Let's Do a Play
The next day, I headed straight for the theater. Daehangno. I'd been here a few times before, but it wasn't a place I knew well.
The venue where Voyage of Evil was being performed was a fairly well-known theater, 350 seats strong.
Over the past year, while I'd been completely oblivious, that guy — Han Jeonghyeon — had apparently carved out a name for himself without my noticing.
Han Jeonghyeon.
The name rang in my ears, and nothing surfaced. If anything, it felt as if my mind were being smeared over in fresh black ink, every thought dissolving into the dark.
What was certain, at least, was that the guy's name was Han Jeonghyeon, and that he was in the class next to mine at school. I'd seen his face once, but it still felt blurred at the edges, stubbornly refusing to come into full focus.
I found myself wondering what he'd look like on a stage.
A sizable crowd of audience members had already gathered in front of the theater. I went up to the ticket clerk to collect my ticket.
"Hi, I'm here for a guest ticket for Han Jeonghyeon's performance."
"Oh! Actor Lee Heeyoon's tickets!"
The clerk recognized me through my mask and blurted it out loud. Whether startled by her own voice or simply mortified, she clapped a hand over her mouth — but by then, the eyes of the people around us were already turning my way.
She hurriedly handed over the tickets, apologizing under her breath.
"I'm so sorry."
"It's fine."
I said it lightly and took the ticket from her hand.
B16.
"……Way too close to the stage."
The thought crossed my mind, but the show was sold out, and I wasn't about to ask anyone to swap seats. I simply walked into the theater.
I'd seen my classmates' school plays from time to time, and back then the seats had mostly stood empty. A theater this full felt almost foreign. All 350 seats were filled.
I sank into my seat and breathed in the air of the theater. It felt good.
Before a play begins, an empty stage stripped down to its set pieces has always struck me as strangely desolate. It's the coldest landscape I know. Like the Earth after the sun has vanished — trembling in the residual heat, waiting for extinction.
Then the lights come up, actors burst onto the stage, music swells, and the space becomes somewhere life can exist again.
That's why I could never, ever stop yearning for the theater. That sense of building a world entirely apart from reality, large or small, on whatever stage you're given — how could anyone give that up?
As I was thinking all this, the play I'd been waiting for finally began. It opened with a scene of a wife alone on stage, laughing as she lost her grip on her sanity. A Ssitgimgut followed — the purification rite for the dead — which the husband walked through alone.
I watched that man. Thankfully, I could now clearly register that there was someone there.
He stood inside a hazy fog, a father laying his child — the one who had gone before him — to rest. Of course, that murkiness was probably mine alone. Everyone else would be seeing his face, sharp and clear.
At least now I could see the performance through the fog.
It still wasn't crisp, though — call it reflected light filling in the remaining gaps. When an actor's performance reflected off the audience, I had to read Han Jeonghyeon's acting through those reactions.
He's incredible.
Even his voice sounded warped, eerily uncanny, and still I was swallowed whole by the play. And the deeper I fell in, the less the fog mattered at all. I could see his performance. He felt like an actor cut from the same cloth as me.
When the play ended, I waited for the curtain call. The full cast came out in a line, and last came the leading couple — the wife's actress was visible, but the actor playing the husband had all but vanished from sight. When he finally stepped forward, the reaction was nothing short of explosive.
Right.
This was a profession where, if you acted well, you received applause like this.
I slipped out of the theater immediately. If I'd stayed any longer, I was afraid I'd throw a tantrum at the company demanding to do a play right now. It was as if my whole body had suddenly remembered how much I used to love the stage.
"I want to do a play."
The words slipped out of me before I knew it. The applause was so thunderous that my voice couldn't carry even to the seat right beside mine.
Thunderous applause for a thunderous performance.
"That's Han Jeonghyeon?"
Before the audience began filing in, a handful of reporters had entered and were talking among themselves.
I'd heard plenty of rumors. But nothing had ever made it into the media — the only glimpses of him came from the photos in press releases. Meeting him in person, the sheer presence hit differently.
"For a play put on by students to get this much word of mouth — all because of that one actor."
"His face alone could explain it."
"I hear he can really act, too."
Moby Dick had arranged the tickets and called us out. He was their boss's son, after all — write him a nice article, they said. We'd braced ourselves to comb through a perfectly ordinary nepo baby in search of a single redeeming angle, a genuinely stressful assignment. Fortunately, seeing him in the flesh, his face turned out to be an undeniable selling point.
I was sketching out the rough shape of my article in my head when it happened.
"Oh, damn, it's Lee Heeyoon."
"Lee Heeyoon? Who was that again?"
"That guy, Moon Gyeoul from Love in the Moon."
"Oh! The one whose parents died, right?"
For the past day or two, the hottest name in the entertainment beat had been Lee Heeyoon.
"Word is Lee Heeyoon goes to the same school as that young master."
"Seriously?"
The reporters were staring at him openly, not even pretending to be subtle, but Heeyoon — apparently convinced no one inside a theater could possibly recognize him — had taken off his cap and mask. He seemed, if anything, to be savoring the air of the theater.
Once the play began, the reporters understood in their bones that this was not a seat you attended for money. It was the kind of seat you should have paid to sit in. A place where a future star, destined to rise whether anyone willed it or not, chose to show his face.
Granted, that was assuming he didn't cause a scandal. Moby Dick could contain the ordinary kind of trouble, but even if he crossed some line beyond that, I found myself thinking it would be worth the risk.
Then again, when Han Jeonghyeon was on stage, he wore the face of a father. A fisherman who sails out to sea even after losing his child. The face of a man with no time to tell whether the weight on his back was his wife and remaining children — or his debt.
