Chapter Eight

“So, uhm, this is Kyungsoo. He’s my-“

“-I’m her friend, nice to meet you, Mr. Jongin.”

“-classmate.”

Without waiting for Haneul to finish her sentence, Kyungsoo leapt into the introduction and reached out a hand for a handshake. Jongin returned with a polite smile.

“Nice to meet you, Kyungsoo,” Jongin spoke in his usual cordial manner, one hand tucked in the pocket of his suit, “I’m Kim Jongin, as you seem to already know.”

Kyungsoo nodded his head in acknowledgement. Then, he leaned towards Haneul and hissed in her ear, “Hey, how do you know Kim Jongin?”

Though it was supposedly meant to be heard as a secret whisper, but his voice still rang out loud and clear as if he had spoken it normally. Biting her lips, Haneul shuffled her feet and darted a glance at Jongin. The man still had an air of friendliness around him, but she could tell that he was getting a bit impatient.

“Uhm,” Leaning back towards Kyungsoo, Haneul whispered back, “He’s-“

“-I’m her supervisor.”

“Oh, supervisor?” Kyungsoo looked confused, “for what?”

“For…” Haneul trailed off, at a loss for words.

“Just for certain things,” Gently taking Haneul’s arm, Jongin led her away from Kyungsoo and guided her into the car. Kyungsoo was about to question further but the look on Jongin’s face clearly told him that this conversation was over, so Kyungsoo swallowed his words back in.

After all, the man in front of him was the CEO of Sky entertainment, one of the leading characters of one of the few largest entertainment companies in the entertainment industry. He wouldn’t want to be getting into trouble with such an important man now.

So all Kyungsoo could do was watch silently as Jongin closed the doors in front of his face, and a second later, the car was driving off into the distance. Pouting a little, he sighed and crossed his arms.

“But what about taking the train together?”

Meanwhile, Haneul was biting her nails nervously as she sat in the car beside Jongin. Once again, he had his laptop out on his lap, and was typing furiously into it.

“Uhm,”

Jongin looked up.

“Are you angry?”

A look of surprise flickered over his expression before he let out an amused smile, “angry for what?”

“I don’t know, just,” Haneul kept biting her nails, “you seemed a little annoyed back then.”

There was a slight pause. Then, a smile broke out across his face.

“No, of course I wasn’t annoyed. After all, you’ve made a new friend, what’s there to be angry about?”

Relief coursing through Haneul’s expression, she stopped biting her nails and smiled back at Jongin.

The rest of the ride back was then spent in comfortable silence.  

The minute she got back, Haneul immediately rushed to her room and grabbed the script from the table. Maria was not yet home, so that left Haneul plenty of private space to practice freely without the fear of Maria’s judging eyes.

The first line of the script is a powerful one. Though simple in words, but it represents Jiyeon’s heart at the moment she confronted Sungki. The feelings she had suppressed all the years she waited for him, the lonely nights and yearnings she felt – they all melted into one big desire for him to still remember her. For him to simply still remember her, that was all she asked for. And it came in the form of three broken words:

“It’s me, Jiyeon.”

“It’s me, Jiyeon.” Repeating the line once, Haneul stood up from the bed and she placed the script down on the ground.

She would do exactly what she practiced with the teacher today. Anger, grief, shock, despair – she would try and act all these emotions out through her voice.

Turning towards the mirror, Haneul slowly pulled her face into a frown. Pressing her voice down, she tried to make it sound gruff, “It’s me, Jiyeon.”

Next, she pretended to sound shocked; her eyes were wide open and her voice came out in a light gasp, “It’s me, Jiyeon.”

Haneul went through each emotion that she could think of one by one until she couldn’t think of anything more to act out. Panting a little, she sat down on the floor and hugged her head.

She did everything that she learnt in class today, but something just didn’t feel right. It just didn’t feel right. Although she tried to act out so many different emotions and attempted to manipulate her tone, but they sounded so distant to her ears. They didn’t hit straight into her heart. Her own acting didn’t touch her at all.

It didn’t feel right, but Haneul had no idea what went wrong.

Sighing dejectedly, Haneul flopped down on the ground and drew her knees to her chest. She had thought that maybe she had gotten a spark on how to act, but in the end, it wasn’t as easy as she had thought it would be.

With her eyes closed, the girl thought back to how her mother portrayed the scene. It was still as clear in her mind as when she first saw it – her mother’s voice was trembling with emotion, and it sounded so sad, and so desperate. With a voice so soft that you almost couldn’t hear it, she had whispered out the words, but at the same time powering a strong sense of desire through that slight plead.

“It’s me, Jiyeon.”

Sighing softly to herself, Haneul wondered if she would ever be able to act like her mother. Perhaps the DNA for acting wasn’t passed down to her, or perhaps she just wasn’t suited for acting at all. With another soft sigh, the girl slowly drifted off into sleep.

Night came, and the sound of shuffling could be heard as the door opened. Massaging her temples with a tired grunt, Maria stepped into her house, dumped her bag on the couch and flopped down onto it. Per usual, it had been an exhausting day. After rushing the idol around from morning until night, Maria was done for the day and just wanted a cup of tea to soothe her tensed nerves. But deciding that it would be better to change into comfortable clothes first, she reluctantly got up from the couch and trudged her way to her room.

It wasn’t until she passed the ajar blue door did she suddenly remember that she wasn’t alone in the house. Frowning a little, the lady opened the door slightly to find with surprise the girl asleep on the floor with the script held in her hands.

Watching Haneul sleep so peacefully, and so unsuspectingly, a sigh escaped Maria’s lips.

“It’s not like I really want to make you feel bad about yourself,” Maria spoke to no one in particular, and her words fell upon Haneul’s deaf ears, “but look at you. You’re so innocent and naïve, how are you going to survive in the entertainment world?”

With a shake of the head, Maria then turned away from the girl and closed the door behind her with a gentle click.

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