I Acted Once, and Now They Call Me a Genius - Chapter 240

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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 240
As the filming day for the Seonjuk Bridge scene drew closer, Seon-woo felt an endless depression dragging him downward.
It was something he’d anticipated to some degree.
After all, Yi Bang-won was experiencing a loss bordering on the actual loss of a nation. It would be stranger if he weren’t depressed.
But the emotion seemed a bit more intense than he’d expected.
“You doing okay, Seon-woo?”
Kim Yeon-jun peered at him with a deliberately worried expression.
It felt somehow embarrassing. Seon-woo nodded.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“……Your face looks a bit drawn though.”
“Well, it’s a pretty gloomy scene. What about you? Aren’t you depressed?”
“Me? What does it matter.”
Kim Yeon-jun shrugged.
“I just follow wherever our master goes.”
In fact, Cho Young didn’t seem to carry the same weight of gloom that Yi Bang-won did.
“I don’t think for myself—Cho Young doesn’t. If Bang-won says go, I go. If he says run, I run. If he says overturn the nation, I overturn it. Because you are my sky.”
“……That’s really something.”
Seon-woo shook his head.
Though Kim Yeon-jun spoke of it as though it were simple, the truth was it wasn’t easy at all.
After all, making someone your sky was no trivial matter. Didn’t Seon-woo himself regard Lee Seong-gye as his sky, and face fierce waves of emotion whenever Lee Seong-gye wavered?
And Yi Bang-won was certainly not a more stable figure than Lee Seong-gye.
‘If anything, he’s more fragile.’
Of course, someone might argue against that.
They might ask—wasn’t it Lee Seong-gye, not Yi Bang-won, who showed signs of collapse before him?
But Seon-woo saw it differently.
The fact that Lee Seong-gye collapsed in that moment didn’t mean he was weaker than Yi Bang-won.
Lee Seong-gye was strong enough to face his own weakness. He confronted his own shortcomings honestly.
But Yi Bang-won could not afford such a thing. He had no luxury of being insufficient, no room for fragility. That’s why he always stands firm, always rigid.
……Could one truly call Yi Bang-won stronger than Lee Seong-gye on that basis?
‘Yi Bang-won is young.’
Various circumstances forced him toward adulthood, compelled him not to remain a boy—but one cannot simply become an adult overnight.
Seon-woo’s current depression stemmed from that realization.
The unconscious impulses that Yi Bang-won tried so hard to ignore and suppress came to Seon-woo with painful clarity.
‘……I’m killing a man.’
Seon-woo brooded over the script.
He would soon kill Jeong Mong-ju. Of course, it was Cho Young who would actually strike him down, but in essence, Seon-woo could think of it as his own act.
Cho Young was merely Yi Bang-won’s blade.
There was a strange unease that came with that realization.
Especially since he held Po-eun in such high regard. Knowing that Jeong Mong-ju moved with the noble will to protect his nation, even if the justification was to safeguard family and all he held dear……a guilt that welled up from his depths troubled him ceaselessly.
And the moment he faced Seong Jun-il…….
‘……This is hard.’
Seon-woo felt a wave of emotion stronger than he’d anticipated wash over him.
It couldn’t be helped.
Anxiety.
The present Jeong Mong-ju seemed almost like anxiety personified. In his faltering steps, the downward cast of his gaze, his hands that couldn’t rest still for even a moment—his restlessness and dread were written plainly across every gesture.
Though he’d only grasped the emotion, he felt he understood what Jeong Mong-ju’s mental state must have been in that moment.
……Once Lee Seong-gye returned, each day must have been hell for him.
More precisely, from the moment he realized that Lee Seong-gye harbored no thought of reviving Goryeo, but instead meant to found a new nation called Joseon—that’s when the sky fell for him.
No matter how great Jeong Mong-ju was, Lee Seong-gye was a current far too vast for him to resist.
He would feel paralyzed. Overwhelmed by terrible guilt as well. For Lee Seong-gye owed much of his absolute power to Jeong Mong-ju.
He had delivered his own nation to the wolf.
That Lee Seong-gye tried to purge Jeong Do-jeon and his other confidants merely because of a riding accident meant that Jeong Mong-ju must have been desperate indeed.
And now, with matters not even properly underway before Lee Seong-gye’s return, Jeong Mong-ju must feel such resentment toward heaven that it threatened to kill him.
The look on Seong Jun-il’s face—as though he might bite through his own tongue at any moment—made sense for precisely that reason.
“You all right, senior?”
“……You’re the one who looks unwell.”
“I suppose my heart isn’t in the best place.”
“Fair enough.”
Seong Jun-il nodded.
“But it’ll be worth it.”
“……Yes.”
“Shall we start by matching the emotional arc?”
Seon-woo and Seong Jun-il began a rehearsal before filming.
And what Seon-woo focused on was……
“Jeong Mong-ju seems…… terrified.”
Precisely that.
Seong Jun-il nodded.
“He should be. He’s about to die. That’s how the script reads anyway.”
“But…… he seems far more terrified than I’d imagined. The Jeong Mong-ju I’ve portrayed until now was always confident.”
“I think he has no choice but to lose that confidence.”
Seong Jun-il laughed bitterly.
