I'm an Unknown Actress, But Everyone Knows Me

“Thank you. I only practiced the lines that are in the script.”

As time ticked by, Don’t talk to me now! Director Jang tapped the script with his pen, tap tap.

He looked like he was agonizing over what to do with the very last line.

00:27

Please.

“Then let’s finish by having each of you say this last section once. Juye?”

Just one sentence.

“She sounds like a local, a real local!”

“She worked in Japan for several years, so of course.”

At the mention of last, the tension drained from the evaluators nearby, and mouths started opening one after another. Everyone was itching to throw compliments at Gi Juye.

The remaining usage time on the item: only 20 seconds.

On top of that, the line itself had to be spoken slowly. It was tight.

“Then Yeoreum as well.”

The moment Director Jang’s words fell, I opened my mouth.

“That flower, it’s a pear blossom,”

I hadn’t intended it, but the end of my voice trembled.

“I wanted to tell Taeseok....”

That day, Huijae learns the name of the flower she saw. But she deliberately chooses not to tell Taeseok.

Instead, she chooses to wait until the next season when pear blossoms bloom. Because if he doesn’t know, then for one whole year, Taeseok will stay her friend.

A lonely Rio. Rio who is neither a Jap nor a Joseon person. Rio who doesn’t even feel how suffocating the tightly cinched kimono around her waist is.

It was the muttering monologue Rio lets slip as she leaves Taeseok behind.

“Yes. Script reading complete.”

00:00

The script reading ended exactly as the usage time expired. I hadn’t even had time to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Then from here on, we’ll move into character analysis.”

Director Jang’s test did not end there.

‘No—if anything, this is where the real thing begins.’

The timing had come to open a clear gap.

‘Because character analysis is what I’m best at.’

* * *

“Why do you think Huijae asked Taeseok about the name of the flower?”

Just as expected. Gi Juye recited the interpretation her acting trainer had given her.

“Huijae was still young, and having followed her father into Joseon, she would have known that whether she liked it or not, she would have to live here for a long time.”

Huijae, with her frail body, having spent a long time on a ship before arriving at the port, then staggering [N O V E L I G H T] into a carriage—

instead of the endless open sea she had seen the entire way, what filled her vision were pure white flowers.

“So she needed to leave something she could love in Joseon. And in that moment, the first thing to catch her eye was the flowers.”

“But she must have seen other things too?”

Director Jang seized on her words. The genius’s characteristic dogmatism showed through—his way of speaking assumed that what he knew, everyone else naturally knew as well.

Gi Juye steadied her breathing.

“Before that, she would have been on the ship. Huijae, who had always stayed at home, was probably curled up with seasickness. Even when she disembarked, she was carried by her nanny and taken by carriage.”

At Gi Juye’s words, everyone vaguely pictured Huijae.

“Lying down in the back seat and opening her eyes, Huijae would see nothing but the same blue sky she saw in Kobe. So much so that she wouldn’t even be able to tell whether this was Japan or Joseon.”

To Huijae, whose mouth was bitter from vomiting over and over due to seasickness—

“At some point, she would have seen a white flowering tree outside the window. And so she decides to love that. Ah, so this is where Joseon begins. It would finally feel real to her.”

Under the blue sky stretching beyond the carriage window, the white pear blossoms must have tasted sweet. Huijae, having found a place to rest her heart in Joseon, would have kept that flower in her eyes for a long time.

“Huijae also knew that she herself was Joseon-born, and she must have felt a surge of emotion at arriving in a place where people of her own blood lived.”

“Alright then, Yeoreum?”

At Director Jang’s question, Han Yeoreum gave a completely different answer.

“She asked on purpose because she wanted to talk to someone. Since she didn’t know much about Joseon, she thought it was a safe topic of conversation.”

It was nothing like Gi Juye’s interpretation. Once again, Director Jang latched on.

“Why? For what reason? Even though Huijae is shy and has no friends by nature?”

“Huijae is, so to speak, someone who has come from the inner lands to the outskirts. Everything she sees would look outdated.”

It was a radical answer. Ji Haebeom, who had been leaning back in his chair, slowly leaned forward onto the table. His upper body bent in.

The Yeon Huijae Gi Juye had shown them moments ago was erased.

In her place appeared Huijae staring not at a blue sky, but at a dark, overcast one.

Huijae who had arrived in gloomy, impoverished Joseon from bright, splendid Japan.

“Huijae, who had only ever set her eyes on good things, expensive things, precious things in her main household, dislikes Joseon the moment she sets foot here. Wouldn’t anyone feel that way if they had to put down roots in a place where the gap is so stark?”

“She dislikes Joseon, you say....”

