How a Loan Shark Survives as an Actor Chapter 27

Chapter 027

 

“No! There’s cucumber in that.”

The moment Yoo Seulho raised his voice, everyone… including PD Myung… turned to look at him.

And what they saw was Seulho’s utterly flustered expression.

Even in a state of panic, he desperately moved his lips, trying somehow to smooth the situation over.

The expression had only flashed across his face for less than three seconds.

Yet it was impossible to forget.

‘Oh?’

One of PD Myung’s eyebrows rose.

His body had reacted automatically to a scene he never expected.

‘He salvaged that?’

Honestly, even Myung himself had thought the whole thing was a bit ridiculous despite being the one who planned it.

Of course, the goal had been comedy, not actually fooling anyone.

That was why he had suggested such a sloppy hidden-camera setup in the first place… one with a flimsy premise and no proper script.

The only information the production team had given Yoo Seulho was that Lee Seulgi had recently developed a cucumber allergy.

All he was supposed to do was urgently stop her when she tried ordering cucumber kimbap and make the other two suspicious.

That was literally it.

‘And he turned that into this.’

Myung had expected everyone to react to Seulho’s random, forced interruption with something like:

‘What are you doing right now…? Are you performing a play?’

Instead, Yoo Seulho had somehow brought that garbage line to life.

‘He really looks like someone who acted without thinking.’

Just moments ago, Seulho had looked exactly like a boyfriend who had panicked because his secretly dating partner was about to eat something she was allergic to.

Someone who was so startled that he forgot everything else and blurted it out.

That sincerity-filled expression left question marks floating above the heads of Woo Junseo and Choi Ran, who knew nothing about the prank.

“Shall we move on to the next segment?”

“Sounds good.”

Without properly resolving the confusion, Yoo Seulho and Lee Seulgi hurriedly wrapped up the situation.

Quietly following behind them, PD Myung thought:

‘This is better than I expected.’

He had spent over fifteen years in the industry and had seen more content than he could count.

Among them were several projects featuring Yoo Seulho.

None had left a positive impression.

They had been so bad that Myung assumed seeing Seulho act in person would be even worse.

But what he had just witnessed…

‘Did he simply have bad directors all this time?’

The performance he had just seen was surprisingly good.

No…

Excellent.

It had felt so natural that it didn’t even seem like acting.

Seulho hadn’t exaggerated his reactions or behaved strangely to emphasize the artificial nature of the skit.

And because of that, he had managed to make an inherently unnatural situation feel natural.

‘What’s he planning to do now?’

Even if that performance wasn’t a fluke, there was still a good chance everything would fall apart from here on out.

After all, there were no more lines.

No more instructions.

Several hours earlier, Myung had ignored the guilty twinge in his conscience and told Seulho to just improvise the rest.

‘Even I thought that was a little harsh.’

It was practically like throwing a newborn animal into a field and telling it to hunt.

Though, once again, that had only been possible because the goal wasn’t to fool anyone… it was to make people laugh.

‘This should become a complete mess…’

Yet strangely enough, he found himself looking forward to it.

Ignoring the way his heart had begun pounding, Myung realized his eyes kept drifting back toward Seulho.

‘Don’t get your hopes up too much.’

Junseo and Ran weren’t amateurs.

They were experienced entertainers with plenty of broadcasting experience.

If Seulho kept doing dramatic things like the cucumber incident, there was a high chance they’d realize:

‘Something’s weird here.’

But contrary to Myung’s expectations…

“Ran, what do you want to eat?”

“Let’s go over there first, Junseo.”

Yoo Seulho behaved as if he had completely forgotten the secret-dating premise.

He deliberately maintained a clear distance from Seulgi.

He only spoke to Choi Ran and Woo Junseo.

Whenever Seulgi talked, he simply stared blankly at whatever camera happened to be in front of him.

He probably thought he was creating distance naturally.

But because he had been so friendly toward Seulgi all day, the sudden change felt suspicious.

And that subtle inconsistency was exactly what made it confusing.

“Alright, shall we move to the next room?”

“Sounds good!”

As the cast and crew followed Seulgi’s lead, Seulho wore a slightly exhausted expression.

He let out a sigh heavy with fatigue and turned his head.

Then he noticed a strand of hair stuck to Seulgi’s cheek.

Without thinking, he lifted his hand.

“…!”

The instant his fingers touched her cheek, both their eyes widened simultaneously.

As though suddenly coming to his senses, Seulho quickly pulled his hand back.

Seulgi bit her lip tightly and hurriedly looked away.

Neither of them made a scene.

Instead, they minimized every possible sound, like people desperately wishing the moment had never happened.

They looked as though they wanted to check whether anyone had seen what happened… but were too afraid to even look around.

It felt real.

Painfully real.

“……”

“……”

And naturally…

Woo Junseo and Choi Ran witnessed the entire thing.

