Strange Premonition (2)
Producer Park Seong-jin's mouth stretched into a grin that nearly reached his ears as he stared fixedly at the auxiliary camera monitor for the making-of footage.
"…Camera director. Camera three, the lighting cam—you've got Gang Si-woo in the judges' seats locked in tight right now, yes?"
His voice, thick with barely contained excitement, crackled through the intercom.
"Yes, PD. We've got Gang Si-woo's face in a full tight shot."
On the monitor, Si-woo was staring at the newly arrived Contestant Number Fourteen, Kim Chae-eun, jaw hanging open in pure, vacant shock.
The so-called prince of Korean teen stardom—normally so lofty and untouchable—wearing an expression that dumbfounded?
Perfect. Perfect! This alone makes the whole audition a massive success!
There was no need for any forced, sensational devil's-edit tricks.
A top star's utterly blank face, and the overwhelming visual of the rookie contestant who had frozen him solid in a single glance.
And the truth behind it: the two of them had once shared the screen in the legendary Netflix drama Blood Garden—the legendary Blood Garden generation.
Anyone who still remembered the Blood Garden syndrome that had whipped the entire nation into a patriotic frenzy ten years ago would never be able to scroll past this story.
This is the kind of thing you couldn't fail even if you tried! Hye-jin! Ha-yul! This weekend, Daddy's treating you to Korean beef!
Producer Park Seong-jin cheered silently to himself, already certain of the triumph awaiting both this one-act drama project and its making-of film.
On camera, Gang Si-woo still hadn't recovered.
Kim Chae-eun.
Si-woo found himself mouthing those three syllables without realizing it.
"Is that… really Kim Chae-eun…? N-no. Are you Kim Chae-eun?"
"Yes. Contestant Number Fourteen, Kim Chae-eun."
Chae-eun offered a light nod of greeting toward Si-woo, who sat in the place of honor staring blankly at her—her eyes cool and impassive, as if she somehow failed to recognize him, even though that was impossible.
"From when we filmed Blood Garden…"
"It's been a while, Si-woo sunbae."
With that single line, memories he had buried deep in the nostalgia of childhood flashed back with violent force.
Blood Garden—the career-defining work that had made him who he was.
The genius child actress who had played Yoo Da-hye, the older sister of the heroine.
And… his first love.
Of course, it had only been a fleeting crush at the age of eight. It no longer carried any great meaning.
In other words: seeing her face again now did not mean he was suddenly falling in love all over again. Nothing of the sort.
But that was hardly a reason not to be completely thrown off balance.
Why… why is she here…!?
Si-woo's pupils shook as if an earthquake had hit them.
The boredom that had filled the audition room only moments earlier already felt like a distant past.
Now he finally understood why the PD had been smiling so meaningfully at him this whole time.
How much fun must it have been, knowing he was about to see this exact spectacle?
For the person living it, it was not fun at all.
"…"
How long had he been sitting there, completely checked out?
At some point Si-woo suddenly realized that this entire humiliating display was being captured on camera in real time.
"A-ahem!!"
He cleared his throat roughly and hastily adjusted his grip on the fountain pen.
The tips of his ears were so red they looked ready to burst. He tried his best to maintain the lofty composure befitting a judge, but he could already feel the other judges watching him with warm amusement.
"No matter how much of a rising star you are these days, Si-woo, you're still a high school student after all. It's nice to see you so genuinely happy to reunite with an old colleague."
"Exactly. Has it been a full ten years? The legendary Blood Garden generation gathering again."
Even the director chimed in, nodding with a look of pure satisfaction—and Si-woo's eyebrow gave a faint twitch.
After staring blankly between the two of them for a moment, he finally spoke in a low, cold voice.
"…So the two of you already knew."
At that, the director and casting director both averted their eyes, fanning themselves or shuffling through profile documents.
Neither confirmed nor denied it—but their behavior was answer enough.
…I'm going to lose my mind. Seriously.
Even the adults sitting in the judges' seats had known in advance that Kim Chae-eun would be participating.
Once again, there truly was not a single adult left in this world worth trusting.
Si-woo let out a deep internal sigh and pressed a hand to his forehead. Betrayal surged up, but the stage was already perfectly set—there was nothing he could do about it.
…Get a grip. This is an audition room.
He righted the pen that had fallen across the desk and forced a solemn expression onto his face.
"…Ahem. That's enough small talk. Contestant Number Fourteen, Kim Chae-eun—we'll proceed with the audition."
Si-woo pointed to the two scripts lying beside the file folder and steadied his tone.
"As you're well aware, the audition for the one-act drama Strange Premonition is not free-form acting. You choose the role you want from the two scripts we designated in advance—Script A or Script B—and perform that character. Which script did you prepare?"
"I'll go with Script A."
There was not a hint of hesitation.
The role Kim Chae-eun had chosen was the terminally ill girl.
On the surface, it was a common setup.
Which was exactly why it was harder.
The terminally ill character had been repeated across countless films and dramas.
Which meant audiences' standards had risen just as high.
Push a little too far and it became melodrama.
Hold back a little too much and it became flat and lifeless.
It was a role that laid a performer's sense of balance bare.
"Very well. Contestant Number Fourteen, Kim Chae-eun—begin when ready."
The moment Si-woo's words ended—
the air around Kim Chae-eun changed.
The shift was not dramatic.
She did not hunch her shoulders heavily.
