"Yes. Before I cast an actor, I first find out what kind of person they are. Acting is ultimately done by that person."
The voice came out calmly, but a strange pressure was soaked into the end of every phrase.
He looked at me for a moment, then added,
"And since you happen to be in your hometown, I think a more honest conversation is possible. This is exactly where I can hear a story that's truly like Cha Eun-yul."
I nodded, but inside a strange doubt rose.
'Is this remarkable passion... or is he just eccentric?'
His gaze bored straight through me. Not simple curiosity, but a will to confirm something.
I steadied my breath a moment and asked back,
"...You called me here because you were curious about me as a person?"
He nodded.
"That's right. Before the actor called Cha Eun-yul, what kind of life the human being Cha Eun-yul has lived, what he thinks... that's what I'm more curious about. The project comes after."
At those words my heart beat strangely.
Most meetings are places where the only measure is 'is this actor right for the role,' and this man was saying he wanted to see the human being first.
For a moment I didn't know how to answer, and wrapped both hands around my coffee cup.
But at the same time I grew curious about what he really wanted to know.
Setting his coffee cup down, Director Na Han-seok spoke first.
"The public remembers me only as an action director. But what I really want to make are stories that dig all the way into a person's interior. Action is only the shell."
His voice was calm but decisive.
He spoke seriously about how a human being can be shown within the frame of film, and what kind of work he wanted to make going forward.
I met his gaze and nodded. And then I carefully brought out my own story.
How I started acting, why I vanished as if running away, and the reason I came back.
They weren't stories I could bring out easily, but there was a strange power in Director Na Han-seok's eyes that drew sincerity out.
And I realized something.
Na Han-seok.
More than genre spectacle, what came through was a will to push an actor's emotional line to its limit and capture that instinct with a camera.
I muttered to myself internally,
'But this conversation isn't really his main purpose.'
The reason the director had come all the way down to Gongju to find me.
It couldn't be explained by wanting to get to know me.
A brief silence ran. Then Director Na Han-seok set his coffee cup down and spoke.
"By any chance......"
The instant that one short word dropped into the air, the atmosphere changed.
His gaze was different from a moment ago. If before it had been human curiosity, now something sharp was mixed in, as though taking aim.
I understood instinctively.
That everything up to now had been packaging, and his real face had been kept hidden for exactly this moment.
And as proof of it, I didn't miss the slight change in his eyes and the corner of his mouth.
'So this is his purpose......'
Everything up to now had been a prologue.
The questions probing at the human being I am, trying to look inside me, had all been groundwork laid for this moment.
His eyes held both the sharpness of someone trying to see through a person and the coldness of someone who has to make a decision.
Gripping my coffee cup slightly, steadying my breath, I sensed that the real game had finally begun.
"...Weren't you bitter about a power abuse incident you didn't commit?"
In that instant, my heart dropped.
"That story... I already spoke about it in the interview."
"Yes. I watched that interview too."
Director Na Han-seok nodded and continued.
"But... what I want to hear isn't that kind of formal answer."
He stopped for a while, then set his gaze straight.
"Not in front of a camera, but here, right now, what Cha Eun-yul really felt inside. Whether it was unfair, whether you were furious, or whether you collapsed. That's what I want to hear."
'What is with this man......'
He looked straight at me a moment, then threw out his words calmly but decisively.
"I always research before casting an actor. And as far as I've seen, Cha Eun-yul isn't the sort of personality who commits power abuse. Which means......"
Setting his coffee cup down, he spoke as though drawing a conclusion.
"Someone unmistakably manufactured a false rumor, and in the end you left the project. That must have been that person's objective."
I looked at him without a word.
I thought I understood.
He'd been talking this whole time about human nature, about instincts like jealousy and desire.
And right now, he seemed to want to draw that out of me too.
'...But this is a bit rude.'
A man who walks calmly along the border between goodwill and rudeness.
That seemed to be the real face of the director called Na Han-seok.
"If it were me, I could never bear being ruined by another person like that. I'd probably still be burning with rage even now."
Short, but words that provoked me openly.
It was a taunt, as though trying to pull out the feelings I kept hidden.
I looked into his eyes for a moment.
