March, and the first day of term dawned. My mother called from the kitchen.
"Gang-woo, are you up? You'll be late for school!"
"I'm up!"
"Are you in the bathroom again? Looking in the mirror?"
"Yes~"
There's a routine I do every morning.
Run to the bathroom and check my face.
I think it every time, but......
"Being handsome is the best. It never stops being a thrill."
This face is a fraud.
Who made this face, that it's this perfect?
Late last night my father was eating ramyeon, so I got a few chopstickfuls off him.
There ought to be some swelling, but far from puffing up, my face is glowing.
"So one packet of ramyeon isn't nearly enough, is it."
"Seo Gang-woo! You'll wear that face out!"
"I'm coming!"
I spent a little longer in the bathroom today. Because I'm meeting a new class and new faces.
The start of term, life as a third-year at Myeongseong Elementary School. Things from my past life come back to me one after another.
'I really used to hate going to school.'
Children judge a face harder than adults do.
There was no end of discrimination and contempt.
Crying about not wanting to sit next to me was routine, and some froze me out openly, saying they don't play with ugly kids.
Now the treatment is different from the walk to school on.
Within the borders of elementary school, I am a superstar of the universe.
On the way to school, children steal glances at me.
The sixth-graders ahead and the second-graders behind, all of them look at me without exception.
Pointing and whispering among themselves come free.
'What's this? The reaction is fiercer than last time.'
I went in to school briefly during the February break, so I'd done some advance study on the effects of being handsome.
Is it because March is warmer? More and more children were gathering.
I soon learned why they were reacting like this.
"That's him, right? The kid from the commercial?"
"Whoa, it really is!"
Right. I was in a commercial.
Two days ago the car commercial went out in prime time. Quite a few of them seem to have watched it.
Some of the children came right up to me and struck up a friendly conversation.
"You're the kid from the commercial, right? Can I take a photo?"
"Do you have FaceTalk? You don't? Can you make an account?"
"Sign something for me!"
A situation I couldn't have imagined in my past life.
Living with an ugly face, nobody had any interest in me.
If anything I was a target for exclusion. All of this was a change made by being handsome.
The kernel that is me is the same, and only the shell has changed — that used to draw a bitter smile out of me.
A day or two of it and you take it as it comes.
Of course, with the children in such an uproar there is a certain amount of nuisance.
"Teacher! I want to sit with Gang-woo!"
"I put my hand up first!"
"Hey, I got here first!"
"No, I did!"
At seat-picking time a scramble broke out among the kids.
"......Da-bin. It's class time. Aren't you going to your own room?"
"Su-yeon. This isn't your class."
"Ye-sol should go back to her class now too, shouldn't she?"
"Hey! Why are the sixth-graders crowded down here! Get back upstairs!"
And girls came to see me every break and got scolded by the teacher for it.
If anything, class time is when I get to rest.
Even if learning addition, subtraction, division and multiplication is a trial.
'Do I have to keep going to school?'
Elementary school is compulsory, but I hear there's such a thing as homeschooling.
And there are legal ways to be excused from attendance.
"Gang-woo. You're coming to eat, right?"
Surrounded by children, in a second run at life that only I know about, I sighed.
I needed a solution to get out of this situation.
***
Two in the afternoon, homeroom.
My teacher called my name.
"Gang-woo, will you come with the teacher when we finish?"
A few kids who'd been planning to walk home with me jeered.
They tucked their tails quickly enough under the teacher's eye.
Walking down the corridor, my teacher spoke.
Her voice was soft, as if to put me at ease.
"Your mother asked to have a talk with the teacher. That's why we're going to the staff room."
A parent meeting on the first day of term is a thing that almost never happens unless a child has caused trouble.
The reason for the meeting was simple.
'It's about the shooting schedule.'
A month ago, on the day of the ad shoot. My mother gave me a script.
Writer Kim Mi-ra's next work, .
I'd expected something like it when actor Choi Do-hyun asked whether I had any thought of acting.
'I didn't expect an offer this fast, though.'
That writer Kim Mi-ra had made contact directly rather than Choi Do-hyun was unexpected too.
Does a writer roll up her sleeves to cast one child actor?
With that kind of care shown, I thought playing hard to get one more time would be rude.
And more than anything, living as someone other than myself, even for the instant the camera is turning, was a joy.
The moment my heart pounded like it would burst kept circling in my head.
'I want to feel it again.'
In a way it resembles the reward and the rush I felt as a figure artist, and in a way it doesn't.
My mother asked.
"Do you want to try acting?"
"......Yes."
"Does it seem fun?"
Fun and then some. Enough that I resent having lived this long without knowing this kind of fun.
My mother nodded as if that was all she needed.
'......Something welled up in me for no reason then.'
It was exactly as she'd been in my past life.
When I told her I was going to walk the somewhat unfamiliar road of a figure artist.
My mother only looked steadily at me and the figures I had made, and nodded.
And then she said this.
"It's enough if you like it."
After the short parent meeting, I headed home with my mother.
My share of the filming in is about ten minutes.
Shooting starts in two weeks.
I'll be brought into that first week and act for exactly three days or so.
'......Can't they shoot for longer? Going through elementary school again is a bit much.'
That my legal truancy amounts to only three days is a lifelong regret, but there's one thing I can pin hopes on.
"Mom. Writer Kim Mi-ra said my share might get bigger, right?"
