In the entertainment world they talk about the curse of sixteen like this.
The cursed sixteenth year, the age when a face turns on you.
'Another spot. Damn it.'
Lee Yu-chan sat in front of the dressing room mirror. He studied his own face carefully.
Millet-sized spots risen red cover his forehead, and his jaw has begun to square off slightly.
The low nose that has been a complex since he was small shows no sign of rising.
The looks that were rated cute and lively in his child-actor days are now shifting into the territory of an ordinary person you could hardly call a celebrity.
"......What is wrong with this face?"
That was when. His manager's shout came.
"Yu-chan! Looking in the mirror again?"
He started and pulled his eyes off the mirror and turned his head. The manager shook his head slowly.
"Stop looking. Do the spots vanish if you keep looking?"
"......No."
"You're very interested in your looks these days. Is it puberty? Spots get covered with makeup. Put a filter on a broadcast camera and they disappear clean away."
"I know. I was just looking."
"Why. Shall I sign you up at a dermatologist's?"
"Can I?"
"Obviously. It isn't as if we haven't the money for that."
At the mention of a dermatologist Lee Yu-chan's colour lifted and he smiled all over.
The manager, watching that with narrowed eyes, said.
"If it's that bad, think about what I mentioned the other day."
Lee Yu-chan froze. Because what his manager and the agency's CEO had said came back to him.
Surgery. Talk of surgery had been coming up a lot lately.
"......I'll think about it."
"You have to do it a little at a time at your age or it shows. If you want the nose and the jaw shaved you have to start working at it now, all right?"
"Yes."
"Come out quickly. The PD is making a racket about wanting a rehearsal."
Lee Yu-chan left the dressing room reluctantly.
Closing the door, he glanced one last time at himself in the mirror.
Today of all days this face felt hateful.
But quite apart from his troubles, Lee Yu-chan was enjoying peak popularity at present.
The sitcom he is currently in, , is recording a high rating of over twenty percent.
He plays a character using his own real name, Lee Yu-chan.
An unhateable character who causes every kind of trouble among a large family living in a villa, he served fully as the comic relief.
Lee Yu-chan the walking disaster, a character he has played for all of one year. You can tell just from the reaction of the people who are wild about it.
The character has eaten the actor.
With the sitcom nearing its end, industry people are proposing to Lee Yu-chan only parts of a similar image.
More than twenty proposals were identical, as if copy-pasted.
Lee Yu-chan thought: at this rate he might not shake off this label for years.
His steps grew heavy. The staff, knowing nothing of what was inside Lee Yu-chan, greeted him warmly.
"Oh? Yu-chan's here~ our little disaster~"
"You're setting the house on fire today, aren't you? The script's the best one yet."
But endure two more months and he can say goodbye to this wearisome character. There is not long left until ends.
The manager looked at Lee Yu-chan and asked.
"Your expression's suddenly better?"
"The sitcom's ending soon. It's a relief."
"Fair enough. You've been shooting without sleep every day, so it's no wonder."
"But hyung."
"Yes."
The manager raised his eyebrows. Lee Yu-chan asked.
"The film I turned down that time."
"Which one did we shoot?"
"Two years ago."
"What? The one set in a zoo? That got cancelled. The director cut his losses because he couldn't find actors."
"No. Not that one. The mute role. Director Kim Jae-gu's."
"Ah. That?"
Groping haltingly for the memory, the manager said.
"Night of Silence, that's the one."
"Yes."
Lee Yu-chan's eyes brightened. When the offer came at the time, he chose the sitcom.
It was the result of thinking that raising his profile mattered.
But now it is different. He has already gained profile enough, and he needs to escape an image that has hardened.
The manager said.
"That one, I think the boss said he'd handle it himself. That's right. Looks like he cut a deal with AJ Entertainment."
"How?"
Going through his smartphone, he laughed as if at something absurd.
"He told them to use you as the condition for putting money in?"
"......Really?"
"You must be well loved, Yu-chan. Well, there's the value of Kim Jae-gu's name too. From a distributor's position it's a case of catching both rabbits. But...... hold on."
Sending a message somewhere, his expression began to stiffen. Lee Yu-chan felt uneasy along with him.
The manager's face turned ugly.
"What's this? You said that was the mute role."
"Yes."
"......They're saying they'll use a newcomer?"
"A newcomer? Who?"
What came out of the manager's mouth was a familiar name.
"Seo Gang-woo."
Seo Gang-woo. Lately, in the broadcasting business, not knowing that child actor gets you called a spy.
Looks handsome enough to make you gasp, and acting ability that does not fall short of them.
They say the rating jumped three and a half percent on one child actor, don't they.
At any rate he is the man of the hour, who has produced something considerably out of the ordinary.
A great many industry people are salivating over Seo Gang-woo.
The sitcom's PD alone keeps pressing him about whether he knows anyone who knows Seo Gang-woo.
'And they're deliberating over him instead of me?'
A teen actor who has appeared in several hits and shown stable work.
A ten-year-old child actor who has managed all of one bit part.
However he thought about it, Lee Yu-chan saw no reason he should come off worse.
Lee Yu-chan bit his lip. It was a role that ought to have come back to him.
It felt as though it had been taken right in front of his eyes.
After messaging somewhere for a long while, the manager raised his head.
Dropping his voice low, he said.
"The director's attached a condition. Look."
On the smartphone screen he held out was a message Kim Jae-gu had sent.
[I'd like to think about it too. I want to judge on the two actors' acting; would you mind sending me one video?]
Lee Yu-chan muttered.
"......One scene chosen from the script, a video one minute long."
