Chapter 11
“I-I don’t want to go outside.”
“No one is going to hurt you.”
“N-No. They’ll look at me strangely.”
As the play continued, Professor Ahn Chi-won’s attitude changed.
At first, he had been worried that the female student’s lack of skill might disrupt the flow of the play, but that concern had been completely unfounded.
She was showing remarkably stable vocalization and breathing, far beyond his expectations.
And as for the male student…
There was nothing more to say.
That deep emotional line layered over solid fundamentals.
The angle at which he delivered his lines, the trembling of his gaze, even the subtle movements of his fingertips as they trembled slightly.
How had he managed to create such a finely detailed character in such a short amount of time?
“Let’s go outside together.”
The woman, who had been continuously persuading the man, took his hand.
The man’s shoulders jerked as if he had been shocked.
Feeling an instinctive sense of rejection, he twisted his body in an attempt to escape her grasp, but she held his hand firmly, preventing him from doing so.
“You’re so weak because you don’t even eat properly.”
“…I-I’m not going outside.”
“The weather is nice today, too. The sun is shining brightly, but there’s also a breeze, so it’s not too hot.”
Professor Lim Hyun-sik, sitting beside Professor Ahn Chi-won, held his breath.
With every word of the woman’s persuasion, the emotions crossing the man’s face were far more sophisticated than he had expected.
“…Please. I said I don’t want to go outside.”
The wariness of a wild animal retreating into the darkness.
“While staying in this room, have you ever thought about going outside?”
“……”
“You actually wanted to go outside, didn’t you? Even though you were afraid.”
Beneath that wariness was a longing for someone to pull him out of this place.
“I’ll help you.”
After the woman’s long persuasion, the man finally stood up from his chair.
Perhaps because it had been a long time since he had stood, he staggered immediately after getting up, but the woman quickly grabbed his arm and supported him.
“I-I can’t do it.”
“No. You can do it. I’m right here.”
The man’s face stiffened.
Fear, terror, confusion.
After all those emotions appeared through the slightest tremors in every facial muscle, the man finally made his decision.
Using the small warmth pulling him forward as his guide, he slowly and carefully took a step.
Oh, this story is pretty good. I definitely have to ask who came up with it.
Professor Ahn Chi-won’s eyes sparkled with interest.
The two performers moved around the stage, miming crossing the narrow threshold, opening the door, and stepping outside.
And finally, the man reached the front of the stage.
“A-Are there people around?”
The man hunched his shoulders tightly, reacting to even the slightest sound and looking as though he wanted to run back into the familiar darkness at any moment.
“Yeah, there are a few people. A mother who came outside pushing a stroller, some elderly women who came out because the weather is nice, and some men playing soc—”
“I-I want to go back inside.”
“Jungi.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s obvious anyway. Everyone must be looking at me strangely, right? I’d rather—”
Just as he shouted and suddenly tried to turn around, the woman pulled him firmly into her arms.
The man’s words caught in his throat.
The woman gently but firmly patted his stiff back.
“Don’t worry about other people’s eyes. Just focus on me.”
In the silence, the man’s rough and anxious breathing gradually began to calm.
At the woman’s whisper, which tickled his ears, the tension slowly drained from his body as he finally came back to his senses.
The professors could not even be heard breathing as they watched the man’s performance, in which he perfectly controlled everything from the position of his pupils and the speed of his breathing to the tension and relaxation of his entire body.
“Are you okay?”
The man tilted his head slightly, like an animal perking up its ears, and remained extremely wary.
“What kind of face… are people looking at me with?”
“They look a little strange. A grown adult man is being held like a child like this.”
“N-Not that kind of look… I mean, like they’ve seen something horrible…”
“No one is looking at you like you’re horrible.”
The woman’s voice was low and firm, without a trace of hesitation.
Her hand stroking the man’s back was equally calm and unhurried.
“…Really?”
“I have no reason to lie to you.”
The woman’s hand moved toward the man’s head.
His shoulders flinched slightly, but soon he gently leaned against her hand as though relying on her touch.
“If you really don’t believe me, listen for yourself. Not to the sounds you created in your head, but to the real sounds.”
The woman completely removed her hand from him.
The man’s two hands immediately wandered through the air.
As though desperately trying not to lose the only hand he had been relying on, he reached toward where the woman had been.
But the woman did not take his hand.
When his fingertips, desperately searching through the air, grasped nothing but the cold air, the man finally realized that she would no longer hold his hand.
“……”
The man still could not see anything, but following the woman’s instructions, he redirected his tightly wound nerves toward the sounds around him.
As he listened to the peaceful sounds of the world, the expression on his face slowly changed.
At that moment, both Professor Ahn Chi-won and Professor Lim Hyun-sik felt an intense shiver run through them.
The man was expressing, without a single line of dialogue, the delicate process of overcoming his enormous fear of the world.
