Aura of a Genius Actor

"[I'd like to explain your graduation assignment.]"

The second week of Action School had begun, and for the first time in a while, all the remaining participants were gathered together.

Twenty four people.

The group had become noticeably smaller.

Apparently every class followed the same policy of eliminating half the trainees during the course.

Unfortunately, Jeffrey, one of Yu Myeong's teammates from George's class, had been eliminated the day before and had already packed up and left. Only Yu Myeong, Kai, and Hyo Jun remained in their room.

"[We originally planned to give each class a different graduation assignment, but due to unforeseen circumstances, that's changed. Everyone will now receive the same assignment.]"

Standing at the front today wasn't the host, Jerry.

It was the producer, Dennis Milton.

Derek had requested that the graduation assignment be changed.

Yu Myeong couldn't understand why it had to be this assignment, and why it had to be now...

"[For your final assignment... you'll be performing your entrance assignment again.]"

"[...!]"

Confusion spread across everyone's faces.

The entrance assignment had been a group project, and many of the original teammates had already been eliminated. It wasn't as though they could perform an ensemble scene alone.

"Um... then who'll be playing the other characters?"

"There won't be any scene partners. You'll perform it as a one person play under the assumption that the other characters are present. The dialogue for the other roles will be read by professional actors we've hired."

One of the contestants immediately raised his voice.

"So we just perform it the same way we did before?"

"No, no. Then it wouldn't be a graduation assignment."

Dennis wagged a finger.

"Whether it's a new interpretation of the character, improved acting technique, or anything else, we want to see how you've changed since the entrance assignment. If we can see that you've corrected the weaknesses we pointed out back then, that'll naturally earn you an even better evaluation. And since it's a solo performance, you don't have to worry about coordinating with teammates anymore. Give us everything you've got."

The theme was growth.

In a way, this assignment might actually be harder for those who had already received high evaluations.

The weaker an actor was, the more basic the criticisms they had received. The stronger an actor was, the more subtle, deeply rooted flaws they had been asked to fix.

And what about someone who had received nothing but praise?

...

With his arms folded, Derek listened to Dennis's explanation before letting his gaze settle on two people.

One was the very person who had made him request this assignment.

A man who kept getting scolded over and over, yet never changed the one thing that mattered. At this rate, he would end up nothing more than an unremarkable actor.

The other...

Was someone Derek simply couldn't imagine surpassing his previous performance.

Let's see...

He slowly stroked his chin.

"...Sigh. Hyo Jun, are you really not making any progress?"

"...I worked hard preparing this. Isn't it good enough?"

Once again, the atmosphere inside the rehearsal room froze.

After enduring Derek's criticism nearly every day, Hyo Jun had grown more and more dispirited. Today, however, he finally snapped back.

"'Good enough' according to whose standards?"

At that, Hyo Jun immediately clamped his mouth shut again.

He couldn't bring himself to name people like Kai, Jackson, or Sydney.

That would be too pathetic.

"This isn't school, where eighty points means acceptable and ninety means good. That's not how I evaluate people. My standard is simple—how much someone who can achieve has actually achieved. And Hyo Jun..."

Derek let out a weary sigh.

"You can do better."

"I don't know why you keep insisting I can."

"If I'd handed you this script and given you ten minutes, you'd still have produced almost exactly this performance, wouldn't you?"

Hyo Jun visibly flinched.

"It wouldn't matter whether I gave you ten minutes, one day, or an entire month. The result would be almost identical. Know why?"

It seemed Derek had decided today was the day.

The {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} other actors didn't even dare breathe.

"You're smart. The moment you read a script, ideas immediately start pouring out. And you're talented enough to turn those ideas into a decent performance almost instantly."

He paused.

"That's your poison."

"You've gotten into the habit of never thinking any further."

"..."

"You're clever. Efficient. But is acting a job where the objective is to squeeze the maximum result out of the minimum amount of time?"

Hyo Jun bit down on his lip.

He had tried talking back, only to be completely outmatched.

"Acting isn't about manufacturing a cost effective product. It's about a craftsman pouring his soul into creating a masterpiece."

Derek's voice remained calm.

"In anything you do, if it takes ten units of effort to reach eighty percent completion, every single percentage point after that demands exponentially more. One percent might cost one more unit. The next might cost five. Then ten."

"You only need ten units of effort to reach eighty percent. But pushing it to ninety might take fifty. It's horribly inefficient."

He looked around the room.

"So would it be better to produce two eighty percent performances instead?"

