40:00.
The staff moved the brush at an invisible speed. Smearing messy black paint across the skin, they created dark circles under the eyes. Nearby, other staff members stood ready, holding tattered costumes.
{Miho! Miho! Hey!}
{Hey—!}
Miho, who had been unresponsive until now, finally answered.
{Don’t call me during the show. It breaks my immersion.}
{Hey! What the hell are you doing—?}
{I’m just fulfilling the contract. Once the performance is over, everything will return to normal. Just wait a bit.}
{No, at least you should explain—}
{As you can see, the ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ show starts in 30 minutes. Just stay quiet for a while. It’ll be a good reference for you too.}
And then Miho fell silent again.
Yoomyeong exerted all his will to try to move his fingertips, but they didn’t budge at all.
Fear began to creep in when his body wouldn’t move according to his will.
{Sigh—}
He finally admitted it.
There was nothing he could do right now. He had no choice but to wait until the performance was over, as Miho had said.
For the first time, a sense of caution arose within him toward Miho—or rather, toward the acting spirit inside him.
20:00.
The audience began to enter. The entrance BGM played.
“What should I do...? I’m so nervous that I forgot my lines.”
The actors fidgeted.
10:00.
Standing in front of the mirror, Miho shivered as if it were cold.
Tick— Tick—
The intermittent trembling of the body stopped at some point. Then he raised his head and looked into the dressing room mirror. Through his open field of vision, Yoomyeong met the eyes of his unfamiliar self.
A pair of horribly numb eyes stared at him as if he were an inanimate object. The gaze was like that of a beast staring at its prey, and Yoomyeong shivered with an inexplicable premonition.
05:00.
“The judges have taken their seats—”
“Act 1, Scene 1 actors in pockets, standby!”
00:00.
Finally, the performance began.
The 200-seat theater was a little over half full. Due to Hyejeondang’s reputation, most theatrical productions tended to sell out, but <Perfume> was clearly not a highly anticipated work.
The audience wore expressions of mild expectation rather than high hopes, simply wishing it would be above average.
But then.
Limp—
The moment an actor appeared in Act 1, Scene 2, the audience was enveloped in a strange tension.
A hunched back, a limping gait. The man seemed infinitesimally small despite not being physically small.
The audience felt an uncomfortable sensation from his mere entrance. It was as if they wanted to leave the theater immediately. They felt that something that shouldn’t exist was standing before them.
However, their discomfort was nothing compared to what Yoomyeong felt.
‘This... what is this?’
His body had been taken over, but the sensations he felt remained the same.
The feeling of breath filling his lungs, causing his chest to rise, the discomfort of walking with a hunched back. The spirit inhabiting his body allowed him to perceive its sensations—and even the emotions boiling within it.
{I’ve opened your senses. Watch closely.}
And then the first line burst out.
‘I don’t know who he is, but his acting is exceptional.’
However, the more remarkable it was, the more uncomfortable it became. Was it really human?
A crawling sense of unease spread through them. It felt as if a crustacean wearing human skin stood before them. It was overwhelming—to the point of anger.
But why?
At some point, the audience found themselves drawn to this unsettling character.
Though they still couldn’t intellectually understand the character’s inner world, their hearts were feeling his emotions.
Especially in the second act, when he climbed the mountain to avoid the smell of humans, the audience became confused.
Watching Grenouille grow more and more satisfied in a scentless environment, a thought crossed their minds...
‘It would be nice if it ended here. What a happy ending it would be...’
For them, the idea that a scentless environment could be a happy ending would have been unimaginable.
The strange sense of empathy deepened. They could even understand Grenouille’s obsession with the fragrant human.
If Laure Richis were in front of them, they felt they might strangle her together, press their noses into her skin, and inhale her scent.
When the notorious murderer killed Laure Richis and escaped, the audience felt joy at the fact that ‘that perfume’ could now be completed.
Haah—
Some conservative audience members would later blame themselves, thinking, ‘I must have gone mad! Why did I have such thoughts?!’ But at that moment, even self-reproach was impossible, because they were completely captivated by the character of Grenouille.
If the audience felt that way, Yoomyeong—who shared the sensations within his body—could not put his feelings into words.
Inside his body, the grotesque murderer and the strange being who did not understand human emotions, Grenouille, breathed alongside him.
‘Is this possession, like in Freddie’s case? No... Grenouille is a character from a novel.’
That was correct.
Regardless of the explanation, this was undoubtedly the ‘spirit’.
Yoomyeong had a reason for being certain of it. It was...
Joy—
At the very bottom of Grenouille’s senses, he faintly felt the acting spirit’s emotion.
It was joy. The pure joy of a being that had accumulated thousands of years of existence—akin to that of a young child.
The unbearable joy of a being finally standing before an audience, with a body capable of acting and a role of its own.
Within that pure joy, there was no trickery. Sharing the same body, Yoomyeong could clearly feel that the acting spirit was not using any ‘powers’.
‘If this is truly acting, then this is the ultimate form of acting...’
It simply surpassed the range of what a human could do.
The audience sat in a half-dazed state.
They were no longer merely spectators—they had become part of the atmosphere within the story.
That was inevitable. After all, this was a violently beautiful stage that seized the gaze of its viewers and dragged them along.
Yoomyeong’s mind trembled.
Fear, envy, jealousy, awe.
Everything intertwined and blurred together, yet Yoomyeong did not falter. He clenched his teeth and thought, ‘One day, I will act like this too!’
