“……Hey, come out here.”
The door opened a crack.
A face with a toothbrush in its mouth poked out.
“Did you caw me?”
“Come here.”
“I'm bwushing my teef wight now…….”
“Here.”
The sound of slippers dragging came down the hall.
Park Song-min peered at the laptop screen.
The comments on the latest chapter of <Conglomerate Family>.
And in the upper right corner, the logged-in username.
[Clear-Eyed Novel Critic]
TAP―
The toothbrush fell to the floor.
Foam splattered everywhere.
“You forgot to log out.”
Park Song-hu scrolled down.
Comments marked [My Comments] appeared one after another.
-I'll give this chapter credit for where it placed the satisfying payoffs. But isn't it a bit of a stretch for the protagonist to have those connections at his age? The plot was much more tightly constructed in this author's previous work. You can check on the author's page.
└[Author] Mini Song: Thank you for reading. However, those connections were already explained through the secretary's office in Chapter 12. Please read carefully.
└[Clear-Eyed Novel Critic]: I did read carefully.
└[Author] Mini Song: Then please read carefully again.
└Hahahahaha, author, why are you acting like this? You're scaring me.
└Author, if you've got time for this, give us back-to-back chapters.
“Did you know this got over three hundred likes and became the top comment?”
“Ah…….”
“I've been grinding my teeth over this bastard all week.”
Park Song-hu tapped the laptop.
“Every time I refreshed the page, that username was right at the top.”
Park Song-min clasped his hands in front of his stomach.
Then he began to confess.
Everything, even the things no one had asked about.
“Well, the thing is, I originally made the account because the comments on my own novel were so quiet. Back then I barely got any comments at all.”
“…….”
“So I gave my own novel five stars and wrote that there was nothing else this good these days, and once I even got up at four in the morning to see how many likes that comment had gotten, and then…….”
Park Song-hu dragged a palm down his face.
“I told you to confess, not write your autobiography.”
“……I'm sorry.”
Park Song-hu pushed the mouse toward him.
“Delete them. Every single one. While I watch.”
Park Song-min sat down.
The cursor hovered over [Delete].
And his finger went rigid.
“What?”
“This one is a little…….”
“What?”
“It's the top comment…… I've never gotten this many likes before…….”
Park Song-hu smacked the back of his head.
It made a crisp sound.
“Ow!”
“Delete it.”
“Yes, sir!”
Deletion complete.
“What's the password?”
“……CuteLouie0324.”
“Is Louie's birthday March twenty-fourth?”
“No, it's the day I brought him home.”
Park Song-hu changed the password.
He did not tell him the new one.
And so the account was confiscated.
“Meooow.”
Louie looked up from beside his feet.
Louie's tail swayed lazily from side to side.
And that night.
The bathroom door opened, and damp footsteps crossed the living room.
Park Song-hu, who had been writing on his laptop, looked up and recoiled in horror.
“……Hey.”
“Y-yes?”
“What is that?”
Park Song-min looked down at himself.
“Clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Yes, clothes.”
“You sure it isn't a rag?”
Park Song-hu set down the script and got up.
He circled him slowly, like an appraiser examining an object.
“What's wrong with the neck?”
“It gets like this when you wash it in the machine and hang it on a hanger.”
The neck had stretched so much that it simply slipped off his left shoulder.
His collarbone was fully exposed, but he himself seemed wholly unconcerned.
“Why has the shoulder grown a horn?”
“That's because of the hanger too…….”
“I suppose after about ten years, a hanger starts changing the shape of your clothes.”
“Huh? How did you know it's ten years old?”
“……It really is ten years old?”
Park Song-min nodded, sincerely delighted.
“I bought it in America. It's a pretty famous brand. Nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, on sale.”
“…….”
“I went without food for two days to buy it.”
“And you're proud of that?”
Park Song-hu's gaze dropped to his chest.
The white print had cracked, and half the letters were gone.
“What does it say here?”
“NORTHSTAR.”
“Do you know what it says now?”
“…….”
“ORTH TA.”
“…….”
“Orta. Sounds like the name of a rookie girl group.”
“…….”
“What's that stain on the hem?”
“……Malatang broth. I guess it's the oil, but it won't come out. It doesn't smell, though. I do wash it.”
And finally, the sleeve.
The left cuff had frayed, with loose threads dangling all the way to the back of his hand.
“What happened to the sleeve?”
“When I get stuck writing, I chew on it without realizing…….”
“…….”
“The length of these threads is a record of my anguish.”
