One Familiar Face Among a Thousand Strangers

When Gam Seongbeom, CEO of Leader Actors, returned, his father Gam Ihyun was deep in conversation with Lee Heeyoon, who had been brought to the house for the first time that day.

As the CEO moved to take Heeyoon home, his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mother Park Seonyoung — who had been gazing with open delight at her husband's face, lit up in a way she hadn't seen in ages — caught her son by the arm and steered him out to the patio.

Seongbeom asked, incredulous.

"Mom, you still like Dad that much?"

"I do. Can you believe it? Honestly, I didn't think I had it in me either."

"Honestly… wait, isn't he fonder of that kid than of his own grandchildren? What's up with that?"

"Oh, come on. It's not like that. A friend is a friend, and a grandchild is a grandchild."

So even to his mother's eyes, the two of them looked like friends.

His mother, watching her husband, wore the face of someone who had lived past sixty without ever once being wounded. When Seongbeom was young, he used to think of her as almost girlish; only after weathering his father's long illness at her side did he understand that she was, in truth, the stronger one.

That aside, it was equally clear that the money simply never stopped coming. Her personal assets seemed to keep growing of their own accord.

Park Seonyoung watched Heeyoon chatting happily with her husband for a while, then said to her son, "So where did that boy come from?"

The question made Seongbeom hesitate. Thirty-some years in education had evidently taught her to see what people tried to hide.

"His parents died in an accident when he was seven. After that he was raised in his uncle's house — and apparently they abused him the whole time he was there."

Park Seonyoung nodded.

Then she smiled and asked, "What about school?"

"Ah, right. He still has to take his equivalency exam. We need to get him into high school, but he hasn't had time to study, so…"

"He's a child. He'll catch up in no time. And besides, there's a math teacher right there in the house."

At her self-description, Seongbeom asked worriedly, "But Dad's really okay with this? He gets tired of his own grandchildren after half a day."

"Somehow he says he's fine. He even offered to pay his tuition, apparently?"

"…Dad said that? No way that happened."

Seongbeom looked back at his father in disbelief. Somehow, it stung a little.

Seongbeom pleaded a mountain of work and headed back to the office first, and his mother, Park Seonyoung, came out and brought Gam Ihyun's conversation to a close.

"Now, that's enough for now. Let's talk over dinner, over dinner."

"I didn't even notice the time passing."

Gam Ihyun said it with a sheepish face.

Before long we were all gathered around the table. I counted at least five people who worked in the house, just from what I'd seen.

A late supper had been laid out on the table. It was my first meal since the regression.

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

Come to think of it, I couldn't even remember when I'd last eaten a meal with someone else.

Which made having people around during a meal feel strange. After I'd left the agency, I always ordered whatever I happened to want; eventually I got sick of that too and just lived on stacks of chicken breast, eating barely enough to stay alive.

So sitting down to a proper meal again was awkward. So awkward, in fact, that having side dishes to choose from flustered me enough that I stopped eating several times mid-meal.

Not once did Park Seonyoung act surprised at my odd behavior — instead, she guided me through it, telling me each moment what I ought to eat next.

"Have some lotus root. Lotus root is delicious, and it's good for you."

"Lotus root…"

I murmured it absentmindedly, found a piece, and put it in my mouth.

Before the regression, there had never been anything I wanted to eat and couldn't have — but that hadn't been true for the sixteen-year-old Lee Heeyoon. I, the thirty-seven-year-old, might have sat down at the table, but the body itself still carried the habits and memories of its original owner.

"…"

It felt insane, but tears welled up all at once.

The two of them simply let me cry. Gam Ihyun asked one of the household staff to bring a handkerchief, and Park Seonyoung rested a hand quietly on my back. It was a warm hand.

After the meal, I went back to my room.

Being a guest room, it wasn't large, but I liked that stepping out the door led to a wooden veranda, and that sitting there put the outdoors right at my feet.

I was sitting out there for a moment when I saw Gam Ihyun walking toward me across the yard. He was leaning on a cane, supported on someone's arm, and the fact that he'd come all this way told me he had something to say.

I made the first move.

"I don't usually cry."

"Did anyone say you did?"

"Even if you told me to go inside at this hour, I couldn't."

"I wasn't going to."

Having barely made it over, Gam Ihyun settled onto the veranda beside me.

If he hadn't come to send me in, what else could he possibly want from me at this hour? I watched him, and he spoke.

"My wife was a teacher, you see. She absolutely despises skipped meals. That's why the conversation got cut off."

Then he just sat there silently at my side. He'd come, I guessed, to watch me finish crying.

Well, since I had him here anyway, I asked the question that had nagged at me before I regressed.

"When you act."

"Yes."

"Do you have to love your role? Because I've never once done that."

I had never given a performance where I truly felt this is mine. Maybe that was because, from child roles onward, I'd only ever been forced into it, coasting through on habit.

At my question, Gam Ihyun shook his head hard. As if he knew I'd given him this one day of my time, it was a denial that spent every ounce of strength he had.

"Absolutely not!"

"Absolutely not?"

"Not at all. Why on earth would you have to love your role? Even if your character is a truly rotten person, even if he's a con man fleeting poor people out of everything they have — you'd love that? There's no need."

"That's what I thought I was taught."

