Life, Once Again!

After Story 16

After Story 16

“How much more servile are you going to be? You really have changed. The Choi Jihoon I knew used to put employees and family members over money.”

“I can’t help it! I didn’t change because I wanted to. Do you think I wanted to become servile? I want to be upright too. I want to act according to my ideals too. But you know better than anyone that business doesn’t always go the way you expect.”

“I know. I know that well. That’s why I staked my future on the person named Choi Jihoon. But it looks like my faith has been shattered.”

“Miss Jihye, please listen to me first.”

The actress pushed back the chair and stood up before leaving the frame. Left alone, the male actor stood up and looked around before sitting down again while clutching his face.

“Cut,” shouted the director.

Maru turned his head around to the front. He kept his head turned in the direction of the actors, so his neck was feeling sore.

“That should be the last one, right?” said the woman sitting in front of him. She seemed really bored. She seemed totally different from how excited she was to see real actors for the first time.

“We just have to pray that the director doesn’t say that they should try again.”

“I thought they were all similar, but I guess the director thinks otherwise.”

“There are many people who stake their lives on detail.”

The actors standing in front of the monitor walked over to the director. At the same time, the assistant director shouted, “We’ll go to the next location.”

The long restaurant scene was finally over. Maru checked the time. It was 1 p.m. It was lunchtime, so they cut off at a suitable time. He raised his hand above his head and pulled his head to the left to stretch his neck. He also massaged his stiff shoulders before standing up.

“We don’t have any time, so let’s get moving.” The staff members started packing the equipment.

The background actors followed the leader outside the restaurant.

“You have an hour for lunch, and you must come here after you take a break. There will be problems if anyone’s late, so watch out for each other. Let’s not inconvenience other people by not keeping an eye on the time. Okay?”

They were thrown out to the heat of summer again.

Maru hid under the tree shade with the lunch box that the staff members handed out. Streaks of sunlight landed on top of the plastic cover. He already missed the AC in the restaurant.

He opened the packaging and stuffed his mouth with food. His untrained body already started complaining about fatigue, even though all he had been doing was sitting still for a few hours. It seemed like the first step to regaining his stamina was to remove the excess fat created by microwaved foods and alcohol.

“It might have been boring, but the inside was definitely a lot better.” The woman he had been facing for hours came over to him. She carefully asked if she could eat with him.

“Sit down. If you can handle a few ants, this isn’t a bad spot.”

They talked over their meal. A more personal conversation where they exchanged information like names went by. Her name was Park Minyoung, and she was twenty-four. She worked at a small company as an accountant after graduating from a two-year college course before quitting. She supposedly found out about this job while looking for fresh experiences such as traveling.

“I thought we talked a lot before, but when I looked back, I didn’t even ask for your name. Maybe I was too nervous.”

“It’s fine since you know now.”

“But the name Maru isn’t that common, is it?”

“I’m sure it’s less common than Chulsoo. Is it strange?”

“No, I think it has a unique character.”

“A unique character usually means strange.” Maru joked before eating the last side dish.

When he looked around, he saw people eating in various groups. Even for people who had never known each other, they were together for hours, so it wasn’t strange that people got close.

“I feel it’s strange to call you Mr. Han, so can I drop the honorifics with you?” Minyoung asked when he came back after throwing away the trash. Whether it was the man named Junghyuk he saw in the morning or the woman in front of him, they were really sociable. Or maybe they were really bad with loneliness.

Maru took out his hand from his pocket. He also let go of his earphones, which he was originally going to take out. “Go ahead.”

Minyoung sighed in relief. “I thought you’d say no. That’s a relief.”

“You were worried about things like that? You seemed extroverted enough to chat with total strangers in the middle of the street.”

“I try to look the part. Having a bold personality makes social life a little easier than being introverted.”

“That’s true.”

“I think I didn’t hear your answer before; did you say you were in college?”

“Well, not anymore. I dropped out.”

“Why?”

“Various reasons, I guess?”

MInyoung nodded in understanding. She looked like she didn’t want things to become awry.

He smiled. “I dropped out to become an actor.”

When he expressed that he wasn’t trying to put up a wall between them, Minyoung became visibly brighter. She was someone with plentiful facial expressions. If that was intentional on her part, he wanted to applaud her for it. If it was natural, then he was jealous.

That was the kind of facial movement that he aimed for; he wanted the movement of muscles that left a deeper and more intense impression than any number of words.

“An actor, huh? That’s neat. I haven’t even thought about it.”

“You said you wanted to experience various things, didn’t you? You should put an actress on that list as well. It’s not like anyone will nag you for putting it on your bucket list.”

“I have a hard time standing in front of people in general. I told you before, right? That I try to look extroverted. If necessary, I have the confidence to do things like presentations, but acting is completely different from doing presentations. Presentations only last a brief moment, while acting is continuous. When I think about how I have to do acting in front of so many people, it makes me uncomfortable.” Minyoung frowned as though she woke up with a terrible hangover in the morning. Her expression was truly vivid. If she had a hangover drink in her hands right now, then that would be a commercial in and of itself.

