The next morning, at the KBC Drama Centre in Ilsan.
Arriving at the studio, I told Choi Do-hyun about what happened yesterday.
Min Ji-yun's mother, actress Im A-rin.
At that name Choi Do-hyun's eyes went round and he asked.
"Sunbae-nim Im A-rin? She invited you, Gang-woo?"
"Not an invitation yet. I think she said she wanted to see me."
"Is that so......"
Choi Do-hyun has appeared in a project with Im A-rin before.
A film in which Choi Do-hyun was the lead, with Im A-rin in a supporting role.
Does he have some bad memory of it? Choi Do-hyun stroked his chin and drew his words out.
I asked.
"Why? Did something happen?"
"Happen? Ah, something did happen."
"What sort of......"
"There was a time your uncle absolutely hated acting, you know? Was it my early twenties."
That Choi Do-hyun was financially exploited by his parents from his child-actor days is a thing many people know.
The money he had earned by the time he became an adult was gone. And after that too his parents' existence was nothing less than a shackle to him.
Even after he came of age he paid relatives' debts, had his name used without permission, went through any number of ugly things.
When I only looked at him without speaking, he laughed and made light of it.
"Your uncle had a time like that too. Hard to believe, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Anyway, back then your uncle went into a shoot without having properly learned the script. Sunbae-nim Im gave me a fearful telling-off with the whole crew standing there. Well, thinking about it now, I deserved every bit of it."
Choi Do-hyun said it and let out a small laugh.
"To me she's, what, a woman like fire?"
"Like fire?"
"Yeah. Her passion is enormous. She talks a lot too. Though I do wonder whether it was because of me...... I haven't seen her since, so I don't know."
Im A-rin is known for avoiding media exposure apart from appearing in films.
She hardly gives interviews and does no social media.
Perhaps because of that, the flattering stories that circulate in online communities describe Im A-rin like this.
A quiet person, like a still lake. The sort who always falls silent for a moment before she opens her mouth, or so they say.
At any rate she was an actor who kept a mystique going, rare in the MeTube era of personal media.
'Is she different from her reputation?'
Looking at Ra Ju-hyun and Min Ji-yun, I feel as though I can half predict her character.
Ra Ju-hyun is the image of the mother-in-law roles she so often takes, and Min Ji-yun's nature is lively and forthright.
Would Im A-rin be somewhere in between?
While I was spreading the wings of imagination, Choi Do-hyun tapped my shoulder.
"Anyway, go. This is how you get an introduction. There's nothing as good in this business as a connection you've tended well."
Then Choi Do-hyun's eyes went to my hand.
The hand holding a script gone crumpled, and he asked with an interested expression.
"Why do you carry the script around? Haven't you memorised the lines?"
"Because it's like a talisman."
"A talisman?"
A talisman, the concentrated result of the time I have poured in. I fiddled with the corner of the script with my fingers.
"The things I worked hard to think out are written in it. When I'm nervous, looking at it calms me down, it's nice."
"Hard work, is it."
Grinning, he brought a hand toward my hair and stopped.
"Ah, I touched your hair, Gang-woo. Nearly did it out of habit."
"They haven't set my hair yet, though?"
"......Really? It looks like it's been worked over properly. This is just what you came out of the house with?"
Fair enough, this one probably looks like this rolling straight out of bed. Muttering, he went and messed my hair up outright.
Grinning away, he asked.
"Ugh."
"What do you write on the script?"
"Do you want to see?"
"Oh, I'd like that."
"Actually, no. I won't show you. It's embarrassing."
"What is it? Is there something I shouldn't see?"
"No. It isn't that, but......"
It's a bit embarrassing. A lot more has been added than when I went up against Min Ji-yun. From character background to the emotional line, and even analysis of the other actors' performances.
The habits of theirs I saw at the table read or during shooting — some of them might well take offence.
'And it feels like showing myself naked. Like being caught out in what I think about all the time.'
Choi Do-hyun seemed to read what I was thinking and said in a needling drawl.
"Embarrassed?"
"Yes. A little."
"Actually your uncle knows a bit already. I hear you analysed my role too, Gang-woo?"
"......You know what's in it as well?"
"Only a very little? Sunbae-nim Ra told me a bit of it."
"Then let me see yours too, Uncle."
"I'm not the type who writes all sorts on the script. Would that even do for you?"
