The Acting Genius Who Descended Dancing from the Darkness (3)
My confusion lasted only a moment. I quickly grasped the situation.
After all, asking a six-year-old to imagine the grief of losing her entire family was a brutal request right out of the gate. No wonder the casting director looked so appalled and pushed back so hard.
Still, I cast my mind back to the rough synopsis printed on the audition notice.
The drama Flower of Blood seemed to be a fairly high-intensity, brutal revenge story. In other words, the performance Director Han was demanding of me right now was either an actual scene I would have to play in the drama itself, or something very close to it.
If I was going to have to do it eventually, showing it here and now was no big deal.
Having roughly understood the situation, I gave a light nod and stepped forward.
…Though this particular performance would need a little time to prepare.
Ah.
Fortunately, it looked like I wouldn’t even have to ask for time to settle into the emotion.
“Director Han! Have you lost your mind? Why on earth are you making her do that scene?!”
Lee Min-woo seized Han Sang-in’s sleeve and growled under his breath.
This bastard finally did it! Ever since the last child-actor audition he’s been singing the same tune about how nothing satisfied him!
This entire Yu Da-hye audition had only been held again because, at the previous child-actor casting call, he had declared there wasn’t a single candidate he liked.
At least back then they had managed to lock in the child actress for the female lead.
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to cast that girl as the female lead, Yu Ji-hye, at this late stage? The child actress for Ji-hye’s role has already been cast!”
“If it comes to that, we can just ask for understanding and move that girl over to the older sister role, Yu Da-hye.”
“Director Han!”
A vein stood out on Lee Min-woo’s forehead.
“Does that even make sense? Suddenly changing a role that’s already been cast? We’ve already sent the acceptance email to that family’s household!”
“Look at it the other way—we’ve only sent the email. No one has signed a contract yet. And I never said I was immediately casting that girl as Yu Ji-hye. I simply said I wanted to see her act.”
Faced with Han Sang-in’s unyielding attitude, Lee Min-woo forced down the anger boiling inside him.
Fine. Calm down. Just a moment ago that kid was playing a bright, energetic older sister full of life. Genius or not, there’s no way she can suddenly turn around and deliver a performance of despair after losing her parents—a role whose personality is a complete 180 from what she just did.
Lee Min-woo soothed himself and righted the chair that had fallen over, sitting back down.
What truly calmed him was the conviction that a child named Seo Da-young could never perfectly pull off what Director Han was asking for.
This was an abrupt demand for a completely different role that hadn’t even been listed in the original audition notice—something that would make even adult actors stumble. There was simply no way she could deliver a performance that would satisfy Director Han’s notoriously picky standards on the spot.
That girl is pure Yu Da-hye through and through. Yu Da-hye and Yu Ji-hye have completely different personalities from the ground up. There’s no way she can pull it off.
In the end, this was nothing more than a petty little episode born of Director Han’s lingering, ugly regret.
That was what he believed.
Meanwhile, Seo Da-young, who had been standing with her eyes closed as if preparing herself, slowly lifted her head.
Perhaps because the request had been so sudden, the girl who normally delivered requested performances without hesitation this time took long enough that the two men even had room to argue.
That delay only strengthened Lee Min-woo’s certainty that she would fail to meet Director Han’s demand.
Then Seo Da-young’s performance began.
And the atmosphere in the audition room changed in an instant.
“….”
There was no dialogue. No scream. No sobbing.
Seo Da-young simply stared blankly at a single point in empty space.
Yet sometimes the things that emerge most clearly are the ones left unspoken.
This performance was exactly that.
In the blink of an eye the color drained from Seo Da-young’s face, leaving an expression so empty it looked as if her soul had been scooped out entirely. Slack shoulders. Eyes that had lost all focus. Dry tear tracks spreading across her cheeks that perfectly embodied a child’s despair—unable to accept the cruel reality of having lost her parents.
No. That wasn’t right.
Lee Min-woo hastily rubbed his eyes and looked again. There were no tear tracks.
The moment he saw the performance unfolding before him, his brain had simply invented nonexistent tear stains on its own.
Then Da-young’s gaze, which had been fixed on empty air, slowly rolled over and locked onto Lee Min-woo in the judges’ seats.
“…!!”
In that instant his breath was stolen.
Bottomless, pitch-black eyes.
