Chapter 2 Part 6: When Opportunity Knocks

The day of the fifth performance.
The weekend, when attendance was highest, drew around ten people, while weekdays managed only three to five.
Honestly, it was a little discouraging.
Standing in front of the dressing-room mirror, applying his stage makeup, Yejun felt the thought rise up—and quickly shook his head.

‘Get a grip, Ma Yejun.
Be grateful that you even get to act.’

After he had grown a bit closer to Woohyun-hyung, who was performing with him, Yejun had once asked him a question.

‘Hyung, why do you act?’

Woohyun-hyung answered like this.

‘What kind of question is that?
Obviously because I want to.’

That much, Yejun had expected.

‘Then what’s your goal?’

Naturally, Yejun assumed it would be debuting on the big screen, or moving into dramas.
But Woohyun-hyung gave an answer Yejun had never even considered.

‘To keep doing this.’

It was a short reply, but Yejun felt as though someone had struck the back of his head hard.
A goal was to keep acting.
To be able to continue doing this work.

Woohyun-hyung’s words—that it was enough just to be able to keep doing something he loved—were shocking.
Because in the past nine years, Yejun had never once thought that way.

For nine years straight, Yejun’s goal had been singular.
A goal so small that real screen actors would probably scoff if they heard it.

It was simply this: to get a role that wasn’t numbered.
Not Passerby 2, Police Officer 3, or Guard 2, but a role that at least had a proper name.

He had thought it was already a modest, first-step goal.
In fact, there had been other actors who laughed when they heard his dream.

But Yejun liked his small dream.
Because dreams that were too big were hard to achieve.
He had planned to set the next goal only after accomplishing the first.

Yet the world had never easily allowed him even that small goal.

And now, Woohyun-hyung was desperately wishing for a goal even smaller than his.
The others probably thought similarly, even if they didn’t say it out loud.

‘I just hope I can keep doing the thing I love.’

Yejun pressed his lips together as he stared at his reflection in the mirror.

‘Yeah.
Let’s just be grateful that I can act.’

So what if only a few audience members came?
Wasn’t it a blessing in itself that a performance had never been canceled due to having zero audience members?

And if he thought about it, wasn’t he currently playing a role with a real name—Jeong Seongryong?
He had gone beyond a non-numbered role and was acting a named character.
How could things be any better than this?

‘No matter how many people come today, I’ll be satisfied.
All I have to do is give my best for them.’

Today was Tuesday.
Among weekdays, it was especially notorious for low attendance.

Still, he felt it would be fine even if just one person were sitting there.
A performance done with everything he had—for a single person.
How romantic was that?

Just then, the door burst open, and Younghwan—who was in charge of hosting—appeared with a flustered expression.
The actors, each in the middle of their makeup, looked at him and asked,

“Hey, what is it?”
“Did something happen?”

Younghwan grabbed the arms of Woohyun-hyung and Donghun-hyung, the two oldest, and shouted,

“Hyungs!!”

Donghun-hyung, who had been drawing his eyebrows, looked bewildered.

“Did the place catch on fire or something?”

“No, it’s not that!”

“Then what?”

Younghwan swallowed hard.

“The—the audience! The audience!”

“What is it, you punk. Spit it out properly.”

“The—the audience seats are eighty percent full!”

“…..?”

Woohyun-hyung let out a snort of laughter and went back to his makeup.

“Hey, you really sucked at arithmetic back in school, didn’t you?
We’ve got fifty seats.
Eighty percent means forty seats are filled, not eighty, Younghwan.
Study a bit, will you.”

Younghwan shouted in frustration.

“There really are forty people here!”

Woohyun-hyung stared blankly at Younghwan’s shouting face, his eyes gradually widening.
Because he could see sincerity in the kid’s gaze.

Bang—thud!!

The actors rushed out.
They wanted to see for themselves whether forty people had really come.
Of course, Yejun mixed in with them.

‘It’s real!’

Peeking from behind the stage and looking at the audience seats, there were truly only about ten empty seats left.
What was interesting was that most of the audience were women.
Out of forty people, only two were men—the remaining thirty-eight seats were filled with women.

Donghun-hyung, gripping the plywood of the stage set and peeking out with only his eyes showing, muttered,

“What the hell?
Did the trend change while I wasn’t looking?
Since when did female audiences start watching horror plays?”

Horror theater had a distinct characteristic.
Couples might come on dates, but groups made up entirely of women almost never did.
It happened occasionally, but most of the audience tended to be couples or men.

Younghwan-hyung said with a dazed expression,

“Could they be a group reservation?”

That was the most plausible explanation.
Assuming some organization or gathering had come together made the most sense.
Woohyun-hyung, the first to regain his composure, quickly shooed the actors away.

“Alright, alright, hurry up and finish your makeup.
Younghwan, you get on stage and warm them up!”

At Woohyun-hyung’s words, the actors snapped back to their senses and ran through the narrow backstage corridor.

Running through the dark passage, Yejun smiled faintly.

Back when he was in school, he had once performed a play in Daehangno.
Of course, not in a small theater like this, but in a mid-sized venue supported by the school.

