Chapter 145
Chapter 145
Filicide (3)
“If you were curious, you could have just asked him yourself…”
After hearing the full story, Yu Yeon-seo’s face crumpled into a deep frown. Cha Yun-ho swallowed the thought that the director wouldn’t have answered so readily if he had asked directly.
“Tsk, what a pain.”
He muttered. Such emotions were useless for the acting he was about to do.
“From now on, don’t go even if my grandfather calls for you.”
“Why not? I enjoyed seeing the Chairman’s expression.”
Yu Yeon-seo stared blankly at Cha Yun-ho without a word.
“Yes, sir.”
His expression hadn’t changed, yet it was somehow intimidating. Overwhelmed by that unapproachable aura, Cha Yun-ho quickly nodded.
Yu Yeon-seo sighed as he watched Cha Yun-ho retreat as if fleeing. He was letting it slide only because Cha Yun-ho had acted out of goodwill, without accepting any reward from his grandfather. He rose from his seat and sat next to Kang Cheon-hui, who was sitting at a distance.
“We’ve met before, right?”
“Yes… Thank you for back then. How can I possibly repay you…”
“I don’t remember what I did… but I’ll accept your thanks for now.”
Yu Yeon-seo brushed it off casually and glanced at the script in Kang Cheon-hui’s hands. It was tattered and filled with scribbles, a sign of having been read countless times.
“Hey, Park Ji-woo, want to run lines?”
After all, their real ages were the same, as were their characters’ ages. It was better to connect through their work than to make small talk like this. At his words, the look in Kang Cheon-hui’s eyes changed.
“Grandfather! I’m heading out!”
“Oh, uh… okay. Be safe.”
Hwang Min-jae called out loudly. Still awkward with the greeting, Hwang Dae-sik hesitated before responding.
But then, he noticed his grandson’s attire as he was about to leave through the front door. The new semester had started, but the weather was still like the dead of winter. In the end, Hwang Dae-sik stopped him.
“Wait a minute, don’t you have any other clothes?”
“Ah… I don’t really feel the cold. I think I’m going to be late.”
Looking embarrassed, Hwang Min-jae scratched the back of his head and hurriedly left the neighborhood, using his tardiness as an excuse.
“…It’s still cold.”
Come to think of it, he always wore the same clothes. He had tried not to get attached, but the sight of the boy wearing just one thin layer of clothing in the middle of winter weighed on his mind.
So, Hwang Dae-sik went to a related agency to receive welfare benefits he had known about but never accepted. However, the response he received was cold.
“Sir, you don’t meet the criteria.”
“Excuse me?”
Was it because of his criminal record? He was sure he’d seen somewhere that it was possible… But the answer he received was unexpected.
“You can’t, because you have a legal guardian responsible for you.”
“Excuse me?”
As if annoyed by the old man who kept repeating himself, the official let out a small sigh and pushed a piece of paper forward.
“Right here, Hwang Seon-hye.”
At the tip of the ballpoint pen was an unfamiliar name. It was the name of the daughter who had stormed out of their rundown house, declaring she was sick and tired of their squalor and her mentally ill older brother. A child he hadn’t heard from since, not knowing if she was dead or alive.
“But… I can’t even contact her.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t process your request.”
“But she has never once supported me…”
“I’m sorry. That’s just how the law is.”
“No, wait a minute. Then there’s nothing I can receive…”
“Yes, next person, please!”
The official just repeated that it wasn’t possible like a parrot and eventually gave up on him. Pushed aside by the next person, Hwang Dae-sik stood there for a long time before resigning himself to the situation.
‘He doesn’t have any decent clothes…’
The thought continued to bother him, so Hwang Dae-sik decided to earn money with his own two hands. It was the moment Hwang Dae-sik, who had been living aimlessly after his release from prison, began to regain his will to live, one step at a time.
Meanwhile, the transfer student, Hwang Min-jae, became the center of attention for every student in his new class.
“Whoa, what’s this? He’s handsome.”
“Is it common for a senior to transfer?”
