Slurp—.
Instant coffee goes down his throat.
At the early hour of eight in the morning, Jang Jin-seok grimaced at the coffee's bitterness.
Today he came not to Gangnam, where Sail Planning's head office is, but to Mapo.
Because a special event is booked at the studio.
The kids model audition.
Jang Jin-seok cracked his jaw wide in a yawn. He felt rather sorry for his own lot in life.
'All this fuss to pick one child actor for a commercial.'
A single audition notice had brought in over three hundred children.
Sifted and sifted down, six applicants were chosen.
A competition ratio of a full three hundred to one.
Out of these, only one child will win the honor of sitting in the back seat of a car.
And there is one who is talked about as the man of the hour.
Seo Gang-woo. On three photos attached to an email alone, a fan club had already formed among the staff.
His face was in a class of its own.
Even Jang Jin-seok, who had been rolled every which way in the advertising business, had never seen a look like it.
So much so that the first reaction was suspicion that it was doctored.
"......This is Photoshopped, isn't it? How can a ten-year-old's face look like that?"
"Can a civilian retouch the background too? It's clean, not a hint of distortion."
"One of the parents could be a graphics specialist. Let's ask them to send a profile video. You can't trust photos these days."
So a profile video followed.
They pressed play and the boy from the photos appeared.
Front, side, front. Seo Gang-woo turned his head this way and that and looked into the camera again.
What came next was a lethal smiling-eyed look and a bow with his hands folded over his stomach.
'......When he smiled I honestly thought my heart stopped.'
In a flash, fan number one, fan number two and fan number three were born.
For the record, fan number one is Jang Jin-seok himself.
Fan number two, Kim Myeong-o, whispered.
"Let's just take Gang-woo. There's no need to drag this to a second round."
"It's for appearances. You have no idea how good the grapevine is among the moms on those forums. And the client asked us to call him in. Said there's something they want to check."
"Come on, what's there to check. Not that I mind getting to see Gang-woo in the flesh......"
"You came in early for one kid, and you're happy about it?"
"So what? We've got a shoot booked after this anyway. Let's call it coming in two hours early."
His commute had been shoved forward two hours and he was still all smiles. Fitting for fan number two. Jang Jin-seok stroked his chin.
Certainly, if the boy has already captured one person, the appeal must be enormous. And that appeal had clearly worked on the advertiser as well.
So why hadn't they given the okay, and instead set up a meeting like this?
'I have a rough guess.'
For now it's only a hunch. Jang Jin-seok drained the rest of his coffee, crushed the paper cup and threw it at the bin.
The studio was noisy.
Because everyone summoned to the second round of the kids model audition had arrived.
Six applicants in total, and twelve people filling the room.
By the nature of kid modeling, a mother always comes as a one-plus-one.
Among them was a child whose pushy mother had gotten her there forty minutes ahead of schedule.
They sat in folding chairs, presenting an assortment of behaviors.
"Mom. I want to go home."
"Just a little longer and it'll be over. Afterward Mom will buy Ha-rim the pork cutlet she likes."
On one side, a whining child and a mother coaxing and soothing her.
"You can do it well like you always do, right?"
"Yeah! I'm going to be totally great!"
And on the other, a confident child and a mother turned praise machine.
'Where is that Seo Gang-woo boy?'
Jang Jin-seok stood off at a distance and swept the room. He found Seo Gang-woo at once.
Left corner, a mother who looks out of her depth, as if this is her first time in a place like this.
Long straight hair, a plain look about her.
Beside her was Seo Gang-woo.
That face from the screen.
No — the photo didn't capture the real thing.
A sharp nose, a faint dimple that appears when he grins, huge eyes.
Just looking into those pupils gives you the feeling of sinking into a deep lake.
'......What was that? I feel like something just put a spell on me.'
Is it the lighting? He could swear he felt a soft halo.
Jang Jin-seok came back to himself and shook his head side to side.
Seo Gang-woo's reaction was unusual.
Innocent, you might call it. He looks like a child on a field trip.
He's looking around every corner of the studio with shining eyes.
If anything, that was what made him special. A child with no nerves.
The usual ten-year-old in an unfamiliar place like this shows wariness or hangs back.
Or hides it under exaggerated confidence.
Seo Gang-woo was different. It was as if he had decided a studio was a place to play.
'And the other mothers seem to have felt it too.'
The mothers' radar had begun to operate.
However much they pretended otherwise, their eyes kept traveling to Seo Gang-woo.
What lay thick in those eyes was not wariness but a strange curiosity.
Jang Jin-seok took this for an abnormal sign.
The reason was simple.
Most parents believe their own child is special. Mothers who appoint themselves manager to a child actor in the entertainment world are more so.
For people like that to be unable to concentrate on their own children means......
