Strange Premonition (1)
The audition waiting room for COOKI's new short-form experimental drama project, Strange Premonition.
A taut, brittle tension filled the room beneath the chill of the air conditioning. Some girls clutched their scripts so tightly their hands dampened the pages, lips trembling; others tipped calming pills straight into their mouths.
The waiting room was packed with aspiring actresses in their late teens and early twenties, and the emotional undercurrents swirling among them were far too heavy and varied to be summed up by the single word nerves.
A haughty-looking girl checked her heavy makeup in the mirror and shot a cold, assessing glance at the applicant beside her. Another sat in a corner, biting her nails down to the quick and staring at her script as if she might burst into tears. A woman in her early twenties cleared her throat several times, then, dissatisfied with her own tone, snapped irritably and gulped water with a rough swallow.
The waiting room was saturated with tension.
In the end, only two people would walk out of this audition smiling. Everyone here had prepared with desperate intensity for a chance to be one of those two.
Then the elevator doors opened, and two high school girls stepped into the hallway.
They weren't late, exactly—but given how little time remained before the audition proper began, their arrival was cutting it close. Even so, their expressions carried none of the tension that gripped the other applicants. They looked almost leisurely.
Seo Da-young and Kim Chae-eun.
"Chae-eun, want a yogurt drink? The convenience store had a two-plus-one deal earlier, so I grabbed some."
"No."
"Yeah? Then I'll just drink them all."
Da-young popped the straw free and stuck it in her mouth as the two of them stepped into the waiting room, casually surveying the atmosphere inside.
She pulled the yogurt bottle from her lips and murmured, calm and quiet:
"The vibe in here's pretty cold."
"Yeah. Everyone's really going for it. We should step it up too."
Kim Chae-eun said it in a flat, deadpan voice that held not a shred of actual tension—as if she were talking about someone else's problem. Then she drifted lightly toward an empty chair in the corner.
"Let's just read the script until they start."
"Sure."
And so the two high school girls settled into their seats with quiet composure.
The moment the two girls sat down, every pair of eyes in the waiting room swung toward them at once.
…What the hell are those two?
The haughty applicant checking her makeup in the mirror furrowed her brow slightly.
Judging by the school uniforms, they were high schoolers. High school students weren't exactly rare in this waiting room. The roles being cast were female high school students to begin with, and the project was billed as a new-talent discovery initiative—so of course most of the participants hadn't yet crossed their mid-twenties.
And yet the eyes kept drifting back.
Long hair shot through with warm brown light. In contrast, fair skin so luminous and full of life it looked like fresh milk. Lashes so long you could see them from across the room, even though she didn't seem to be wearing makeup, and beneath them large, vivid, beautiful eyes.
Beside her: long dark blue-black hair, bright pale skin, and features so sharp and distinct that even set against the countless actors one might encounter in the industry, they would never fall short.
Looks that shone even among a room full of aspiring actresses—bright enough that you almost wanted to curse the sky for dropping competitors like these out of nowhere.
Of course, in the end, acting is about skill more than looks…
But the way they sat down as if the waiting room were already familiar territory, the unhurried hands that went straight to the script without so much as glancing around, the posture that suggested they already knew how this kind of space worked—
Do they even have acting experience already?
A strange premonition settled over her: that she was not going to walk away from today's audition with a good result.
At the sudden appearance of those two, the other applicants' lips began to go dry.
Just then, one of the girls seated in the center of the waiting room narrowed her eyes and stared hard at the pair.
…Huh?
Watching the way Seo Da-young's fingers moved over the script, and the side profile of Kim Chae-eun with her head slightly bowed, a peculiar sense of déjà vu stirred in a corner of her mind.
They were faces she was certain she'd never seen before. Even among the major-agency trainees currently making the rounds on community boards and Instagram, there was no one with visuals like these.
So why do they feel so familiar? I'm sure I've seen them somewhere…
An afterimage of unease flickered just out of reach, and she swallowed hard.
Wanting a closer look, she adjusted her grip on the script and was just about to rise quietly from her seat and start toward them when—
The audition will begin shortly. Participants, please prepare.
And so the audition for the short drama Strange Premonition began.
One hour into the audition.
Gang Si-woo was there as well—dragged in by his maternal uncle, first as a special guest appearance and then, inevitably, as a judge.
Even if the judging seat had been foisted on him, he still intended to take the responsibility seriously and give it his best. It would go on his career record either way.
But the emotion that settled over him once the audition actually started was…
Disappointment.
