Become a Star

“What did you talk about?” Hwang Yi-Young asked softly as Lee Min-Soo walked into the distance.

“Nothing much. We were just expressing our different opinions about our relationship. By the way, do you know why he came here today?”

“He had something to attend to in the area yesterday and decided to take a quick stop here before heading back to Seoul. He wanted to observe and study the lead actors’ acting to have a good grasp of the ambience.”

“He has a good attitude towards work, huh?” Woo-Jin laughed. He had now become an ashen-faced Louie with dark circles under his eyes. He thought about how Lee Min-Soo used to tag along whenever Blue Fit had recording sessions for their debut song, all for the purpose of observation and study. He felt rather relieved that things seemed to be the same as before. This was indeed fortunate for Woo-Jin because it would have been difficult to deal with Lee Min-Soo if he had become an entirely different person.

They were shooting Louie and Lee Yoo-Ra’s trip to the amusement park today. Lee Yoo-Ra set aside a day to take Louie to the amusement park after he mentioned that he had never been to the amusement park except for the one time he went there with his parents as a kid.

She wanted to create new memories with him, not knowing that his parents had abandoned him there that fateful day.

“Are we going to keep walking like this? Since you’re afraid of taking the roller coasters, shall we go on the merry-go-round?” Lee Yoo-Ra asked, with a look in her eyes that seemed to say, ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid of that too.’ Louie simply nodded in response.

Louie walked around blindly without much thought as he recalled the path he had walked along with his parents when he was a child. As Lee Yoo-Ra led him down the path, Louie saw a child running away – it was young Louie. Young Louie had walked on this very path that day too. He held both his parents’ hands with a happy smile on his face. Walking down the same path with his parents and a slightly different background, young Louie smiled at adult Louie as he walked with Lee Yoo-Ra. Not knowing the meaning behind that smile, Louie stopped in his tracks for a moment.

“What’s wrong?” Lee Yoo-Ra also stopped in her tracks. She looked up at Louie with sparkling eyes, but he had a distant look in his eyes. Seeing that young Louie was about to get on the merry-go-round, Louie subconsciously started walking quickly. He had to stop him. ‘No, you can’t go on that.’

However, young Louie was already riding on a horse on the merry-go-round; he had become the happiest child in the world, smiling widely. And that smile vanished right when the merry-go-round had stopped. The world that was embracing both him and the child had collapsed.

“I couldn’t stop him,” muttered Louie. Lee Yoo-Ra approached him and held his hand quietly. The feeling of a soft, warm hand in his hand caused Louie’s gaze to shift from the crying young Louie toward Lee Yoo-Ra.

“Are you leaving too?” He was asking her if she would also be leaving him if he were to get on the horse on the merry-go-round. Lee Yoo-Ra smiled and shook her head without knowing the deep meaning behind those words.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘leaving,’ but it’s not happening today.”

“Then what about tomorrow?”

“Probably not either.”

“What about the day after tomorrow?” She shook her head, thinking there would be no end to these questions at this rate.

“I won’t leave. I won’t leave even if you plead with me to disappear from your sight! So we’re good, right?”

“You don’t know anything, which is why you’re cruel.”

“What did you say? Me? Cruel?”

“And pitiful.” ‘Because I killed your father.’ The image of Lee Yoo-Ra’s crying face after losing her father overlapped with young Louie’s crying face as he stood by the merry-go-round. ‘I took away your world and made it fall apart. I did that to you.’

Louie was finally aware of what he had done to her and couldn’t hold in his emotions any longer. He looked away from Lee Yoo-Ra, and his gaze fell upon young Louie once again. The balloon that had made the young child happy for a brief moment flew up into the sky; the cotton candy fell to the ground and created a mess as it melted. It was a devastating and tragic scene, as though it was giving him the preview of young Louie’s future.

‘Would I be able to take it if I were to be abandoned like that once again? Even though I was much younger back then, I held up well and survived, so I probably wouldn’t die, right? But even if I don’t die, would I be okay? I suppose I’d feel my world crumbling down again.’

At that moment, he was struck by realization like a bolt of lightning, causing him to feel despair.

“It’s love, huh? This is love.”

It was a different type of love compared to the one he had for his parents. Still, he clearly understood that Lee Yoo-Ra’s existence meant the entire world to him.

“Hmm?” Lee Yoo-Ra widened her eyes out of curiosity. Even though she was standing next to him, Louie was muttering to himself very softly, so she couldn’t hear what he said.

Young Louie was no longer crying; he looked at adult Louie with puffy eyes.

“I endured this moment and survived. How about you?” the child asked. But Louie couldn’t give him an answer. Now aware of the weight of his sins, he had also realized what his feelings toward Lee Yoo-Ra meant. He loved her deeply, and she was his world now.

“I’m sorry.”

“Wow~! Are you apologizing to me now? A day like this has actually come.”

Lee Yoo-Ra smiled as she covered her mouth with her hand. Louie continued, “I’m sorry. And if that’s what you want…I’ll do it.” Louie’s words were drowned in the commotion made by a group of laughing young students as they walked past them.

Lee Yoo-Ra slightly frowned as she told Louie that she couldn’t properly hear what he had just said. He stroked her forehead with his finger, smoothing out her frown, and said, “Ugly.”

