I Acted Once, and Now They Call Me a Genius - Chapter 230

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 230
Seo Jin-wook is ordinary.
To be precise, it would be fair to say he had nothing special about him. It had always been this way since childhood. His face was unremarkable, to say nothing of his academics, soccer, singing, comedy—whatever it was, Jin-wook was never particularly good at anything.
Even when he tried his absolute hardest, he’d only manage to exceed the average by a margin.
Jin-wook himself knew this.
So at some point, he became the loudest kid around. If he raised his voice, it felt like he grew in stature. The smart, quick-witted, handsome other kids…… would close their mouths and stare at him the moment his voice grew louder.
He loved that attention.
For that moment, it felt like he’d become special.
Like he’d become someone with actual talent.
The problem was that Jin-wook wasn’t foolish enough to live his entire life under that delusion.
As time went on, Jin-wook came to realize something was wrong. He could read the faint mockery in people’s eyes when they looked at him.
Actually, he could find that same mockery in his own face when he looked in the mirror.
It made sense.
Seo Jin-wook was still nothing.
No—by now he’d gone beyond being nothing…… he’d become a pathetic creature.
‘……Why did it turn out like this?’
He’d never wanted to become this kind of person.
He too had wanted to be special. To be better than others, to become someone impressive. He’d hoped his friends would look at him with admiration.
But the result of that desire was the monster he’d become now.
Once Jin-wook realized this, he sank into despondency for a long time. He stopped going to school and just wandered around aimlessly, hanging out at arcades and the like.
It was during this time that he saw that acceptance speech.
—When I was young, I used to think this way. I believed that everyone in the world had a fixed place and position, and that wishing for anything more would only bring suffering to oneself.
It was an acceptance speech by Seong Jun-il.
With the Acting Grand Prize trophy in his hands, his eyes—glistening as if tears might spill out at any moment—gazed through the camera lens directly at Jin-wook.
—I tell you today. There is no such thing as a fixed place for a person. Look. Even someone unremarkable like me is right now…… holding this trophy, am I not?
……His image shone so brightly.
So brightly that the trophy’s gleam faded from sight—the radiance of Seong Jun-il’s smile was overwhelming.
In that moment, Jin-wook made a decision.
He would become an actor. So that one day, like that man…… he could hold a trophy and declare:
I came.
I saw.
I conquered…….
But,
“……Senior, are you awake?”
Where was he?
Jin-wook opened his eyes. The first thing that caught his attention was the narrow ceiling. And only then did Jin-wook realize he was in an ambulance. And right beside him…….
“Kim Seon-woo?”
The second most irritating person in the world had come into view. For reference, the first was Cha Do-young.
Jin-wook furrowed his brow.
“Where…… am I? Why am I here?”
“Don’t you remember? You collapsed right in the middle of filming, Senior.”
“I…… ugh!”
Jin-wook gripped his head.
The memory came back. The sky spinning suddenly, the shocked faces of the actors and staff members, the ground rushing closer, and…….
‘Damn.’
I came. To an ambulance.
I saw. My pathetic self.
I lost. ……Completely.
“Damn…….”
A curse escaped his lips before he could stop it. Watching Jin-wook, Seon-woo let out a sigh.
“The medical team said it’s exhaustion combined with malnutrition. I mean, I understand the exhaustion part, but malnutrition—what’s that about?”
“……There was a role that required me to lose weight.”
“……Well, that can’t be helped then. Acting does come before health, after all.”
Seon-woo nodded in agreement.
Jin-wook stared at Seon-woo with a blank expression. Normally, wouldn’t people tell him that health comes first?
Anyway, this guy isn’t normal. His mind is completely off.
It’s no accident that Jin-wook ranks him as the second most irritating person in the world.
Even when not acting, it’s felt in these small, everyday moments.
Kim Seon-woo.
That guy possesses the very specialness Jin-wook had longed for…… as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
When Seon-woo had first joined Cheongseong, Jin-wook had been eager to pick fights with him—partly because he disliked that the guy had come in as a parachute hire, but more than that, it was his ability that bothered him.
For someone just starting out in acting…… he demonstrated an immersion ability far deeper than troupe members who’d been at it for years.
It was a talent so dazzling it transcended unfairness and sparked actual anger.
As a result, Jin-wook would get angry every time he saw Seon-woo. The more he watched him, the less he could believe the words he’d heard in Seong Jun-il’s acceptance speech—that there was no such thing as a fixed position.
He resented him.
It probably wasn’t personal resentment. It was just…… the fact that such a person existed bothered him.
Seon-woo’s existence seemed to tell Jin-wook:
Give up.
You know it yourself. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never become like this kid.
What exactly are you struggling for?
“…….”
“……Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Why are you here?”
“Someone had to stay with you…… Your manager just dropped you off and left, apparently. So I volunteered. I’m the one closest to you here.”
“That’s gross to hear.”
“That’s you being grateful, right? I get it.”
Seon-woo had by now learned to brush off Jin-wook’s grumbling without a second thought.
Jin-wook laughed softly, then immediately clutched his head and coughed. With each cough his head throbbed, and by his own assessment, his condition didn’t seem very good.
“Here, some water.”
“…….”
Jin-wook accepted the water Seon-woo offered and took a slow sip, then exhaled deeply.
And he looked at Seon-woo.
“Thank you.”
“Ugh, that’s gross to hear.”
“……Were people shocked?”
“Yeah. When a person suddenly collapses like that.”
“I need to get back to filming…….”
