Park Song-hu's gaze fixed on Park Song-min.
What had that been just now?
The “I've been waiting” Park Song-min had spoken was the same line he'd repeated dozens of times.
The words were the same, and so was the pronunciation.
But something was different.
It was as if the air had been pressed down.
His voice hadn't been loud, yet it had seemed to fill the whole living room.
“…….”
Park Song-hu's pride wouldn't let him admit it.
No, more precisely, he couldn't understand it in the first place.
That kid had never studied acting.
Forget acting classes. He'd hardly ever stood in front of people.
So how could he put emotion into a single line?
“……Do it again.”
“What? Do what?”
“What you just did.”
“N-no! I was just talking to myself!”
Park Song-min waved his hands.
He really had been talking to himself.
As he'd written the backstory, the character had come alive in his mind, and the words had simply slipped out unconsciously.
“Never mind that. Do it again.”
Park Song-min flinched, then murmured the line once more.
“……I've been waiting.”
“…….”
Park Song-hu picked up the script again without a word.
He thought of the backstory Park Song-min had written for him.
A man who had spent years in hiding.
A man erased from the world.
The moment he decided to reveal himself again.
“I've been waiting.”
No. That wasn't it.
“……Are you the male lead in a romance drama?”
As if Park Song-hu weren't irritated enough already, Park Song-min had to needle him.
“I really will kill you.”
“Ah, eek!”
“Hah…….”
Park Song-hu leaned against the back of the sofa.
He looked up at the ceiling and let out a breath.
“…….”
Afraid his brother's anger might spill over onto him, Park Song-min stared fixedly at his laptop screen.
His serialization page on Soseol Joa.
The comments were visible.
Around three again today.
Park Song-min had no talent for plotting.
He knew it himself.
He struggled to work out how his protagonist could escape a crisis, and he was poor at adjusting the pace of a fight scene to build tension.
But there was one thing.
Characters were different.
-Honestly, the plot of this novel is frustrating, but I read it for the characters.
-Isn't the author a master at making characters? Even every supporting character feels alive. I can't stop reading.
-The characters really are insane. Se-rin's line in this chapter gave me chills.
-If the plot moved a bit faster, this could reach the top ranks. What a waste.
Each time a comment appeared, Park Song-min's feelings rode a roller coaster.
He'd beam at the praise, then slump at the word “plot.”
Still, the readers who had stayed all had the same reason.
The characters.
Even the villains had their own logic. Every time a supporting character appeared, that person's particular habits and way of speaking came alive.
As a writer, Park Song-min was something of a character obsessive.
Inventing a character's past and compressing that person's life into a single line of dialogue…….
It was like borrowing someone else's life and trying it on. For Park Song-min, who had lived shut away in his room, it was also his only way to experience the world outside.
That was what had happened earlier.
When he'd written the backstory for the man in the <Hwain> script, his fingers had moved on their own.
A face the man had never forgotten for even a moment during his years in hiding.
That was why the line had escaped him without his realizing it.
The man's emotions, turning over in his mind, had simply spilled out through his mouth.
‘……Can I even call this acting?’
He'd become too absorbed.
It was what he always did when he wrote novels.
When he stepped inside a character, that person's emotions came rushing in as though they were his own.
The only difference was whether he wrote them down or spoke them aloud.
“Hey.”
“Y-yes?”
Park Song-hu had risen from the sofa and was looking his way.
Arms folded.
Brow furrowed.
“You go to the <Hwain> shoot in my place on Thursday.”
“……?”
What?
It took Park Song-min a moment to understand what this man was saying.
He meant to hand over his own shoot.
And it was <Hwain>!
<Hwain>, the highest-rated Friday-Saturday drama!
“W-wait! What are you……!”
“What?”
“I'm not an actor! I'm a web novelist! I've never even stood in front of a camera, so how could I……!”
“You did fine on the variety show.”
“I only did that because I had no choice! A drama is…… a drama is on a completely different level!”
Park Song-min's hands flailed in the air.
Louie watched with interest, letting out a “Meow.”
