Chapter 99: Stage Acting
Chapter 99 < Stage Acting >
‘No way…’
I couldn’t recognize him at first glance because of the scruffy beard that covered his face, but his eyes looked familiar. They resembled the eyes of someone I knew, the director Cheon Seong-min, whose photo I had asked Lim Seung-hyun to check.
‘Does he know someone in this theater group?’
I pretended not to notice and looked at the stage. The actors were sitting on the stage after finishing their rehearsal. Director Cheon clapped his hands and got up from his seat. The actor on the stage looked at him in surprise.
“Well, not bad. Are you here to see someone?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Come with me. I know this place well.”
I was supposed to wait for a while until Jeong Hyeon-sik arrived, but I decided to follow him for now. Cheon Seong-min looked back at Lim Seung-hyun, who was following me like a shadow, and widened his eyes in surprise.
“Who is that behind you?”
“My secretary.”
“Secretary? Are you a businessman?”
“…Don’t you know who I am?”
I had a feeling he did. At my answer, Director Cheon stopped walking.
“So you know me?”
He smiled with his eyes without saying a word. He was wearing a cap and a mask, so only his eyes were visible, but they were enough to show that he was a handsome man. Cheon Seong-min thought to himself as he looked at him.
‘He’s too good-looking, isn’t he?’
He was impressed, but also curious. Having such a distinctive face was a disadvantage for an actor who wanted to play various roles.
He often watched ‘Evil Spirit’ when he heard that Jeong Hyeon-sik was in it, and he was captivated by Yoo Yeon Seo’s charm every time he appeared.
‘His acting was decent, but… he had a presence that overshadowed everything else.’
In other words, his face overshadowed his acting. Director Cheon was observing Yoo Yeon Seo carefully when someone came out from inside and waved at them.
“Huh?”
Yoo Yeon Seo turned his head back when he felt Lim Seung-hyun stop behind him.
“Seung-hyun!”
“Do you know him?”
Lim Seung-hyun’s face crumpled slightly. He looked like he had run into someone he knew from school.
“He’s my brother.”
Oh… He was the one who switched from an idol aspirant to an actor aspirant, but still couldn’t get a significant role. He must be in this theater group. Yoo Yeon Seo didn’t pay attention to them and glanced at Cheon Seong-min’s back, who was heading inside.
“Why are you here?”
“Didn’t Hye-ju tell you?”
“I heard, but…”
Lim Seung-hyun’s brother, Lim Hyuk-jun, whistled at Lim Seung-hyun’s neat suit and then gasped when he saw the person next to him.
“Gasp, Yoo Yeon Seo!”
He was a light-hearted person, unlike Lim Seung-hyun. Yoo Yeon Seo crossed his arms. Lim Seung-hyun frowned deeply.
“You’re really his secretary?”
“Watch your mouth.”
Lim Seung-hyun glared at his brother and then smiled softly when he met Yoo Yeon Seo’s eyes. He switched between an athlete and an announcer’s face in an instant. He had talent. He would do well if he acted.
“Sir, why don’t you go and talk to your acquaintance?”
That’s what I was going to do anyway. It would only feel awkward if Lim Seung-hyun stayed behind me.
He had witnessed me vomiting blood, so he insisted on being my driver even in my personal time. He was quite annoying.
‘By the way… he doesn’t seem to like his brother very much.’
Well, not all siblings are as close as Yu Eun-ho and I. Yoo Yeon Seo left Lim Seung-hyun, who didn’t look very happy, behind and went inside.
“You can’t come in here.”
“Don’t you know me?”
“Huh?”
Director Cheon confidently led the way, but he was stopped by someone. Yoo Yeon Seo took off his mask and stuffed it in his pocket. He then took off his cap and casually brushed his flattened hair.
“What’s the matter?”
“This place is only for our theater group members… Gasp, Yoo Yeon Seo?”
The person who realized his mistake too late closed his mouth with a gasp. Yoo Yeon Seo shrugged it off. It was normal for him to be called by his three-letter name as a public figure.
“You heard I was coming, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s fine. Shall we go, Director?”
