Yoo Ji-ho listened quietly to what Cha Eun-yul said.
The words were delivered calmly, but there was a weight in them that was anything but light.
'He talked about that... with Director Na Han-seok?'
At first he was startled.
The face of Cha Eun-yul as a much younger kid came back to him, a minor delivering lines playfully in a sitcom.
Back then Eun-yul still had the look of a student all over him, but he had an unexpected knack for landing the timing of a line, and it caught the production team's eye.
The viewers' response was hot too, and thanks to it he even took a rookie award.
The day he received it on stage, the way he hadn't known what to do with himself while the corners of his mouth kept lifting, was still vivid.
That expression, looking down at the trophy in his hands over and over, dazed as if he'd touched a dream.
Eun-yul back then, too tense in front of a camera to know what to do with his hands and feet.
But the way he spoke now, in front of him, was different.
The old awkwardness had vanished without a trace, and a strange strength rode every word.
The time he'd spent broken had not been wasted after all.
He'd come back and settled in bit by bit, and now even the person standing at the very top of the industry had begun to recognize his potential.
Yoo Ji-ho quietly steadied his breath and looked at Cha Eun-yul.
'This kid's about to get busy fast.'
He was proud of him.
And at the same time, a practical calculation brushed through his head.
Once the schedule grew and shoots ran on with travel between sites, his own care as a team leader wouldn't be enough.
At first he'd looked after him lightly, like a younger brother, and now he was truly becoming an actor.
And to manage that actor, a dedicated manager had to be assigned quickly.
'I can't stay beside him forever. Still......'
Watching Eun-yul grow was nothing but a source of pride.
Into an actor who speaks with his own voice on an unfamiliar set, and an actor more and more people need.
In front of him, Eun-yul was talking away.
It was unmistakably good news, admirable news, and yet it circled in his ears without landing clearly.
The eyes that had only grown darker before he vanished, and the emptiness of the period when contact stopped.
All those memories mixed together in contrast with the Cha Eun-yul of now.
'He looks like he's enjoying himself......'
Yoo Ji-ho rolled his soju glass slowly and muttered internally.
'Right... that's enough. This kid is working happily again.'
What landed larger than the news of meeting Director Na Han-seok was the fact that Cha Eun-yul was laughing the way he used to.
Yoo Ji-ho held one single wish deep in his heart.
That this kid would keep working happily, and become an actor who shines proudly on a stage.
Carrying that feeling, Yoo Ji-ho clinked his soju glass lightly and laughed.
"Hey, you've really grown up. When was it that I first met you......"
Cha Eun-yul snickered and played along.
"Hyung, I was such a kid back then."
And so the two of them naturally shared stories from when they first met all the way to now.
Mishaps on the sitcom set, the tense moment at the awards ceremony, and the small things that had happened since he came back.
The drinking ran on, moving between past and present, and the words that had piled up for so long poured out without end.
Laughing and talking without noticing the time passing, outside the window had turned a pale predawn color before they knew it.
Like brothers meeting again after a long time.
In the end, the two of them stayed up the whole night.
***
A few days later, a thick screenplay arrived at the agency office.
On the cover, letters written in bold caught the eye.
[Working title: Black Judgment]
I carefully took the substantial screenplay in my hands.
Its heft transmitted straight through my palm.
'...It's finally here.'
Before I'd even opened a page, an unfamiliar tension seeped in along with the smell of paper.
My eyes went straight to the character introduction section.
Inspector Shin Gyeong-su.
The man called the most dangerous in the police force. He's also called Mad Dog.
He tracks criminals without discriminating between means and methods, with a tenacity that lets no one escape.
PD Han Yeo-reum.
A PD producing the documentary .
While tracking how criminals live by evading the net of the law, the perpetrator she was investigating meets a mysterious death, and she falls into a deep emptiness.
But then, amid a chain of deaths of the worst criminals that follows, she catches sight of the existence of the 'Black Judge.'
And then—
Senior Officer Kim I-jin.
My role.
The simple introduction written on the first line held my eyes.
"A man who refused promotion and remains a senior officer."
