'For headphones this popular, kids don't seem to recognise me much day to day.'
Kwon Do-gyeong spoke as if he had read my thoughts.
"Their parents will have bought them for them. The place your video actually got shared a lot is FaceTalk."
He's right.
Smartphone penetration is rising, but at this point it is rising among adults.
Elementary school children with smartphones like me are rare.
'True enough, the buyers would be the parents.'
A few minutes passed like that.
The car stopped in front of an elementary school in Gangseo-gu, Seoul.
Stepping out of the car, the warm spring sunlight tickled my face.
Forsythia is blooming in profusion.
The playing field is covered over with bright yellow petals.
Min Ji-yun started skipping about on the offbeat like a rabbit.
"Wow! Forsythia!"
With each step of hers the yellow tide swayed gently.
Kwon Do-gyeong, watching her fondly, said to me.
"Gang-woo, why don't you go and play too."
"I'll just watch."
"All right. There's a shoot soon, so getting too worked up isn't good either. Ji-yun! Your clothes will get dirty, so stay away from the dirt!"
Both Min Ji-yun and I came to the school in ordinary clothes.
An outdoor location shoot, a rare thing, and since the time was set with the end of the school day in mind there are almost no children left on the grounds.
Even so, there was a crowd watching, apparently finding it novel that a shooting team should come swarming in and carrying equipment about.
Kwon Do-gyeong folded his arms and said.
"They came ahead and shot the school exterior, by the look of it."
"But boss, couldn't the interior school scenes be shot in the studio too?"
"Usually, yes. It's more efficient that way, too."
"Then why......"
That was when. An AD in a pink coat called out to us.
"Gang-woo! Ji-yun! Over here!!"
The man's face, who wears nothing but drab coats every time I see him, had brightened right up.
The staff around him are the same. Pastel-toned outfits, expressions loosened by a degree.
Kwon Do-gyeong grinned.
"They've come out on an excursion under cover of a shoot."
"Looks like it."
"There aren't many scenes, so the crew is small. But there's an ambush waiting for you today: there'll be a lot of child actors like the two of you."
Hearing that, Min Ji-yun frowned slightly.
"Ugh—."
"......What's wrong with child actors?"
Min Ji-yun pinched the line above her lip and said.
"You'll know once the shoot starts."
I had heard that shooting with child actors is difficult, but is it enough to make a fellow child actor wince?
Tilting my head, I stepped onto the set.
A corridor lined with fourth-grade classrooms. Through into a classroom, a familiar scene unfolded.
Old wooden desks and chairs lined up straight, and faint white chalk marks left on the board.
Dust gathered on the window frame glitters in the sunlight.
At the back of the room was a noticeboard decorated with the children's drawings and writing.
The staff were moving busily. The AD assigned us our places.
"Right, Gang-woo sits here, and Ji-yun is going to sit back there."
And not long after, the child actors who had been waiting nearby came crowding in.
Close to fifteen of them, and every one had brought a mother along.
"Mom, I need a wee."
"I'm sorry. Where was the toilet again?"
"My head hurts...... can't I go home?"
"Just bear with it a little. What did Mom tell you. I said thirty minutes and that's it, didn't I?"
Somehow this isn't unfamiliar.
The whining that rang in my ears at the kids model audition started coming at me in surround sound.
The AD, watching the child actors with dead fish eyes, shouted.
"Everybody quiet! Kids, sit down!"
The rehearsal went past fast.
There is no telling when a child actor's concentration will vanish.
The AD passed on only the lightest direction to the children about where to look and asking them not to move.
And then he left a small plea behind.
"We do it quick and go home quick! Got it?"
But for all his hoping, the shoot ran into heavy weather.
Take three, and the boy sitting next to me forgets his line and starts stammering.
"Um...... the...... uh......"
The child's face grew redder and redder. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, he tore at his lips, and the unease was plain. An NG, of course.
Take seven, and the girl sitting diagonally behind me is the trouble.
Her role is simply to sit still and hold her place.
But her eyeline is peculiar. Instead of looking at the camera she is staring a hole in me.
The assistant director shouted in exasperation. The child's mother is on the verge of tears along with him.
"Yun-hui? Don't look at the camera, and don't look at Gang-woo either! Is Gang-woo's face made of honey!"
"I'm sorry! Sim Yun-hui!"
"Mother, could you wait outside in the corridor!"
And then she just bursts into tears.
The reality of the child actor, and Min Ji-yun looked at me with an expression that said: see?
Fair enough, that is how a normal ten-year-old behaves. We took a short break, partly to soothe the crying girl.
The boy in the next seat isn't in a good way. Is there a contagion effect? The boy who had been especially nervous saw the child crying beside him and tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.
I patted his shoulder.
"It's all right, everyone's like that at first."
"......I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what. I cried at first too, from nerves."
"Really?"
No. I didn't.
I nodded with a bright smile.
The child's eyes brightened in an instant. I went over to the other one. The girl who had been staring a hole in the camera earlier.
She had stopped crying and was steadying her breathing, apparently calmer.
The AD said.
"Gang-woo. I'm sorry, but let's shoot in a little while."
"It's fine. One moment."
I turned my head and took the hand of the girl sitting beside me.
The child's ears went red.
I said with a smile on my face.
"You're Yun-hui, right?"
"......Yes."
"The camera's really big, isn't it? But look at this. If you do this it goes blurry and you can hardly see it."
