How a Loan Shark Survives as an Actor Chapter 131

Chapter 131

 

Instinctively, I knew I shouldn’t look.

But my head had already turned toward the front door.

There…

“……”

There was no one.

The front door was still tightly shut, and Seungmin was still curled up asleep in the corner of the living room.

I swallowed hard.

As I stared toward the front door, the bathroom mirror drifted into the edge of my vision.

‘…Fuck.’

It looked like there was something inside the mirror.

I was standing in front of it, which meant…

Simply put, someone was standing beside me…

“Junho?”

Just then, I heard Seungmin’s voice.

I had barely managed to keep breathing through the overwhelming fear when my eyes met Seungmin’s, who had just woken up.

“What are you doing over there…?” he asked, adjusting his glasses.

A powerful sense of relief washed over me.

The moment I opened my mouth to explain…

BANG!!!!

“Urgh!!!”

The front door burst open with a deafening crash, and Seungmin was dragged outside in an instant.

As if an invisible person had grabbed his legs and yanked him away.

“–Junho!!! Junho!!!!!”

Seungmin’s bloodcurdling scream echoed from beyond the open doorway.

Everything happened so suddenly that my body failed to react in time.

‘Choi Seungmin…!’

It wasn’t until I blinked once that I realized I couldn’t just stand there.

I sprang to my feet, and at that very moment, I sensed someone right beside me.

I turned instinctively.

A woman had leaned her face right up to mine, smiling so widely it looked as though her mouth would split apart.

It was Ajin.

 

***

 

“Cut!”

The moment Director Seo called it, I got back to my feet.

‘Another NG.’

We had practiced as much as possible before filming, but getting the timing right in the actual take wasn’t easy.

The actress playing Seorae kept messing up the scene where she had to completely relax and fall backward.

“I’m really sorry. Ah… I didn’t think it’d be this scary.”

After yet another NG, Seorae apologized with tears welling up in her eyes.

At the same time, she let out a sigh full of self-reproach.

‘No wonder she’s frustrated.’

Just a few days ago, Hyewoo had even been suspended on wires while filming fight scenes.

So it must have been unbelievable to keep getting NGs over something as simple as falling backward.

‘But you don’t know until you actually try it.’

From the outside, falling backward looked easy.

But once you actually tried it, fear naturally crept in.

Even if you knew you were falling onto a mattress and wouldn’t get hurt at all.

Whenever people fall backward, their bodies instinctively resist.

She had to overcome that instinct to act properly.

‘The problem is she’s supposed to be dead, so she can’t tense up her face.’

But every time Seorae held her breath and forced herself to fall, her face would stiffen.

She sniffled, saying she couldn’t understand why she kept failing, so I tried to reassure her.

“Don’t think about forcing yourself to relax. Think about removing all the strength from your body.”

“Huh?”

“Imagine you’re a machine whose battery’s completely dead. Like a blown fuse—just let your whole body go limp.”

Seorae looked doubtful at my advice, but after several more attempts, she finally earned an okay sign.

We then filmed the scene where Seungmin gets dragged outside, followed by the shot of Ajin smiling eerily right beside my face.

“Eugh… I’ve got goosebumps.”

Even though she was the one doing the creepy smile, Ajin shivered.

“Imagine how I feel.”

“Come on, you’re lying. You didn’t look scared at all.”

“I’m scared while I’m acting too.”

Ajin narrowed her eyes suspiciously, clearly questioning whether I was telling the truth.

But I was.

The more I immersed myself in Junho’s perspective, the more sensitive I became to even the smallest sounds.

Even surrounded by countless staff members and cameras moving right in front of me.

No matter how many people filled the set, once everything fell silent and I was moving alone, I stopped feeling their presence.

Instead, it felt as though I was the only person inside the camera frame.

And somehow, that made it even more intimidating.

“Then prove it!”

“Prove what?”

Ajin refused to believe me.

It wasn’t until she saw the goosebumps covering my arm that she finally backed off.

“Ooh… So Oppa really is human.”

“What exactly do you think I am?”

“Hmm… How do I put this? If you were actually trapped in a situation like the movie, I feel like you’d just go, ‘Go ahead and kill me,’ then go to sleep.”

“…I’m not that bad.”

“Of course not! I just mean you always give off this ridiculously relaxed vibe.”

That wasn’t relaxed.

That was just insane.

I wondered what kind of image she had of me, but decided not to think about it any further.

The next scene was difficult enough that getting as much rest as possible would be more beneficial.

“Oppa, Oppa.”

But even after I lay down in the corner and closed my eyes, Ajin’s mouth never stopped moving.

“Did you hear Maru got discharged from the hospital?”

“I didn’t even know he was hospitalized.”

“Oh, stop joking! I told you during the hidden-camera prank the other day.”

Did she?

I’d listened so absentmindedly that I couldn’t remember.

Anyway, Ajin started telling me a recent story about Maru that I wasn’t remotely curious about.

“I brought some really tasty cat food with me, you know? I carried it all the way from Seoul just for Maru.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So yesterday, I gave it to him as soon as I saw him, and he gobbled it down like crazy. But guess what he did afterward?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No way, seriously! He actually burped right in front of me! Ahahaha! Wasn’t that the cutest thing ever?? Ah, I should’ve recorded it!”