“Bullshit. Such bullshit.”
Park Song-hu gave the hood's drawstring a sharp tug.
One end came sliding out, and the other vanished through its hole.
“Take it off. I'm putting it in the clothing donation bin tomorrow morning.”
“No!”
Park Song-min wrapped both arms around himself.
“It's my lucky charm!”
“What?”
“The chapters I wrote wearing this got the most views!”
Park Song-hu reached for him.
Park Song-min backed away.
They went once around the sofa, then once around the dining table.
“My whole life is in this thing!”
“Your life has malatang broth on the hem?”
“It could! Life has its ups and downs!”
When Park Song-min was finally caught, he clutched the bottom of the hoodie with both hands.
He tugged, held firm, and tugged again.
There was a sound of the neckline stretching farther.
SNAP―
“W-what are you going to do? You stretched it even more!”
“It was already stretched.”
“You stretched it more!”
Just then, Louie sprang lightly down from the sofa.
Louie climbed onto the hem of the hoodie spread across the floor, curled up, and settled there.
Purr, purr, purr. The sound spread through the living room.
“Louie says he'll protect it.”
“Louie's just sitting there because it's warm.”
“No. Louie knows.”
Park Song-hu sighed.
“Wear it. Only at home.”
“Yes, sir!”
“If you wear it outside, you're dead. You'll make me look bad.”
“Where would I ever go wearing this?”
……Unless it was an important day.
***
The following afternoon.
Park Song-hu was turning the pages of the script for <The Weight of Ash>.
“A day laborer from a tiny-room slum.”
“Yes.”
“The girl's eight years old.”
“They're not family, but they're something close to it.”
“That'll make it even harder.”
Jung Jae-seung.
Park Song-hu put a finger on the name.
“Do you know what they call this director?”
“……What?”
“They've got a nickname on set. The Dehydrator.”
“……The Dehydrator?”
“They say the director puts actors in, spins them until every last drop is wrung out, then hangs them out to dry.”
Park Song-min shrank his neck into his shoulders.
“Know what an actor who shot a film with this director last year said in an interview after it wrapped? The actor cried and said, ‘Thank you, Director.’”
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“Then the actor said behind the scenes that they'd never do it again.”
“…….”
“You know the director's film from two projects before that? The one set in a factory.”
“Oh, I saw it. It was really good…….”
“The lead actor actually went to work in that factory for two months before filming. The director put them there.”
“……Seriously?”
“Yeah. With all four major social insurances.”
“So does that mean I have to live in a tiny-room slum for two months?”
“I don't know, but even if you do, you'll have it easier.”
“……Why?”
“You've had plenty of practice staying in your room.”
“…….”
Park Song-min's face began to contort, but their eyes met, and he smiled for the moment.
‘……I'll get you back.’
“When you enter the audition room, they won't start by asking you to act. They'll ask what you ate for breakfast, what you took to get here, things like that.”
“I-isn't that to help people relax?”
“Would someone trying to relax you write all that down in a notebook?”
“…….”
And then.
“They don't give an okay. If they like you, they just say, ‘Next.’ They don't even call the actors by name. I hear they use only their character names in the audition room.”
“……Like, ‘Mr. Tae-sik’?”
“Yeah. So if you don't answer, your audition ends right there.”
“T-then they'll give me the script in advance, right?”
“…….”
“Brother?”
“The thing this director hates most is what an actor comes prepared to do. So I don't know what they'll pull. Even I can't promise anything.”
Park Song-hu took a sip of sparkling water.
Then he added, as if it were nothing.
“I auditioned for them once myself.”
“……What?”
It was early in his career.
Park Song-hu had applied out of an actor's stubborn pride.
-You have read the script, yes?
-Yes.
-Then close it and just stand there.
So he stood there.
Still.
It was the first time he realized how cruel a demand it was to be told to do nothing.
-What are you thinking right now?
-……That I want to make a good impression.
-All right. Thank you for your time.
From opening the door to go in to opening it to leave, it had taken less time than a cup of coffee needed to cool.
He had failed.
After that, Park Song-hu rose to a position where he no longer needed to audition.
“……But honestly, if I'd seen you act, I probably would've rejected you too…….”
“You want to die?”
“Eek!”
Park Song-hu rolled up the script in his fist.
“Listen carefully. The moment you try to show them how well you can act, it's over.”
“……Then what do I do?”
“Be there.”
“What?”
“Bring the man called Tae-sik into that room, sit him down, and take yourself out of it.”
Park Song-min blinked.
