When Cinderella's Magic Ends (3)
Silence filled the hall.
"…."
Even Shin Seo-hyun, the MC, seemed completely blindsided by what I had said. She stood frozen, her face locked in an awkward expression, unable to find a single word.
In that brief stretch of stillness, I looked out toward the audience and found my mother.
Han A-ri was still watching me with glistening eyes—and yet, of everyone there, she wore the warmest smile of all.
The decision to put my acting career on hold had come on the day I finished my final interview related to Blood Garden and headed home.
"…Da-young. May Mom ask you just one thing?"
Han A-ri's voice was quieter than usual, weighted. At that heavy tone, I reflexively lifted my head and looked at her.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Da-young… are you happy being an actress?"
Ding—
The elevator's arrival chime cut through the thick silence. The doors opened to take us home, but neither Mom nor I could quite bring ourselves to step inside.
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I tried to deflect.
"Come on, Mom. Why are you asking that all of a sudden? I've been winning so many awards, and everyone keeps saying how good my acting is—I'm having a blast…"
"Da-young."
She gently cut me off and let out a soft breath. The moment I met her eyes, I knew instinctively that she already understood everything.
"Do you remember the kids' café a little while ago? The day you and Chae-eun sat together whispering?"
At the unexpected place name, I looked up blankly. Mom offered a bitter smile and continued quietly.
"I overheard all of it. The two of you talking about how you were only acting to live up to the adults' expectations—how you were forcing yourselves through it just to make Mom and Dad happy."
"…!"
My heart dropped.
Ah… so that was it.
That was why, right before the awards ceremony, Chae-eun had suddenly taken my hand and decided that this project would be the end of her child-acting career.
Mom's eyes reddened as she tightly clasped my small hands.
"Seo-jin and I… we had no idea you two were thinking that way. Because of our greed, you kids, still so young…"
She looked straight into my eyes and added, softly,
"Da-young. Is acting really something you do because you love it? Don't lie to Mom. Tell me the truth."
Under her repeated questions, the old me would have answered the way I always did—that I liked it, that I'd only been playing along with Chae-eun that day, that acting was fun. A simple lie would have been enough.
But that day, looking into Mom's clear eyes, I couldn't bring myself to lie.
What tumbled out of my mouth instead was a question so far outside common sense that I would never have asked it under ordinary circumstances.
"Mom. What if I… what if I'm a fake who was born after killing the real Seo Da-young?"
"…How long have you been thinking that?"
Any other parent would have dismissed it as nonsense or gotten angry. But Mom simply gazed into my eyes, then cupped my small cheek with a trembling hand.
That alone was enough to feel how good a mother Han A-ri was.
And that made it hurt even more.
If she had been even a little irresponsible, even a little cruel, the guilt might have been lighter. But because she gave her child unconditional love, my heart ached all the more.
"…Since the day I was born."
When I confessed it quietly, her pupils trembled, just slightly.
"From the moment I was born until now… I remember everything. That's something no ordinary little kid could ever do. The truth is, I…"
I was about to tell her about my past life—about who I really was—when she gently stopped me.
"That's enough."
As if to say I didn't need to go any further, she took my small hands firmly in hers.
"If it's been that way since you were born… then at the very least, the Da-young that Mom and Dad know has always been you. From the beginning until now. Just you."
"Yes…"
"Then you're Mom's daughter. That's all that matters."
One sentence, spoken with absolute certainty, as if there was nothing left to ask.
The guilt that had been knotted hard in the depths of my chest seemed to loosen, just a little.
Maybe the weight I had carried for the past seven years was finally finding a small measure of salvation in those few words.
"Whatever you were about to say just now… tell me later, when your heart is truly ready. Mom can wait as long as it takes."
"…Okay."
She pulled me into a tight hug, then looked me straight in the eyes one last time.
"Then, Da-young. Answer me just this one thing. Acting… is it fun?"
I hesitated. But I no longer wanted to wrap the truth in lies. For the mother who had accepted me completely, honesty itself was the only real courtesy I could offer.
"…Honestly, I don't hate it. But I also don't really know if I like it. The truth is… like Chae-eun, I'm happier just staying home watching cartoons, playing games, and eating good food."
At my honest confession, Mom smiled—bitter, and yet endlessly tender.
"…I see. Then, Da-young, let's stop acting."
"What?"
"Someday, far in the future, if a day comes when you truly want to act again… then Mom and Dad will help you with everything we have. So for now, just go back to being seven-year-old Seo Da-young, and play as much as you want."
When we got home, Han A-ri and I told my father, Seo Hyun-woo, everything that had happened. He agreed with her completely, saying there was no reason a child should be forced into something unwanted for the sake of their parents.
And so we reached one conclusion.
The Baeksang Arts Awards.
That stage would be the final stage of the actress named Seo Da-young.
The two words Seo Da-young had thrown out—retirement—were more than enough to plunge everyone watching the ceremony into chaos and shock.
"…Retirement?"
On the broadcast screen of Netstpot streamer Nari, her face hung frozen, mouth hanging open in a blank stare.
A moment later, the chat window shattered the silence, comments racing upward so fast they became impossible to read with the naked eye.
But Nari had long since forgotten to care about the chat. She clutched her head and screamed at the screen.
"What the hell is this supposed to mean?! Retirement?! What am I even hearing right now?! Da-young, Chae-eun! You're only seven years old! This is supposed to be the beginning!!"
Meanwhile, in Kim Yu-na's living room, where she sat holding a bowl of popcorn in front of the TV, the same silence had fallen.
"…Unnie. What did Da-young just say?"
At her younger sister Hana's hollow question, Yu-na could only stare blankly at the screen, unable to answer.
Subtitles scrambled across the image of Da-young and Chae-eun, trophies in hand, smiling brightly as they walked off the stage.
"Retirement… so that means… we'll never see Da-young act again…?"
The popcorn in her hands slipped and scattered across the floor. The sudden exit of the two genius child actresses who had helped shake an entire nation was a bombshell—for their fans, and for the public at large.
After the ceremony ended, communities and social media were utterly devastated. Day after day, articles about Seo Da-young and Kim Chae-eun's retirement dominated the headlines.
When the parents of both girls released a statement calling it "a decision made for the children's happiness and an ordinary childhood," the fans' heartbroken cries were left behind. Cinderella's glass slipper came off, and just like that, the magic came to an end.
In people's memories, the seven-year-old genius child actress Seo Da-young remained a legend—a miracle who had walked away without a single regret, at the most brilliant moment of her life.
But even the feverish heat that had seemed destined to set the world ablaze forever could not last forever.
The stories about Blood Garden that had blanketed the news day after day, and the legendary retirement declaration of the two child actresses, gradually faded.
And time, cruelly indifferent and yet relentless, simply kept flowing on.
Ten years passed.
On a brilliantly blue spring morning, sunlight warmed the windowsills.
A girl in a school uniform walked slowly toward the school gate.
On its own, it was an ordinary scene—nothing anyone would have reason to notice.
And yet, as she passed through the campus where cherry blossom petals drifted thick on the spring breeze, the students heading to class stopped in their tracks all at once, as if by some unspoken agreement.
Someone swallowed a breath. Someone else froze mid-step.
Pale skin faintly visible through the sway of deep black hair. Clear, deep eyes beneath long lashes. And a quiet, warm smile resting at the corners of her lips.
She wore nothing more than a neatly pressed uniform skirt and a school blazer—and still, the girl seemed to transform the ordinary morning commute of a high school into something out of a drama.
Seo Da-young, seventeen years old.
First-year student at Seoyeon High School.
Her high school days began with the fresh breath of spring.
