After Story 63

Joohwan was good at everything ever since he was young. It wasn’t just his personal opinion. Everyone around him told him the same thing: he is different from other people.

He was six when he first appeared on TV. Thanks to the urging from a neighborhood lady, his mother called the TV station, and he stood in front of the camera for the first time.

Back then, he didn’t know what being broadcasted meant, but it was quite a captivating matter for him to know that he would receive the attention and interest of many people.

He added and multiplied the numbers on the whiteboard. The faster he did it the louder the applause became.

He was confused about why everyone was making a fuss about what a calculator could do, but he liked it because they liked it.

After that, various TV stations called out to him. However, his mother judged that such attention would ruin her child and rejected all calls from program writers ever since.

When he thought about it now, it was a wise decision. If his mother was gullible, then it would've been very exhausting.

People soon forgot about the math prodigy. He just finished compulsory education with the support of his parents, telling him to do whatever he wants to do.

His grades were all over the place. He easily topped his school whenever he thought that he should study, but whenever he found interest in something other than schoolwork, he soon dropped to below average.

If there was one thing that he realized through exams, it was the importance of concentration. Even something as easy as schoolwork didn't give him desired results if he didn't concentrate.

"I'm going to go to Joongho High."

He tried his hand at various things while studying, but his interest didn't last that long. Only schoolwork gave him a consistent amount of interest. Even when he went off on a tangent, he would return to studying. He thought that he was suited for studying. This was why he chose a prestigious high school in his neighborhood.

Enrolling in a prestigious high school, then university, and then post-graduate studies, and then eventually becoming a professor… that was the simple life plan he had designed.

They say that there was no end to studying, so he felt that being friends with studying would be the most satisfactory for him.

From time to time, he felt vain for reasons he didn't know, but he thought that it was just life.

His frame of thinking changed when he was in his 2nd year of high school.

"Have you ever watched a play?"

About a week after the new school year started, a girl suddenly said those words to him. He was doing some mock exam papers and turned his head to look at the girl.

Moon Jungah.

She was a girl whose only trait was that she was quiet. It was the first time they talked as well, after a whole week.

He shook his head. He had watched a lot of dramas and movies, but he had never watched a play.

"What club were you in during 1st year?"

"The English Speech club."

"Was it fun?"

"So-so."

"Don't you have any interest in doing plays?"

After that conversation, Joohwan found out that the girl seated next to him was definitely not quiet, and was actually far from it.

He refused back then because of the lack of interest, but he headed to the gym after school when she asked him to come just to watch. When he went there, he found around ten people other than him.

"The play will end quickly, so I hope you can watch until the end."

"Just finish it before I have to go to cram school," said another student from another class sitting next to him. Everyone seemed to be running out of time because of various matters after school.

"If you find any interest after watching, then I hope you can come to the acting club. It's really fun."

Four people, including Jungah, stepped onto the stage. They all seemed to belong to the acting club. After checking the camera installed in front of the stage, Jungah started acting.

The story wasn't anything much. It was a story about finding an underwear thief.

Get him, no, get that guy instead — It was just a series of skits that seemed like it was from a comedy program.

20 minutes had passed after the play began. Five out of the ten people who gathered apologized and left.

Joohwan thought about the rows of cram school vehicles that should be lined up outside the school. It was quite a sight in this neighborhood. Everyone was going to go inside those.

Another ten minutes passed. The four remaining people also left, saying that they should talk later.

He heard a basketball bouncing on the ground next to him. The students who were here for some sports before after school studying were taking over the court.

In one corner, people were playing badminton. The gym was filled with noise.

He thought it should be okay to end it here, but the students on stage did not stop. They raised their voices since the noise in the court had become louder. They knew that their audience had left, but they did not pull out the strength in their actions.

But still, they were only human, so they made a lot of mistakes towards the end and their voices became smaller as well.

They probably didn't have any energy since there was no audience.

After the play ended, he applauded. It was his payment for their passionate labor, not something he did because they were good.

Even as someone clueless about acting, the stage was terrible.

"But there's still one person left. Our play was pretty okay, wasn't it?" Jungah asked from on top of the stage. The people standing next to her also looked at him with their eyes glistening.

They looked different from people who had dead fish eyes every time they studied. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were probably putting their passion into something they wanted to do.

"You were bad."

"Bad?"

"I'm not entirely sure about plays, but from a general perspective, I don't think you're good at all."

"Really? That can't be helped. We did our best to prepare throughout the holidays. But why did you watch until the end?"

"Because I don't have anything to do."

"Cram school?"

"I don't go to one."

"Hey… didn't you top out the mock exams all throughout first year?"

"Yeah. I did."

"You said you didn't wish to do after school study sessions either when they investigated. You don't go to cram school or go to self studies classes after school. Do you get schooled at home separately or something?"

"I don't do anything like that. I find it enough to just study for tests at school. I'll do more if I find it insufficient, but I don't need it for the time being, so I just find it better to go home and sleep."

"You're such a cocky guy."

"Is there anything to be cocky about when it's the truth?"

Jungah crouched down after twitching her eyes. There was sweat on her forehead.

