A crumpled script, and crooked handwriting glimpsed on the open pages.
It was not only Seo Gang-woo's looks that had startled Ra Ju-hyun.
That obsession, that manic analysis of the script, had taken hold of her.
'Not something children this age show easily.'
Of course, it isn't that worn scripts like that don't exist at all.
Child actors' parents will go over a script with a fine-tooth comb out of a wish for their children to do well.
'Take me — I hounded Ji-yun exactly that way.'
But that hand gripping the script, that strength in the grip, cannot be imitated.
[Is it you? The one who stole our Ji-yun's part.]
What kind of acting will he do?
Wasn't it his acting ability, not those looks, that captured writer Kim Mi-ra?
Venomous eyes hid their anticipation and watched Seo Gang-woo.
She sees a child smiling.
Not cowed in the slightest by the fierce performance his opponent has just given.
Choi Do-hyun said in a voice that was crawling into the ground.
"......That was well done, Ji-yun. Your acting has come a long way, hasn't it?"
"Yes. I practiced a lot."
"It shows. That's impressive. Ahem. Gang-woo? Shall we act?"
Eyes trembling with unease looked at Seo Gang-woo.
Seo Gang-woo gazed steadily at Choi Do-hyun and nodded.
Ra Ju-hyun said.
"I'll read the lines. Actor Choi, give me a script."
"Sunbae-nim. You have to do it properly. If you go easy because he isn't your granddaughter......"
"Am I an amateur? I don't play games like that, so don't make a fuss."
"Here you are."
"No, Gang-woo. Could I have the boy's?"
Choi Do-hyun's eyes went round, and he asked Seo Gang-woo's leave.
"I don't mind."
A cheerful assent, and Ra Ju-hyun took the script.
Well, well.
'He's done a thorough character analysis even with the limited material.'
Not just his own role — he had dismantled the other characters thoroughly as well.
A child abandoned by his parents.
A lawyer who only needs to win — why on earth did he come to meet this child privately?
Seo Gang-woo has analyzed the reason like this.
[Because his own past of being abandoned by his parents overlaps with it.]
[He feigns coldness, but he hopes the child will not follow in his footsteps.]
[Therefore the emotion the child has to show at the end is not sorrow but resolve.]
Ra Ju-hyun ended up smiling despite herself.
Because she felt this tiny child was better than most working actors.
Roll around the drama world long enough and you're tormented by last-minute script pages more times than you can count.
The situation on daily dramas is worse still.
There are plenty of cases where the script for a scene shooting at four in the afternoon comes out, slapdash, twenty minutes beforehand.
An actor doesn't even have time to memorize the lines. Analysis of the emotion? There's no room for that kind of luxury.
'It's practically improvisation.'
Which is why some people say drama acting is more impressive than film acting.
'A difference of viewpoint, no doubt.'
Ra Ju-hyun was of the sort who thought there was more romance in this kind of obsession.
And in that sense she couldn't help crowing inwardly.
Writer Kim Mi-ra had been right.
The role of Hyeon-seo — no, Jun-yeong — was better going to this boy than to Ji-yun.
"Sunbae-nim?"
"Yes. Begin."
Ra Ju-hyun came to herself and raised her head.
A Seo Gang-woo with a changed air was facing her.
The child who had been acting innocent with a bright smile was nowhere to be found, and a heavy atmosphere hung over him.
He drew a breath deep in and let it out.
"I'm ready."
The eyes alone are different.
Ra Ju-hyun narrowed hers.
It's a situation she has met many times over decades as an actress. The feeling of being overwhelmed by presence.
That boy is the real thing.
'What kind of acting will he show me?'
Ra Ju-hyun opened the script.
The same line as before was spoken. But the reaction is different from Choi Do-hyun's.
Ra Ju-hyun spoke not as a cold, unfeeling character but in the warm voice of someone worried for a child.
"You saw me before, didn't you? I'll spare you the preamble and get to the point. Your parents are getting divorced, Jun-yeong. Both of them have given up custody of you."
Seo Gang-woo was silent.
Not trembling eyes; calm pupils look downward and then rise slowly.
