I Acted Once, and Now They Call Me a Genius - Chapter 263

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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 263
“Do you want to break up?”
It blazes.
“That’s not it.”
Do-young’s fire.
And at the same time, Chang-seop’s fire as well.
When Seon-woo first saw that fire, he’d wondered about it privately.
He couldn’t understand why such an angry, wavering flame seemed to flicker from Chang-seop.
And Do-young had answered that question like this.
‘It’s the same reason you were angry at me back then.’
Seon-woo had once gotten angry at Do-young for spouting weakness.
Do-young had been Seon-woo’s role model, after all.
‘Chang-seop believes in remaining unmarried, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in love. Rather, precisely because he believes in love and reveres it…… he thinks he’ll stay single unless he can have that kind of love. And Jun-seo and In-hee are very peculiar beings to Chang-seop.’
‘Because they’re having the kind of love Chang-seop wanted?’
‘Yes. From Chang-seop’s perspective, you all seem to have a kind of love that he can never easily obtain no matter how much he wishes for it, yet you treat that love as if it’s nothing. How could he not be angry in a situation like this?’
Do-young’s answer had convinced Seon-woo at once.
That’s right. With a heart like that, he could understand the fierce burning. In a way, it was no different from brazenly toying with food in front of a starving person.
That’s why,
“You don’t want to break up. You still love her. You can’t live without In-hee, you idiot.”
Chang-seop’s eyes burning with fury no longer seems strange at all.
Because he understands what Chang-seop feels.
And that understanding had helped bloom an emotion that the original Jun-seo could never have harbored.
Gratitude.
“Say you don’t want to break up. Tell her you still love her. Why can’t you say something so simple? Why do you always act like this? You pathetic bastard. Huh?”
Gratitude.
It’s a strange thing. Even now, Chang-seop is pouring all manner of curses at Jun-seo, yet Jun-seo doesn’t hate Chang-seop for it in the slightest.
Rather, he’s grateful.
Because it feels like Chang-seop is angry on Jun-seo’s behalf.
Like he’s sorrowful and suffering in Jun-seo’s place.
“……Because that’s the only way I’ve ever known how to live.”
And yet he continues to stammer and falter like this.
“Just like you said, I’m acting like an idiot.”
Perhaps it’s because Jun-seo is such a young, weak person.
“I can…… I can be pathetic, right? That’s allowed, isn’t it? Yes?”
Terrified his lover might leave him, he’s even gone so far as seeking breakup counseling, yet he still can’t find the words—because he’s such a pathetic person.
That’s why, in this moment, he’s reduced to throwing a tantrum.
Seon-woo’s body trembles.
As if he lacks the strength to bear this situation at all.
The sight is so pitiful and wrong that some members of the audience end up squeezing their eyes shut.
All the colors that had been painted on the stage lose their strength and drain away.
And in that space, Jun-seo’s color fills in.
“……You’re right. I don’t want to break up. I don’t want to break up, but…… it’s not something I can choose not to do just because I don’t want it, is it?”
Jun-seo looks at In-hee.
And in this moment, all of Jun-seo’s confused emotions swirling on stage flow toward In-hee.
Is that why?
In-hee’s eyes, which had seemed so steady until now for someone speaking of separation, can’t help but waver in this instant.
She hadn’t thought Jun-seo might feel this way.
Seeing In-hee like that, Jun-seo smiles bitterly.
“I’m sorry. Honey. This is really how I feel.”
“…….”
In-hee doesn’t answer.
She simply doesn’t open her mouth, yet her face expresses much. If one were to name the principal emotional line expressed…… it would be a sense of loss.
The moment Seon-woo saw that face, apart from empathizing with Jun-seo’s sadness, he couldn’t help but feel elation.
It was an achingly beautiful expression.
Facing a boyfriend who confesses he still loves her, she feels loss…… what does that mean?
What Jun-seo had been fearing all along is now happening.
Looking at Jun-seo’s affection, still warm, In-hee can’t help but realize how cool her own heart has become.
And that means she’s lost the greatest treasure she possessed—love.
To express “I don’t love you” with an expression full of loss…… is there any acting more beautiful and precise than this?
A step backward, taken without thinking.
Hands raised aimlessly, then falling powerlessly.
In-hee tries to smile.
But the moment she realizes the smile won’t come, her expression hardens, and she turns her head away from Jun-seo.
Only now is she truly grasping it.
What it means to speak of separation.
And all of it was visible to the audience’s eyes.
It was remarkable. Though her movements aren’t grandiose, In-hee’s acting has a quality that makes even the smallest details leap into focus.
A practiced skill at naturally drawing the audience’s gaze.
Anyone with knowledge of theater couldn’t help but admire Yu-ran watching this moment.
How many times she must have analyzed and rehearsed this scene to deliver such performance was almost palpable.
And as the stage progressed further, other actors began to come into focus in the audience’s eyes—all except Yu-ran.
“Anyway, that’s why people need to fight sometimes.”
“Shh.”
“What! I have something to say!”
Hye-seong and Min-hee’s acting was like solid ground supporting all of this.
While Chang-seop and Jun-seo’s emotions seesawed, their steady composure kept the stage in balance—their very presence providing equilibrium.
It was a curious play.
In truth, the material is simple. A couple in the throes of romantic ennui contemplates breakup, and friends offer counsel.
Yet this play wasn’t created merely to emphasize the sorrow and weight of that separation.