In the past, I might have raised my voice at what he said. But now was different.
Thanks to that time, I was able to stand again, and to put myself back in order.
'Maybe it was actually for the best.'
The bitterness is still there, but I didn't want to live chewing on that alone.
Because through that incident I came to know more clearly what kind of person I am and what kind of actor I want to be.
So even if what Director Na Han-seok said was true, I didn't feel much resentment.
I was accepting even the wounds of the past as a part of what made me who I am now.
I steadied my breath a moment and said quietly,
"In the past, I might have......"
That was when it happened.
Blue light brushed one side of my vision and the status window surfaced.
[Director Na Han-seok is overlaying Cha Eun-yul with the protagonist of his screenplay.]
[Hear the words 'let's work together' from his mouth.]
And right below it, a title line was carved in bold letters.
[Title acquisition available: Ruthlessness]
For an instant I stopped as though my breath had halted.
'Ruthlessness...?'
Director Na Han-seok seemed to misread my stiffened expression as a signal of discomfort.
"I apologize. I know it can sound uncomfortable."
But his eyes hadn't changed.
Unlike the apology, there wasn't the slightest waver or regret in them.
"The truth is, the project I'm preparing is a story involving a dark hero."
He continued calmly.
"A being who is a hero and could be a monster at the same time. He protects the world, but his interior is deeply wounded. How to express that duality is the core of the project."
I steadied my breath a moment and met his eyes.
His mouth was apologizing, but his gaze was still cutting coldly through me.
It felt as though even this conversation was one experiment toward making a dark hero.
"You're certainly... a bit excessive, director."
He didn't so much as blink at that. He simply looked at me with an unwavering gaze.
A man who exposes a person's wounds, watches the reaction, and measures their essence from it. Cold and tenacious at once.
The dark hero he spoke of.
A being who fights evil but is stained by darkness in the process.
In the end, its essence came down to 'where the standard of justice lies.'
I read him internally.
What Na Han-seok wanted wasn't simply a wounded character.
A duality that holds rage and despair and can also weigh justice on a scale.
A being standing at the border of light and darkness.
And I realized.
That the shadow of the protagonist he was looking for wasn't much different from who I am now.
I steadied my breath briefly and said,
"The justice I think of, and the justice the character thinks of... you're weighing those against each other."
In that instant, a faint smile brushed the corner of Director Na Han-seok's mouth.
And he slowly nodded.
The reason this man had come all the way down to Gongju to sit across from me.
He hadn't simply been trying to find an actor.
He'd wanted to meet the protagonist of his own work in person.
And at the end of his research, he'd learned of an actor named Cha Eun-yul, and discovered that my past and my wounds resembled the character he wanted to draw.
In the end, unable to hold back, he'd come to find me himself.
...He was, right now, unmistakably seeing me as the protagonist of his work.
I set my coffee cup down and added, meaningfully,
"Seeing you bring out my wounds, the protagonist must carry deep wounds too."
"......"
"In the end, my actual wounds and the protagonist's wounds, their origins are probably similar."
After letting a beat pass, I looked the director straight in the eye and finished.
"In that case, what I think won't matter. Pulling me toward the dark hero is exactly your role, director."
In that instant, even the air changed strangely.
At my words, which were something like a provocation and something like a declaration, Director Na Han-seok's eyes wavered just slightly.
I couldn't know what he really felt inside. But one thing was certain.
Those eyes had glinted strangely briefly.
***
Na Han-seok had long been called, among actors, a director who was impolite and cold to the point of being ruthless.
It was common for staff to click their tongues and say "the director has no humanity," and there were cases where sensitive actresses burst into tears on set and eventually left the project.
But Na Han-seok didn't care.
What mattered to him wasn't human relationships.
Only one thing: the completeness of the work.
"An actor is ultimately a tool for realizing a character. If it isn't alive down to every detail, the film dies."
That was always how he thought.
Because of it, endless friction followed, but the results couldn't be denied.
The films he made sometimes drew harsh reviews, but on completeness alone they always earned the highest evaluation.
And Na Han-seok had one screenplay he'd held onto for a long time.
The title wasn't decided yet, but the theme was simple.
'Innocent if rich, guilty if poor.'
