'......An award, he says.'
It would be a lie to say I had never thought about it.
You can tell from the mood on set day to day.
The run of okay signs and the look in the actors' eyes; from those I know I am doing acting that works even to the eyes of people in the business.
'A best new actor award, maybe not, but a child actor award should be worth aiming at.'
Awards ceremonies are at the end of the year, so it is a matter for later.
Right now is the time to keep the air out of my head and concentrate on what is in front of me.
Because in an hour there is a production presentation.
At the moment I am on the way to a hotel banquet hall with Kwon Do-gyeong.
In the tinted window of the van I could see myself all done up.
A pure white shirt with black brace trousers, and a black bow tie for the accent.
'Clothes really are wings.'
Fashion comes around again, they say. The clothes Choi Do-hyun gave me were already hard to believe as twenty-year-old clothes, they sat so well.
Passed through an expert's hands, they have turned more modern still.
And then I found myself curious.
Why did Choi Do-hyun give me these clothes?
'It did feel like a sort of thank you.'
I feel like I know and like I don't. Hard to make out.
To mark a first debut? Maybe he thought it admirable that I get through schedules at a young age without whining.
Whatever the case, he seems to have decided to bring all his firepower to bear on me.
Because he gave me the clothes from his first awards ceremony, which he had kept like a sacred relic.
The special quality of a first time is precious to anyone.
Not only to me — the story attached to these clothes would interest the public as well.
Kwon Do-gyeong must have thought something similar, because he said in an excited voice.
"Let's release this story to the press."
"Would that be all right?"
"I'll square it with actor Choi's agency. Ah, how do I get this exposed more dramatically."
Kwon Do-gyeong turned his own wheels in his own way.
There will probably be a run of internet articles from today onward. At the entrance to the hotel where the presentation is being held, Kwon Do-gyeong called out.
"I'll go by the car park first. Don't get lost! You remember what your boss said, don't you?"
Don't shrink; be confident.
That is the thing I do best. Telling him not to worry, I waved back at him.
I reached the corridor leading to the banquet hall.
A staff member who had been waiting spotted me and greeted me warmly.
"Gang-woo, you're here!"
"Hello!"
"You look wonderful today. Hold on a second. Let noona take one photo."
"Maknae! What are you doing not sending Gang-woo in!"
"One moment! If I don't get this I'm going to cry!"
"What??"
"I said I'll cry!! Gang-woo, quick! Do the V sign!"
After being photographed by the planning team's maknae, I looked toward the banquet hall corridor with its red carpet.
A photo wall papered with the network's logo and the drama's title; photo time was in full swing.
But something was strange.
The number of reporters massed there was out of the ordinary.
'Why are there so many?'
At a rough count, over thirty reporters are packed shoulder to shoulder.
It must mean KBC is praying that hard for the drama's success.
Click! Click! Click! Click!
The instant I entered, dozens of camera lenses flashed.
The feeling of an enormous flashbang going off.
The world in front of me washed white.
"......He's more handsome in person?"
"Hey, just shoot, shoot."
"Actor Seo Gang-woo!"
"Look this way please!"
"One smile please!"
Reporters' voices burst out from every side.
Flashes going off without pause, the shutter sound circling my ears, air full of heat......
I feel like a blinded craftsman.
Even so I could not show the slightest sign of being dazzled. I had to work at managing my expression.
'Nothing difficult about it.'
Thanks to repeated training I have grown used to the workings of my facial muscles.
A soft smile, dimples in full bloom, a smiling-eyed look that shows the curve under the eye.
Whatever smile they ask for, I am confident I can switch to it in a blink.
CEO Kwon Do-gyeong worried that I might shrink, and there was no need for that worry at all.
Because I came intending to take command of the photo time, at the very least.
Did they catch my enthusiasm?
The reporters' requests began to grow varied.
"Could you put a hand on your hip?!"
"Do something cool!"
"A show-off pose!"
Easy as eating cold porridge.
Living as a figure artist in my past life, I researched poses thousands of times.
With the workings of my body familiar to me as well, I behaved exactly like a fish that has found water.
