The Fan Cafe
"Come on, Dad. Your daughter went first because of a drunk driver, and you still couldn't quit drinking?"
"Booze was just that good to him. Better than his own wife, even."
"Now that's going too far, Mom."
"Too far, my foot."
Bae Dohan, master craftsman of hanok signboards, often dreamed of his daughter and his wife. Ten years had already passed since they left the world, and still they came to him constantly in his sleep — both of them exactly as they'd been in their final days.
Whenever the two women appeared in his dreams like this, they would sit in front of the television eating fruit and carrying on with that kind of banter, while Bae Dohan, an old man grown ancient alone, sat a little apart and listened.
It was so good. He wanted to dream forever.
Whenever he woke, he wanted to wipe every last drop of that cursed alcohol — the thing that had stolen his daughter, and so his wife — off the face of the earth. But he didn't trust himself to face reality straight on, and so he drank again.
Then he saw his grandson, and quit. The reason he could finally give up the drink he'd been unable to quit even after losing everything was that he still had a grandson to protect.
He only had to hold out until the boy turned twenty. Barely a year left now. He had decided that once he endured this one final year — the moment his grandson came of age — he would plunge headlong into the bottle and put an end to this tedious life of his.
It was right around the time he'd resolved on this that a weekend drama called Love in the Moon began airing on television.
Bae Dohan could count on one hand the dramas he'd watched in his life. He'd been fond of historical epics, to be fair, but those weren't made often, so wanting to watch one never meant he actually could.
Then he started watching Love in the Moon. The things his grandson had filmed in the past were either too short or movies that ended the moment you blinked — but this was different. Every single weekend, there was Lee Heeyoon on the screen.
The old regulars who still dropped by his shop even knowing Bae Dohan no longer made signboards talked about Lee Heeyoon every other breath.
"Honestly, everyone at our church does nothing but talk about Love in the Moon the second we get together."
He had missed his timing.
Convinced he had no right to call himself a grandfather, he'd never once told anyone that the actor was his own grandson, even after Lee Heeyoon began his career. When customers came, he pulled the curtain over the one wall in the shop that brimmed with his love for the boy. And now that he'd become this famous, blurting it out this late would only get him branded a traitor and run out on a rail.
In any case, thanks to that silence, he got to hear the public's unvarnished reactions — and they were uniformly glowing. After that article about the guardian came out recently, he heard people were actually filing complaints with the police department. Begging them to chase off that big uncle of his. Public servants hate civil complaints more than anything, they said, and it turned out to be true. Before long, news arrived that Lee Kyunghoon had resigned from the force of his own accord.
Then came the day Bae Dohan, who searched Lee Heeyoon's name every single day, stumbled upon something called a Lee Heeyoon fan cafe.
It had quite a lot of members. Bae Dohan joined on the spot.
CrapeMyrtle: Hello. I've joined.
After posting his greeting, he began browsing the materials in the cafe. There was far more there than anything Bae Dohan could get his hands on himself. Bae Dohan, who didn't do social media at all, hunted down even the photos posted on Leader Actors' official account through the cafe and saved them one by one.
It really was a fine thing, being able to find out what his grandson was up to just by searching.
So he caught a cold and I didn't even know, Bae Dohan thought, reading the fan cafe posts with an aching heart, when he came across a notice.
Actor Lee Heeyoon 1st Debut Anniversary Cafe — Schedule & Info (for anyone planning to visit)
Every drink order comes with a designer cup + postcard (1 random design of 2).
"So they're counting his debut from Garden of Manyusa. He did plenty of child roles before that, though..."
Muttering to himself, Bae Dohan pushed his glasses firmly up his nose and read the text for a long while.
He looked up the postcards the cafe was giving away — photos of his grandson, already so precious he could have pressed them straight into his eyes, now with words of encouragement written on them besides.
It was probably the first time since his daughter had passed that looking at something stirred in him the urge to own it.
In the end, on opening day of the anniversary cafe, he went early and paced back and forth in front of the entrance any number of times. Inside there were nothing but girls far too young for him. He'd stayed up all night studying what a "debut anniversary cafe" even was, and still he couldn't muster the confidence to walk in.
"I suppose this just isn't a place for me..."
Bae Dohan grumbled gloomily and turned around for what must have been the nth time.
And yet, strangely, he wanted that postcard so badly. Badly enough to set his dignity aside for a moment. At last, Bae Dohan screwed his eyes shut and stepped inside the cafe.
The Lee Heeyoon fans inside all turned to look at him at once. Under those wary gazes, feeling sweat trickle down his back, Bae Dohan pretended not to notice and spoke to the staff.
"Um... if I order a drink, I get a postcard of Actor Lee Heeyoon, right?"
"Oh — yes, that's right. You do know it's one random design, correct?"
"I do. I read about it on the fan cafe."
Saying this, Bae Dohan studied the menu with care. He ordered a single cup of maesil tea, and was handed the cup and the drink in a plastic container, separate.
Tray in hand — postcard perched on top of it — he went and sat in a corner. I suppose you're meant to pour it yourself, he thought, and was just tipping the tea toward the cup when the customers beside him cried out in unison, "No, don't!"
Bae Dohan froze, wondering if he'd done something to rub the young people the wrong way. Then one of the customers who'd shouted came over and said to him:
"You take the cup home with you — this part you just drink as is."
"But you gave me the cup, so why..."
"You're a Lee Heeyoon fan, aren't you?"
