"Ji-hye, we're going into rehearsal!"
"Yes!!"
Following the AD's guidance, actress Choi Ji-hye came onto the set.
The interior of an apartment a high-earning household might live in, and Choi Ji-hye, having come running in a hurry, said to me.
"Gang-woo, I'm sorry. We should at least have run it together beforehand. My schedule was just too busy."
Choi Ji-hye is the actor I will be working opposite.
In the story she abandons her son Jun-yeong and starts a new household with the university student she had an affair with.
At the table read we had said we should meet once before shooting to try the scene, but the schedules tangled and we never managed it.
Choi Ji-hye looks at me with an apologetic expression.
She even puts both hands together to offer the apology, and I wonder whether it warrants being this sorry.
'She'd only suggested meeting out of consideration for me in the first place.'
Choi Ji-hye is known as a supporting actor of real quality.
These days she must be run off her feet with a period drama coming to the end of its run.
What is worth noting is her appearance.
The graceful, lofty image of the queen I saw in the period drama is nowhere to be found, and another person has taken its place.
Long straight hair swinging under a headband that leaves her forehead fully bare, cherry-pink lip gloss with a sheen to it and pastel-toned nails done as if to mark a special day.
Exactly the styling Lee Yu-jeong in the story would go for.
A person who abandons the son she had in her mid-twenties and starts a new household with the university student she fell for; it is a look at some distance from a mother devoted to her family.
What is in front of me now is a woman dressed to the nines to look young for a young boyfriend.
'It really is interesting.'
An actor expresses a character just by standing there.
I did up the top button of my open shirt.
Tight enough to grip my throat. Because the part I play, Jun-yeong, seemed like he would.
Choi Ji-hye, watching me fasten the button, smiled quietly and whispered to me.
"Jun-yeong is that kind of character, isn't he. Let's do this well. Gang-woo."
"Yes!"
The scene we are about to shoot has the mother, Lee Yu-jeong, coming to take her things away after finalising an uncontested divorce.
A meeting with her son, and Yu-jeong speaks to get under his skin.
"Mom didn't abandon you, all right? I'm going to send you money every month. More than two million, at that."
A jeering tone.
The eyes that look down, the folded arms — Choi Ji-hye is expressing a hateful human being with her whole body.
One thing is interesting.
'......The character has shifted a little from the one I saw at the table read.'
The person Choi Ji-hye is showing feels more vulgar than I expected.
Did she push the character further because it's a drama? There's a pleasure in the unexpectedness.
'And that isn't all.'
Every time I deliver a line her reaction shifts a little.
The twitch of an eyebrow turns into a twist of the lip, or the words of a line and the pitch of it change from moment to moment.
Like a living organism.
Is this why she wanted to run it together? No, I think this is simply how this person acts.
'In figure terms it would be going in for a retouch in real time.'
The angle of an eyebrow changes the impression of a person, and one pass of the brush changes the whole aura.
An actor is the same. Choi Ji-hye delivers a line.
She scatters light of every colour and asks.
What acting are you going to do?
My answer was simple.
To take the optimal form under each changing light.
I become Jun-yeong and face my mother Lee Yu-jeong.
"You can go and throw away the things Mom gave you. You can't stand the sight of them either, can you. Well?"
"I'm going to keep them."
Casting my eyes at her as if looking at someone pitiable.
"What? You really are, just like your father......"
"Unlike you, Mom, I don't throw away things that are still useful."
"......Look at him talking back again. Ugh, it's horrible. I hate even looking at you."
And at times looking at her steadily without an answer.
Perhaps that is why. The person who was holding back at the start of the rehearsal is behaving like a colt off the rein the moment the take rolls.
'She's enjoying this, this person.'
That heat is coming across to me. The feeling of a body heating up. There is nothing for me to do but answer it.
***
Even when shooting a single scene, they shoot it from various angles and many times over, for the edit. Lee Jae-won thought.
'......This is maddening.'
This makes the edit harder.
Because the several takes still to come will produce scenes much like this one.
