Twenty-Three Years, Perfectly Spent

Even without seeing each other anymore, knowing they were still alive had apparently been a tremendous source of strength to me. As soon as I read the article, I called the company. However badly things had fallen apart, those people were family to me. Surely they would have told me about a death, if nothing else.

Which made me wonder — had they really been like family at all? Had we truly been that much of strangers to each other? I only realized it, belatedly, now. Well, I'd never been one to read a room, so apparently I'd simply never known where the line was drawn.

Ever since I came back from Director Do Jaeyeon's funeral, my apartment had gone to ruin. The place was a mountain of trash — there wasn't a single spot left to set down a soju bottle.

I had stopped, but fortunately, the industry I'd walked away from had not. I passed the time watching the dramas and films that kept being made, one after another.

That became the whole of my life.

The call came on some winter or other.

For once, it was neither spam nor the big uncle's family calling to beg for money.

No — wait.

Truthfully, I couldn't tell who it was. The caller's name wouldn't read.

......Huh? Now that I thought of it, why couldn't I read it?

Something was off. My eyesight had always been good. For text to be unreadable at this distance was strange.

I reached for the phone on the table — and cracked my shin against the chair.

"Fuck!"

And while I was howling about the pain, I stepped on an empty soju bottle and toppled backward. My skull cracked against the marble floor so hard my vision whited out.

At first I thought it was the kind of injury that would fix itself with a bit of lying still.

......Except it was worse than I'd expected. Blood was running from my head.

'This... isn't fine, is it?'

Lying there, I groped hurriedly for my phone. I meant to call an ambulance.

But the moment I picked it up, a thought drifted through, unbidden: was I really alive? Not a single soul in this world wondered about me — whether I was living or dead. My life held nothing I had enjoyed, nothing I regretted leaving behind.

And yet I was still alive?

The moment I lowered the phone in my hand—

Ha. Hilarious.

"Then say it so I understand in one go, you lousy demon."

Once was enough — it was terrifying. Fine, I got it. My life gets burned up.

Even then, the phone in my hand was ringing again. I lifted it and narrowed my eyes. Up close, it was unmistakable: the caller's name refused to display. As if something had been smeared over it, the name was simply smudged away. I scrubbed it against my clothes until my arm ached, and nothing changed.

Goosebumps crawled up my skin. Was this the demon's doing, too?

The demon hurried me along.

If I went back to a random point in the past, then maybe. Just maybe, I might see the family of Leader Actors again.

At Vice President Gam Soohan's funeral, I hadn't been able to believe any of it. But by Director Do Jaeyeon's funeral, it had finally sunk in — I had truly lost every single person I loved.

'......I just want to see them one more time.'

Wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that how it was supposed to be? When someone goes to see family they've lost, there's nothing grand about the things they want to do. To share a single meal together. That was all of it.

I should eat jokbal — braised pig's trotters. The dish the three of them loved so much they ordered it as a late-night snack every single time, the one I'd never even tried.

When my contract with Leader Actors was first terminated, I hadn't understood. Five years on, I did. Leader Actors had been toppled — deliberately.

This was no groundless delusion, no stray conspiracy theory. Leader Actors wasn't a major corporation, but it had held a solid, established place in the industry. For a company like that to collapse in a single stroke defied all reason. And in all likelihood... Do Jaeyeon and the other two had been dragged down in that fall.

So I would build Leader Actors into something greater than it had ever been.

Into something no one could ever tear down.

And for that, I would have to act better than I ever had.

Acting, after all, is an extension of life — and in the end, emotions you cannot properly understand are emotions you cannot properly perform. The warm, love-saturated feelings were almost never natural to me. I had never lived them, so I had never grasped their depth. Happiness. Love. Teenagers staking their lives on friendship. Children throwing tantrums in the absolute trust of a parent's boundless love.

If I could come to understand those things even a little more — if my life grew even a little richer — then no matter what a piece of trash I was, there would always be a set out there waiting for me.

Come to think of it, acting again would be a good thing in itself. And thinking that way, my remaining twenty-three years felt as though they would be spent perfectly — used to the very last drop, and vanish without an ounce of waste.

If I died here, it seemed no one would ever know that I had died. So I reported it to 119 first.

And lay there, counting numbers. I lost consciousness before I reached five.

At the moment of death, this is what I thought.

My life really had held nothing but Leader Actors and acting.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes again was a system window.

Sixteen years old. If I'd been in school, that would be third year of middle school. If the demon had aimed for it, it was a rather well-chosen moment.