"Of course. Why else would I have come all this way?"
"Then this has to go home with you too."
Oh — that's why they stopped me from pouring it!
He looked at the cup, and it was yet another photo he'd never seen before. He'd saved every single one of them, and still there were more he hadn't seen...
"Thank—"
"Here, take this one too."
"Oh — and this as well."
"I'll give you one of mine."
And after that, the customers there kept pressing things on him. They gave him candy, shared their snacks, and even pressed a palm-sized photo into his hands. It took him a while to understand: they were giving because he was a fellow Lee Heeyoon fan.
That the people of the world loved his grandson this much was so heartwarming it made him laugh out loud, dignity be damned.
He set the random postcard he'd received on the table and stroked it for a long, long time. That this young thing had endured all that hardship alone while his grandfather was drowning himself in drink — the thought wrenched his heart clean open.
He sat in the cafe a short while, gathered everything into his bag, and stepped outside — and strangely, not once that day had the thought of alcohol crossed his mind. Doing something out of the ordinary, it seemed, left no room in his head for anything else. So this is the trick, he thought. He wanted to watch his grandson's drama more. Much, much more.
They say even rolling in a dung heap beats the world beyond — and for the first time in years, Bae Dohan found himself thinking he wanted to live.
Han Jeonghyeon had once seen a film called The People of Wooheonjeong. A revenge play in which a gathering of eccentric, impossible people avenged the death of the one good soul in that household.
Watching it, he'd thought it resembled his own family. The general eccentricity of the bunch, for one — but above all, the way that lone good soul had taken to a sickbed early in life. Of course, that was just a movie; the people of his house would never lift a finger in revenge for the sake of a good soul. They were all far too busy looking out for number one.
Han Jeonghyeon stared with a blank expression at his mother, who had slipped into a coma yet again, days ago now. Out of consideration for his film-loving mother, a movie had been running on the hospital room monitor without pause. Today it was Comrades: Almost a Love Story. He had always wondered how his mother — a woman who loved movies — reconciled herself to this tale of two people dithering back and forth between lovers. By everything Han Jeonghyeon had been taught, infidelity was a sin, therefore evil, yet his mother didn't seem to care in the slightest. She'd told him not to live badly — so why was this film supposed to be beautiful? Why did the world hold so many countless, bottomless ambiguities?
The Demon chided him.
[What you're supposed to be feeling right now is sadness]
[I taught you that when you were little, remember?]
'I understood what it was. That's not the same as feeling it.'
He knew it in his head, but it never reached his chest. He could imitate expressions well enough, but with no one in the room — his father included — looking remotely grief-stricken, there was nothing worth copying.
As Han Jeonghyeon narrowed his eyes at his mother's pallid face, the Demon spoke.
[Guilt is what you're supposed to feel at a time like this, you sociopath]
'Why? I haven't done anything wrong.'
[You made her suffer]
Han Jeonghyeon jerked his chin toward his father, who was clasping one of his mother's hands in a tight grip.
'Father's the one who made her suffer. I was simply born this way.'
When his mother, daughter of a master director, married the man who inherited Mobydick Entertainment, the Han household came to be spoken of in the industry as a "great house." Directors, producers, and actors poured forth from both sides of the family in absurd numbers.
Han Jeonghyeon's father, Han Tae-rin, was a man profoundly obsessed with that title of "great house." They say that once a man acquires money, he begins to covet honor — and CEO Han Tae-rin was exactly that pairing made flesh.
Han Tae-rin had wanted to make his wife a star. He failed. The one who came closest to stardom, as it happened, was his sister-in-law. In any case, she was family all the same, so he was satisfied in his own way — and he did love his wife, more or less.
Han Tae-rin, who had lingered at his wife's bedside for some time, finally turned away. And he said to Han Jeonghyeon:
"So. Have you gone through all the scripts that came in?"
"I picked one."
"Pick the one that'll succeed."
"I already know what's going to succeed."
Nothing announced a great house to the world like producing a star. Han Tae-rin had known from the moment his son was born that the boy would become one. Whether that star would content itself with glittering in the reflection of a well, or blaze across the ocean — that was the choice that began now.
"All you have to do is act," Han Tae-rin said. "Don't concern yourself with anything else. Keep up your looks, do your acting, and stay out of trouble."
"What's that supposed to mean? If I cause trouble, you'll have to cover for me anyway."
"I mean don't cause trouble I can't cover."
"Ah."
Han Jeonghyeon, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, gave a shrug.
"The thing is, I can't tell the difference."
"Your mother's hardly in any state to teach you that sort of thing now, so ask the secretaries."
With that, Han Tae-rin left. Han Jeonghyeon turned his gaze back to his mother.
He wondered, briefly, whether she had been happy or unhappy. To Han Jeonghyeon, flexing his muscles to express emotion was like a foreign language he'd grown very practiced at. Now and then it even felt easier than his mother tongue — but on tired days, his tongue would stiffen and refuse to move. There were still times he couldn't grasp the obvious, and delays cropped up depending on his condition.
His mother, lying there, looked at peace.
He had always believed death was naturally more comfortable than life. So once he'd asked her — since waking hurt this much, why not simply choose death? And his mother had asked him whether he would be all right without her. Han Jeonghyeon weighed the matter in his head and answered that he would be fine. Whereupon his mother, strangely, made a sorrowful face.
As expected, this was a foreign language.
It would never, not ever, become his mother tongue.