Bound to Rise, No Matter How You Look at It
"Jin-hyuk, that little pause at the end was great. Yeon doesn't fire back right away when he speaks — she studies him first, just like that."
At Director Seol Kyung-woo's words, Jin-hyuk nodded.
The truth was, he hadn't paused on purpose. The words had simply come out late because he'd been too busy watching the girl in front of him.
Somehow, that fact stung his pride.
He'd assumed she was a complete amateur — and yet she'd delivered a performance overwhelming enough to bury him, which felt surreal. He had, after all, walked what he considered the elite track among child actors, the kind the industry brass unanimously called a prodigy.
He'd never once imagined a peer could out-act him, so his bruised pride came hand in hand with a budding fascination.
While a staffer straightened his collar, Jin-hyuk's gaze drifted toward Maru.
Jegal Yeon was drinking the water her mother had handed her. When she returned the bottle, she lifted the hem of her skirt slightly and scratched her thigh.
It was the kind of behavior more befitting a boy than a girl.
"Yeon-ah! You can't just, um, lift your skirt like that—"
"It's fine! This much is nothing!"
...She's a strange one.
Her acting was every bit as unusual as her conduct.
Acting, as a rule, can never be perfect — at its core it's nothing more than an imitation of another person. And yet this child's acting was perfect. Yes, it was almost as if...
as if she had actually become the character in the story.
Which meant her scene partner — namely, him — had no choice but to scramble just to keep up with her rhythm.
"Jin-hyuk, want to check the monitor?"
At Seol Kyung-woo's call, he walked over quickly.
On the screen, the scene from moments ago was playing back. It was different from facing her in person; there were things you could only catch through the lens.
For instance, why Yoon-ha had fidgeted with her sleeve before speaking — because Do-jin's tone had turned sharp and she'd cowered. Even the subtle play of her facial muscles as she delivered her lines — only now, watching the footage, did he grasp it all perfectly.
What kind of detail is that...
Jin-hyuk fell silent when his own lines came up.
On screen, Do-jin genuinely looked like a boy confronted with something strange. At first, displeasure. As he listened to her story, a faint wariness. And at the end, mid-reply, a quick check of the other person's face.
It was far more natural than anything he himself had prepared.
"Putting two prodigies together — now that's a treat. Haha!" Seol Kyung-woo said, sounding thoroughly satisfied.
Prodigies. Jin-hyuk couldn't bring himself to answer.
That scene simply could not have existed without Jegal Yeon. The one scrambling to keep up had been him — the very person who'd smirked about her being an industry senior's hand-picked favorite.
The director moved away to set up the next shot. Jin-hyuk stayed in front of the monitor and watched until the playback ended.
It was probably true that he'd recognized Ji Hak-young's name and come running on his own. But that wasn't the whole story.
Watching this girl act, he'd have wanted to bring her in regardless. If he were the director, he probably would have done the same.
The first shoot went more smoothly than I'd expected.
I took another sip of water and rolled my shoulders. Only when the tension drained away did I notice how stiff my neck had gotten.
Even the added scene came off decently.
That was a relief. The possession experience had only carried me up to the moment of greeting Do-jin for the first time. Everything after that — I'd had to read the script and work it out myself.
I'd been a little worried at first. I feared that once that fleeting sensation wore off, I'd slide right back into the half-baked acting of my past life.
But it hadn't turned out that way.
The feeling that had stirred in me when I first laid eyes on the boy still lingered. From that state, when he'd spoken to me, I'd slipped naturally into immersion as Yoon-ha, the character within the story — all the way down to wanting to explain why I was staring at him, and to feeling that small ache in my chest when he told me not to say such strange things.
And Seo Jin-hyuk had received my lines beautifully. Acting against another person drew reactions out of me that I'd never found reading the script alone.
I knew the boy had a brusque way of speaking, but hearing it in person hit differently. Turns out the name "future world star" wasn't just for show.
So he was this good even back then.
A prodigy really is a prodigy, I suppose.
I nodded to myself for no particular reason — and that was when Seo Jin-hyuk came up beside me.
Somehow his expression and his energy were oddly different from before. He still wasn't saying a word, but he no longer gave off that glare-y vibe.
The boy fiddled with the corner of his script for a while before opening his mouth.
"What I said in the waiting room earlier."
I looked up.
"I only said it because I thought you were a parachute hire."
It was a more honest confession than I'd expected. I mulled it over for a moment before answering.
"Well, you're not wrong. I didn't come in through auditions, after all."
"But I still shouldn't have said it like that."
