"Mom! I'm home!"
Eight in the evening, and I came back to the house.
I called for my mother but there was no answer.
'Is she not in?'
I stepped into the living room and only then did I see her.
Sitting on the sofa with a laptop on her knees, my mother was typing away.
A mountain of documents piled beside her; she seems to have brought work home.
I was going quietly into my room to change when my mother turned her head toward me.
"Gang-woo, you're back? Have you eaten?"
"CEO Kwon bought me something."
"An actual meal?"
"Yes. Stir-fried pork over rice."
"Home cooking is better than something full of seasoning...... do you want a snack?"
"No, I'm fine."
"All right~ tell me if you get hungry."
Meeting my eyes for a moment, my mother fixed her gaze on the laptop again.
Having changed, I sat down beside the sofa.
The tip of my mother's tongue was poking out slightly between her lips.
An expression that only shows when she is in a state of extreme concentration. I quietly closed my eyes.
'Today was fun.'
The first shoot of went smoothly.
There were small incidents, an NG here and a staff member knocking over a prop there, but nothing seriously off track.
I spent several hours watching the actors.
It was the world of true professionals.
The faces that transform the instant the camera rolls; the gooseflesh that rose then rose again now.
'Tomorrow I go in too......'
Tomorrow is my first shoot.
I thought about going over the script and then dropped it.
I have it memorised cold, so there is no need to look at the script. I was fiddling with the headphones, putting them on and taking them off, when
Flash—.
The smartphone on the sofa table kept lighting up over and over.
My mother must have been bothered too, because she glanced at it and let out a small breath through her nose. It isn't her usual expression. There's a look of being worn down, if anything.
"Mom, is something wrong?"
"No, it's nothing~"
For nothing, the cycle of the smartphone going dark and lighting up again is remarkably short.
My mother turned the smartphone face down entirely.
Glaring at it with her mouth in a flat line, my mother spoke.
"Gang-woo, shall Mom buy you a smartphone?"
"Sorry?"
"I think you'll need one now too. What do you think, Gang-woo."
A smartphone? Of course I need one.
Once you are out on set there are all sorts of contractual matters you get tangled in.
Bluntly, this is a business where changing a single scene requires agreement between both sides.
'And CEO Kwon Do-gyeong can't be my manager forever.'
I said with a bright smile.
"Yes, I think it would be good to have one."
"Let's go and buy one sometime next week."
"Aren't you busy these days, Mom?"
"I have that much time. You've got no schedule on Monday, right? Let's stop by a dealer after Mom finishes work."
"Sounds good."
"Mom has to concentrate, so I'm going into my room for a bit. You have a shoot tomorrow, so go to sleep early."
"Yes!"
My mother stole a glance at the smartphone and narrowed her eyes slightly with a look of distaste.
Then she gathered up only the documents and the laptop and slipped into her room.
'What's that about?'
She's a person who almost never shows it when she dislikes something. My curiosity got the better of me and I checked the smartphone.
A little heat came through my palm.
'It's running warm.'
Notifications are piling up in real time on the lit screen.
Group chats on my mother's side of the family, and messages even from distant relatives whose faces I can't remember. Twelve missed calls came free with it.
'......Is something actually going on?'
There were a lot of messages like this when the commercial I was in aired.
But right now I haven't shot anything in particular, and is still two months from broadcast.
Just as I was wondering what on earth was happening, a call came in.
[CEO Kwon Do-gyeong]
"Mom, there's a call......!"
I thought about getting my mother's permission and swallowed the words.
There's talk of buying me a smartphone anyway, and my mother seems to be no ordinary kind of busy.
"Hello."
[Gang-woo? Good timing. Would you search the internet for me?]
"Search?"
[Yes. Type your name in.]
As if typing my name would turn anything up.
This isn't 2025, a world where you type in the name of someone from a commercial and a profile for the person of the hour comes straight up.
At most there'd be a community post about that kid from the SUV ad.
Unenthusiastically, I searched my name. Seo Gang-woo. There's a profile.
Since I have no released work yet the only descriptor is "person of interest", but the fact that my name is up there at all was disorienting.
"......There's a profile for me?"
[Ah, that. I asked the portal to put it up. You're starting to get media exposure now too, Gang-woo. Never mind that, isn't there an article?]
"An article? There's no way there'd be an art......"
There is?
He must have caught what my silence meant, because Kwon Do-gyeong's voice lifted.
[There is! Click it.]
"What is this??"
The headline is embarrassing. .
I clicked the article and scrolled down. Like most entertainment articles the content was nothing much.
One line of comment and, below it, a run of photos laid out one after another.
「 child actor Seo Gang-woo takes various poses wearing headphones.」
There I was on set with the noise-cancelling headphones on. A close-up shot framing my face from the shoulders up.
Even allowing for the lens magnification, it seemed to have been shot from quite close.
A little closer and it would have caught my pores.
"When was this taken?"
At my muttering Kwon Do-gyeong said with a chuckle.
[Surprised? Looks like a reporter who dropped by for the drama's publicity took them.]
"......I didn't even know I was being photographed."
[There'll be plenty of cases like this from now on. Next time we'll make sure to check at agency level before an article goes out. But what do you think. The photos came out well, didn't they?]
The quality is good.
Not up to a photo shot properly in a studio, but it looks like the maximum you could get out of an ordinary moment.
"Yes. They look like photos a homma took."
[Homma?]
"Homma, you know. There are people who go around photographing the idols they like. Seriously, when did they take these."
[Come on! Does that matter? The headphone company loved it. Said they've been promoted already and it hasn't even aired.]