The camera captured Junseo frowning and silently mouthing to Ran:

‘Did you see that?’

Ran wore a strange expression.

She didn’t answer.

But her gaze remained fixed on Seulho and Seulgi.

At this point, the prank had basically succeeded.

This was exactly the kind of scene they had hoped for when they started.

They could end it right now, and everything would still be fine.

Yet…

‘What is this?’

PD Myung watched the situation unfold with growing confusion.

The rest of the staff were equally bewildered.

‘Wasn’t this supposed to be a hidden-camera prank?’

Junseo and Ran being fooled was one thing.

But the production team knew exactly what was going on.

They were the ones who had ordered it.

There was no reason for them to be confused.

If anything, they should have been grateful to Seulho for creating such incredible footage.

Yet the staff kept exchanging looks.

‘What’s going on with those two??’

‘Are they actually dating…?’

Only after noticing the staff’s expressions did Myung finally snap back to reality.

‘Dating my ass!!!!’

He wanted to yell at everyone for losing their minds.

But at the same time, he understood exactly how they felt.

He knew how stupid it was for people who knew this was a prank to still be questioning it.

But what could they do?

No, seriously…

Just look at Seulho’s face!

‘That’s acting, right? So this is fake, right?’

The realism was so overwhelming that thoughts like that naturally surfaced.

‘No…’

At this point, another thought appeared automatically.

‘Yoo Seulho can’t act, can he?!’

If it had been another actor, sure.

But this was Yoo Seulho.

The same Yoo Seulho who had been called “Deadweight” for years.

That Yoo Seulho was capable of acting like this?

The thought process that began with:

‘No way.’

Eventually became:

‘There’s no way. It’d make more sense if those two were actually dating.’

Because Seulho didn’t look like someone acting.

He simply behaved the way someone would behave if they were pretending not to know their lover.

That indescribable, ambiguous feeling… he captured it perfectly.

Even Seulgi, who had started out maintaining her usual variety-show energy, gradually became infected by the strange atmosphere and began hesitating too.

Which only made everything seem more real.

‘Who can pull off a scriptless performance this well?’

The idea that Yoo Seulho was acting well felt so impossible that people naturally started wondering whether the relationship itself was real.

Of course, that wasn’t the only reason.

‘Look at his eyes.’

Those were the eyes of someone genuinely in love.

The way Seulho looked at Seulgi.

The faint smile.

The softened corners of his eyes.

Everything radiated sweetness.

Even PD Myung, a grown man, felt his body instinctively curl up from secondhand embarrassment.

If he felt that way, how much worse must it be for everyone else?

The writing team, made up entirely of women, had been furiously texting each other for quite a while now.

The moment Myung saw their chat notifications exploding nonstop, he squeezed his eyes shut.

‘This is bad.’

Despite his tall stature and handsome appearance, Yoo Seulho had never been considered particularly attractive by women.

Sure, there were a few insane fans who occasionally argued:

‘The whole world may call him useless, but his face is definitely useful.’

But even they were an extreme minority.

Fundamentally, Seulho had a very strong unfavorable image.

And that image naturally affected romantic appeal as well.

Sure, the real Seulho he’d seen on set was polite, respectful, and greeted everyone properly.

But that wasn’t enough to erase years of accumulated negative perception.

PD Myung knew this.

That was exactly why he had approved the hidden-camera prank.

‘It’ll be a problem if Yoo Seulho starts giving people butterflies.’

In reality, the production team had come up with everything.

But in the final broadcast, viewers would see Lee Seulgi approaching Yoo Seulho first and suggesting they pretend to be secretly dating.

Normally, it wasn’t wise for a female celebrity to do something like that toward a male celebrity.

Maybe if they were older.

But Seulho and Seulgi were both only in their mid-twenties.

That kind of behavior made it easy for people to nitpick and criticize.

And yet Myung had moved forward without much concern because, as mentioned before, Seulho’s public image was so negative.

Nobody would look at Seulgi and say:

‘Look at her trying to flirt with our Seulho.’

‘But just look at those romance eyes.’

PD Myung would stake all sixteen years of his career on this:

The moment this episode aired, it would create a huge stir.

Whether Yoo Seulho was a good actor or not was irrelevant.

Demand for those romance-filled eyes would explode.

He was willing to bet everything on it.

‘We can’t let our precious Seulgi get attacked.’

Even if it was troublesome, additional footage needed to be filmed today.

They would have to film a segment showing the production team personally giving Seulgi and Seulho the mission.

No matter what, they needed viewers to understand that this prank had been planned by the staff.

‘Seriously, today has been nothing but surprises.’

Myung’s gaze settled on Yoo Seulho.

An inexplicable feeling gripped him.

‘For some reason…’

He had a strong premonition.

The entertainment industry was about to be shaken up.