Audition.
Audition.
Inside Lee Jin-seok's study, I sat face-to-face with Lee Jin-seok.
"".....""
"Da-yeon... being bullied... she didn't want to go to school."
"Who bullied her?"
At my words, Lee Jin-seok, enraged, gulped down his hot plum tea and slammed the cup onto the floor.
"How dare they!"
"So I'm telling you, just send her to my school! Why'd you have to separate Da-yeon and me..."
Acknowledging his mistake, Lee Jin-seok sighed.
"Haa... Si-yoon, what should I do?"
"We go with Plan B, obviously. If she transfers to a nearby school after being bullied, word's gonna spread anyway."
Lee Jin-seok nodded silently and handed me a paper envelope marked Plan - B.
HSW candidates.
It was an envelope containing the personal details, personalities, and other information on the brats.
"Early education for a same-age bodyguard... you're a genius, Si-yoon."
"Just train 'em so nobody can tell they're bodyguards... it'd kill Hanseong's entire image."
"Of course! For what it's worth, this is top secret."
HSW, simply put, is Hanseong's weapon.
I'd heard it was a bodyguard organization created by Lee Gi-seok in the past to oppose S Company—more precisely, Taebaek—and it boasted overwhelming skill on par with the 'Blue Roof'.
Regarding the selection of those HSW child bodyguards, matters were proceeding secretly inside the study.
"I narrowed it down to three."
"Hmm..."
"This kid, I'm not too fond of, though..."
Lee Jin-seok read the paper I handed over.
The brat I'd said I didn't like must've been a strong candidate in Lee Jin-seok's own opinion, because he reacted visibly.
"Why?"
"Look at the face."
A boy named Kim Tae-oh, with overwhelmingly top scores in every category—but his face was far too handsome.
Like... child-model level.
"...Do you not like good-looking people?"
"The hell kind of bullshit is that? If Da-yeon falls for that runt, can you take responsibility?"
Only then did Lee Jin-seok seem to understand what I meant, and he flinched.
"N... no way."
"A guy who keeps rescuing her all the time? Knowing Da-yeon's personality, she'd fall for him no question. And on top of that, look how handsome he is."
"Ah..."
Lee Jin-seok asked for my opinion on the remaining two.
"The one on the left looks like he'd make it obvious he's a bodyguard, and the one on the right is so overzealous it'd be lucky if he didn't turn into a troublemaker."
"....."
"Anyway, I picked three, so I'm outta here~"
I walked out of the study, and Lee Jin-seok stared fixedly at the faces of the three inside the documents.
Time passed, and before we knew it, winter break was approaching.
Seeing the kids cheering about winter break, kids really are kids.
I stared out the window and recalled the invitation that had come yesterday.
"A preview screening, huh..."
Dad had said an invitation came and handed it to me while I was playing the Maple Leaf game.
The invitation held passes for the first, second, and third preview screenings, but the first screening was listed as still being in the editing phase, so non-staff attendance was not possible.
When my eyes stopped on one particular spot, Dad smirked.
"...Is this right?"
"Mm... wouldn't it be right?"
I read a certain phrase with a shocked look.
- The film was rated for adults only... so it looks like Si-yoon will only be able to attend the first screening.
It was a film I'd monitored in person multiple times already, but apparently I couldn't watch the work I appeared in at a movie theater.
"....."
"Si-yoon?"
"I... can't watch it in a theater...?"
When I looked disappointed, Dad didn't know what to do with himself.
"I worked so hard filming it..."
Dad nodded as if he'd made a decision.
"We'll just watch it at home!"
"...I wanted to see people's reactions, though..."
Dad began to think it over with a grave expression.
"Later, when Si-yoon is all grown up, let's watch the one we filmed this time at the theater!"
"Haa... if I want to see an adults-only film... I guess I'll have to live my whole life over again..."
"Sh... should we sneak in and watch it...?"
"How?!"
Dad agonized over it seriously, and in the end he called Jang Seong-man.
I was just recalling yesterday's events for a moment when Park Ji-hoon started pestering me from the side.
