That day, it rained. The sky, which had been overcast since morning, finally poured down its burden at noon.
In a room where the lights remained off, neither too dark nor too bright, Shin-jae stood before the mirror and stretched out his arm. His thumb and index finger formed the shape of a gun, the rest of his fingers curled inward. The reflection in the mirror pointed right back at him.
He couldn’t quite remember the exact lines he had spoken back then. But what he did recall was how, despite his awkward delivery, his expression had been unusually serious. He had thrown out what he thought was a cool-sounding line and then quickly rushed to the other side, reciting the opposing dialogue. He had no idea how long he had been lost in this one-man act.
“Oh my.”
At the sound from the doorway, his head instinctively turned.
Even inside the house, his mother was dressed impeccably in a white blouse, adorned with bold necklaces and earrings. A long, flowing black skirt trailed down to her ankles as she approached in an instant.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Shin-jae quickly closed the script he had been reading and held it out. His head was tilted slightly to the side, suddenly feeling embarrassed for having played alone, acting out scenes from his mother’s script.
“Shin-jae, do you want to act?”
Her voice was unusually gentle, enough to make him turn back from gazing out the window. It was a look he hadn’t even seen on his birthday. Almost hypnotized, the child nodded.
And then, a few days later, at the dinner table—
“I’m thinking of making Shin-jae an actor.”
Struggling to pick up a cherry tomato next to his pork cutlet, Shin-jae put down his fork and fidgeted with his fingers. Our Shin-jae. His mother, usually so distant, had called him that—twice now.
“Would you believe it? He already knows how to express emotions.”
A mother-child acting duo—how wonderful. Shin-jae, wouldn’t you like that too?
His mother’s voice carried a slight excitement. At the time, he didn’t understand what mother-child acting duo meant, but he still felt his small shoulders lift with pride.
As the conversation shifted to praising him, he got caught up in the moment. His cheeks flushed, his lips twitched. Even his usually stern father—surely, even he would offer some praise just this once?
It was right as he turned to check.
Clack!
Before Shin-jae’s gaze could even land on him, his father slammed his chopsticks onto the table. The impact of metal against the glass tabletop rang out sharply. At once, the boy’s shoulders shrank inward.
Another sharp sound rang out from the glass-covered table. This time, it wasn’t chopsticks—it was a palm. And soon, shouting erupted. A familiar scene. Still, it had been a while since both of them had gotten this angry.
Tears threatened to spill over, so Shin-jae climbed down from his chair and hurried out of the kitchen. Once the arguing started, neither parent paid any attention to whether their child was there or not. He ran to his room, covered his ears, but the harsh voices still seeped through his small hands. That dinner had been awful.
It was, without a doubt, a terrible night. And yet, somehow, amidst all that shouting, an agreement had been reached. Before he knew it, his mother had taken him by the hand and led him to a film set.
And there—everyone was kind to him. Even his mother, who barely acknowledged him at home, acted sweetly. Shin-jae found himself liking the place.
Obediently, he did as he was told by the people sitting in chairs. He held his gaze under the intense studio lights without blinking, looked where they told him to look, smiled when instructed. He even changed outfits on his own without any trouble. That earned him applause.
“He’s so pretty. Handsome. So mature.”
He heard more compliments there than he had in his entire life. On top of that, he got to eat delicious snacks on set, and on the way home, he had sweet ice cream. From start to finish, his mother was with him.
Before long, Shin-jae liked being on set more than playing with friends.
Not long after he started visiting the set regularly, his mother brought home a script. It was for a supporting role in a miniseries—a remarkable opportunity for someone with no prior experience. She sat beside him as he read the lines, personally coaching him on his acting.
She wasn’t a good mother, but she was a good actress. And so, Shin-jae’s acting improved at a rapid pace. His striking looks as a child actor even made small waves on the internet.
The show’s ratings were abysmal, but Shin-jae loved acting. His mother, who always used her busy schedule as an excuse to leave him in someone else’s care, was finally paying attention to him. But soon, he became truly immersed in acting itself. He had a talent for it.
For a child who had once known nothing, it was a happy time. It was when his relationship with his mother was at its best.
