Chapter 173: Hidden Story.
After Do Hyo Jun finished his performance, the astonished judges immediately began questioning him.
"Do Hyo Jun... would you explain your performance? It's like you've become a completely different person."
"During the entrance assignment, I got greedy and overreached. In this play, I think the king's role is fundamentally a supporting one, so this time I performed it the way it should be."
A powerless king who contributed little more than the occasional interjection to the noble's and merchant's confrontation.
His performance lacked the overwhelming impact of his previous attempt, but it conveyed exactly what kind of king he was. While the actors playing the noble and the merchant delivered their dialogue, the king flawlessly fulfilled his role as the one who balanced the scene, ensuring that their performances landed as they should.
"So you 'performed it the proper way'... But hasn't Group 34's interpretation of The Painting already been established as the correct reading? If you wanted to perform it properly, shouldn't you have followed Group 34's interpretation? Or is it that your pride won't allow you to perform someone else's interpretation?"
At Derek's piercing question, Hyo Jun instinctively flinched.
Then he slowly shook his head and answered quietly.
"No. I just felt it would've been shameless to borrow someone else's interpretation without earning it. So I performed it based solely on the impression I had when I first received this script fragment."
That didn't mean he had acted thoughtlessly simply because he relied on his first impression.
It was obvious he had carefully considered and studied every breath, every reaction, searching for the most effective way to portray a king blinded to reality and deaf to the truth.
For the first time, traces of genuine effort could be seen in Do Hyo Jun's acting.
Has he... finally come to his senses?
Derek studied him suspiciously before suddenly asking,
"What's the king's name?"
"Henry Canute Stuart."
The answer came without a moment's hesitation, drawing a faint smile from Derek.
There was no name given for the character anywhere in the script.
Which meant Hyo Jun had created one himself.
The old Do Hyo Jun would never have bothered. To him, a role had simply been a role.
Giving the king a name meant he had thought about who this person was—what kind of life he had lived, what identity he carried.
"I think you're finally beginning to understand what I've been trying to teach you. That's already a tremendous achievement. Your technical skills have always been exceptional, so I won't nitpick the finer details. Well done."
For the first time, Derek offered Hyo Jun sincere praise.
He's no longer trying to steal the spotlight for himself. He's blending naturally with everyone around him—and doing so in a way that perfectly fulfills the role of a supporting actor.
In truth, Derek had designed this graduation assignment specifically for Hyo Jun.
He wanted him to witness how actors could change when they devoted time to refining the same material. By watching everyone else's growth, Derek had hoped something would finally click.
It was the last piece of advice he could offer someone with such extraordinary talent.
Yet somehow, Hyo Jun seemed to have reached that realization before Derek could lead him there.
How did he change so suddenly? Did what I said to him that day finally sink in...?
With Hyo Jun's performance over, only one remained.
Yu Myeong.
Has he managed to prepare something even beyond that...?
Unable to contain his curiosity, Derek's toes wriggled unconsciously inside his shoes.
"We're ready."
At Yu Myeong's announcement, the three actors stationed around him—the ones performing only the voices—visibly tensed.
Even though they were providing only voice acting, it had been anything but easy to learn, in just thirty minutes, how to portray "a painting gradually becoming human."
The performance began.
As the voices of the king, the noble, and the merchant passed back and forth, the slave stood motionless at center stage.
With the audience's attention focused entirely on a single performer, every tiny detail became more apparent.
The brief glances he stole toward the king.
Every subtle reaction while the noble and merchant spoke.
Each movement was stripped of anything unnecessary, quietly and precisely revealing the slave's character.
And yet...
Hm?
The impression was different from before.
His back was no longer bent as though crushed beneath the weight of the earth.
His lowered head still expressed obedience.
But his spine remained perfectly straight.
Why...?
Was this, as Derek had once interpreted, a slave secretly plotting something?
No.
His eyes were far too clear for that.
The respectful way he folded his hands and attentively listened to his superiors carried an unmistakable dignity.
What kind of interpretation was this?
Gasp—
From beside him, Derek heard Eva suck in a sharp breath and forget to exhale.
He instinctively glanced toward her, wanting to ask what was wrong.
But he couldn't tear his eyes away from Yu Myeong.
"M-May this lowly servant speak?"
He wasn't lowly.
Not in the slightest.
Gone was the desperate cry of someone who had fallen into the abyss.
In its place was a composed, elegant voice.
The kind of pure resolve possessed by someone willing to stake his life on justice and conviction.
"I believe His Highness the Crown Prince took his own life."
