At last, the first shooting day.
A clean convenience store sitting in the middle of a residential district in Bundang.
We'd be filming here all day.
Since we'd decided to shoot the convenience store scenes from episodes 1 through 6 all at once, the schedule was no small thing.
Tension and excitement rushed in together.
'So this is where... I start over.'
The staff moved busily, setting up equipment. But something about the mood was off.
The camera team and lighting team were working as usual, but they spoke little and their faces were somewhat stiff.
Inside the convenience store, PD Lee Woo-seok was talking quietly with someone.
Even from a distance his face was full of exhaustion.
Both of them kept glancing around, seeming conscious of someone.
Just then PD Lee Woo-seok spotted me and came over.
"Cha Eun-yul-ssi, did you prepare well for today?"
"Yes. I prepared as best I could."
I turned my head naturally following his gaze. A man standing beside him came into view.
The man who had been staring straight at me.
A short greeting led into an introduction.
"This is the CEO of the drama's investment company."
'An investor...?'
I greeted him politely right away.
"Hello."
"...Yes."
A short, dry answer.
And a blatantly appraising look.
In that moment, letters surfaced above his head.
[Big Hand Kim Myeong-jun]
'...Big Hand? What does that mean?'
My eyes went to his hands for a second. His fine watch caught my eye without my meaning it to.
And in that gap, I missed what he'd said.
"...is it?"
"Sorry?"
CEO Kim Myeong-jun's brows drew together slightly. Before I, flustered, could get another word out, PD Lee Woo-seok stepped in naturally.
"We're planning to shoot the convenience store scenes all at once today, so it'll be a bit hard on you. Pace your stamina well."
"Yes, understood."
I bowed my head briefly.
Looking around the site, the staff were still moving carefully, watching CEO Kim Myeong-jun's mood.
The cameras weren't even rolling and Kim Myeong-jun had already started interfering everywhere.
"You can't display it this way. The new product isn't visible."
"Pull the counter lighting more this way. That line has to be emphasized."
I quietly steadied my breath.
'This... feels less like a drama set and more like a commercial shoot......'
PD Lee Woo-seok seemed to have been suffering through this situation for days already.
The tired face, the way he nodded without a word and accepted the instructions.
Knowing he had pushed to cast me, I felt all the more sorry.
'Is he having a harder time because of me......'
I put strength into my fingertips.
Today, I had to prove it through acting.
But what made my heart more uncomfortable today was the other people's faces.
The staff.
They nodded at CEO Kim Myeong-jun's criticisms while reading his mood, straining to hide their expressions with the look of people swallowing something.
They weren't simply working. They were enduring and moving in order to 'satisfy' someone.
Watching that made me more careful still.
'On this set, is acting well all I have to do?'
The question brushed past me for a moment.
What I could do in this situation right now.
Greet CEO Kim Myeong-jun again?
Or would it be right to help the staff struggling inside?
But the deliberating didn't last long.
I raised my head and walked straight into the convenience store.
***
Kim Myeong-jun had always liked dramas and films. After starting his business he naturally took an interest in the industry, and eventually jumped in as an investor himself.
At first he believed artistic quality mattered most.
But—
After he realized that money moves and that a brand's image can be decided by a single drama, things changed.
What mattered now wasn't 'quality' but 'exposure effect.'
He'd invested a large sum in this drama too. The direction was by PD Lee Woo-seok, called the best in the industry.
Naturally he'd assumed famous actors would appear.
And then an actor who'd had a power abuse controversy?
A newcomer with no work for five years, at that?
Hearing that such a person would take the convenience store part-timer role, Kim Myeong-jun had been floored.
'At this level they might as well have cast an ordinary member of the public.'
In the end, unable to hold back, he'd come to the set. Looking around, his dissatisfaction only grew.
The display shelves were a mess, and the new product sat in a spot the camera couldn't see at all.
"Rearrange the new product so it's clearly visible. Putting it in the back like this is pointless."
The production team just kept bowing and repeating "we're sorry."
'This is exactly why I have to come myself.'
Far from treating him like an investor, the mood suggested they weren't even paying attention.
On top of that—
'That's... Cha Eun-yul?'
The moment he first saw him, Kim Myeong-jun snorted in disbelief.
Plain clothes, ordinary looks with nothing that stood out. Compared to the actors next to him he looked like a bit player.