In a police organization, refusing promotion under your own power was a label reading 'this person has no drive.'
In his colleagues' eyes he was just someone who took orders, worked with an unmotivated face, and sometimes even dozed off.
'A person like this... is the protagonist?'
The instant I tilted my head and read further down, an entirely different face was revealed.
Kim I-jin.
In truth, the man who personally judges the people who cunningly slip through the net of the law.
The Black Judge, who finds and kills criminals without even guilt, the ones who torment people over and over.
I swallowed my breath.
The screenplay was unflinching.
The [Black Judgment] incidents were recorded as cases concealed even within the police.
The criminals who had died so far already exceeded fourteen.
Every one of them a person with a stack of prior convictions.
Fraud, assault, drugs, sexual crimes... but all of them had slipped through cunningly and never properly paid for their crimes.
The conclusion the police reached was one.
The victims had all been taken by a single man.
The basis for it, ironically, was that there was no evidence whatsoever.
Not a trace was left at any scene, and there were no witnesses.
The police knew.
If this fact became known to the world, the press would splash it across the front pages as 'the appearance of a dark hero.'
And in that moment, the absurdity and incompetence they had concealed until now would unmistakably be exposed along with it.
So they quietly buried the case.
One line, spoken as if they'd rehearsed it together, explained everything.
"Only the ones who deserved to die, died."
But the crack began with one documentary PD's tenacious investigation.
When a criminal PD Han Yeo-reum was investigating was found dead one day, the story that a 'dark hero' existed behind it leaked out into the world.
And the case grows in an instant.
In the end, the police make a decision.
To catch this dangerous judge, they deploy the roughest, most merciless detective there is, Inspector Shin Gyeong-su.
And from that moment, the story of 'Kim I-jin' and 'Shin Gyeong-su' began in earnest.
"This is incredible......"
Even after closing the screenplay, I couldn't shut my eyes for a while.
Senior Officer Kim I-jin.
A man with a powerless, indifferent face on the outside, hiding a ruthless blade within.
Like a monster with two faces.
"...This is the role entrusted to me?"
My heart pounded.
***
After that I read the screenplay again, and again.
The weight held inside it was far too great to read once and close.
The further I turned the pages, the more it felt like I couldn't breathe. This wasn't a simple film.
Human beings living behind masks, and a story that digs at their bare faces roughly and relentlessly, as if stripping them naked.
'This is... a declaration the director is shouting at the world.'
My fingertips trembled.
Any actor, the moment they read this screenplay, would have no choice but to desperately want to live and move inside it.
My chest pounded and at the same time a heavy pressure settled on me.
'What if I can't do this role? When this screenplay comes out into the world, what if I'm the actor who falls short?'
Fear raised its head. But soon even that fear felt like greed.
Still, I wanted it. No, I absolutely had to do it.
Senior Officer Kim I-jin.
A man like a powerless shell on the outside, holding a ruthless blade within.
I knew. This wasn't a matter of acting 'well' or 'badly.'
This was a role that could only come to life if I poured everything I had into it.
And without meaning to, I muttered,
"Maybe...... Maybe I got the titles for this screenplay."
The titles I'd gained going down to my hometown.
They resembled this role too strangely to write off as coincidence.
'Could it be... that it isn't a simple coincidence.'
An ominous premonition and a strange thrill ran through me at once.
But I couldn't be certain yet.
A screenplay is only a blueprint.
It's the underdrawing the writer and director have sketched, not a document for an actor to breathe on a stage.
What my ability responds to has always been the 'script.'
The actual shooting document, with stage directions and dialogue fixed scene by scene.
Only with that do the title and the role interlock, and I become that person.
And if the role and the title match......
I understand the character perfectly, analyze him, and make him mine.
The moment the analysis is done, what floats above my head won't be [Ruthless Police Officer Cha Eun-yul].
It will be [Ruthless Police Officer Kim I-jin].
In that moment I stop being Cha Eun-yul.
I have to live entirely as Kim I-jin, with his eyes and his breath and his voice.
