The Thirty Minutes We Prepared
The film shoot was a month away. The complete screenplay was supposed to be finished a week before then. The thought of receiving a script just a week from now gave me a rare little thrill.
Within that month, the regular performance survival contest took place.
Every school event was normally loud and chaotic, but the regular performances were comparatively subdued affairs.
It struck me as curious that no matter how large or small a play was, the shape of the people preparing it looked so similar. Big play or small play, a play was still a play in the end — this felt like proof of that simple fact.
All three teams were given thirty minutes of stage time. From the very beginning, our team had racked its brains over how to fill those thirty minutes.
Compared to the other three teams, the team preparing the play Boundary was honestly a bit weak. Sure, we had two former child actors among us, but the other teams had child actors of their own, and even idols whose names everyone already knew on their stages.
Even so, our play had one scene with real impact. I burned through my brain cells trying to devise a direction that would pour every ounce of strength into that single scene.
Because the fight was over a tax levied on a jewel dug up from the earth, the jewel itself remained buried underground all the way through Act 1, Scene 2.
Compressing a two-hour play — intermission included — into thirty minutes is no easy feat. Summarizing is hard, and showing only fragments is hard too. In effect, the story has to dive straight into its center without so much as a word of character introduction.
I chose to show fragments instead, and slightly rearranged the order of the script. For the dialogue, I read through three separate translated editions, picked the version that suited our team best, and then tailored individual lines to fit each actor. Sometimes I simplified things so much that the flavor of the words died on the vine, but I judged clarity of delivery to be the more important virtue.
Thinking of them as students, their shortcomings in acting didn't feel nearly as frustrating as they otherwise would have.
"But if you're getting paid, you'd better do better than this."
When I finally let the scolding slip out, Ki Ian clapped a hand over my mouth and cursed me out.
"Quit saying pointless stuff."
"Ugh, does this punk talk like that even on a film set?"
"The world's gotten way too soft. Somebody ought to smack him."
Look at this guy, saying the world had gotten too soft. How long did he think he'd lived, exactly?
In any case, the fact that they were students made their lacking acting forgivable — and the fact that they were my same-age peers made it feel fine to cross the occasional line with each other. When the people at Leader Actors lectured me, it was nagging; when these guys did it, it was just flat-out cursing. And yet somehow it landed harder that way. The immediacy of the reaction — that was the difference.
They say you learn the ways of society among your own peer group. Back before I regressed, Vice President Gam Seoohan once lamented that he should have sent me to school first. Only now did I understand what he'd meant.
Our preparations for those thirty minutes were complete. We stood gathered in a circle. The same punks who'd been whining about this and that turned to me and spoke.
"Director, say a word."
"Skip the money talk, you unhinged bastard."
"And no comments on our acting!"
With warnings flying at me from every direction, they still told me to say something. I thought for a moment about what to say, then opened my mouth.
"Honestly, from the start, our team was the least popular of the three. But I'd planned on joining this team from day one. So you should all be thanking me."
Boos erupted at my words. Why, though? Obviously they should be grateful, no?
"Of course, if any of you could actually act, that would be a lie—"
Before I could get any further, afraid I'd say something pointless, Jang Chaerin smacked me hard on the back. I rubbed my back with one hand and pressed on.
"It's also true that you all improved at a startling speed."
And unable to let this opportunity pass, I quickly doled out criticism to each actor, one by one. The things they needed to watch for on stage. Looking at their faces, there was so much to pick apart that it came pouring out of me. In the end, one little word turned into roughly ten minutes of sermonizing, but fortunately Jang Chaerin didn't hit me again, and no one called it pointless. I suppose they'd tired themselves out cursing.
"Do well out there."
With that, I ended the sermon. I couldn't wait to show these kids to an audience — it was killing me.
That I felt this way without even setting foot on the stage myself was a first, not just in this life but across my entire life before regression.
Team 3's play Boundary was the third act on the program for the second-year regular performances. The supervising teacher, Hong Hyeonsang, was practically beside himself with the desire to show it off.
These days, Hong Hyeonsang had a play of his own in preparation, and he unspooled the same bragging almost every single time he ran into his colleagues.
"Lee Heeyoon is simply a genius. He's attained complete mastery. This isn't a matter of age. I only watched from behind the scenes this time, and I had nothing to say. He understands that play better than I do."
The first time he bragged, it was right around when Garden of Manyusa had aired, so everyone had listened with genuine interest. By now, he'd bragged so many times that they all just let it pass in one ear and out the other.
Then the moment actually came for that vaunted stage to go up, and Hong Hyeonsang began to grow nervous. His fellow teachers, watching the youngest of their ranks, teased him mercilessly.
"Teacher, you praised it to the skies — why are you this nervous?"
"The preparation went so well that it makes me even more anxious. What if the audience doesn't get to see all of it…?"
This was a first for him. He'd never been this nervous over his own play.
They'd worked so hard. They'd grown so much. What if the audience simply failed to recognize it? That was the worry gnawing at him.
Hands trembling, Hong Hyeonsang covered his face with both palms and watched the first two teams — and then, as he slowly rose to go ready his own team's order, his eyes met Lee Heeyoon's. Heeyoon spotted him, shaking visibly enough that his hands trembled before his eyes. But Heeyoon seemed entirely uninterested; he simply ignored him and moved to walk past. Lee Heeyoon, same as ever. And seeing him ignore it so completely made the tension drain right out of Hong Hyeonsang's shoulders. He fell in step with the others at once.