Yoo Yeon Seo smiled gently and raised his arm to point the way.
Lim Seung-hyun’s research file had a detailed description of Director Cheon’s personality. He hated people who lied and hid things. In this case, it was better to be honest and reveal my intentions.
“So you really knew me.”
“Yes. How can I not know you, Director?”
“Is that so? It’s been quite a while since I put down my work…”
Even after a long time, many people were looking for him. How much attention would his comeback work get?
“Director, your return news is getting a lot of attention here.”
Here… It must be a rumor among the investors. Director Cheon’s eyes sharpened.
“Was I that famous?”
“Of course.”
“Really? So you approached me because you wanted something from me?”
“Approached? No, you were the one who approached me first.”
“Ahem…”
Director Cheon was curious about the sight of Yoo Yeon Seo alone. When he coughed awkwardly, Jeong Hyun-sik came out in a hurry and saw the two of them.
“Oh? You two came together.”
“Hello, hyung.”
Yoo Yeon Seo greeted him with a bow.
“Did I come late? Did you see him practice?”
“Yes, he was good.”
He had become close to Jeong Hyun-sik by talking about acting at the wrap-up party. Jeong Hyun-sik spoke excitedly. The actor who was doing a monologue on stage alone was called the idol of Daehak-ro these days for his decent skills and appearance.
“He’s our troupe’s rising star. I’ll introduce you later. You have similar tastes in works, so I think you’ll get along well.”
“Really?”
Jeong Hyun-sik spoke excitedly and then smiled awkwardly at Director Cheon, who was folding his arms with a blank face.
“I told you to come and play sometime, but I didn’t expect to run into you like this. What a coincidence.”
“You didn’t make this happen, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Jeong Hyun-sik seemed to be good at acting, but not at lying in everyday life. His face showed everything.
‘Did he call me to meet Director Cheon?’
At the wrap-up party of ‘Evil Spirit’, he and Jeong Hyun-sik talked not only about acting, but also about dramas and movies, and then about investing.
‘That’s an unexpected catch.’
He wanted to make a connection with a good director even if he couldn’t act, so he casually mentioned that he wanted to produce and invest in his works, but he caught an unexpected big fish. He never imagined that Jeong Hyun-sik and Director Cheon Seong-min were so close.
“You know you can’t lie, right?”
“Come on, hyung. Just play along.”
They seemed to be more than just friends by the way they talked.
‘And seeing that he wants to meet me like this, is Director Cheon gearing up for a comeback?’
Yoo Yeon Seo pretended not to know and asked.
“You two seem close?”
“Yeah. Oh, right. Yeon Seo, you don’t know who this hyung is, do you?”
“I don’t need to. I recognized him already.”
“Really?”
He had a good excuse for this. Choi Yoo-jin had a high reputation in this industry.
“My mother is a fan of yours, director.”
“Your mother? Ah… that person.”
Director Cheon smiled kindly. Vice President Choi Yoo-jin had contributed a lot to the development of the film industry and was one of the investors who gave him a good impression.
“Since we’re here, do you want to go on stage?”
“Shall we?”
He was curious anyway. Director Cheon scolded Jeong Hyun-sik at the sight of the two getting along.
“Why did you call me if you were going to do this?”
“Hyung, you’re curious too, aren’t you?”
Jeong Hyun-sik wanted to see Yoo Yeon Seo’s acting on stage, and Director Cheon was curious about how Yoo Yeon Seo, who was famous for his bad acting, had changed. It wasn’t bad to watch him on the media, but it was different to see his acting in person, wasn’t it?
‘I feel like I’m on trial…’
Yoo Yeon Seo, who followed them on stage, had a vague idea of what they were thinking and smiled awkwardly. The spotlight shone on them at the right time.
“Do you want to try the acting that our kid did earlier?”
He knew this would happen. Yoo Yeon Seo stood in the center of the stage and looked around the theater slowly. It was a small theater with no audience, but he felt an inexplicable nervousness.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“No, I’ll try. I think I can imitate it to some extent…”
“Really?”
