Episode 41
And that evening, the verdicts came pouring in from the audiences who had caught the newly opened screenings.
Word of mouth from the audiences who walked out of Giyeon spread, and spread again, and the screenings multiplied one by one.
No news could have been more welcome than word that the screening halls were expanding. The audience count, which had crept upward as quietly as an early snowfall, finally crossed the hundred-thousand mark.
In the low-budget film world, this put it in the same company as the movies that had drawn five or six million. And once it passed 100,000, the distributor called Leader Actors. Since the film was doing better than expected, they suggested — would it be worth revealing the identity of the actor playing the monster? Nothing forced, just an option on the table for publicity.
Leader Actors agonized over it at length, then politely declined. It seemed my ongoing troubles with my uncle had weighed on them; they said they couldn't in good conscience pile more worries on top of that.
For my part, I intended to terminate my minor guardianship. I wanted to handle it as quietly as possible, but with Garden of Manyusa having made my name, an article or two would probably slip out regardless. That said, I was a minor and this was a family matter, so there was a fair chance the press would simply look the other way even if they found out.
The moment the distributor heard the reason, they accepted it without a fuss.
"Understood. If that's the situation, then we need to be careful too. Please tell Actor Lee Heeyoon to hang in there, and let us know if there's anything at all we can do to help. We'd like to keep this relationship going for a long time."
On the very day I took that call, I was filing for the removal of my guardian. Park Seonyoung, President Gam Seongbeom, and a lawyer accompanied me to family court.
The two of them had spent that whole stretch quietly assembling the evidence that made the filing possible. Come to think of it, Park Seonyoung had asked me to photograph the inside of my fridge every time she sent side dishes over. Only now did it click: she'd been building a record that my uncle had zero influence on my livelihood. Alongside it went the marks of abuse, and the bank statements showing money pouring into my uncle's hands and never coming back to me.
The proceedings were easier than I'd imagined. I hadn't expected it to end so quickly. Contrary to my expectations, with no melodrama whatsoever — just a sliver of time wedged between the endless stream of cases churning through family court — the whole thing was wrapped up in a single morning. Reality, I was reminded once again, is nothing like a drama.
Though when I crossed paths with my uncle, the look on his face was truly a sight to behold. Being a police officer caught loitering around a courthouse like that must have stung badly. If it hurt him that much, I figured, then all the better.
Fortunately, the family court dismissed my minor guardianship without much resistance. The evidence was overwhelming, my legal representative was excellent — and, of course, Park Seonyoung's money spoke loudest of all.
And so I severed that one strand of blood ties for good.
As we left the courthouse, guardianship dissolved, Park Seonyoung held my hand tightly in hers. The weather was brutally hot, yet somehow, without quite knowing why, I didn't try to let go either. President Gam Seongbeom spoke up.
"Let's go get something cold."
"Ah, naengmyeon again."
"Wait until you're my age. Nothing but cold noodles brings the appetite back."
"Ugh, always with the age bit. Grandma, will you be having naengmyeon too?"
When I turned the question to Park Seonyoung, she answered without even a pretense of deliberation.
"I want to go to a pretty café."
"Then let's. I know plenty."
My school was predominantly girls, and somewhere along the way I'd been dragged to one pretty café after another. Thanks to that, I knew all the good ones these days and took point without hesitation, while President Gam Seongbeom trailed behind, grimacing the whole way.
"Mother, you're not hungry?"
"Of course I am. So we'll have cake."
"Cake is not a meal... Well. Fine, sure."
Gam Seongbeom scratched his head, but since Mother wanted it, he swallowed what complaints he had and came along. We went to a genuinely lovely café and ate an extravagant cake for lunch. It felt, somehow, like a celebration of my setting out on my own.
Naturally, it was so cloying that the moment Seongbeom and I got back to the office, we ended up ordering spicy cold noodles anyway.
In any family worth the name, the eldest son had to be the most successful — that was simply how peace was kept.
Inspector Lee Kyunghoon had believed that all his life, and so he had never much cared for his younger brother, who from the very start had lived a conspicuously finer life than their peers.
