Life, Once Again! Chapter 682

Chapter 682

The shoot began in the set after it was cleaned up. The slightest bit of noise disappeared, and everyone’s attention was focused on the firmly shut set. Maru walked silently behind producer Jayeon. He saw Mira captured in the monitor that she was looking at. On it, Mira was dancing on the spot joyfully with her eyes closed. When producer Jayeon grabbed the walkie-talkie and said ‘more’, Mira shook her body even more violently.
“Cut, Mira!”
Jayeon stood up from her seat and ran over to the set. Maru saw Jayeon appear on the monitor when she rushed in. Jayeon’s hands moved up and down. After explaining something with big hand gestures, she suddenly started dancing. A rather abrupt dance session unfolded. The two people, who looked at each other inside the screen while dancing, eventually returned to normal and started walking around. The dance was hot, just like the instructions.
“That’s the first time I saw a dance without music. Dang, it’s something,” Ganghwan said.
“They’re adding the music afterwards, right?”
“Probably.”
The two women inside the screen exchanged a quick conversation. Jayeon quickly returned to the monitor and ordered through the walkie-talkie to standby. Maru became quiet and breathed as shallowly as possible. Jayeon, who was staring holes in the monitor, would react to even the most minute sounds. The Mira inside the screen let her body loose to the soundless music. She waved her hand above her head and shook her head so that her orange hair was fluttering around. Apparently, it was a dance that was recently trending in night clubs, and it looks like it would strain the neck bones considerably.
A newly debuted writer who has hit a writer’s block after writing a good work, an exam student who lived a plain life and was now living inside a ravine and was having a hard time escaping, a college girl who focused all her energy into the things she wanted to do, a high school boy who decided to throw out his ordinariness for the sake of his first love, and a high school girl who likes that ordinariness and has a lot of pains. Characters who might exist somewhere had been polished and fitted into a scenario, and were being brought to reality through the acting of the actors.
Mira was expressing a college girl whose entire body was filled with passion with all her body. She was dancing in silence, but looking at her expression, it felt like some strong beats were flowing out from somewhere. At that moment, the lights stretched in a long fashion next to the set had turned blue. Even psychedelic lights had appeared and started flashing. Jayeon also jerked up and down as she watched Mira shaking her body. About 40 seconds passed like that before Jayeon shouted cut.
“That’s it! That was very good!”
Jayeon even snapped her fingers in joy. Inside the screen, Mira was panting heavily with her hands on her waist. She had done some vigorous actions, so she must have been out of breath.
“The production is just like the script.”
Maru thought about Mira’s scene. In the script was a line that said: a nightclub-like environment formed inside the room. Whether the final version made it look like it was the imagination of the character or like a sitcom, Jayeon would be the one to decide.
Maru took out his phone and checked the time. It had been 3 hours since they started shooting. Up until now, they finished his own scene, Ganghwan’s, Byungjae’s, and Mira’s scene, but in terms of the actual air time, it wouldn’t even be 5 minutes. The scenes they shot were the introduction scenes where they showed off the characters one by one. These scenes would allow the audience to deduce the nature of the characters through their actions as well as their rooms. If it was a play, they could just introduce the characters to the audience in detail, but the moment someone said ‘I’m someone and I have the role of X’ in a TV series, the viewer forums would explode and the channel would be switched to something else.
“We’re moving now!”
The assistant director’s voice could be heard. The staff, who had gotten into position in front of set B, moved over to set C with all the equipment. Maru looked at Yuna. It was her turn now.
“Do your best.”
“Yes, seonbae.”
Yuna walked over like a machine that wasn’t oiled properly. It seemed that nervousness had gotten to her again. It was impossible to avoid being nervous in a situation where one was about to do what one came to do. There was only one solution - to overcome it. As long as one was a pro, the option to run away or to give up did not exist. She would either have to finish the act successfully or leave behind a terrible act. There was nothing inbetween.
Maru stood in front of set C. This was the space he had been acting in just a little while ago, but everything had changed. There was a blanket on the floor which looked really old. The blanket had cute characters on it, and it was stained as though it had fungus growing on it. It was small as well. Even Yuna, who didn’t have a big stature, would have her feet sticking out if she lied down on it.
Against one wall was a circular metallic table. On the surface of that table were many dents indicating that it was used for a long time. The only thing that could be considered ‘furniture’ was a shelf, and even that was completely empty. On the floor were textbooks and various problem solving books, and the problem solving books had been discolored into a yellow color. Everything in the set indicated that she was poor. Yuna entered the room that looked like the manifestation of poverty. Her shoulder-length hair was tied with a rubber band, and she was wearing a pink ‘jersey’ that had been discolored from the wrong use of bleach and had holes at the knees.
“Looks good on you,” Jayeon said.
Yuna laughed. Her lips were slightly shaking as she laughed. It seemed that there was still a hint of nervousness.
“I hope she does well,” Ganghwan said.
He looked rather worried. He no longer had a joking tone, and his words sounded heavy.
“Have you ever worked with the director?”
