I Will Live As An Actor

Chapter 72

Heroine.

“Ahhhh!”

Playwright Jung Yong-dae screams as he grabs his head. He has finished his script, but he has a problem with the cast. 

He has already chosen an outstanding actor for the role of Baek Mu-yeol, the greatest Casanova of Joseon. But he still hasn’t found a suitable actress for the female lead, who is his counterpart.

“Kim Yeon-ji, Seo Young-hee, Ahn Ji-soo…”

Jung Yong-dae lists the names of the actresses who are currently performing in plays. 

They are all flawless in their acting skills, but they don’t match the image of his script. That’s because most of them are much older than Baek Mu-yeol.

‘Is there no other way?’

It’s a natural situation. 

The theater scene is different from drama and film, where it’s hard for child actors to grow. It’s not only unprofitable, but also difficult to raise their popularity. 

And unlike TV or screen, they have to act directly in front of the audience at a close distance.

That means they need the ability to understand and persuade the audience with their acting without any editing. 

Many theater actors spend a long time playing minor roles to perfect their acting skills.

In that sense, the actor Jang Young-guk is beyond description. 

He said he had never learned or done theater acting before, except for a brief appearance on the stage as a punk.

At first, he doubted his eyes. How could he show such acting skills at that age? And this is not a movie or a drama, but a theater. Well, he might be born with it.

But.

Jung Yong-dae has lived his whole life as a playwright. He was so promising that he won the Daehan Literature Award, and he put his works on many theater stages. 

He also met a lot of theater actors. His eye for talent was better than any veteran.

In that sense, Jang Young-guk’s acting, which was shown by the troupe Hye-seong, resembled the passionate acting of someone who had been in the theater scene for a long time.

‘He’s a mystery.’

Gulp.

Playwright Jung Yong-dae habitually takes out a can of beer from the fridge and drinks it coolly. 

Thanks to the refreshing sensation that goes down his throat, he feels like his head is clearing up. 

The reason why Jung Yong-dae is so worried is simple.

‘The perfect picture.’

The heroine that Jung Yong-dae had in mind was not an ordinary woman. 

She was the only one who stole the hearts of many women and the last one that Baek Mu-yeol loved. 

She was the one who heard his final confession. He looks at the last line of his script.

A woman looking at a man with sorrow, the man calmly explains.

-If people like me become dirt and dust and become fertilizer for this barren Joseon land, someday spring will come. So let’s have a cup of coffee and talk in the next life. By then, this Joseon will be full of the scent of spring. I, Baek Mu-yeol, have only looked at you for my whole life. So don’t be sad. I don’t want to be just a painful memory for you.

Jung Yong-dae feels suffocated. How can a man’s confession be so plain and poignant? The more wind he has, the more clouds he moves.

It’s the story of a man who made many women love him and passed by many lives like the wind. 

He is looking for the female lead who he looked at until the end. How can he easily decide?

“Hoo.”

He sighs deeply and turns on the TV. He won’t suddenly find an actress who fits the picture by worrying. 

He tries to cool his head by watching a comedy show. At that moment.

“Huh?”

He sees a historical drama that is being rerun on the TV. There, a young actress is showing her acting skills. She looks young, but her voice and tone are impressive. 

Even her eyes. He doesn’t even know what the story is, but Jung Yong-dae can’t take his eyes off the young actress on the screen.

The Young-guk were just as flabbergasted. 

They never expected to cast a rookie actor who had never learned proper acting in their play. 

An actor who had bluntly admitted that fact. My uncle scooped up a spoonful of spicy soup and asked me.

“What role are you playing this time? All the works written by Jung Yong-dae are full of humanism.”

I chuckled at his follow-up remark.

“The greatest Casanova of Joseon.”

***

New semester.

I can’t hide my excitement. My face in the mirror shows how happy I am.

Even the navy blue uniform feels fresh and new. I touch the Sehwa High School badge and say to myself.

“Finally!”

I achieved my goal. Ever since I started high school in Seoul, I vowed to get into the same school as him someday. 

Today is the day I reap the fruits of my hard work.

‘Why are there so many eyes on me?’

As soon as I arrive at school, seniors and classmates flock to see me. 