He had always wanted to make her smile but didn’t have the ability to do it.

“It must be nice to be as good-looking as you.”

“It would have been nicer if we had met back then.”

Louie looked at the backs of the young students that passed by with a futile longing. If he had continued living in Korea instead of getting adopted and moving to the United States, his past might have turned out like that. And he might have met Lee Yoo-Ra at some point in his life.

“Even if we had met, we would have probably just walked past each other without getting to know one another.”

“...?” This time, it was Louie’s turn to question what Lee Yoo-Ra had just said, and he tilted his head slightly. She called him ‘cute’ and went on her tiptoes to stroke his hair. Louie lowered his head a little so that Lee Yoo-Ra’s hand could reach his head.

“When we met each other for the first time, it was purely coincidental.” Back then, Lee Yoo-Ra had just discovered a new cafe in an alley that she usually passed by. As she was snooping around the cafe, Louie appeared before her with an injured arm. Lee Yoo-Ra had helped him treat his wounds without asking any questions when she found him returning to the cafe that also doubled as his home. That was how their friendship had started.

“For a coincidence to develop into a meaningful connection, it requires care and concern on each party’s part. We walk past so many people in just one day, but how many people among them do we form a connection with? We got to know each other in a pool of so many people because we cared and bothered to make an effort to get to know each other. However, if we were that young, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to a boy who’s younger than me.”

Lee Yoo-Ra shrugged and added, “So it was the best time for us to meet at this stage in our lives.” She grabbed Louie’s hand.

“Let’s get on the merry-go-round now.”

“Us?”

“Of course, don’t tell me you wanted to do it alone?” Lee Yoo-Ra thought he was being ridiculous and dragged him to the merry-go-round. He walked past the still crying young Louie and trampled on the cotton candy that had dropped onto the ground.

Behind him, young Louie was staring at him. He stood still with an expressionless face before gradually fading away until he disappeared, leaving only adult Louie behind as he rode a wooden horse with Lee Yoo-Ra. However, Louie wasn’t happy at all.

Even though he had found love today, Louie was more unhappy than ever because he knew his world would abandon him once again. He truly hadn’t known the weight of his sin, which was no one else’s fault, would be so heavy.

Louie looked extremely miserable and gradually crumbled down, in contrast to Lee Yoo-Ra’s happy disposition. He fell into despair after realizing that regardless of when they met, it was ultimately the worst moment of her life.

“Cut!”

The production director gave the green light, and they were done with the scene. Woo-Jin stumbled for a moment as he got off the wooden horse. Like Louie, he walked lifelessly without anything on his mind. Then someone approached him and sat him down in a chair. He could see Kang Ho-Soo from his peripheral vision.

Kang Ho-Soo quietly unscrewed the water bottle cap and passed it to Woo-Jin. He took the bottle and drank from it while his mind was still devoid of thoughts. Just then, a shadow appeared right before him.

“Your acting was better than I expected.” Lee Min-Soo said to Woo-Jin, looking slightly surprised. It sounded like a compliment but was undoubtedly a backhanded comment.

Chae Woo-Jin was like that in the past. He would complete tasks that people couldn’t do even if they had put in their best efforts, with total ease, and act like it was nothing. His look of nonchalance and indifference had provoked others.

“I watched your movie and assumed that they had done a good job editing it to make your acting look decent, but now that I’ve seen it, your acting is rather…” Lee Min-Soo cut himself off mid-sentence. That was because Woo-Jin looked up at him as he drank from the water bottle. Lee Min-Soo subconsciously took a step back when he made eye contact with those emotionless eyes.

Was this how it felt if one were to run into a murderer who wanted to kill them? Kang Ho-Soo approached the trembling Lee Min-Soo as he stood frozen and supported him. He whispered, “It’s best not to get too close to him while he’s still in character.”

Woo-Jin tended to get out of character relatively quickly after the cameras stopped rolling. However, there were times like these when he needed a little more cooldown time, especially after shooting an emotionally taxing scene. Right now, Woo-Jin was silently looking at Lee Min-Soo through Louie’s eyes. Lee Min-Soo was a worthless person to Louie, and he had no emotions toward him.

After looking at Lee Min-Soo from Louie’s perspective, Woo-Jin finally felt that the suffocating bitterness within him had started to diminish. Ever since he had discovered a thorn he didn’t even know existed, he had been on edge the entire time. He had a hard time calming himself down because the thorn had pricked him even at the slightest touch.

However, in hindsight, Lee Min-Soo wasn’t someone who existed in Woo-Jin’s world. He couldn’t be compared to any of the people who existed in it. There was no reason to be affected by someone like him, but Woo-Jin had kept thinking about him.

Woo-Jin started to get out of character and smiled gently. He thought to himself: ‘You’re going to spend the rest of your life living like that, huh? Living like a greedy hyena who covets what others have and steal from them, but ultimately gets nothing but rotten meat.’

He had never been envious of rotten meat; the fact that it was stolen had always irked him. However, looking at it from Louie’s point of view, it was futile to feel that way. Unless he was a hyena, he didn’t need rotten meat even if he had it.

“Thank goodness.”

‘Because I’m different from you.’