“What if I ruin a take?! If I go there, everyone will think I'm you, and I'll have to act in front of all those people! In front of professional actors! Actor Yoo Yeon-jae will be there too! If I deliver a line in front of Yoo Yeon-jae, it'll be like some school recital……!”
Park Song-hu took a threatening step forward.
Even so, Park Song-min didn't back down this time!
“I won't do it! Never!”
“Is that so?”
“It is!”
“If you don't want to, move out of this place.”
“…….”
***
Thursday, six in the morning.
The black van driven by Jo Yong-gi emerged from the apartment building's underground garage.
“Brother, are you feeling all right?”
Jo Yong-gi glanced in the rearview mirror.
“…….”
There was no answer.
He knew Song-hu was usually a man of few words, but today was especially bad.
He turned up the radio slightly.
An early-morning pop song filled the van.
After they left the Paju Interchange, the set building came into view between rice paddies and fields.
Of course, Park Song-min was gazing out the window and calculating an escape route in case he was found out.
‘If I run across those fields, it's about two kilometers to the highway. From there, if I hitchhike…….’
“Brother, we're here!”
The van door opened.
The assistant director came running out from the set entrance.
“Oh, Mr. Song-hu! We look forward to working with you today!”
“……Likewise.”
Park Song-min bent ninety degrees at the waist.
The assistant director paused.
Park Song-hu, bowing ninety degrees?
That was nothing like the reputation the assistant director knew.
“Th-the makeup room is over there.”
“……Thank you.”
As Park Song-min entered the set, the staff turned to look.
News traveled fast.
It took less than five minutes for word of Park Song-hu's arrival to travel from one end of the trailers to the other.
A cameo by the face genius whose conduct scandal had brought him down.
Of course people would talk.
As Park Song-min passed through their gazes, he kept swallowing hard.
Every time someone looked at him, his neck stiffened and his walk grew more robotic.
‘Act natural, act natural…….’
Walking beside him, Jo Yong-gi whispered into his ear.
“Brother, the atmosphere on set is good right now. Everyone seems curious about you.”
Park Song-min merely nodded.
He was afraid something strange would come out if he opened his mouth.
He entered the makeup room.
The makeup artist sat him in front of a mirror, leaned in to inspect his face, and said:
“Wow, your skin is really nice.”
‘……Maybe secretly stealing my brother's skin care products and using them worked.’
After his makeup was done, he stepped into the hall.
Someone was walking toward him from the far end.
Tall enough to stand out even among ordinary people, with a sharp jawline.
Yoo Yeon-jae, the star of <Hwain>.
‘Wow…… good-looking.’
Yoo Yeon-jae looked even better in person than on screen.
Their eyes curved like crescent moons when they smiled. It gave them an air completely at odds with the sharp detective they played in <Hwain>.
“Oh?”
Yoo Yeon-jae spotted Park Song-min and stopped.
Their eyes widened, then they broke into a bright smile.
‘This is different from what I've heard.’
It was unexpected.
Everyone in the industry knew the stories about Park Song-hu's reputation.
But the air he gave off now was nothing like that.
‘He seems more humble. Has he really changed?’
“Mr. Song-hu.”
“……Yes?”
“I'm Yoo Yeon-jae. I'm playing opposite you today.”
“…….”
“I look forward to working with you.”
Yoo Yeon-jae extended a hand.
The smile was polished.
Friendly, but with a certain distance.
They shook hands. As Yoo Yeon-jae walked away, a thought occurred to them.
‘……Does he have hyperhidrosis?’
How could someone's hand be that sweaty?
Pretending to sit down, Yoo Yeon-jae discreetly wiped their hand against their trousers.
***
The interrogation room set stood farther inside than any other set for <Hwain>.
Walls made to resemble concrete, a steel table, rusted water pipes.
A single fluorescent light hung crookedly from the ceiling.
The lighting team had deliberately created its uneasy glow.
Park Song-min left the makeup room and stepped onto the set.
His own face in the mirror had looked unfamiliar.
Dark fatigue lay across his cheeks, with shadows beneath his eyes.
A man who had spent years on the run.
‘……What am I doing here?’
He sat in the metal chair.
