“Yeonsu hyung. You do not like spicy fish stew?”
“Huh? Uh… I do not really like soups like this. They said a top actor should avoid foods with a lot of sodium.”
Because I was worried, I spoke to him first.
Nam Yeonsu just picked at his plain rice, and at my question he answered hesitantly.
Hm. I do not know about being some “top actor,” but for kids, a spicy, peppery soup like this might not be to their taste.
I took more side dishes like lean beef and zucchini pancake from the table next to us and slid them over in front of Nam Yeonsu.
“This is good. Eat more.”
“Thanks, Siwoo.”
“It is nothing.”
That only made me more concerned.
Where did Nam Yeonsu’s manager go?
He should stick by the kid and at least pay attention while he eats.
When I looked around, he seemed too busy drinking, glued right next to Cha Ilnam.
…Let us think of that as part of his job, too.
“Siwoo, you act well, and you seem to get close to people around you easily, too. That is impressive. They said you need that kind of thing to become a top actor.”
“Huh? Ah, is that so?”
It is because the habits I built up while being put through the wringer at the Oscar troupe are still in me.
The troupe said teamwork mattered, and they made my life miserable to the point I wondered if they were serious.
Is it because those habits stayed with me?
Or is it because I am the only one around Nam Yeonsu’s age right now?
In a strange way, I could not leave Nam Yeonsu alone.
“The scene last week with you and Sujeong sunbae. It was really good.”
While eating the lean beef I pushed over, Nam Yeonsu suddenly praised me.
The more I look at him, the more he seems like a really upright kid.
“Right? And your scene where you are alone in the room doing that monologue was not bad either, hyung.”
“Really? It felt okay?”
At my praise, Nam Yeonsu’s cheeks flushed red.
I watched the whole time we were filming, and Nam Yeonsu did not know what to do even if he heard praise, or anything like it.
Is he really not used to being complimented?
“Ah! I have heard your name before when I did RUN, too. Seong Jihoon, do you know him?”
“Ah, Jihoon hyung. Yeah. I know him.”
“They say you two are friends. Are you close?”
“…Jihoon hyung said I am his friend?”
“Yeah. He told me that.”
Because of that, he hated me so much for suddenly showing up and taking the lead role, leaving his friend behind.
I decided not to bring that up.
After all, just hearing that Seong Jihoon called him a friend had him that happy.
“Yeah, that is right. We are friends.”
Seeing that reaction, it would be reasonable to doubt Seong Jihoon’s claim that they are friends.
No. Looking at what Seong Jihoon does, he seems to acknowledge Nam Yeonsu’s skill to that extent, so they might actually be friends.
“Then why did you not audition for RUN, Yeonsu hyung? Jihoon hyung said he was really disappointed he could not do it with you. Jessica mentioned your name before, too.”
At my words, Nam Yeonsu flinched, his eyes going wide, and he asked loudly,
“Really?! Jessica knew who I was?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah.”
If he is this happy, why did he not participate in the audition?
Nam Yeonsu, who had been happy at the thought that Jessica knew him, soon wilted and turned gloomy.
“Huh? You did not want to audition?”
Now I was truly curious.
From his reaction, it did not seem like he absolutely did not want to.
Nam Yeonsu scratched his head and said,
“I did not know because Dad did not tell me. My dad makes my audition schedule for me.”
“Ah, your dad?”
As expected, it was not for nothing that when I saw Lee Hyein in that reading class last time, Nam Yeonsu overlapped in my mind.
Both of them were following their parents’ instructions in a similar way.
Did he really like acting in the first place?
I started to worry that he might be doing it against his will.
If he were being forced, then Nam Yeonsu’s shining talent would feel far too wasted.
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I just leave it alone, or not?
As I was thinking, I saw Nam Yeonsu picking at his food with a gloomy face, and I let out a sigh.
This will not do.
My past, when I lived as the loyal youngest son of a ducal house, keeps coming to mind, and I cannot just leave him alone.
Fine, it’s not like it is that hard.
I will step in once.