Well, I can’t blame them. I’m a famous child actor in England, and I have a pretty face too. I’m enough to shake the hearts of many boys. 

Luckily, they disappear without a trace as soon as the bell rings.

‘How did you manage to survive this kind of school life, oppa?’

Yeon-su’s middle school was an arts school, so there were quite a few students who were preparing to become singers or actors. But they hardly ever received such enormous attention as they did now. 

That’s why Yeon-su was not used to the zoo-like stares of the people around her.

“Yeon-su, do you know a senior named Jang Young-guk?”

Yeon-su nodded briefly at the question from her friend who sat next to her.

“Are you a fan of the Young-guk oppa too, Yumin?”

“Oppa? Of course, I am. I didn’t really care about him at first, but I learned about him because of my father. He usually tells me to study and doesn’t let me watch TV, but one day he started watching a drama at home. So I watched it with him, and it was Youth.”

Yeon-su looks at her friend Kim Yumin, who sits next to her. She is not as pretty as herself, but still quite cute. Yeon-su asks with a casual smile.

“Did you enroll in Sehwa High School because of that?”

“Huh? How did it come to this? I’m just a fan, nothing more. I was planning to go to International High School, but my dad suddenly told me to enroll in Sehwa High. I hated it at first, but when I found out there was a Young-guk senior there, I changed my mind.”

“Are there a lot of fans of the Young-guk oppa at school?”

“Don’t you know? Sehwa High has a fan club for the Young-guk senior, he’s that famous. Whenever he plays soccer or basketball in the field, all the girls go out to watch him during lunchtime. And they say he’s so well-mannered that once you fall for him, you can’t get out.”

Well-mannered my ass.

I didn’t show it on my face, but I couldn’t calm the boiling rage inside me. 

Young-guk must have known that I enrolled in Sehwa High, but he never showed up. Wasn’t our last meeting at the award ceremony last year? And yet.

‘Why are there so many competitors!’

I had to bite my dry lips whenever the actresses talked about Young-guk with greedy eyes on the set. But to think that I couldn’t even relax at school, what a tragic reality. 

Even the freshmen who had barely been here for a week were constantly talking about Young-guk. How much worse would it get from now on?

Before I knew it, it was lunchtime.

“Yeon-su, aren’t you going to eat?”

My friend Kim Yoo-min, who sat next to me, asked, but I skipped lunch with the excuse of having a stomachache. And then I walked to the floor where the third-graders were, as if I had been waiting for this moment.

***

The harsh winter had passed, and spring had sprung in the schoolyard. 

The faces of the students who started the new semester were full of excitement. 

The classes had changed, and another change of environment had come. 

Some of them were studying hard, as if they were settling their remaining high school life. But Yeong-guk was lying on the rooftop at lunchtime, looking at the sky.

The mansion was filled with the festive aroma of the holiday. 

It was thanks to the side dishes that Young-guk brought from Namhang. 

His mother had packed them generously, including various pancakes, japchae, braised ribs, soup, and seasonal fish. 

She had told him to share them with his teacher and uncle, and had carefully stored them in an icebox.

“Wow, brother. It’s like a feast today!”

His uncle exclaimed as he picked up a rice cake. 

The housekeeper had gone on vacation for the holiday, so the already spacious mansion was empty. 

The silence was broken by the lively atmosphere. His grandfather, who had been away in the countryside preparing for his next work, had returned, and his uncle had joined them as well.

“Young-guk, what are you doing now?”

Young-guk was in charge of cooking in the kitchen. It was no wonder, since his uncle and grandfather could barely boil a ramen. 

On the other hand, Young-guk had been living on his own for several years. 

He had grown up by the sea and could cook any seafood dish. He had been doing it for so long that he couldn’t count them on his fingers.

“I’m making spicy fish stew and octopus salad.”

He sliced a large radish and seasoned the spicy stew with green chili peppers and various spices. 

The fish he had caught on the fishing boat were fresher than any sashimi restaurant in Seoul. 

And the octopus was so plump that it would be a perfect match for the vinegar sauce.

“Young-guk, you could be a chef instead of an actor. No, why don’t we start a business together? How about Young-guk’s Restaurant?”