Rather, there was a greater tendency toward satirizing all of it.
Min-jae speaks.
“Let’s organize this. There must be reasons for breaking up, right?”
“A breakup needs an agenda. Like a meeting.”
Everyone looks incredulous. Just moments ago, Chang-seop and Jun-seo were pouring out their emotions, and now they’re supposed to hold a meeting as if it was nothing?
Yet strangely, everyone gets pulled along with it.
Ga-hyeon draws a line on paper.
On the left: “Reasons to break up.”
On the right: “Reasons not to break up.”
“Hey, you two are using a couple’s phone plan, right?”
At first, only silly reasons come to mind.
Reasons not to break up:
We’ve been dating so long our parents are close.
We have way too much stuff at each other’s places. Sorting it would be exhausting.
Couple phone plan still has a lot of time left on contract.
We have too many mutual friends.
Reasons to break up:
We eat out together so much we’re both getting fat.
We don’t really talk even when we’re together.
We fake laugh.
We feel lonely even when we’re together.
But as the list grows, bitter truths begin seeping in among the jokes.
As the list lengthens, the audience members who’d been giggling softly grow quieter and quieter.
It becomes harder to judge.
Whether they should laugh through this lightly.
Or stiffen their expressions, sensing the meaning beneath.
And Cheongseong continued to shake the audience’s hearts relentlessly.
It made them laugh, then made them sad, then delighted them again, then unsettled them. The genre’s characteristic mordant emotion continued to torment them.
And this genre shakes more than just the audience.
The characters too are shaken.
Just then, Jong-seok tries to stop Jun-seo and In-hee’s breakup, speaking like this.
“Seriously, if you two break up, I won’t believe in love anymore either.”
“……Why would you say that? If you two break up, does that mean you don’t love me?”
“W-what? No, that’s not what I…”
So even those who’d been getting along well face unexpected trials,
“The problem is you don’t fight. You know when romantic love grows? After a fight ends, when you realize, wow, nothing can tear us apart—that’s when you grow closer. But you two never fight, so you’re just getting tired of each other!”
“……But that sounds like you’re only thinking about your own situation.”
“Huh?”
“I hate fighting. Do you think I come out of a fight thinking we’re so strong, we won’t break up? No. I think, even after fighting like this, we’ll just have to keep fighting. That’s what I think more often.”
“Why is the arrow suddenly pointing at me!”
Min-jae brags and expounds on the importance of fighting, only to end up grazing Ga-hyeon’s patience.
And so the breakup counseling party descends into chaos, and as people leave one by one…… only Chang-seop remains.
He slowly brushes himself off and stands, looking at In-hee and Jun-seo.
“I’m going. You two should talk.”
And so In-hee and Jun-seo are finally left alone together.
It’s a curious thing.
Even though the other characters have already left the stage, the colors they painted remain vivid on both the stage and in the audience seats.
A sense that they’re still present even after leaving the stage.
Resonance.
Seon-woo suddenly recalled that word. The technique of voice projection essential for delivering a proper theatrical stage.
But perhaps in theater, what resonates isn’t just the voice alone.
Actor and actor,
actor and audience—all resonate together.
Everyone becomes one, creating the work together.
Seon-woo had yearned for this.
That the audience here, and the masses beyond the camera…… would feel the charm of theater.
That they would feel this sense of becoming part of the work together.
To make that happen, the ending had to be done right.
“Honey.”
Seon-woo looked at Yu-ran.
Having felt so many emotions in so short a time, their expressions had actually grown calm now.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I want to break up.”
“Yeah. That’s how it seems.”
“Can we not break up?”
And seeing In-hee like that, Jun-seo finally speaks the truth he’d been wanting to say.
What he’d wanted to ask from the beginning wasn’t really “Can we break up?”
In-hee watches Jun-seo in silence for a long moment.
Unable to fathom the meaning contained in that silence, both Jun-seo and the audience hold their breath.
“We…….”
Yu-ran’s lips open, and in an instant the lights on stage cut out.
As the audience startles at the sudden shift, a tape plays and a voice is heard.
Presumably a conversation Yu-ran and Jun-seo might have had in the past.
Jun-seo asks.
“Hey. Do you think we’ll hit a rough patch someday?”
Yu-ran answers.
“Maybe. But I’m not really worried about it.”
“……How aren’t you?”
“Because no matter what—a rough patch or anything—we can work through it all with talk. So don’t worry about it unnecessarily.”
Even though only the voice is heard, it’s clear.
How tenderly Yu-ran must be smiling right now.
“We’ll get through it all.”
And then the lights come on.
The living room where the breakup counseling had been taking place is now empty. What that void means, people struggle to say.
People even struggled to guess what mood they were feeling now.
Because the stage had been relentlessly assaulted by so many kinds of emotions.
And a few seconds later.
Clap.
Someone began clapping first.
As if that sound were a signal, applause began echoing through the entire audience.
Applause.
Cheers.
The sound of people catching their breath.
Heightened emotions pour out in their own ways.
All felt the same.
That the actors’ performances had transcended the stage and made those in the audience a part of this play as well.
Backstage, savoring that applause, Seon-woo quietly closed his eyes.
With each clap, waves of countless emotions ripple and flow past the stage, spilling over into this backstage space.
Facing those emotions, Seon-woo quietly understood.
That his wish to convey the charm of theater to the audience and beyond to the masses…… had come true in this very moment.

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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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