic score swelled, and the teaser for Flower of Blood began to roll.
"Well? Isn't it insane? Look at that sensual red tone, the way they cut the frame. I told you the visual quality was next-level!"
"Yeah, yeah. Amazing."
Even Yu-na's dead-eyed reply couldn't stop her sister from staring at the phone screen, lost in private rapture. She had been going on about how there was this one truly, impossibly special child in her class—and now she was wringing every last drop of drama out of the trailer itself.
At first Yu-na had written it off as the usual "doting auntie" routine. A kindergarten teacher gushing over how cute her kids were was basically an occupational hazard.
But this time, both the intensity and the frequency had blown past any reasonable average.
"Yu-na, if you ever saw her in person, you'd understand. I'm speechless. Literally speechless."
"Here we go again. Teacher Kim Hana's infinite loop."
"I'm serious! I'm not kidding!"
Her sister waved the spoon she was still holding, launching into an impassioned defense as if she'd been personally wronged.
"It's not just that she's pretty…. There's something off about her atmosphere. She's quiet and mature in a way that doesn't make sense. Sometimes when she's just sitting still, I swear there's this noble aura behind her."
"…So you're not raising a cute little kid. You're raising a Demon King candidate."
"And the way she talks is so pretty and calm. She's kind, and from what I saw of the drama shoot, her acting is incredible too."
Yu-na counted on her fingers, brow furrowing.
"Please. Even if her acting is good, all we've got is a one-minute teaser. And you said her child-role scenes only last a few seconds. So how exactly do you know she's a good actress?"
"I'm telling you, she is! Absolutely! I've been doing this for years—you think I don't have instincts? That kid was just born with it."
"Unnie. If you play favorites like that, the other kids are going to hate her."
"Hey. No matter how I feel, I've been a kindergarten teacher for years. You think I'd let it show? When I'm with the kids, I love them all equally!"
"Then maybe try doing that at home too?"
"Kim Yu-na! Give me a break after work, will you?!"
"Haha, okay, okay."
Yu-na finally couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing. But once the laughter faded, a quiet seed of curiosity began to grow in her mind.
Just how extraordinary was this child, that her sister—who normally had zero interest in dramas—had been like this for days?
Kim Hana had never been the type to watch dramas for fun. If anything, she was the one who scolded Yu-na whenever her newly minted high-schooler sister parked herself in front of the TV instead of studying.
And yet that same sister had been talking about a child named Seo Da-young so relentlessly that Yu-na's ears were growing calluses. The first time, Yu-na had half-listened and assumed her sister was simply thrilled that an actor had emerged from her kindergarten. The second time she gushed, Yu-na let it go in one ear and out the other. But by the third and fourth rounds, even Yu-na had developed a stubborn urge to see for herself just how impressive this face really was.
And finally, tonight, she had her chance to verify the rumors with her own eyes.
"You said that drama drops today?"
"Yeah! That's right!"
Her sister's eyes lit up. The hands setting down her plate moved noticeably faster.
"Flower of Blood. Tonight at ten o'clock sharp!"
"The one with that aura-overflowing Da-young of yours."
"Exactly. At last, the world is going to recognize our Da-young's worth."
Her sister pulled out her phone, checked the time, and bounced in place. Watching her make such a fuss only made Yu-na feel contrarian, and her expectations quietly dropped a few notches.
Well, she's still just a child actor.
No matter how gifted, there was a hard limit to what a six-year-old could deliver. A few tears, some cute mumbling—that would be the whole show.
In truth, Yu-na was the acknowledged drama addict of her class. Coming home after evening study hall and staying up all night devouring every VOD service available was her hobby, and she had a sharp enough eye that she could usually predict a hit just from the pre-air synopsis of a major production. Lately she had even expanded her range to Japanese and American dramas.
But this thing called Flower of Blood was a complete unknown—a title that had never once reached the ears of a self-proclaimed veteran like her. The production company was one she'd never heard of, and more than anything, the platform was weird.
"En…flix?"
Yu-na opened her laptop and typed the name her sister had given her into the search bar.
"…What kind of new spam site is this?"
