Rising Star (2)
Lately I had been busier than at any other point in my seven years of life.
…Even busier than during the thick of filming Flower of Blood.
“Da-young~ Could you look at the camera over here this time?”
Click.
“Perfect! Now make a pretty little V with your hand!”
Click.
“…V.”
“Ahaha! How can even that blank expression look so cute?”
Flashes exploded from every direction.
Magazine pictorials, special making-of segments for the networks, newspaper interviews, special radio recordings, terrestrial entertainment-info shows—the list never ended.
Only a few days earlier I had been an ordinary six-year-old who built sandcastles and rode the swings after kindergarten. Now I woke up, ran through every schedule, and the entire day was gone.
By any normal logic, no matter how much buzz I generated, I was still only the child actress who appeared in the first two episodes as the young version of the female lead. Even if the drama became a hit, I should never have been this busy.
But the absurd performance of Flower of Blood shattered every scrap of common sense.
Riding a syndrome-level popularity that threatened the very stronghold of terrestrial television, the market value of a girl who had appeared in just two episodes soared beyond imagination. Every network and advertising firm was sending love calls, desperate to claim me—that was the proof.
“…Ugh.”
The wave of exhaustion finally pulled me under. I sank deep into the back seat of the car and began to nod off. My heavy eyelids slid shut, then fluttered open, then shut again.
“Da-young.”
Mom—Han Ari’s—gentle voice reached me quietly.
“…Yes.”
“You’re really tired, aren’t you?”
I answered in a sleep-slurred mumble.
“…A little.”
From the driver’s seat Mom kept her hands steady on the wheel, watching my drowsy face through the rearview mirror with a tender, aching look. After a long hesitation her lips finally parted, heavy with something unspoken.
“…If it’s too hard—if you ever want to stop—just tell me. Anytime.”
“…?”
My half-closed eyes snapped wide open.
“…Is something wrong?”
Screech.
The car stopped at a red light. Mom’s grip tightened on the steering wheel.
“…Mom is…”
Only after a long pause did she continue.
“I’m scared that Da-young is growing up too fast.”
So something really had been off lately.
I already knew how Mom had acted during the drama shoot. The Han Ari I knew would have been the most excited person in the room right now—clutching my hand, gushing nonstop.
‘Our Da-young’s acting was the absolute best!’
‘The director said Da-young is a genius!’
‘Let’s work even harder on the next schedule!’
She would have chattered like a sparrow, eyes brighter than mine. Yet after the drama exploded far beyond anyone’s expectations, she had grown strangely quiet.
I stole a glance at her profile. She kept her eyes fixed on the road, pretending nothing was wrong, her expression carefully blank as she focused on driving.
But before I could press further, we arrived at the next schedule location.
Weekend. The private villa belonging to Chae-eun’s family, tucked away in the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
In a quiet, camping-style garden surrounded by green lawns and forest, the four child actors of Flower of Blood gathered together for the first time in a long while.
We had become too famous to meet casually at a downtown kids’ café the way we used to. If four eye-catching children showed up in one place—even wearing masks—the entire café would grind to a halt.
The café owner might have loved it. I did not.
Besides, a quiet villa like this suited my personality far better than any kids’ café. And I was almost seven. Even setting aside the mental age of my previous life, I was reaching the age where tossing ball-pit balls around felt a little awkward.
“Ahh, I finally feel like I can breathe again.”
Ha-eun sprawled dramatically across a lawn chair and let out an exaggerated sigh.
Hearing a six-year-old say “I can finally breathe” was funny, but given the situation of every child actor here, it wasn’t an overstatement.
“I’ve been crazy busy too. Photos every day, and Mom lives with her phone glued to her ear.”
Kang Si-woo was the first to jump on Ha-eun’s words. True to his nature as a born simp, he responded to even her smallest reaction with wholehearted enthusiasm.
“I saw online that people are calling us the ‘Flower of Blood generation.’ Grown-ups say we’re amazing.”
“Yeah! Even my kindergarten teacher asked me for an autograph!”
Ha-eun and Si-woo still looked dazed by the sudden change in their world, yet they clearly enjoyed the attention and the busy new life. Exhausting as it was, standing in front of the camera made them happy.
Lucky them. They genuinely loved acting. Unlike Chae-eun and me.
After a long stretch of boasting about their packed schedules, Chae-eun suddenly turned her head toward me.
“What about you, Da-young? How many commercials have you shot? You must have the most, right?”
“Me? Only two commercials so far. Interviews maybe two or three times a week.”
“…Huh? Really?”
Ha-eun and Si-woo’s eyes went round.
“That’s weird. My mom said you’re the one everyone in the world is looking for right now. So why is your schedule about the same as ours? Si-woo had three commercial meetings this week alone.”
“Uh…? For real?”