“He’s crazy tall.”
[Even with all this, we can’t seem to tone down Mr. Yeon-seo’s face.]
That was what the director had said upon seeing Yu Yeon-seo in a school uniform. Even after losing weight, slouching his posture, and letting his bangs cover his eyes, his innate features still created a sense of dissonance.
[Then let’s tweak the character’s settings a bit. It won’t affect the story anyway.]
According to the original setting, Hwang Min-jae was supposed to be an ordinary high school student you could see anywhere—one who was bullied due to his gloomy and unconfident demeanor.
But since the actor himself was so handsome, it was better to shift the narrative toward him being the target of his classmates’ jealousy. The initially planned gloomy and passive personality was toned down, and the void was filled with a fiery spirit.
“Why are you working?”
“I have to do my part.”
“Don’t push. I’m fine.”
“But I’m not.”
And one classmate, who resented the attention Hwang Min-jae was getting, witnessed a scene: Hwang Min-jae, who had been handing out flyers on the street, pushing Hwang Dae-sik’s cart full of scrap paper from behind.
“Huh? That person…”
“What is it? Mom, do you know that old man?”
“He’s famous in this neighborhood. Looks like he got out of prison.”
“Prison?”
His mother clicked her tongue, saying how pitiful the situation was, but the student, having found some dirt, smirked vilely. The next day at school, he provoked Hwang Min-jae.
“Hey, I heard your grandfather is a murderer.”
“What?”
“This is about your family, isn’t it?”
The phone the classmate held out contained something he could never have imagined.
70-Year-Old Man Kills Son While Caring for Him with Mental Illness
Murdered Schizophrenic Son… Attempted Suicide Pact Due to Financial Hardship
“Whoa, I know this case.”
“That was Hwang Min-jae’s grandfather?”
“So you’re living with the person who killed your dad? You’ve got some nerve.”
“Hey, cut it out.”
The murmuring students either tried to stop him or stood by idly. Hwang Min-jae slowly read the article on the phone. He had, in fact, heard the neighborhood people whispering. They all said it was pitiful and tragic. So he had thought it was nothing serious.
A surge of emotion welled up inside Hwang Min-jae. So what? What are they trying to say? Right now, my grandfather is the only person I have to lean on.
“But how do you know my grandfather? Are you a beggar too?”
“What?”
“To know that rumor, you must live in a beggar’s neighborhood too. Just like me.”
“Pfft!”
At those words, a student who had been sleeping with his head down in the far back corner burst out laughing. All eyes turned to him.
“Kheheh… Pwahahaha!”
The student, whose shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter, lifted his head. It was the first appearance of Park Ji-woo, the character played by Kang Cheon-hui.
“This guy’s interesting. Knock it off.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“This bastard’s being a dick even when I’m helping him.”
Park Ji-woo was to become the only person Hwang Min-jae could call a friend, playing the role of peeling back a layer of the blind affection he held for his family.
“What are you doing here again?”
After the incident at school, Hwang Min-jae would seek out his grandfather whenever he wasn’t working. And he would push the cart his grandfather pulled. Hwang Dae-sik had found it bothersome. But as his grandson approached him more and more cheerfully, a smile began to return to his lips.
“Why are you out here again instead of studying at home?”
“What’s the point of studying? I can’t go to college anyway.”
He looked at his grandfather’s frail back.
‘Why did he do it?’
He had been composed at the time, but what happened at school kept weighing on his mind.
“By the way… I heard something strange at school.”
Hwang Dae-sik’s steps halted. And Hwang Min-jae said no more. He hadn’t said it expecting an answer as to why.
You can’t know unless you’ve experienced it yourself. The hardship of having a severely ill patient that even hospitals wouldn’t admit, the sorrow of not receiving support from the state. He had thought about rather dying than living like this at least ten times a day.
But if he just left, how would his remaining son live without him… He’d spend another identical day with that thought. It took a long time to reach the conclusion that they should just go together.
“…Life wasn’t always so good.”