“I don’t want to go bankrupt with you, uncle.”

“What do you mean, you don’t trust me?”

How could he?

His uncle was a legendary figure who was called the national actor of Korea, but he had no business sense. 

In the past, actors didn’t earn as much as they do now. Most of them had side jobs, but his uncle was different.

‘Maybe that’s why he focused more on acting.’

He thought that his uncle might have become the national actor because he only had to go to Seoul. 

If he had succeeded in business, he might have neglected his acting career.

His grandfather added to the conversation as he watched them bicker.

“Your mother gave you a lot, Young-guk. Let’s go down to Namhang with your grandpa next time. We should thank her and say hello.”

“Really? If we go down with grandpa, the ladies in Namhang will go crazy.”

“Not me, but Junghyun?”

“Grandpa is very popular with the ladies too.”

It was not a lie. Director Baek Janghoon was a film director, but he had a masculine and dark facial features that made him popular since his youth. 

Not to mention that he was the representative director of Korea, who would dislike him?

The table was set with a feast of holiday and sea scent. Junghyun played with his chopsticks and glanced at Young-guk.

“Young-guk, by the way, when is The Confession of a Priest going to be released?”

“The editing is still going on for a few months.”

“But it’s a rated R movie, so you can’t watch it in the theater, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Look at this, I’ve seen everything in my life. An actor who can’t watch his own work in the theater. What nickname will you get this time? Last time, you were the nation’s first love.”

“Uncle, are you trying to make a weird joke again?”

“You got me, but what about your next work? I heard that playwright Jeong Yongdae tried hard to meet you.”

Young-guk hadn’t said a word about his next work.

Young-guk looked at his uncle with wide eyes. Meeting playwright Jeong Yongdae was a secret that even his grandfather didn’t know. It was understandable, since his grandfather had been busy with his film shooting. As a proof, his grandfather also looked surprised.

“How did you know? I was going to tell you today.”

“Hey, I may look like this, but I’m a gossipmonger. I have a lot of ears and eyes in the drama, movie, and theater scenes. But I’m surprised that you’re doing a play for your next work, brother. Most playwrights are very picky. And that Jeong Yongdae is also a big deal, according to the stage directors he worked with. He even won the Daehan Literary Award, but I didn’t expect him to cast you as the lead. You’ve never done a play before, have you?”

‘I’m already nineteen.’

I turned nineteen before I knew it. 

Compared to my previous life, when I lived until middle age, I was still very young, but it felt like I had spent a long time since my life had changed so much. 

My memories of my school days in my past life were filled with nothing but bad memories, but my current life was.

‘I’m happy.’

I was grateful not only for living as an actor, but also for meeting my mother again. 

The warm spring sun shone on my shoulders. I looked at the script that Jung, the writer, had given me. 

As I lay down and looked at it, the script that blocked the sun seemed to enter my sight more clearly.

“Baek Muyeol.”

The play ‘Spring of Joseon’ written by the playwright Jung Yongdae was a very difficult work. 

At a glance, it looked like a story of a libertine who spread rumors with countless women, but if I looked deeper, it contained more sorrow than any other work. 

That’s why I was more worried.

‘He’s a more complex character than I thought.’

It was a role that I had never played before in my previous life. Baek Muyeol, the protagonist, was cheerful but also had sadness.

It was the actor’s duty to show all his facets to the audience on the stage. 

On the other hand, I was curious about the character who was Baek Muyeol’s first and last love.

‘I wonder who will play her.’

It was a role that required as delicate acting skills as the protagonist. But I couldn’t think of any outstanding actors who matched my age. 

Since the audience’s eyes would be like cameras, it had to be realistic, so if there was a big age difference, it would break the immersion from the start.

I recited the last line of the play.

“If people like me become dirt and dust, one by one, and the land of Joseon, which has withered, will someday see spring with that nourishment. So let’s have a cup of coffee and talk in the next life. Then, this Joseon will be full of spring fragrance. I, Baek Muyeol, have only looked at you for my whole life. So don’t be sad. I don’t want to leave you with just painful memories.”

It was poignant but plain. It was then.

The roof door opened with a bang, as if cracking the space that was my own world.

“Brother!”