The Chaebol Family’s Youngest Daughter Doesn’t Hide Her Acting Skills - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 4

A breathtaking feeling.

They say people feel such overwhelming pressure when witnessing insurmountable talent.

Throughout her decades-long acting career, Seong Hye-sim had never felt such a sensation from an opponent.

There were plenty of skilled actors around her, but they were all at a similar level to hers. She too had awakened to the profound mysteries of acting.

But.

‘What was that just now…’

She’s just a girl not even twenty years old. A friend’s niece. A so-called novice with no child acting experience.

Yet Seong Hye-sim was overwhelmed by Ju Sae-i’s expression.

Without uttering a single line, her decades of honed acting experience reacted to Sae-i.

‘It was Dohun.’

Among the protagonist’s family, the ‘son’ Yeon Do-hun was someone who repeatedly ranked first in his class and got accepted to a prestigious university.

However, all of this was due to his mother’s urging, and Dohun, who had lived without will, locks his room door after getting accepted to university.

But neither home nor his small room could provide Dohun with freedom. Eventually, he ends his own life one day before his high school graduation ceremony.

This was the past part.

The story of the mother who neglected her daughter for three years in shock after losing her son, and the daughter who grew up strong on her own, is the main content of 【Your Blue Name】.

She had chosen the scene where the son facing death confronts his mother for the first and last time to test Ju Sae-i.

The first episode script contained the protagonists’ childhood.

She threw a curveball, thinking Sae-i would only focus on the female protagonist’s lines, which were of the same gender and had the most screen time.

“Mom did everything wrong… Please open the door, okay? Son…”

When she delivered the line, processed her gaze, and examined her expression.

The pale complexion and immediately bloodshot whites of her eyes. Pupils filled with resentment and emptiness. The slightly trembling eyelids and tightly pressed lips before her first act of rebellion.

‘A child carrying out the most venomous revenge with the gentlest heart.’

A son who resents the mother who controlled his life. Even while deciding to rebel through death, he still feels sorry for the mother who would grieve his death, ultimately pitying his mother till the end…

To Seong Hye-sim’s eyes, Sae-i was Dohun himself. That’s why her acting broke.

‘I made a mistake. I need to focus quickly…’

Just as Hye-sim was trying to regain her composure, Ju Sae-i spoke.

“…Are you okay?”

“Oh, sorry. I got distracted for a moment.”

Ju Sae-i seemed to immediately notice that Hye-sim had wavered.

Hye-sim couldn’t control her trembling lips.

‘You can use expressions that well and then return to reality like turning off a switch? Plus, you figured out that my acting wavered in such a short time.’

Ah, how coveted. The feeling of passion for acting, which had been cooling, igniting again.

‘Not yet. She might completely break when we get to the dialogue…’

Even as she told herself not to get her hopes up too early, her heart was still beating fast.

“Shall we try again? The scene we just did, the part where it transitions to Dohun’s monologue.”

Along with the signal to resume reading, Seong Hye-sim reflected on the line she had delivered earlier.

“Don’t you care that Mom is upset? Open the door. Talk to Mom. Huh? Dohun, Yeon Do-hun!”

This isn’t a filming set. Therefore, the only thing an actor reading lines can rely on is their own voice.

“You got into Daehan University and what’s the problem that you’re making Mom, who never worried before, worry her whole life!”

Hye-sim’s line ended. Just from reading it, the image of a mother glaring at the closed door and rattling the doorknob was drawn.

Now it was time for Sae-i to respond.

“…Did I make Mom worry?”

A voice with boyish charm, different from Ju Sae-i’s own, dominated the area.

The image of Dohun coming out of his room wearing formal clothes like a shroud was naturally drawn.

“You got into Daehan University and what’s the problem… It wouldn’t be a problem for Mom, would it. Since it’s the university you wanted so badly. But Mom. To say I made you worry… have you ever given me any choice worth doing so?”

Sae-i, who had become Dohun, let out a tender breath. She narrowed her eyes as if even this conversation was too burdensome to bear.

Her expression changed fluidly by the second, no, in even more minute units.

“I did everything you told me to. Because Mom smiled when I did well. Even those smiles were rare. After Dad passed away, Mom, Mom!”

