"Son!!"
My father, home from work, hoisted me up without even taking his socks off.
What followed was a hail of kisses; his stubble prickled my skin.
Beside us my mother laughed and tried to stop him.
"You're hurting him. That's enough."
"Bear it even if it hurts! Let Dad have a kiss for once!"
He'd heard I went to an audition and couldn't hide his excitement.
It does hurt, but not so much that I can't take it.
And seeing him this happy makes me happy along with him.
"I hear you filmed some video too. Gang-woo did acting?"
"Yes. Here, here. They sent us the file."
A video played on the smartphone my mother handed over.
[Daddy, I'm sleepy—.]
There I am, whining in my sleep.
It feels awkward in a way it didn't while I was acting. Embarrassing, somehow.
'......Honestly though, I really am handsome.'
He's handsome even to me, so what about my father?
I stole a glance at him and his eyes were brimming.
My mother said he was being ridiculous and handed him a peeled tangerine.
Mouth working, my father asked.
"When are they shooting the commercial?"
"In a month."
"And the TV broadcast."
"With editing and getting everything agreed, I think they said it takes a month?"
"So in two months we can see our son on TV? Ah, what do we do if he gets too famous."
My father patted my shoulder and asked.
"Son. When you're famous later, no pretending you don't know Dad, right?"
"Honey."
My mother's smile dropped away and she gave him a warning glare.
There's something she's been saying a lot lately.
Be humble. You aren't handsome. There are impressive people everywhere in the world.
'Which suggests she's restraining herself from praising me too much......'
She says that, but she likes it.
Even now, she's replaying the video of her son acting over and over, proud of him.
My father must have noticed it too.
Hup.
He put a finger to his lips with an exaggerated gesture and laughed.
"I'm only saying it because it's a shame~ if it weren't for this job I'd tag along and see the set with my son."
My father stroked my hair and asked.
"Son. Was the audition fun?"
"Yes. I got to see new things, it was good. There was a lot of interesting stuff."
"Interesting stuff?"
"Lights and microphones and things. The camera was huge too."
I really did get to look at things I'd only ever have seen in photos in my past life. I experienced things I'd never have gotten to do.
In my past life I was busy avoiding people.
Because there were plenty of people who disliked me openly.
And now? I'm getting more love than I deserve.
Come to think of it, I've changed a lot too.
When a stranger smiles at me I smile back and greet them.
I can even wink as fan service.
'I've tried it a few times and people just about collapsed.'
These days I think I understand what people mean when they say being handsome never stops being a thrill.
My mother said with a beaming face.
"Oh, right. We saw Choi Do-hyun."
"Choi Do-hyun? The guy from ?"
"Yes. Looks like he's shooting the commercial with Gang-woo. Apparently the concept is a father and son going camping?"
"......So he's playing the dad?"
"That's right?"
My father tapped my shoulder playfully again.
"Son. If you get famous and throw Dad away......"
"Honey!"
"Heh heh heh. I'm joking. That fellow was a good actor even as a kid. Didn't he first debut on the small screen at about Gang-woo's age?"
He debuted at eleven, was it?
Choi Do-hyun, former child actor. He'd be at twenty years in the business.
Anyway, that famous actor gave me his phone number afterward — my mother's, to be exact.
My mother still seemed dazed by the fact, and said in a blank voice.
"So I got a phone number."
"A number? Who gave it to you?"
"Choi Do-hyun."
"Choi Do-hyun? Why is he giving numbers to a married woman!"
"No, it wouldn't be for me, it'd be for Gang-woo."
"......Would it?"
"Yes. He looked at Gang-woo and asked if he was interested in acting."
"And what did Gang-woo say?"
"Well......"
My mother's and father's eyes both swung to me.
Acting? It was fun. And it felt like something I could do.
But a person shouldn't open up their heart the second they like something, I've learned.
So I told him I'd think about it.
***
A month later, in Mapo-gu, Seoul, where the car TVC is being shot.
Team leader Jang Jin-seok of Sail Planning looked around.
Inside the soundstage, a set had been completed that looked like an actual outdoor campsite lifted and set down whole.
A tent and camping chairs, a table, and......
'a fire pit stand too. Okay.'
There's even a spot where you can light a fire.
