Time passed faster than I'd expected.
The awkwardness of the first reading, the tension of standing in front of a camera for the first time, all of it had become part of a routine that was familiar now.
The shoot had reached its middle stretch before I knew it.
When the cameras rolled I found myself controlling even the sound of my breathing, and after a call of cut my instinct was to look for the monitor first.
In that time I'd grown much closer to Su-hyeon, and I'd memorized every staff member's face. The set was no longer an unfamiliar place to me.
"This morning I was thinking, 'I should do something healthy like go hiking~'. I never imagined I'd end up hiking in full makeup, on camera......"
Eo Su-hyeon came over with a laugh and spoke to me.
"Right?"
I laughed and went along with it lightly.
I looked slowly around.
We were waiting at the entrance to a hiking trail right beside the shooting location.
Today's scene was Eo Su-hyeon and me hiking together and talking.
Behind us a few extras went up and down, creating a natural background, and the assistant director was busy with a radio, adjusting where people stood.
A little later the signal came that preparations were complete.
The camera and the boom mic moved, and PD Lee Woo-seok sat quietly in front of the monitor as if steadying his breath.
"All right, going right in. Ready—action."
Halfway up the mountain, a narrow dirt path beside a rock.
The camera slowly tracked along after Eo Su-hyeon and me.
The boom mic adjusted its angle to avoid the wind, and beside the monitor PD Lee Woo-seok held his breath as he stared at the screen.
We walked carefully, matching our steps.
After a brief silence, I spoke first.
"...You remember? That kid at our orphanage. The one who was always making someone a joke."
Eo Su-hyeon's eyes narrowed slightly.
"I remember. On the bad days... there were times I cried on the back hill before coming down."
I looked at her quietly.
"Thinking about it now, it's stupid. Why did I just sit there and take it like that... it isn't fair."
I'd always thought of her as someone strong and clear-cut, but the truth was she was better than anyone at hiding her wounds.
Someone who acts tough, but up close is actually more fragile, with a slightly careless side to her.
That side of her stayed with me strangely, back then and now.
"Don't work so hard at acting strong."
At my words she twisted the corner of her mouth into a smile.
Along with that smile, a thread of wind passed quietly over us.
As that moment for the two of us alone ran on in front of the camera, my eyes settled on Eo Su-hyeon's feet.
Her shoelace had come loose.
We were about to shoot the scene going back down together, and I thought this way was dangerous.
"Hold on."
It was a line that wasn't in the script.
I carefully lowered myself.
Eo Su-hyeon looked at me, seeming flustered, but I tied the lace firmly without a word.
Then I stood up and said lightly,
"Tell me if it gets hard. I'll help."
At that, Eo Su-hyeon's face slowly flushed.
Unable to get a word out for a moment at the unexpected ad-lib, she carefully picked up her line.
"You're right... back then too, you helped me a lot."
In that instant, even the air turned warm.
Improvisation with no awkwardness in it.
The sensation of the sincerity between two people pushing through the screen.
In front of the monitor, PD Lee Woo-seok smiled quietly.
He watched that scene, where each small emotion lived and breathed, unable to take his eyes off it for a long while.
"Are those two actually dating?"
The camera director came up to the monitor and whispered quietly.
His expression was serious, but there was a trace of mischief mixed into his eyes.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, PD Lee Woo-seok lifted only the corner of his mouth.
"Well... that is the look, isn't it."
The camera director watched the two on screen closely.
They stood there without a word.
There wasn't a single movement, but a strange current ran between them.
"...Hey, how many years have I been holding a camera? I read couple energy like nobody's business. That is one hundred percent. I'm telling you!"
PD Lee Woo-seok snickered at that.
"That's what good acting is."
Watching with a proud face, PD Lee Woo-seok called out,
"Cut!"
When PD Lee Woo-seok's voice rang out, the set stopped as though quietly catching its breath.
And right after—
"Eun-yul, that ad-lib just now... was excellent!"
PD Lee Woo-seok stood up from his seat and continued. Pride was written on his face.
"Eo Su-hyeon-ssi was really good too. The line timing was exactly right, and the expression was perfect."
Eo Su-hyeon smiled quietly and bowed her head, and I sheepishly swept a hand over the back of my hair.
In that moment, the camera director, packing up his equipment, muttered low as if to himself,
"...What, that was acting?"
"Director-nim, they're actors, so of course they act."
I laughed and answered his slightly disappointed tone.
"Sorry about him. This hyung's going through the change lately."
At PD Lee Woo-seok's teasing, a staff member beside him snickered, and after a brief silence the set loosened lightly into warm laughter.
The sunset was tilting slowly along the mountain ridge.
Under a sky stained red, the final cut of Eo Su-hyeon and me standing side by side was being shot.
The camera swept slowly over us and pulled back, and the background was pure natural dusk, needing no staging at all.
"Cut! Okay! That's good. Let's stop here for today."
PD Lee Woo-seok checked the monitor and nodded with satisfaction.
The staff on site closed out the last cut with quiet applause.
"Eun-yul, you worked hard today."
PD Lee Woo-seok came over and clapped my shoulder. Then he continued,
"And your shooting load is pretty much wrapped with this schedule. Yoo Dae-yeong's weight in the story pulls back a bit for a while."
It was something I already knew, but hearing it said out loud brought a slight emptiness.