Without thinking I glanced toward the garden table where the mothers sat chatting.
Why?
A strange feeling prickled at me, and I started to look more carefully at Mom—only for Ha-eun, who was in an especially good mood today, to keep firing questions at Chae-eun.
“Hey, Chae-eun. Why haven’t you said anything this whole time?”
Now that she mentioned it, the three of us had been noisily comparing schedules while the girl who had invited us to her villa stayed completely silent.
She sat on the lawn chair, fidgeting with a paper cup in both hands, her face full of hesitation. Normally she would have kept the quietest poker face among us; today she looked unusually tense.
“…Chae-eun?”
When I called her name she flinched and lifted her head. Her lips moved soundlessly for a moment, then she drew a small, decisive breath.
“…Actually. The reason I called you all here today is because there’s something I want to say.”
“…What is it?”
“The truth is…”
Director Han Sang-in stood by the window, gazing down at the city in silence for a long while.
Less than a month had passed since the drama’s release. In that short span his life had been transported into an entirely different world.
Not long ago he had been a skilled director whose name was known only within the industry. Now Han Sang-in was one of the most closely watched rising directors in film and television—not just in Korea, but across the globe.
He opened his laptop. The first thing that filled the screen was his inbox. Dozens of emails had arrived overnight alone.
A production company in Los Angeles proposed a meeting for his next project. A New York film magazine requested an exclusive video interview. The Cannes International Series Festival in France had sent an official invitation. London asked him to appear as a special lecturer at a drama forum.
Broadcasters in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore were preparing special programs analyzing Flower of Blood and wanted to know if he could appear.
The old saying that a new email arrived every time you deleted one was no exaggeration.
Things were no quieter at home. Morning news programs ran his interviews on loop under the caption “A New Chapter in Korean Content.” Entertainment shows devoted special segments to Flower of Blood almost every day. Newspapers hailed him as “the world-class director Korea has produced,” and networks competed for exclusive interviews.
Mixed in with the genuine praise for the drama’s success was a certain childish national pride—the thrill that Korean content was being recognized worldwide. Still, attention was better than none.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who, only weeks earlier, had lost sleep worrying about broadcast slots.
Yet Han Sang-in knew the truth.
Half of the praise pouring over him right now should never have been directed at him in the first place.
The real gamble of this project was always the first two episodes.
His own script had never been especially commercial—a raw, brutal noir revenge story centered on the female lead. He had confidence in the work’s quality, but quality and popularity were separate realms. To drag viewers all the way to the final episode past the barrier of the material, those opening two episodes had to deliver an overwhelming immersion.
And those critical early episodes had to be carried not by adult actors but by child performers. If the children’s acting felt even slightly clumsy or broke the immersion, audiences would abandon the show without mercy.
So Han Sang-in had poured more blood, sweat, and sleepless nights into casting and directing the child actors than into anything else. Casting director Lee Min-woo had grumbled that he was being excessively picky about the auditions, but to Han those auditions were the single most important fork in the road—responsible for more than half of the drama’s eventual success.
That anxiety had shattered in the most delightful way possible.
Seo Da-young.
Filming had long since ended, yet the girl’s performance—rewound countless times in the editing room—remained vivid in his mind.
People said actors realized a director’s imagination. Seo Da-young was different. She brought back results that surpassed even the director’s imagination. The raw, devastated emotional lines that even adult actors handled with caution—she expressed them with a depth beyond anything he had drawn in his head.
Everyone on the production and cast of Flower of Blood knew it. In a certain sense, the true hidden MVP of this syndrome was not the top adult stars who carried the later half so solidly, but the girl who, in only two episodes, had driven the foundation of the entire work perfectly into the ground.
And it wasn’t only her.
Kim Chae-eun, who had originally been cast as the lead; Yoon Ha-eun; Kang Si-woo—every one of those child actors had done their parts so well that the early viewers stayed glued for the next episode.
Especially Kim Chae-eun. Her skill had been every bit the equal of Seo Da-young’s. In the end a single final performance had decided that Da-young would take the lead role, but without that, Chae-eun could have carried the young heroine without any problem.
Rustle.
Han Sang-in picked up the elegant envelope lying on his desk.
It was an official invitation to the Baeksang Arts Awards—the most prestigious comprehensive arts awards in the country. Flower of Blood had been nominated in numerous major categories, including Best Director, and they politely requested the honor of his presence.
He set the invitation down. The corner of his mouth curved into a smooth arc.
In his mind flashed the face of a small child whose cool eyes had once gleamed through the crack of a wardrobe door.
“At that awards ceremony… I might finally get to see those kids again for the first time since filming.”
“The truth is… I…”
Chae-eun paused to steady her breath. Then, in a quiet voice, she said:
“I’ve decided to quit being a child actress after this project.”