Episode 169. On-Site Work (3)
Jeong Seongbin barely made it past the cutoff. Half of Choi Jeho’s octopuses were mangled, but he earned a passing score through sheer quantity.
And I, who had revived my memories from my days in the military and put on a hellish shovel-show…
“Eighteen, nineteen… Twenty!”
“Actually, I think Iwol should change careers.”
…I was advised to switch professions. The captain’s eyes were sparkling. I’ll consider it once I retire.
“What’s the penalty?”
As he swept up the octopuses scattered across the deck, Choi Jeho asked.
The fact that the bastard had started cleaning up without being told made one thing perfectly clear: he wanted to make nakji-tangtang with his octopuses, which he obviously couldn’t sell, no matter what.
While I saw through Choi Jeho’s devious scheme, the PD pointed toward the black midsize car parked in the lot.
“There’s a place called Muan about forty minutes from here by car, you know? It has mudflats, too.”
“Are we going to catch octopuses again…?”
“Come on, it wouldn’t be fun if you just caught the same thing.”
The PD let out a hearty laugh and waved his hands at Park Juwoo.
What did he mean, the same thing? Even if they were the same octopuses, Choi Jeho’s only had four legs.
“There’s a different specialty in those mudflats.”
“Don’t tell me…”
Jeong Seongbin flinched. He seemed to have remembered one of the “101 Creatures That Live in the Mudflats” he had excitedly chattered about on the way to Mokpo.
A bad premonition was never wrong.
“Yes, you’ll be digging up cockles!”
“Waaah…”
Lee Cheonghyeon and Kang Giyeon’s cheers rang hollow. Both of their faces had turned the color of dirt.
And so, Spark’s first octopus catch and six idols smelling of the sea returned to land.
* * *
To carry out the penalty, we had to wait once again for the mudflat tide to recede.
Even after taking into account the additional filming time after reaching land and the time it would take to travel to Muan, that meant we had about four hours to spare.
Thanks to the ‘Do.Salm’ crew lending us a container normally used by the workers during their breaks, we were able to get some sleep until the tide came in.
‘They can’t film for too long, can they? There’s a minor involved, and they already made him work through the night.’
Perhaps for the sake of guaranteeing our right to rest, there wasn’t even a camera inside the container. Thanks to that, the members of Spark were able to sleep off the fatigue of filming all night.
Park Juwoo collapsed into sleep the moment his head touched the floor, and the others huddled together and closed their eyes.
I found an empty spot, lay down, and pulled a flower-patterned blanket over myself. It reminded me of the time we had gone to the countryside to film our own content.
But the wistful reminiscence lasted only a moment.
The power of a warm floor was formidable. Before I knew it, I had become one with the floor and fallen into a morning nap that had never once been included in my destiny.
I woke up not long afterward. There was a bit of a commotion outside the container.
When I opened the door and went out, the camera directors were taking out the equipment they had packed away.
“Iwol, why are you up already?”
One of the passing writers spoke to me. Saying I had woken up because it was noisy would have been rude to everyone else, so I didn’t bother explaining.
“Are the kids leaving soon?”
“Not right away. In about ten minutes? The staff will go wake them up.”
I looked once at the production staff preparing to leave, then once at the boys behind me, who looked equally capable of being asleep or unconscious.
Their legs might have been two meters long, but they were still high school students. After coming all the way from Seoul to Jeonnam without sleeping, they had spent hours digging in the mudflats on a boat without a moment to catch their breath. It had undoubtedly been hard labor.
And now they were going to put those kids back on the flat-bottomed boats and send them out into the mudflats again. Until each of them dug up a hundred cockles.
There was no room for hesitation. If I just let this happen, I would become a heartless adult who had grown up without even the most basic moral education—a thoroughly uneducated excuse for a human being.
“Writer, could I perhaps be a black knight… or something?”
“Why? Are you going to go in their place, Iwol?”
“Yes. I want to let the kids sleep a little. They’re all still growing.”
Perhaps the writer had been moved by our friendship (?), because she readily gave me permission.
There were three kids who had to carry out the penalty. I could take the place of one.
Which meant…
“Choi Jeho, wake up.”
“…Why?”
“Let’s go dig up cockles.”
…If this guy came along too, we could at least save the two youngest members.
Choi Jeho got up with his brow deeply furrowed. Then he rubbed his face vigorously with both hands, as though washing it.
“In their place?”
“Yeah.”
“Ha…”
He hung his head and let out a deep sigh.
Then he staggered to his feet and picked up the jacket he had taken off and left on the floor.
Yes, we were the adults of this team. What else could we do? Let’s think of it as an effort toward building a mature society.
While Choi Jeho and I exchanged our closely coordinated battle plans, Park Juwoo woke up as well.
That kid was fated to go anyway, but perhaps if Jeho and I negotiated that we would dig up 150 cockles per person, he might be able to rest.
“Juwoo, do you want to go dig up cockles?”
“…You two are going?”
