What Is Freedom?
Being the youngest on a film set was exhausting work.
Woo Woongbae walked into the house feeling bruised all over. With a weary face, he pulled his parents into a hug, one after the other, then gave a deep bow.
“Thank you for your sacrifice. In this godforsaken world….”
Filial devotion surged up in him out of nowhere. Was this what being an adult meant—fighting your way through a world like a war zone? Even while being ground down by such a withering world, they could still smile at the sight of their child. Wasn't that what made a heart great?
Having reflected on all this, Woo Woongbae offered his greeting and climbed the stairs.
“?”
He took one step up and stumbled back down. The light being on was strange enough, but what was stranger—and frankly, a little unsettling—was Lee Heeyoon, hunched in front of the bookshelf reading a comic book.
Lee Heeyoon usually acted by calculation rather than immersion, so talking to him while he was reading a script barely got a reaction. Still, Woo Woongbae approached as carefully as he could, treating him with the courtesy one would give a working actor.
But today there was something about him that made him even harder to approach than usual.
So he just watched quietly, until Lee Heeyoon straightened up. His lips were moving as if reading aloud under his breath, and Woo Woongbae spoke up.
“What's that?”
“Oh, this.”
Lee Heeyoon held up the comic book. It was the famous demagogue Noah Crane's speech scene. Woo Woongbae said:
“Hey, can't you read it for me?”
“Sure.”
Lee Heeyoon nodded readily and set the comic down. Apparently he'd already memorized the whole thing in the meantime. Heeyoon forgot everything else in his life, but his own lines he memorized with absurd, almost unfair ease.
Lee Heeyoon began to act from the moment he stepped onto the imaginary podium.
Woo Woongbae always thought this was the most fascinating thing about Lee Heeyoon's acting. Heeyoon could cast a spell that changed the world around him.
And once he'd transformed the space, Lee Heeyoon opened his mouth.
No—young congressman Noah Crane began his speech.
“What do you think freedom is? Shall I guess for you? You think, above all else, of the luxury of sharing a warm dinner with your family. And that comes from financial freedom.
You're right.
Then why does financial freedom feel forever out of our reach?
It is because we have been slaves all this time.
My limbs moving does not make me a free man.
A free man, in the truest sense, is one who faces no constraint and no punishment for his own free actions. Only such a person has earned the right to be called free.
Thank you for electing me.
From this day forward, you will live in a city of free men.”
Sixteen-year-old Lee Heeyoon was playing a sly old fox of a young politician, an absolute master of the game. The confident smile at the corner of his mouth and the crinkle of his laughing eyes froze the audience solid in an instant. What they felt was fear.
The actors who had played Noah Crane in the previous two installments of the Foucault trilogy were still-active, famous, heavyweight stars.
Of course, those actors had been remarkable in their own right. And each of them had brought their own interpretation to the role.
Lee Heeyoon, who did not yet fully understand Noah Crane, was imitating their performances.
No—he was stealing them. And that theft fused completely with the talent he'd been born with. Lee Heeyoon was a prodigy of acting. But more than that, the role of Noah Crane fit him perfectly, like a key sliding into a lock.
Lee Heeyoon always used to say it. Acting should flow like water, but the actor himself is not water. That was why you couldn't just pour him into anything—you needed the right vessel.
If the world held the most perfect vessel to contain Lee Heeyoon—well, Woo Woongbae had always believed there'd be a few, but one of them would certainly be Noah Crane. It was a thought he'd carried almost from the day he first met Heeyoon.
“That role's yours, you know.”
At Woo Woongbae's words, Lee Heeyoon glanced over at him and answered.
“I know.”
“So what do we do. They say the trilogy's coming out in three or four years. Then the next series won't come out until we're in our forties.”
“It'll get delayed.”
“…Yeah, that's fair, isn't it?”
Obviously it would be delayed. He'd never once seen a schedule like that actually hold.
Woo Woongbae hoped, more than anything, that Lee Heeyoon would get his chance to be part of the Foucault trilogy.
“If… I know it's a pipe dream, but if you ever end up playing Noah Crane, I'm going to be on that set no matter what. It doesn't have to be a job related to the film. Cleaning, delivering food, whatever—I'll work there.”
“Mm.”
“I will be on that set. Guaranteed.”
“That's likelier than me actually landing the role.”
Lee Heeyoon said it and shrugged.
“Still. Let's see when the time comes.”
Do Yeojin's words drifted back to me in fragments. That this industry is a good place, because it forgets your age.
That applies when you have plenty, and just as much when you have nothing. When we dream, we don't put much weight on how old we currently are.
Just as Woo Woongbae and I were making that promise, a loud commotion came up the stairs and Woo Woongbae's father came running up.
“Lee Heeyoon! You're sick—why did you come!”
“It's just air-conditioning sickness. It's not contagious.”
“That's not the point—right now!”
Apparently someone at Leader Actors had made a phone call.
CEO Gam Seongbeom had come to pick me up, and in the short window before he arrived, Woo Woongbae's mother had cooked me a pot of rice porridge. So I left with the porridge in hand.