He had gained a change in his physical abilities that improved dramatically when Kang Jin-hoo’s soul moved into this body, and there was another one. It was his memory and memorization skills. The original Yoo Yeon Seo was smart, but he couldn’t match the abilities of Kang Jin-hoo, a future man.
“Everything started when I stayed at this mansion…”
As soon as Jeong Hyun-sik and Director Cheon sat down in the front row, Yoo Yeon Seo recited the lines without hesitation.
“Did he memorize all those lines?”
It was a pretty long monologue… Director Cheon muttered and Jeong Hyun-sik whispered.
“He’s smart. He even memorizes the lines of the other actors.”
“Really?”
But just memorizing the lines doesn’t make you a good actor. Director Cheon was watching Yoo Yeon Seo’s acting closely, as if he had come to the audition site himself.
“······You’re good, aren’t you? Is this your first time doing stage acting?”
“That’s right······ I heard you never did it before.”
Media acting and stage acting were different. Media acting required considering how the camera would direct and focusing on the moment, but the stage had to be with the audience from beginning to end.
Of course, there was no retake, so it required quick thinking and flexibility, and to convey the play well to the audience, they had to speak louder and act a little more exaggerated than media acting.
“You must have followed what you saw well······.”
Yoo Yeon Seo was using it well for a first-timer. He even moved and used props and mimed exactly like the actor he had seen earlier.
‘I don’t think he would want to see me imitating another actor······.’
While the two people in the audience were admiring, Yoo Yeon Seo was racking his brain. The play was about a man who stayed in a haunted mansion and slowly went mad, agonizing over his life. Coincidentally, his situation was similar to his.
“Oh······.”
Director Cheon sat on a chair on the stage and looked at the air, then stiffened his body and avoided Yoo Yeon Seo’s gaze. It was as if he could see the ghosts around him.
“He has a strong presence.”
“Doesn’t he?”
Director Cheon changed his mind from earlier. Yoo Yeon Seo was not the type whose acting was overshadowed by his face, but rather the person himself had an aura that was unreachable.
Yoo Yeon Seo decided to add some changes here.
‘How did that actor do it?’
The protagonist of the play decides to escape from the haunted mansion after being tormented by ghosts. But the ghosts wouldn’t let him go because he was someone they hadn’t seen in a long time, and his escape from the mansion failed.
The last scream part was filled with despair, anger, and rage that he couldn’t get out of the mansion. But why did the man in the play go to the mansion that was rumored to have ghosts in the first place?
‘Maybe he went there to become a ghost.’
The actor he had imitated must have gone to the haunted mansion to give up on life, and after agonizing there, he finally regained his will to live and struggled to get out of the mansion, but failed to do so, expressing his emotions with anger and rage.
But Yoo Yeon Seo twisted it slightly. What if the man didn’t find his will to live? What if he was faced with a situation where he couldn’t die even if he died? But what if the ghosts were holding him back because he was a living person they hadn’t seen in a long time?
‘I can’t do what I want even in the place I came to on my own.’
Just like me, who came back to the past by my own will, but was swayed by the illusions and emotions that my body sees.
He thought there were different kinds of anger. If the original actor had vented his anger, he mixed in a different anger.
“This is interesting.”
While Director Cheon was enjoying Yoo Yeon Seo’s acting, Jung Hyun-sik opened his eyes slightly.
‘Was that acting a coincidence?’
He remembered clearly when he filmed the scene where he clashed with Yoo Yeon Seo in the last scene of ‘Evil Spirit’. Raphael, the priest who fell to his knees in pain from the devil’s whisper.
[No, I’m different from you.]
[Get out of that body.]
But the look of struggling not to fall completely. Jung Hyun-sik, who played the role of the cult leader, felt overwhelmed by the look that Yoo Yeon Seo showed for a moment.
Well, that was probably because of the influence of being immersed in the role for several months of filming. Jung Hyun-sik was sorry. He wanted to see that look again.
And then, Yoo Yeon Seo’s atmosphere changed.
“Leave me alone!”
He shouted loudly, but his acting showed more sadness and longing for freedom than anger. Director Cheon’s eyes sparkled.
“Wow······.”
Jung Hyun-sik exclaimed. That was it. That was the feeling.
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