The First Fan Calls

Anyway, this time around, I found myself wanting to do right by my fans. What "doing right" actually meant, I still had no clue. Shin Ji-won, who'd filmed Garden of Manyusa with me, was around to ask, and I'd put the question to the idols at school as well — the unanimous answer was, take lots of photos. In the end, photos were all that remained, I supposed. Typical.

Among everyone I asked, Shin Ji-won had one firm warning: even if friends around me pushed me to do live broadcasts, absolutely never do them. On that point, we were in complete agreement.

Do Jaeyeon said, "You could do a fan meeting, you know. Once."

I'd heard the fan-meeting pitch a few times before I regressed, too, and never once did one. What was I supposed to go there and do, exactly? I said as much.

"But Ji-won hyung told me never to do live broadcasts. Fan meetings are okay? Doesn't feel like they would be."

"Ji-won said no live broadcasts?"

"He said without a script, I shouldn't do anything."

"He really does treasure you, huh."

No, hold on — in what sense, exactly? I wanted to fire the question back, but I doubted I'd get an answer I'd enjoy hearing, so I let it go. In the meantime, Do Jaeyeon carried on.

"Fan meetings have an MC, and you just move through it on script. It's fine. Treat it like acting. Don't go trying to show people the real you."

"Wow. You people are all weird."

"Just show your face, that's all. Just your face. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A special face they can't see in your acting — that's the only thing they need."

I said I'd think about it. There was still a long, long way to go before I had enough fans to fill a fan meeting anyway.

Do Jaeyeon had shown me my cousin Lee Sunggyu's account.

These days, every acting professor and academy instructor drilled the same lesson: casting directors crawl through those tags, so every kid at my school had plastered their profiles thick with industry hashtags. But running around bragging that you knew about a role that hadn't been announced yet? I couldn't imagine the industry side looking kindly on that.

Do Jaeyeon said, "The journalists are digging into the monster actor's identity like hounds these days."

Giyeon had been coasting on momentum ever since it crossed 150,000 admissions, but the ride was slowing. Theaters were drying up — a screening every other day now, tucked into the early-morning slots. The distributor had even bought number balloons, dreaming big about 200,000, but that dream looked out of reach.

Still, what really grated on me was Sunggyu writing "we're close." And yet, when I looked at it again, I decided it had actually worked out for the better.

The first person I'd met after regressing had been Sunggyu, and the moment I laid eyes on him, the words had come out on their own.

Become an actor. Promise me you will.

Sunggyu had passed through his child-actor years even earlier than I had, then quit for sports, then from high school onward thrown himself back into acting through an admissions academy. Now that he'd made it into an acting program, his career path was more certain than ever.

I ran the numbers on my big uncle's age. Fifty-three this year. My parents, three years younger, would have been in their fifties now — a fact I couldn't begin to picture. The year they died, they were both thirty-nine. That put them the same age as Gam Seongbeom, who turned forty this year and who, despite raising two kids of his own, still carried himself like a overgrown brat. Seeing it that way, I couldn't help thinking: they really were gone too soon.

Do Jaeyeon said, "That bastard's already been ringing up reporters to confirm whether the monster actor is you. And get this — he asked them to print his name and profile photo in the article in exchange for confirming it. Another call came in just now, asking us to verify the story."

On top of that, Sunggyu had been calling me nonstop for a while now. I knew exactly what I'd get if I picked up — an apology for what happened when we were kids — so I'd let every single call ring out. Today, though, I figured I might as well answer.

I thought it over for a moment, then said to Do Jaeyeon, "There's an ID right here, see. 2weeks_empty."

"Ah, the person who caught the monster actor first?"

"Contact her. Ask how she figured it out, then tell her it's me. She can do the press interviews in my place, too. She's the discoverer, after all."

"You're sure? It's going to get noisy."

"I'm fine with that."

I said, "If it has to be noisy, better that than Sunggyu reaping the benefit."

"Fair enough... Ah, but can we actually trust this person?"

Of course we could. She was my fan. Maybe not yet — but she would be, someday...

Or would she not? Was this some butterfly effect, where my acting differently meant she'd fall for someone else instead?

Well, whatever. Love was that kind of emotion anyway — it burned, then it cooled, and once it cooled you couldn't even remember why you'd loved in the first place. Nothing to be done about it.

The moment I gave the nod, Do Jaeyeon phoned the distributor first and announced we would be revealing the monster role, and the green light came back almost immediately. They'd kept the casting under wraps out of fear that audiences, knowing a kid was under that CG, wouldn't be able to lose themselves in the film — but by now, everyone who was going to see it had seen it. Both sides had arrived at the same conclusion independently: it was time.