Eyes too clouded for a young child to hold.
She can tell at once. This child has already reached his own conclusion about his parents' divorce.
"So?"
"......"
"Where am I supposed to go? My mom, who's sleeping with a university student? My dad, who's set up house with another woman? Which one's the better choice?"
Seo Gang-woo's voice was low and even, but there was deep injury felt inside it.
He bent his shoulders slightly.
With the change in posture, the sound his chest cavity makes changes as well.
"If it were you, who would you want to go to? Hm?"
The line that comes next is cruel.
The lawyer protagonist recommends 'wherever you can get more child support'.
If a person had any human feeling left in them, what would they face in their heart standing in front of that child?
'......Grief.'
An enormous stone dropped into her heart.
Ra Ju-hyun hesitated to deliver the next line.
Because the child in front of her was weeping, without a single tear, without a single sound.
***
After the short scene ended, the inside of the practice room was wrapped in silence.
Everyone felt what Ra Ju-hyun was feeling.
But the reactions on show were all different.
Lee Su-yeon was watching Seo Gang-woo with trembling lips.
Something like pride in her child is soaked all through it.
Choi Do-hyun? He's covering his mouth.
To Ra Ju-hyun's eye it looked like a hand meant to hide a grin splitting his face.
'......He's thrilled.'
He couldn't not be.
A child actor performing at that level is more than enough for the press to make a headline of it.
And on top of that, isn't this a moment when the thing called social media is coming into its own?
'That's the drama promoted, and no mistake.'
Ra Ju-hyun drew a hand down over her face.
She too was hiding the smile riding on her lips.
At the same time she was worried about her granddaughter.
'How did Ji-yun take it? I hope she isn't crushed.'
A granddaughter who had hauled her acting up in a short span out of competitive spirit.
Strong motivation sometimes brings a large recoil.
Ra Ju-hyun looked at Min Ji-yun.
'......What's this?'
An unexpected reaction.
She is standing with her eyes shining and her mouth hanging open.
"Ji-yun. What did you make of it."
"Huh? Ah. Uh. That, uh."
She dithers and turns her head toward Seo Gang-woo.
Min Ji-yun, half looking at Ra Ju-hyun and unable to gather herself.
Then she dropped her head low.
A reddened face showed.
"I don't know......"
It was amazing. A voice at the edge of hearing came faintly.
Ra Ju-hyun laughed under her breath.
Either way, things seemed to have gone differently from the situation she'd feared. She said.
"Writer Kim certainly has an eye for people."
"That's what I said!"
Choi Do-hyun started making a fuss and rattling off this and that.
How Gang-woo had been at the ad shoot. How the spark just pours out of him.
From the way he talks, he seems to have already made Seo Gang-woo his direct hoobae.
Whatever he was doing, Ra Ju-hyun kept looking at Seo Gang-woo.
He was fiddling with the returned script between his fingers as if the experience just now were something strange and new.
Come to think of it, that would have been the boy's first time trading lines with anyone.
'A natural.'
And even so, that he made everyone present experience an emotion that fierce is purely down to the boy's talent.
Ra Ju-hyun asked.
"You said you weren't yet thinking seriously about acting, didn't you?"
"Sorry?"
"Writer Kim told me. That you only find acting interesting so far, Gang-woo. How is it now. Acting is fun, isn't it?"
A smile formed at the corner of Ra Ju-hyun's mouth. Seo Gang-woo is working his lips.
She knew without needing an answer.
That was the sign of a yes.
Choosing his words, he said.
"It's fun, acting. I want to do more of it."
"Good. That's the frame of mind to start in. Go further. Actor Choi. This child has no agency, does he?"
"Sorry? Yes! That's right."
"Your agency only takes finished actors, so they won't be bringing Gang-woo in."
Ra Ju-hyun, letting out a laugh, looked at Min Ji-yun.
Min Ji-yun had quietly raised her head and was rolling her eyes upward to read the adults' faces.
A genius, and my granddaughter, who admires him.
If she keeps Ji-yun beside this child, might she not develop a little more hunger for acting?