'......he has a kind of appeal that overwhelms maternal love.'
Whatever the case, from an ad man's standpoint it couldn't get better. An appeal like that was certain to radiate off the screen as well.
Jang Jin-seok wore a satisfied smile. It was time to call the start of the audition.
"Tell them we'll start with the individual interviews."
"Yes, sir. Mothers! We'll begin with the individual interviews!"
The heat in the room shot up.
***
"The questions and answers will run three minutes."
Following the staff's guidance, the children and guardians began going in one pair at a time.
In a makeshift interview room set up in one corner of the studio, after the three-minute individual interview comes the camera test.
You might say three minutes is stingy for children who made it to the second round, but.
'That's what people say when they don't know.'
Three minutes is plenty.
In this business people usually decide whether to use someone in one or two seconds.
Jang Jin-seok scratched his head with the corner of his pen.
Five children went past.
It felt like a storm had blown through.
'......Hah. Children and I really don't get along.'
Children's attention wanders. With boys it's worse.
The fifth child, bored out of his skull, sat down and stood up more than ten times.
And if that boy were put on a set?
'A disaster.'
What should take two hours to shoot could stretch into five.
In that sense, the next applicant was a model case in himself.
Never stood up while waiting, never whined at his mother, and in fact steadied his nervous mother instead.
'......What is this. Did I burn all of this year's luck in one go?'
Seo Gang-woo was as extraordinary as he looked.
"Would you prefer coffee or tea, ma'am?"
"Ah, could I possibly just have a glass of......"
"Of course. Would a bottle of water be all right?"
"Yes, yes."
"And Gang-woo. What would you like to drink?"
"Hot chocolate."
His taste is exactly right for his age, you might say.
Jang Jin-seok looked at Lee Su-yeon and Seo Gang-woo with a contented smile.
Where his eyes were aimed was Lee Su-yeon.
"Hello. I'm Jang Jin-seok, team leader of Production Team 2 at Sail Planning. You're Gang-woo's mother?"
"Yes, hello. I'm Gang-woo's mother, Lee Su-yeon."
From the start this is nothing but a formality of an interview.
There's only one thing at stake.
Leading her to sign a contract so that gasp of a face doesn't run off somewhere else.
'The most important part of booking a kids model is winning over the child's mother.'
Small talk followed.
How's the weather, how was the trip in? He didn't forget to compliment her child either.
"Your son is very fine-looking."
There was no need for empty flattery. It was simply fact.
Even seeing him with his own eyes now, he can't believe it.
'......How can a kid be that handsome?'
He has to keep talking to the mother, and his eyes keep getting stolen away.
"......We are reviewing this very positively. In the case of the appearance contract, it's paid on site, and......"
Jang Jin-seok was drawing his sentence out when he blanked entirely. His field of vision had filled with Seo Gang-woo drinking hot chocolate.
The staffer asked, puzzled.
"......Team leader?"
"So, ah. Yes. Hot chocolate."
"Sorry?"
The way he took the paper cup with both hands, that expression as he blows on it with pursed lips.
Slurp—.
And then the look of him savoring the sweetness with his eyes shut.
All of it is like watching one perfectly finished commercial.
He had only looked at the boy's face, and a storyboard assembled itself in Jang Jin-seok's head.
A weary walk home from work, coming back to a warm house, a cup of hot chocolate shared with your son.
Closing on the brand logo and our Gang-woo's bright smile.
He can see the picture where sales climb.
Don't they call an actor who stirs a film director's inspiration a muse?
"Team leader. Team leader? Are you all right?"
"Gang-woo's mother. We're also going to shoot a hot chocolate commercial — no, nothing has come in yet, but it probably will. So, what was it. Would you be interested?"
Twenty years in advertising, and Jang Jin-seok had laid eyes on such a muse for the first time.
***
"Mom. Am I shooting a hot chocolate commercial too?"
"W-well. Mom doesn't know either?"
After the interview that wasn't an interview, I moved on for the camera test.
When I got to the center of the studio I could see the children going through their tests.
"All right, good~ next applicant. Min-su! It's Min-su's turn!"
Min-su is two ahead of me. I figured I'd only have to wait a little, but.
'......Why do they keep staring? It's a lot.'
The eyes around me are hot.
The mothers whose sons had finished weren't leaving their seats; they stared at me with smoldering eyes.
Some seem to know each other, and trade speculation about me.
"......Who is he? That's not a face I've seen."
"He looks like he's signed somewhere, doesn't he?"
"Would it be an agency we know?"
It sounds like they mean to be heard.
My mother, too, looked at me with awkward eyes and gripped my hand tight.
'Honestly, if I had backing like that, would I be here?'
I made an effort to ignore it and focused on the camera test underway.
The order was simple.
Face front and greet, then take various poses in front of the camera.
