I Acted Once, and Now They Call Me a Genius - Chapter 241

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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 241
“……This is insane.”
Every member of the staff watching Seong Jun-il’s performance stood transfixed, jaws slack.
The Yeokjeok filming set was no stranger to impressive displays of acting prowess, but this——this was in a class of its own.
Not only was this Jeong Mong-ju fundamentally different from every version they’d witnessed until now, but Seong Jun-il’s acting ability had reached nothing short of its absolute peak.
And in that moment, so did Seo Tae-rok feel it——
‘……I find myself grateful anew.’
His chest burned with warmth.
There was a power in Seong Jun-il’s acting that moved the hearts of those who witnessed it.
This scene was one that Seo Tae-rok had poured his greatest care into writing for this entire production.
By showing Jeong Mong-ju’s most human and vulnerable side——the Jeong Mong-ju who had seemed so towering——he wanted to truly convey what it felt like for Goryeo to crumble.
The fall of Goryeo was not merely the end of a corrupt nation.
It meant the end of a world that someone had devoted their whole heart to loving, a world that was everything to them. A despair as profound as losing family——or perhaps even greater.
Seong Jun-il was expressing that despair with devastating perfection.
Exactly the performance Seo Tae-rok had envisioned.
By this point, the audience would have no choice but to understand.
The hearts of the scholars who fought to preserve Goryeo in that era of its collapse——what they felt. What the death of Jeong Mong-ju truly meant.
And how terrible an act it was to kill such a man.
“……I have no requests for you, my lord.”
But as Seo Tae-rok watched Seon-woo’s performance unfold, his expression became subtly complex.
Seon-woo’s acting wasn’t poor. That cold face, sharp enough to cut, carrying with it the bitter chill of midwinter——you could read at a glance how firmly resolved Yi Bang-won had become.
An expression that suggested not just Jeong Mong-ju was desperate in this moment.
“Even if I made a request, you would not grant it, my lord. Though I might beg you to abandon Goryeo, to join this new age……you would call me a traitor.”
It was chilling.
In that emotionless voice lay the implication that Yi Bang-won had become a monster.
And yet——
“……Cut.”
Seo Tae-rok called cut.
Even though filming had stopped mid-performance, neither Seong Jun-il nor Seon-woo seemed particularly surprised. Seon-woo in particular looked at Seo Tae-rok as though he’d already known this was coming.
He could sense that Seo Tae-rok would not be satisfied with this take.
“Seon-woo.”
“Yes, Director?”
“Do you understand why I cut?”
“I think I do.”
Seon-woo nodded.
“Yi Bang-won felt a bit too composed, I think.”
Several people in the room tilted their heads uncertainly.
It was true that Yi Bang-won had shown an expressionless face, yet despite that, the atmosphere of melancholy and heaviness had been conveyed clearly enough.
But Seo Tae-rok nodded in agreement.
“I’d like you to play Yi Bang-won more as though he’s cornered. Pushed to the edge.”
Under ordinary circumstances, the emotional arc he’d just shown would have been sufficient.
But the variable was Jeong Mong-ju. Because Seong Jun-il’s portrayal of Jeong Mong-ju’s collapse was so achingly perfect, Seon-woo by contrast looked too composed, too intact.
The benchmark had been set extremely high.
“Understood. Could I have five minutes to recalibrate my emotions?”
“Of course.”
Having secured the time, Seon-woo began breathing slowly and deeply.
Then he gazed slowly into his color orb. In truth, from partway through the previous take, Seon-woo had already sensed that Seo Tae-rok would stop him.
‘I was pulled down.’
A swamp.
Jeong Mong-ju’s despair, like a swamp, dragged everything in this world relentlessly downward.
When faced with that despair, Seon-woo felt his own mental image crumble as well. Despite his efforts to endure, to hold on——it had been impossible to resist.
In simpler terms, he’d been swept away.
‘……He’s truly remarkable.’
Seon-woo felt fresh respect for Seong Jun-il.
He was certainly an extraordinary actor. Watching his performance made it clear what decades of experience could be worth.
But admiration alone wouldn’t suffice.
He had to express it.
Seon-woo burst his Yi Bang-won color orb.
A mental image: a wind so biting and parched it stung the skin, howling mercilessly. Once, he’d thought this much was enough to show how agonizing Yi Bang-won’s existence was. But now, watching Seong Jun-il’s performance, his mind had changed.
Before Jeong Mong-ju’s mental image——where everything in the world collapsed in real time, where there was not a single place for him to stand——this cold was nothing at all.
‘What am I going to do.’
He’d told Seo Tae-rok five minutes, but honestly, Seon-woo wasn’t confident. Yet he couldn’t spend the entire shoot lost in deliberation either.
He had to think of something.
Some way for Yi Bang-won to appear cornered even before Jeong Mong-ju’s despair.
‘……Should it feel more precarious? More on the edge?’
The acting style Seon-woo had favored up until now was this:
When he wanted to express rage, he held it back. When he wanted to express sorrow, he held back the tears. He’d come to believe that emotions, the more you suppress them, the more vividly they emerge.
By the same logic, to express being cornered, he’d need to project composure——to emphasize the impression of someone not yet beaten.
In fact, that’s why Yi Bang-won now displayed such a calm, icy demeanor.
But if the emotional arc needed to be more dramatic still……
‘A greater emotion needs to roil beneath the surface.’
He needed to amplify the very magnitude of the emotions Yi Bang-won was holding back.