Ra Ju-hyun spoke. Along with a small wish.
"How about Ji-yun's agency?"
Lee Su-yeon said, sounding dazed.
Seo Gang-woo's expression was much the same.
"Well, that's so sudden that......"
"Only give it a thought. You may decide later."
"He probably does need an agency, doesn't he?"
"There will be more and more places calling for him, so......"
The adults' conversation was still going.
"Our agency is really good! The boss is nice, and there are lots of snacks, and, and......"
Min Ji-yun mobilized her hands and feet and started pitching Seo Gang-woo.
'She's hooked.'
Ra Ju-hyun couldn't help a snort of laughter at her granddaughter's green, fresh way of being.
***
Seongdong-gu, Seoul, and Kwon Do-gyeong looked out of his office window.
The view down from the top floor of a four-story building was bleak in the extreme.
A gray four-lane road and a cramped, narrow footpath, cars going past now and then and people walking by in a hurry.
He runs a small-time agency called Lime Entertainment.
Because the company's scale is small, the location and condition of the building weren't good enough to boast about, but
'the substance is being built up solidly.'
The reason was his career as a manager.
Kwon Do-gyeong worked for over ten years as manager to Ra Ju-hyun's daughter — that is, to actress Im A-rin — and struck out on his own afterward.
In this world, connections and money are everything.
Kwon Do-gyeong is a case of someone helped greatly by connections.
Just take Min Ji-yun, a child actor with a promising future, coming to him — that too was thanks to his career as a manager.
'A-rin noona really is a warm-hearted one. I never thought she'd entrust me with her own daughter.'
Recently he had even landed a child role of real weight in a terrestrial drama.
Though it got swapped out.
Thinking about it makes him gloomy. Replacing a role by one-sided notification.
'Ah, sugar crash.'
Kwon Do-gyeong unwrapped a chocolate and chewed it up with a crunch.
Sweetness began coating every fold of his brain.
Vitality springs up. Kwon Do-gyeong clenched a fist and thought.
'Right. Even so, the kid who took that role is coming to us!'
Ra Ju-hyun had introduced a child actor to him.
A boy who's become a hot topic on social media lately.
Possessed of otherworldly looks and cuteness, 'that kid from the car commercial'.
And the child actor who took Min Ji-yun's part.
He wondered what kind of connection this was, but good is good.
He isn't one to be bound by petty grudges anyway.
He's also a businessman doing business.
A smile spread over Kwon Do-gyeong's lips.
'I have to sign him, no matter what......'
Looks, acting ability, everything about this child is off the standard scale.
Just as Kwon Do-gyeong was steeling himself, the office door opened.
Pale skin, a straight, high nose, looks so unreal you wonder whether such looks exist in reality.
It was Seo Gang-woo.
Lee Su-yeon had come along beside him.
Kwon Do-gyeong sprang up from his seat and welcomed them.
"Come in, come in!"
"Hello."
"Would a cup of coffee be all right? And Gang-woo, I heard you like hot chocolate."
"I'll just have water today."
Seo Gang-woo said.
Somehow the mood seems calmer than what he'd been told.
A meeting with a contract on the table, where each side says what it wants. Sipping his tea, Kwon Do-gyeong opened the proceedings.
"You met Ji-yun beforehand, didn't you? Ji-yun belongs to our agency. We tend to specialize in developing child actors. We'll help so that Gang-woo can bring out the most of his talent."
Naturally, his target was the mother, Lee Su-yeon.
But there was something he had overlooked. That the opponent who wouldn't go down easy was not the mother but the child.
Pouring out words without a break, Kwon Do-gyeong glanced sideways at Seo Gang-woo.
A ten-year-old kid who had taken the contract was frowning and reading it carefully.
Ah, he's only making a show of looking at it. Kwon Do-gyeong looked away from the unease raising its head.
But what was pushed under his nose was
"Um, mister."
"Yes?"
"About this clause on deduction of activity expenses. There's no concrete specification of the individual items. Does that mean the company handles it at its own discretion?"
Words he couldn't believe had come out of the mouth of a ten-year-old child.