The shoot that had started before dawn finally wrapped only after the sun had gone down.
"All right, that's it for today's shoot! Everyone worked hard!"
The instant PD Lee Woo-seok finished speaking, sighs of relief broke out across the set.
"It's finally over!"
"Wow... today was seriously long."
"Let's keep this momentum tomorrow too!"
The fatigue was still there, but a faintly buoyant expression spread across everyone's face.
The staff's hands moved fast as they packed up equipment, and the actors changed clothes one by one and gathered in twos and threes to talk.
Just then, my eyes happened to meet PD Lee Woo-seok's as he carried gear past.
He came over unhurriedly and, without a word, put a hand on my shoulder.
It was brief, but there was a strange weight in that firm press.
"Today... you really did well."
I smiled at that and nodded.
"I was nervous since it was the first day, but the mood on set was good, so I shook less than I expected."
He propped his chin and snickered, then tapped my shoulder again.
"Nervous, my foot. You were flying out there. What's more amazing is that you held this in for five years."
He turned his head and glanced toward where CEO Kim Myeong-jun was standing. Then he said with a small laugh,
"The CEO's completely fallen for you. Says he won't lay a finger on the drama from now on."
My eyes widened slightly.
"...Really?"
"Yeah. He said watching your acting gave him conviction. No more touching it, he'll just put the money in."
The corner of my mouth lifted on its own.
"Wow... an attitude can change this much in a single day."
"It's because of you. You gave the CEO conviction with acting alone."
He looked at me again and nodded. This time the look in his eyes was different. Not simple encouragement, but trust with sincerity in it.
"Well done, Cha Eun-yul. From here on all you have to do is shoot in peace."
I nodded quietly.
"I look forward to working with you, director."
PD Lee Woo-seok snickered at that.
"Standing on ceremony for nothing."
He wrapped an arm briefly around my shoulder again and stepped back. Waving lightly as he turned away, his retreating figure looked somehow dependable.
He turned around, stretched once, and said,
"Whew! This worked out! With the investor locked in, now I can get everything moving, starting with a sound director!"
I asked without thinking,
"You haven't found one yet?"
He stopped walking and turned only his head slightly.
"There's no point until the production money comes in. Until now the main assistant director's been covering sound checks on top of everything as a stopgap, and it's been killing him."
"What... seriously?"
"Yeah. The sound box is rented too. The proper equipment is scheduled to come in next week. And I need to draw up the sound director list starting today."
Then he propped his chin and muttered,
"To catch sound with a real sense of place, you can't stay in a studio. You have to do outdoor recording alongside it too...... Ah, busy, busy."
I laughed quietly.
"Director. You look very tired."
He looked at me for a moment, then snickered and said,
"Hey, shooting one drama ages a PD ten years, that's just how it works. You can swap out the writer, the lighting, the actors easily, but you can't swap the PD."
"That's a bit hurtful to hear."
"Ah, except you. You can't be swapped. Whew, I'm just glad you've been this good."
Saying that, PD Lee Woo-seok clasped his hands behind his back and headed back toward the set.
I watched his back and quietly muttered,
"...So it's starting now."
Around the set the lights were going out one by one, and the camera equipment was being packed away.
I stopped for a moment beneath the convenience store sign. The place where I'd poured out more emotion than anywhere else in a single day. And the first scenes of the day came back to me.
The moment I first met Eo Su-hyeon's eyes inside the drama.
Trading lines across the counter, ringing up items, recommending products.
That wasn't acting.
To me it was real.
[Convenience Store Part-Timer Yoo Dae-yeong]
From the moment the title was equipped, this place stopped being a set.
It felt more real than reality, more vivid than acting. Even without lines, my body was reacting naturally.
That wasn't acting. It was me, living and breathing as Yoo Dae-yeong.
- How did you hold out for five years?
PD Lee Woo-seok's words brushed through my head again.
Five years ago, standing in front of a camera had just been a given.
And now, standing in this place again.
I slowly drew in a breath. My fingertips trembled slightly.
This wasn't nerves.
It was excitement.
The sense of being able to act again.
The conviction that I could melt myself into this scene.
For this moment at least, not a single falsehood was mixed in.
"Eun-yul, let's get going too!"
Ji-ho hyung waved from a distance.
I looked up quietly at the convenience store sign one last time.
And then I took a slow, certain step forward.
The first shoot was a success.
***
Ad-lib.
Acting is a living art, and the ad-lib is the element that makes that art shine brighter.
A script lays out the path an actor is to follow, but how to walk that path is the actor's share.
So if you want to act well, simply memorizing lines isn't enough.
What lies beyond the lines.
That is, you have to make the character entirely a part of yourself.
And one method for that is precisely the ad-lib.
An ad-lib isn't simply changing a line. It's immersing more deeply into the character's emotion in that split second.
When an actor understands the character sufficiently, an ad-lib becomes not a mere variation but real acting.
The moment an unexpected word or gesture creates a resonance beyond the script.
Sometimes improvised acting like this becomes a project's defining scene.
Doing an ad-lib isn't simple wit.
For it to blend in naturally, what matters is how deeply the actor understands the character within the work, and how three-dimensionally they've conceived them.
In other words, the ad-lib isn't permitted to just anyone.
Only an actor who is 100% immersed in and understands the character can pull off a successful ad-lib.
***
Before long it was day three of the convenience store shoot.
The sky was already dark, and the lighting beneath the convenience store sign spread out softly. Evening air seeped in between the hands packing up equipment.