It wasn't one of the three major terrestrial networks, and it wasn't any of the big cable channels everyone knew by name either. Emblazoned across her monitor was the name of some bizarre overseas platform that the Korean broadcasting world had never even heard of.
"Unnie."
"What, are you all set up?"
"Say again where I'm supposed to watch this."
"Enflix!"
"Right, so where did this rootless channel called Enflix even come from?"
"Oh, it's this huge video rental company that's super famous in America, and they just launched an online streaming service here. Have you heard of OTT?"
"O-T-T?"
A strange silence settled between the two sisters.
"…What's that?"
"You pay money on the internet and watch movies and dramas unlimited."
Her sister answered Yu-na's question with the kind of textbook definition that made it clear she didn't really understand Enflix either—she was just repeating something she'd picked up somewhere.
"Ah. So like a paid site."
Yu-na got the general idea and shook her head.
"Some kind of internet drama, then?"
Her expectations plummeted even further. An American streaming site completely out of step with domestic tastes—and a completely unknown child actor making her debut there. Yu-na even entertained the reasonable suspicion that this was where the parachute kids who couldn't make the terrestrial child-actor open calls ended up.
Well, the teaser visuals did look decent, at least.
The framing had the look of something expensive, so it would do fine as a time-killer. Half out of a lighthearted desire to humor her sister's obsession, Yu-na moved the mouse and clicked play.
"…Huh? Oh, that's kind of cool."
The moment she hit play, the drama started. The fifteen-second slog of ads she had fully expected never appeared.
For someone who always had to sit through three insurance or cosmetics commercials just to watch a single episode, a system that played instantly was a surprisingly fresh jolt. She felt a flicker of goodwill right from the start.
Then, in the darkness of a room with every light switched off, red neon-like letters rose against a black screen. A lonely, ominous cello line sank the air in the room into something heavy.
FLOWER OF BLOOD
The strange, weighty opening title faded, and at last the first episode began.
And before three minutes had passed, the camera angle drifted slowly and closed in on a child.
The child her sister had been shouting about until her throat went raw—Seo Da-young, playing young Yu Ji-hye.
"…."
Yu-na's lips parted, just slightly.
Cute. Objectively speaking, she was overwhelmingly cute.
Flawless porcelain cheeks, enormous eyes like pieces of the night sky set into her face, a silhouette curled small and careful as she warily scanned the adults around her. Just by appearing on screen, the child seemed to purify the thick, dark tone of the genre piece in an instant.
Yeah, no wonder Unnie loses her mind at kindergarten. She's basically a living doll.
But that was as far as Yu-na's praise went.
The child was simply playing timid, frightened, flinching at every adult voice. As child acting went, it was perfectly natural and solid—but she couldn't quite feel the "one-of-a-kind genius" her sister had praised until her mouth ran dry.
Maybe the rose-colored glasses just kicked in because she knows the kid?
She had always thought her sister was pretty good at separating personal and professional. This was unexpected.
Thinking that, Yu-na casually shifted her gaze toward the next cut as the scene changed.
"Well… the drama itself is pretty good, though."
Seo Da-young's acting might not have been the earth-shattering genius her sister claimed, but that was a separate matter from the story—which was genuinely gripping.
The first twist: a family that had seemed merely strict turned out to be high-ranking officers in a corporate-scale criminal organization so vast that even the Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency was paying attention. And from episode one, meaningful foreshadowing was being laid with quiet precision—hints that the protagonist's father, Yu Jeong-tae, was no ordinary crime-syndicate lieutenant.
Sorry, Unnie, but Seo Da-young herself is just okay. The drama I wasn't even expecting is way more interesting.
…She still hadn't realized it yet.
She had rated Seo Da-young's acting as merely average—and yet, for some reason, every time Seo Da-young appeared, her eyes locked onto the child as if she were under a spell.
It would be a long time before she understood that this very moment was the first time she had ever met the actor she would love more than any other for the rest of her life.
And so Flower of Blood was quietly released.
A small beginning that no media outlet paid any real attention to.
But no one knew.
That this was the start of a massive wave that would shake not only South Korea, but the entire world.