An unsettled world.
Turn on the news and those with money and power slip cunningly through the net of the law, while only the powerless carry all the despair.
The victim carries the wound for life, while the perpetrator finishes a mere few years' sentence and walks the world again.
Na Han-seok hated that absurdity down to the bone.
So what he'd come up with was the story of a dark hero who executes the trash.
'The world always tramples the weak. In that case, there needs to be a monster to fight in the weak's place.'
He obsessed over the character as he wrote the screenplay.
A simple sense of justice wasn't enough.
There had to be a wound.
Because the memory of having been harmed was the driving force that turns a human being into a monster.
And that memory was exactly the power that carves 'justice' harder and firmer.
But the problem was always the same.
He couldn't find an actor for it.
And then Na Han-seok learned the name Cha Eun-yul.
At first he was simply an actor who wasn't widely known.
But the more he investigated Cha Eun-yul's history, the grueling gap he'd been through, and the unjust rumor, the more he overlapped with the dark hero protagonist of the screenplay.
Ironically, the protagonist of his own screenplay also carried a similar wound.
The setup was that the rage and despair of it became the beginning of the dark hero.
In that moment, Na Han-seok knew instinctively.
"Found him."
He could no longer hold back.
The reason he'd come down to Gongju was one thing only, to confirm that the protagonist of his screenplay was Cha Eun-yul.
But once the conversation actually went on, something different from his expectations came out.
No matter how deep he dug, the man was unlike the dark hero of the screenplay.
Not a figure warped by rage and hatred, but rather an upright young man with a straight gaze.
'...This isn't the picture I was drawing.'
For a moment his expectations broke.
Even so, Na Han-seok didn't stop.
Perhaps without realizing it, he was digging at the man's wounds even more roughly.
"Getting Cha Eun-yul dropped from the project and blocking your work as an actor. That must have been that person's objective."
At those words, Cha Eun-yul's expression twisted.
In that moment, a flicker of guilt crossed Na Han-seok's chest.
But he soon lowered his head and steadied himself.
'No... for the sake of the work, I have to become a monster too.'
He looked at the actor in front of him as though through a microscope.
'All right, Cha Eun-yul. What is the justice you believe in? Revenge, or forgiveness?'
At the end of waiting for the answer with held breath, at last Cha Eun-yul's voice came out.
"Whether you can draw out the instinct hidden inside me depends on your ability, director."
In that instant, Na Han-seok's breath seemed to stop.
He realized it.
What he was facing wasn't simply a young man hungry to act.
Cha Eun-yul was smiling calmly and drawing out the instinct hidden inside himself, showing it head-on.
Those eyes didn't waver.
If anything, they seemed to say, 'now it's your turn.'
Cha Eun-yul had seen through his thoughts and his intentions.
Na Han-seok had been the one digging at wounds to test him, and instead it was he himself who was being tested.
The truth was, he had been fixed on Cha Eun-yul for a long time already.
He'd only been struggling to find some justification to convince himself.
And that feeling, which even he hadn't recognized, Cha Eun-yul had read exactly.
Now whether he could complete the dark hero of his film had become a matter of proving his own ability as a director.
Na Han-seok felt a strange thrill.
It was the first time he'd felt this kind of pressure from an actor.
'This is the look I only ever felt from leading-class actors.'
And in that moment, the Cha Eun-yul in front of him and the protagonist of his screenplay were overlapping.
The protagonist of his screenplay was nothing but the bottom rung of society, but he was a figure who held a conviction stronger than anyone's.
A person who lives holding onto a justice that doesn't break no matter how the world shakes.
Na Han-seok narrowed his eyes and looked at Cha Eun-yul.
In that instant, Cha Eun-yul's present form transformed in his head.
Over the plain shirt, clothing soaked in darkness overlaid it, and the neatly groomed hair was roughly disheveled.
And over the calm expression of a moment ago, the ruthless face of the dark hero he had written down was layered.
It was an image that carried over so naturally it was suffocating.
It was no longer imagination, and no longer a wish.
The conviction that it had to be this actor.
Na Han-seok set his coffee cup down and slowly opened his mouth.
"...Cha Eun-yul-ssi, let's work together."