The next day, the weather was bright and clear, as if yesterday’s downpour had been a lie.
Today, by coincidence, it was a day when Nam Yeonsu and I were filming alone together both morning and afternoon.
At the set where preparations were in full swing, the two of us were waiting side by side under the shade of a tree.
As always, I watched Nam Yeonsu, who had his script open and was staring at it as if he were being sucked into it.
I had already memorized the script perfectly, like I had chewed it up and swallowed it, so I did not need to look again.
What is he, the second Kang Sujeong or something?
Today is a day we are filming together, but it looked like discussing acting before we started filming had gone out the window again.
Nam Yeonsu speaks fairly well when we are eating, but on set, he only greets me and never lets go of that damn script.
With no timing to talk to him, I blankly organized my thoughts while observing Nam Yeonsu to see if there were any oddities.
With the drama doing well, I grew more and more ambitious about it.
A filmography is an actor’s face.
Is there anything better for an actor than having their work become a hit?
Just like how Cha Ilnam came looking for me because the RUN performance went well.
If this drama does even better, more good projects will probably come flooding in.
For that, I have to show off my acting ability in this drama…
But even if I want to build chemistry with my scene partner, when my scene partner is like that, what can I do?
I want to discuss something with Nam Yeonsu, but that kid is trapped in the script and does not try to do anything beyond it.
I could tell just from the experience we have had filming so far.
By the book.
By the script.
An actor who does not add anything beyond that or attempt anything.
Of course, even pulling off the script exactly as written is not an easy thing, but he was not a co-star who made matching breaths with him particularly exciting.
Even though Kang Sujeong was also the type to dig into the script, once we started talking, we exchanged our emotional arcs and interpretations, and every shoot became thrilling.
Honestly.
To be that possessed by the idea that you must follow the script exactly…
If he is that obsessive, there is a high chance he has never even considered something like the freedom to interpret.
Ah, if my friend Shakespeare saw this, he might have cried and pounded the ground.
An actor who seems to have talent but has no intention of unfolding it.
Still, Nam Yeonsu is a child.
It is not like there is no way at all.
First, the urgent thing was to grasp exactly how Nam Yeonsu approaches acting.
“Wooju.”
Ji Haeseong (Nam Yeonsu) wanders around the spacious house, looking for his younger brother.
His new mom, Han Jihae, and his dad, Ji Hyeonwoo, remarried and came to live together.
And Ji Haeseong gained a new younger brother, Kang Wooju (Han Siwoo).
Ji Haeseong was shocked at their first meeting when he heard, “You are not my brother or anything,” but thinking of his dad, who sighs deeply every night, Ji Haeseong tries to get along with Kang Wooju.
But Wooju does not open his heart.
There were several attempts, but in the end, taking advantage of a moment when there were no adults around, the two of them got into a big fight.
Perhaps because he is a little older, stronger, and taller, Wooju ends up getting hurt more badly.
When their parents return home and see the state the two of them are in, they are left speechless.
Han Jihae and Ji Hyeonwoo exchange looks, then try to coax their respective children, and even scold them.
Despite those efforts, after that, there was still no sign that the relationship between Ji Haeseong and Kang Wooju would improve.
They thought remarrying would make them happy, but why is happiness so far away?
Seeing his dad sighing more and more, Ji Haeseong makes a decision.
He will go to his grandmother’s house in Seoul.
He will come back when Wooju grows a little more and a day comes when Wooju can understand him.
Because he is a little older, Ji Haeseong understood Wooju’s situation.
His own mother died when he was young, but Kang Wooju’s biological father had an affair and left the two of them.
Wooju is too young, so no one can properly tell him that fact.
From Wooju’s perspective, firmly believing that one day his dad will come back, there is no way he could accept Ji Haeseong and the new dad, Ji Hyeonwoo.
Ji Hyeonwoo told him no many times, but his son Ji Haeseong had already made up his mind.
It seems he even secretly called his grandmother.
At his son’s words, showing such firm resolve, Ji Hyeonwoo agonizes for days and days, and in the end decides to do it.