A dense despair so thick he could not breathe. A crushing pain as if his chest were being ground to pulp.
Lee Min-woo clutched at his own chest without realizing it.
He had been completely overwhelmed by the performance.
A tiny child who didn’t even weigh thirty kilograms was the only presence radiating through the entire spacious audition room.
Only she had been granted permission to exist in this space.
…At this rate.
An absurd impression rose in Lee Min-woo’s mind.
It was ridiculous, yet at the same time an undeniable truth.
At this rate, doesn’t the Yu Da-hye performance she showed first feel like she was wearing clothes that didn’t fit?
Only after a long stretch of time did the two men remember to breathe, gulping in air and looking at each other.
“Well, Min-woo? Glad I insisted on seeing this performance last, aren’t you?”
At Han Sang-in’s voice, Lee Min-woo managed to squeeze out a single sentence.
“…First things first—you’re coming with me to explain this to the parents of the child who was originally cast as Yu Ji-hye. I can’t handle that alone.”
“Thank you for your hard work. The audition is over, so you may leave now.”
Director Han and Casting Director Lee Min-woo dismissed us with expressions that looked somehow drained of all energy.
Mom bowed deeply with a “Please take good care of us!” and led me out of the audition room by the hand.
The moment we stepped into the hallway I pressed a hand to my chest and carefully reined in the emotions that had been blazing inside me.
Even I had to admit I had gone too deep just now.
What I had shown them wasn’t really acting.
It was closer to simply stopping the act.
Because the despair of losing every member of my family and knowing I would never see them again—that was my true, innermost heart.
This world I had been reborn into, carrying the memories of my previous life, was similar to the one I had originally lived in, yet subtly different.
For instance, in my original world I had already died in 2026.
Yet when I opened my eyes again, this world had rewound a full twenty years into the past—to 2006.
A tangled timeline was something I could shrug off as just one more miracle piled on top of the miracle of reincarnation itself.
But that wasn’t the only strange thing. The very history of the world was slightly off-kilter in places.
The largest global OTT service I remembered wasn’t called Enflix; it had an entirely different name. The president who appeared on the morning news every day, the popular idols, even the games—none of them were the ones I knew.
In short: a parallel world.
I had been reborn on an Earth that was endlessly similar to the one I had lived on, yet completely different.
And the moment I realized that fact—
I despaired.
It would have been better if only my soul had time-slipped into the past of the same world.
Then somewhere in this world the people I had loved so dearly—my real family—would still be alive and breathing. Even if in this new life we remained complete strangers who could never become entangled, simply being able to watch them live healthy lives from afar would have been salvation enough.
But in this parallel world, the people I loved did not exist.
They had never even been born here to begin with.
…I would never be able to see them again.
I should never have been reborn at all.
At least then I might have met them in the afterlife.
Even if I met a second death in this body, the afterlife of a parallel world would contain no one I longed for.
So when Director Han asked me to play a child left alone in eternal solitude after losing her entire family, it was not a difficult request.
Because it wasn’t a matter of acting—it was a matter of simply stopping the act.
“Da-young.”
As we walked from the audition building toward the parking lot, Mom carefully took my hand and asked in a cautious voice,
“Today was your first audition…. How was it? It wasn’t too hard, was it?”
Anxiety colored her tone. I felt a jolt of realization.
The final performance I had shown must have been too intense.
It wasn’t the kind of emotional line a normal six-year-old child would carry, after all.
I had thrown myself into the audition with all my heart to live up to Mom’s expectations, yet if the result had only made her anxious, that completely defeated the purpose.
So, as always, I played the good child.
“No! I really enjoyed it!”
“…Really? And, um…. Are you feeling okay? You’re not hurt anywhere, or sad in your heart?”
Mom still watched my face carefully, her voice full of worry.
Her hand gently stroked my cheek.
Through the thin layer of skin I felt her warmth—the heart of a mother worrying for her daughter.
“Yes, I’m fine! Because just now was only ‘acting’!”
And so Seo Da-young smiled.
Like a good child drawn in a picture.
And a few days later.
A single piece of mail arrived at our house.
Flower of Blood
Enflix Original Drama
Role: Yu Ji-hye (Female Lead — Child)
(Originally auditioned for: Yu Da-hye)
“…Huh?”
What is this.