"From next week we go into shooting centered on the leads. Your schedule will probably be open for a while."
"Yes. Understood."
I said it calmly, but my heart wasn't calm. Because the reluctance ran deep.
I thought I hadn't let it show, but PD Lee Woo-seok looked at me and smiled.
"Don't worry about it, just rest. You've done more than enough so far."
PD Lee Woo-seok clapped my shoulder lightly once more and laughed.
"Besides, you're about to get busy."
At that line, delivered so evenly, I tilted my head for a second.
My schedule was completely empty right now, so how could I possibly get busy?
I couldn't tell whether his words were simple encouragement or whether he'd foreseen something.
***
The leads went back into shooting from next week, but my portion was essentially finished with this schedule. The blank spaces on my calendar looked wide for the first time in a long while.
That afternoon, manager hyung called.
"Eun-yul, you've got a few days off for once, so go take a trip or something. It's been ages since you traveled, hasn't it?"
'A trip, huh......'
It sounded nice, but something inside me didn't respond readily.
Through the five-year gap I'd lived inside my apartment.
I had no occasion to meet new people and no plans to go anywhere.
The word 'vacation' felt like a luxury far removed from me.
That evening, I opened the refrigerator without thinking.
Inside, the containers of side dishes Mom had sent were stacked in layers. Kimchi, stir-fried anchovies, braised beef, seasoned eggplant......
The date stickers on the lids went back months, even years.
As I took them out one by one and sorted them, empty containers piled up like a tower on one side of the sink.
Looking at that, it suddenly hit me.
Through my long hiatus, Mom had never once stopped sending side dishes.
Even as the seasons changed, even as I contacted her less and less, she filled the delivery boxes to the brim without a word.
Inside were the same dishes every time, and sometimes seasonal food that changed with the months.
Probably, instead of the question 'are you eating well?', those containers were the answer.
I only ever received.
There were times I passed along a word of thanks, but I had never once gone down to my hometown myself.
That thought started pricking at one side of my chest, strangely.
Even after starting to shoot again, I hadn't said a single word to Mom.
'I'm acting again.' She must have been waiting for exactly that sentence since five years ago.
The containers stacked neatly in the refrigerator came to mind again. I realized they were the greeting Mom had been handing me, and her way of asking how I was.
'...Maybe I should just go down.'
I raised my head at the sudden thought. It wasn't that I wanted to meet anyone or had somewhere in particular I wanted to go.
I just felt like I had to set foot again in a place I'd turned away from for far too long.
'Since I'll be going out of the city, I should tell PD Lee Woo-seok......'
When I asked PD Lee Woo-seok about the schedule again, he laughed and pushed me out the door.
"Don't worry, just rest. Ah! And make sure you answer calls from unknown numbers!"
For a second my eyes stopped as I chewed over what he meant.
'Answer calls from unknown numbers... make sure?'
I couldn't tell why he'd say that, but it caught at a corner of my mind for no clear reason.
Carrying that strange aftertaste with me, I found myself booking a train ticket home.
Going down alone without a manager was something I hadn't done in a very long time.
I'd only been traveling with manager hyung for a few months, and I hadn't expected moving around alone to feel this unfamiliar.
When I took a window seat on the KTX, the scenery outside streamed rapidly backward.
Gray buildings thinned out bit by bit, and brown rice paddies and fields came into view.
Mist tinged with autumn light lay low, and people walked slowly with scarves wrapped as though covering their necks.
Inside the train it was quiet.
Music played through my earphones, but my heart was quieter than that.
It felt like the air that had been holding its breath among the lights and people of a set was slowly unwinding.
The country station I reached after a little over two hours. The moment I stepped onto the platform, the smell of damp earth brushed my nose.
It was definitely a different wind from Seoul's. Slow, and heavy.
"Nothing's changed."
Seoul changes by the day.
A shop you knew swaps its sign in an instant, and even the people change.
But this place wasn't like that.
It was familiar, and that familiarity put me at ease.
Just the fact of standing on my hometown ground settled my heart considerably.
When I left the station, rows of old signs came into view.
The lettering had faded a little, but the shapes and the places were the same.
The alleys I used to run through as a child still held the same look and the same smell.
The lady at the snack shop sat by the window frying hotteok, and the cat in front of the corner store had claimed the sunlight for itself, eyes narrowed shut.
In a scene where time seemed to have stopped, my own steps naturally slowed.
The closer I got to the house, the more the air changed.
The faint smell of doenjang rising from the crock stand, and cosmos flowers just starting to bloom in the flowerbed by the gate, shaking their thin stems.
When I opened the front door, a familiar sound came from the kitchen.
The brisk rhythm of a knife tapping a cutting board.
And then—
"Oh my! Eun-yul, you're here!"
Even though I'd told her in advance I was coming today, her expression and voice carried surprise and delight together.
Inside that one phrase was a warmth that had never once changed.
Among all the things that hadn't changed, the most unchanging was Mom's love.
With a fruit basket in one hand and a bundle of empty side dish containers in the other, I set them down carefully on the table.
"I'm home."
After that short greeting, I looked around the living room without thinking.
Snack wrappers scattered on the desk, a comic book tossed on the sofa, even a console game controller—
Traces both familiar and somehow unfamiliar were left all over the house.