'Did they really just pull him off the street?'
That was when it happened.
Kim Myeong-jun had been arranging new products in front of the counter himself, and one of them rolled onto the floor.
And then—
Cha Eun-yul.
He came over quietly and picked up the fallen product without a word.
Then he went back to his place, still without a word.
'Ha... it's always the ones like that.'
Kim Myeong-jun felt like oil had been poured on his already accumulated dissatisfaction.
An actor with any social sense would read the room and offer at least a word of greeting when an investor was present, and yet this man had known he was the investor and acted without saying anything.
'He acts well? Don't make me laugh.'
At that moment,
"Starting the shoot! Standby, please."
The site speaker rang out.
Kim Myeong-jun folded his arms and walked slowly to the monitor.
'Fine. Let's see it, then. This supposedly superb acting.'
He had no expectations.
A rookie actor, and one with a controversy at that. What was there to expect?
'This important scene, can he really pull it off?'
"Give me a script."
His tone was short and dry.
When a staff member hurriedly held one out, Kim Myeong-jun took it roughly, as if displeased by that too.
His fingers tightened and the paper crumpled slightly.
Then, for a good while, he pretended to page through the script while his eyes kept drifting toward Cha Eun-yul.
Watching Cha Eun-yul check his blocking, Kim Myeong-jun lowered the corners of his eyes.
His displeasure was written plainly on his face.
'Who does he think he is......'
"Camera roll!"
"Roll!"
"One, twenty-one, take one! Convenience store!"
Clack!
As the slate cleared, PD Lee Woo-seok's voice rang out over the megaphone.
"All right, ready~ action!"
Ding-a-ling—
The convenience store door opened and Eo Su-hyeon came in with a tired expression.
And in that moment Cha Eun-yul's expression changed.
Until a second ago it had been the face of a nervous rookie, and then the look in his eyes was different.
Quietly, unmistakably.
Eo Su-hyeon picked up a canned coffee without a word and set it on the counter.
Cha Eun-yul bent his body very slightly and lifted the barcode scanner with practiced ease.
"One pack of cigarettes."
At Eo Su-hyeon's blunt words, Cha Eun-yul stopped short for an instant.
But he soon turned naturally and took out a pack of cigarettes.
And in that moment his finger gave the warning text on the cigarette box a light 'tap.'
'...What was that?'
There was clearly no such stage direction in the script. Kim Myeong-jun furrowed his brows. That one brief motion carried a strange emotion in it.
Like a wordless scolding that said, "think about your body a little."
A subtle change came over Eo Su-hyeon's expression as well. Then she took out one of the buy-one-get-one coffees and held it out to Cha Eun-yul.
"Drink it."
Cha Eun-yul picked up a lighter and said,
"This is for the coffee."
He quietly watched her retreating back.
"Okay~ cut!"
PD Lee Woo-seok lowered the megaphone and asked,
"Cha Eun-yul-ssi, was that tap on the cigarettes an ad-lib?"
"Yes. Was it strange?"
"No, I like it. Let's go once more with just the angle changed."
Kim Myeong-jun raised his head again.
In that brief scene, Cha Eun-yul hadn't simply handed over cigarettes.
With the detail of his fingertips and a single look, he'd explained the two characters' shared past.
Building emotion with not one line of dialogue. That wasn't something just anyone could do.
'...That was an ad-lib?'
Going by the script alone, it was just a short exchange between a blunt customer and a convenience store part-timer.
But Cha Eun-yul had melted emotion into it. Story had seeped into a single look, a single fingertip.
At that moment PD Lee Woo-seok lifted the megaphone.
"Three, thirty-seven, take one! We'll go straight on! Kim Mi-rae standby! Cha Eun-yul-ssi, this time the emotion is completely different!"
"Yes, understood!"
Thrown by the shooting running straight on, Kim Myeong-jun asked the staff member beside him,
"That PD, does he always push this hard?"
"We only get one day to shoot here. It's a busy area, so we're doing episodes 1 through 6 through to dawn."
'They shoot all of that in one day? Isn't that too much......'
Time passed, and though four or five hours of shooting had gone by, there was still no sign of stopping.
"Cut! Let's go again!"
"Sorry, my line again......"
"Just once more, please......"
Every time the lighting and cameras changed positions, NGs repeated, and the actors' and staff's concentration frayed.
The set was wearing down.