It isn't something to make that much fuss over, but Kwon Do-gyeong seemed high on the fact that one of his actors was getting known.
[Anyway, are the preparations for the shoot going well? Though I imagine you're managing on your own just fine, Gang-woo.]
"Yes. I'm doing what I always do."
[Tomorrow's your first shoot. Aren't you nervous?]
"I am a little nervous, but......"
It would be a lie to say there were no nerves. But there is a flutter bigger than the nerves.
If the table read was a taster, then shooting in a studio would be something like the main course.
"My heart's beating. Because it's my first time going in for a shoot."
[Should I bring cheongsimhwan?]
"Ah, it's fine. It isn't that bad."
The first shoot. A chest that had been quiet began to pound.
***
A child actor's proper duty is unlimited waiting, they say.
I came at ten in the morning to match the call time, but even after lunch my turn to shoot did not come around. Thanks to that I don't have to go to school, which is nice. There's fun in watching the other actors.
Film and drama are the art of efficiency, they say.
Inside this enormous studio the production team goes back and forth between several sets, conjuring a picture of busyness.
One side is devoted to setting up and striking, one side is deep in shooting.
I went round the various places putting my face about.
"Hello!"
"Gang-woo's here?"
The staff greeted me with warm smiles.
The actors made a show of noticing that I had come in wearing the headphones.
Choi Do-hyun recognised what the headphones were at once.
"Well now, our maknae came in wearing headphones? That's the PPL, right? Looking sharp~"
Gu Ha-rin, playing the female lead, knew that my photos were going around the internet.
"Gang-woo, there was an article about you."
"You saw it too, noona?"
"I search your name every day these days."
"Sorry?"
"Joking. Oppa Do-hyun told me, so there."
Choi Do-hyun, who had been listening quietly, shouted.
"I did not tell her! She really does search your name every single day!"
"Not every day, thank you!"
Laughing a little, I whispered to Kwon Do-gyeong.
"Is one person wearing headphones really this much of a fuss?"
Kwon Do-gyeong laughed low and said.
"Because you're an unknown child actor, Gang-woo. One article coming out is genuinely a big deal. I told you the other day that we'd hold off on commercials for a while, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"Let's make an exception this once."
Kwon Do-gyeong went on in a voice that had turned serious.
"The headphone company seems to be coming at this quite aggressively. Aside from the PPL, they're proposing a commercial to air after the drama."
"Really?"
"Normally this gets decided at the planning stage; this is an unusual case. How about it, Gang-woo. Shall we shoot one more commercial?"
"I don't mind."
I earn money and get my face known, so it's good for me.
As for image burnout, it doesn't look excessive enough yet to be worth worrying about.
'But the scene is a bit...... isn't the tone of it criticising a mother who forced her son to study?'
The character I play, Jun-yeong, is a child who was pushed hard into studying by his parents from early on.
The headphones are what that mother bought and handed him when he was eight, a mere ten-year-old, so that he would apply himself.
'Well. It isn't as if there were no cases like this before either.'
A drama that made waves in my past life came to mind. 'SKY Complex', a satire of Korea's obsession with school pedigree.
That one also had scenes of children shut into rooms built like single-person study booths.
The writer must have put those scenes in to criticise the trend, but the viewers' reaction was different.
Many parents were taken with it and bought the product, and I heard the company's sales tripled.
'The situation is a bit funny-sad.'
Kwon Do-gyeong, checking his smartphone, said to me.
"Gang-woo, one moment. Go and get your makeup done. I'll be back after a call."
"Yes!"
I headed for the dressing room for makeup.
A mirror studded with bulbs, cosmetics and hair products laid out neatly on the table.
Women's voices could be heard from inside the dressing room.
"Don't put effort into the child actor's makeup, they said?"
"Yes. They want it as natural as possible. Close to a bare face."
"Children have good skin, so you can put them on air as they are, but honestly. It's the first time I've had a request like this."
"I know. Is it a face-washing scene? Even so, this is a bit......"
They are staff provided by the broadcaster, so they were faces I hadn't seen.
The two makeup artists who had been murmuring saw me, exchanged a look and nodded.
"Understood, in full."
"Same here."
"You're Seo Gang-woo, aren't you? Do you want to sit here?"
"Is this your debut work? Have you done anything else? Noona is asking because she wants to keep up with it."
"No. This is my first."
"That figures. There's no way I wouldn't know a face like this. Noona is going to do your makeup properly."
"Chief. The AD said what he said."
"So he did. Nice and light, then."
The makeup artist, her voice somehow gone flat, began powdering my face.
That was when. Through the open door I saw a girl peering into the set.
Pale skin, lips red as cherries. Large eyes with a slight upward tilt.
It was Min Ji-yun.
'What? Why is she here?'
The makeup artist asked.
"Gang-woo. Is that someone you know?"
"She's at the same agency."
"Oh my. You've got an agency already. But what. Aren't you going to say hello?"
"I'll do it after the makeup. It gets in your way, noonas."
Taking it for consideration on my part, the artists waved it off.
"Aigo, no! Call her over now! This is exactly when you build a friendship."
"No, I'm fine, really."
"Are you shy? Shall noona call her for you?"
Min Ji-yun and I are at the same agency, but there had been no chance at all to meet.
I had thought we would run into each other sometime, and here it was, today.
Just as I was about to say not to call her.
"Seo Gang-woo!"
I met Min Ji-yun's eyes. Min Ji-yun said.
"Why didn't you tell me you had a shoot?"