"Then you must have a lot of free time, huh?"

"What if I do?"

"Would you like to join the acting club? I think you'll be good at it."

"Better than you for sure."

It was an offer he hadn't received for a while. Perhaps that was why, but he accepted it on the spot.

On his way home, he thought about it. He didn't accept it simply because he was given the offer. The greed that had been lying dormant within him had urged him to enter the acting club.

He wanted the ecstasy of standing in front of the camera, the sense of heightening when receiving the eyes of multiple people.

After that day, he looked at books related to acting instead of exam papers. He watched dramas and movies with a pair of analytical eyes instead of watching them as a pastime.

When he did, a whole new world unfolded in front of his eyes. The world of acting was something where the obvious was no longer obvious. It was interesting. Acting was a very strange 'act.' It was a formula to disguise the false as the truth, and also a tool to implement planar text into three-dimensional reality.

When he tried acting himself, he found that it had a different taste to it from studying. It was worth digging into.

"I want to try acting."

He said those words to his mother after two months of deep contemplation. That evening, they had a family meeting. While it was put in a grand way, the only thing that happened was telling his father about his opinion.

"Not as a hobby, but seriously?"

"Yeah. It's as fun as studying."

"Have you thought that you might have a hard time making a living from it?"

"I can make a living. I'm good at everything."

His father said that they should look into an acting school. He told his father that he was going to study by himself for the time being.

The world was his studying material, and since he knew what he had to study, going to an acting school was pointless.

Since then, he invested his concentration into studying acting. As for his grades, he was now about 30th in grade in the whole school, but he didn't care. He had long ago realized that he only had one hand in making a decision and that he could not choose two things at once.

It wasn't a problem even if he was fed up with eating midway. As long as he made that decision three months ahead of the college SATs, he wouldn't have a hard time going to a well-reputed university.

This new field of study known as acting was as deep, if not deeper, than studying for exams.

The castle of comedy and tragedy built before the era of Christ was sturdy and he did not get fed up with it no matter how much he studied it.

When he came to, he was right before the winter holidays of his third year. During that time, he won many prizes at the city, province, and national levels. Scanning the trophies lined up in the acting club, he made the decision to continue acting.

As he decided on his path, it was then time to take action. He enrolled in the theater department of Hanbyuk Arts University. Jungah enrolled in the same college and same department. He majored as an actor and Jungah as a producer.

His studies became deeper. The more he opened his eyes, the more he realized the excellence of actors in the media. The uniqueness and aura shown by actors in their mid to late thirties especially were the epitome of shock. Their acting had matured from years of concentration. If he imitated them, he might be able to look similar, but it wouldn't 'taste' the same.

A higher field was right before his eyes. Joohwan was so pleased with that fact. The desire to catch up to them one day heightened his concentration even further.

"You really don't watch the acting of your peers. They don't have anything for you to benefit from it, huh?" Jungah said. He did not deny her words.

There were only a handful of actors in the same age group as him that managed to catch his attention. There was not a single actor around him who had gained a reputation at the young age of twenty-one. Those people were far away in Chungmuro.

However, to his eyes, even the acting of those rising stars was lukewarm at best. They were good, but they lacked something. Even he was confident that he would be able to do those things if he was given their roles.

"You never know. There might be people who are far better than you, you know?"

Jungah said so, but he wasn't able to sympathize with her. No matter how many times he visited theaters around Hyehwa station and no matter how much he rummaged through all the movies being released, he never received stimulus from an actor around his age.

There were good actors for sure, but none were 'far superior' to him. That was the conclusion he came to after listening to and watching the objective facts.

As Jungah said, if there was such an actor, he wanted to see one. If there was an actor that made him stand on the edge, then he would go to that person first and give that person a big hug.

A competitor was precious after all. However, he believed that he would hardly find one since he had never seen one until now.

And right now, Joohwan was watching the film in front of his eyes, unable to loosen the grip of his interlocked hands.

His eyes were captivated by the man in 'The Form of Love.' It was the same man who just gave him a thumbs-up a while ago.

The man's acting itself seemed to be on a level that he could put out. The actor was good, but that seemed to be the only thing good about him. However, as time passed and the story progressed, his lips became parched.

He could not picture it in his head. This was weird. This was the first time he could only faintly see a figure of himself acting in the same place. The emotional act was something he had watched a lot and he felt like he would be able to recreate it, but when he sketched it out, the impression became faint.

Joohwan had tasted this once before. It was when he first came across high school-level mathematics when studying middle-school math; when he looked at a formula he had never seen before.

He was stifled, and eventually, exhilarated.

"How is it?" Jungah, who was next to him, asked in a small voice.

He spoke as he looked at the man hugging his dead girlfriend in the film, "He's good. But I don't get exactly what he's good at. I don't get it, but he's good. He's definitely good. He's someone worth learning from."

He raised his head to look at the man with the neat hairstyle. To him, studying was the same as fighting. They both led to the same sense of achievement after breaking down the unknown and stepping a foot forward.

"I must hear that I am better than him."

His sense of objective, which had become faint until now, became clear again at this moment.

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