Nine years old. Second grade.
I'm roaming the market with my mother's hand in mine.
"Gang-woo, look at Mom. Was the hotteok that good? You've got it all over your mouth. Go look in that mirror over there."
A full-length mirror standing in one corner of the market.
Standing in it was someone familiar and unfamiliar at once.
Over pale skin, huge eyes that looked like they held the starlight of the Milky Way, and a straight, high nose.
'What is this?'
I couldn't believe the situation, and a laugh escaped me.
And then.
"He just smiled at me, right?"
"He's so cute, that kid~!"
"Should I talk to him? What would I even say?"
High school girls passing by stamp their feet at the sight of me.
Well, whatever. I turned back to the mirror.
There's no way I could fail to recognize this face.
Four months of nights and days boiled down into no sleep, and that face.
'......This is the figure I made.'
More precisely, it's the face of the adult figure I made, made younger.
Starting with that group of high school girls, people walking past start talking to me.
"Little one~ look at auntie. Here, here. Aigo! What bright, clever eyes. How old is the baby? Eleven? Nine, you say?"
"What a fine-looking boy. Come here. Uncle'll give you something good."
"Where's your mom? Are you lost?"
The area around us is in an uproar.
At every turn adults stop me to pinch my cheeks or stroke my head or bend down to meet my eyes.
Just then, my mother pulled me in against her.
"I'm sorry. Gang-woo is shy with strangers."
But even so the passersby keep on paying attention.
Praise is a given, and then they keep giving me things.
Rice cake, fruit, snacks, jokbal, candy, jelly, drinks, seasoned skate.
'Come on, why would you give a kid seasoned skate.'
Anyway, the market cart my mother was pulling ended up piled high with food.
Mom is walking around with her shoulders all the way up.
She never looked like this before.
'She always used to be a little cowed, whether she knew it or not.'
Even so, she was a woman with a straight sense of how to raise a child.
'It's the people who call you ugly who are in the wrong.'
'You have no reason to shrink.'
The things she told me once settled deep in my chest.
'A person has succeeded if they have even one person to keep beside them. And Gang-woo, you at least have Mom beside you.'
My mother always supported me and cheered me on.
Now a wide grin has spread across that mother's face.
Later she started massaging her face, as if the muscles had tightened up.
"My cheekbones are tingling. It's always like this when I come to the market with my son. Gang-woo. Today was fun too, wasn't it?"
......I think it was Mom who had the fun, but she's enjoying herself, so that's fine.
We left the market and walked maybe ten minutes.
Before I knew it we were home.
I saw myself again in the elevator mirror.
'No matter how long I look, I can't get used to this face.'
I was pushing my face around this way and that when my mother snorted a laugh beside me.
"What. Is your face interesting?"
"......Yes."
"The grown-ups touched Gang-woo's face too much today, didn't they? Next time I'll tell them not to."
Ding—.
The elevator stopped, and we came into the apartment.
My father, who had been lying on the sofa, got up laughing and took the bags from her.
"Came home with a whole haul again. You should send the market folks some rice cake sometime."
"I probably should? I keep taking food from them, it's starting to weigh on me."
"And be sure to introduce Gang-woo when you do. Did you buy the cake? We should light candles for Christmas."
While Dad and Mom got the Christmas table ready, I perched on the edge of the sofa.
I spotted the smartphone on the table.
'I didn't have a phone until middle school, so this is probably Dad's.'
The internet. I needed the internet.
I had to work out what shape the world was in.
"Dad, can I play with the smartphone?"
"Sure~ only while Dad's cooking with Mom, though. Not more than thirty minutes, okay?"
"Okay!"
The moment permission came down I started surfing.
December 24, 2010. There's talk of snow in the central region and a white Christmas expected.
There are news items with inflammatory headlines too. Politics, economy. Fields I never cared about to begin with, so I skimmed past them and let them go.
What stood out, easily, was the entertainment news.
Who's dating who, who got caught drunk driving, the kind of news designed to fry your nerve endings.
「Actor Yeon Seung-jun, first child lead to draw three million admissions.」
In the middle of it, the word that lodged in my eye was child actor.
I remembered what all those passersby at the market had said.
Talent, singer, actor, model, you could be anything you wanted.
'Anything, anything at all, huh.'
I switched the smartphone off and looked at the black screen.
In it, the creation I had shaped was looking back at me and smiling.
***
"......Doesn't Gang-woo seem a little odd today?"
Lee Su-yeon stopped in the middle of boiling the pasta and asked Seo Tae-seong.
"What kind of nonsense is that. What's wrong with Gang-woo?"
"No, look at him. The kid never cared about his looks at all, and now he's doing that."
Seo Tae-seong raised an eyebrow and turned his eyes where his wife's gesture pointed.
There sat their son, peering into a smartphone.
"Looks normal to me?"
"Doesn't it look like he's looking at himself in it? The way he keeps turning his head. He's smiling now. He was strange at the market today too, I'm telling you. He's always been a bit shy, but today especially. He seemed half out of his mind."
"......Really? Why all of a sudden?"
Seo Tae-seong looked puzzled for a moment, then snapped the lid onto a container.
"He can't be hitting puberty, so he's probably just looking at his own face. If I had that face I'd keep looking at it too."
"......I need to be careful."
"About what."
"The old folks at the market kept telling Gang-woo to be a talent, be an actor. Saying he's fine-looking."
"They know a face when they see one. What's the worry?"
"If we keep giving in to him he'll pick up bad habits. What if he starts strutting around because he's handsome?"
Lee Su-yeon muttered it with a serious face.
Celebrity.
Lately she had been hearing that word constantly.
Once or twice you let it pass, but when the praise keeps coming day after day, you start to know.
My son is objectively handsome.
"Something about this doesn't sit right."