I'd sometimes suspected that Do Jaeyeon was the one actually running the day-to-day operations of this company. Turns out I was right.

She re-routed every single call in the blink of an eye, then came straight back to me and said, "All right. Forget all this and go prep for your next audition."

2weeks_empty — Lee Joobin — had watched Giyeon because of the poster.

"That monster."

"Oh boy. What nonsense are you about to say this time."

"His fingers look just like Eun-ha's..."

"...Let's walk on opposite sides of the street, you and I."

She had watched Garden of Manyusa over and over and over again. How many times, you ask? Enough that if you paused it on any random frame, she could name the scene instantly. Enough that she could identify it even with the surrounding props cropped out of the shot.

Precisely because she'd watched it that many times, she could tell what she was looking at in Giyeon.

The film's CG, being a low-budget indie, was far from flawless. And there, in one truly split-second frame, the CG coverage had thinned out and fallen short. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠In that instant, Lee Joobin was certain.

It's Lee Heeyoon.

Granted, even someone as tenacious as Joobin — someone who, once she latched onto a thing, saw it through to the very end — needed three full viewings before ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she dared call it a conviction. No, that's not quite right. She'd been certain from the very first watch. It was simply that everything in this world demanded cross-verification, so she'd sat through a few more screenings on principle.

That was why, every single time the question came up — who on earth was playing the monster? — she left her answer pinned: It's Lee Heeyoon. Because it IS Lee Heeyoon. Everyone, my actor acts this beautifully. Open your ears and take note.

But there was no way to prove it, and nobody believed her.

The one small mercy was that her fellow Heeyoon fans, at least, sympathized — some of them even went out to see Giyeon because of her.

The fans' certainty was quietly stacking up, one by one — and that was when it happened.

A DM had arrived from a journalist.

DMs like that had been flooding in lately.

Interviews with reporters felt inexplicably awkward to her, so she'd been declining nearly all of them. She was in the middle of typing out yet another refusal when one more DM landed in her inbox.

"Huh?"

It was from Leader Actors.

Without a single thought for caution, Lee Joobin dialed the number Do Jaeyeon had left right away. The phone rang once — once — and Do Jaeyeon picked up.

"Hi, I'm Lee Joobin — I got your DM. Is this Assistant Manager Do Jaeyeon?"

"It's Lee Heeyoon, isn't it? It IS, right? I knew it the second I saw the poster."

The moment the opening presented itself, Joobin launched into a meticulous, blow-by-blow account of exactly how she had recognized Lee Heeyoon. Assistant Manager Do Jaeyeon asked whether this could be written up as an article, and Joobin said of course it could.

"The whole world needs to know how well my boy acts."

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, born of pure excitement, and the instant they were out she regretted them. Had she just come across as a total otaku?

Fortunately, Assistant Manager Do Jaeyeon — a veteran of the entertainment industry — didn't miss a beat.

"Right?? Oh — the article's totally fine, but could I ask you just a few questions?"

"Any fan meeting plans? Variety shows? Also — Lee Heeyoon's birthday is Christmas, and if fans want to open a birthday café they need to book venues and start prepping right about now, but he's so young that his face changes practically every day. And there are barely any recent photos. Would it be possible to release a nice big batch of good ones?"

Even through a phone line, Joobin could feel how dearly the company cherished Lee Heeyoon. Because he had entered the industry at such a tender age, his fans worried about him in every direction imaginable. Almost nothing was publicly known about the actor himself, and even after Garden of Manyusa, aside from the production briefing, all the promotional rounds had been handled by the adults — Shin Ji-won at the center. Shin Ji-won did talk about Heeyoon plenty, of course, but nothing quite satisfied like hearing it from the man's own mouth.

"If there are no fan meeting plans, then at least turn on a live broadcast. Just once."

Assistant Manager Do Jaeyeon faltered for a beat at that, then said:

"You truly do not need to worry about that even a little."

So no broadcast, then.

Lee Joobin hung up, a little deflated.

She flopped back onto her bed for a while — then shot bolt upright.

"Wait. Hold on. The actor's identity is getting officially confirmed now."

For the duration of the call, her head had been so crammed with every question she wanted to ask about Lee Heeyoon that she'd completely forgotten an article was about to go live. Her heart started pounding, belatedly.

And less than two hours later, the very first article appeared.