"Whoa... we almost ended up in different classes."
Ji-hoon was looking at the next school year's class assignments.
In the past, back when he was Jae-hyeong, he'd been the epitome of ignorance, but now I could see he put in a fair amount of effort.
Or maybe his brain's just better now than back when he was Jae-hyeong.
"I think... my brain's better than I thought..."
I snorted a laugh, watching Park Ji-hoon stare at his own grades.
"Among a bunch of eight-year-olds, and you only barely scraped by?"
"I didn't barely scrape by..."
Ignoring Ji-hoon, who was looking at me with a dead-serious face, I opened my sketch notebook.
It was full of pictures I'd drawn recently.
"Whoa... are you seriously prepping for art school? That's insane..."
"I think my sketching's at a decent level, hmm... the problem is it gets weird when I add color..."
Park Ji-hoon took my notebook and started flipping through it one by one.
"The art teacher told you to come find her, didn't she?"
"If you're gonna use polite speech, do it; if you're not, then don't. How long are you gonna keep mixing them?"
"Then I'll just drop the formalities~"
I'd said it, but watching Park Ji-hoon's reaction... damn, feelings I couldn't put into words welled up inside me.
"....."
I closed my notebook and got up from my desk.
"Where you going?"
"The snack bar."
"Me too!"
Park Ji-hoon scrambled to his feet and followed me.
We headed toward the snack bar; as expected, there were a lot of unfamiliar faces, and the brats who were seeing me for the first time were startled.
The path opened up like the Red Sea parting.
"".....""
When we reached the snack bar, Ji-hoon started picking things out excitedly.
It was called a snack bar, but it was more like a buffet, with all sorts of menu items lined up in a space that was endlessly spacious and dazzling.
I had a banana milk in my hand, and Ji-hoon had his arms full of food.
"Can you eat all that?"
"Obviously."
We set it all on the checkout counter, and since I had no cash, I pulled out a black card.
It looked mundane for a black card, but the employee recognized what I was holding.
"...Huh?"
"Ring it up, please."
"R... right."
Whenever we bought food, out of an old habit from the past, I was always the one who paid for Ji-hoon's food, too.
The moment the transaction finished, Ji-hoon dashed over to the microwave and started heating up some kind of pizza bread.
I grabbed a seat and sat down, then tore into the bread Ji-hoon had brought over.
Ji-hoon came back after heating up his pizza bread, spotted me eating his bread, and in a joking voice, full of mock complaint, said:
"If you were gonna do that, just buy more. Why'd you steal mine and eat it?"
"It's my money, isn't it?"
"Wow, that's cheap, all that 'my money, your money.'"
"...Shut up, just sit down, and eat."
"Yep."
Ji-hoon sat down with a haughty air and looked around.
Ji-hoon swept his gaze around as if he was used to the attention being on us because of me.
Because of an incident in the past, even the older elementary kids didn't ignore Ji-hoon.
The kids who'd once been skeptical about me hanging around Park Ji-hoon, on account of his dweeby face, had been proven wrong.
Ji-hoon, who'd sweet-talked and handled a brat older than us who had crossed the line with me, had become more famous than I'd thought.
Eating my bread and looking at my phone, I spoke up as if I'd just remembered.
"Oh, right, the trailer for the movie I filmed is out."
"!? Really?"
I showed him the trailer, which displayed the scheduled release date.
When Ji-hoon tried to touch my phone with those dirty fingers smeared in pizza bread sauce, I tossed him a napkin, and he wiped his hands.
As if he'd never done otherwise, he focused on my phone.
"Whoa... look at the production quality..."
The tense music Dad had composed flowed out as actor Kim Ha-neul appeared on screen, and an overwhelming horde of zombies emerged.
And at the end, Kim Ha-neul was sitting in front of a door; the screen passed through a small hole and showed me in a perfect stance taking aim with a crossbow.
- "Lower your head, unless you want a hole through it..."
An age meant to show off cuteness, but a short cut that looked like I'd roughly chopped it myself.