When I let my eyes go vacant and my focus soften, the child copied my expression.
"If the camera bothers you too much, try doing this. Much better, isn't it?"
"Yes!"
"But why are you looking at me?"
"Because you're handsome!"
Whispering started up among the staff behind us.
"......He handles kids at a professional level."
"Gang-woo, of course. He really is different. Very mature."
"We might be able to start shooting soon."
"Shall we go for a take in a minute?"
"Let's."
"Right, we're shooting again in one minute!"
At the AD's shout everyone sat back down.
***
After that the shoot went smoothly.
The scene with the crowd of child actors finished, and all that was left were a few scenes with me in them.
The staff who had come out packed up the equipment, spread the mats they had brought and ate gimbap in the school car park.
Min Ji-yun and I sat on a mat and looked at the flowers.
I asked Min Ji-yun.
"Ji-yun, did you really need to take an extra's part?"
Honestly, someone at Min Ji-yun's level could simply take a bit part with weight to it on another drama.
Her acting is excellent, her look is good. There is no reason to volunteer as an extra.
And Ra Ju-hyun and Im A-rin are working actors.
They would know that for the sake of an acting career it is better to commit to one project than to turn up in this and that.
Min Ji-yun chewed a mouthful of gimbap with both cheeks bulging and swallowed it down.
Without cleaning off the rice stuck around her lips, she asked back.
"Why? Am I not allowed to be in this?"
"No, it isn't that. Someone at your level could go into another production. And watching earlier, you didn't seem to like shooting with other child actors much either."
"It isn't that I don't like it. It's that it's a bother."
Isn't that the same thing?
Min Ji-yun added.
"I used to just sigh and space out when the other kids NG'd, you know?"
"Right."
"But you, Gang-woo, you actually settled them. Even the sunbae-nims find that hard. I'm going to try it next time too. Anyway."
Min Ji-yun changed the subject abruptly.
"Today's shoot was really hectic, wasn't it?"
"A bit? A lot of them had never shot anything before. Can't be helped."
"Child actors like us are the rare ones."
There was something forthright in it and something boastful too.
I nodded and kept her spirits up.
"Fair enough. Kids like you are the rare ones."
"Right? I think so too!"
Pleased, Min Ji-yun shrugged her shoulders.
"You know, the first time I acted, I was so nervous in front of the camera I forgot all my lines?"
"Did you?"
"Yes! But Grandmother said this. 'Ji-yun, you just act thinking you are that person.' So I did that, and the uncles praised me."
That isn't something you can do just by thinking it.
Fitting for a future ten-million-admission actress, Min Ji-yun certainly has innate talent.
That was when. Min Ji-yun called out as if something had just struck her.
"Right. Mom said she was sorry she couldn't see the set the other time."
Min Ji-yun tugged at my arm.
"Do you want to come to our house? Mom says she wants to see you."
"Sunbae-nim Im A-rin does?"
"Yes!"
"Today?"
"Do you want to come after we finish?"
Min Ji-yun's eyes filled with expectation. Her hand was gripping my sleeve tight.
***
On the way home, inside Kwon Do-gyeong's car.
The car stopped near Min Ji-yun's house.
A detached house in Hannam-dong, and the streetlamps were beginning to come on one by one.
"You're really not coming?"
Min Ji-yun asked from outside the car window with a disappointed expression.
There was genuine letdown in her eyes.
"It's sudden. And I've got a shoot tomorrow. It'll probably be more comfortable for her if we fix a time and meet."
"It won't, though, Mom would say it's fine."
Min Ji-yun pushed her lips out. Her expression was like a child who has had a sweet taken away.
"I'll definitely come next time."
"That's a promise?"
"Yes. Next time let's eat together."
"You have to! Boss! Get home safe!"
Min Ji-yun waved, still disappointed.
I watched her small back until it disappeared into the housing complex.
Kwon Do-gyeong started the car again. The evening roads were crowded with cars going home.
Turning the wheel, he said.
"You should have gone today. You haven't even eaten."
"I can eat when I get home. And there's a shoot early."
"That's true, but you know actress Im A-rin, don't you?"
"Yes. I know her well. You were her manager, weren't you? Weren't you with her over ten years?"
"That's right. Noona and I went through pretty much everything together. Her nature is really good. I think she'd like you, Gang-woo. Ah, but she genuinely can't cook, so suggest eating somewhere outside."
Im A-rin, the actress who becomes a Cannes actress in years to come.
In my past life I saw every one of Im A-rin's films.
A few of them I watched more than five times. Enough that I can reel off whole scenes of dialogue.
'Comedy, melodrama, action, science fiction...... she took on such varied roles she was like a bird of many colours.'
I did want to meet Im A-rin. But I had a shoot with Choi Do-hyun the next day, so I declined.
Of my share of the shooting, tomorrow may be the most important scene of all.
'I think actress Im A-rin had a gap in her career around here.'
Feeling back through my memory, I wondered whether this wasn't that period.
And yet Min Ji-yun clearly said Im A-rin was considering shooting a film. That there was a role she wanted to offer me, or something of the sort.
'What film is she trying to make?'
There is no work of Im A-rin's I did not see in my past life. I have her entire filmography by heart. Which leaves one conclusion.
'A film that was never made.'
I have a guess.
, the thriller that fell apart at the production stage.
Couldn't I make that unfinished film happen?
My chest swelled with anticipation.