But that golden era didn’t even last six months. During that time, the conflict between his parents only worsened. After her role in Spy did little to revitalize her career, Seo Sang-a decided to use a parenting reality show as her comeback.
Sa Dae-seung, a rigid and traditional man—both as a husband and a father—flew into a rage. From that point on, every encounter in their spacious home ended in arguments.
Seo Sang-ah refused to back down. Sa Dae-seung refused to yield. They had fallen into love in a fiery instant, and before that passion could cool into a breakup, she had gotten pregnant, forcing them into marriage. They had never once tried to understand or compromise with each other.
For a long time, the fighting continued. Then, just before she could move forward with the reality show, Seo Sang-ah was cast in another project, and the conflict temporarily subsided.
With her schedule packed again, she went back to leaving child-rearing to others. She had never been suited to taking care of even herself, let alone someone else.
That was when Shin-jae’s enthusiasm for film sets began to wane.
Then, when the miniseries ended with poor ratings, Seo Sang-ah lost all interest in her son.
Acting was still fun, but it no longer made him happy.
So, when his father returned home after two weeks away, Shin-jae ran straight to his study. Surrounded by towering bookshelves, the child spoke.
“I don’t want to act anymore. I like studying more.”
His father, who had been reading, took off his glasses and chuckled. Right. I was never meant to be loved by both parents at the same time. A twisted realization for a child.
But like attracts like. It wasn’t until Sa Shin-jae handed over his university acceptance letter that he finally understood—his father, a professor at Korea University, had long since lost interest in him. He just needed another bragging point: a son who got into Korea’s top university.
The moment that truth hit, Shin-jae gave up on studying as well. Instead, he turned to the theater club, something he had avoided for so long. And that was the full story behind his academic probation in his first semester of freshman year.
***
“Still… just once a year… on my birthday… we always had a family dinner together…”
The words trailed off, the edges crumbling, the final note trembling before it could be completed. Sa-yoon clicked his tongue silently. He already knew how this story ended.
So in the end, Seo Sang-ah didn’t show up to the family dinner. He had seen the follow-up articles about her staying at the film festival, but he hadn’t known about this side of things. Maybe she had her own reasons as an adult, but right now, Sa-yoon only cared about the person in front of him—Shin-jae, whose tears were soaking into his shoulder.
“No matter how unwanted I am now… telling me about the divorce and remarriage after they’ve already decided everything… isn’t that too much?”
Now that he fully grasped the situation, Sa-yoon pressed his lips together in frustration. The one day of the year the family actually gathered, the mother was absent without a word, and the father used it to drop the news of his divorce and remarriage all at once. Even in a trashy drama, people would call this too unrealistic.
Parent or not, that was just cruel.
“This all started because I acted… I never should have done it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If I hadn’t started acting, things between them wouldn’t have fallen apart like that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Sa-yoon’s voice came out firmer than he intended. The more he listened, the more infuriating it became.
He had always wondered—why doesn’t someone with a face like that, with talent like that, pursue acting? Turns out, it wasn’t the industry that had let Shin-jae go. He had run from it himself.
What did a child even know back then? And to see him blaming himself—when all he did was follow in the footsteps of his actress mother—just made Sa-yoon’s heart ache even more.
“Your parents’ problems weren’t because of you. They were between them.”
If only it had been anyone else’s parents, he would have had a whole lot more to say. But years of Confucian teachings, ingrained since childhood, held back the words rising up his throat.
Shin-jae, still pressed against him, let out a quiet murmur.
“They say parents are a child’s foundation… but, hyung, I feel like I’m just a buoy, drifting with no place to anchor.”
The words carried through their touch, stabbing straight into Sa-yoon’s chest. Shin-jae, soaked to the bone from the rain, had already looked pitiful enough. But now, after hearing everything—Sa-yoon felt absolutely wrecked with sympathy.
Was it just a coincidence? The image of Sesame, that abandoned kitten left to die in the rain, overlapped with Shin-jae in his mind.
“It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”
That was all he could offer.
Instead, he pulled him into a firm embrace, holding onto the trembling frame. This time, the feeling of bare skin against his own didn’t even cross his mind. All he wanted was to comfort the wounded boy in front of him. Nothing else mattered.