"......That's not fair."
"Heh heh. I'll show you mine sometime."
Grinning still, he patted my shoulder. That was when. The manager, who had been watching us in silence beside us, said.
"Gang-woo, your uncle has to go into makeup, so let's talk later."
"Yes!"
"Anyway, that thing. It helped a lot."
Helped? Helped with what all of a sudden. Just as I was about to ask what he meant with a suspicious expression, he waved a hand.
"Your uncle's going into makeup. See you in a bit."
***
In the dressing room where Choi Do-hyun's makeup was in full swing, Choi Do-hyun's manager Lee Yeong-cheol asked.
"What was that about it helping, earlier?"
"Earlier? Ah— the script? Just, there was something worth referring to when I was analysing the character."
"......A ten-year-old scribbling on a script helped you?"
"Hyung, you say that even after watching him act?"
"Gang-woo's good at acting, sure. But good at script analysis on top of it? That doesn't make sense."
It is as Lee Yeong-cheol says.
Showing outstanding acting without any training at all — that is unmistakably the territory of talent.
But analysing a character and pulling apart every single line is another matter.
At ten, Seo Gang-woo is barely a third-year in elementary school.
However many books he may have read, he is too young to analyse emotions he has never experienced.
Choi Do-hyun said.
"He must have a good head for that side of things too."
"......Completely broken character. Perfect looks and a good head as well? Why is my draw luck like this. Honestly, my life."
Choi Do-hyun laughed for Lee Yeong-cheol's silly remark and looked into the mirror.
A thing Ra Ju-hyun had said came back to him.
"The boy was better than you, actor Choi."
"Sorry? What do you mean by that."
"The script. He had analysed not just his own character but the part you're playing."
"......Had he? What did he say?"
"Well, things you'd know yourself. Why the protagonist met the character Jun-yeong, why he said such harsh things."
In the story the protagonist, a lawyer, meets the son of a client facing an uncontested divorce.
Parents both proclaiming they give up custody, and a child asking which of the two he should go with.
The protagonist recalls, in that child, his own past of being abandoned by his parents.
Choi Do-hyun thought that relationship resembled the one between himself and Seo Gang-woo.
'I debuted at exactly Gang-woo's age.'
Choi Do-hyun had been recognised for star quality and acting ability from his debut.
Seo Gang-woo would probably follow much the same course. Perhaps he will command even higher popularity than that.
If there is a difference between Choi Do-hyun and Seo Gang-woo, it was the parents. Lee Su-yeon said this to Kim Mi-ra, who had proposed a drama appearance for her son.
Don't ask me about that. Ask the child.
'My father, well. Honestly.'
Father. Choi Do-hyun thought of his father for a moment.
He is the man who gave him life and raised him, but a person he would rather not even mention.
And strictly speaking, the ones who raised him were not his parents but the adults on the shooting floor and his manager Lee Yeong-cheol.
Choi Do-hyun envied Seo Gang-woo. Because he was a child who had the most important thing Choi Do-hyun never had.
That is why his last scene with Seo Gang-woo meant something to him.
Because the words the protagonist says to the child in the story felt like words said to his own past self.
「Live better than they did and get your revenge on the mother and father who threw you away.」
Seo Gang-woo had written something like that on his script too. That the protagonist is consoled by the character Jun-yeong.
A child brought in purely on the strength of ratings had written that line as if speaking for his heart.
'Have I got old too.'
Consolation. The moment he thought of that word, somewhere in his chest ached with a thin, sharp pain.
Ridiculously enough, one line of Seo Gang-woo's scribble lodged deeper than the dialogue did.
After his makeup was finished, Choi Do-hyun stood beside Seo Gang-woo.
He said.
"Gang-woo. By the way, have you got clothes ready?"
"Clothes?"
"There's a week left to the production presentation. You need to think about what you're wearing."
Seo Gang-woo shook his head.
"Not yet. I heard I could just go dressed comfortably. Do I have to dress up?"
"Come on, it's your first production presentation, you should take some care."
"Should I mention it to the boss......"
A child who will walk a road like his own and yet not the same, and Choi Do-hyun looked at Seo Gang-woo.
He simply wanted to do something for him.
"No. Your uncle will help. Let's stop somewhere after we finish."
There was warmth in his eyes.
