The Good Son of the Weekend Drama

Inspector Lee Kyunghoon had always believed that a police officer's greatest asset was honor.

Anywhere he went, the moment he mentioned he was police, people treated him with respect to start with — even the kind who spent every other day cursing cops as useless. Everyone did it. It was the same even abroad, talking to foreigners he was meeting for the very first time.

Lee Kyunghoon took pride in his profession. He'd scraped through all the hardship of his younger years, and now that he was in his fifties and the work had gotten comfortable, he felt it all the more. Retirement age would come when it came — that was simply a given. He had no intention of quitting before then.

He'd told them he'd resign, mostly because his son Sunggyu wouldn't stop shrieking about it — but of all times, the superintendent promotion window was coming up.

He absolutely did not want to quit.

Just then, a junior officer greeted him.

"Inspector, congratulations on Actor Heeyoon's Best New Actor nomination."

"Best New Actor? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He's a finalist?"

"Yes, sir. The article just dropped."

Lee Kyunghoon looked up the Best New Actor nominees right away. There, among them, was Lee Heeyoon.

Thinking it over again changed nothing.

He could not quit.

So someone tells him to resign, and he just has to resign?

Lee Kyunghoon could not hide the injustice of it. Lee Heeyoon had won awards at his age, which meant a decent life stretched out before him like a script already written.

Meanwhile he himself was expected to abandon the career he'd built? It was far too unfair.

He didn't want to quit. No — if he had to quit, he at least wanted to make it to superintendent first.

He only needed to quietly hold out a little longer. Honestly, if they pushed him to resign with a promotion this close, he felt like he might lunge at Lee Heeyoon and take them both down together.

This much, he decided on his own, was a matter of mutual understanding.

An honorable retirement sat just within reach.

KQS had been nursing a headache lately over the back-to-back ratings disasters and dismal reviews for its weekend dramas.

"I never thought I'd live to see a weekend drama pull single digits."

The one before last had been passable, at least. There was a bottom beneath the bottom.

The show had averaged 13 percent, with a single day dipping to 8.9 percent at the two-thirds mark. Granted, every other day had stayed in double digits.

But single digits had never once happened in the network's history. At the time, KQS had felt like a ghost ship becalmed under a century's worth of storm clouds.

The bigger problem was that this historic low had come from a director and writer the network had trusted.

There was nowhere left to fall. Any lower and you couldn't call it the ground anymore — it was the basement. They were desperate for someone to haul this genre back up.

Fortunately, the writer and director had been chosen. A solid roster of actors had been brought in, too — appeals to sentiment had done most of the heavy lifting.

For the lead couple, they'd cast Seo Joongsung and Kang Minha. Fine actors, both.

Which meant their on-screen son, Moon Gyeowool, had to have enough experience not to be flattened by those two. They'd set a condition: a former child actor. Experience was non-negotiable.

What the production team learned instead, yet again, was that being a former child actor did not automatically make you good.

They were supposedly judging on acting ability alone — so how was the talent pool this shallow?

Granted, the kid was playing Kang Minha's son, so the looks had to be there as a baseline, and he had to be young.

But still. Acting ability was the only criterion. Was there truly no one?

"Director, this kid's acting is actually pretty good—"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"That one's a bit chubby, isn't he. He's playing a patient. Ah — is there really no one? We're judging on acting alone here."

Everyone except the director and the writer had We're not judging on acting alone, that's why crawling up their throats, and swallowed it.

Only then did someone remember the actor Seo Joongsung had recommended — the one from The Garden of Manyusa.

His face was almost too good, which had given them pause, but at this point, they figured they might as well take one look.

Sunggyu called to say his father had decided to retire. But for a while after that, no news of an actual resignation followed.

The walls of that house had always been hung with commendations and plaques. Wasn't a cop's job supposed to be catching violent criminals? Why were the violent criminals the cops themselves? I'd wondered that my whole childhood.

Meanwhile, I met with the CP, the director, and the writer, all in one room.

"Joongsung did recommend him, but I honestly expected him to turn us down. He just got a Best New Actor nomination for a film, after all. Figured he'd stay on the film track."

