Chapter 3 Part 3: The Home of Stars

Daehangno Granny’s Noodle Shop.

Jeonghwan slid over a bowl brimming with makgeolli and spoke.

“Hey, today the troupe leader’s treating us, so it’s seonjitguk.
How is it?
After eating noodles every day, doesn’t seeing a meat soup make your mouth water?”

“…..”

Yejun, sitting there with a pale face, felt bile surge the moment he saw the deep-red blood curd floating in the earthenware bowl Jeonghwan handed him.

Ugh!

Damn it.
He’d thought that being the one who kills instead of the one who dies would hurt less.
But what the hell was this?
How many people did he kill, exactly?
And all of them indiscriminate murders of complete strangers.

One person in the bathroom in the opening scene.
Another passerby he killed while walking down the street.
He killed a police officer who chased him.
He even killed a mail carrier.

The mind of the man in the script was truly empty.
What kept this hollow man—one who knew nothing of joy, anger, sorrow, or pleasure—alive was the thrill of murder and the twisted rapture he felt at the sight of blood spurting beautifully.
Other than that, he felt nothing at all.

Yejun turned his gaze away from the blood soup that made him retch.
Even the scent of makgeolli felt nauseating.
As he leaned back, Jeonghwan asked,

“You feeling sick?”

“……Ah, I think something I ate for lunch didn’t sit right.”

“What’d you have for lunch again?”

“Convenience store ramen.”

“You get sick from ramen?
That’s the national food.”

Hmm.
Come to think of it, he’d never gotten sick from ramen either.

“I think I should skip drinking today.”

“Sure, whatever.
One less mouth to feed works for us.
Alright, let’s drink!”

He wanted to go back to thinking about the script, but before he knew it, Yejun was standing at the center of the troupe’s attention.
The only two actresses in the troupe, Yeona and Jieun, leaned in and asked,

“Oppa, are you okay?”

“Shouldn’t you take some digestive medicine?”

Yejun waved them off.

“No, I’ll feel better if I rest a bit.”

“Still, you’d recover faster if you took something.
You have a performance tomorrow too—you should take care of yourself.”

What medicine was supposed to help when you felt like vomiting after experiencing brutally killing people?
What were you even supposed to take?

“Thanks for worrying.
I’m fine, so go ahead and eat.
You must be hungry.”

He tried to gently refuse their concern and return to thinking about the script, but this time Donghun and Woohyun slung their arms around his shoulders.

“Our pretty Yejun!
Thanks to you, we’ve been sold out day after day.
It’s rare for the troupe leader to treat us this generously, you know?”

“Yeah.
He’s been barely scraping by running this troupe entirely out of his own pocket without outside investors.
But lately he’s been smiling a lot.
That’s all thanks to you, Yejun!”

The troupe leader was running everything 100% out of his own pocket?
They weren’t getting outside investment?

He didn’t know exactly how much the other actors made besides Jeonghwan, but it was probably around the same.

Seven actors, eight if you count Younghwan.
And there’s the writer, too.

At a minimum, just actor pay alone—thirty thousand won per person—came to 240,000 won per show.
Setting the writer aside for now and subtracting nothing else, that was already a fixed cost of 240,000 won per performance.

Let’s assume every show sold out like it did now.
Most people watching plays didn’t actually pay the full 15,000 won.
They usually booked through sites with discount coupons, which let them see a show for 8,000 won.

If fifty people paid 8,000 won, that was 400,000 won per performance.
And that was only when it sold out.
Considering fixed costs, additional expenses, and the writer’s pay, the troupe leader would make only a small profit if every show sold out.

But the last time they’d sold out was six years ago, before COVID.
That meant he’d been operating at a loss every single day for six years.
And he’d endured all of that alone?

Maybe the most incredible person in this troupe wasn’t anyone else—it was the troupe leader.

Yejun glanced toward the troupe leader, who was sitting deep inside, chatting with the writer while passing drinks around.
At that moment, the troupe leader happened to be looking his way, and their eyes met.

“Yejun, are you feeling unwell?”

Despite his age, the troupe leader always spoke politely.
Yejun hurriedly shook his head.

“No, sir.
I’m perfectly fine.”

“Yejun, you’re the treasure of our troupe, so make sure you take care of your health.
Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and earlier, after the performance, it looked like you were talking with some people who seemed like industry folks.”

Everyone’s attention focused on him.
When a stage actor talked to industry people after a show, it usually meant there was a chance they’d landed work.
Naturally, everyone was curious.

Yejun scratched his head and smiled awkwardly.

“Well, um… I got an offer for a short film.”

The members of Troupe Mae all shouted at once.

“Oooh!!
Ma Yejun!
Is this your film debut?!”

“No way!
Seriously?!”

“I want to do a short film too!”

“If there’s any role left, introduce me!
Tell them I’ll do it for free!”

He’d worried that people might get jealous and had planned to keep quiet, but it seemed that fear was unfounded.
No one looked jealous at all.

The writer took a sip of makgeolli and asked,

“So, are you going to do it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s good.
It might not be a huge opportunity, but for an actor, experiencing as much as possible is always best.
Do your best.”

“Thank you.”

“When do you shoot?”

“I’m not sure yet.
We haven’t discussed it—I just received the script.”

“I see.
It won’t conflict with our schedule, right?”

“No.
It should just be three intense days, Monday through Wednesday.”

“That’s a relief.
I’ll be cheering you on.”

