Just before the actual filming began.
Having checked his blocking, Shin Yi-han looked up at the clear sky.
Even shading the sun with his palm, his eyes stung from the brightness.
The rough sand from the playground that had worked its way into his shoes as he moved around felt all too vivid.
Every time he opened his mouth to loosen his muscles, he could feel his skin stretching smoothly.
It was still the past.
Shin Yi-han felt relieved by that fact, yet at the same time, a wave of anxiety washed over him.
This entire situation, like a mirage that could vanish at any moment, still felt utterly bewildering.
But in this moment, standing before the camera...
Truly.
'This is the best.'
That much, at least, he could say with absolute certainty.
Shin Yi-han stood still, waiting for the Director's cue. He was ready to immerse himself at any second.
The version of himself that used to gripe every day about how he could do better than anyone else had vanished from this place.
The gazes directed at him held no pity.
All that remained was his real face.
His role.
And his stage.
Shin Yi-han took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He gazed at the scene before him.
All around him—dressed in his school uniform—was an old apartment complex nestled against a mountain.
And in the playground inside it, a child actor was swinging on the swings.
Everything was prepared.
Every situation from the script was perfectly recreated.
There was nothing lacking.
"Action!"
What he'd longed for so desperately—just to act.
As the Director's voice echoed across the set, Shin Yi-han began his performance, shedding the shackles of his past one by one.
"Hey there."
The boy spoke casually, just as he'd practiced in front of the mirror.
He bent his knees to meet the child's eye level and flashed a gentle smile.
"Wanna play with me, kid? There's a puppy over there if we go."
"A puppy...?"
At the mention of a puppy, the child looked up.
"C'mon, yeah?"
The boy extended his hand.
The child hesitated.
Her mother's warning not to go with strangers flashed in her mind.
But there was no scary stranger here like her mom had described.
The boy looked completely ordinary—far from menacing.
Besides, the child really wanted to see that puppy the boy had mentioned.
In the end...
The child took the boy's hand.
The boy's hand was incredibly warm.
Like the hand of someone truly kind.
The child followed the boy. He matched his steps to her small strides.
She sensed nothing wrong.
Not even with the forbidden mountain right in front of them, the one adults had warned her never to enter.
The boy glanced at the child and gave a faint smile.
"That sounds fun. A puppy."
"Yeah."
In response to the child's innocent words, sincere words slipped from the boy's mouth.
"It'll be so much fun. For us."
His eyes held a murderous glint that only adults could sense.
And with each step, one by one, as the child moved farther from the playground...
Only the onlookers felt their breaths catch in their throats.
A strange dissonance that children wouldn't notice, but adults could instinctively grasp.
Like a being that merely resembled a human—something entirely other standing right there.
The crew flinched.
For a split second, they wondered if this was right.
A nagging sense that something was off.
Even though they knew it was just acting.
Even though it was such a simple scene.
Why did it feel so wrong for that boy to take the child away?
They wanted to shout something.
Their bodies twitched involuntarily.
As if they needed to rush over and stop that murderer right now.
If not for the surrounding camera equipment reminding them this wasn't real, they might have.
No, they definitely would have.
It felt like they couldn't let her go any farther.
Like the child would vanish from the world entirely if they did.
'Oh, no.'
'Don't go. Please.'
Someone prayed desperately without realizing it.
They even forgot to breathe as the child finally reached the mountain.
And the moment Shin Yi-han and the child actor arrived between the trees on the mountainside as planned...
"...C-cut!"
The Director barely managed to call cut, hanging on to his composure by a thread.
It wasn't just because he'd captured the scene he wanted.
It was more like a frantic cry to stop something from happening.
He couldn't even comprehend what had just occurred.
"..."
"..."
A long silence fell.
Tension still lingered as they stared at the boy and child standing far off, separated from the crowd.
No one could speak easily.
The first to rush over was...
"Ye-seul-ah...!"
"Mommy?"
The child actor's mother.
Her face drained of color, she ran to the child.
Her palms bore nail marks from clenching so hard.
She frantically checked the child's face and body for any issues.
Once she confirmed all was well, she hugged the child tight.
Like a mother who'd just witnessed her own daughter nearly kidnapped.
Of course, she knew it was just filming.
But... it felt like her baby was about to disappear. Like she was really going to die.
Recalling the scene made her hands tremble again.
It was just that her mind had been so rattled. She hadn't watched her step.
"Gasp."
The child actor's mother stumbled over the fallen leaves.
Thud. Fortunately, someone grabbed her arm. She didn't fall.
She looked up. For a moment, she nearly shook off the hand.
It was that boy from earlier—
"You okay? This spot's surprisingly slippery, so be careful."
"...!"
But the eyes she met made her realize.
The person holding her couldn't be that boy from before.
All that stood before her was a rookie actor, genuinely worried for her.
Right... yeah...