“Then what is it that you want to do? Maybe there’s a job you’re aiming for?”

“A job at a big company that gives me my salary without late payments, but doesn’t nitpick with how I work?”

“That’s not an ordinary dream you have there. Why don’t you aim to become the president of the country instead? I think that will be a lot easier.”

“I guess my dream is a little difficult.” Minyoung smiled softly.

Truly, Maru was desirous of that face of hers. She had a face that could be used in many different scenarios, so with enough acting skills, she would be perfect as supporting character material, if not leading roles. This was something he noticed with his numerous experiences living as an actor, so he probably wasn’t wrong.

“Let’s meet up,” the leader said, clicking his fingers.

Minyoung stood up first, saying that they should go. Maru stood up and dusted away the ants that climbed on his pants. The ants that fell off struggled before hiding in the ground. The talent of ants to climb was only useful when climbing trees that had sap in them. If they lost their direction and ended up climbing a lamppost or something, they would either starve or fall to their death. Talent that has not met its right use was as pitiful as an ant that was climbing a lamp post.

“But you never know what the world has in store, so you should try it out when you still have the time. If you have the effort to fix your introverted personality, then I’m sure you can do anything you want,” he said as he walked past Minyoung.

Whether it was because he took a step back and decided to return, or because his memories had returned and he had some leisure, he did not know, but for some reason, he no longer felt off-putted by giving advice to other people.

If it was in the previous life, he would remember the words that silence is golden and not utter a word.

“Should I?” Minyoung smiled.

He no longer said anything. He said what he needed to, and it was up to her to decide. It was probably categorized as meaningless in her head and probably disappeared into the depths of her memories. In the first place, what he said could be commonly heard in everyday life, so it was natural that she took it lightly.

In a world where giving advice had become synonymous with being nosy, it would be nonsensical for her to accept advice from a total stranger she met for the first time today.

“Those of you with training jerseys, take them out,” said the leader. After scanning the clothes of those present, the leader separated people just like what happened at the restaurant. A healthy-looking couple walking past the actors, a couple sitting on the bench, and a couple sitting on a mat on the grass.

“The two of you just have to walk with your arms hooked like a warm couple, can you do that?”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, so don’t worry about it.”

With the middle-aged couple laughing warmly with their arms hooked like a true married couple, the assignment of roles ended. As for Maru, he was assigned to the role of a runner, who started running from the opposite side of the actors and ran past them.

“Leader Kim.” The assistant director ran over. The leader urged the background actors to hurry up.

The women who had their hair tied in the restaurant had untied their hair, and the women who had their hair loose changed their hair shapes with hair bands or pins. While they were trying their best not to look the same, the director suddenly came over.

“You and you, go over there.” The director, who was gentle towards the actors, waved his fingers in the air.

Maru moved quickly as he took this as natural, but as for the people doing this job for the first time, they were taken aback and hesitated.

“Geez! Go quickly.” The director urged them, and the background actors moved.

There were some directors who treated background actors gently, but more directors treated them like props than not. There were many who even extorted the background actors intending to make the most out of the money they spent since those people were just hired contractors.

“You stand out too much. Swap with him, and this one too.”

Unlike the restaurant scene, in which the background actors were still, many of them were moving now, and even crossed paths with the main actors, so the director assigned the positions of the background actors himself. The leader was the one moving the people when the director just waved his fingers around.

“Hello, director.”

“Oh, you’re here. It’s hot today, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

She seemed to be an actress who came late. The director, who looked like a military officer glaring at the soldiers, made a warm smile and went elsewhere with the actress. One of the background actors swore after looking at that. The college girls were gossiping as well.

“You should remember what the director said and move accordingly. There’s nothing difficult, so please do it well,” said the assistant director with a fatigued face before walking away.

“I can see why my seniors say that doing this work twice or three times is more than enough.” Junghyuk had approached him while Maru was unaware. “I should just stop doing this after seeing what the atmosphere is like just once. I don’t think I can learn anything from where I am now either.”

“But if you look closely, there are some things you can steal from them. You can see how shitty the position of the assistant director is, and how cheap people are treated,” Maru said.

Junghyuk laughed out loud before quickly covering his mouth.

“There are other things you can gain aside from that. Though, that depends on the individual.”

“What do you gain from this then?”

“I gain the atmosphere of the shoot. An atmosphere I can look back to and remember how it felt.”

“Have you ever done a shoot before?”

Maru replied with a smile to Junghyuk’s question.

“Get ready!” The assistant director’s voice could be heard from a distance.

Maru walked past the puzzled Junghyuk and went to the position he was assigned to by the director. In the distance, he saw actors standing next to shiny reflectors.

They were only a few dozen steps away, but it was still quite a long distance for now. He calmed down the sense of urgency rising inside his heart. Rather than focusing on success, he should be focusing on enjoying himself right now.

“Stand by!”

He started running on the spot just like the leader told him to.