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Bunhong hadn’t particularly intended to eavesdrop, but coming to the filming set naturally led him to learn the reason why Oh Hangeul had gotten injured.
Even without asking, there were rumors circulating among the staff.
“Seems like one of the staff members caused an accident.”
To summarize the gossip explaining the situation at the time, it was apparently a really big accident. One staff member accidentally broke a lighting fixture while passing by, and it turned out glass shards had embedded in his ankle.
Fortunately, they weren’t deeply embedded, so surgery wasn’t necessary and they just needed to extract the fragments.
Given that he had to go around doing various shoots immediately, it would have been understandable for Hangeul to be angry about injuring his body, but he apparently handled the situation with remarkable composure and wrapped things up well.
However, there exist people in this world who cannot accept goodwill as goodwill. Their conversation flowed in a strange direction.
“Even in that situation, he said that. Where’s the luck that it didn’t hit his face? Anyway, he’s scary in a slightly different sense. Should I say he’s ruthless?”
“Don’t you know those types of kids are even worse originally?”
Feeling uncomfortable listening to what seemed like gossip, Bunhong left his spot. Sure enough, on set, one action leads to ten different interpretations.
And always, words are as light as air. However, each word carries its own traces. The people who spoke those words would quickly forget they even said such things, but the traces left by scattered hatred remain intact.
The sound of quiet giggling reminded him so much of that time that Bunhong took a deep breath for a moment. It was because an unpleasant memory had surfaced.
At that time, as Bunhong was picking up clothes in the waiting room to change into stage costumes, someone blocked his action and said:
“That’s Hanbit-ssi’s outfit.”
Kim Bunhong felt bewildered and asked back. Still, since he was in charge of visuals, before Hanbit joined, most outfits with special points belonged to Bunhong, who stood at center.
“What?”
Ridiculously, even the outfits they could wear changed according to recognition. That’s how this industry works. When your value drops, the people around you change first.
The other person wasn’t to be taken lightly. They stubbornly expressed their opinion. Bunhong’s gaze followed to the other outfit she pointed at.
“What Bunhong-ssi will wear is over here.”
To the naked eye, it was the same outfit except for having just one more decoration attached.
The unnamed stylist’s demand was absurdly childish. That’s what made it even more miserable for Bunhong.
That’s why.
That’s why he secretly tore up the outfit Hanbit was supposed to wear.
When emotions pile up layer upon layer, sometimes there comes a time when you can’t clearly see the situation. Even knowing it’s not the right choice, you end up doing it anyway.
Though it was something done on a moment’s impulse, if there had been someone nearby who could give him an answer, Bunhong would have desperately wanted to ask:
“Could this be considered a reason, if it could be a reason?”
However, whatever the reason, Bunhong knew that what he had done could not be rationalized. After all, Hanbit had done nothing wrong.
But still, it was always like that. When you think about it, Hanbit wasn’t at fault, but he was at the root of every problem.
What if he had faced such discrimination with other members instead? He might have accepted it.
Why. Why did it have to be you? A thought he’d had dozens of times, no, hundreds of times.
“By regressing, it all became as if it never happened, but…”
Thinking that way made him feel deflated. The emotional exhaustion caused by past memories triggered through gossip about someone else’s story was severe.
To the exhausted Bunhong, a staff member approached and handed him clothes, saying these were the outfits he needed to wear today.
“You see the t-shirt and jeans in front here? The changing room is over there.”
“Yes.”
Bunhong took the clothes the staff member gave him and walked toward the changing room.
Generally, there’s an image that the word “changing room” brings to mind, but when he opened the door and entered, a space much wider than expected appeared, making him puzzled.
After looking around for a moment, as he examined the clothes to put them on, Bunhong felt troubled and muttered:
“What should I do?”
At a glance, the pants seemed to fit perfectly, but when he actually tried to put them on, they were a bit small.
He timidly poked his head out to look outside the changing room, but the staff member who had guided him was already gone.
“Must be busy.”
Still, he felt he should at least try them on, so he took off the school uniform he was originally wearing, hung it neatly on a hanger, and began forcibly pushing one leg into the jeans he’d received.
While he was struggling like that,
“…!”
At the sound of the door suddenly opening, Bunhong lifted his head while in an awkward position.
“This must look very unsightly…”
Panicked, he tried to force the buttons closed, but pants that didn’t fit in the first place wouldn’t go up. Instead, he almost fell over in the position he was changing clothes in, and barely managed to stand up by pressing against the wall.
“Ah?”
Startled by the half-naked appearance suddenly unfolding before his eyes, Hangeul blinked quietly.
