I'm an Unknown Actress, But Everyone Knows Me

Shin Seojin successfully wrapped his portion of the shoot.

“Seojin, here.”

“Thank you, thank you. Thanks.”

He took the tumbler being handed to him and drank down the cold water. Only then did it feel like the vocal cords that had been burning under the lights finally began to cool.

For the record, even the tumbler’s color had been matched to today’s Oh-Ah-Ah-Sa horoscope—light green.

“Aw, the shot looks great. Then I’m off.”

Director Park smiled as he looked past the monitor at Han Yeoreum inside the interrogation room.

Come to think of it....

At some point, Director Park had started smiling whenever he looked at Han Yeoreum. Just like he had on the set of 〈The Great Garland〉.

No.

But Shin Seojin decided not to dwell on trivial things like that. A grown man getting jealous of a much younger girl? It was pathetic. The popularity he had painstakingly gathered would vanish like a mirage.

Shin Seojin always wanted to be a man in demand. A man had to be gentlemanly.

The sub male lead of the century.

—and also the most materialistic snob among snobs. Shin Seojin looked at Han Yeoreum.

She really helped me out in the making clip earlier.

In the scene where Shin Seojin slammed the table, Han Yeoreum had given him that “how-does-he-have-that-much-charisma wow seriously incredible sunbae” expression. The making camera must have captured it perfectly, so this time it was Shin Seojin’s turn.

“Ready—”

At Director Park’s voice, Han Yeoreum’s expression slowly changed.

As if completely locking the angle of her jaw into place.

“Action!”

Han Yeoreum entered the interrogation room without a single wasted movement. She walked in with such measured steps it almost looked as if someone had input a prompt beforehand.

“Mr. Kim Yonggeun. Hello.”

Standing beside Kim Yonggeun, Lee Seohae greeted him.

No answer came back. The suspect was currently exercising his right to remain silent.

Scrape—

Lee Seohae pulled over the metal chair and sat down. She aligned the corners of the documents she had brought and placed them neatly on the desk.

People usually imagine detectives and criminal profilers in very specific ways.

The detective leans back lazily in the chair, speaks in a loose tone, then gradually loses patience and leans toward the suspect. Their hands never stay still. They point fingers or slam the desk with a bang.

The profiler, on the other hand, is static. With their upper body fixed, they either scan the papers in hand or tap away at the laptop they brought, barely moving.

But Lee Seohae resembled neither.

“...”

She simply stared at Kim Yonggeun.

At first, Kim Yonggeun met her gaze. Then he was the first to quietly look away.

There is power in the eyes.

People say actors speak with their eyes. They also say the eyes are the windows to the soul.

The eyes contain far more information than one might think.

Yet Lee Seohae’s pitch-black eyes held no intention, no purpose. They merely looked at the other person.

“Mr. Kim Yonggeun.”

After the suffocating standoff, it was Lee Seohae who spoke first.

“This is the last time you’ll be able to have anything resembling a proper conversation in society.”

Her voice remained utterly calm.

“Once you’re incarcerated, do you think there’ll be anyone decent among the people sharing your cell?”

As though this was the final normal society Kim Yonggeun would ever face.

“That’s how society works.... Political offenders with political offenders. Drug offenders with drug offenders. Petty criminals with petty criminals.” 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

At the word petty criminal, Kim Yonggeun’s brow twitched.

“Murder and concealment of a corpse. Criminal Act Article 250, Paragraph 1: death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for no less than five years. Criminal Act Article 160: concealment, destruction, or unlawful possession of a corpse. Up to seven years. These two crimes are added together as separate concurrent offenses. The average sentence is life imprisonment.”

Lee Seohae never looked at the papers.

It was as if every word on the white pages had already been perfectly filed away in her head.

“So in reality, keeping your mouth shut won’t magically get you some joke sentence like five years, ten years... by sheer luck.”

By now the set had filled with dense concentration.

The air had grown heavy.

Even the red recording light on the camera looked like a warning lamp Lee Seohae herself had switched on.

...This is insane.

The previous shoot with Gam Seonghwan and Lee Seohae had been the sundaeguk restaurant scene, and after that there had only been the car scene and the paperwork-reading scene.

Since Lee Seohae was not a particularly talkative character, this was the first time he had heard Han Yeoreum—playing Lee Seohae—speak at such length.

Without realizing it, Gam Seonghwan bit the tender flesh inside his cheek.

There hasn’t been a single delay.

No matter how experienced an actor was, if the vocabulary wasn’t something they regularly used, they would stumble at least once.

That was why investigative dramas had such a high barrier. You had to rattle off lines full of sentences you would never normally say in everyday life.

But Han Yeoreum carried herself as though she had always been Lee Seohae.

And this is the very first take.

Listening to lines flow out this flawlessly was overwhelming.

Shin Seojin thought today’s horoscope ranking had to be wrong.

His luck shouldn’t have stopped at second place.

It felt more like /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ first.

The moment Han Yeoreum entered this production instead of Noh Seungchan... he had the premonition that all his luck had already been spent.

* * *

Director Park stared at Han Yeoreum beyond the monitor, then shifted his gaze.

The monitor feels too suffocating.

He tore his eyes from the screen and looked directly at the Lee Seohae before him.

The feeling was so vivid it was like watching the entire life of a criminal profiler unfold right in front of him.

“Do you remember the 2009 Suwon study room unrequited-love murder case? The defendant was a dental student claiming he’d soon become a licensed professional. Did he get a reduced sentence? No. All he got was ridicule for acting arrogant over a profession he hadn’t even reached.”