“No, I haven’t. But I did watch her.”
“How was she?”
“She was similar to how she’s doing now. Jayeon is an angel when everything goes well. She’s probably happy that the actors she picked are doing their jobs properly.”
“How about when things are not going well?”
“I told you, she’s an angel when things are going well.”
Maru stopped asking. Dramas were the work of many people working together, but for the shoot alone, the responsibility would lie with the actor. It was something very difficult and solitary. It was especially worse when the actor caused a series of NGs and people around started looking at the actor with displeased eyes. By then, the shooting set would become hell on Earth for a new actor.
“But don’t worry too much. This is something that has Yoo Jayeon’s name on it. She might not show it, but she should be feeling very responsible. It’s not that surprising since the number of digits of money that’s being moved around is different, and there are a lot of people putting their effort into this. If she doesn’t feel the pressure, that’s also a problem.”
After listening to Ganghwan’s words, Maru looked at Jayeon’s face from the side. She was explaining to Yuna her movements and she definitely looked confident, but after what Ganghwan said, Maru felt that she seemed somewhat nervous.
Ganghwan made a rectangle with the thumbs and index fingers. He captured the two women in the rectangle like he was taking a photo.
“I’m saying that strictly speaking, this is the first time for both of them. It’ll be a debut piece for both of them. They should be just about as nervous as each other.”
“Why didn’t you give them some advice?”
“I will if they reach out to me. If they come to me, then I’ll help out at that time. Director Yoo is someone who would growl at me, telling me not to pity her if I tried to do that. I’m not sure about the details, but apparently, it’s not an easy thing for a female producer to survive in the drama field. She climbed up all the way here after going through all of that hardships. I can’t help her out so easily. There’s her pride on the line.”
Ganghwan crossed his arms.
“She tells me in passing to help her out, but that shouldn’t be what’s really on her mind. I know a little about her. She’s an unrelenting general. She’s the kind of tree who would manage to take root even in the desert. If I stick my head around trying to be gentle to her, I’ll get hated instead. …. Yeah, no matter how much I think about it.”
This will be the best piece ever! - Maru remembered Jayeon saying those words during the get-together. The shadow from that high self-confidence of hers should be that stifling nervousness. If things went well, she would gain momentum and climb the ranks, but the moment she looks back, she might fall in despair because of the drastic difference between her ideals and reality. It was at those times that Ganghwan would reach out. After all, he was a veteran among veterans. As Ganghwan had experience both directing and acting in a piece, he was probably well aware of what Jayeon was going through. The fact that there was someone to support her would relieve her a lot, just with him being here. Even if she did not rely on him, she would be a lot more relieved knowing that he was here and could proceed onwards.
Maru had a look at Yuna. He was the only one who could be considered her ‘peer’ in this wide set area. If Yuna felt pressure and reached out to him for help, what could he do for her?
“I wish I had confidence like you, hyung-nim. If I had the ability to solve everything that people ask me to do, then I would feel confident too.”
“The fact that you’re thinking about such a thing means that you are a good man. There are kids who need a friend’s encouragement more than an adult’s advice, so you should try to do that. From the way I saw it, she seemed to follow you a lot?”
“I’m the only one around her age here after all.”
“Well, to my eyes, she looks like a girl who’s acting embarrassed in front of the oppa she likes though?”
“No way,” Maru said as he looked away.
He couldn’t be sure that Yuna had resolved all of her feelings towards him. However, it was impossible for him to date her when he already had a lover. People betraying each other wasn’t something that happened frequently, and he did not experience that a lot, but for some reason, when he thought about that word, rage boiled up inside him. As such, he did not plan on accepting other people’s feelings towards him as long as he maintained a good relationship with Gaeul. It was a student romance that would end one day, but as long as that romance existed, he wanted to give her the best memories possible.
“Just think of her as a cute junior and listen to her a lot. An actor is a solitary job after all.”
“Okay.”
“Also, I saw that your acting has improved quite a lot. I also feel like the way you do it has changed somewhat.”
“The way I do it?”
“Until last winter, you felt like a machine. You were good. You were good, but it somehow felt artificial. But right now, a lot of that has dissipated. I feel like you’re finally acting like a person of your age.”
Maru smiled inwardly. I’m actually thirty-one - if he told him that, he wondered what Ganghwan would say about it. Since he was at it, he thought about how he acted before. He couldn’t understand before he heard about it, but now that he looked back, he did somewhat understand. The way he acted was similar to now, but back then, he just had no leisure.
‘Rather than leisure… I might have thought that I had to do it that way.’
It was a strange feeling. There was a sense of disparity between the current him and the past him. Was it happening because the memories had been fading this past half a year? He felt like the naturally mature child had now become a natural youth. Mature… naturally mature, huh.
As he was thinking deeply about it, the shoot started and the first cut sign fell. He saw Jayeon standing up in front of the monitor. Her expression didn’t look that good. She started moving. Thud, thud. The sound was heavy like an elephant’s footsteps. It seemed to be representative of her heavy heart.