Exhaustion was soaked into PD Lee Woo-seok's voice too. Fatigue had built up in Kim Myeong-jun as well.
Sighing several times, he thought,
'Everyone's this worn out, so who's going to carry the next scene... at this rate we're looking at an all-nighter.'
By schedule they hadn't even finished half. Scene transitions were slow, and the NGs kept piling up.
Exhaustion was written on the staff's faces, and quiet sighs went around among the actors.
Then one sight caught his eye.
Cha Eun-yul.
He'd been on his feet longer than anyone, and not once had he slipped.
While the other actors went back over their scripts or caught their breath in the waiting chairs, he was always there as 'Yoo Dae-yeong.'
"Cut! Let's go again!"
The scene changed, the lighting moved, the grain of the emotion shifted, and Cha Eun-yul's immersion didn't waver.
In that moment, Kim Myeong-jun raised his head and looked straight at him.
'...What is he?'
One man holding firm in the middle of a set wearing down.
He wasn't acting like someone wringing out the last of his strength. He simply was the role.
"Cut! Okay! Cha Eun-yul-ssi was perfect!"
At PD Lee Woo-seok's call, applause broke out from the staff.
And yet Kim Myeong-jun still couldn't take his eyes off Cha Eun-yul.
A little while later, Cha Eun-yul raised a hand.
"PD-nim, would it be all right to change the item to this one?"
What he held up was a bibim lunchbox.
The new product Kim Myeong-jun had selected.
PD Lee Woo-seok tilted his head.
"Your reasoning?"
"It seems like something the exhausted lead could use to get a meal down fast. It has a variety of sides and you can mix it all at once, so I think a natural eating flow comes out of it... and I think the camera angle would catch it without any trouble too."
Kim Myeong-jun's brow moved slightly.
The product's strengths, the character's situation, even the camera blocking, all factored into the explanation.
In that moment, Kim Myeong-jun felt the aura of a 'professional actor' from Cha Eun-yul for the first time.
PD Lee Woo-seok smiled and nodded.
"Good. You've got the lines ready?"
"Yes!"
Shooting resumed.
The convenience store door opened, and Kim Mi-rae's actress stepped in with a tired face.
Cha Eun-yul stopped his hands tidying the register and spoke to her naturally.
The tone and the expression were both natural.
There was no foreign feel to the line.
Holding the lunchbox so it showed well in the camera angle, the angle at which he set his hand on the counter, all of it was perfect, as if calculated.
'It flows naturally, like words his body knows... not like a script.'
The feeling of the product's characteristics and the scene's purpose meshing exactly. It was a difficult scene where advertising and acting had to coexist, and he'd caught that balance perfectly.
Kim Myeong-jun drew in a breath without realizing it.
'This guy... really can act.'
Up to now the PPL scenes in countless projects had felt like forced advertising, but the scene just now was different. Not a drama, but a conversation out of real life.
Cha Eun-yul wasn't reading a script. He was acting a living situation.
***
The morning's shooting wrapped and there was a short break. PD Lee Woo-seok came over and spoke to him.
"How was it? Actor Cha Eun-yul is really good, isn't he?"
Kim Myeong-jun nodded reflexively. Far too naturally. It was a reaction that came out without thought, without his meaning it to.
In that instant, his lips stiffened.
'Should I be nodding this easily...?'
His pride flared a little, but only for a moment. The acting from earlier came back into his head at once.
Timing as smooth as if it had been fitted together, a gaze and a delivery that felt real, and the instinct to make the situation live.
'...Right. It wasn't good, it was extraordinary.'
In the end Kim Myeong-jun let out a quiet breath.
"I apologize for doubting you. It was your eye after all, PD-nim."
At the unexpectedly quick concession, PD Lee Woo-seok looked briefly surprised, then smiled.
"Thank you for acknowledging it. We'll see it through with a sense of responsibility to the end."
After thinking it over for a moment, Kim Myeong-jun added,
"Could I ask... if I put in a little more investment, could actor Cha Eun-yul's screen time be increased?"
PD Lee Woo-seok laughed, seeming startled, then nodded.
"Of course that's possible. Let's work it out."
Kim Myeong-jun looked at the set once more.
From a distance, his eyes met Cha Eun-yul's.
The man bowed his head politely.
Kim Myeong-jun quietly nodded back and muttered to himself,
"...I look forward to working with you, actor Cha."