Chapter 461 (1/2)

“Hello, senior!”

She greeted with a 90 degrees bow. The senior actor, who was greeted, waved back at her with a short reply. When she arrived at the set, the first thing she did was to greet all the actors and the staff members. Since she was initially nitpicked on because of her greeting, she always approached a senior actor whenever she saw one and greeted that person.

As there was no one that didn’t like a greeting from a junior actress, she was able to go around greeting everyone energetically.

“Hello, senior.”

She greeted the woman with a smile. Lee Miyoon. That woman had a faint smell of cigarettes and she just nodded before going away.

“She doesn’t touch you these days, huh,” Jiseok approached her and spoke.

“I can see that she hates me, but it’s not like she’s going to do something to me based on something I didn’t do. I took the initiative today as well.”

“What a tiring relationship.”

“I’m used to it now. Rather than that, tomorrow is the first episode right?”

“Yeah, it’s finally here.”

“Why don’t you do some monitoring for me while you wait?”

“I’ll do it if I have time.”

She stuck out her tongue slightly and smiled at him. Jiseok told her that she was being unfair while drinking a sip of water from the cup in his hands before snapping his fingers as though he had remembered something.

“Oh yeah, have you seen that?”

“Seen what?”

“The touching street performance of Daehak-ro.”

“The touching street performance of Daehak-ro?”

“So you don’t know about it. It’s quite popular these days, you know?”

“What is it about?”

“Maru? Ah! I did hear from him that he was preparing for a street performance.”

“So he didn’t tell you because it’s not official yet. After the shoot, try going on ‘Acting Street’. It’s a blog that talks about issues in Daehak-ro and….”

“I know ‘Acting Street’. Though, I haven’t been able to go on it a lot recently because I’m busy.”

“Really? Anyway, try going on it and look at the popular posts from recent days. There are a few posts that have low-quality videos, but the reactions are great. I also had a look at it, and it’s worth seeing, especially if you’re aspiring to become an actor.”

Jiseok wished her luck with the shoot before going over to his own set. She wrote down Acting Street in a memo in her mind before turning around.

* * *

“Acting street, recent posts… here it is.”

After the shoot, she didn’t go home immediately and went to the nearby PC-bang because she couldn’t wait. She grabbed a seat, opened a browser, and went to a web portal. She logged in with her account and went to ‘Acting Street’, which she designated as a neighbor[1].

Acting Street was a blog that had many events and issues that occurred in Daehak-ro, and there was a lot of content, such as information about various plays, events, and even interviews of some actors neatly organized into various sub-categories. It was a blog that was visited by tens of thousands of people every day. Although it started off as a personal blog, it recently switched its format to a multiple-reporter administration, and thanks to that, the number of posts went up. Right now, it was a must-visit website for someone that was going to Daehak-ro for the first time. The first place she added as a neighbor when she started her own blog was Acting Street as well.

She read the title in a small voice.

The photo right below the title contained a scene where many people were holding their phone cameras up in the air in the dark night. It looked like a small theater. The people that were colored in lights from phone flashlights, as well as a man wearing a guitar. Then, there were the actors. Just watching them made her smile. It felt as though the livelihood of the scene was transferred right into her.

“A stage where the audience becomes the actors. We are all the main characters of the play that is our life.”

She scrolled down and read the post. Late at night, heaters placed throughout, the sound of a guitar, the chatting of the people, and finally, there was the story.

The photo was switched to a much more serious one than the joy-filled one from before in the next paragraph. The photo contained people looking very sad, and perhaps serious. In the middle of what seemed like a stage, there was a man in his forties, and next to that man was instructor Yang Ganghwan looking at the man while wearing a white gown.

“But the stage called life sometimes cruelly pushes the person that’s supposed to be the main character out of the spotlight.”

After reading a rather ominous sentence, she watched the video right below it. It was the video that Jiseok talked about before. She could hear the man’s voice through the speaker. Although the quality of the video wasn’t that good, the voice could be heard clearly.

She collapsed her hands and stared at the monitor in silence. The man’s words flew into her ears. Twenty minutes could be considered long, and it could be considered short. She watched the video without budging for twenty minutes, and when she realized that the video had ended, she sniffed.

It was a fearful story. It was a very frequent occurrence for people that aspired to become actors, so it was all the more fearful for her. She felt complex since she could neither cheer for the man nor sympathize with him. She just stared at the blacked-out screen for a long time.

‘This was a play, yet not a play. I felt uncomfortable, yet I could only keep watching; I felt hurt, yet I could not cry. A lot of people cried, but I did not. The one that uttered out the pain wasn’t crying, so I couldn’t cry either. Rather than tears, I sent a passionate round of applause. That applause contained my jealousy of the man who focused on acting his whole life, as well as a compliment towards myself who didn’t live such a life. I did not have the confidence to live like that, yet he did. In a popular sense of the word, he wasn’t the ‘main character’, but in that place, he clearly was. I cheered for such a foolish man.’

Beneath that comment was another video. It was a 3-minute one. It contained what happened after the man’s story ended.

The man thanked everyone for listening to his story and tried to leave, but Ganghwan held him back.

-You’re going to continue acting, aren’t you?

-I think it’s too late for me now. I’m past forty after all.

-Is there a suitable age for acting in the first place?

After that, the man didn’t say anything, and the video ended with the man sitting back down again.

After reading the whole post, she checked the comments section. The post was from two weeks ago, and right now, the number of comments reached over four thousand. Every comment she saw cheered on for the man. Sometimes, there were comments that made cynical remarks about his foolishness, but those numbered extremely little.

It was a surprising thing. Although Acting Street was a popular blog amongst people who liked Daehak-ro, it lacked views compared to hugely popular blogs. Yet here, just one post had more than four thousand comments.