Chapter 18

The moment I delivered my first line and met Byeon Seo-jun’s eyes, I already knew it — this take was bound to end in an NG.

Sure enough.

“Leave me alone! Mom couldn’t care less, so why does oppa have to?”

“Do-yeon, that’s——”

It was a scene meant to highlight her brother’s gentle, protective side.

Since it would resurface later as a flashback every time Do-yeon thought of her dead brother and felt the weight of guilt, whoever played him needed to put real care into it.

But far from putting in care, Byeon Seo-jun didn’t say his line at all. Whether he’d forgotten it or something else was going on, I couldn’t tell.

“……”

I looked up at him without a word. Even after the director called cut, his face stayed blank.

Only after someone told him to at least take a breath did the light come back into his eyes.

Belatedly, Byeon Seo-jun slapped his own cheeks and tried running through his lines one after another, but he still couldn’t manage to get through a single one.

Strange… Was Byeon Seo-jun really the type to fumble like this?

In my first life, Byeon Seo-jun had been an actor I’d seen crop up in dramas I followed fairly often.

If I had to put it in one line, he was probably the most successful case among second-generation idols who’d crossed over from singing to acting.

From what I knew, the group he’d debuted in hadn’t been a commercial success. He’d been its face and, practically, its sole breadwinner.

That was how little the group had registered — even I couldn’t name another member besides him.

His diction and voice projection hadn’t been bad, and with a solid base fandom behind him, I knew he’d landed plenty of scene-stealing supporting roles early on.

Building up experience that way, he’d eventually broken through as the male lead in a romance drama adapted from a webtoon.

He’s not the type to show up without his lines memorized, though.

No matter how talented someone was, a lack of diligence buried them eventually — especially under a demanding writer or director.

If he’d kept getting offered supporting parts and eventually landed a lead role on top of that, he had to be a diligent person. There was no way he’d rack up mistake after mistake just from not memorizing his lines.

And besides, Byeon Seo-jun was a practice fiend, if anything.

Out of curiosity about what the sets had been like, I’d looked up a few behind-the-scenes clips, and I’d seen him never once put his script down.

I’d even looked at his script, worn ragged at the edges, and thought, Wow, I should break down my own lines like that too.

If a person like that couldn’t even get a line out, something had clearly gone wrong somewhere.

Byeon Seo-jun’s fumbling struck one other person as strange too.

“Seo-jun, can I borrow you for a second?”

It was Seong Hye-sim — she’d crossed paths with him twice on variety shows and once in a drama.

To her, Byeon Seo-jun wasn’t the most gifted actor, but he was a junior who’d left an impression — someone who worked hard to pull his own weight.

A diligent sprout of a talent, slow to grow given the effort he poured in, but one who never made a big mistake.

The Byeon Seo-jun she knew wasn’t the sort to blow a line.

“Um, if we could resume filming now——”

“You know better than anyone that you’re not in any state to film, don’t you?”

“Ah, that’s——”

Having watched countless actors on set over the years, she’d caught at a glance that something was seriously off with Seo-jun.

She’d wondered if it was simple nerves and watched for a while, but the way he calmly managed his breathing suggested that wasn’t it.

If it’s not nerves……

There was one thing she could guess.

The rookie who’d overwhelmed Byeon Seo-jun from the very first script reading — Joo Sae-i. That this diligent actor would shrink back because of the girl she herself had discovered.

He must be eating himself up inside. He’d fought his way up through sheer effort, only for a total newcomer to overpower him.

The feeling of being crushed by a genius — Hye-sim had felt it herself, long ago, so she could understand the tangled knot in Seo-jun’s chest.

But if he just stayed crushed, fuming in frustration, Seo-jun would never grow.

“Oh, dear, Seo-jun’s still got a long way to go.”

Sighing, Seong Hye-sim glanced over at Joo Sae-i. True to her position as the youngest one on set, Sae-i kept throwing furtive glances at Byeon Seo-jun while reading the crew’s mood.

She has no idea, not even in her dreams, that she’s the reason.

Those deep, worried eyes glimmered in Hye-sim’s view.

If that girl ever found out her senior had been pushed into silence because of her, how would she react?

She’d blame herself, no doubt. And that would poison both Byeon Seo-jun and Joo Sae-i alike.

This shoot was the very first of the acting life of Joo Sae-i — the girl she herself was raising. She couldn’t just stand by and watch it get ruined.

Let’s do it this way.

After some thought, Seong Hye-sim decided to step into the situation herself. Having made her seasoned judgment, she shot a signal over to Director Woo.