Kim I-jin, a character dark enough to drive you mad.
A pressure that seems to stop your breath just thinking about it.
But at the same time, that pressure is exactly the force that lifts an actor onto a real stage.
'Still, I can't leave everything to the title.'
The title will unmistakably give my acting wings.
But whether I can fly or whether I fall is ultimately my share.
I took out my phone.
My fingertip moving across the screen was trembling strangely.
[Director, I received the screenplay. Is there anything I should be preparing?]
A little later, a message arrived on my phone screen.
[Build your body. Not thick.]
I frowned.
"Not thick...?"
Some directors ask for 'bulking up,' others for 'muscular' or 'lean.'
But 'not thick' was a vague and yet strangely sharp instruction.
'...Does he mean he wants a body that moves like a perfectly fitted set of clothes?'
The questions trailed one after another.
Soon a second message lit the screen.
[I'll send the script before long.]
And below that, another message appeared.
An unidentified number, along with a short address.
[This is the contact and address for the action school's director. I've passed it to your manager as well, but since action is new to you, it's best to go often.]
In that instant, the back of my head went cold.
"...Ah, right."
I'd forgotten.
One of the biggest reasons Director Na Han-seok's work always drew public attention.
Overwhelming action.
His films had in fact swept critics with the word 'reality.'
Fighting and pursuit in the raw, with almost no sense of choreography to them.
Audiences held their breath, and critics called it innovation.
But the industry's own talk was different.
-Go into a Na Han-seok project and you have to be willing to throw your body away.
There were in fact actors who'd torn ligaments or cracked bones and had to halt shooting for months.
And despite that, actors who turned down his films were rare.
Because the mark those works left behind was that powerful.
'...And now I'm standing on that road too.'
I looked down at my phone and drew a deep breath.
A strange fear seeped in, but at the same time excitement boiled up like blood.
The smell of sweat in a training hall already brushed through my head.
The dull sound of fists colliding, bodies rolling across the floor, pain that fills your breath to the throat.
And when I came out through all of it, I wouldn't be simply the actor Cha Eun-yul—
I'd be standing before the world as the ruthless police officer Kim I-jin.
I looked at my phone screen once more and smiled a little.
"All right, director. Let's see how far I can hold out."
Just as I was about to press 'Ji-ho hyung' saved on my phone to call him, a call came in first.
The phone buzzed briefly and I answered quickly.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Eun-yul. What are you doing?"
"Oh, hyung. I was actually about to call you."
"Yeah? What for?"
I pushed the screenplay aside and straightened up in my seat.
"The action school meeting... I was wondering when we'd set it."
"Yeah. That's what I called about. We start with the action team orientation next Friday. The choreography comes after that."
My chest dropped again for a second. It was faster than I'd thought.
"Ah... next week? Understood."
After steadying his breath a moment, hyung added,
"Eun-yul, it really does seem like the director is paying you a lot of attention. Normally this gets passed through the manager, but this time he even contacted you directly."
I answered with a sheepish laugh.
"It's probably because this is my first film shoot and my first time doing action, isn't it?"
Hyung's voice dropped half a tone.
"...Hang in there."
"Suddenly? What's wrong?"
Hyung let a small sigh escape.
"That action school has a reputation among actors as the hardest one there is."
"Ah......"
Hyung's words paused for a moment, then continued.
"Which also means if you learn there, you'll have nothing to worry about with action going forward. You won't come up short anywhere."
"Hyung, don't worry too much. I can do this."
At my words Ji-ho hyung snickered.
"All right, understood. I'll tell the director to avoid heavy action until The Temperature of a Meal wraps. The tone can't differ between the early episodes and the last ones."
I smiled and nodded.
"As always, hyung, you're dependable."
I hung up and set the phone down.
My first action school, and it's a place they call 'hell.'
And on top of that, Director Na Han-seok's screenplay is in front of me.
But strangely, the anticipation was greater than the fear.
The Kim I-jin I'll play, how will he look on screen?
'Please... let it be as perfect as it can be.'
The first action school.
Anticipation and tension and a strange excitement wound around my whole body.