Seon-woo pondered. How could he manage that? How could he deepen that emotion further?
“Seon-woo.”
“……Ah, yes, Senior.”
At that moment, Seong Jun-il called to him.
With Jeong Mong-ju’s emotions still not settled, his face deeply sorrowful as though tears might come at any second, Seong Jun-il spoke quietly.
“Next time……could you act as though you’re facing me more directly?”
Focus more on Jeong Mong-ju.
In that instant, Seon-woo grasped what Seong Jun-il meant. In the previous take, Seon-woo——Yi Bang-won——had been averting his gaze from Jeong Mong-ju.
Jeong Mong-ju’s condition was too terrible to face directly.
If he kept looking at him, it felt like Seon-woo would crumble.
……But avoiding that gaze wasn’t really in character for Yi Bang-won, was it?
Following Seong Jun-il’s suggestion, Seon-woo resolved to face Jeong Mong-ju head-on. He wasn’t confident he wouldn’t falter before Jeong Mong-ju’s raw desperation, but one advantage of shooting with Seo Tae-rok was that multiple takes weren’t viewed as a particular failure.
The director himself was known to demand dozens of takes.
And so——
“I have come……to end Goryeo.”
“No. That cannot be. Do not speak such words.”
Seon-woo resolved to face Seong Jun-il’s mental image directly——his swamp-like reality in full.
“I will do anything. If you ask me to be your dog, I will be. To be your servant, I will serve. So please……I beg you, do not trample upon Goryeo, upon this nation……!”
It was awful.
Just meeting that gaze felt like his mind was being worn to shreds.
His heart sagged endlessly, and in the moment Jeong Mong-ju grasped his sleeve, Seon-woo felt the weight of nearly falling into that very abyss.
And simultaneously, he understood: this was right.
Yi Bang-won must have felt this when he killed Jeong Mong-ju. He must have felt in his entire body how terrible an act it was to kill a nation.
Unless Yi Bang-won was a fool——which he wasn’t. He was someone who understood people better than most.
“……I have no requests for you, my lord.”
It was painful.
Facing Jeong Mong-ju as he clung to him with such desperation.
“Even if I made a request, you would not grant it, my lord. Though I might beg you to abandon Goryeo, to join this new age……you would call me a traitor.”
And the reality of being able to offer such coldness in response.
“So it cannot be helped. I will make no requests of you, my lord. In turn, I ask that you make no requests of me.”
With each word Seon-woo spoke, shock registered on Seong Jun-il’s face.
His lips still quivered, as though he wanted to insist there was still hope for Goryeo, yet no further words came. He had always known, after all. That once they met like this, there was no possibility of his survival.
And seeing Jeong Mong-ju thus——
“……Young-gyu.”
Yi Bang-won calls to Jo Young-gyu.
Instead of answering, Jo Young-gyu walks slowly from behind Yi Bang-won. Dragging an iron club.
Seeing him, Jeong Mong-ju cries out in panic.
He flees in panic. Of course it was futile. Jo Young-gyu pursued Jeong Mong-ju in a single bound and brought the iron club down upon his head.
“Ugh, g-gahhh…….”
And Jeong Mong-ju falls.
He falls, blood pouring from his head, yet——he crawls. Desperate to survive any way he can.
In this moment, Jeong Mong-ju would know.
That this flight was meaningless. And yet, the fact that he crawls, that he crawls on his legs heedless of dignity or anything else——it reveals that he is a man who cannot abandon Goryeo under any circumstance, for any reason.
“Ah…….”
“Hnngh…….”
In the end, the staff members themselves were moved to tears.
For desperation had always moved the human heart. In this moment, they were all captivated by Jeong Mong-ju, the man.
Seo Tae-rok felt a thrill course through him as he sensed the tenor of the set.
He could feel it. Life was flowing into the character and the scene——the work itself was breathing.
But it was not Jeong Mong-ju who would write the final punctuation of this story.
It was Yi Bang-won. Depending on how Yi Bang-won witnessed and received Jeong Mong-ju’s final struggle, so too would the audience’s stance toward this story shift.
That was why he’d made this request of Seon-woo.
Show me what it looks like to be pushed to the limit.
All of this was a human story. And it was human in a way that was far too vast and overwhelming to bear——he wanted to express that truth.
And in this moment——
“……Ah.”
Seon-woo magnificently fulfilled Seo Tae-rok’s request.
Yi Bang-won gazes upon Jeong Mong-ju. Like someone who has lost something precious——empty, anguished, and deeply, profoundly sad.
It is felt.
Yi Bang-won did not want to kill Jeong Mong-ju. He did not want to end Goryeo. Perhaps even that dream of founding Joseon——it now felt to him like nothing more than a burden, a dream of the distant past.
Yet he cannot stop.
The story has already begun. The current cannot be halted.
“……I beg your forgiveness, my lord.”
Before Yi Bang-won now lies only a road of thorns.
Even the softest grass beneath his feet will feel only sharp and wounding. Yi Bang-won himself must know this.
Jeong Mong-ju’s crawling body is already still.
The blood Jeong Mong-ju shed stretches across the ground in a long trail. And Yi Bang-won, standing above it, wears the face of one who has lost everything——more lifeless, more hollow even than the Jeong Mong-ju who lies dead.
‘……It’s perfect.’
In this moment, Seo Tae-rok closed his eyes and smiled.
A perfect final punctuation.

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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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