Sae-i gave variation to Dohun’s voice that had only been gentle.

A child who didn’t even know how to get angry, shouting for the first time due to frustration filling his head.

With such an expression, a rough voice burst out as if wounded.

The VIP room of the empty Atrium resonated with the clear pronunciation that was passionate yet without slurring.

A moment of silence. And then.

“Mom… only smiled at me on days I brought home report cards.”

The volume became calm again. The line overlapped with his exhale, evoking a sense of futility in the viewer.

“Dohun, that was all because I wanted our son to do well…”

“Do you think I’ll do well living like this?”

Cutting off his mother’s words, Dohun spoke sarcastically.

“Now it’s all wrong. When Mom smiled, I could smile too… Living feels like the wrong answer. Mom’s smiles, the schedule Mom made for me. And yet, even myself who thought of Mom’s smiling face as soon as the acceptance screen appeared…”

“…”

“Now everything. I’m just tired of it all.”

As if even this conversation was useless, the voice declaring boredom was constant without highs and lows. It was the moment Dohun truly decided on the end.

‘Oh, no.’

Hye-sim’s lips trembled finely. According to the script, the scene should end with the mother, unable to overcome the humiliation given by her child, driving Dohun out.

However.

‘I want to hold him back…’

The Dohun before her eyes looked so precarious that she just wanted to embrace the child. She felt like she shouldn’t let him go outside like this.

Even knowing she wouldn’t see him again in the script, she got goosebumps from the intuition that as the mother in the play, she would never see her son again.

Hye-sim hesitated to deliver her last line. If this had been actual filming, the director would have called “NG.”

The silence lengthened, and just as she barely controlled her distracting thoughts and parted her tightly closed lips.

“…I’ll go for a walk. Sorry for getting angry, Mom.”

Still in the same toneless manner, Dohun delivered a line not in the script. It was an ad-lib.

“Let’s have dinner together later.”

The ending note trembled. Knowing better than anyone that if he left home now, he would never return, the good son’s pupils wavered as he spoke the lie.

The end of the designated scene.

Even though there was no movement at all while reading the script, Dohun leaving through the front door flickered in her vision.

“…Whew.”

Sae-i, who finished the reading, returned to her usual self.

Dohun’s lifeless face was erased and vitality returned once again.

***

Emerging from her immersion, Sae-i exhaled a long breath toward the floor.

The Atrium, which had been filled with their two voices, was now suffocatingly quiet.

Gathering her emotions, Sae-i slowly raised her head.

Across from her, Seong Hye-sim was staring at her intently. A hardened face. The emotions contained there were completely unreadable.

‘Was it too much?’

No matter how long she waited, Hye-sim didn’t finish the scene, so she had improvised the line. Perhaps that ad-lib was displeasing.

In her previous life, she had received high praise from Seong Hye-sim, but she didn’t know what evaluation she would receive now.

Sae-i looked at her aunt with a worried heart. Her aunt was also dazed like Seong Hye-sim.

‘It seems like I messed up…’

As Sae-i opened her mouth to apologize,

“No…”

Seong Hye-sim beat her to it.

“The last line, you came up with it on the spot, right?”

“Oh, yes! It felt like it was flowing differently from the script…”

“Dohun dies after this, you know. But what was the reason for saying let’s have dinner together later?”

The questions continued. Seong Hye-sim raised her eyebrows while watching Sae-i choose her answer.

“I looked at your expression before delivering the line. But unlike the stage direction that says to frown with humiliation…”

“Unlike?”

“You looked like you were crying and would embrace your son at any moment, your ‘mother’ did. Seeing that, I thought Dohun would also want to comfort his mother, at least in that moment.”

Hye-sim’s face, listening silently, twisted strangely.

“Dohun resents his mother for controlling him, yet he also feels sorry for her. He couldn’t completely disregard the mother standing before him until the very end.”

Sae-i bit her lips while waiting for Seong Hye-sim’s response.

“Hmm….”

Seong Hye-sim, who had been trailing off, suddenly reached into her handbag and rummaged around.

Soon, what she extended to Sae-i with a benevolent smile was,

“Sae-i, could you give me your phone number?”

Her cell phone.

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