Along one wall an enormous chroma key backdrop had been installed.
An unavoidable measure for the CG work. The middle-aged director, prickly-looking, said it half as a complaint.
"An ad like this, the romance of it is an outdoor location. Shame~"
"Nothing to be done. Actors are expensive."
"It's a shame, but I'll shoot it looking good."
The director changed his attitude at once, as if he'd never been disappointed at all, and pointed at the set.
A hearty laugh burst out of him.
"There won't be anything stilted about it. See the set? That's real soil. The grass is real too."
Just as the director said, it's full of realism.
Enough that you wonder whether they didn't shovel up a section of an actual campsite and haul it over.
The staff moved busily, checking the last of the setup. The lighting hand was adjusting the output to produce a sunlight effect, and the props hand was correcting the angle of the props with the camera's position in mind.
Not one worker going to waste.
But not everyone was lending a hand.
The director looked at the staff who had come in behind Jang Jin-seok and tilted his head.
There was no earthly reason for this many people from the agency to be here.
"But team leader, the people behind you there......"
"Ah, these lot."
They're people who by rights should be back in Gangnam hammering keyboards.
There's only one reason they came: Seo Gang-woo. Three staff put in for field work and trotted along, all to look at one kid.
"They made such a fuss about coming that I brought them."
Jang Jin-seok shot his staff a warning glance.
"You lot have to go back and work after this, you really okay with that? If work piles up I'll......"
"We'll finish it if we have to work through the night!"
"You've genuinely lost your minds, haven't you?"
Jang Jin-seok sighed.
The staff had paper bags in both hands.
Stuffed full of chocolate and robots, the sort of thing a ten-year-old might like.
Jang Jin-seok shook his head slowly.
There are cases of people putting in for field work to go see a celebrity they like, but for a child actor it was a first.
They had even started competing outright with their tributes in hand.
"What did you bring? I've got strawberry latte. Organic pasture-raised milk with Kingsberry and Jirisan honey in it~"
"I've got Godeva chocolate. Bought it on overseas direct order the second the audition ended. Gang-woo drank hot chocolate, remember. He'll like this more."
"......I lose."
"Looking at you, you don't have the basics of fan life down. A fan gives not the present she wants to give, but the thing the celebrity needs and likes."
The director asked in a dazed voice.
"......A child actor gets that much? I did watch the video you sent."
"Yes. Enough that the video can't keep up with the real thing."
The director raised both eyebrows. The doubt didn't look like it was going anywhere. Jang Jin-seok didn't add a word either way.
He'd be convinced once he saw the kid's face anyway.
'Speak of the tiger and it comes.'
The floor got noisy.
"Hello! Hello!"
"Gang-woo, you're here~~!!!!"
A child's voice greeting people. Fan club members gushing. Seo Gang-woo had arrived.
The director's head turned too. Once he'd confirmed the model's face he broke into a grin and rubbed his hands as if he couldn't wait.
"We can't have more attention going to the kid than the car. This is stoking my competitive spirit. I'll give it everything."
Jang Jin-seok nodded, smiling.
He's a man who'll shoot anything beautifully. He's been scouted as far away as Germany.
Jang Jin-seok looked at his watch. Because Seo Gang-woo had arrived early.
'An hour before the call time. Came with his mother again this time.'
Child actors usually arrive first and wait longest before going home. Industry standard. And yet......
'......Choi Do-hyun came early too?'
There was someone he hadn't expected.
Choi Do-hyun. An expensive actor had hauled his precious self to the site early.
Is it because he was a child actor himself?
'No, that's not it. That fellow may not be late, but he keeps to the clock exactly. And there's no unusual case this time like last time......'
He soon learned the reason. Jang Jin-seok spotted the woman beside Choi Do-hyun.
A woman no one in this industry could fail to know.
, , .
A ratings machine who turns everything she touches into a hit.
It was writer Kim Mi-ra.
***
"......I'm not dreaming, am I. Would you pinch my cheek for me? That child's face has no realism to it at all??"
Kim Mi-ra asked with her eyes wide. She kept looking out past the dressing room as if she couldn't tear her gaze away.
"Have you ever seen me say something that wasn't so?"
"He genuinely has no realism. You're handsome enough yourself, and......"