A chill ran from his buttocks up his spine.
The handcuffs were props and hadn't actually been fastened, but even resting them over his wrists gave them a heavy feel.
The producer approached from beside the monitor.
“Mr. Song-hu, nervous about filming again after so long?”
The producer had noticed his rigid shoulders.
Of course, the minor problem was that this wasn't his first shoot in a long time; it was his first shoot ever. Either way, there was no denying that he was nervous.
“Just relax and do what feels comfortable.”
When the producer stepped away, Yoo Yeon-jae sat across from him.
Dressed as the detective.
They looked entirely different from when he'd seen them outside the set.
Their eyes had narrowed, and the corners of their mouth had dipped slightly.
They already seemed deep in character.
Yoo Yeon-jae looked at Park Song-min across the table.
A slight nod of greeting.
Even that seemed like something the detective would do, Park Song-min thought with admiration.
‘……They're already ready.’
His own leg, meanwhile, was shaking.
He stopped it as soon as he became aware of it.
His heart felt ready to burst.
‘Focus.’
Park Song-min closed his eyes.
Ever since the night his brother had declared, “Thursday it is,” Park Song-min had done what he was best at.
He'd created a character.
The script gave him a name.
Kang Yoon-ho.
Twenty-eight years old.
It told him almost nothing else.
So Park Song-min filled in the rest.
He opened a blank document and invented the life of the man in the <Hwain> script from the beginning.
His past. His family. His hobbies. His favorite food. The clothes he wore in winter. The first thing he did after waking in the morning.
Kang Yoon-ho was a rookie reporter.
While working on an investigative report for a provincial newspaper, he'd probed corruption in a powerful organization.
He'd written his first article at twenty-three, and that winter, he was officially recorded as dead.
A death disguised as an accident.
His family and his peers all thought he was dead.
He watched footage from a security camera of his mother wailing at his funeral.
He wanted to rush to her, but if he came out of hiding, he really would die.
So he hid for five years.
He moved between tiny boarding rooms and public saunas all over the country, gathering evidence in a single notebook.
Then he took all his evidence and went to the police station of his own accord.
Yes.
Entering the interrogation room was his choice.
The night before, Park Song-min had filled two A4 pages with this backstory.
He'd even decided what convenience store food Kang Yoon-ho often ate while he was on the run.
So immersed was he that he'd deliberately gone to a convenience store and eaten a tuna-mayo triangle rice ball.
“…….”
Actually, that was half an excuse.
He'd just felt like having one again after a long time.
Nothing beat a triangle rice ball for value.
‘Focus again.’
It might seem like needless detail.
Someone might ask whether two lines really required all of that.
But Park Song-min knew.
A character's depth came from what couldn't be seen.
Kang Yoon-ho's five years.
A dark, cramped boarding room.
Names filling a notebook.
Security camera footage of his mother at the funeral.
A tuna-mayo triangle rice ball from a convenience store.
Sleepless nights spent tossing and turning at a public sauna before dawn.
Each detail sank deeper into his mind.
The deeper they sank, the fainter the outline of Park Song-min's own self grew.
His trembling leg stilled.
His damp palms dried.
His pounding heart quieted.
His head slowly lowered.
The hand resting on the table clenched into a tight fist.
The head of the makeup team watched Park Song-min from beside the monitor, then nudged the assistant director with an elbow.
“……Look at his face.”
The assistant director glanced at the monitor.
The camera had a close-up of Park Song-min's face.
The corners of his mouth had fallen, and a faint crease marked the space between his brows.
“……What's with that atmosphere?”
The assistant director murmured without meaning to.
The makeup team leader nodded.
“We haven't even started filming.”
The producer took a seat and looked around the set.
The staff stood in their positions.
Two cameras.
A boom microphone hung above them.
“All right, here we go.”
The producer leaned toward the microphone.
The set fell quiet.
“Ready―”
Park Song-min opened his eyes.
There was no timidity in them, no panic, no sense of Louie's betrayal, no worry over the electric bill.
Nothing remained.
Only Kang Yoon-ho, who had waited five years.
“Action!”