Completely unfazed by my half-hearted responses, Ajin burst into laughter.

I could practically feel her determination to keep chatting no matter what.

‘Why is this scarier than when she’s acting?’

She felt even more terrifying now than when she’d been grinning creepily inches away from my face earlier.

“Ajin… My ears are bleeding…”

“Stop exaggerating!”

I wasn’t.

Maybe it was because I’d recently spent time with Choi Ran.

Compared to quiet, composed Ran, Ajin was her complete opposite, and my head started throbbing.

It felt like I’d somehow become the older brother of two younger sisters with completely different personalities.

“Mr. Seulho, do you have a moment?”

Right then, my savior appeared.

Director Seo.

“Yes!”

I immediately jumped to my feet and hurried over.

“Uh… You didn’t have to run over that fast…”

“Not at all, Director. What is it?”

When I reached him less than five seconds after he’d called me, Director Seo blinked a couple of times before speaking.

“Starting today and tomorrow, after we finish filming the fight scene between Junho and Ajin inside the villa, all that’s left is the outdoor finale, right?”

“Right.”

“But they say a cold wave is coming this week, and I’m a little worried.”

Director Seo scratched the back of his head.

“No matter how important the movie is, we’ve already been publicly criticized by an actor once before, so I want to pay more attention to the working conditions.”

“I understand how you feel, Director. But what else can we do?”

It’s not like we could postpone filming until the weather warmed up.

I told him we’d just have to grit our teeth and get through it somehow.

But Director Seo shook his head.

“What I was thinking is that we’ll film Junho running into the mountains in the actual forest. We can’t really replace those shots.”

“Right.”

“But once Ajin catches him and drags him back toward the villa, I think we can shoot that part in the studio instead. We’ll put up a chroma key screen and add the villa with CGI.”

There would naturally be some difference compared to the earlier shots filmed in front of the real villa, but since the scene itself was so intense, he figured no one would really notice.

I had no reason to refuse.

It meant I wouldn’t have to fight against the cold.

‘Every director really has their own way of doing things.’

Director Baek had insisted on continuing filming for the sake of perfection even when Bae Dain had been on the verge of collapsing from a fever.

Of course, given the circumstances, there hadn’t been much Director Baek could do, so I wasn’t calling him a bad person.

Still…

Wasn’t Director Seo actually doing a better job of living by Director Baek’s favorite saying–

“People come before movies.”

‘A twenty-three-year-old director everyone looks down on.’

He’d even had his previous two films fail miserably.

If I hadn’t constantly stepped in to smooth things over between Director Seo and the crew, there probably wouldn’t have been many people on this set who truly respected him as a director.

Thinking that someone like him was actually the best director I’d worked with in my year as an actor made me laugh a little.

‘I guess rehabilitating him worked after all.’

Of course, I hadn’t helped him develop better social skills out of kindness.

I’d simply looked at the wealth his family possessed, the goodwill shining in his eyes whenever he looked at me, and chosen the option that benefited me the most.

Some people might say they’d gladly act for free if it meant working with a world-renowned director.

But I’d much rather take Director Seo’s generous paycheck and perform the acting I was capable of.

Even if I’d gotten so caught up in enjoying myself lately that I’d stopped paying as much attention to money…

If I were doing the same job either way, I’d obviously rather get paid more.

“Thank you for looking out for me, Director.”

“It’s nothing. I looked into similar cases, and apparently, there was an actor who filmed for a long time wearing only his underwear in below-freezing temperatures, and he ended up needing surgery.”

“Surgery?”

“They said the blood vessels down there expanded, so he had to get surgery to fix it. If that happened to you, Hyung… I’d never forgive myself.”

Director Seo muttered those words with the face of a younger brother.

He wasn’t saying it just because he was watching my reaction.

His expression genuinely showed that he didn’t want me to get hurt.

‘Not bad.’

Granted, maybe he’d only become more considerate when it came to Yoo Seulho specifically.

But even so, it was encouraging.

“Thanks, Jinki.”

“It’s… nothing.”

Looking a little embarrassed, Director Seo told everyone to get back into position.

“We’re almost done now. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. At this rate, it’ll be over before we know it.”

The same script probably would’ve taken much longer under another director.

Thinking I was lucky to be filming this movie with him, I took my position.

“Ready… action!”

Next came the scene where Junho fought hand-to-hand with Ajin, who was standing right beside him.

Just as Hyewoo had smiled while charging at Junho, Ajin looked completely out of her mind.

Junho grabbed her with all his strength, but Ajin smiled as she jabbed her hand into his wounded side.

He finally let out a pained groan and collapsed.

As Ajin slowly took one step after another toward the fallen Junho–

“Urgh…!”

Grinding his teeth, Junho desperately fled out of the villa.

And in that frantic moment, the sight that greeted his eyes was–

‘What the hell… is this?’

A roaring blaze, burning like a campfire.

And piled in front of it…

A mountain of corpses.

Hyewoo and Jaehyun, whom he’d laid to rest in the bedroom, along with Daon, who had disappeared in the mountains, were all stacked neatly together.

And at the very top lay Seungmin, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he hung limply over the pile.

The twitching of his fingers told Junho that he was still alive.

“……”

“……”

The instant his eyes met Seungmin’s, Junho didn’t even glance back.

He turned and sprinted straight into the mountains.