Seo Jin-hyuk dropped his gaze for a moment.
"Sorry."
Well, well.
I hadn't expected him to apologize so openly. Usually kids his age either get even more prickly or just pretend nothing happened, don't they?
So there's a reason he makes it big in the future. He's got a good character, too.
Come to think of it, the industry rumor mill said Seo Jin-hyuk had a remarkably decent personality for his line of work — apparently that much was true.
"It's fine. I'd have thought the same thing in your shoes. And honestly, this is my first time acting."
The boy glanced at my face and looked a little flustered. If you imagined a total beginner pulling off what he'd just seen from me, no wonder his feelings were complicated.
I quickly added, "Th-that's why I practiced so hard."
It was true that the possession experience had helped enormously — but that didn't mean I hadn't put in the work.
Seo Jin-hyuk nodded, then spread his script open next to mine.
"Next, I say I'm never coming back here. Right?"
His finger tapped a specific line — the scene the director had said we'd shoot soon.
"Could we run the lines after that together?"
He really was an ambitious kid. Asking to rehearse together even during break time.
If I'd been that passionate in my past life, would I have made it too?
"Sure, let's do it."
At my answer, Seo Jin-hyuk dragged a nearby chair over. Script on his knees, he looked at me with a face far more serious than it had been during the shoot just now.
The future world star was waiting for my next line.
I straightened the end of my sleeve and smiled a little to myself.
This is actually fun...
The simple fact that I was facing off, scene to scene, with someone who'd stood at that summit in my past life — it stirred up in me a strange mix of tension and anticipation.
Enough that I found myself wanting to keep doing this forever.
Showbiz folk keep an eye on the networks as a matter of course, but lately TVK had been on everyone's mind especially.
The glittering golden age of cable drama had passed a few years back, and once the terrestrial broadcasters began reinvesting in dramas and poaching writers, a cable dark age had set in. Capital and quality were both slipping at TVK, but they couldn't afford to give up drama production — outside the news, it had always been their strongest content.
And into that moment, the script for Nakhwadang had landed in their lap like a godsend.
Jo Yu-na. Her debut work had aired on TVK, sunk without much of a ripple, and left her out of a job. But the script she'd brought in this time was on a different level entirely — as if she'd become another person.
Urban redevelopment, a society in transition, and a shaman — a distinctly Korean subject to boot. It had the elements to charm audiences, and the characters were drawn with real individuality.
That was why they'd gone all-in, casting all the way up to an S-Class Star like Ji Hak-young. The side effect, of course, was that they had no budget left for the other roles, and the drama risked sliding into a Ji Hak-young one-man show if they weren't careful.
And then — out of nowhere — a kid came falling from the sky.
Starting with that uncanny hook of jade-green eyes, and moving on to an acting ability that defied belief — possibly the best of her entire generation.
"You'd call it method acting?"
"That's how it looked to me... but she seems able to switch it on and off."
At Director Seol Kyung-woo's explanation, the TVK bureau director tilted his head.
He'd done his own time on sets back in the day, and he'd seen his share of method actors. Every single one of them had immersed themselves so completely in their roles that it bled into their daily lives.
And you're telling me she can toggle it? Is that even possible?
But the important thing, either way, was that a young, adorable genius was now in TVK's hands.
In the bureau director's eyes, the girl called Jegal Yeon had true star quality. Normally calm and wrapped in a mystical air — yet the moment the cameras rolled, she became the role itself. A prodigy of a girl.
Even her name is unusual.
In all his life, he'd never once met a Jegal. And apparently she was from the Namwon Jegal Clan — he'd looked it up, and there were fewer than fifty registered members in the whole country.
For all he knew, she might be a child literally born to become a superstar.
The timing couldn't have been better. As bureau director, he absolutely needed Nakhwadang to be a mega-hit, which meant doing everything within his power to make it happen.
"...Kyung-woo. You're confident you can use her well, right? The mood upstairs is not good right now."
"Bureau Director. Who exactly do you take me for?"
Seol Kyung-woo was the director notorious for staging all manner of rage-bait clips with his actors and uploading them as "behind-the-scenes" content. Fans hated him for it; the executives loved him. That kind of director.
And in Seol Kyung-woo's eyes, Jegal Yeon was close to the perfect ingredient — the kind of kid who'd rise naturally on her own with the barest push of his spoon.
"I'm going to feature her front and center in the teaser."
Which was exactly why he needed no rage-bait content at all. Just maximum exposure across as many media outlets as possible.
That alone would be enough to plant that child at the very center of the Republic of Korea.