***
After the shoot, the place Choi Do-hyun and I arrived at was a clothing repair shop.
The ground floor of a shabby row of shops in Seongsu-dong. Above the glass door, the word 'Repairs' was drawn faintly, half worn away.
Inside, it was full of old sewing machines and skeins of thread.
I said.
"......It's a repair shop?"
"Yeah. Your uncle has come here often since a long time back."
"A long time back meaning."
"Your uncle came here when he debuted. This place has changed a lot too, come to think of it."
The production presentation is held a week before the drama's first broadcast.
It is usually held in a hotel banquet hall or at the network, and the clothes the actors enter in vary with the scale of the drama.
is a lawyer piece, and it has a name writer and name actors in it.
The scale is on the large side; I had been thinking vaguely of buying a shirt from the children's section, but Choi Do-hyun's thinking was different.
He had his manager Lee Yeong-cheol bring some clothes. Bringing them to a repair shop meant......
'Is he going to remake them and give them to me?'
Choi Do-hyun opened the door. Through the gap the smell of cloth and the smell of oil came out at once.
On the racks, fine clothes of various colours and designs were arranged in neat order.
Silk, cashmere, wool, garments of the very best materials, catching the light and gleaming.
At the sound of the door a middle-aged woman poked her head out. Seeing Choi Do-hyun, she called out loudly.
"Is that Do-hyun?"
"Yes, auntie! I'm here!"
"Never comes by normally, only when he needs something. What's the occasion today!"
"This is a hoobae I'm working with on a project. I came to ask you about clothes for him."
The woman's fingers carried plain traces of a long life of sewing.
She looked me over carefully and said.
"That's the boy from the car advert, isn't it?"
"Oh, you knew straight away?"
"One look is all it takes. Do you think I've been doing this a day or two?"
"Longer than me, at any rate. You've been at it over thirty years."
"That's right. I've been doing it since you were in nappies. You've grown a lot yourself. The thing that used to be this high is a bristly, unpleasant middle-aged man now."
"......Auntie. Unpleasant?"
"Look at him. The one who used to whine at me and call me ma'am has been calling me auntie, auntie, for years now. Smooth as anything. He was cuter when he was small."
"Am I no good now?"
"You're manly! Even if you've lost the cute in it."
Choi Do-hyun laughed with his shoulders shaking. The woman asked me.
"What's the little one's name?"
"I'm Seo Gang-woo. And your name is......"
"Yun Yeong-suk! Getting clothes fitted, are you? Where are you going?"
"We're shooting a drama. It's for the production presentation. Please remake these."
Choi Do-hyun handed her clothes out of a paper bag. Black braces and a bow tie, and a white shirt.
Yun Yeong-suk's expression turned odd and she said to Choi Do-hyun.
"These have to be twenty years old — you kept them?"
"Yes. They're the clothes I wore the first time I went to an awards ceremony, aren't they."
Clothes worn for the first time at an awards ceremony. What those clothes mean must be out of the ordinary. I asked with startled eyes.
"Uncle, you're giving me these?"
"Yeah. Your uncle doesn't need them any more."
"No, but still......"
Yun Yeong-suk, coming over with a tape measure, said with a satisfied smile.
"If he'll hand over clothes like these without hesitating he must have taken quite a liking to you. Put them on and come out so I can take your measurements."
When I changed self-consciously and came out of the fitting room, Choi Do-hyun and Yun Yeong-suk made sounds of admiration.
She circled around me and began pinning in pins with small beads on them.
"He hangs clothes well, doesn't he? Look at him carrying off something worn back when tigers smoked."
"Gang-woo's handsome, isn't he?"
"Yes! I don't think I've ever seen a face this handsome?"
"There's me, though."
"Ah, compare like with like, would you."
"......Auntie. I'm going to sulk."
"A grown man over thirty, sulking. But why are there two sets of clothes?"
Come to think of it, there were. There are two garments in the paper bag.
One is the braces I have just tried on, the other is a black tuxedo.
It is the kind of clothing for a formal occasion rather than a production presentation. Curious myself, I asked.
"What's that one?"
Choi Do-hyun lifted the hanger, shook the tuxedo and answered.
"One of them is for wearing at an awards ceremony."
"An awards ceremony?"
"Why, aren't you going to win one?"
On his face was a smile full of certainty, as if the thing were already foretold.