Lee Seohae naturally grouped Kim Yonggeun into the same category as them.

Countless crimes happen in this world. A petty criminal like you is no different.

That message landed with precision.

“Similarly, the 2011 civil service exam student case—the one where he killed his boarding house landlady and hid her in the basement because her footsteps bothered his studying. This one is relatively recent, so you should know it well. The result? No sentence reduction.”

Lee Seohae gave two examples of widely known crimes, similar enough in method for Kim Yonggeun to understand.

“Violent crimes like murder, robbery, and sexual offenses are generally classified differently from things like fraud or theft. High-risk repeat offenders are sometimes placed in solitary rather than shared cells. But your scale isn’t quite at that level, Mr. Kim.”

Next came Kim Yonggeun’s future.

“If you put an inmate in his early twenties in the same cell as someone in his sixties, the older one gets beaten one-sidedly, so they separate them again. Then it becomes age brackets. You’ll be grouped somewhere between your late thirties and forties.”

Her attitude already assumed Kim Yonggeun’s life was over the moment he was imprisoned.

There was no emotion in Lee Seohae’s voice.

She sounded like a top-tier instructor calmly explaining a math formula.

“Then fraud, embezzlement, financial offenders together. Drug offenders together. Sex offenders are separated, though lately space shortages complicate that. And finally, for people like you—thieves, habitual assaulters, violent offenders all lumped into one.”

Lee Seohae still sat with both hands resting on her knees.

By contrast, Kim Yonggeun had begun curling inward, shoulders hunched, head lowered.

Like an insect trying to flee the reality in front of it.

“Mr. Kim, you weren’t exactly the type who had a lot of friends in society either, were you? Even among the quiet, decent people around you, you were treated like the loser. So in a room full of the so-called delinquent types from your school days, the kind who live and breathe violence—how exactly are you planning to keep them happy? If you want to get hit even one time less, you should start thinking about that now.”

When she once again emphasized that he would be the lowest rank in the hierarchy, Kim Yonggeun, who had been staring downward, snapped his eyes up. Wrinkles formed across his flat forehead.

“What people care about is how someone’s going to make money after release. That’s why financial offenders like stock scammers and embezzlers are popular. Even inmates who came in after mooching off women tend to get along well. Sometimes they even build connections because people in other cells ask to be introduced.”

Lee Seohae illuminated Kim Yonggeun’s life once again.

A devil, a psychopath, a cold-blooded monster.

He had probably thought of himself that way when he first held the knife.

But that was nothing more than the delusion of a pathetic criminal.

“Who would be interested in your story? Everyone in there has at least a dozen episodes worthy of a film. You’re boring.”

Among the people he would spend the rest of his life talking to, Kim Yonggeun was neither devil nor psychopath nor cold-blooded killer.

He was merely a toy to play with.

“So let me say it again. This is the end of your last real conversation in society. Wouldn’t it be frustrating to keep lying to your lawyer? Even if you keep denying it to the end, the National Forensic Service will uncover everything with enough time. They don’t get paid those salaries for nothing.”

Lee Seohae’s low voice burrowed into Kim Yonggeun’s eardrums.

“Or do you think you can deceive the people at the National Forensic Service? The academic gap is just too—”

At that, Kim Yonggeun glared at Lee Seohae.

His anger was stacking up layer by layer.

Unlike Gam Seonghwan’s style of cornering and shouting, Lee Seohae’s rational analysis was the more painful attack.

“Lying won’t get you a reduced sentence. Trying to fool them won’t work either. Before you know it, you’ll be living among the low-level conversations of society’s dropouts. Who’s going to listen to what you say? You’ll be lucky if they don’t just beat you while telling the loser bastard to shut up.”

Before anyone realized it, Han Yeoreum had been carrying over five minutes of dialogue alone.

“Do you think the guards can stop every single act of violence in detail? One slap, one hit to the head? Of course not. So your mornings are going to start with getting slapped across the face. Someone’s already in a foul mood, so why not take it out on you? People instantly recognize something weaker than themselves, don’t they? Especially predators.”

Her emotions never escalated, her speech never tangled.

She was simply Lee Seohae.

With her hands still resting on her knees, her upright posture never once wavering, Lee Seohae kept her gaze fixed in one place.

It felt as though there were an invisible frame around it all.

Like collecting an insect, placing it in a transparent acrylic box, and observing it from the outside....

Kim Yonggeun was not a devil, psychopath, or cold-blooded killer.

To Lee Seohae, he was a dragonfly, a cicada, or some nameless bug.

“Let me say it one more time. Wouldn’t it be better for the sake of your future life to simply say what’s inside you at least once? Out of all the prepared options, you’re not going to get a better one than this.”

Trapped inside the frame, Kim Yonggeun had neither eaten nor slept properly for three days.

His curled-in shoulders twitched, and he began breathing harshly. His dry chest heaved.

It’s working. It’s working.

It’s all working.

By now every single staff member was focused entirely on the two actors.

Even though they already knew the entire content from the script and storyboard.

“With your level of judgment, you must have realized it immediately. Out of everyone who’s come in here so far, there’s no one better than me.”

Lee Seohae lifted up the last scraps of Kim Yonggeun’s pride and drew him out.

At last, his mouth opened.

“...Okay!”

Park Jaeyoung’s bright voice rang through the set.

Only then did everyone finally let out the breath they had been holding.

“Fuuuh....”

“Wow. Incredible.”