The man standing at the pinnacle looked down on everyone with absolute certainty.

"No."

"As ridiculous as it sounds, people don't get excited over a hundred works that are eighty percent complete."

"They get excited over one that's ninety nine percent complete."

"And an actor capable of reaching ninety nine percent?"

His voice hardened.

"They won't be worth a hundred times more than an eighty percent actor."

"They'll be worth a thousand times more."

"Ten thousand times more."

Coming from the highest paid actor in Hollywood, the words carried overwhelming weight.

"But someone talented enough to reach ninety percent with only ten units of effort..."

He sighed again.

"...is satisfied with exactly that and cares more about showing off his natural talent than pushing himself."

By then, tears had begun to well up in Hyo Jun's eyes.

"You're not one of those people who brag, 'I never studied, but I still got good grades because I'm smart,' are you?"

He shook his head.

"That means absolutely nothing in this industry."

"Only results matter."

"The finished work is everything."

"Even if someone else is slower than you and has to pour in two hundred or three hundred units of effort, if they can raise the quality by even one more percent, then they're the better actor."

He swept his gaze across the room.

"And that doesn't apply only to Hyo Jun."

"It applies to every single one of you."

A tear fell.

Without another word, Derek ended the class, clearly in no mood to continue.

That evening.

Feeling more tired than usual, Yu Myeong wrapped up practice early, showered, and returned to the room.

He was drying his hair when the lump curled beneath one of the blankets suddenly threw it aside.

With a sullen expression, Hyo Jun muttered,

"You hate me too, don't you?"

The question came out of nowhere.

Yu Myeong quietly considered it.

Once before, Yu Seok had asked whether he disliked Hyo Jun.

Back then, Yu Myeong had answered no.

They were simply coworkers. It wasn't that he hated him. He just didn't particularly like him.

But now...

Normally, if he saw even a coworker receiving criticism about acting to that extent, he wouldn't have been able to stand by and ignore it.

Yet he had deliberately kept his distance.

There was a reason for that.

It wasn't so much that he disliked Hyo Jun himself...

"I can't honestly say I don't."

The admission made Hyo Jun's face darken even further.

"You can't understand someone like me, can you? You've had an easy life."

Yu Myeong remained silent.

Mistaking that for encouragement to continue, Hyo Jun kept talking.

Only then did Yu Myeong notice the beer cans scattered inside the blanket like a cave.

So he'd been drinking.

"I don't even know what my parents looked like. I was sent to America before I was old enough to speak."

"You know I'm adopted, right?"

"..."

"It was a very Puritanical middle class American family. Rewards and punishments were strict from the time I was little. Once I realized why my skin and hair looked different from theirs..."

His voice grew quieter.

"I tried as hard as I could to avoid being abandoned."

"I wanted nothing but praise."

"I guess I was smart enough."

"I got plenty of it."

Lately, Yu Myeong seemed to hear far too many stories about people's pasts.

Another child who had spent his life desperately trying not to be abandoned.

"But when I was over ten..."

"My adoptive mother, who'd been diagnosed infertile..."

"...miraculously became pregnant."

Everyone celebrated the unexpected blessing.

Everyone except one frightened child.

"After that..."

"The praise stopped."

"So did the scolding..."

A child who had once behaved well in hopes of earning praise...

Now misbehaved simply to receive attention.

But even the scolding wasn't the same anymore.

Had that only been the fearful imagination of an insecure child?

Or had things really changed?

Yu Myeong had thought he simply didn't care about Hyo Jun.

Yet he wasn't cold enough to cut him off while he drunkenly poured out the pain he'd carried since childhood.

The longer he listened, the easier it became to understand why Hyo Jun was obsessed with praise and attention.

And why he had become so attached to Yu Seok—the first person since his parents to show genuine interest and expectations toward him.

After Yu Myeong appeared, Yu Seok's attention toward Hyo Jun had lessened.

Perhaps that reminded him of the adoptive parents whose attention had shifted away from him after their own child was born.

"Is it so wrong to want a little praise?"

His face remained stubbornly sullen.

"I just want to enjoy acting without taking it so seriously."

"So why does Derek keep deciding on his own that I'm capable of more, then riding me because I don't live up to his expectations?"

He looked up again.

"And why do you hate me?"

"Because I'm twisted?"

"Because I don't work hard?"

"I became twisted because of how I grew up."

"And effort..."

He laughed bitterly.

"Does every actor in the world have to stake their entire life on acting?"

