"What, what? Is it a celebrity? Who is it?"
"Oh my, oh my, I'm getting an autograph when this is over."
After the self-introductions ended, the floor stirred.
The mothers, who had been dazed, all started turning to look behind them. From the flowering smiles, someone famous seemed to have arrived.
'Who is it?'
A height over 180, with enormous sunglasses covering the face and a mask on top, so the features weren't visible.
I felt like I'd know him up close, but I didn't leave my spot.
The camera test was still going.
"Nice~ now let's try acting. Just think of it as taking a light pose, so don't feel any pressure."
The camera test runs in two stages.
Self-introduction and free acting.
The self-introduction shows what the model's face and voice are like, the way I did earlier.
Free acting? You make a gesture or an expression as the staff instructs.
'It's called acting, but it's closer to striking a pose.'
In fact what the other kids did was nothing but simple movements.
Stretching, or yawning, or throwing both arms up in excitement.
Because the models are young, they don't ask for complicated acting.
And they're picking a child who will be on screen for a few seconds of a commercial to begin with.
I was sitting quietly waiting for the staff's instructions when.
"Excuse me. One moment."
A man built like a bear came over and whispered to the staffer.
"Manager, how have you been. Was there something you needed?"
"Ah, would something like this be possible, by any chance?"
It seemed a variable had come up.
The two whispering exchanged a glance, then turned their eyes to me.
'What's this? Those looks were suspicious.'
There was a brief discussion.
The man called manager bowed his head over and over.
"Understood. It isn't very different from what the other children did, so it should be fine."
"Thank you."
"Gang-woo, I'm sorry~ shall we do it again?"
"Yes!"
"Could you imagine you're sitting in the back seat of a car taking a nap?"
"A nap?"
"Mm-hmm. You said you've been to your grandmother's house with your parents at the holidays, right? Act like it was then."
A child taking a nap in the back seat of a car.
A more specific request than the other kids got.
"When I say three, two, one, you start. Got it?"
"Yes! Understood!"
If anything, it was better.
The more specific the situation, the clearer the action.
Pak-.
That was when. The lights announcing the camera test came on.
Heat settled over my head, and the world in front of me went bright.
The features of the people looking at me began to blur.
Only then did it become real.
This space was prepared for me alone.
A place to look at my face, my gestures, my expressions.
People watch me without trespassing across an invisible line.
As if a glass wall stood between them and me.
'......Like a figure display case.'
There's a thing called an action figure.
It has movable joints, so a collector can put the figure into any pose they want and view the character posed however they like.
This is exactly that situation.
'If I'm the figure inside the case......'
The staffer giving me instructions is the collector.
Come to think of it, actors have something in common with figures in a case too.
A stage seen through a transparent pane, a doll that moves at someone's direction.
The difference would be that the exhibit is a person who moves.
Also, an actor expresses context. A figure does the same.
'A figure isn't just a sculpture imitating a character's exterior.'
If a character is reaching out a hand, there has to be a reason for that gesture, and a difference of one or two degrees in the angle of an eyebrow changes the situation the character is in.
My clients, otaku in the crude term, were people who cared about those details.
To satisfy people like that, some go so far as the madness of fitting hundreds of parts into a single finger.
'I was much the same.'
I was nobody's inferior when it came to detail.
Something more realistic, something more artistic.
To bring out that fine feeling I invested tens, hundreds of hours.
Maybe that's why this stage felt somehow familiar to me.
Think. How do I make these people believe I'm asleep?
I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath in, and let it out slowly.
The staffer's countdown fell.
"Three, two, one!"
My body began to slump back against the chair as if collapsing into it.
In my head I imagined.
That this chair propping me up so stiffly is really a soft car seat, and I'm a child who has crumpled from exhaustion on a holiday drive of more than eight hours.
Carsickness and hunger and boredom.
A child who was whining sinks into a sleep that knows nothing of the world.
The vibration of the car is singing him a lullaby so his deep sleep isn't broken.
Thump. Thump.
Silence came, and the calm sound of my own heart began to ring against my eardrums.
'......What is this?'
I only imitated it, and yet the hair on my body is standing on end.
A liberation I can't account for came over me.
***
If a child actor can only manage to cry, they're halfway home.
That's a saying that goes around the industry.
Actor Choi Do-hyun agreed with it to a degree.
'No, not to a degree — I'd say I fully endorse it.'
A drama set is a chaotic crucible where script pages come flying in at the last minute.
A place where not even tomorrow's broadcast material is secured, as a matter of daily routine, where all-nighters and weekend overtime are the baseline.
A situation where every minute, every second is precious.
The child actor who was supposed to cry whines that she isn't sad? And starts calling for her mother while she's at it?
Then it's a free-for-all on the spot.
A catastrophe where the shooting schedule slips because of one child actor must never be allowed.
So drama PDs make this request first when they cast a child.
[Can you cry for me?]
Under forty seconds is okay.
Under ten seconds is excellent.
It's like treating them as juicing machines, but there's no choice.
Reality made the PDs that way.
'And in that sense, a child actor not being conscious of the camera is the most important talent there is.'
An actor fundamentally performs surrounded by huge numbers of people.