Han Jihae, teary-eyed, had hugged her new son Ji Haeseong tightly.
After several days pass and all the luggage has been sent, today is the day Ji Haeseong leaves for his grandmother’s house.
“Wooju, are you here?”
Because they were combining two households, Han Jihae and Ji Hyeonwoo moved into a spacious house.
So that even after giving each child their own room, there would still be plenty left over.
Ji Haeseong wandered around the spacious house, then cracked open the door to the room used as a playroom.
Inside, with his back to the door, Kang Wooju was sitting and reading a book alone.
“…Wooju.”
“…”
Even at Ji Haeseong’s call, Wooju did not turn his back.
With a deep sigh, Ji Haeseong finally gave up and spoke softly, almost like he was muttering.
“I am going. Wooju… take care.”
He quietly closed the door again and turned around, and from behind came the sound of tap tap tap.
Thud.
“Where are you going, you!”
“Ugh.”
Ji Haeseong staggered at the sudden impact.
When he turned around, Wooju, with a startled face, was clinging to his waist.
The book had been flung far away, like he had run over in a hurry.
“Uh, uh… I am going to stay at Grandma’s house for a while.”
“Why?”
“Uh, um… We fight all the time. Then Mom and Dad have a hard time, you know.”
“…You are going because of me? You… you are?”
“…”
Unable to say no, Ji Haeseong closed his mouth.
And he quietly tried to peel Wooju’s hands off his waist and head for the front door.
At that moment, something unexpected happened.
Normally, at this point, I am supposed to stay still and wait, then deliver the last line.
But today, I cannot do that.
Watching and waiting with time is over as of today.
I took a deep breath and spat out the ad-lib I had prepared.
Since the shoot with Kang Sujeong last time, Cha Ilnam had given me a certain amount of authority when it came to ad-libbing.
“…Do not go, hyung.”
“Huh…?”
Nam Yeonsu froze.
Originally, after he went all the way to the front door, my line was supposed to come out, but a different line came out at an earlier timing.
“What did you… say…?”
Oh?
Nam Yeonsu asked me again with a startled expression.
That is quite a reaction.
Keeping my head lowered, I watched to see how Nam Yeonsu would respond, then I spoke with tearful eyes.
The ad-lib starts now.
“Uh, hy-hyung is… you are my hyung now. But where are you saying you are going…?”
“Up until now, not once did you call me hyung…”
I almost got surprised instead.
A line that is not in the script at all.
But Nam Yeonsu took that line and immediately threw out a new line.
And on top of that, he added a confused expression in his acting.
Is that acting, or is Nam Yeonsu’s real fluster showing on his face?
“Sorry.”
“…!”
“I am sorry, hyung. Yeah? From now on, I will do better and call you hyung.”
One step.
I moved toward Nam Yeonsu like that, speaking pitifully.
Kang Wooju’s desperate longing, not wanting to lose any more family.
It was an expression that also held the shrewdness of a child who does not want to watch Mom be sad again because of him.
“…No. Don’t. Do not do that.”
Ji Haeseong, stepping back, forced himself to hold back tears as he hurried toward the front door.
It was the final movement originally planned for this scene.
Confirming that Nam Yeonsu was retreating that way, I likewise shouted the final line from the script.
“If even hyung goes… then I am really all alone! Waaah.”
Ji Haeseong, the only one in the same situation as him.
A hyung with no blood relation and a comrade.
Every day he said he hated him, that he was not his hyung, and ignored him, but it seems they had been gradually becoming family.
Kang Wooju, feeling that Ji Haeseong turning his back on him and leaving is more sorrowful than he thought, wails at the top of his lungs.
Ji Haeseong, who reached the front door to leave, also cannot endure it in the end and bursts into a loud cry.
In the spacious house, cries that one cannot even tell whose they are become tangled together.
And my head also became tangled.
If he can take an ad-lib this well and hit it back, then why in the world is he so obsessed with the script and digs into it like that?
Nam Yeonsu, this guy…
In six years of Han Siwoo’s life, this is the first time, without a doubt, that something has provoked my curiosity like this.
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