After a quick discussion, the crew tactfully picked out a scene that didn’t need Byeon Seo-jun or Joo Sae-i and began setting up to shoot it.

There’ll be a bit of a delay, but… this should be enough to snap Seo-jun back to his senses.

Seong Hye-sim studied Byeon Seo-jun with worry in her eyes. Gripped, it seemed, by the thought that the shooting order had been changed because of him, his hands were shaking.

The moment she laid a hand on his shoulder, Seo-jun jolted in surprise.

“Senior, if the schedule’s gotten tangled up because of me right now——”

“Seo-jun. Your acting’s not coming together right now, is it.”

“……”

Byeon Seo-jun hung his head low. When he answered with nothing but biting down on his own lip, Hye-sim pressed on quietly, as though she’d expected exactly that much.

“I happen to know a way out of it.”

“……!”

“Do you want to swallow your pride and fix it, or just keep struggling with it alone?”

“I’m not sure I follow——”

“I’ve always thought well of you, Seo-jun. So I’d like it if you picked the first one.”

Hye-sim glanced at him as he flinched. Judging by the tension in his body, it seemed his mind was tipping toward swallowing his pride.

“If you’re ready, come with me.”

She strode off ahead of him without hesitation. Her destination was the rookie she was raising, and the very source of this whole mess — Joo Sae-i.

“You want me to coach your acting, senior?”

“Why, is that a problem?”

“No, I mean, how could I possibly——”

I couldn’t even close my mouth, my words trailing off.

Of course they would!

Seong Hye-sim had brought Byeon Seo-jun over to me while I was waiting around after the shooting order got shuffled. Then, out of nowhere, she’d shoved him at me and handed me the job of coaching his acting.

Did Byeon Seo-jun actually agree to this?

Checking his expression as discreetly as I could, I found it brimming with bewilderment too. It looked like this had been entirely Seong Hye-sim’s own unilateral decision.

“Senior, I think it’d be better to just let Joo Sae-i rest——”

“Seo-jun, just hold still and stay quiet.”

“Y-yes, ma’am……”

Even when the man dragged into this tried to object, Seong Hye-sim shut him down in a single stroke, radiating the full force of a senior who towered above him.

Struck speechless, Byeon Seo-jun folded his large frame in on itself and clamped his mouth shut.

“Why not? Sae-i’s practiced Do-hun too, hasn’t she.”

“Wait, she’s practiced Yeon Do-hun? Joo Sae-i has?”

Byeon Seo-jun, who I’d thought would stay quiet, blurted out the question in a rush.

“I practiced it a little. Not the whole part, just——”

“No, but why? Why Yeon Do-hun, of all people, instead of the adult Yeon Do-yeon?”

“Ah, it’s because Teacher Seong Hye-sim gave it to me as an assignment before——”

Normally her image as a great actress was so strong that I called her by that title, but at a moment like this, senior or teacher seemed to fit better.

The instant I called her teacher, Seong Hye-sim, who’d been watching Byeon Seo-jun and me from the side, lit up.

……Does she like that title?

“You felt it too, didn’t you, Seo-jun? The quality of Sae-i’s acting.”

“……Yes.”

“Our Sae-i isn’t just good at Yeon Do-yeon. She can pull off Yeon Do-hun too.”

“And that’s why you want me coached by——”

“Chances like this don’t come around often. Even if you paid for it, getting coached by a genius like Sae-i isn’t easy to come by.”

Seong Hye-sim launched into a long string of praise for me, aimed straight at Byeon Seo-jun.

“You choke up acting in front of Sae-i, don’t you? And you’re not the only one who does.”

“Then who else——”

“I choked for a second too, you know. The first time we met, I had her try acting out Do-hun. Her voice shifted into a completely different tone than how she normally talks, and ugh, it actually scared me a little.”

“You, senior……?”

“Mm-hm. So I flat out blew my line. Sae-i covered for me with an ad-lib, but if it had happened on set, I’d honestly have been mortified.”

Oh, please. Even if it’s true, isn’t this laying it on a little thick……?

Even so, it was no small thing for me to teach an industry senior like Byeon Seo-jun.

There was no way Seong Hye-sim didn’t know that too!

“Get coached and work out your timing together while you’re at it. It’ll definitely help.”

“I……”

Please turn it down. Judging by how dark his face looks, he’s going to refuse, right? Please, don’t put this on me…… I don’t want to go down in this set’s history as the junior who taught a senior……

Just as I was praying that, deep inside——

“I’ve made my decision.”

Byeon Seo-jun spoke, his voice grave and solemn.