Compared to the first day, the mood was far brighter.
Ease was soaked into the staff's faces, and PD Lee Woo-seok was steering the set gently, tossing out the occasional joke.
And above all, Kim Myeong-jun's shadow had disappeared from the set.
'Good. The investor's interference over me should be over now.'
At first it had weighed on me that he'd been unhappy about my casting and had stirred up the site throughout the shoot.
I'd been uneasy inside, worried he was crushing the staff's spirits for no reason, but looking at the mood now, it seemed I could set that worry aside.
The camera director and the lighting team were laughing as they set the rig, and the actors on standby were talking quietly with hand warmers cupped in their palms.
A night with light laughter circling rather than tension. I think this is the first shoot I've enjoyed like this.
Just then someone called out to me warmly from behind.
"Actor Cha Eun-yul! Hello!"
I turned around to find Eun-min from the makeup team greeting me with a bright face.
"Ah, Eun-min-ssi. Hello?"
Her eyes went round and she covered her mouth and laughed.
"Oh my, you memorized my name? Amazing. Actor Cha, your popularity on this set lately is no joke."
"Sorry? It's only been three days."
"Exactly. Just three days, and you've memorized all the staff's names and speak so warmly to everyone...... Among the staff you're already a legend."
I smiled sheepishly.
The truth was... it was thanks to the title.
When I shifted my gaze for a moment, I saw letters slowly surfacing above her head.
[Chatterbox Park Eun-min]
If I can see the title, the name comes with it. Since most of the staff have titles, calling people by name was very easy for me.
She went on,
"Ah, and before the shoot today CEO Kim Myeong-jun apparently called the whole camera team together and told them the mood on set has been good lately, and that he'll arrange a convenience store location for us anytime we ask. It came down as an official directive, even."
I was speechless for a moment.
"Really?"
"Yes. They say it's the first time the CEO has ever said something like that. On day one alone the mood was so harsh, and lately... well, who could he be smiling at?"
I smiled without saying anything.
"Everyone's figured it out, though. Oh, right. You know there's a team dinner today?"
"Yes. Of course."
"I'm curious how you change when you drink!"
Leaving behind a mischievous smiling glance and a "you've got this," she quietly left.
I smiled quietly to myself. No one had heard it or seen it, but that one remark warmed somewhere in my chest.
I was a little proud, and a little careful.
This was... a small signal that I was being accepted.
After catching my breath a moment, I slowly walked onto the set.
The next scene was from the afternoon's material.
The scene where Yoo Dae-yeong, who has been hiding his feelings, bares his teeth. The lines are short, but the suppressed emotions have to spill out.
I called the rehearsal script back to mind.
Writer Yoo Ye-jin's scripts are always tightly woven. PD Lee Woo-seok's direction is trustworthy too.
In the hands of those two, the drama was already close to a finished form.
And yet an ambition rose in me as an actor.
It felt like I could make the person called Yoo Dae-yeong more vivid than he was now.
More precisely, the moment I understood Yoo Dae-yeong completely through the title's power, several scenes in the script started looking somehow off.
It felt like Yoo Dae-yeong wouldn't say it this way.
Down to a single inflection, a single look—
It felt like a little refining would bring him to life far more truly.
'...But is it all right to say that?'
The thought stopped there.
I'm an actor who's only just come back.
And not even a proper lead, just a supporting role with weight to it.
Saying we should touch the script, in a situation where the director may well have already agonized over that scene, could be an act that muddies the flow for nothing.
'Do I have any business making that request right now?'
A set that had only just started finding its rhythm. Touch it wrong and it could look like presumption for no reason.
It wasn't the timing yet.
I quietly sat at one side of the set and took a sip of water.
In front of me the cameras were being installed, and the lighting team was repeating brightness tests.
The lines and the blocking were already familiar.
The problem was... 'how' to fill them.
Whether to express the person called Yoo Dae-yeong exactly as given.
Or, as an actor, to push the emotion a little further.
In that instant, a thought brushed through my head.
The motion of pressing the emotion down harder and then detonating it. Or a detail like a short catch of breath before spitting out a line.
Would director Lee Woo-seok take it?
No, before that......
Was it right to propose something like that from my position?
In reality, plenty of actors trying to change even one line's tone or one bit of eyeline get told 'let's go as written.'
Especially an actor who hasn't even hit a handful of shooting days.
Even so, that ambition in my heart didn't go out easily.
I wanted to make Yoo Dae-yeong not a person who lives only inside the script, but someone I could argue for.
The moment I raised it, whether it would look like an actor's immersion or like overstepping interference depended entirely on timing.
"All right, sound roll—, camera roll—, going for the last take."
Tension spread across the set.
A dark alley.
The lighting behind the convenience store went out, and a portable flash lit the space roughly.
The camera lens turned, and Eo Su-hyeon stood leaning against the wall with her head down.
In front of her, one man.
A bit player with a single passing line. But the look in his eyes was sharp.
The emotions layered.
Eo Su-hyeon's voice climbed higher and higher, and the man's breathing turned rough.
It felt less like a set and more like a real fight was about to break out.
And then—
Yoo Dae-yeong, walking quietly in from the mouth of the alley behind them. A shabby blue jumper, stooped shoulders, a dark expression.
That was me.
Holding the emotion pressed down, slowly entering the frame.
Every breath, every footstep. Everyone was watching that scene in silence.
Now it was the moment to draw out the emotion I'd kept hidden.
In that instant, PD Lee Woo-seok's low voice came through.
"......Cut. One moment."