"What now? He's just cute."
"People keep saying celebrity, celebrity, and it's putting air in his head."
"So? Let him be a celebrity."
"You think being a celebrity is easy?"
"Honestly, a kid like Gang-woo......"
"Honey!"
"......Was I wrong?"
Seo Tae-seong grumbled. Lee Su-yeon, for her part, was turning serious.
Since when was being a celebrity easy?
However handsome you are there is always someone more handsome, and unless you're born with the spark, most of them get buried.
'......Though my son is unbelievably handsome, that's true.'
Even bending over backwards, there wasn't a single known child actor better-looking than her son.
She knew that her son was handsome from the front, from the back, and standing on his head.
'Ah, come on. Think how many pretty and handsome people there are among celebrities.'
It's a market where only the ones that shine unusually bright survive, even among brilliant stars.
And on top of that, becoming a celebrity takes more than good looks alone.
Luck, connections, money — even with all three lined up neatly you struggle to get noticed. That's the world over there.
Rather than chase that kind of uncertainty.
'It's better to live an ordinary life.'
Lee Su-yeon breathed out through her nose.
She felt she'd let herself get swept up in everyone else's praise and shown him too much excitement. The boy shouldn't grow up drunk on how special he is.
There was nothing for it but to keep warning him to stay humble.
Seo Tae-seong, who had been quietly watching, asked.
"And if Gang-woo says he wants to be a celebrity?"
"......Then we help him."
"With everything we've got?"
"Just short of bringing the roof down on the family?"
His wife's answer set Seo Tae-seong roaring with laughter. He wiped his eyes and said.
"Don't start worrying already. When the time comes he'll find his own road."
"You think so?"
"Yeah. All we have to do is stand beside him and cheer."
That was when.
"Mom!"
Their son shouted. He came running over holding the smartphone up.
"Yes?"
"Can I try this? Please?"
What their son had brought over was......
[Kids Model Open Call]
Some open call for kid models.
***
Gangnam-gu, Seoul, in one of the high-rise buildings.
Jang Jin-seok, team leader of Production Team 2 at Sail Planning, is tearing at his hair.
The project this middle manager at an advertising agency has drawn this time is a car TVC.
With a normal client, what they want out of a TV commercial like this is obvious.
Killer exterior shots of the car.
The rush of speed down an open road and a smooth, stable ride.
And family.
But the demands coming through the phone from this client are anything but normal.
"Yes. Yes. I'm listening."
[As I said before, the presence of the child is important here. Since we're targeting parents with children......]
The reason a child appears without fail in apartment, home appliance and car commercials is simple.
Children provoke the buying urge in parents.
The client is showing a bizarre fixation on the child.
[The look we're hoping for is, hmm. You know the one? Western but also Eastern, sophisticated but somehow guileless, grown-up-looking but with a boyishness you can catch glimpses of......]
"......Understood. I'll do everything I can."
A child who is Western and also Eastern? Cast a mixed-race kid.
But the phrases that follow are no better than banging on a paper window.
'......What is this, a hot iced americano!'
At this rate the little hair he has left will be pulled out by stress.
Jang Jin-seok let out an anguished groan. The staffer beside him asked.
"What'd they say. More crap?"
"Yeah."
The man, who had a rough idea of the situation, screwed up his face.
"There are plenty of agencies with child actors on their books these days."
"Went through all of them."
"......None of them any good?"
"Nothing that grabs me."
"What about the well-known child actors?"
"You think they'd take this money?"
A client with a long list of demands and short money. It makes you want to swear.
What softened his discontent was a single suggestion from the staffer.
"Team leader. Then what about, uh, that audition we opened two weeks ago? How about that?"
"There are hundreds of emails as it is. I have to go through them now."
"Should I do it?"
"No. I'll do it."
He had nothing to lose. Jang Jin-seok had put a big open call out on mom forums and everywhere else.
Sure enough, when he checked his mail, hundreds of applications had come in.
He'd flipped through maybe a hundred of them before Jang Jin-seok reached a conclusion.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Same soup, different bowl.
'......A total absence of faces. They say there are so many beautiful people these days, but that's all surgery. Kids can't get surgery, so the raw stock of the genes is all out there on display.'
He'd skim the rest and soothe the advertiser with some suitably sugared words —
That's what Jang Jin-seok thought.
Then.
Scroll- scroll- stop.
Scrolling irritably, Jang Jin-seok found one email.
[Sail Planning_Kids Model Applicant_Seo Gang-woo]
Jang Jin-seok opened it, and.
'......Is this real?'
His finger stopped, overwhelmed by an image file.
There was only one.
A photo of the boy smiling.
A dimple carved in. A face Western and Eastern at once.
He passes on the spot.
'Looks like a foreign model. Is he mixed?'
Below it, other image files were attached.
Jang Jin-seok scrolled on as if enchanted.
Next photo.
Expressionless, looking past the camera.
Something aches in his chest. He gives off the aura of a child with a story.
Jang Jin-seok found himself muttering.
"Sophisticated but guileless, grown-up but with a boyishness to him......"
Exactly what the advertiser asked for.
Surely a kid like this couldn't be in Korea — and if he were, he'd have debuted long ago.
"Is he signed with an agency somewhere? Or a civilian caked in Photoshop?"
Narrowing his eyes, he realized.
Cherry-colored moulding, and a half-empty bottle of Delront juice.
And behind that, a towel thrown over the sofa, as if someone had started tidying and given up.
A photo with a background this careless can't be Photoshop; there isn't a single sign of retouching anywhere.
'......Struck gold.'
He's in Korea.
And a new face nobody has dug up.
If this is real, wouldn't even that fussy advertiser gasp?
"C-contact. Where's the contact......"
Jang Jin-seok's eyes flooded with excitement.