Choosing the best out of a run of well-turned scenes is hard work.
The AD beside him whispered.
"PD, the actors have gathered."
"Hm? Why?"
"They've come to watch actor Choi and Gang-woo act, I think."
Actress Choi Ji-hye is famous among actors.
Someone who is fun to act with; someone who is occasionally a headache because she ad-libs against what was agreed.
In front of a person like that, Seo Gang-woo is not cowed and is carrying on with his own acting. The actors showed various reactions to the sight.
Choi Do-hyun and Kang Ju-bok said.
"......Whoa, that's lethal."
"You haven't worked with him yet, have you, Do-hyun? Lucky devil. That, that there — I want to act with him too."
"Shall I give up my place?"
"Give up what. Are you handing me the male lead?"
"If sunbae-nim asks, I'd have to pluck him a star."
The actors of real craft were salivating.
"......Why is he that good?"
And there were others showing unease as well.
Regrettably, not every actor is good at acting.
Lee Jae-won thought some of them would probably end up suffering under clips comparing their acting with a child actor's.
From Lee Jae-won's position it was something to welcome with both hands.
Acting controversy? It helps drive the conversation.
A child actor who acts well? That in itself is a talking point, and something that pulls ratings.
And more than that, Seo Gang-woo generated a certain current at the table read as well.
He read a few lines and actors sat up straighter. Right now that same sight is unfolding.
One child actor moved a crowd of actors. At that fact Lee Jae-won felt an electric thrill run down his spine.
***
'What? Where has everyone gone?'
Writer Kim Mi-ra, who had had her head buried in her laptop, looked around her.
Inside the studio where is shooting — it differs from writer to writer, but Kim Mi-ra stays resident on set.
Because a shooting floor is a place where inspiration wells up.
A drama writer conceives scenes from an actor's performance.
So she had claimed a shabby sofa in a corner of the studio as her fixed seat and carried on writing the script.
From this seat it is easy to grasp the mood of the floor.
And yet the people who had been passing by now and then are nowhere in sight.
Absorbed as she was in writing, she noticed something was off when the footsteps stopped all at once.
Kim Mi-ra asked the kid writer, who was hunched at a similar angle beside her hammering at a keyboard.
"Why is nobody here? Have they gone to eat?"
"No. Gang-woo's acting right now."
"Gang-woo? He's at one. Didn't they say they were waiting for actor Choi's period-drama makeup to come off?"
"It got pushed, so it's four now. They're probably shooting."
"......That was now? You should have said sooner!"
The kid writer looked at Kim Mi-ra with an aggrieved expression.
He had definitely said that Seo Gang-woo's shoot was starting shortly.
Kim Mi-ra simply hadn't heard it, being busy writing the script.
"I did say it!"
"Did you? I don't know! Next time shake me if you have to and tell me!"
Kim Mi-ra flung the laptop onto the sofa and kicked off from her seat.
And the place she arrived at had only the warm heat left in it, the shoot apparently already over.
Kim Mi-ra dropped to the ground and muttered.
"......I'm the only one who missed it again."
An expression like someone who has lost the world, and while Kim Mi-ra was pounding the ground in regret, someone spoke.
"Writer, hello."
"Uh, huh? Ji-yun, hello?"
It was Min Ji-yun.
A child actor with an old unsettled feeling between them; Kim Mi-ra, being the writer who had taken Min Ji-yun's part away unilaterally, felt slightly awkward.
But contrary to Kim Mi-ra's inner state, Min Ji-yun seemed not to mind the fact of having been cut.
If anything her expression was bright. Min Ji-yun asked in the grown-up tone that befits a seasoned child actor.
"Have you been well?"
"I've been well, thanks. And you, Ji-yun, are you visiting today?"
"Yes. I was watching Gang-woo act."
Kim Mi-ra hung her head low. Even she saw it and only I missed it.
Her chest smarted, but she decided to concentrate on the person in front of her.
There was homework to work through with Min Ji-yun.
"Ji-yun, weren't you hurt the other time? I took your part away all of a sudden."
