Superstar From Age 0

Chapter 37

“Ready, action!”

Ji-seok knocked on the door.

Thud, thud!

He followed the script’s instructions, but he felt something standing behind the door.

He flinched involuntarily and knocked again.

Director Choi Daeman thought that looked more natural.

It seemed like the evil spirit inside ‘Soo-hyuk’ sensed the divine power of the baby shaman on the other side of the door.

Indeed, there was a reason why he was a good actor.

Thud, thud!

The door opened.

It looked quite thick when he knocked, but it opened lightly. And a child in a white hanbok appeared.

“Is there a powerful shaman here…?”

The line was supposed to end there, but Ji-seok, no, soo-hyuk stopped talking without realizing it.

Two pairs of eyes were looking at him.

One was the sparkling eyes of the baby shaman.

And the other was something inside them.

Director Choi Dae-man, who was watching the monitor, didn’t feel it as much as Ji-seok. But he knew that something inhuman was there. Because he felt the same thing when Ji-seok auditioned.

He had a feeling that there was something inside Seo-jun.

Some staff members also felt a strange sensation from the child, and some didn’t, but they all held their breath at Seo-jun and Ji-seok’s acting.

The silence created by the two actors made their hair stand on end.

The baby shaman’s head moved slowly from Soo-hyuk’s head to his feet.

Soo-hyuk couldn’t snap out of it because of that thing that was examining his insides.

Soo-hyuk thought that the evil spirit inside him was dancing.

He felt his blood moving along with his pounding heartbeat. He felt his heartbeat from his toes to his fingertips.

And finally, even in his head.

The baby shaman’s gaze disappeared and bang! The door closed. Soon,

“Cut! OK!”

The director’s voice was heard, but Soo-hyuk, no, Ji-seok was still staring at the door in the same posture.

The other staff members also quietly rolled their eyes as the actor didn’t move.

When the puzzled Choi Dae-man got up from his chair,

Clank.

The door opened.

Ji-seok stepped back two steps without realizing it.

“Oh, were you still filming?”

When Seo-jun’s guardian, Kim Hee-sang appeared, Ji-seok came to his senses.

He saw Seo-jun smiling brightly in Kim Hee-sang’s arms, waving his hand at him. He had only one pair of eyes now.

“You both did really well! Now take a break while we prepare for the next shoot.”

As Director Choi Dae-man said, they had to shoot the close-up and bust shots now.

While the staff members set up the camera near the wooden door to capture the realistic expressions of the two actors, the two actors sat on chairs and waited for the shoot.

Ji-seok opened and closed his mouth as he saw Seo-jun sitting politely on the chair and drinking cocoa.

How did you do that? How, how is that acting possible?

He wasn’t a tiny child who just started acting, but an actor who had been active for a long time.

No, could an ordinary actor do that kind of acting?

Ji-seok kept staring at him, and Seo-jun put down his cocoa cup and rubbed his face.

“Did I have something on my face?”

“No.”

Ji-seok shook his head. There were actors like that.

Actors with a talent given by heaven. Born actors.

That kind of talent was not something that ordinary people could understand by explaining it.

It was no different from saying ‘I just studied from the textbook’. No, in this case, it might be ‘I just tried it because it seemed possible, and it worked’. Ji-seok sighed inwardly.

But even acting with such an actor, his acting skills improved.

He could take a step forward just by playing the opposite role without being overwhelmed by the overwhelming acting.

Ji-seok smiled. If he couldn’t learn it by the book, he had to steal it.

“Let’s start the next shoot!”

Ji-seok and Seo-jun got up from their seats and headed to the set.

After the shooting was over for the day, the actors went back to their lodgings and the staff stayed behind to clean up the equipment.

The camera director spoke to Director Choi Dae-man incredulously.

“Lee Jiseok is one thing, but Seo-jun doesn’t give in either. The two of them acted like sparks were flying…”

“I doubt it.”

“What?”

“It looked to me like Ji-seok was trying not to lose to Seo-jun.”

***

The next day.

The shooting for the scene with Seo-jun was over in a flash.

He played a baby shaman who prepared bells and talismans to exorcize an evil spirit and calmed his mind.

He also filmed a scene with his grandfather, who lived with the baby shaman.

Since the scene was not time-bound, it was all done by lunchtime.

Unlike Seo-jun, Lee Ji-seok had many scenes to shoot.

He had to film a scene where Soo-hyuk, his character, heard the baby shaman’s story from his grandfather, and another scene where Soo-hyuk tried to leave the village to avoid harming the baby shaman, but clashed with the evil spirit who wanted to stay.

“Grandma, this is delicious!”

“It’s really good.”

Seo-jun and Kim Hee-sang, who decided to explore the village, were invited by the old lady of the blue gatehouse, which they used as their lodging, to eat hand-cut noodles.

It didn’t seem to have much ingredients, but it was very tasty.

Seo-jun slurped the noodles eagerly.

“The baby eats well.”

“That’s Seo-jn!”

“Is that so?”

The blue gatehouse seemed to serve as the village’s meeting place, as all the villagers were gathered there. An old man who was drinking rice wine said.

“They’re filming, right? Where can we see it? On TV?”

“It’s a movie filming. You’ll have to see it at the cinema.”

“The cinema is over there, we have to go to the town…”

“But our village is in it, we have to go!”

“If we take Lee’s car and the cabbage house’s car, we can all go, right?”

“Lee’s car is big, but we need four cars!”

They all started to plan the date to go see the movie. The old lady asked.

“What kind of movie are they filming?”

Kim Hee-sang hesitated for a moment. Exorcist? Spirit?