He had wanted to escape through death, but all that awaited him was his son’s cold corpse. The bitter reality that he had killed his own child.
“So how are you now?”
“…”
Hwang Dae-sik didn’t answer.
After walking the streets for a long time collecting scrap paper, the old man spoke quietly to the grandson who had been silently supporting him from behind.
“Don’t expect too much from me.”
“…I’ll figure it out myself.”
A sullen reply came back, not the one he had hoped for.
Despite their poverty, his mother had never given up on him. But the grandfather before him looked as if he could be blown away by a single gust of wind. Shaking his head fiercely to clear the thought, Hwang Min-jae forced a smile.
“Grandfather. Are you done with work now? I’m hungry.”
“Hungry? Then…”
“Buy me that.”
His finger pointed to a street food stall. They stood side by side, eating fish cake skewers and tteokbokki, things they couldn’t afford back then. A smile touched Hwang Min-jae’s shadowed face.
“Grandfather! Should we try the claw machine?”
“How does this thing work?”
“Watch carefully.”
The grandfather and grandson stood before the claw machine for a long time. They lamented over the doll that dropped at the last second and rejoiced greatly when they finally managed to get one.
And these heartwarming scenes existed only for the sake of the tragedy to come.
“You were coughing. Did you catch a cold?”
“I think so.”
Yu Yeon-seo was looking over his script next to Park Seung-hwan, who was sitting for a long time to get his makeup done.
In truth, his body was fine. It was just that, because the character Hwang Min-jae in the film had a distorted attachment to his family, he naturally started thinking about his own family, which always led to a bloody outcome.
“What do you think will happen with our movie?”
“…I think the critics will like it.”
“I heard that Jae-ho is already training himself to get used to malicious comments asking if he’s caught the ‘art film disease’.”
“What’s with all the training?”
Yu Yeon-seo chuckled softly. The flow of ‘Filicide’ was quiet. It calmly depicted Hwang Dae-sik’s situation of being pushed to the brink. Yu Yeon-seo wasn’t hoping for a box office hit either. He just thought it would be good to have something like this in his filmography.
“Isn’t it difficult to act with all that makeup on?”
“It’s tough. I regret saying I’d do it.”
Park Seung-hwan feigned complaint, but Yu Yeon-seo was quite impressed. Despite the stuffy makeup covering his face, he portrayed the old man without any awkwardness. He stood with a stooped posture as if it wasn’t difficult at all, and his phlegmy voice made Yu Yeon-seo think he had intentionally caught a cold for the role.
“What do you think of Hwang Dae-sik?”
“Well, it’s not that I don’t understand.”
He knew that sometimes there were unavoidable choices. Anyone in Hwang Dae-sik’s situation would have thought the same.
“What about you?”
“Me?”
What was he talking about? He turned his head and caught his breath at the look in Park Seung-hwan’s eyes. He wasn’t talking about Hwang Min-jae and Hwang Dae-sik, but about Yu Yeon-seo and Lee Hui-seo. Yu Yeon-seo let out a short, sharp breath.
“I didn’t expect you to bring that up…”
Her story was a taboo topic among those around him. Everyone just tiptoed around it; Park Seung-hwan was the first person to mention it outright. If this question had been asked before 2018, he might have thrown something.
“We’re close enough to talk about things like this, aren’t we?”
“…I wonder.”
Now, he was certain who the culprit was. He had even confirmed it with his own eyes on video. But since he couldn’t talk about that, he dredged up feelings from the past.
“In the end, I wasn’t enough to hold on to her. It’s the same for Min-jae, isn’t it?”
As the emotions from that time resurfaced, he couldn’t help but feel a lump in his throat. Yu Yeon-seo instinctively held onto that feeling. Coincidentally, the next scene was one where he had to cling to Hwang Dae-sik and sob.
Seeing this, a satisfied smile spread across Park Seung-hwan’s face.
“I’m ready, so let’s go.”
“…Okay.”
Belatedly realizing the question was meant to draw out his co-star’s emotions, Yu Yeon-seo followed behind him.