“Jeong Mong-ju failed to protect the nation. And he knows full well that when he dies, Goryeo ends with him. Of course…… he can’t help but be afraid of that.”
“……That’s true. So what you most want to express in this scene is…… Po-eun’s terror?”
“Right, exactly. And you…….”
Seong Jun-il tilted his head slightly, seeming uncertain.
“It seems almost as though you’ve become a monster, and yet there’s something very human about it too…… Did you feel sorrow at Jeong Mong-ju’s death? No, that’s not quite it either. It’s hard to pin down exactly what you’re expressing. So…… hmm, I see.”
Seong Jun-il fell into thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened.
“Loneliness. You’re lonely, and unhappy. That’s the Yi Bang-won you’ve imagined, isn’t it?”
“Exactly right.”
Seon-woo nodded with a rueful smile.
Sadness, torment—of course such feelings weren’t absent. But what needed to come to the fore in this scene was the unhappiness of Yi Bang-won as a person.
Neither Goryeo’s fall nor Joseon’s founding moves his heart anymore. In the end, he is merely one man swept along by the current of the age, struggling to survive.
That desolate reality was what Seon-woo had to convey.
What he wanted to convey.
And after contemplating that image for a moment, Seong Jun-il laughed.
“……The audience will eat this up.”
“They will, won’t they?”
“On screen, the more miserable we are, the more gripping it becomes. Let’s shoot something really spicy, shall we? Like malatang.”
“Yes, I’d love to!”
Seon-woo answered with forced brightness.
Yi Bang-won’s depression weighed on him even now, but it didn’t diminish his drive to perform.
The deeper the depression, the more Seon-woo found himself savoring it from another angle. For an actor, emotions are all the more compelling the more intense they become.
As an actor, Seon-woo hadn’t forgotten what he needed to focus on.
As Seong Jun-il had said, he had to properly convey Yi Bang-won’s unhappiness.
It wasn’t an easy task.
It’s Seong Jun-il—Jeong Mong-ju—who dies here. He is the one truly deserving of unhappiness.
But for Yi Bang-won to seem unhappy before such a Jeong Mong-ju……how could he achieve that?
For this moment, Seon-woo had wrestled with the question endlessly.
He’d conjured dozens, hundreds of details through which to express Yi Bang-won’s unhappiness.
But once filming actually began,
“……Have you come to kill me?”
Seon-woo realized it wouldn’t be easy.
People usually imagine Jeong Mong-ju’s final moments as confident.
Free of regret, of fear……facing the end with shoulders squared. But look at the light in his eyes now.
Those eyes, desperate, ready to crumble at any moment.
“No.”
And so, in this moment, as he spoke those words……Seon-woo felt an indescribable bitterness flood his chest.
“I have come to end Goryeo.”
To Jeong Mong-ju, that would have sounded far more terrifying than a mere declaration of death.
He could see it in his face.
Drenched in terror, his pupils and shoulders beginning to tremble violently. He could feel it—how much fear Jeong Mong-ju carried now, how desperately he longed for Goryeo’s survival.
In this moment, Seon-woo felt a vast marsh forming around Seong Jun-il. A great, swallowing marsh that drags all it touches down to the depths.
When he realized that this was actually the mental image of Jeong Mong-ju thrashing about, grasping at any straw, desperate not to sink……Seon-woo found his own eyes squeezing shut without his knowledge.
It was unbearable.
Yi Bang-won knows this: Jeong Mong-ju is no villain. He is simply an obstacle to his path. If there is a villain in this situation……it is himself.
Yet it must be done.
Someone must have blood on their hands.
Someone must commit this evil so that this nation can be built.
So he cannot stop.
Cannot stop, and yet……
“No, no—you cannot. Please, I beg you. Did not this nation give you birth?”
“…….”
Jeong Mong-ju approaches him.
His face on the verge of collapse, eyes reddened, he looks upon him.
“Spare me. Please? Just spare me……just let me live. I beg you like this. Surely it need not come to this? Please? Please……?”
The learned master whom all the scholars of Goryeo revere and follow begs for his life. Not merely because he fears death, but because he cannot accept that his own death means Goryeo’s end.
Pitiful.
Pitiful and sublime.
“I will do anything. If you ask me to be your dog, I will be. If you ask me to crawl, I will crawl. But……but please, I implore you……do not trample Goryeo. Do not destroy this nation of mine. Please do not erase my country. Sob……!”
Jeong Mong-ju seizes his collar.
Clinging to him with tears streaming down his face—a man who could be his father. As Yi Bang-won, as Seon-woo witnessed this……he felt as though he might crumble.
Jeong Mong-ju cares nothing for his own dignity.
Knowing full well that his own death is near, he clings to a sliver of hope, grasping desperately at survival. For only then can Goryeo live.
That heart was so profound, so beautiful, and so heartbreaking that……Seon-woo had no choice but to clench his fists until they shook.
“Please……I beg you. Spare me. Please, please……let me live. Spare me, let Goryeo……Sob sob……Oh……! Please, please……!”
A cry of such anguish that merely hearing it made the heart rot.
In that moment, an inescapable thought emerged.
The mental image of Jeong Mong-ju revealed through that cry……was so grotesque, so terrible that Seon-woo could not help but think:
I’ve lost.
I cannot bear this.

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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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