"Everyone has their own way of living."

"Can't you just... understand that?"

Yu Myeong let out a long sigh and looked at him with tired eyes.

"Why do you need my understanding?"

Hyo Jun's eyes wavered.

"If you truly believe that's the right way to live, then live that way."

"So why do you need me to understand it?"

"...You're nice to Kai."

The answer made no sense.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're kind to everyone."

"You get along with everybody."

"But you're only cold toward me."

"I've had a hard life too."

"I just want you to understand."

It was the awkward, clumsy way of someone who had never learned how to build relationships.

Yu Myeong had realized some time ago that Hyo Jun's feelings toward him had changed.

He no longer saw Yu Myeong as a rival.

He wanted his recognition.

Yu Myeong didn't know why.

But he had always been perceptive about things like that.

Even after hearing such a pitiful story, however, he couldn't simply accept those feelings.

"You're right."

"Everyone has their own way of living."

"I'll cheer for people who work hard."

"But I have no intention of condemning those who don't."

His eyes turned cold.

"But don't look down on it."

"..."

"You're treating something other people devote their lives to as nothing more than a tool for showing off."

"And then you expect those same people to understand you."

That was why Yu Myeong could never like Hyo Jun.

Because he looked down on the thing Yu Myeong valued more than life itself.

"It's fine if you're bad at acting."

"You can improve."

"If you're trying your hardest but still can't get better, that's unfortunate. Talent has its limits."

"If you grow exhausted after years of trying and decide to stop chasing improvement, that's understandable too."

"It's cruel to demand that someone struggle for their entire life."

These were the words of an actor...

Who had been told he couldn't act.

Who had fought desperately to improve without seeing results.

Who had spent a lifetime striving, even as exhaustion slowly consumed him.

"But you're boasting that you can outperform everyone else without even trying."

"You're looking down on acting."

"..."

"Do you think acting is easy?"

"No."

"You've simply never done it properly."

"Every role is an entire human being."

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is to contain a whole life inside yourself?"

"If you truly understood that..."

"...if you truly understood how inadequate you are..."

"You could never speak the way you do."

He looked directly into Hyo Jun's eyes.

"You already sense it, don't you?"

"Deep down."

"You're afraid."

"Afraid that if you throw yourself into acting with everything you've got..."

"...you'll discover you're actually nothing."

"So you keep avoiding it."

Hyo Jun's eyes lost their focus.

He had been struck dead center.

"No one smiles while watching someone mock the thing they treasure most."

"..."

"If all you're going to do is boast that you'd win if you ever bothered to take it seriously..."

"...without even having the courage to face it head on..."

Yu Myeong stood.

"I think you'd be better off finding another path."

With those final words, he opened the door and left.

Long after he was gone...

Hyo Jun's trembling hands refused to stop shaking.

After the translated version of Casting Boat Episode 7 was released, South Korea exploded with speculation.

Countless theories circulated about the meaning of the preview.

What on earth happened? We want to know too!

George Housley said he wasn't impressed. Doesn't that mean the judges were split?

The judges all looked like they'd just seen a ghost. Didn't Yu Myeong shock them somehow?

That could be either good or bad. It's still too early to say.

What does Derek want to try? Ugh! I need Episode 8 already!

Meanwhile, in one corner, two people surrounded by an ominous black aura were quietly writing what looked suspiciously like a death notebook.

"Shin Eung Soo..."

"First on the list?"

"Oh, that bastard's definitely got to pay."

"The Friendship Daily ran a defense piece for him."

"They gave us the exclusive on Peter Pan back when it premiered."

"We'll let them off once."

"What about Magazine Q?"

"Two strikes."

"They still haven't learned their lesson after firing Shin Eung Soo."

"They've already run eight articles attacking Yu Myeong."

The woman meticulously clipping articles into the notebook was So Jin, president of the God Named fan community.

The man sitting beside her, whose rough language leaked out no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, was Yu Myeong's manager, Ho Cheol.

The two of them had been especially stressed by the recent public discourse.

The notebook they were compiling was titled:

Interview Boycott List.

In the future, numerous major media outlets would end up desperately begging for their names to be removed from it.

"It's today, right?"

"Yeah, noona."

"Today's the day."

"Technically it was yesterday in America."

Today was the long awaited broadcast of Casting Boat Episode 8.

Author's Note: I'm revising the setting so that Casting Boat airs twice a week instead of once a week. I'll be updating all earlier references that say once a week as soon as possible. Sorry for the confusion.