'Seems similar to shooting a profile video?'
The difference is that there's a prepared set.
Equipment I'd never come across stood everywhere.
Lights and a reflector, and a boom mic too. Rather serious for picking a kids model.
'Looks like there's an ad shoot afterward. Fun.'
Everything was new and strange.
Enough that it still didn't feel real that I'd come back to the past.
"Next up is Gang-woo! Gang-woo? Time to get ready."
"Ah, yes!"
I'd been sightseeing, and before I knew it my turn had come around.
A plastic chair with armrests, and I stood in front of it.
The wary eyes of the mothers came into full view.
They're probably hoping I fail.
Only then can their sons get on TV.
'Well, it's no loss to me if I do.'
Still, shouldn't a person do their best?
The time given to me is two minutes.
'They said to introduce myself for about thirty seconds first, so......'
Smile, and move my face around a bit. That should do it.
Whoo.
I drew a deep breath and opened my mouth.
Three, two, one.
"Hello! I'm Seo Gang-woo. I'm going into third grade at Myeongseong Elementary School, and the things I like are anime and chocolate!"
The greeting was done, so I turned my head in order.
So the camera could get plenty of my profile.
One step was left.
The flower of any self-introduction. Smile and fire the greeting off.
'If there's one thing I'm confident about, it's my smile.'
My changed face was so strange to me that I practiced expressions whenever I got a chance.
It looked good to me, but who knows how it looks to somebody else.
Nothing for it but to try.
Three, two, one, and shoot.
"Please take care of me!"
Keeping the smile on, I checked the room.
'Did it land?'
It landed.
The eyes of those mothers, so full of wariness before, had filled up with hearts.
***
The studio is busy. Actor Choi Do-hyun looked around.
"Actor Choi, welcome!"
"Yes, hello. Thanks for all your hard work."
Twenty years in the business, a national actor out of child roles who shot to stardom the moment he debuted as Man-deuk in .
Choi Do-hyun walked through the studio receiving the staff's greetings.
The atmosphere was quite unlike a normal set.
He asked his manager.
"Hyung. Something going on here?"
"Kids model audition, apparently. You know that thing you're shooting next month. The car TVC. Looks like they're finding the kid for the back seat."
"Ah, that? I heard there was a kid with a good look. I thought that was already decided."
"Today's the day of that kid's audition. The boss said to come see the face and go."
"......So that's why they told me to come in before the call time. What's so important about a kid's face."
"Matching mugs matters, doesn't it. Just look at the face and go."
Actor Choi Do-hyun arrived an hour before his scheduled call time.
All for one kid who's going to be in a commercial.
Nine in the morning is a lethal hour for an actor in more ways than one.
Facial swelling, and less of the sleep that's already in short supply.
If the boss hadn't pleaded with him, he'd never have swallowed a schedule this unreasonable.
Choi Do-hyun swallowed his complaints and shuffled along.
He asked his manager.
"What's the boss really after?"
"With what."
"He didn't kick up all this to make me look at a kid's face. It's the drama, isn't it?"
The manager clamped his mouth shut.
One of his habits when he's been hit dead center.
"So I'm right."
"......I heard the boss doesn't like the child actor on this next drama. Says the acting is no good?"
"It's not that she can't do it, it's just, hmm."
A Monday-Tuesday mini-series in sixteen episodes.
Choi Do-hyun has been going through a slump at the box office lately.
The film he was scheduled to appear in fell apart spectacularly, and the drama he prepared with ambition barely cleared seventeen percent at its peak.
Seventeen percent. Not a bad number. But not a good one either.
For a man who had walked a paved road since his child-actor days, this drama carried real weight.
"Didn't you say the kid shooting the ad with me has no career? Seo Gang-woo, was it?"
"Yeah. But the face is good enough to chew up any lack of camera experience."
"How handsome can a kid possibly be......"
Choi Do-hyun stopped grumbling and shut his mouth.
The reason his manager had been so impressed was right there.
A smile clear without a speck on it, a young voice. As a former child actor, he could tell.
That kid is going to make it big on his face alone.
Choi Do-hyun turned to look at his manager. As if he'd known it was coming, a full-blown grin greeted him.
"You're going to swap the child actor, aren't you?"
"......Just have him act one thing for me."
"Act?"
"Sleeping. What we're shooting is a car TVC. That much I can ask for, surely."
The kid's a child actor who'll be on screen for all of ten minutes.
But isn't a child actor an actor doing a job of acting all the same?
Excellent acting? He isn't even hoping for that.
He only wanted the most basic thing kept.
'......Just don't be afraid of the camera.'
Choi Do-hyun clenched a fist.
He'd meant not to get his hopes up, but there was no helping the swell in his chest.
Because it's hard not to place hope in a face like that.