Jin-wook tried to sit up, but felt the room spin and immediately fell back onto the bed.
Seon-woo shook his head watching Jin-wook.
“You should rest for a bit. The medical team said you need absolute rest. But where did your manager go, anyway?”
“……He can’t help it. Right now he’s managing four actors.”
“He’s managing four actors on location?”
“The company’s in a tough spot.”
“Still…….”
Seon-woo looked at Jin-wook with worried eyes.
It was a company Jin-wook himself could easily have ended up in. So his hardship didn’t feel like someone else’s problem to Seon-woo.
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
“Will you…… avoid pushing yourself?”
“What?”
“You can see it. How impossible the acting the seniors are doing right now is, how incredible it is, how amazing it is…… can you really just stand by with your hands in your pockets?”
“…….”
“From what I can tell, you’re not standing by either.”
Seon-woo nodded.
Jin-wook was right. In a situation like this, telling him not to push himself was meaningless. This was the time to throw everything at it and collide with it head-on.
“No one expects anything of me. So I have to prove it. That they can expect something from me. That I’m an actor worth expecting something from.”
It was an emotion Seon-woo would never know.
He’d always had everyone’s expectations resting on him.
And yet Seon-woo tried to deny it. He felt he still fell short. But the moment he met Jin-wook’s eyes, Seon-woo could say nothing.
The version of Seon-woo reflected in Jin-wook’s eyes…… seemed far larger than life.
The same kind of gaze he saw when looking at Do-young, perhaps even more saturated with that same desperate thirst.
“I’m going to push myself. So don’t tell me again to not push myself from now on. I have no intention of listening to such words.”
* * *
“I’m sorry for the trouble!”
Back on set, Jin-wook threw himself into filming with such vigor you’d never know he’d collapsed just moments before. His complexion was clearly exhausted, but considering they were now shooting the Gaegyeong battle scene, his haggard appearance actually made for fitting makeup.
Watching Jin-wook, Seon-woo reflected:
‘……I didn’t know Senior looked at me like that.’
Jin-wook’s gaze was…… peculiar.
Not admiration, exactly. It was more like competitive spirit. But there was recognition of Seon-woo woven through it.
And that thirst contained within it…… was an emotion Seon-woo knew well.
It was always something Seon-woo carried inside himself.
And yet,
‘Is this thirst a good thing?’
The thought suddenly arose.
Watching Jin-wook saturated with such thirst, he found himself thinking this way.
It seemed somehow pitiful.
Probably anyone would feel the same.
Because thirst, after all, isn’t a good emotion.
‘Mirror therapy, I suppose you’d call it.’
Just watching Jin-wook, that’s what came to mind.
Perhaps that thirst was what held him back. Thirst makes people desperate, and desperation makes them work harder, but…… in acting, focusing too heavily on that thirst wasn’t necessarily beneficial.
The desperation could become more visible than the emotion you were meant to express through the role.
In a way, the actor becomes more visible than the character.
‘……Master Jeong In-gi did say not to rely only on the character’s emotional arc, but to do my own acting.’
But having oneself show through due to desperation was entirely different from “doing my own acting.”
“Doing my own acting” meant understanding who you were as a person and building your own unique acting on that foundation.
Seon-woo thought about it.
If there were such a thing as Kim Seon-woo’s characteristic acting, what would it be? Until now, he’d thought that pushing immersion to its absolute limit through Color Orbs was his acting.
But if that was merely being absorbed by the character, if it meant the Color Orb was doing the acting rather than Kim Seon-woo himself…… then what made it Kim Seon-woo’s?
In the first place, how does an actor’s signature color manifest?
Fortunately, Seon-woo had the perfect teaching material right beside him.
“Lee Seong-gye, you wretch!”
A powerful voice rang out across the plain.
Lee Mu-beom’s voice. Not shouting loudly, yet conveying a chilling presence with complete clarity.
The voice of Choi Young.
“Everyone has told me. That this Lee is duplicitous at heart, never to be trusted at your side. And yet I believed you. I believed in your heart, the heart that fought to protect your people from pirates, risking your life!”
“That heart remains, General.”
“Then why!”
It sounded like a stern rebuke, yet also like a plea.
Like a parent admonishing a wayward child…… yet knowing that voice will never reach them. Desperation was woven through Lee Mu-beom’s words.
And hearing that voice, Seon-woo felt it anew.
‘……This is it.’
The weight of years.
An emotional arc only a parent could express—one who’d lived long, raised children, and felt them slip from their grasp.
No matter how much Seon-woo improved his acting, he could never express that without having lived it himself.
There are things you can only obtain through actually lived experience.
Lee Mu-beom’s acting was showing exactly what that was.
“Why do you turn your back on Goryeo! You, who have fought foremost to protect this nation above all others—why on earth!”
Behind Choi Young, a lush bamboo forest seems to shimmer into view.
A single old man’s life, lived only with unwavering integrity…… was now being projected through the character of Choi Young. And Seon-woo felt it watching this.
‘……My own acting’ becomes possible only when you pour your own life into that acting.
Lee Mu-beom’s acting was the kind that made viewers reflect on the lives they themselves had lived.
Seon-woo clenched his fists.
He wanted to act like that.
Just by being himself, for that to become the character and its charm—he wanted to act that way.
And Choi Young, or rather Lee Mu-beom, was teaching Seon-woo exactly this:
If you want to act with charm, become a charming person.
Live a charming life.
Not a false life that only sparkles when acting,
but a life that truly shines.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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