"I took the chance to watch Giyeon while his name was floating around. He's genuinely good."

Each of them tossed in a remark, but the atmosphere was strikingly businesslike.

The premise was part makjang, part family drama, so I'd half expected the people making it to be just as colorful — instead they felt closer to office workers.

The good thing about all that businesslike efficiency, though, was that every single person in this room had watched The Garden of Manyusa and Giyeon as part of their job.

The CP spoke up.

"The director of The Garden of Manyusa is a film director by trade, and so is the one behind Giyeon. A weekend drama is going to feel like a whole different kind of directing to you."

"Understood."

"Right, then. Let's have you read through it first."

I checked over the script they'd handed me.

The character's name was Moon Gyeowool. A diligent, good-natured young man with an easy smile, living in a tiny basement studio while working at a bakery, playing Santa Claus every Christmas for the younger kids at the orphanage.

This Moon Gyeowool was…

"…Excuse me, does he die again?"

From the very first pages of the script, he's coughing up flecks of blood.

He died in The Garden of Manyusa, and in Giyeon he effectively dissolved out of existence — so if I died in this one too, I was afraid I'd start looking like a professional corpse.

The writer answered my question.

"We'll decide once we see how it plays. The ending's currently set for him to die, but if I'm going to get torn apart by the audience for it, I'll have to keep him alive."

So it's not decided yet.

If I died in every role, the image would calcify. Then again, the other side of the coin: if people got used to watching me die on screen, then when I actually did pass away a bit early someday, it wouldn't feel so jarring to them. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

Put that way, it doesn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sound half bad, actually.

Because if Do Jaeyeon and VP Gam Soohan were alive this time around, unlike before, they'd miss me once in a while even after I was gone — and in this life, I fully intended to save those two. I also still needed to find out where exactly CEO Gam Seongbeom, who'd gone AWOL in his scheming little head, had vanished to.

Ever since my legal guardian changed, my mind felt freer somehow. I finally had room to think about other things.

The script came in two versions. The first was the first meeting with Kwok Jaehee, a customer at the bakery-café where Gyeowool worked — a medical student who might later become his love interest.

And Draft 2 was the scene where Gyeowool meets the birth father who once lost him — and, because of all the wounds from that time, pushes him away.

I read the script with Seo Joongsung, the actor playing the birth father, in my mind. At first neither knows who the other is, and Moon Dohoon and Moon Gyeowool grow close.

Then Gyeowool is the first to realize that Dohoon is his birth father — and at almost the same moment, he learns the man has an illness that hospitals can barely treat.

I'd heard that a weekend drama lives or dies on its subplots — if the supporting couples were fun, viewers of every age would tune in. So the first test was whether I could carry a subplot couple convincingly, and the second was whether I could bring a character with that much quiet ache to life. That was what the two drafts were for.

I finished reading Draft 1 and Draft 2, and nobody reacted. When I finally lifted my head, everyone in the room had their heads bowed, weeping.

I needed to retract that whole "businesslike" remark. It was the opposite. These people were weekend-drama characters themselves.

"How does a kid who looks like he was raised on silver spoons act this well?"

"Writer, I can't shoot this. What if I start wailing in the middle of a take?"

They weren't shedding a few polite tears — they were properly wailing. The absurd part was that CEO Gam Seongbeom, who'd come along with me, was also glistening-eyed and staring into empty space. I spoke up to put a stop to the waterworks.

"The script reads beautifully."

At my words, CEO Gam Seongbeom's eyes went round as saucers, clearly bracing for me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to cause another incident. I ignored him and kept going.

"I lost my parents early, you see."

As predicted, the tears stopped dead. Shock is best treated with shock — it never fails.

The writer asked, carefully,

"This… do you think you could play it?"

"If anything, it suits me."

"I was just worried the material might hit Actor Heeyoon too close to home and stress you out."

"Not at all. Acting my own story is still just acting. I've never been one to sink into a role like that, so I'm fine."

And then, to help nudge along an uncle who was putting off his retirement, I added:

"Feel free to use my family circumstances in the promotion, if it helps. Because honestly? It would help me too."