Episode 5) #2. Is Being Handsome Everything?
Creeeak.
The door to the theater club room opened. A high schooler soon appeared, his face glowing with an almost otherworldly radiance. Was this the self-luminescence—or halo—that supposedly existed only around celebrities?
“Whoa! Wh-what is that? Do Yeonho?”
“Are you related to Do Yeonho?”
“Hey, it’s definitely Do Yeonho, even if he looks subtly different. This is seriously creepy…”
“Did you get plastic surgery or something?”
As expected, everyone was staring at him in shock.
Teacher Shin entered right after Yeonho, but the children’s eyes remained fixed solely on the handsome high schooler.
“Whoa! This is insane…”
“Is that face for real?”
One female student approached him hesitantly, then suddenly poked him in the cheek with her finger.
“Wh-what are you doing!”
Even as Yeonho jumped back in surprise, her eyes sparkled brightly.
“Wow, amazing.”
“No Jeongyeon! Why are you suddenly touching someone else’s cheek!”
The tall, slender girl, who stood over 170 centimeters, Jeongyeon could be considered one of Yeonho’s childhood friends, along with Kang Hoon. She had known him even longer than Hoonie had—they had first met in kindergarten. They had attended the same schools all the way from kindergarten through high school.
“Can losing weight really change a person this much? Do Yeonho, be honest. You got some kind of procedure without telling us, didn’t you?”
“What’s a procedure…?”
Jeongyeon stepped close enough that only he could hear her and spoke in a low voice.
“You can fool the others, but not my eyes. What did you do?”
Why was she so unnecessarily perceptive?
“All right, all right.”
Teacher Shin stepped in to settle the bustling atmosphere.
“There’s only a month left until the competition. Enough chatting—let’s practice. For Duho’s return, let’s start with a simple reading of the lines. Act One begins in Jinho’s room, right? Jinho, Mother, get ready.”
Jinho was essentially the protagonist of the play. The third-year senior, Kim Seungwoo, opened the script. Every now and then, he shot Yeonho an awkward sideways glance, but the target of those looks didn’t notice at all.
“Ugh, what a headache! Isn’t it exam season right now? It doesn’t seem like the time to be hitting the wall with a baseball!”
“Mom, just five minutes!”
“How many times are you going to say that? Stop right now. I’m not saying it again.”
The second-year girl playing the mother delivered her lines with a fairly sharp edge. She had infused them with emotion appropriate to the situation her character was facing.
The protagonist, Jinho, on the other hand, gave off an awkward feeling through his lines alone. Perhaps it was too contrived? As expected, it wasn’t long before Teacher Shin began showering him with advice.
“Hey, Jinho. What are you doing right now? You don’t think acting is the same as reading from a textbook, do you? Speak with some emotion.”
“Yes.”
After that, Jinho’s lines gained a little more force, but that was all. He still felt distinctly awkward. He was only thirty percent Jinho.
‘I heard that senior even attended an acting academy separately.’
It was somewhere Yeonho couldn’t attend because of his family circumstances, but that senior seemed to receive quite a lot of support from home. He had studied at an acting academy since childhood and had even worked as a child model—a fact he liked to boast about from time to time.
Eventually, after the lines went around the room, it was Yeonho’s turn. He had thought he’d been given the least significant role of all, but he no longer thought so.
He recalled what Teacher Shin had told him.
‘And the second reason is that it’s the most difficult role, so I gave it to you. I’m curious whether you might bring out a fresh take on Duho. That is, if you’re serious about acting. You need to understand that the ability to make the most of a major opportunity is built up by taking on countless small roles. I’d like you to approach it with a little more affection.’
After rustling open the foil, Yeonho shoved the chocolate into his mouth all at once. The sound of the chocolate breaking between his teeth rang out—crack, crack.
Closing his eyes, Yeonho let go of himself. That was probably the most fitting way to describe it. To him, acting was the experience of erasing himself and becoming someone else.
All the way down from the rooftop, Yeonho had thought and thought again. About the character named Duho, whom he had scorned until now. He filled his empty inner self—emptied of Yeonho—with the fruit of that contemplation.
At a terrifyingly rapid pace.
‘I am Duho.’
His closed eyelids opened.
He had become someone else.
It was the scene where the mother’s club struck the boy’s back.
“Stoooop! Stop it!”
A sharp scream struck everyone’s ears.
It was overwhelming acting.
Everyone in the room felt the same thing at once.
The sensation of their skin prickling with gooseflesh.
The feeling that the air around them was vibrating.
The girl playing the opposite role momentarily became confused as to whether Duho’s cry was acting or reality. Her focus had been shaken to the point of breaking. Somehow regaining her composure, the girl playing the mother delivered her lines.
“Y-you little brat. How do you think I raised you? Why do you keep giving me so much trouble! Why are you saying you won’t go to school!”
Fortunately, as the lines continued, her tone and intonation gradually settled down. Duho covered his ears and screamed.
“Stop ittttt! Stooooop!”
The boy’s eyes were empty.
Poor mother—Duho could not reject her. Yet his mother’s coercion was sometimes irrational and overwhelming. Even when he should have been out playing to his heart’s content, he had been forced to study under her watchful eye. If his grades dropped even slightly, he was punished physically.
Even choosing his future dream had been his mother’s responsibility. Every moment of his life had been tightly bound by her.
That chain, which had continued for so long, drove the boy mad.
That was the Duho Yeonho had created.
‘There isn’t just one or two emotional threads here.’
Teacher Shin’s eyes sharpened as he watched the performance. The boy’s gaze seemed to hold sadness, depression, anger, or even a love-hate attachment.
“I wish Mom would become like this too! Like me! Like me—!”
A scream poured out toward his mother.
It was explosive acting, as if every impurity that had built up over a long period had burst forth all at once.
“I wish Mom… hurt too…”
The same line, but a different emotional thread.
‘The second one feels as if he’s pleading with me to understand his heart, his pain. It’s incredibly desperate.’
In a short amount of time, he had completed his study of the character and grasped the tone and intonation of the lines, his facial expressions, and the emotional flow to this extent.
“Ah…”
The girl playing the opposite role froze.
“I-I forgot my lines.”
She was not the only one who had frozen. Everyone in the room had done the same. Duho’s tears ran along the contours of his cheeks, frighteningly real.
“D-Do Yeonho, are you all right? Can you start again from the beginning?”
But Yeonho did not answer.
‘No way…’
Teacher Shin Juwon was startled. Somehow, he felt he knew why Yeonho wasn’t answering.
Even though practice had come to a temporary stop, the boy was Duho himself. His dark expression, hunched shoulders, and unstable gaze, filled with a complex tangle of emotions. Everything about him was Duho.
‘Does that mean Do Yeonho isn’t here? Did the kid actually become possessed by the role of Duho?’
Teacher Shin had spent more than ten years working in Daehangno. Among the people he had worked with in the same theater troupe, there had once been someone exactly like this.
Could someone who had only begun acting a few months ago really perform with this level of immersion?
The question arose in his mind.
‘Maybe he’s even stronger than that senior. This is really creepy…’
Adjusting the horn-rimmed glasses that had slipped down the bridge of his nose, Shin Juwon propped his chin on one hand.
He possessed acting ability so outstanding that he would monopolize the entire spotlight by himself. It was only natural that the other children would shrink back, whether they realized it or not.
* * *
After all the practice ended,
Yeonho looked around him.
The uncomfortably heavy silence, and the blank stares pouring toward him.
Then—ding!
An alert sounded beside his ear.
[Seven people have been influenced by your aura!]
[Skill experience has increased significantly!]
What was this now?