Perhaps it was because... he, too, had endured 15 years of extraordinary hardship.
The lights in the audience came on.
There was no applause. The audience was too overwhelmed and exhausted to react.
“Uh? Is... is it over?”
Only when someone finally spoke did the frozen silence shatter with a crack.
“Who... who was that actor?”
“Call the director!”
When the judges and members of other theater troupes regained their senses and rushed backstage, they found only the stunned members of the Haeundae Theater Troupe.
“We don’t know either. There was an accident during the day, so the role was urgently recast, but... he disappeared as soon as the performance ended.”
“What? Does that make sense? Who introduced him?”
“The lighting technician at Hyejeondang...”
The technician in question consistently feigned ignorance. He claimed the man had simply been a visitor during the day and that he had only allowed him to watch the rehearsal because of his passion for acting.
The increasingly anxious organizers searched for recorded footage.
“What? You didn’t record it?”
“They said we only needed to film the reputable troupes. Do you want the tape from the daytime performance?”
“No! What kind of operation is this?!”
“We were just following instructions...”
The theater association fell into chaos.
It had been a single performance by a local troupe, with an audience of only about 100 people. Moreover, the performance had been carried out by an understudy actor whose name wasn’t even listed—and who had now vanished.
People assumed he must have been a seasoned actor to display such skill. However, very few had seen his face without makeup, and all of them insisted they had never seen him before.
Normally, the matter would have been dismissed.
However, the judges who had witnessed the performance strongly objected.
“If that performance is invalidated, I will boycott my role as a judge.”
“Same here. I refuse to be remembered as a ‘blind servant’ who failed to recognize that acting.”
Meanwhile, reviews flooded the theater association’s bulletin board, along with requests for a re-performance.
[<Perfume> Review: I can’t forget the sense of immorality I felt that day.]
└Re: I request a re-performance of ‘Perfume’ by Haeundae Theater Troupe.
└Re: Please, I beg you. I bought a ticket but didn’t go because of bad reviews, and now I’m going crazy reading these.
└Re: Re: You bought it and didn’t go? I feel sorry for you. It was the performance of my life.
└Re: It was heavenly acting. I will attend every show if there is a re-performance.
└Re: Re: I heard the lead actor was an understudy and is now missing. Is that true?
In the end, that year’s National Theater Festival Grand Prize was left vacant, and <Perfume> gained modest recognition through the Audience Popularity Award.
As for the Best Acting Award, the host made an unusual announcement.
“The Best Acting Award goes to Cheon Sangyeon—”
There was no actor by that name. Yet everyone knew who was being referred to.
Flashes burst toward the empty podium. Reporters’ hands moved rapidly.
“There is an actor who created a great sensation at the National Theater Festival with just one performance. Theater fans have named this unidentified actor Cheon Sangyeon, meaning a heavenly actor.
Although his whereabouts are currently unknown, we await the day he returns to the Korean theater world. The 19th National Theater Festival’s Best Acting Award is presented to the unknown actor, Cheon Sangyeon.”
Thus, a legend named Cheon Sangyeon was born.
This legend stirred the theater world, yet no one was able to uncover his identity for a long time.
{What did you do to make everyone go crazy? Isn’t it a good thing to get attention from people in the theater?}
“I’ll tell you later. Thank you for today!”
Yoomyeong snapped his flip phone shut and frowned.
“What the hell was that?”
{What’s wrong?}
“We may have made a deal, but why did you suddenly take control of my body without any explanation?”
{There wasn’t time to explain. Besides, I was being considerate in my own way. It’s not like I possessed you while you were Freddie or President Nam.}
“Then why did you make those strange remarks about being a genius? It’s a good thing they didn’t realize it was me—but what if they had?”
{How would you explain memorizing a script in 10 minutes?}
“Something like ‘I’ve seen it before.’”
{It was an original script.}
“...”
Miho responded to Yoomyeong’s glare in a pitiful tone, its fox ears drooping.
{I’ve only ever watched acting, so I wanted to try it.}
Startled—
It struck him.
Yoomyeong reacted to the idea of wanting to try acting.
Who would understand better than him the desperate desire to stand on stage?
“You... wanted to try acting that much?”
{Yeah. I became an acting spirit because I was drawn to it.}
“Was this your first time acting?”
{No. I’ve done it a few times through contracts. This time... it’s been about 100 years.}
“Your acting... it was amazing.”
{Hehe. Fox lineage naturally has a talent for beguiling people. I’ve been watching acting for a thousand years.}
“I see. So... do you want to possess me again and act more...?”
Yoomyeong casually asked.
It was a loaded question. He had no desire to lose control of his body again.
Miho carefully chose an answer that would reassure him.
{As I said before, contracts in the spirit world are strict. The possession deal was used once and is now gone. If you don’t want to be possessed, don’t make that deal next time.}
“...Alright. I understand.”
That day, for the first time, Yoomyeong felt a sense of caution toward the ‘acting spirit’ and ‘contracts’.
However, the reason he didn’t press further was because Miho had been right—it had been a valuable reference.
Before him, who had been striving toward Everest, Olympus—an unattainable peak for humans—had appeared.
An ultimate form of acting, infinitely close to an actor’s ideal.
Rather than wishing he had never seen it, Yoomyeong—driven and ambitious—set his sights even higher. Witnessing such a performance would serve as powerful fuel for his growth.
Today, Yoomyeong had been given a goal, even if it seemed impossibly distant.
‘Even if I’m not there yet... someday...’
Yoomyeong clenched his fists tightly.