"Is he trying to make a deal or what. Does he think passing an investment review is easy?"
Lee Yu-chan calmed his fuming manager.
"No. I'll do it."
"What?"
"Ask them to give me the script again. I'll practise it properly."
Crush him on ability and the other side will accept the outcome without a word of complaint.
Lee Yu-chan clenched a fist.
***
[Yongin Yunseul School]
Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and I stood in front of the gate of a school for the deaf.
It is a place secured with difficulty for the sake of my acting in .
Kwon Do-gyeong, who had driven me all the way here, put a hand on his hip and flaunted the power of connections.
"This place was genuinely hard to arrange. The head teacher here is the father-in-law of the son-in-law of my in-law's eighth cousin."
"......Isn't that just a complete stranger, at that point?"
"It's a way of saying I went to a lot of trouble. Apparently they don't do anything like observation lessons for people without disabilities. Getting permission from the parents was hard too. You get exactly five observation lessons. After that, nothing doing."
Five, is it. Few if you call it few, many if you call it many. Nothing to do but draw out as much of the essence as possible.
While I was resolving that, a girl's voice came from beside me.
"The school's so pretty!"
The owner of it was Min Ji-yun.
The moment I said I was going to visit a school for the deaf she insisted flat out on coming too, so I allowed her along on condition that she stay quiet.
Min Ji-yun looked up at the building with eyes full of curiosity.
I let out a small laugh and asked.
"Hey, why did you actually come?"
"I told you, I came to practise my acting~"
"And what about school?"
"Today's founder's day."
Kwon Do-gyeong shook his head side to side beside me.
"That's all lies. She applied for a field-study day and came, same as you."
"Boss!"
"Ji-yun, I'm the one who writes it out for you."
"......Thank you."
"That's right. You should be grateful."
Well, she is a child who will make her living from acting, so there is no need to hang her heart on a perfect-attendance prize.
Still, shouldn't she get a basic education?
I said with a sidelong look.
"You should still go to school."
"What's it matter? You skipped too."
"I got a casting offer directly."
"That isn't confirmed yet, you said!"
She has a way of saying the painful thing. Min Ji-yun was right.
For all his talk about wanting to cast me, Kim Jae-gu shut his mouth and changed his tune.
He asked me for a one-minute acting video. Wants to compare my acting with Lee Yu-chan's, or something of the sort.
It overlapped with what happened with Min Ji-yun. It feels like being dragged into a troublesome business.
I asked Kwon Do-gyeong.
"Do they normally set up a contest like this?"
"Hm?"
"Director Kim Jae-gu. He asked me to shoot an acting video and send it. I wondered whether this was normal."
"Usually not; they'd hold an audition."
"Right?"
When I let a little of my displeasure show, Kwon Do-gyeong patted my shoulder.
"He'll want to be careful. And he said actor Lee Yu-chan's side is coming at it so hard that he's trying to placate them. Don't hate it too much."
"He could just be saying that."
"I doubt it. Think who the lead over there is."
"......Sunbae-nim Im A-rin."
Im A-rin named me and wanted me in it with her.
Min Ji-yun knew that too, so she backed Kwon Do-gyeong's view.
"Mom said so! She said if it isn't you she won't do the project!"
"......Did she?"
"Yes! And sunbae Yu-chan is probably......"
Just as Min Ji-yun was about to go on, Kwon Do-gyeong signalled to us to be quiet.
"Shh."
The place we had arrived at was the head teacher's office.
Simple greetings followed. The head teacher said.
"You're Seo Gang-woo?"
"Yes, hello! I'm the actor Seo Gang-woo!"
"Good to meet you. Handsome as they said. Our children are going to like you."
Chuckling, he walked us down the corridor. He did not say much either way.
With one sentence he opened the classroom door for us.
"Tell our children's story well."
Rattle—.
The door opened and a great many eyes poured over us. Even while the teacher was introducing me, the deaf children gestured to try to talk to me.
I don't know sign language well so I could not tell what they meant, but going roughly by their eyes and the muscles working in their faces, I think I can guess.
'......I'm a smash hit.'
Some raise their hands to ask that I be sat next to them, or thump their chairs. There are children making sounds like ah, ah, appealing to be looked at.
"The children have got excited. One moment."
The special education teacher laughed and began to settle them. I waited for the noise to die down and raised both hands.
I unfolded the sign language I had practised in advance.
Hello, I am,
Seo Gang-woo, and I am an actor,
I have taken, a mute, role, and so, I came, here.
Please, be good to me.
"Uh-uhh—!"
A soundless clamour rang out through the classroom.
***
'......Amazing.'
Min Ji-yun is observing a lesson for deaf children, a thing that was never in her stars.
A world without sound, and inside it were countless stories.
Hands sweeping about, exaggerated gestures and facial muscles crumpling as if wrung out. Min Ji-yun felt it clearly.
These children use a different language from hers.
'Is this why he said he'd come?'
Min Ji-yun looked at Seo Gang-woo. He was observing the deaf students with relentless eyes.
At times he scribbled something on a notepad, at times he communicated with them directly through his body.
It goes without saying that the reason Min Ji-yun came here today was to be with Seo Gang-woo.
To look at his face, to talk with him, to build up good memories.
She was busy enough serving her own wishes that the acting came second.
And yet, watching Seo Gang-woo over and over, she felt something stir inside her chest.
'......He looks like someone who has fallen alone into a different world.'
The neck pushed forward, the teeth slightly parted, the eyes absorbed in the scene before him.
It is like the picture of a genius sunk in his own thoughts inside a world set apart.
In a classroom where the language of silence flowed, Seo Gang-woo was drawing out a world nobody had seen.