My parents had died when I was seven, and after that I was raised in my big uncle's household. Working as a child actor, I couldn't even sleep properly — school was out of the question. I'd entered the withdrawal process the moment I started middle school, so I had long since been struck from the student roster.

Even half a day's jet lag leaves a person disoriented; there was no adapting instantly to a crossing of this magnitude. And yet I had no choice but to pull myself together on the spot.

"Augh — what the hell."

I was hanging off the railing of an apartment rooftop. It was a foggy day, and the ground below showed through only in glimpses.

I swore and scrambled down off the railing.

"Almost died all over again."

My breath came ragged; when I turned around, my legs were trembling. I sank down where I stood and pushed up the long sleeves I was wearing in the height of summer. Wounds covered my body — every last one from being beaten.

It was somewhere around this point in my life that I had learned going to the police would only earn me the same old line: too much hassle. I climbed up onto the rooftop like this time and time again — and still I carried my money home to the family that abused me. It was hardly surprising that someone who hadn't even managed to finish elementary school made irrational choices. Thinking of those people as my only family even past the age of twenty — that, I suppose, was a natural-born foolishness that no schooling could have fixed.

And yet now I knew. My family was at Leader Actors. They had chased me out, yes. But in the end, the only people who had ever loved me were them. My knockoff family.

Let's start over from the very beginning.

Again.

First — see whether revenge was even possible.

I clenched my jaw. Then nodded at once.

"Yeah. No way I can go after them yet."

Unlike my action-tempered thirties, this sixteen-year-old body was as frail as a dandelion seed. Years as a child actor had left me chronically underfed and underslept. Perhaps because I had eaten too little and slept too little my whole life, I had grown far shorter than my genes promised.

I came down the stairs, headed for my uncle's apartment, and went into my room to pack up my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠things. And there, walking in through the front door, my uncle's son — Lee Sunggyu — found me.

"What are you doing?"

Maybe because he'd recently started attending an acting academy, Lee Sunggyu had cut back on the swearing. Now and then he even made a show of stopping his father whenever the man moved to beat me.

Seeing Sunggyu, I felt — of all things — glad.

"Hyung."

"I asked what you're doing."

"Become an actor. Whatever it takes. You have to."

That's how I'll get it back. You'll need a little fame first.

I shouldered my bag and went on.

"I'm running away from home. Since I'm not coming back, I guess that makes it independence... ah, no — technically, escape."

"What are you even saying."

While Sunggyu stood there dumbstruck, I opened the front door. The elevator felt like a trap, so I bolted down the outdoor stairwell instead. Apparently even Sunggyu didn't believe he could catch me: by the time I'd leapt down from the third floor and out of the building, he was watching me from the veranda with a look of pure bewilderment. What could a brat with nowhere to go even do? — that was the look.

I raised both hands and flashed him a double middle finger, then left the complex. Naturally, I ran like hell, terrified of being caught.

Back when I was sixteen for real, I never would have dared think ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of leaving that house. Because back then, I had believed those people were family. I had believed that if I only kept pouring myself in without end, a family fence that scattered like grains of sand would one day harden into something solid.

But grains of sand stayed grains of sand, and my money never became a river ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— all it ever managed was groundwater. And just like that, I was forgotten.

"Still, come on. I'm way too broke."

I thought it over only after I'd bolted from the house.

Sixteen years old, a student struck from the roster, a secondhand 2G phone.

Total assets: whatever transit fare was loaded on a mini transit card... oh, crap — do I even have transit fare on this thing?

It was hot enough to kill me, so I jumped onto the first bus I saw — and thank God, the fare went through. I sank into a seat on the empty bus and let the air conditioning wash over me.

I lay there half dead until my stop. When I looked outside to get off, rain was hammering down out of nowhere — a squall, maybe.

The Leader Actors office stood five minutes on foot from its nearest bus stop.

I ran through the rain toward the stilt-raised building of Leader Actors. Over the years I belonged to the company, our headquarters had moved twice.

The three-story office in Heukseok-dong.

I had let the place slip my mind entirely — but the moment the building came into view, the nostalgia crashed over me in a wave. Only after stepping inside did I realize that some part of me had missed this place all along.

A crudely scrawled sheet of paper was taped above the doorbell.

I pressed it, and the door opened at once.

Looking back now, Leader Actors had cast me around October of the following year. The door should never have opened for someone they didn't know from Adam.

Well. What of it.

"Because I'm handsome."

When do the doors of the entertainment world swing open most easily?

When something extraordinarily beautiful comes knocking.

And that would be me.