I wasn't feeling well, so I didn't bother arguing back with the scolding adults. Besides, the whole “I already ate dinner” thing had been a lie, and I was slowly starving—getting to eat that porridge was the only thing on my mind.
I returned to Wooheonjeong, and CEO Gam Seongbeom stationed himself beside me as a guard, apparently worried I'd try to bolt again. With the porridge he'd reheated set in front of me, I said:
“How's Jang Choongwon doing these days? He hasn't been sending fish lately.”
I wasn't exactly making the company piles of money yet, so the agency's biggest cash cow was still actor Jang Choongwon. CEO Gam Seongbeom answered:
“He's doing all right lately. He's finally going to film sets more often than fishing spots.”
“Oh.”
Jang Choongwon had started shooting a drama a little while back.
And before that shoot began, I'd done script readings with him. Reading scripts is my favorite thing in the world, so it was a pleasure for me, and it was something Jang Choongwon needed too. Vice President Gam Soohan had looked at me—finally, someone to read scripts with—and said he felt like he'd finally hired a dog-walking side gig. I have no idea what that means. He's a good person, so I'll take it as a compliment.
CEO Gam Seongbeom continued.
“Jang Choongwon keeps saying you're fascinating. Like, what on earth— actually, never mind.”
“You mean I act like a kid who's taken his share of beatings.”
“….”
“Don't look at me like that. Even without the beatings, I acted well.”
I had no desire to admit that I owed even the smallest debt to my big uncle or my cousin Lee Sunggyu. And to begin with, even before regressing, I'd trained in all sorts of martial arts, so I'd always been confident with my body.
When CEO Gam Seongbeom first met me, he'd seen the marks left on my body, and even now the shock seemed to linger. He'd been furious. Truly furious.
I'll never understand how a man that angry could sound so warm and personable every time he got on the phone with my big uncle, Lee Kyunghoon. Of course, I know it's because it works in my favor. There was simply no need to provoke the old man.
CEO Gam Seongbeom let his stiff expression soften and went on.
“Apparently you lit a fire under him. He says he's determined to pull good ratings this time. How determined? He'd rather get absolutely torn apart by haters and build name recognition that way than be ignored.”
“…Is he out of his mind?”
“When has he ever been sane?”
CEO Gam Seongbeom said it with the weary ease of long habit. Then he turned the conversation to me.
“Hey, but seriously, it's wild. Every director I talk to says the exact same thing.”
“That I'm handsome?”
“No, other than that.”
“Ah—that I act well.”
“Can you let me finish a compliment for once?”
Ugh. Wait when I'm in trouble, wait when I'm being praised—when exactly am I supposed to show my personality, then?
While I was thinking that, CEO Gam Seongbeom continued.
“They all say you don't treat the set like a rookie.”
“Ah.”
Huh. That's a remarkably uninteresting thing to say. Well, I'd been through plenty of film sets before regressing, so of course I'd know my way around.
So there I was, drizzling sesame oil over my vegetable porridge like it was soup, when CEO Gam Seongbeom spoke again.
“Director Schäfer has a reputation for being brutal with praise. Almost never gives it. But this time he went on and on about you. Said you seemed like a veteran.”
“I'd rather hear it about my face.”
“You brat. With a face like yours, why are you so obsessed with hearing about your looks? Fine—you're obscenely handsome. Happy now?”
“That had no sincerity in it.”
“It did too, you little punk. Look in a mirror—could a face that insincere even exist? You're infuriatingly handsome.”
That's more like it. That's the reaction I was looking for.
But I still wasn't handsome enough. Not yet.
Around the time this too-youthful voice of mine settled into itself, my face would settle as well. That was when the real thing would begin. Right now, I was just a kid.
And so I ate my dinner, chatting away with CEO Gam Seongbeom about this and that. Apparently he'd done a fair amount of digging into what had been happening at my school, too—he relayed to me the various notices the school had sent home.
We were in the middle of that conversation when it happened.
A racket broke out in the Wooheonjeong courtyard, and someone came sprinting inside in a total panic. The first one through the door was Vice President Gam Soohan.
“H-Hyung. Come out here, quick. Jaeyeon's fighting right now!”
“What? Fighting with who?”
I asked, and Vice President Gam Soohan looked at me. It was the briefest of glances, but it was all I needed to know exactly who she was fighting.
I dashed out of Wooheonjeong before CEO Gam Seongbeom could move, and just as I'd predicted, there was Do Jaeyeon, locked in battle with my big uncle, Lee Kyunghoon.
“Damn it, the kid—I said no. I don't care how well that family's son acts, I'm not interested. He is not getting into our company. I said no!”
Hearing Do Jaeyeon bellowing like that, it wasn't hard to figure out what the two of them were fighting over.
My big uncle's son, Lee Sunggyu, had dreamed of becoming an actor before I ever did. That was what got me started on child acting in the first place.
And now that I was at the age where agencies came calling, the plan was apparently to use me as bait to get him into Leader Actors.
In this world, there is no ally like family—and no shackle like family, either.