"Not at all, it made sense."
"Sorry?"
Kim Mi-ra's expression turned surprised. It was an unexpected answer.
"Gang-woo is better at acting than me."
"I-is he?"
"Yes. And he doesn't show off either. Kids who are better than me are all kids who live on how great they are."
Min Ji-yun pushed her lips out.
Kim Mi-ra let out a small laugh.
"There are unnies and oppas too. There must be plenty who are good at acting and modest as well."
"The sunbae-nims only ever see me as a little kid."
Discontent came through in her voice.
A little kid discontented with the fact that she is seen as a little kid.
Finding the sight quite endearing, Kim Mi-ra did not let her smile go.
And then a thing Choi Do-hyun had said came back to her.
'I think he said Ji-yun acted well at the contest too.'
A child actor with a promising future, and a writer who threw her weight around at that child actor.
The fact that she gave abrupt notice of removal from a role will stay in Ra Ju-hyun's and Min Ji-yun's memories all the way through.
For Kim Mi-ra, who plans to keep working actively from here on, that was bad news.
'It means I might not be able to book her when I want to!'
Kim Mi-ra thought about a way to make up for the situation, partly as a way of saying sorry.
Kim Mi-ra put a proposal to Min Ji-yun.
"Ji-yun. Would you like to take part as an extra?"
"An extra?"
"Y-yes. In the school scene, as one of Jun-yeong's friends. There's no dialogue, but you'll be on screen. And I'll put a line in as well."
From a bit part to an extra; it was a proposal that could be taken as an insult.
Kim Mi-ra thought, the moment it was out of her mouth, that she had blundered.
But what that proposal meant to Min Ji-yun was different.
Min Ji-yun's eyes went wide.
"I'd be on with Gang-woo, right?"
"Of course. You're classmates."
What was there to think about? It would create time when she could look at that acting from closer at hand.
Laughter blossomed on Min Ji-yun's face.
"Yes! I'll do it!"
***
A month later, with a month remaining until the first episode of airs.
Having been publicised by an article they never intended, the headphone company drew up a proper marketing plan.
They produced clips tied to the images from the article that had made the rounds, and let them loose.
The internet was in an uproar.
Because a GIF file of me lifting one side of the noise-cancelling headphones had become a talking point.
A small hand lifts the headphones. As if someone is speaking from the side, the eyes travel slowly.
Lips slightly parted, nose faintly wrinkled.
And just as a smile is about to form at the corner of that mouth, the clip stops. A technique to leave the viewer desperate.
'Over a thousand shares on FaceTalk alone, was it?'
And after that? Once the episode ends, a proper commercial airs.
I am going to put the headphones on outright and shout an embarrassing tagline.
"I don't like noise. When it's quiet, reading gets better."
I went and shouted that catchphrase at lunchtime today.
It should have been the hour for a drowsy nap at home, but there was a shoot on the schedule.
An outdoor location shoot; I have come to an elementary school in Gangdong-gu, Seoul.
Kwon Do-gyeong is with me on my right. To Kwon Do-gyeong's right is Min Ji-yun.
She said she was shooting with me today, so we came in the same car.
I asked.
"......Ji-yun. Did you actually buy those headphones?"
"Hm? Yes. They looked good on you."
"Those are noise-cancelling — no, they're for studying."
"You can listen to music on them too."
"Aren't the wires a nuisance?"
"No. Better, if anything? They say wireless keeps cutting the music out."
To think she's using something I threw away long ago like that.
Kwon Do-gyeong, seeing me narrow my eyes, said.
"Gang-woo, I don't think you feel how popular these headphones are. Didn't you see on the way in?"
"See what?"
Kwon Do-gyeong pointed at some children going past.
Elementary school children on their way home.
Children running along laughing and shouting, and among them some with their hands in their pockets, taking in the spring air.
And every one of those children was wearing headphones.
"Look at that. Those are the headphones you wore. Quite a lot of them."
"......"
"The headphone company told me. They're calling it the Seo Gang-woo syndrome."