Chin lifted slightly, head angled forty-five degrees.
A high nose bridge as if piercing the sky. Show-off pose, fired.
The reporters go wild. The highlight came next.
"A cute pose!"
'A cute pose?'
I think this was the pose that got famous around this time.
After a moment's thought I gathered my fingers into a heart. A two-handed heart made by crossing forefinger and thumb.
The reporters' fingers held their buttons down and would not come off. Burst mode.
'Does this ever end?'
The photo time, scheduled for thirty seconds, ran well past its allotted span. Even the staff member managing the time was looking at me with a slack expression. Another staff member elbowed her in the side.
"Maknae! What are you doing! Move it on to the next one!"
"Sorry? Yes! That concludes actor Seo Gang-woo's photo time! Let's take the group shot!"
The staff held the reporters back.
A mere minute, and only after the group shot as well did the production presentation begin.
On the way to the table on the platform, Gu Ha-rin looked at my clothes and said to Choi Do-hyun.
"These are the clothes you wore twenty years ago?"
"Yeah. Pretty, aren't they."
"When you said you were passing on your old clothes I wondered what you thought you were doing......"
Gu Ha-rin took my hand, looked me slowly up and down and said.
"The face did all the work. It would have been fine even without your clothes, oppa."
"......Hey. Not you as well."
"But the braces are so cute. Oppa, you're giving these to Gang-woo outright, aren't you?"
"Hm? I suppose so."
"Gang-woo, you have to take a photo with noona after the presentation, all right? Come to the set in these sometimes."
"I'll think about it~"
"Ah, don't be like that~"
Having traded jokes, I headed for the table where the actors sit.
I sit at the end of the row. The PD, the writer and the leads are to the left in that order, and I was positioned furthest right.
With me last, everyone was seated.
It was the moment the curtain went up on the production presentation.
***
Short in height, square in the jaw, Park Mi-ryeo was a well-known MC regularly called in for film and drama production presentations.
While preparing the event as she always did, she noticed one unusual thing.
Seo Gang-woo, a child actor who is nothing more than a bit part, stood at the photo line. And where he was placed was next to the supporting actors of real quality.
'It's rare for a child actor to attend an occasion like this......'
She asked the production team whether his share of the show was large, and got the answer that it was not that either.
Even so the production team said it. To be sure to throw Seo Gang-woo a few questions.
They had clearly staked something on the child actor. But she had not known it was to this degree.
The insane looks of the child actor. Simply looking at him you feel a halo like hundreds of fluorescent lights switched on.
And not only that. The spark Seo Gang-woo showed at the photo time is out of the ordinary.
Child actors that age shrink or grow shy under a barrage of flashes, and Seo Gang-woo showed nothing of the kind.
'He's next-generation star material. I'd say I'll be seeing him at other production presentations within a few months.'
She drew her gaze away from Seo Gang-woo and brought the microphone to her mouth. It was time to announce the start.
"......Today is at last the first unveiling of KBC's Monday-Tuesday drama , which so many of you have been waiting for."
Having introduced the PD and the writer, then the leads and the supporting cast in turn, she looked at Seo Gang-woo and set up her line.
"And there is one actor we should pay special attention to today. It's actor Seo Gang-woo, who plays Jun-yeong in this piece. Hello~"
"Hello! I'm the actor Seo Gang-woo!"
"He's handsome!"
"Whoo—!"
A small cheer burst from the seats. At the moment of Seo Gang-woo's introduction in particular, the banquet hall grew noisy. Someone is whistling.
'Did a reporter just whistle?'
Has he already built rapport with the press?
Park Mi-ryeo, working at managing her expression, asked.
"Actor Seo Gang-woo, this is your debut work, and you're already getting a lot of attention. What was the most fun part?"
"Watching all the sunbae-nims act!"
"Whose acting did you like best?"
"They were all so good I think it's hard to pick just one."
"Aigo, so sharp. Answering even a difficult question well. He must have been full of charm too! The actors must have loved having him around while you were shooting!"
Seo Gang-woo showed exactly the advantage a child actor brings to a formal occasion like this.