The trembling of his pupils as they wandered aimlessly, the subtle changes in the speed of his breathing as air entered and left his lungs, and the gradual relaxation of a body that had been firmly closed off from the world.
The male student was already an actor who knew how to express himself with his entire body.
After feeling the world around him, the man looked toward the woman.
His gaze still did not actually focus directly on her, but it was different from before.
“Big sister.”
At last, the corners of the man’s lips curved gently upward.
“Thank you.”
That smile was the first step taken by someone who had been trembling with fear as he stepped out into the world.
For both the actor and the character.
Flash.
When the performance ended, the stage lights became brighter.
“All right. Good work.”
At Professor Ahn Chi-won’s words, Han Seohyun hurriedly came forward from backstage.
“Thank you!”
At the same time as Han Seohyun, I also bowed deeply at a ninety-degree angle.
“Oh, yes. Who came up with this situation?”
“We came up with it together!”
“How did you complete the characters so quickly?”
“We started by adapting The Glass Menagerie into a twenty-first-century version and developed the idea from there. In my case, I brought Laura into reality and gave her visual impairment and scars.”
I turned my head toward Han Seohyun and gave her a signal.
It was her turn to speak, just as we had practiced.
Soon, Han Seohyun opened her mouth.
“I created the role of the man’s older sister’s friend. I wanted to express her bringing the man out into the world. She might seem a little forceful, but I thought that was the key to getting him outside.”
All that practice for the oral interview had definitely paid off.
“You made it quite well. Anyone else have questions?”
Professor Ahn Chi-won took the microphone.
“If you come to our school, what do you want to learn?”
“First, I would like to take Professor Ahn Chi-won’s Breathing and Vocalization class to improve my basic ability to deliver dialogue.”
“Your vocalization already seems good.”
“No! I still have a lot to improve!”
“Good. What about the female student?”
Han Seohyun slowly opened her mouth.
“Yes! I want to take Professor Lim Hyun-sik’s Understanding the Body class so that I can learn to release tension from my body!”
Up to this point, everything was going exactly as we had practiced.
“Do you really want to come to our school?”
“Yes! I really want to!”
“But I don’t see that passion in you.”
I had expected him to say this as well.
It wasn’t because he genuinely couldn’t see her passion.
He was deliberately putting her in an awkward situation to see how she would respond.
The answer was simple.
Show enough sincerity that the other person would feel embarrassed for doubting you.
“I’m sorry! I’ll put even more passion into my acting!”
I spoke as loudly as I could while bowing my head, and Han Seohyun bowed her head in exactly the same way.
“Do you know what class year you’ll be if you enter our school?”
“Yes, as far as I know…”
“No. Not the male student. Let the female student answer.”
I flinched for a moment, but I put strength into my knees so that it wouldn’t show.
This wasn’t on the list of expected questions I had given Han Seohyun.
“You applied to our school without even knowing something like that?”
One of the purposes of the interview was to test the student’s pronunciation and vocalization under normal circumstances.
So it wasn’t a big problem if she didn’t know the answer.
What I wanted from Han Seohyun was for her to answer that she didn’t know without breaking the concept of confidently acting that she had maintained until now.
Han Seohyun opened her lips.
“Class 47.”
Oh.
She was exactly right.
And she didn’t stutter at all.
“Keep answering, young lady.”
The professors began directing all their questions toward Han Seohyun.
“What are the three elements of theater?”
“Actors, stage, and audience.”
“What does a beat mean in acting?”
“The smallest unit of emotion.”
“What are Chekhov’s four major plays?”
“The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and Uncle Vanya.”
“You studied a lot, didn’t you?”
Professor Ahn Chi-won smiled with satisfaction at Han Seohyun’s flawless answers.
“Then answer this one, too.”
The strict Professor Ahn Chi-won took a brief breath before continuing.
“What is the Meisner Technique?”
Wait.
Han Seohyun probably wouldn’t know this one.
Should I answer?
No.
If I did, my attitude score would be lowered.
Just as I was wondering how I should intervene, Han Seohyun answered first.
“It is an acting theory in which an actor focuses not on themselves, but on their scene partner to receive emotional stimulation.”
She knew even this?
I had naturally assumed she wouldn’t.
It seemed she had studied quite hard for the oral interview on her own as well.
“I told you. The level of these applicants is really high.”
“Does anyone else have any questions?”
“I think we’ve asked everything worth evaluating.”
At Professor Ahn Chi-won’s words, Professor Lim Hyun-sik took the microphone again.
“Good work. You may leave.”
“Thank you!”
And with that, all of my Daeyejong acting examinations came to an end.
Han Seohyun thanked me several times, saying that thanks to me she had been able to do well on the second-round examination, and then she left.
The final results came out a few weeks later.
At the time, I was filming my debut work.