Director Jang drew out the end of her words.

“To be precise, she dislikes her father, Hanamura 상.”

Oh—this was a direction no one had expected.

“Even when he was living amid good things, expensive things, precious things in the inner lands, he was a man who showed violence whenever things went wrong. So in this backward outer land, Huijae would have been seized by even greater anxiety. She would immediately have sensed the inferiority her father felt from the painfully obvious gap.”

It was an interpretation that felt as though it had been perceived from Yeon Huijae’s actual point of view.

Something that could only be done by a mind that understood a father worse than a dog.

‘Ah. So from now on, my father’s violence will only grow worse.’

Han Yeoreum, who had practically snatched away the telescope he was holding, freely twisted its angle.

Director Jang’s field of vision was being whipped around.

‘Damn. I can’t let a green rookie steal the initiative.’

He immediately changed the subject. Looking at Gi Juye, Director Jang asked,

“Then what does the pear blossom symbolize to Huijae?”

“A pure white first love. An untainted, wholehearted feeling.”

A textbook answer came back. This time, it was Han Yeoreum’s turn.

Once again, Han Yeoreum arbitrarily changed direction. Then—click. She pulled the lens so the telescope zoomed closer to the subject.

“A cautious pretext. Something to try speaking to Taeseok with.”

Emotion on one side, calculation on the other. The gap between pure first love and Yeon Huijae’s possible mere curiosity began to widen.

Director Jang and Han Yeoreum both tightened their grips. It was a fierce tug-of-war, each competing to frame the image in the direction they wanted.

“When Huijae first spoke with Taeseok, what was she feeling?”

Gradually, both the questions and the answers began to speed up.

“Because she’d never had the chance to interact with someone her own age, she feels shy with a heart as white as a blank canvas. She’s a pure teenage girl.”

That was what the red Huijae said—

“Huijae, who grew up reading the room to survive as the child of a concubine, with a Joseon father who was both a merchant and a live-in son-in-law, would calculate her gain. She would keenly sense that her environment had changed, and unlike the tightly surveilled main household, she would judge that here, she could make friends.”

That was what the white Huijae said.

Compared to Gi Juye, who gave answers anyone could draw just by reading the script, the clarity of what was being painted was on an entirely different level.

In an instant, the telescope became a microscope, and Han Yeoreum made it possible to grasp Huijae’s three-dimensional form in vivid detail.

“Make friends, you say.... According to your interpretation, Yeoreum, Huijae dislikes Joseon. So why would she want friends here? Wouldn’t it be more natural for her to shut out all outside contact and wish to return to Japan? Anyone would feel that way if they were dropped into a backward place where they can’t even communicate properly.”

Director Jang pressed in sharply—

“She was lonely the entire time.”

Han Yeoreum cut in.

“Perhaps because Taeseok was the first person to become her friend, Huijae’s affection for this place grew. Something that doesn’t exist in Japan, but does exist in Joseon. Amid a father’s escalating violence and a world that is entirely unfamiliar and old, the only thing that holds value.”

The tide had already begun to turn. The clarity of Yeon Huijae that Han Yeoreum was presenting was on another tier altogether.

She was expressing even the texture of the character’s emotions in meticulous detail.

“Because of that, I judged that she developed a desire to put down roots in Joseon. And perhaps, through that, she even came to love the country called Joseon.”

One of the investors, unconsciously picturing the Joseon Yeon Huijae had seen, hurriedly interjected,

“No, but the pear blossom delivers such a beautiful message throughout !”

No matter how they thought about it, it seemed hard for them to accept a first love that used the pear blossom as nothing more than a pretext.

“That’s right. It’s true the pear blossom connects the two of them, but calling it a pretext feels a bit....”

Supporters nearby nodded along. They were all investors on Gi Juye’s side. Ji Haebeom looked at Han Yeoreum with an intrigued gaze.

“Fine. I’ll grant that. But doesn’t the pear blossom risk becoming a negative image? The very first thing the successful Gi Taeseok does is plant a pear tree at his Western-style house. How do you explain that? What if the viewers can’t accept it?”

Director Jang dug back into Han Yeoreum, bombarding her with question marks, his face alight with interest. Even so, Han Yeoreum answered calmly.

“I actually think Huijae didn’t like that flower she saw in Joseon very much.”

Another radical turn. By now, Ji Haebeom had unfolded his crossed arms.

“Why? For what reason? Even though it’s one of the few mediators in old, shabby Joseon that resembles the environment in Kobe?”

“...Because the only places in Joseon where you can see pear blossoms are the homes of pro-Japanese collaborators.”

Han Yeoreum struck straight through their blind spot.