“A movie about fighting evil spirits!”

Seo-jun answered in the meantime. Evil spirits? The villagers tilted their heads.

“There are shamans and priests. That kind of movie. Should I call it Spirit?”

“Oh, shaman!”

“The shaman from the next village was very powerful.”

The topic quickly changed from the movie to the shaman.

When the old lady saw the empty bowls that Kim Hee-sang and Seo-jun had finished, she tried to give them another ladle, but they both declined quickly.

They had eaten too much, honestly.

Seo-jun and Kim Hee-sang decided to go see the Seonangdang, a shrine at the corner of the village.

They got up from their seats, greeted the villagers, and left the blue gate.

After Seo-jun and Kim Hee-sang left, the old man who poured rice wine into his bowl said.

“If the shaman from the next village was still alive, I would have asked him to look at my grandson’s fortune…”

“Ah, didn’t Choi’s grandson come to visit the other day?”

The villagers remembered Choi’s grandson, who used to walk around with slumped shoulders.

He had grown up in his grandfather’s house until he was ten, and he was like a grandchild to the old folks in Ogeo-ri.

“Where is he going without eating lunch?”

“He went to see the Seonangdang in the morning. I wonder if he’ll come back late again.”

“Life in Seoul must be hard for him.”

They all drank from their rice wine cups.

***

The Seonangdang of Ogeo-ri was a very old tree. But it was not the oldest or the biggest tree in Korea.

It was just an old tree, the kind that you would expect to find in the countryside.

“It’s huge.”

“It must be 200 years old.”

Seo-jun ran to the front of the tree.

He looked up and saw how big it was.

Red, blue, yellow, and white cloth were tied to the branches and hung down to the ground.

The trunk of the tree was surrounded by a round stone wall.

Kim Hee-sang held up his camera from afar.

“Seo-jun, over here!”

“Kimchi!”

Kim Hee-sang was taking pictures of Seo-jun to send to Seo Eun-hye and Lee Min-jun.

Seo-jun, who had been a good photo model, heard Kim Hee-sang say that he was done and looked at the big tree again.

The large branches stretched to the sky and the trunk was thick.

The long strings of colorful cloth reminded him of his memories.

It felt like the grave of the bell goblin!

Could it be? Is this the place?

Seo-jun’s eyes sparkled as he walked around the Seonangdang slowly.

Kim Hee-sang took pictures of him as if he were a photographer.

He searched everywhere, but he couldn’t find the hole where Kim Seo-bang had put the broken bell.

“There’s no way it’s here.”

He felt a bit disappointed. It would have been nice if it was. If Hee-sang was his uncle, he would have fixed it in no time.

“What is it?”

“Nothing!”

Seo-jun ran to Kim Hee-sang.

“Uncle! Let’s go to the mountain!”

Was this the same mountain?

It might have changed over time, but he had grown fond of the mountain after reading the book of life like an old fairy tale for a month and a half.

It was a mountain that seemed to have a real goblin or two.

“Okay. But don’t run, there are a lot of rocks here.”

“Okay!”

Seo-jun and Kim Hee-sang walked slowly along the path next to the Seonangdang.

They hadn’t walked for more than a few minutes when the summer sun that had been shining through the branches and leaves was blocked.

“It’s cooler in the shade.”

“Look! A flower!”

Seo-jun spotted a flower nearby. It was nice to be outside and see things.

Seo-jun was excited and pointed here and there. He saw a bird. There was a squirrel too. Kim Hee-sang, who was watching where Seo-jun pointed, said.

“What if a wild boar comes out?”

“A pheasant!”

“A pheasant?! Are you sure it’s not a wild boar?”

Seo-jun, who had been walking and looking for animals, stopped and

Swish!

He turned his head.

He heard a sound through the gentle breeze.

It sounded like a bird, but there was something more, something meaningful.

Seo-jun raised his head like a rabbit twitching its ears and looked around.

Kim Hee-sang, who had been following Seo-jun diligently, called him with curiosity.

“Seo-jun?”

“Shh!”

Seo-jun focused his attention, over there, far away. Something. But it was too small to tell the direction.

“Kim Seo-bang.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s play.”

[The Bubble Goblin’s Kim Seo-bang Prank is activated.]

Seo-jun scattered the goblin’s energy like a bat’s echolocation.

He had created an inner form and wondered if there was a better way to use it, until he came up with this idea after watching an animal documentary.

The only one who reacted to this energy was Kim Seo-bang.

Seo-jun concentrated.

He was at a low-rank, so he didn’t have much energy. In such a wide place, he could only reach a short distance.

So Seo-jun decided to move around actively as the center.

He thought he would stay close to the road as much as possible, since he had his uncle Hee-sang behind him, but the sound that was barely audible before disappeared completely.

It was a dangerous situation.

Seo-jun changed his mind and walked off the road into the mountains.

“Seo-jun?!”

Kim Hee-sang called out to Seo-jun, who left the trail and went to a place that was not a road, but Seo-jun apologized inwardly and walked carefully, watching his feet.

“Uncle! Follow me!”

The little boy scurried around like a squirrel.

Kim Hee-sang also hurried after Seo-jun.

The road was rough and Seo-jun was too fast to catch up.

“You, you’re going to be in trouble!”

The goblin’s energy that was flowing smoothly was blocked at one point.

Seo-jun quickly headed there.

“I found it!”

“Seo-jun, you! You’re going to get scolded by your uncle!”

“Uncle! Here! There’s someone here!”

“Also from mom and dad… What?!”

Kim Hee-sang was startled by Seo-jun’s words and ran over in a breath.