"Some people do come to love their roles. But I don't think it's essential. It may be inevitable sometimes, but that's different. My answer is no, Heeyoon. In my opinion, what we have to do is recognize the roles we play. That's what's essential."

In that moment, I understood once more.

Gam Ihyun was not looking at me as a child right now. He was looking at me wholly as an actor. As a fellow actor.

"Do you know what recognizing means?"

"No."

"It's picking out the one person you know from among a thousand strangers. That's what recognizing is."

Picking out the one person I know from among a thousand strangers.

That was it.

"I can do that."

"Of course you can. You will."

Gam Ihyun nodded deeply, then went on.

"I know you'll become a fine actor."

"How do you know?"

When I pressed him, Gam Ihyun answered.

"Everything else — well, it can be built, one way or another. When an actor gains experience, he learns to handle his roles. But screen dominance, that commanding presence… that's the thing you're born with."

"…"

"My father never had it. Maybe that absence is why he acted so long, and so variously…"

Gam Ihyun was staring straight through my eyes. I had long, narrow eyes and long upturned corners of the mouth — apparently all of it from my mother.

Gam Ihyun seemed certain of it. Then he let out a long sigh and, looking at me, said:

"You're going to do so very much acting from here on out. And God, I envy you for it."

Those words carried a truly enormous amount of sincerity.

He'd answered my question, so it felt only right to give something back. I opened with a lure.

"Nothing you're curious about regarding the CEO?"

"CEO Gam?"

The moment I dangled the bait, Gam Ihyun bit, exactly as I'd predicted.

"That is… well. That boy. What do you think of him as a producer?"

"As a producer?"

"He wants to run a production company. Seongbeom, I mean."

He'll be doing both at once soon enough anyway.

I debated whether I should actually drop that piece of future-spoiling, and then decided to just do it.

"In my opinion?"

"Yes."

"He'll burn through money spectacularly a couple of times, and most of the rest will break even. But—"

"But?"

"He'll make a few masterpieces. One or two… no, call it two or three."

Wow — one day of my life buys me how many spoilers, exactly? Becoming a chaebol heir would be easy at this rate. I'd just die young, that's all. Thirty-two or thirty — honestly, it seemed like six of one.

My life past thirty had been so, so unbearably dull. The thought of living through it again made spending a single day feel like no loss at all.

Best of all, my one sacrificed day worked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wonders. Gam Ihyun laughed. Gam Seongbeom had once said his father hadn't smiled for a long time before he passed away. I'd have to tell him later: It was out of love for you, you know — that's why your father was laughing.

That night, I truly slept well.

So well, in fact, that I could hardly believe it had happened in a house I was seeing for the first time. I hadn't known I was the kind of person who could sleep soundly in a house full of people.

If I'd known, maybe I would have been less high-strung on film sets before the regression.

I was thinking that as I stepped outside — and there, in front of my door, a book had been left for me.

I opened the book.

The middle school equivalency exam was something anyone who'd been through the regular curriculum could pass easily just by reading the questions properly — but for someone like me, who had never in his life properly attended school, it was a mountain to climb.

To think the pressure of the exam would arrive before the pressure of acting.

I had wanted to go to school, sure — but I'd never known it meant having to study.

Still, the note said it was like a script, that "reading carefully" was all it took. So I opened the book and read. And soon closed it again. It was boring. As I thought, scripts were the most entertaining reading there was.

"…"

But still. School.

I wanted to know what it was like to attend for real, just once. Even for a single month.

I wanted to sit in classes, to make friends my own age.

And there was someone willing to help me, after all.

With that thought, I found myself ready to open the book again.

Before I got down to serious studying, I read the inscription one more time.

Grandma will help you.

It became my resolve.

A few days later, I visited Leader Actors again.

The desk of Vice President Gam Soohan was still buried under a heap of proposals and scripts.

Some I'd seen before the regression; quite a few had ended up falling through entirely.

The one on top was The Loneliest Hours. The child actor playing the lead had a substantial role — a film I'd genuinely coveted. It was a high schooler's part, but well, I'd be a high schooler myself next year anyway…

Except that, as I remembered it, a member of a mega-famous idol group had snatched that role, so there was no way it would ever come to me. Besides, I had zero confidence in being better-looking than that guy.

I was still poking around out of curiosity at the rest of the pile when Gam Soohan casually spread the scripts flat with his hand. Do Jaeyeon sighed and said to me,

"This is confidential. Understood?"

"Of course."

I answered and scanned the titles with my eyes. Just seeing scripts again after so long set my heart racing.

While I was intoxicated by the scripts, the CEO and the Vice President agonized over my schedule and auditions.

I, for my part, had always simply taken whatever work came at me. Like Tetris, my schedule had always been packed to the seams.

Finally Gam Seongbeom lost his temper.

"Hey, from now on, nobody answers calls from that kid's house. Cancel every single appointment. He's only got one body — how is he supposed to do all of this!"

"Hyung, they say they're coming down to the office to find him. What do we do?"

"What do you think? Body-block them. Hey, Gam Soohan. Can you throw a punch or not?"

"Look at my body."

"Right, you can't. Jaeyeon! It's got to be you after all!"

"You should've come to me first, long ago."

Do Jaeyeon, who had started out as a road manager straight after graduating high school, wore the expression of someone stating the obvious.

Watching the three of them labor so hard to protect me — it had been a while, and somehow it felt good all over again.