His clear voice carried no hesitation.
If anything, it bordered on insolence.
Where the previous version had felt like the final, desperate struggle of an ant trampled into the dirt, this slave possessed the spirit of a revolutionary willingly laying down his life for his beliefs.
It was an excellent character.
But... why?
To derive such a character from this script alone...
Wasn't that interpretation far too excessive?
Thrust.
The slave was stabbed and collapsed.
Even then, he fell without a scream.
His eyes never left the king.
Though his breathing grew ragged with pain, he fought to keep his posture composed, refusing to die disgracefully.
He continued looking at the king.
Again.
And again.
As though trying to convey one final message.
Then...
With his eyes still wide open—
Thud.
His head finally fell limp.
Haaa...
Only after the audience collectively released the breath they had been holding did the fallen slave return to being a painting.
The movements that had become so fluid gradually stiffened once more, turning rigid with delicate, mechanical precision.
Clack.
The transformation back into a painting was even more refined than it had been two weeks earlier.
He's improved again...
Yu Myeong's performance came to an end.
For the first time, Derek felt like challenging him.
The acting itself had become even more polished, but he wanted to ask whether this version of the slave wasn't pushing the script too far.
"As acting it's outstanding, but can a slave like that really come from this script? Doesn't this interpretation actually move farther away from the play rather than closer to it?"
Before he could speak, Eva snatched up her microphone.
"What was that, Yu Myeong?! How did you figure out the slave's hidden story?"
Hidden story?
What on earth was she talking about?
Before anyone could make sense of Eva's unexpected outburst, Yu Myeong smiled faintly.
"I really enjoyed reading it."
"You mean... you read the original script? How?"
"Weren't all the entrance-assignment scripts actually part of the same script?"
Eva let out a startled gasp.
She opened her mouth, but no words came.
Jerry finally stepped in.
"Hold on, what are you talking about? Fill the rest of us in. What do you mean they were all the same script?"
"There were fifty-two teams in the entrance assignment, including the seeded teams, and twenty-six scripts in total. They all came from the same work."
"But that can't be right. The stories didn't connect. And twenty-six scripts would be over four hours long."
"More accurately, they're different fragments from the same story."
Yu Myeong began explaining.
The Kingdom of Arizade—the setting of The Arizade Kingdom Murder Case.
Within that kingdom, nobles and merchants were locked in a fierce struggle for power.
The slaves suffered.
The royal family had become ineffectual.
The twenty-six scripts were simply different windows into that same world.
In one script, a woman who went to the marketplace to buy groceries became involved in an altercation with an abusive merchant and met a tragic end.
In another, a royal cook, a palace maid, and a noblewoman exchanged ominous rumors.
In yet another, the paintings themselves held a heated debate that symbolized the reality of the Kingdom of Arizade.
"If the world of the story consisted of sections A through G, a film would only show something like A, C, E, and F. The slower parts would be cut away, leaving only the essential scenes. But these scripts are like fragments from before the editing process—pieces that haven't yet been assembled into the finished work. I was amazed by Eva's ability to make them all look like completely separate scripts."
"Is that true, Eva? We were never told any of this."
"...Yes."
Eva finally managed a small nod.
"I was simply asked to write twenty-six ten-minute scripts. I could've written completely unrelated pieces, but instead I wanted to create one large world by combining the kinds of stories that are usually omitted. There wasn't any reason to tell people that. I never imagined anyone would figure it out."
Both the person who conceived it...
and the one who unraveled it...
were extraordinary.
"How did you notice?"
"During the entrance assignment, I kept feeling that different pieces of the story were connected somehow. The thought wouldn't leave my mind, so I kept thinking about it."
Even after the assignment was over,
Yu Myeong had continued studying it.
"I borrowed some of the key scripts from other teams and read them. The scenes performed by the seeded teams—the prince and princess scenes—were the ones that revealed the current state of the Kingdom of Arizade. One of them even featured Prince Roche, although his name had been changed so he wouldn't be recognized."
Little by little, he gathered script fragments from other teams and fit them together.
Eventually, he realized the scattered clues formed one enormous story.
"So that's why today's performance was different?"
"Yes. The four paintings hanging in the royal hall weren't simply symbolic images. They were portraits of real people from the previous era."
"...!!"
"There was once a prince.
"He stood in the way of both the nobles' and the merchants' interests, so they intended to eliminate him. But the queen secretly smuggled him out of the kingdom.
"He grew up as a slave, never knowing he was of royal blood."
Derek pressed his lips together.