"Hm? Oh, yes. It isn't certain, she said she'd have to adjust some things."
"So she's revising the script."
"Probably? But she said not to get my hopes up too high."
Contrary to my mother's words, there was no way not to hope.
More screen time would mean she liked my acting, wouldn't it?
A smile came on its own.
'Looks like I'm going to live a completely different life from before.'
At the main gate of the school building I can see a big mirror with the elementary school's name written under it.
"What. Do you want to look at your face again?"
"I want to look at Mom's face."
"You silly thing."
A changed face was smiling brightly at my mother.
***
I got home and dropped onto the sofa.
It had been a long day.
The shower of attention at school, the talk about the drama shoot.
I thought about taking a short nap, but the script on the table kept catching my eye.
'Two weeks, she said.'
There isn't much time until the table read.
I picked the script up.
.
A script of slight thickness came into my hand. Because of script leak issues, a bit player like me is only given up to his own share of the scenes.
'There are sections that explain the context before and after, but......'
There's no helping the disappointment.
With more of the overall context, deeper analysis is possible.
'I'll pester the writer once the table read is over.'
That's for later; for now I started going over the content I'd read so much I nearly had it by heart.
My role is the child of a divorcing family.
The father and mother have both had affairs and stand in divorce court, and the two of them insist on giving up parental rights.
Which is to say that neither of them wants to raise their son.
'The setup is shocking from the start.'
It's very like writer Kim Mi-ra.
Even in my past life she was famous for enjoying a wide range of genres.
Once the streaming era arrived she also made a number of dramas with real artistic merit.
What that writer wants to hand me is a child abandoned by his parents.
When I first got this script I was curious about what ending the story would head toward.
Which of the mother and father would end up saddled with custody? Why did the boy choose his mother?
Once I'd read it through, the characters' lines began to catch my eye.
「Jun-yeong: I don't want Mom and I don't want Dad. But they say I have to choose one. They ask me which of the people who threw me away is the better one, and what I actually wanted was to ask the judge something. Whether I couldn't just live as an orphan.」
I chewed over every letter.
Why does this person have no choice but to say this? The pitch of the breath, the expression, the movement of the hands.
All of it was built the way I imagined it.
'I thought I was just supposed to follow what the writer tells me to do, but it isn't that either.'
Analyze, dismantle, re-create.
This is a different kind of fun from making a figure.
'When I sculpted a film or anime character I had to follow the original faithfully.'
Acting is different. Or no, is it similar?
"What I actually wanted was to ask the judge something. Whether I couldn't just live as an orphan."
Reciting the same line over and over, I try changing the pitch.
"What I actually wanted was to ask the judge. Whether it wouldn't be all right for me to just— live as an orphan."
I pause partway through and swallow a breath, or change the ending of the sentence.
Kneading resin and drawing a human shape out of it, and what I'm doing now — how different are they really?
They run along the same line in that both are the work of calling into reality a person who does not exist.
'This time I'm the one who becomes the character.'
A strange flutter came over me.
That was when. In the living room, the ringtone on my mother's smartphone went off.
Dee-ree-ree-ree-ree~
It seemed to cut off, then rang again. I came out to the living room and looked at the screen.
[Actor Choi Do-hyun]
Actor Choi Do-hyun? Why is he calling all of a sudden?
Since the ad shoot I've spoken with actor Choi Do-hyun exactly once.
When the first commercial aired, Choi Do-hyun, apparently thinking we'd gotten fairly close, laid on the banter.
"Oh ho, isn't Gang-woo going to be a star now? Standing shoulder to shoulder with your uncle here."
In my past life he was in the gossip columns any number of times over his parents' troubles, but talking to him directly, I can tell.
He's a person with a good nature.
Like a friendly uncle who lives next door, you might say.
'People really do have to be spoken to in person.'
The ringing was going on.
It wasn't a call for me in any case, so I called my mother.
"Mom! Phone! Mom?"
"Gang-woo, what is it?"
"There's a call!"
"Mom's in the bathroom. Take it for me~"
"Okay! Hello?"
He was silent a moment, then asked.
[......Gang-woo? Where's your mother.]
"She's stepped out for a second. What's this about?"
[Mm. I wonder if it's right to be telling you this, Gang-woo.]
His voice was thick with difficulty.
Has some problem come up with the drama production?
Just as the question was forming, he blurted it out as if deciding to hell with it.
[Gang-woo. Do you have time tomorrow, by any chance?]
"Tomorrow?"
[Yeah. When does school finish.]
"Two o'clock."
[Two is good. You met your manager uncle before, remember? The huge man. He'll come pick you up.]
"Tomorrow, just like that?"
[Yeah. And be sure to bring the script.]
"......The writer said not to take the script outside."
[It's fine. Just say your uncle told you to. You've been practicing your acting, right?]
Practicing? Of course. I was doing it just now.
"Yes. Why?"
[Nothing. If you're doing it well, that's all. It isn't as if you can't deliver a line without practice, Gang-woo. Anyway, be sure to bring the script! All right?]
What is with this man? He's making me nervous.
After a good many repetitions of the same instruction he said his piece and hung up.
As if that weren't enough, Choi Do-hyun sent a text.
「Be absolutely certain to bring the script! And tell your mother I'm sorry!」
An apology I could make no sense of came free with it.