The Forbidden Word
The moment the article went live, the calls came flooding into Leader Actors.
“Wow, at this rate we're actually going to hit 200,000 admissions!”
Gam Seong-beom, who had spent the entire day firing off replies to questions from every media outlet under the sun, said this while kneading his stiff shoulders. Do Jae-yeon shot him a look.
“Don't jinx it. Sit still.”
“Come on, it could have an effect. Soo-han, tell me — for a low-budget indie film, a rookie director pulling 200,000 admissions, what kind of record is that?”
“It's the equivalent of ten million for a tentpole.”
“See? Ten million. Of course I want it.”
Gam Seong-beom grumbled on, but as expected, the film world and everyone with even a passing interest in movies were reacting with white-hot intensity.
And then October came.
The film truly did pass 200,000 admissions.
In the Giyeon group chat, Director Ju-eun Schepper and Do Yeo-jin were practically broadcasting the news on a loop.
I couldn't imagine what I'd done to deserve thanks, but every time the chat exploded over some new ten-thousand-admission milestone, the director and the cast made a point of thanking me.
That was when Shin Ji-won reached out too.
“Best New Actor?”
The moment I murmured it while reading Shin Ji-won's messages, Vice President Gam Soo-han jumped so hard he dropped the script he was holding. Then he dropped to his knees on the spot and hurriedly gathered the pages back up. I turned to look at him.
“Why are you so startled?”
“N-nothing. Startled? Me?”
At my words, another employee who happened to be at the office chimed in.
“That's a banned word around here these days. The Vice President made it an absolute rule.”
“Best New Actor?”
“Aigo, you said it again.”
Why on earth would that be a banned word?
I was puzzled, but the instant the words left my mouth a second time, I could feel every single person in the office pretending not to hear and fleeing to their own tasks. These people were hopelessly superstitious. If you can't win an award just because someone mentioned it out loud, that's simply a lack of skill.
That was what I thought — but just in case, I decided to keep my mouth shut too.
Best New Actor.
Before my regression, I had definitely never won it. Of that I was absolutely certain. But what awards had come after it, I couldn't quite recall. Only a faint memory that I'd once taken Best Leading Actor remained; everything else seemed buried in fog.
Still, there was a particular thrill that belonged to this award alone. The fact that Vice President Gam Soo-han trembled at the mere mention of it probably spoke to just how precious it was.
Come to think of it, everyone at the office had seemed a little on edge all week — apparently because the major awards ceremonies announce their nominations around now.
I said, “An awards show is something you attend if you can, and if you can't, you just don't. No big deal.”
At that, Gam Soo-han — script finally reassembled in his arms — shot to his feet.
“What are you talking about? You're going.”
“It's guaranteed, then?”
“Yes. You'll get nominated for sure. The only question is for which work.”
“Then why are you all being so careful?”
“Well….”
Gam Soo-han continued, cautious but utterly certain.
“Because I want you to win it.”
So they weren't just watching their words over a mere nomination — they were being careful because they genuinely wanted me to take the award itself.
Gam Soo-han wanted me to win Best New Actor this year even more desperately than I did.
Once that thought landed, I actually started feeling nervous myself.
And then, just as every employee in the office was wound tight with tension — the phone rang.
The moment the office phone rang, every head turned toward it, and everyone lunged at once. Gam Soo-han took a deep breath and picked up.
“Yes, this is Leader Actors. Ah, yes, hello. Yes. Yes…… Yes, I'll confirm that right away. Yes, I'll call you back shortly…… Yes, thank you very much.”
After that brief exchange, all the strength drained out of Gam Soo-han's body and he gripped the edge of the desk to stay upright.
“It's done. Heeyoon's been nominated.”
The instant those words landed, everyone in the office erupted in cheers.
This, from people who had said the nomination was a given and the award was what mattered — and yet the mere news of a nomination had their hands shaking like leaves.
It was funny, and at the same time it gave me the strange illusion that Leader Actors really was some kind of community bound by a shared fate.
“The nomination is a given, you said—”
I'd been about to add what all the fuss was for, but before I could finish, one of the employees sprinted over and threw their arms around me in a crushing hug.
Good grief. Even before the regression I'd felt it, but the people at our company were, on the whole, far too rich in sentiment.
Only then did Shin Ji-won's message come back to me, and I asked Gam Soo-han:
“It's for Garden of Manyusa, right?”
“Well, the thing is….”
“……It's Giyeon, isn't it?”
When I asked back in sheer disbelief, Gam Soo-han nodded.
Not Garden of Manyusa — with its star writer, its enormous budget, and its monster box office — but a low-budget film made for one-hundredth of that production cost. No star director, no actor with ticket-selling power to speak of.