With a mixture of poise and cuteness he brightened the mood.
Enough that Park Mi-ryeo, running the event, found herself gushing without meaning to.
She said.
"I'm looking forward to your next work too. Will you take auntie along that time?"
Laughter broke out from the seats again. Seo Gang-woo laughed shyly and bowed his head.
Even that was captured perfectly by the cameras.
The production presentation wrapped up successfully, and the reporters left in a hurry to write their articles about Seo Gang-woo.
The next morning, the entertainment section of the portal news was papered with Seo Gang-woo's name.
[Newcomer Seo Gang-woo, veteran-grade poise at his first production presentation]
[Seo Gang-woo, who inherited Choi Do-hyun's clothes, and their 'senior-junior chemistry' draws attention]
[ production presentation, Seo Gang-woo certified a 'face genius']
A week before the drama aired, one child actor had captured the public's eye first.
***
Eight days later, and time had moved on to a day after the first episode of aired.
The average rating for episode one was twelve percent, a disappointing figure considering a name writer, PD and cast were all mobilised.
The cause was a rival hit among the dramas of the same period holding immovably at thirty percent.
But nobody lost hope. Because the rating climbed a little at a time right through to the end of the first episode.
Inside a detached house in Hannam-dong, three women sit on a sofa talking quietly together.
Min Ji-yun and Ra Ju-hyun, and Im A-rin.
Ra Ju-hyun asked Min Ji-yun.
"It jumped to sixteen percent at the end?"
"Yes! Writer Kim Mi-ra says the rating will go up more for episode two!"
What could the writer's reason for confidence be?
Ra Ju-hyun thought the cause lay with Seo Gang-woo. A look and an acting ability that seize the nation's living rooms, with nothing lacking anywhere.
And more than that, Seo Gang-woo announced himself spectacularly in the preview.
The instant episode one ended, Ra Ju-hyun checked the drama's message board.
It was as she expected. The board had gone into meltdown.
-What's the child actor's name? Is it actor Choi Do-hyun's role as a boy?
-Going by him appearing as the son in the car advert, he might be a hidden son. So looking forward to it!
-Writer Kim Mi-ra is to increase the child actor's part immediately, earnestly requested by a woman in her forties.
All manner of gushing and expectation; however much this is an era of burning hundreds of millions on marketing, there is no viral force as strong as word of mouth.
Dramas are a subject that comes up often in saunas, at workplaces, in markets.
There is no chance that talk of a handsome child actor would fail to come up.
Ra Ju-hyun felt an impatience rise in her for no good reason.
She was feeling again what she felt when her granddaughter appeared in her first drama.
That was when. Min Ji-yun pointed at the television and shouted.
"Mom, Gang-woo's coming on soon!"
As Seo Gang-woo appeared on the screen the three of them fixed their attention on it.
On screen, Seo Gang-woo was performing an abandoned child perfectly.
The look in his eyes, his expression, every one of his gestures dissolved perfectly into the character.
He had gone unfathomably beyond the standard of a ten-year-old child actor. Even the drama's PD, for the moments Seo Gang-woo is on, has kept the focus on Seo Gang-woo rather than Choi Do-hyun.
Ra Ju-hyun was curious.
How would her daughter, Im A-rin, see Seo Gang-woo?
'......She's fallen right in.'
A good actor recognises a good actor.
A gently domed forehead, clear skin and cat-like eyes. Im A-rin's alluring eyes shone as if holding starlight.
It was an expression that appears only when she has an interest in another performer.
Ra Ju-hyun put a question to Im A-rin.
As it happened Im A-rin was also considering appearing in a thriller film.
"A-rin."
"Yes?"
"I hear you've been looking for a child actor lately?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
Im A-rin soon grasped the intent behind the question. That her mother meant: how about that boy for the child actor's place they cannot fill.
Ra Ju-hyun asked in an insinuating voice.
"How about Gang-woo? He looks exactly right for the role."
Im A-rin did not answer, and watched Seo Gang-woo's acting as if entranced.
Her gaze was already standing in for the answer.