From what Hangeul had heard, there were a total of two designated changing rooms for the models. This place where Bunhong was currently changing clothes was actually Hangeul’s waiting room.
Rather than pointing out the mistake and stating the facts, Hangeul, who was assessing the situation, quickly noticed Bunhong’s predicament and asked:
“Does the pants not fit by any chance?”
At the gently inquiring voice, Bunhong carefully nodded and answered:
“It seems too small.”
At those words, Hangeul rushed to run outside but called out to Bunhong:
“Wait just a moment. I’ll go call the staff noona.”
Before Bunhong could reflexively say it was okay to stop him, Hangeul had already disappeared. Bunhong closed his mouth, thinking it was actually for the best.
Honestly, there was nothing he could do himself in this situation. Worried about being a nuisance, he couldn’t go find the staff directly and would just drag out time while reading the room like before. In the end, Bunhong concluded:
“I’ll just have to wait.”
When Hangeul returned with a staff member, Bunhong was back in his school uniform. He couldn’t stay naked after all.
Seeing him like that, the staff member glanced lightly and handed Bunhong a paper bag containing pants while making a comment:
“Should have said something earlier…”
Confirming that the clothes he received were about one size larger than before, Bunhong hesitantly bowed to her in greeting:
“Thank you.”
However, even at Bunhong’s expression of gratitude, her complaints continued pouring out:
“If you’re here to work part-time, you should act with some sense. Time is money on a film set, so what are you doing hesitating by yourself? You should have asked earlier. I’m only letting this slide because Hangeul’s here.”
Then Hangeul, who had been smiling, warmly called her:
“Noona.”
At the same time, he stood blocking between the staff member and Bunhong. Naturally, Bunhong, who was already red up to his nape, was hidden behind him.
“This kid is still nineteen.”
Listening to the words flowing from the large back that filled his view, saying that the noona should have taken care of it in advance and that this was the noona’s lack of sense, Bunhong buried his face in his hands and let out a silent groan.
Actually, he wasn’t nineteen. He was twenty-two. To still be unable to resolve even such matters on his own and have to receive help from others.
Usually he’d be fine, but strangely, whenever he came to filming sets, he kept getting smaller – this hadn’t changed even after regression.
Whether the staff member’s anger had subsided at Hangeul’s words, she spoke as if making excuses:
“The kid we originally planned to use had a similar build. That’s what I thought.”
Hangeul maintained his gentle attitude and soothed her:
“That guy’s a professional model.”
With Hangeul’s help, Bunhong successfully managed to change clothes, and his shoot ended quickly after not too long.
He had come to fill the spot of a model who had dropped out due to circumstances anyway, and since Oh Hangeul was the main model, there was no reason to drag things out.
As soon as his shoot ended, Bunhong found himself unknowingly wandering around looking for someone. His gaze settled on Oh Hangeul shooting in the distance.
The gentle appearance of quietly reading a novel book, carefully reasoning with staff in front of the changing room door, had already disappeared.
He seemed to lower his eyes, then subtly angled himself while biting the sleeve area with his mouth, and that pose matched frighteningly well with his black hair swept back neatly behind his forehead.
Kim Bunhong, who had been staring blankly at that sight, unconsciously muttered:
“He looks like a different person.”
Seeing that the staff member who had been cold to him, and even the staff members who had been gossiping earlier, were all mesmerized watching that sight, it seemed they all had the same thought.
“…So that’s what a pro is like.”
He also watched intently as Hangeul continuously changed clothes and took various poses for the shoot.
After doing that for a while, he heard the voice of the director who had just photographed him calling. Only then did Bunhong turn his gaze away from Hangeul.
“Bunhong-ssi. Come here for a moment.”
Bunhong approached nervously, wondering if he had made some mistake. What was in the monitor that people were gathered around looking at were photos of himself.
The director, who had been scratching his chin while rotating through the photos for a moment, asked Bunhong:
“Have you ever had shooting experience before?”
“Huh?”
As the shots continued flipping through quickly, the monitor finally stopped at one photo. The director, who had been staring intently at the stopped screen, looked up at Bunhong.
“Something about your poses and posture seems natural. Should I say you seem quite professional?”
“…”
“What’s interesting is that your look is decent too, and you’d probably be popular. You don’t have that, what should I call it, superficial pretension that people your age usually have, Bunhong-ssi, so I thought it was refreshing.”
Superficial pretension? This was an expression Bunhong couldn’t understand how to interpret.
Noticing that Bunhong seemed not to understand his words, the director continued his explanation.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