He distinctly remembered reading a script with exactly that premise.
He had never imagined it would connect here.
"Even without knowing his birthright, his innate dignity never disappeared.
"The other slaves gradually came to follow him. He led a movement to free them, and was ultimately executed at the hands of the nobles and the merchants."
The contestants listened as the scripts they had each performed gradually connected together.
It felt like watching magic unfold.
"And even after becoming one of the paintings, he continued trying to reveal the truth behind the current Arizade Kingdom Murder Case to the king, only to be stabbed to death.
"He was a man of unwavering conviction.
"The idea that royal blood remains noble even after becoming a slave is admittedly rather medieval. But dramatically, it completes the structure of the highest-born person becoming the one who strives to liberate those at the very bottom."
The man Yu Myeong had portrayed...
was not a slave.
He was a prince who had become a slave.
Suddenly every aspect of his performance made perfect sense.
There wasn't a single flaw to criticize.
No one could find the words to speak.
Among them all, however, the one whose eyes shook the most violently was Do Hyo Jun, who had only moments earlier finished his own performance.
There had once been a time when he hadn't even realized what kind of talent he possessed.
He had simply relied on it to get by.
"Would you like to come to Korea with me?"
Yu Seok had been the first person to show any real interest in Do Hyo Jun.
Or rather...
perhaps it hadn't been him that interested Yu Seok.
Perhaps it had only been his talent.
That was why Hyo Jun had never been able to honestly ask him to care about him as a person.
He believed he had to treat acting casually, had to keep proving himself a genius beyond everyone's expectations, or Yu Seok's attention would drift elsewhere.
But Yu Seok kept talking about one thing.
Mindset.
"If you keep thinking like that, you'll never become a professional actor."
"Why not? I'm confident I could walk into any audition today and pass."
"You probably could. Then you'd keep acting however you pleased, following every impulse that crossed your mind, and eventually you'd start dragging everyone else down with you. Even if you got away with it for a project or two, the more success you accumulated, the more casually you'd treat acting. Until you've developed the proper mindset, the answer is no."
Two years passed.
The first proper job Yu Seok finally entrusted him with was the role of Bohyeong in Entertainment Studies.
"I'm still not completely at ease... but I'd like to believe you've finally come to your senses. It's a role with tremendous potential, and I've reserved it for you. Don't be late."
But at the last moment...
Hyo Jun ran away.
Why?
After boasting that everything would be fine as long as he landed a proper role, why had he fled at the final moment?
Was he afraid Yu Seok would abandon him too if he failed to live up to those expectations?
Or was it an act of rebellion—a desperate plea for someone to accept him exactly as he was, regardless of whether he was right or wrong?
He could no longer remember.
That same day,
Yu Seok signed another actor to fill the role Hyo Jun had abandoned.
Yu Myeong.
The more successful Yu Myeong became, the more anxious Hyo Jun grew.
After he had abandoned the Entertainment Studies audition, Yu Seok had declared that there would be no more work until Hyo Jun had fixed his mindset.
For the next two years, he remained trapped in the practice room.
Meanwhile, Yu Myeong raced toward the summit.
At least my talent is greater than his...
Without clinging to that one consolation,
he couldn't have endured it.
As Yu Seok's expectations gradually faded away completely, Hyo Jun played his final card.
He begged to be allowed to compete in Casting Vote as well.
After a long sigh, Yu Seok agreed.
Having spent his entire childhood surviving by reading other people's moods, Hyo Jun immediately understood what that sigh meant.
This...
was his last chance.
But the Yu Myeong he encountered up close was nothing like the distant rival he had imagined.
"I never asked for your help. If you're insisting on helping anyway, isn't that interference rather than help?"
He wasn't an easy opponent.
Nor was he someone who could be manipulated.
More than his astonishing talent or overwhelming skill, what captivated Hyo Jun was that Yu Myeong lived by principles of his own.
He was...
a genuine adult.
If he believed something was right, he followed through even when it meant opposing Yu Seok's wishes.
He remained unmoved even by the attention of world-famous celebrities like Natalie and Derek.
He didn't seem to care in the slightest that the program had drastically understated the quality of his performances.
How can someone be like that?
Jealousy became curiosity.
Curiosity became admiration.
Before he realized it, Yu Myeong had stopped being a rival.
He had become someone whose acknowledgment Hyo Jun desperately wanted.
And the first words that man had ever truly driven into Hyo Jun's heart were these:
"You're treating something other people stake their lives on as nothing more than a tool to show off. And while doing that, you still expect them to understand you... and acknowledge you?"