"We're in different classes, is that it?"
"Yeah. If you're 3D, he's like 4D."
"......I'd be about that good with a filter on too."
"I don't think so?"
"......"
"I'm joking. Don't sulk. You're gorgeous too. Handsome."
Kim Mi-ra laughed and waved a hand. She went on with the happy problem.
"Seo Gang-woo, was it? We'll have to nerf his looks a little with the makeup. We can't have too much attention going to the child actor. It's a problem when an actor is too good-looking, isn't it~"
For the first time in ages, Choi Do-hyun was told he was uglier than someone.
He didn't feel wronged.
The object of comparison was on another dimension.
"So what will you do. Is the casting decided?"
"Yeah. I've got a feeling. Let's use him."
"What about the child actor who was already set?"
"Toss her to another production."
Kim Mi-ra waved her hand about.
There was one child actor in the place Seo Gang-woo would take.
Notifying someone of a swap this way is out of order by the customs of the industry, but that's how this world is.
"And that one, well, her acting is only a little wanting; she's got a good look. I don't think there's a PD who'd dislike her."
She sank into thought for a moment and made a sound through her nose.
"Hmm, but......"
"Something bothering you?"
"She's actor Ra Ju-hyun's granddaughter. You know? The iron rice bowl at KBC. Actor Ra has been in twenty dramas there, easily."
"I know her. She's got some pull, that one."
There was an ambush waiting.
Actor Ra Ju-hyun is famous for playing the mother-in-law in daily dramas.
The child actor was Ra Ju-hyun's granddaughter.
The family had been actors for generations — grandmother, mother and granddaughter, all actors.
Born with an actor's spoon in her mouth rather than a gold one.
"I did float the idea yesterday that the child actor might be swapped. She was absolutely furious."
"She got angry?"
"Obviously."
Kim Mi-ra said, raising her eyes.
"You decide to cut the granddaughter she'd arranged to put on screen, her own flesh and blood. How would she not lose her temper?"
Ra Ju-hyun is famous for being hysterical to begin with. She's loud at the network too, so the shockwave would be considerable.
But however loud an actor is, they can't defy the writer, who is king of a drama.
"A few words to the bureau chief and the noise will die down. But the position of a PD who's only completed two projects is a bit different. The PD might object. He has to watch the actors' faces too."
"......More complicated than I thought."
"I'm on your side. What wouldn't I do to raise the ratings."
It was as good as an okay.
With the table read only two weeks away, Seo Gang-woo had to be cast as fast as possible if the schedule wasn't to slip.
Kim Mi-ra clapped Choi Do-hyun on the shoulder.
"I've confirmed the real thing, so I'll go. Good luck with the ad shoot. See you at the read-through?"
"Writer, he doesn't know yet."
"Hm? Know what."
"A while back I sounded Gang-woo out about whether he was interested in acting."
"And?"
"He said he'd think it over."
"Think it over?"
Kim Mi-ra frowned. It was an expression that said she found it hard to understand.
"He's a kid debuting as a kids model. Why would he not want it? Isn't getting famous the whole point?"
Never mind the mother — surely the child himself comes out to sets like this because he enjoys it.
Kim Mi-ra recalled the Seo Gang-woo she had seen in the camera test video.
The spark poured off him.
Children like that treat a set like their own living room and love standing in front of people.
In a word, an attention hound.
A boy like that hesitating about acting? It made no sense. It was a thing that ought not to exist.
"Sweetheart. I've already told them I'm swapping the child actor, you know?"
"So we get permission. You and me."
"......Is this why you called me here?"
"Yes. Honestly, I wasn't confident about persuading him alone. Shut your eyes and help me out this once."
Kim Mi-ra bit her lip.
She had forgotten.
That this Choi Do-hyun creature is also a man who will not pick his means or methods where ratings are concerned.
She couldn't very well snap at him that the actor was his catch, so he could finish the casting himself.
'......I've got a feeling.'
The ones holding the remote control in the living room are women in their forties and fifties.
They like handsome men, and they like handsome child actors.
A child who looks like that? And with that acting on top of it? She was certain the early ratings would jump another three percent.
Kim Mi-ra thought.
'Can't let him get away.'
That this was a child she had to seduce by any means necessary.