I was genuinely dumbfounded… and yet, even more dumbfounding, I found that I liked the fact.
After it came out that Lee Heeyoon was the monster actor of Giyeon, Lee Sunggyu had profited quite a bit. Thanks to all the buzz around Lee Heeyoon, even the comments and vlogs Lee Sunggyu had posted got swept up in the traffic, and casting directors started reaching out to him.
“You're Lee Heeyoon's cousin?”
Every meeting, that same question. Well, seeing as it had come to this, he'd decided to milk it for all it was worth.
“Yes, we're cousins. We basically grew up together.”
“Oh, really. How did one family's genes turn out this good?”
It was the same line everywhere he went.
The thing this industry valued above all else was buzz. He had once met a producer who declared that if a god of buzz existed, he would abandon his own religion to worship it.
Everyone was interested in the buzz of being Lee Heeyoon's cousin. Everyone seemed to regard it as prime material for feeding the press.
Lee Sunggyu enjoyed that privilege to the fullest. And yet somewhere in his heart, an discomfort gnawed at him.
This summer, Lee Heeyoon had effectively cut ties with Lee Sunggyu's father, Lee Kyunghoon. Lee Kyunghoon had quietly given up on siphoning Lee Heeyoon's earnings — because Lee Heeyoon had assembled a considerable archive of material that would stand as evidence of abuse.
Granted, Lee Sunggyu himself had never wielded violence the way his father had, and there was the excuse that his own actions had been childhood ones. Mostly they'd been pranks.
But he had no confidence that his father's influence hadn't left its mark on him.
Of course, Lee Heeyoon wasn't the type to drag family history out into the open and make a scene. From childhood, he had fundamentally hated both trouble and noise.
Even so, the unease wouldn't leave him. He was turning over how he might make amends when his classmate spoke up.
“Your cousin got nominated for Best New Actor, apparently.”
“Oh. So I heard.”
“Your parents must be thrilled.”
“I'm sure they are.”
After brushing off the conversation like that, he decided he really should get in touch with Lee Heeyoon. And yet at the same time, another thought surfaced — that maybe he should just let it pass quietly and say nothing at all.
He was caught between the two feelings when the message arrived.
Lee Heeyoon was the one asking to meet.
Without quite meaning to, he'd lowered himself in the reply. True, he had started working first, as a child actor — but going by when their names became known, Lee Heeyoon was the senior now. Besides, he'd been hearing so much about actor Lee Heeyoon at school lately that a certain distance had crept in.
After that, nothing. No further messages.
Is he actually coming? he thought, waiting there in frustration. That kid was hopelessly removed from the basics of social life. If you said you were coming, surely you ought to specify how long you'd take and exactly where to meet.
He was still grumbling through these thoughts when — far too soon for them to be vindicated — his phone rang. Lee Heeyoon.
“Yeah, Heeyoon.”
— I'm in front of the film department building right now….
Even as he spoke, he could hear the voices of students offering greetings. Someone who recognized him had apparently run into him.
Lee Sunggyu hurried out to the front of the film department building and found Lee Heeyoon surrounded by students from other majors who had recognized him.
Every time he saw him, Lee Heeyoon had shot up another stretch.
“Man, Lee Heeyoon is freakishly handsome.”
“How did he grow so much?”
“Ugh, the aura. Celebrities really are a different species…….”
The students watching Lee Heeyoon from a distance were muttering among themselves. Most of them knew him as Eun-ha from Garden of Manyusa, so the gap between that memory and the grown boy standing before them hit them as a pleasant shock.
Lee Heeyoon spotted Lee Sunggyu and tipped his chin toward the exit. Lee Sunggyu followed him, and they arrived at the company car.
“You two talk.”
Gam Seong-beom said this from the driver's seat and stepped out. The two of them settled into the back seat, and Lee Sunggyu spoke first.
“So why did you want to meet?”
Lee Heeyoon glanced sideways at him, then handed over a single document envelope.
“That. The stuff I filed with the family court.”
Lee Sunggyu opened the envelope and went through its contents. Page after page of material far too damning to simply let pass, and he asked through a stiff face:
“So what the hell am I supposed to do with this, you little shit.”
“You got cast in something, didn't you? And from your Instagram lately, you're landing sponsorships too.”
“So what's that got to do with it. I'm supposed to spread this around?”
“Negotiate.”
“Negotiate?”
“Yeah. Honestly, I'm angrier at Big Uncle than at you.”
He said it that way, but there was no real anger to be felt in Lee Heeyoon's tone. Even as a kid, no matter how badly he was beaten, he'd always sounded like this. And that had always been the part that made people's blood boil.