Unbelievable.
The moment the play ended, the reporters all turned their heads in the same direction at once. They needed a comment from Lee Heeyoon.
Before the actors emerged, one reporter made a beeline for Heeyoon, who had already put his cap and mask back on — thinking, all the while, that it seemed a bit pointless to cover up a face that read as a celebrity's proportions even from across the room.
"Hello, Actor Lee Heeyoon. I'm Lim Donghwa, a reporter with XX News."
At the greeting, Heeyoon gave a slight bow of his head. Reporter Lim went on.
"I was actually a fan of yours since you filmed Giyeon — I even interviewed the very first viewer who guessed you were in it."
"……Thank you."
Despite the polite exchange, I could feel him warily holding me at arm's length. Reporter Lim cut straight to the point.
"You're friends with Actor Han Jeonghyeon, right? Any comment you'd like to share? Something brief is fine — even a single line."
"……Han Jeonghyeon?"
"Yes."
"Wow, I can actually hear you."
"Sorry?"
"Nothing."
Heeyoon's lips quirked up for a split second before he spoke.
"One line, then…… I want to act with him. A play, anything."
It was more than a good enough answer. Not wanting to prod Lee Heeyoon — someone he suspected he'd be crossing paths with often from now on — Reporter Lim wrapped up with a courteous farewell.
Outside, the entrance was jammed with people waiting to catch a glimpse of the actors. Heeyoon was already heading out to grab a taxi.
Against his own better judgment, Reporter Lim followed him out.
Heeyoon had called a cab and was standing there waiting when he saw Han Jeonghyeon emerge from the stage door and walk straight toward him. Han Jeonghyeon planted himself beside Heeyoon and glanced sideways at his face.
What is this?
Heeyoon was ignoring Han Jeonghyeon completely, as if the man didn't exist. Only when Han Jeonghyeon gave his arm a sharp nudge did Heeyoon startle and look over. At that moment, Han Jeonghyeon looked toward Reporter Lim — and because he'd physically turned Heeyoon's body with his hand, Heeyoon's gaze swung that way too.
"Let's do a play."
Why…… why is he saying that to me?
A chill crawled down Reporter Lim's spine, and he found himself stepping back without meaning to.
That was all Han Jeonghyeon said before turning and walking back through the stage door. Heeyoon pulled out one earphone and came over to Reporter Lim.
"What did Han Jeonghyeon just say?"
"Oh — right, the earphones……"
Wiping away the cold sweat that had broken out on his forehead in an instant on this freezing day, Reporter Lim answered.
"He said, 'Let's do a play.' Those exact four words."
"Ah. The play."
Heeyoon nodded as if it had only just clicked. Then he clicked his tongue once, gave Reporter Lim a short bow, and said,
"Goodbye."
"Wait, hold on."
He couldn't let it end like that, so Reporter Lim caught his arm. Heeyoon — startled by the sudden touch, just as before — yanked himself free. Only then did Reporter Lim remember the articles he'd written about Heeyoon's severe history of domestic abuse, and the chatter in the reporters' group chat about how the kid seemed to flinch at unexpected physical contact. He let go at once.
"Whoa, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry. I forgot. I was the one who wrote that article."
"I'm not rude, you know."
Reporter Lim had no idea where that came from, but he was too rattled to do anything but soothe.
"Huh? Oh, right. Of course not."
"Why did you grab me?"
"You two aren't actually close, are you?"
"We're not close."
Rivals.
As he watched the two of them face each other, the word surfaced in Reporter Lim's mind from nowhere. Two genius actors of the same age. The boy who'd had everything he ever wanted handed to him his whole life, and the boy who had lost everything at seven years old.
Reporter Lim asked,
"This is a genuinely personal question, but…… can someone be an actor even if they can't feel emotions?"
It was an established, fully verified fact among the press that Han Jeonghyeon had received extensive counseling as a child for emotional detachment.
At the question, Heeyoon narrowed his eyes as if to say what kind of question was that, then answered.
"Never thought about it. Does it even matter?"
With that, Heeyoon turned his head, scanning the street for his taxi. Reporter Lim pressed on.
"It doesn't matter?"
"Even if your insides are rotting away with depression, you smile on stage — and even when you've just promised to marry the love of your life and you're the happiest person alive, you have to be able to play a man dying. That's what makes you an actor."
"But wouldn't it be better if you got so immersed that you actually felt the emotion?"
Since the reporter was taking a real interest in his craft, Heeyoon turned back toward him and answered with a certain diligence.
"Sure, that's true. But what's the point of immersion if you can't act? When you perform a scene of weeping over a spouse you're sending off after a long illness, an actor who tries to cry harder doesn't understand human beings."
"Stop crying — so the one leaving doesn't hurt as much."
"If you can faithfully recreate a grieving person, that's what makes a good actor."
"Someone with emotional detachment imitates other people's feelings their whole life — so maybe they'd actually end up being better at acting."
The taxi pulled up. Heeyoon opened the door, then turned back to look at Reporter Lim.
"By the way — when you say emotional detachment, are you talking about me?"
"No! No, of course not!"
"Then it's Han Jeonghyeon."
"Aw, damn……"
He should have denied it instantly, but the moment had slipped past him. Heeyoon muttered under his breath.
"……I feel like I've had this exact conversation before, sometime."
With that cryptic murmur, Heeyoon bowed once more, got into the taxi, and was gone. His tone of voice could be infuriating at times, but he was, at heart, an actor with impeccable manners.