“Yeah. Giyeon and Cheonghyeon look like they need to sleep. If they’re too exhausted, Jeho and I can dig up 300.”
“No, I want to go too. I’ll go with you.”
“Are you not going to ask my opinion?”
And thus, a new three-man party was formed. One of them seemed to have lodged a complaint, but I ignored him. Then we set off on a long journey to dig up cockles.
Nothing particularly special happened after that. Park Juwoo turned out to be surprisingly good at riding the flat-bottomed boat, while Choi Jeho shook a basket full of cockles and mud in an attempt to get rid of the dirt, splattering both mud and cockles in every direction.
Even so, the cockle-digging mission ended smoothly. When we returned, we were even rewarded with tearless hugs from the younger members, who had belatedly learned what had happened. All in all, it had been a productive shoot.
* * *
Some schedules had become as familiar as variety shows, while others had not.
The drama script reading was one of the latter. Since I had never watched a drama in my life, I had spent the past several days watching every famous drama I could find, along with behind-the-scenes production videos, drama communities, and scriptbooks until my eyes nearly fell out. Today was the first day I would set foot on one of those sets myself.
When I entered the conference room I had been directed to, two long rows of tables had been arranged facing each other, just like in the script-reading videos I had watched.
A staff member was placing nameplates at each seat.
“Mr. Iwol, you’re here already?”
“Hello! Luckily, there wasn’t any traffic.”
After checking the seating chart, I gathered up the nameplates for one of the rows and picked them up.
“Oh my, just leave those there. I’ll put them down in a moment. Your seat is…”
“It’s all right. I just have to place them according to the seating chart, right?”
“We should have done this before the actors arrived. Goodness…”
“I haven’t quite gotten rid of all my idol habits yet. I’m still trying to be everyone’s favorite wherever I go.”
As we chatted and organized the conference room, people began arriving one after another.
Once the director and writer I had met at the audition, along with all the actors, had arrived, the large conference room was packed.
My role was to avoid standing out among all these people.
Not making any NGs, and not sticking out because of atrocious acting.
My first acting challenge was not going to be an easy one.
“Even so, who evaluates someone’s performance like that?!”
“If you have a problem with it, Mr. Gwan can change it. By taking first place in performance.”
Although I had received crash-course lessons at an acting academy, everyone gathered here was a veteran who had been acting for at least several years, and in some cases more than ten. Even to my untrained ear, I could tell that their projection was on an entirely different level.
Then what could I use to blend in among these people?
There was only one answer: naturalness.
Just as when I had worked at Hanpyeong Industries. As though I were not a person, but some kind of object.
Like a third party beyond the partition, whose presence or absence within the organization no one was quite sure of.
“Isn’t the new team leader completely insane? Isn’t that a violation of labor law?”
“Our company’s been above the law for a long time, hasn’t it?”
I just had to avoid drawing attention to myself while the others delivered their lines.
That was what I should have done…
“Still, don’t you think it’s strange too, Mr. Yeonghwan?”
A problem arose. Ha Seomyeong, who played the female lead Seon Gugan, had suddenly thrown an ad-lib at me.
Every pair of eyes belonging to the people following along with the script turned toward me.
I had read that Ha Seomyeong was famous for adding a lot of ad-libs, but I never imagined she would do it even during the script reading. And of all people, she had chosen someone whose acting level was practically zero.
“I think I’ve at least realized that I won’t be going home on time for the foreseeable future.”
I answered with a tiny amount of the despair I had felt on the day Manager Nam was promoted. When the next line followed without incident, I secretly patted myself on the chest in relief.
For the rest of the reading, I fervently prayed that I wouldn’t have too many scenes opposite Ha Seomyeong.
Before the reading, when the camera was rolling, everyone exchanged formal first greetings. One by one, they would say, “I’m ○○○, playing the role of ○○○. I look forward to working with you!” and bow, after which everyone would applaud.
After the reading, by contrast, the atmosphere was more like a genuine round of introductions. People offered handshakes and exchanged names.
Before I had even finished organizing my script, someone extended a hand to me. It was Ha Seomyeong.
“Mr. Iwol! You were pretty surprised earlier, weren’t you? I always tell myself I need to break this habit, but I can never seem to. I’m Ha Seomyeong!”
“Not at all, sunbae! I was amazed seeing you act in person. I’ll learn a lot from you!”
“Oh my, even if you’re just saying that, I like it!”
It wasn’t an empty compliment. I really was amazed. My heart is the size of a bean, so please leave the ad-libs to the experienced seniors.
I also had the chance to speak with the writer for the first time in a while. She said that after looking over my reference materials, she had extensively revised the terms that appeared in the script. No wonder the first episode had changed so much.
“Looking at you, I think you would’ve done well even if you’d studied business administration or something!”
She didn’t hold back on the compliments, either. The lectures I had attended for four years flashed before my eyes like scenes from a revolving lantern.
I hoped drama filming would begin soon.
And I hoped everything would proceed smoothly, that we would finish filming all twelve episodes, and that I would receive proficiency as a reward.