His joining as a special judge had ballooned the whole production into something that included a making-of film—and yet the audition itself was painfully ordinary.
It was billed as a new-talent discovery, but most of the applicants delivered either formulaic academy-style acting or exaggerated tones that were far too conscious of the camera. The ones whose skill seemed decent were already in their mid-twenties, which created an age dissonance for high school roles.
In those cases, the "new-talent discovery project" slogan had become a liability.
Skill levels hovering somewhere between amateur and professional.
In an ordinary audition, of course applicants like that would show up—that was inevitable, and the whole point of an audition was to separate the wheat from the chaff. It wouldn't have mattered.
The problem was that this was simultaneously an audition and part of a making-of film shoot.
If the making-of footage kept filling up with nothing but these middling applicants, far from promoting the main production, wouldn't it just lower expectations?
Here he was, an actor, fretting over the broadcast's buzz before anyone else.
But there was one thing Gang Si-woo simply could not understand.
The attitude of the director sitting right beside him—PD Park Seong-jin.
Seated at the judges' table, flipping through applicants' profiles, PD Park had been unable to wipe the smile off his face for some time now. For a director who ought to have been frustrated by the lack of striking compositions or standout raw talent, his solitary good mood was more than a little bizarre.
Did he win the lottery or something?
Nothing short of that could explain an expression that happy.
At this rate, I'm the one acting like the PD, worrying about the making-of footage.
The first half of the audition passed, and an assistant director's voice announced a short break.
"Staff, check your equipment—we'll resume in ten minutes!"
The moment the camera lights went dark, Gang Si-woo approached PD Park Seong-jin with a frown. He couldn't hold back his curiosity any longer.
"Something good happen, PD-nim?"
"Ah, no. Gang Si-woo-ssi. You'll find out soon enough."
PD Park only offered a meaningful smile and dodged a real answer.
Si-woo tried pressing him a few more times after that, but the PD never gave a proper reply, and before long the break was over.
"All right, break's over! Cameras rolling. Judges, please take your seats!"
The assistant director's voice rang through the audition hall.
PD Park smoothly changed the subject and returned to his place, and Gang Si-woo, still without an answer, made his way back to the head of the judges' table.
His joining as a special judge had inflated a plain short-drama audition into something big enough to produce an entertainment-style making-of film—so of course the PD would be grinning ear to ear. Si-woo let it go as nothing worth fretting over.
Seriously. Once filming wraps, I'm saying something to Uncle about this. Wasting my precious break on something this trivial…
5 seconds. 4, 3, 2, 1…
Mark it!
Clack—!
The camera's red light flared on, and the audition resumed in earnest.
An applicant stepped onto the center mark and began performing the piece she'd prepared. Gang Si-woo folded his arms and coldly observed her eyes and vocal projection. When the performance ended, the casting director beside him checked something on the profile and spoke quietly.
"Applicant number eleven. This one's breathing is stable. Clean tone, too."
Si-woo shook his head lightly and added in a low voice:
"I don't know. The tone's smooth, but isn't the emotional delivery a bit weak?"
The director seemed to agree; he propped his chin in his hand and let out a long sigh.
"Then what about applicant number twelve?"
"Skill-wise she's better than the last one, but… honestly, number twelve overall is still…"
Disappointed remarks passed among the judges, profile pages flipping back and forth—and then Gang Si-woo's gaze stopped on the next sheet.
At the name written at the top of the profile, Gang Si-woo's eyebrow twitched slightly.
Kim Chae-eun…? I've heard that name somewhere.
A residual image from some distant memory brushed the edge of his mind, almost surfacing.
Wait. Don't tell me…
But before he could think any deeper, a knock sounded at the audition hall door.
"Applicant number fourteen, please come in."
Click—
The moment the door opened with the staff member's voice, the noise in the audition hall died.
The high school girl who walked through moved as if in slow motion—slow, and without a single waver, each step planting firmly on the floor.
When Gang Si-woo lifted his eyes from the papers, what entered them was the clean line of her figure cut by the school uniform, and long dark blue-black hair that settled calmly under the lights.
Transparent eyes of unfathomable depth beneath dark brows, and features so sharp they carved themselves into his vision.
In the breathless silence, the high school girl finally stopped at the center mark and raised her head toward the front.
A sense of recognition so sharp it raised the hair on his arms—and Gang Si-woo's eyes went wide.
Clack.
The pen held loosely in his hand slipped and fell onto the folder of papers.
At last, Gang Si-woo understood why the PD had been wearing that delighted expression.
Without a doubt, the PD had hit the lottery for real.