Why did I...
Her senses snapped back.
"If it's not too much trouble, can I keep holding on while we head down?"
"...Huh? Oh, sure!"
At his warm voice, the child's mother nodded.
Her earlier trembling was gone. His gentle smile brought relief.
He was the one who'd greeted her child so kindly the moment he saw her on set today.
Hadn't he even offered a sandwich, asking if she'd eaten breakfast?
Why on earth did I freak out like that?
Her cheeks burned at the thought of making a scene alone.
But no one there could blame her.
Everyone had been so immersed in the scene.
And when Shin Yi-han safely escorted the child and her mother back to the playground...
"Great work, everyone!"
The set buzzed at Shin Yi-han's polite bow and greeting as he approached first. Everyone awkwardly returned it.
His friendly smile only amplified it.
He seemed so different from the one before the camera.
'That's definitely the guy I know right now.'
'But what the hell was that earlier...?'
'How can someone like that pull off such creepy acting?'
The stark contrast to his intense performance was hard to process.
The Director and the Assistant Director who'd cast him felt the same.
"Director, Assistant Director. Mind if I watch the monitor with you?"
"Huh?"
"Uh, uh...! Come on over."
Assistant Director Kwak Hoon stammered as Shin Yi-han approached him directly.
It was nothing like what he'd expected.
What was this? Had it always been like this?
No, definitely not...
Kwak Hoon recalled visiting his acquaintance's acting academy a few days ago.
The Shin Yi-han he'd met then had sparkled brightly.
Not just his face, but those eyes that lit up during acting—they made you want to root for him.
He had some rough edges, but his acting was the best among his peers.
Especially since he'd only recently gotten into acting.
The perfect standout rookie vibe.
His tall, lean build suited this film perfectly, he'd thought.
But... even so, this was beyond expectations.
The first murder scene.
Raw, pure anticipation laid bare right there.
A bizarre, twisted pleasure.
You couldn't fake that with practice alone.
Yet this kid, Yi-han, pulled off acting that even veteran actors struggled with.
Like someone who'd spent decades honing their craft.
How had he done it in that short week?
Or had he always been this way, and I'd just not noticed?
He couldn't gauge what kind of actor he'd brought on board.
And following the Assistant Director...
The most flustered person there was actually the Director.
"Uh, play back the take once."
He tried to stay calm and check the footage first.
But from what he'd seen with his own eyes earlier, to the footage playing now...
It was truly bewildering.
'I never expected the flashback to turn out this good.'
No, more precisely, this scene was too perfect not to use.
Honestly, he hadn't had high hopes for the flashback.
The original actor had flaked, so they'd brought in an unknown rookie as a last-minute sub.
His face didn't perfectly match the middle-aged lead's, so they'd planned to blur it with lighting and noise anyway.
Make it so his face barely showed.
To avoid any disconnect between past and present protagonists.
But no.
'No need for that. Not with this.'
The Director stared at the boy leading the child away in the footage, over and over.
Chills raced down his spine.
This wasn't just some kid killer.
It was the protagonist's childhood itself—no disconnect from the middle-aged lead whatsoever.
'What the hell is this kid?'
How did he know?
The film, from script to direction, was packed with painstaking details for the middle-aged protagonist.
He'd run rehearsals with the lead actor countless times to instill those details.
The lead had suffered greatly for it during filming.
Yet Shin Yi-han expressed it all effortlessly, as if it were nothing.
And as a last-minute patch for the latter half of shooting... he'd never even seen the lead's acting.
'Does this make any sense?'
How could he melt the lead actor's traits—gestures, habits, speech patterns in those brief moments—into his own performance?
The Director's head spun.
How thoroughly had he analyzed the script?
For a moment, it felt like the future killer had shown up as a child right before his eyes.
'I genuinely thought the character we'd agonized over was alive and breathing right there.'
At this level, they could show his face fully.
In fact, they should—it would bring the details to life.
If even he felt this way as Director...
The audience would surely see this boy as one and the same with the protagonist.
The Director even thought...
'Maybe we should shoot more scenes...?'
They'd only planned the playground scene.
But that didn't matter.
They had to create more to shoot, even if there weren't any.
Wasting this goldmine made no sense.
"H-hey! Yi-han! Hold up a sec!"
The Director called urgently after Shin Yi-han.
He was hurrying off to help clean up the set.
"Don't go home yet. Stick around longer today."
"Pardon? Oh."
Shin Yi-han hurried over to the Director and nodded at his words.
"Of course. I love being on set."
He answered without hesitation.
Shin Yi-han had figured the Director wanted him to stay for cleanup or an after-party.
"N-no, not that."
But apparently not.
"Let's shoot more. I'll get side scripts ready, so do a few and then go. For real."
The stage he'd thought would end after one take wasn't over yet.
Shin Yi-han's face lit up with joy.
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