And not only people. Drama shoots come with cameras.
Broadcast cameras as big as artillery pieces, and not one of them but several.
'Plenty of kids you pick thinking they're fine end up crying on set because they're scared.'
So Choi Do-hyun was looking forward to what kind of acting Seo Gang-woo would show in front of the camera.
'Hold on, they could at least have sat him on a sofa. Why give him a chair with no armrests?'
The staffer just now asked for acting a sleep in a car.
But where is Seo Gang-woo sitting? A plastic chair with nowhere to rest an arm and nothing like the give of a car seat.
The one saving grace is that it at least has a back, but that doesn't change how poor an environment it is for a ten-year-old.
'......It's a mess.'
Choi Do-hyun found himself regretting not coming a little earlier.
Then he could have asked them to at least swap the chair out.
'Wait, what am I thinking.'
Choi Do-hyun folded his arms and pressed his lips into a flat line.
He found his own ridiculous train of thought funny and let a puff of air out.
An actor is someone who has to show acting that seems true even in a poor environment.
Wasn't Choi Do-hyun himself trying to see whether this boy Seo Gang-woo had that in him?
He decided to hold his tongue and watch for now.
Choi Do-hyun leaned lazily against the wall and waited for the staffer's word to fall.
How long had it been?
The staffer's mouth opened.
"Three, two, one!"
That was the moment a change came over Seo Gang-woo's body.
A breath drawn in, and the boy's body slowly relaxing.
Basic breathing. The first thing you learn when you learn to act.
The problem is that this boy Seo Gang-woo is a rank beginner with no acting career at all.
'......What. Didn't they say he had no agency?'
Only breathing. But in acting this close to mime, nothing is as important as breath.
Because the moment the breath collapses, the body's center wavers.
Seo Gang-woo held that center as he began to sink slowly into the car seat.
There's no sign of discomfort or nerves.
Choi Do-hyun thought: that is instinct.
There are kids like that.
No camera-shyness, and no formal training, yet able to use their bodies freely.
The industry falls over itself to use a child actor like that.
'Pass.'
A child with talent not just meeting the cut line but running over it.
And just as Choi Do-hyun gave him that passing mark and turned to leave.
A voice thick with sleep came out of Seo Gang-woo's mouth.
"Daddy, I'm sleepy—."
Choi Do-hyun froze in the very posture of leaving.
It would be a lie to say there was nothing stilted about it.
But hearing it together with Seo Gang-woo's body, the sight of it looks real.
The head moves sluggishly, the lips work.
Pale skin under the settling white light, eyebrows creased just slightly.
'Look at this.'
Cheeky little brat. Even the ad-lib is perfect.
***
After the ad shoot ended, Choi Do-hyun exchanged goodbyes with the staff.
'Ugh, I'm tired.'
Where he arrived, dragging his feet, was a black van.
He opened the door and his enormous manager greeted him.
"You're here? Good work."
"Next time tell them not to set the call time early. It isn't even outdoors, so booking a schedule in the morning is out of line. They know perfectly well celebrities are awake at night."
"Got it. Rest up. Going home?"
"Yeah. I'll go sleep."
Choi Do-hyun tipped his neck back against the headrest in exhaustion.
He felt a prickling stare.
He cracked an eye open and saw his manager looking at him in the rearview mirror.
"What, what is it?"
"No, how was it."
"How was the shoot? Same as ever. I busted my back, why?"
"Not the shoot. Him."
Him? Choi Do-hyun paused for a second, then laughed.
Seo Gang-woo. It would be about that boy.
The manager was watching Choi Do-hyun with the face of a dog that needs to relieve itself.
He doesn't even mean to hide his impatience.
The manager seemed to have taken quite a liking to Seo Gang-woo.
"How did you see it, hyung?"
"Looked like he's got the fundamentals? You saw him relax his body with his breathing. That isn't easy."
"So it's like he's taken acting lessons somewhere?"
"Yeah. Ten million percent."
"Doubt it. That kid's a natural."
"......A natural?"
Choi Do-hyun nodded at the manager, who had asked it back.
Choi Do-hyun recalled the sight of Seo Gang-woo sound asleep in the chair.
Instinct. He himself was a former child actor who had climbed to where he stood now.
He too had heard the praise of being a natural from adults more times than he could count, so he could spot the leaf that promises a good tree.
'Feels a bit like looking at myself as a kid.'
When Choi Do-hyun only kept smiling without a word, the manager muttered in dissatisfaction.
"So are you saying he's good or he isn't."
"He's good. Whatever he lacks can be coached on set, and he'd fly. His looks are insane to start with."
"So should I call the boss?"
"Hold on. Not the boss — let me make one call."
"To who."
"Our writer Kim."
Writer Kim Mi-ra. A ratings machine courted alike by all three public broadcasters, KBC, MBS and SBC.
Famous chiefly for writing lurid melodrama, Kim Mi-ra has one iron rule. Ratings, and only ratings.
Choi Do-hyun smiled the smile of a man about to win and cast his line.
"Yes, writer. You have a moment, don't you?"
Along with bait the fish crazed for ratings could not pass up.