“Thank you.”

Checking the time, it was a little past eleven p.m.
Calling this late felt rude, so he sent a text to the number on the business card.

[I’ll accept the casting, Director.
Thank you for entrusting work to someone like me.]

He reread the message—short, concise, but polite—then hit send.
As he was about to slip his phone back into his pocket, it vibrated.

Huh?

It was the same number he’d just texted.
It seemed they were already looking at their phone.

Yejun stepped away from the noisy drinking crowd, sat somewhere quiet, and answered the call.

“Hello.”

–Actor Yejun!

“Ah, Director.”

–Thank you so much for accepting the role!

“No, thank you for giving an opportunity to an actor like me.”

–To be honest, I was waiting pretty nervously.
I kept thinking, what if he turns us down?

“Not at all.”

–The shooting schedule is quite tight.
I’m sorry to say this, but I think we’ll need to start filming as early as next week.
Will that be too little time to rehearse?
I’m really sorry, but because of the screening schedule we’ve coordinated with Hongdae Space, we don’t have much choice.

Yejun glanced at the old calendar hanging on the wall of Granny’s Noodle Shop.
Today was Saturday.
If filming started Monday, that left just two days.

–I’m worried we might be making unreasonable demands when you, as an actor, must have your own ambitions.
I apologize, but please understand just this once.

Hearing Young-ho’s voice over the phone, Yejun smiled softly.

“Two days is plenty, Director.”

Even if he invested only three hours a day, he could run a full rehearsal thirty-six times.
With access to the counterpart role as well, he could experience every emotion felt by the characters.
For him, two days was a very long time.

He would rehearse at least seventy-two times over those two days.
He would probably be the only actor to go on set having done that much preparation.

“I’ll see you on set.”

***

Sunday.

After finishing the weekend performance of The Scarred Mountain Lodge and removing his makeup, it was eleven p.m.
Yejun headed toward a pojangmacha alley near Jongno 3-ga Station to meet Young-ho for drinks.

“Ha…”

A sigh escaped him.
Over the past two days, he had entered the script The Killer’s Diary exactly sixty-four times.
He could have gone in more, time-wise, but he didn’t.
He felt that if he continued these rehearsals, his mind might collapse.

During sixty-four rehearsals, I committed two hundred and fifty-six murders.

He hadn’t simply acted scenes of a murderer.
He had become the murderer in the world of the script.

Actors who play serial killers for months often require psychiatric treatment afterward.
How much worse must it be for Yejun, who not only inhabited the body of an actual killer but also read his thoughts?

As Yejun peered into the killer’s mind, he discovered one defining trait.

Why does a killer kill?
What does a killer feel while killing?

He had wondered about these things before—pure curiosity about the subject he had to portray as an actor.
But what he saw inside a killer’s mind was different from what he had expected.

“Perfect numbness.”

There was nothing inside the killer.
It felt like an empty shell.
He seemed to observe his own life from a third-person perspective, as if he were someone else entirely.
Even events that happened to him failed to reach his sphere of concern.

A killer who felt nothing while killing people.
Even harder to endure was the fact that while he felt no excitement at all as he mutilated people with a knife, he did feel excitement at the sight of blood spurting from victims writhing in agony.
It was unbearably beautiful, thrilling enough to make his whole body tremble.

Two hundred and fifty-six murders changed Yejun’s eyes.
That didn’t mean they became the eyes of a creepy psychopath.

They became perfectly empty eyes.
Eyes that held no interest in anything, no thoughts at all.
Of course they would.
Aside from the sight of blood spurting, no external stimulus could stir emotion anymore.

***

As he wandered blankly out of the subway station and turned into the pojangmacha alley, a group of college-aged men—clearly drunk—were fooling around among themselves and bumped lightly into him.

“Ah!
Sorry!”

“…..”

It was nothing.
They hadn’t collided hard, so they just bowed their heads and moved on, chatting among themselves as they headed to another bar.

Yejun stared at the man who had bumped into him with emotionless eyes.
It wasn’t that he thought about killing him.

A killer only reacts to external stimuli when it interferes with what he wants to do.
That man had simply brushed against him, apologized, and left.
He hadn’t interfered with anything.

“…..”

Yejun withdrew his gaze and continued walking.

When he entered the pojangmacha where he was supposed to meet Young-ho, the owner greeted him.

“Welcome.
How many people?”

“…..”

Without speaking, he held up two fingers.
He didn’t know why she even asked.
Whether one or two people came, she’d give them a two-person table anyway.
Or did they seat groups of three elsewhere?

The owner met Yejun’s eyes, flinched, and stammered,

“Ah… t-two people?
Th-this way, please.”

“Do you have wet towels?”

“I—I do.”

“Please give me one.”

She quickly handed him a disposable wet towel.
He tore it open and meticulously wiped his hands.
The towel contained alcohol, so it had a sterilizing effect.

Was this germophobia?
No.
This was just a habit.

But something was strange.
He clearly knew that his current state was abnormal.
He also sensed that if things continued like this, it could become dangerous.

And yet, strangely, I’m not worried at all.

It felt like he was simply going through an ordinary day devoid of emotional highs and lows.
No particularly good feelings.
No particularly bad ones.
Just a calm neutrality.

At that moment, the plastic tent of the pojangmacha was pulled aside, and Young-ho hurried in.
Spotting Yejun, he immediately shouted,

“Actor Yejun, thank you so much!”