‘……Huh?’
That felt familiar.
It was the same mechanism he used to inhabit a character when writing a novel.
BUZZ―
Just then, Park Song-min's phone rang.
It was Jo Yong-gi.
By now, Park Song-hu's manner of speaking came out of him by habit.
“Yeah, what is it?”
-Brother! We have the audition date! Next Wednesday at two in the afternoon, at a production studio near Hapjeong!
“……Got it.”
-But, brother, um, the other people auditioning are kind of…….
“…….”
-Someone who won a supporting actor award last year is coming, and someone who crossed over from theater, too. Anyway, there are six of them, all people you'd recognize if I said their names.
Park Song-min's hand went cold.
“I'm screwed. I'm so screwed…….”
After the call ended, he buried his face in both hands.
Park Song-hu held out the script with a tap.
“Here. Now it's your turn.”
“……To do what?”
“What you do best.”
***
He opened the script.
Kim Tae-sik.
Twenty-eight years old.
Park Song-min skimmed from the first page to the last, then picked up a highlighter.
He underlined only Tae-sik's lines and counted them.
Forty-six lines.
Everything else was stage direction.
Scene 14. Outside a day labor office at dawn.
Tae-sik stands at the end of the line.
Tae-sik's name is not called.
Tae-sik turns away.
Scene 27. Inside a container.
Tae-sik eats bread.
“…….”
It meant he could explain none of it in words.
He could not say he was sad or wronged. The script did not even give him a line to say he was hungry.
He had to prove it all with his body.
‘……So this is why they haven't found an actor for three years.’
He opened his laptop.
He brought up a new document and typed a name in the title field.
[Kim Tae-sik]
Then, as always, his fingers began to move.
[Name] Kim Tae-sik
[Age] 28
[Birthplace] Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province. An asbestos shack beside a livestock barn, ten minutes' walk from the center of town.
If someone asked why he was writing this, he had no answer.
The script mentioned neither Jeongeup nor a livestock barn.
But Park Song-min was approaching it the way he wrote a novel.
[Body]
Damage to the meniscus in his right knee. He could not afford to go to the hospital in time, leaving him with a permanent disability.
→ Uneven gait. The left foot moves first, and the right drags along the floor behind it.
[Eyes]
Does not look people in the eye.
→ Gaze rests on the other person's solar plexus or the floor.
→ Makes eye contact only when asking for something. He has nothing to ask for, so he has no reason to meet anyone's eyes.
After writing that much, he walked across the living room.
He put his left foot forward first and dragged his right along the floor.
‘Too much. This just looks like I'm acting out a limp.’
He tried walking again.
This time, he focused only on never fully straightening his right knee.
His right shoulder dropped on its own, his upper body tilted slightly, and his left hip shifted forward.
‘……That's it.’
Next were the eyes.
He stood before the mirror and looked into them.
He tried to let his gaze go unfocused, but somehow it looked as though he was glaring.
When he relaxed, he looked sleepy instead.
‘……Trying to erase the focus doesn't work.’
He changed his approach.
Instead of looking at the face in the mirror, he looked at the towel rack hanging behind him.
The face was right in front of him, but his gaze went past it.
Something slipped out of the eyes in the mirror.
“…….”
Goose bumps rose on his skin.
An unfamiliar man stood in the mirror.
‘……Hello, Mr. Tae-sik.’
Just then, Park Song-hu came out for a drink of water and stopped in front of the refrigerator.
“Hey.”
“…….”
“Hey, Park Song-min.”
“Oh, yes!”
He straightened with a start. Only then did he become Park Song-min again.
“What are you doing?”
“Practicing walking.”
“…….”
Park Song-hu could not understand what he was doing.
Puzzled, he looked at the laptop screen, crowded with notes…….
‘……What is this?’
He rolled the mouse wheel, but there was no end in sight.
‘Is all of this a character sheet?’
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
Park Song-min stopped limping and turned around.
“Why doesn't Tae-sik run away?”
“……Where to?”
“Anywhere. He could leave Seoul or go back to his hometown.”
“…….”
Park Song-min answered as if it were an easy question.
“If you have somewhere to run, you aren't poor.”
A chill ran through Park Song-hu.
‘……What the hell is this bastard?’
***
Saturday night.
The day the final episode of Hwain aired.
The brothers sat side by side on the sofa in front of the television, and Louie settled on top of its backrest.
The living room lights went out.
Ten p.m.
The commercials ended, and a black screen appeared.
And then.
[Hwain: Final Episode]