He hadn’t realized it back then, but after standing on a small-theater stage, he discovered something new.
Namely, that blocking practice was done separately after rehearsals.

Small theaters were cramped.
Because they couldn’t secure enough space, the backstage movement paths had to be narrow.

In near-total darkness during blackouts, running while relying on glow-in-the-dark tape stuck here and there often led to collisions with fellow actors or the set.

If a set shook during an actual performance, it would severely disrupt the audience’s immersion.
That was why they practiced this separately.

Recalling that brief, pleasant memory, Yejun arrived at the dressing room and steadied his mind in front of the mirror.

‘No matter how many people are out there, I’ll give it everything.’

***

At the same time, onstage.

As Younghwan dashed onto the stage, unfamiliar applause and cheers erupted.
Before he even had a chance to forcibly hype things up, the audience reacted first, energizing him.
With exaggerated gestures, he greeted them and spoke.

“Welcome, everyone, to The Scarred Mountain Lodge.
From this moment on, you are guests invited to the opening event of a highland lodge with a hundred-year history, joining us on this journey.
Now! What kind of secrets does this lodge hold?
And what kinds of stories await the four men invited here?”

When Younghwan cupped a hand to his ear, the audience shouted back.

“We don’t know—tell us!”
“They’re here to dig up a jar of honey buried at the lodge!”

Hearing some strange remarks mixed in, Younghwan looked at that audience member with a dumbfounded expression, and laughter broke out.
Once the atmosphere had warmed up, Younghwan asked,

“By the way, everyone!
Is there anyone here who came individually, not as part of a group?”

Younghwan’s eyes went wide.
All forty people raised their hands.

“E-everyone came separately?”

There were a few small groups of friends, but group discounts only applied to parties of twenty or more.
In other words, there wasn’t a single group booking among the forty.

Then a woman in the audience shouted,

“I’m a member of the ‘People Who Watch Plays’ café—I came after reading the review!”

The women around her smiled and chimed in.

“Oh my, you too? I’m a member as well.”
“Oh my, me too.”

The murmuring grew louder.
Younghwan’s eyes darted back and forth.

‘What is this?
“People Who Watch Plays” is a Daehangno theater-specialty café.
It’s not like reviews of our play were posted there for the first time—so how did one post draw this many people?’

At the very back of the audience, near the lighting booth, the director signaled to hurry up and start.
Younghwan quickly cleared his throat and shouted,

“Ah! I see!
Welcome, everyone!
Then let us now set off together on a journey to The Scarred Mountain Lodge!
Please give us a big round of applause!”

With the sound of applause, the stage fell into blackout.

Younghwan hurried through the dark backstage and headed to the lighting booth, sitting beside the director.
The director, who had been looking at his phone, was grinning from ear to ear.

Younghwan asked quietly,

“What are you looking at?”

“A review.”

“The one the audience member mentioned earlier?”

“Yeah. Hey, focus on the stage—we’re in the middle of a performance.”

“Ah, sorry.”

He was dying of curiosity.
Even while keeping his eyes on the stage, his mind kept drifting toward the director’s phone.

“Director, I’m too curious to focus.”

“Haha, that’s understandable.”

The director showed him the screen.
On it was a photo of a chubby woman with glasses, smiling shyly as she stood next to Yejun.

“The café owner herself posted a review of the play.
She praised Yejun’s acting and the completeness of the script.
That’s probably why the audience flooded in.”

“Ah.”

Not just any member, but the café owner herself had written the review.
That seemed to be the driving force behind forty people showing up on a weekday evening.
The director added with a grin,

“She might be a fan of Yejun, too.”

“Because he’s handsome?”

“No.
There’s no comment about his looks at all.
It’s all about his acting and her evaluation of the script.”

The director scrolled up and said,

“The café owner wrote over five thousand characters.
She gave especially high marks to the acting of the four male actors.
She rates every play she watches—and she gave ours four stars.”

“Out of how many?”

“Five.”

“Ooh!”

“She even gave four stars to a play currently running at QUAD.”

“Huh? We got the same rating?”

“Yeah.”

QUAD was a mid-sized theater with 258 seats, remodeled from the old Dongsung Hall of the Dongsung Arts Center.
Receiving the same evaluation as a production running in a theater five times larger was nothing short of remarkable.

The director chuckled softly and continued,

“But for acting performance, we got five stars.
Apparently, this is the first time she’s given full marks for acting in all her reviews this year—the comments section is going wild.”

As he listened, Younghwan watched Yejun on stage and raised his thumb where no one could see it.

“Yejun-hyung is the best.
I knew this would happen!”

Reading the café owner’s review, the director smiled.
A particular line had caught his eye.

‘Rookie actor Ma Yejun’s performance presents clear cause-and-effect, lending strong credibility.
Even his smallest gestures contain subtle meanings intended by the playwright.
As a reviewer, I dare to award full marks for his acting.’

It was a long, meticulously written review.
And at the very end, there was a single line.

‘A monster has appeared on the Daehangno theater scene.’