News that the boy made good money he could just about stomach. But when his brother bought a house before him, something in him snapped clean in two. And since the sister-in-law was a beauty, the nephew had come out adorable and seemed sweet-natured besides — always politely offering up whatever he had whenever the boy was around his own son. That, too, curdled his insides.
The protruding nail gets hammered down, as the saying goes. His brother and the wife dying young in a car crash was tragic, of course — but Kyunghoon had privately thought it was deserved.
The house the couple had bought went for around 700 million won back then. Left unsold, it would be worth over 2 billion now — the thought of it still made his stomach burn. In any case, it had been serious money even then, and both sides of the family had raised their voices fighting over who would take charge of Lee Heeyoon. Everyone postured and preened right up until money was on the table, at which point not one of them could hide their true colors.
That was how Lee Kyunghoon came to raise Heeyoon.
Heeyoon is good at acting.
Every set he accompanied the boy to, the staff sang the same tune — the kid could really act. They'd grouse about him being insufferable from call to wrap, then turn around and marvel at the raw talent. One director, at the end of a shoot, kept asking him to stay in touch.
And every time, the comparison to his own son — who had started out as a child actor just the same — made his blood boil all over again.
When Heeyoon had signed with some small-time agency, Kyunghoon had actually been pleased. Feed and house the little eyesore, and the agency would even find him work. Pocket a decent signing advance, and jobs would come rolling in on their own. He'd thought it was practically auto-hunting.
Except those conveniently provided jobs started succeeding from the very first one.
"Saw your nephew's drama. Great stuff."
"Wow, the kid can really act, huh?"
Everyone in his circle who knew he was raising his nephew came by to offer a word. For years he'd collected congratulations and sympathy — taking in the poor boy after both parents were taken so young. Some said the child would know gratitude when he grew up. Others, more bluntly, said you don't coddle a black-haired beast and expect it to repay you. And then there were those who said it straight to his face:
"You got the house, didn't you? Why on earth did you sell it? Should've just held onto it."
Every time he heard it, a flare went up in his gut. Every last won of that house had been slammed into stocks, and almost nothing was left. If only he'd waited — waited just a little longer — it would have soared to the heavens...
Anyway, the money he'd received was gone now too, which made the whole business of caring for his nephew feel like a waste twice over. Never mind that, from the boy's perspective, having a guardian on record was a lifeline of enormous consequence.
But even with the drama's monster success, not much money was flowing his way. The little bastard never signed onto anything profitable — he just kept scavenging one trash-tier movie after another.
Then, in the middle of all that, came the call: they would be terminating the guardianship. At first he'd thought, fine, whatever. Only after chewing on it did it land — if that went through, the account receiving the boy's acting fees was finished too.
"Whatever you've taken so far, keep it. There's no need to pay anything back. Don't contact me, and don't come to the company."
That was what the boy said over the phone. Not a shred of gratitude for being raised. Was feeding him and putting a roof over his head supposed to be free? There was next to nothing left in his hands, and hearing whatever you've taken so far — it turned his stomach inside out.
Trying to picture a family of three living on a police salary left him hollow. The spending habits were already established, and above all, his son Lee Sunggyu's actor preparation was swallowing money by the fistful.
Lee Kyunghoon, hunting for one last way to squeeze out money while showing off his boy's face at the same time, found his hint in a friend's remark over drinks.
"You know that movie, Giyeon?"
It rang a bell — and then he realized it was a film Heeyoon had shot. His colleague kept going.
"So my daughter absolutely loved the thing. And she says there's a role in it where the actor's name is never given."
Now that he thought of it, he did remember Heeyoon asking to keep his involvement a secret. At the time, Kyunghoon couldn't fathom why anyone would bother hiding a role in some money-pit of a film. Seen from here, though, it was evidently a role better left unrevealed.
And once he'd heard that, a thought took root: wasn't there, just possibly, a way to make his son the slightest bit interesting to the world?
Lee Kyunghoon promptly called his son.
"Hey, you said you were running some YouTube thing, right?"