She did not bend at the waist.
She simply exhaled once.
And yet it was strange.
Where a girl her own age had been standing only a moment before, there now stood a child who had spent a long time leaning against a hospital window, simply surviving.
Her face, already fair under the lights, now looked pale—like someone who had not seen sunlight for days beneath the fluorescent glow of a hospital room.
Her fingertips trembled, ever so slightly.
A hand that had been reaching for something stopped, powerless, in empty air.
There was no strength left in her fingers.
Even her breath could not stretch long.
It was short and shallow, like someone who could not fill their lungs all the way to the bottom.
"…!!"
One of the filming staff sucked in a breath without meaning to, then belatedly realized the mistake and glanced around for reactions.
But in that moment, no one was giving that staff member any looks.
Because everyone in the audition room—
was being pulled into the girl standing before them.
Her lips trembled, just a little.
And then a single line barely managed to slip free.
"…It's starting again."
A voice cracked and frail, scattering as it left her.
Even the soft drop of a single handful of breath squeezed at the chest.
A presence so precarious it seemed ready to be swept away and extinguished by the cold air-conditioning of the audition room at any second.
The room fell silent in an instant.
Someone drew a breath without realizing it.
In a space that was supposed to be quiet, that tiny sound of breathing rang out with unnatural clarity.
The camera director watching the monitor unconsciously pulled the zoom tighter. The staff member holding the boom mic tightened their grip without meaning to.
Kim Chae-eun did nothing.
She did not cry. She did not raise her voice.
Just one slow gaze directed out a window.
The calm, resigned eyes that only someone who already knew their own end could possess.
Following that gaze, people found themselves no longer looking at an audition room—but at a hospital window.
The director's hand stopped moving.
The casting director had been about to take a note and froze with the tip of the pen still pressed to the paper.
Si-woo, too, watched her in silence.
How much time had passed?
"…That's all."
When Chae-eun spoke in a low voice and straightened her shoulders, the compressed air of the waiting room burst free all at once with a soft pop.
Only then did the judges explode into the breaths they had been holding, coughing them out in delayed gasps.
Producer Park Seong-jin could not close his hanging jaw. The director's hands shook as he began scribbling furiously across his documents.
Si-woo wet his bone-dry lips with his tongue and screamed inwardly.
…You're kidding, right?
How many minutes had that been?
No—had even a few minutes passed?
Whether it had been tens of seconds or several minutes, he could barely sense the passage of time.
That was how intensely the performance Kim Chae-eun had just delivered burned itself into his mind, like a brand.
Honestly… I could say that every performance from the applicants before her just got wiped clean out of my head because of what she just showed.
And as unfair as it was to the contestants still waiting, after seeing acting like that, anyone else performing Script A might as well be wasting their time.
Ten years. He felt pathetic for having even one percent believed that her craft might have rusted during the long absence from the industry.
Rusted? Hardly…
Si-woo let out a hollow laugh without meaning to.
She's gotten so much deeper than she was ten years ago.
Just as Chae-eun calmly offered her thanks and turned to leave, Si-woo hurriedly called her back.
"…Chae-eun, wait a second."
He wet his parched lips and looked at her. There was a mountain of things he wanted to ask.
Where she had been and what she had been doing for ten years. Why she had suddenly appeared in this audition room.
"Let's talk for a bit. I've got so many questions. Your acting's gotten even better than when we were kids. It gave me chills. No, wait, that's not—… Are you coming back to acting for real? If you are, Ha-eun would be so happy."
Si-woo dropped the formalities of a judge and let genuine praise and gladness show through.
But Chae-eun's response was utterly matter-of-fact.
"No. I need to buy full-tracking gear."
"…?"
???
Full-tracking…?
A festival of question marks flooded Si-woo's mind in an instant.
While he sat there, mouth hanging open in pure blank confusion, Producer Park Seong-jin cleared his throat beside him and flashed a sly smile.
"Haha, Gang Si-woo. No need to get so impatient. I'll make sure the two of you have plenty of time to talk once the audition is over. That's part of the making-of film too, after all. Don't worry about it—for now, just keep the audition moving as scheduled, all right?"
That irritating curl of the lip.
PD Park's face was genuinely unpleasant to look at, but as long as the cameras were rolling, Si-woo had no choice but to handle the schedule in front of him first.
When Chae-eun bowed and left the audition room, Si-woo exhaled a long breath and pressed hard against his temples.
The encounter with Kim Chae-eun had been a genuinely shocking event he had never seen coming.
A reunion with his first love from ten years ago—and a legendary child actress.
But looked at another way: he had just taken a direct hit from the massive bomb that was Kim Chae-eun. There couldn't possibly be anything left that could still rattle his heart or catch him off guard.
…Yeah. Time to really get my head straight.
Si-woo settled his shaken nerves and reached for the bottle of water on the judges' table to soothe his dry throat.
He twisted off the cap, tipped his head back, and gulped down the cold water in big swallows.
But he did not know.
He did not know exactly what that earlier remark—about the Blood Garden generation gathering again—had truly meant, spoken before Chae-eun's performance had even begun.
The audition room door opened, and a staff member's voice carried through.
"Next contestant, please enter. Waiting number fifteen—Seo Da-young!"
"Cough—! Pffft—!!!"
The moment that name rang out across the audition room—
Gang Si-woo forcefully sprayed the water he had been drinking all over everything.