Backstage, Hong Hyeonsang took a deep breath and asked Lee Heeyoon.
"Aren't you nervous? I'm nervous."
What if we mess up? What if someone blanks on their lines?
No — the scariest thing wasn't even mistakes or forgotten lines. It was suddenly being unable to immerse yourself on stage and turning into a person simply reciting the script line by line.
At Hong Hyeonsang's words, Lee Heeyoon glanced at him. Then, hands clasped behind his back, he addressed the Boundary team.
"Hey, if anyone forgets their lines, stall naturally and look my way. I'll write the line out for you right away."
"You know all the lines?"
When Ki Ian asked, Lee Heeyoon answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Of course. I know every one of your lines. Memorized them word for word, not a syllable missing. If you blank, I can write it out and pass it to you in one second. So don't worry about mistakes. That's my job to cover. Just forget that kind of worry exists entirely and act."
Everyone assumed he absolutely wouldn't be nervous. But watching from behind, Hong Hyeonsang saw it — Lee Heeyoon's hands, clasped behind his back, were trembling slightly.
Wait, that punk's nervous too?
Unable to help himself, Hong Hyeonsang let out a quiet laugh — amused by the fact that the boy telling everyone not to worry about mistakes was actually tensing up over whether the kids would be able to show their full ability.
Meanwhile, Team 2's stage — Sherlock Holmes — was approaching its end.
That team, like Heeyoon's, kept its overwhelmingly skilled actor off the stage almost entirely. Han Jeonghyeon appeared only briefly in the middle, playing the role of a witness giving testimony — but at that moment, Lee Heeyoon had his full attention fixed on the stage.
…So there was a reason Lee Heeyoon wasn't acting.
Han Jeonghyeon's vocal work alone was different.
He had stripped his voice of as much force as possible to match the students' acting — and that restraint only made his mastery feel more overwhelming.
Hong Hyeonsang thought: perhaps the hardest thing in theater is naturalness. It isn't that theater demands some grand vocal technique or grandiose expression — it's that you must speak the way you speak in everyday life, and people keep forgetting that.
It takes considerable time before an actor realizes that all acting, in the end, exists to portray the human being as naturally as possible.
The reason Lee Heeyoon had needled Ki Ian relentlessly back during the first reading, when the roles were being decided, had been precisely to draw out his everyday voice.
The audience was absorbed in Han Jeonghyeon's throwaway lines; they laughed, and murmured to one another about his looks. He was a born clown — the kind of performer who, in another age, might have earned a court title for his fooling.
Team 1 had been decent enough. Team 2 had been better.
And then Team 3 took the stage.
The students who had sat through thirty minutes each of the first two plays were exhausted, but interest in Team 3's play — directed by Lee Heeyoon, the school's biggest star thanks to Garden of Manyusa — was immense.
Lee Heeyoon had cut Act 1, Scene 1 entirely, and the device he had chosen to introduce the characters one by one was the aside.
The moment Lee Heeyoon heard the play had to be cut to thirty minutes, he had chosen the aside — and the other students had shown faint misgivings. Wasn't the method too easy? Too safe?
But Lee Heeyoon had brushed the concern aside. Don't waste time on pointless deliberation — take the most classical method there is, and make it the most entertaining thing on that stage.
The aside went to Jang Chaerin. And Lee Heeyoon's judgment was exactly right.
With a cute, lovely face no one could help but be drawn to, Jang Chaerin darted all over the stage, explaining Act 1, Scene 1 to the audience.
"Did you all catch what I said? That man over there — do you know who he is? That's right! It's Mikhail!"
When she clapped for the audience and showered them with praise, they burst out laughing. For roughly three minutes, she wittily summarized Act 1, Scene 1 — and then she was gone, and the climax of Act 1, Scene 2 began.
Across Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2, the landowners Yuri and Mikhail — having discovered the jewels the pirates had buried — escalate their fight over the tax on the treasure until it spreads across the entire village.
Then, as Act 1, Scene 2 draws to a close, Yuri and Mikhail at last agree to dig the jewels out in full before the watching treasury officials, to determine exactly how much tax will be levied.
Official 1: "Just how much treasure did these pirates plunder? Filthy, revolting wretches, the lot of them!"
When the last of the jewels was unearthed, they discovered within the pile one old, heavy pouch. The villager who opened it collapsed backward.
Villager 1: "Wh-what is this! Th-that's a skull!"
Villager 2: "A sk-skull?"
The villagers recoiled in shock, then crept back — and now every character's gaze converged on the pouch.
Human bones lay inside. The village undertaker lifted the contents out one by one. And when at last he drew the final item from the pouch and set it down, he stopped dead where he stood.
Undertaker: "These are… the bones of royalty. It was never the pirates' treasure. This is what the royals buried! Some hidden struggle between them has been laid bare before our eyes this very day!"
Mikhail: "Th-then… what is to become of us?"
Official 1: "Is it not only natural? All of us… shall carry the secret to our graves on the executioner's block."
Hong Hyeonsang stared blankly at the stage — then turned to look at the audience.
What summarizing demands above all else is essence. The man who had read the same script through the night, and again, and yet again, had produced a summary of sheer genius. The audience reacted precisely where Lee Heeyoon wanted them to, precisely the way Lee Heeyoon wanted them to.
Watching their reactions, one thing was perfectly clear.
The regular performance — that title is ours to take.