Her expression was emotionless, giving her an eerily decadent beauty on screen.
"Oooh..."
I scoffed, watching Ji-hoon play it again.
"Did I come out well?"
"Whoa, that stance—it's exactly your old stance from back in the day."
According to the school's phone rules, using your phone at any time other than lunch break earns you demerits.
"Hey, stop watching it and watch it on your own phone."
Ignoring my words, Ji-hoon kept staring at my phone.
"Whoa... I gotta tell my mom to watch it."
I took a bite of the roll cake Ji-hoon had brought and said with a smile.
"It's rated R?"
"...Then that means you can't watch it either."
I recalled my conversation with Dad yesterday and said nothing.
JSM headquarters had told me I wasn't supposed to let it slip that I'd be watching the movie...
"....."
I looked at Ji-hoon, who had finished that enormous amount of food.
"Does all of that really go in?"
"Hah... I'm full. It wasn't even that much, y'know."
I tossed the milk and bread I'd eaten into the trash and began to move, and Ji-hoon cleaned up his spot and fell in behind me.
Since it wasn't the way back to the classroom, Ji-hoon asked.
"Where are you going?"
"The art room."
"All of a sudden?"
"I'm not going to the next class, so go let the teacher know for me."
"Huh... so this is what being ranked first in the whole school looks like?"
I left the muttering Ji-hoon behind and headed for the art room.
"Oh! Si-yoon, what brings you here? You don't have class today."
"My next class is Jang Hyeok-jin's. Please tell him I'm staying here to practice drawing."
"Of course! Wait just a moment, I'll let him know now. Have a seat over there."
"Okay."
The art teacher called the Korean language teacher, nodded, and looked at me.
"Did you drop by because you wanted to draw?"
"Yes."
"What type?"
She sat down in front of me with a serious look and started to go over things one by one, so I handed her my notebook.
"Just as I thought..."
The art teacher was in admiration over my drawing, which came out as vivid as a photograph.
"I'm not good enough at coloring."
She looked at the shading I'd put in for a moment, and she looked puzzled.
But perhaps wanting to confirm for herself whether adding color was truly the issue, the art teacher moved toward the storage room.
"Is that so? Since you're used to drawing with graphite, shall we start with watercolor pencils?"
A box-type case she fetched from one spot.
Inside were 120-color pencils, and once she finished preparing, the art teacher set up some model fruit and flowers in one area.
"Still-life painting will be good for getting used to color."
"Yep."
Maybe because it was something she truly enjoyed doing, the teacher, who had opened her own sketchbook off to the side, smiled and began to draw.
The art teacher lightly constructed a framework with a red pencil, then handed me the pencil she had been using.
"The colors are all different, so you can make mistakes. That's why you make a framework first."
Unlike the teacher, I used light colors too, but I created the framework in one go.
"Oh... that's good too, but it's not exactly accurate, you see?"
The teacher, who had been beside me, took the pencil, gauged the size of the apple, and built a new framework, plane by plane.
"How is it?"
What the teacher drew went clearly beyond perfection; it had her own coloring in it.
It was a picture that was only a framework, yet it even looked different from the model apple.
The ultimate goal envisioned by those who dream of the pinnacle of art in the Republic of Korea.
The paintings of art teacher Go Min-su, who graduated top of her class from Korea Comprehensive Arts University, which boasted the highest competition rate in 2022, were clearly different.
I knew that even this private elementary school in Seoul had invested a great deal to bring in this young art teacher.
I drew step-by-step as the teacher instructed me.
"Wow... that's impressive. Your fundamentals are definitely incredibly solid."
The teacher finished one apple in no time and handed me pencils in the proper order in turn.
The art teacher was impressed as I drew each one from memory.
"Nothing lacking at all, though?"
I snorted, stood up, and turned the apple half a rotation.
An apple with more of the yellow side showing.
As I drew it out rapidly and without a word, the art teacher realized what the problem was.
"So you weren't drawing by looking at the subject—you were just following my drawing..."
"Yes."
Following the teacher, who pointed out the issues one by one, I continued to draw.