Top Actor Hired Me and Said Teach Me novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Table Read

The table read was in a rehearsal studio in Paju, forty minutes outside Seoul.

Twenty people sat around a long table with scripts open in front of them.

The director, a small gray woman in a man's cardigan, looked at Ye-won once and nodded.

That was all the welcome Ye-won got.

Eun Ji-seon stood up from the far end and came around the table with her hand out.

Ji-seon was twenty-nine, with a sharp black bob and a red mouth.

"You're the girlfriend," she said.

"I'm the coach."

"Same thing, different title."

Ji-seon shook Ye-won's hand and held it a second too long.

"Sit by me. I want to see his face when I start."

They sat.

Tae-oh took the chair across from them and didn't look at Ye-won.

He looked fine.

He looked like the poster of himself.

The director said, "Page fourteen."

Ji-seon read the widow's lines in a low, wet voice that made the back of Ye-won's neck prickle.

Tae-oh read the captain.

"I told you not to come."

It was the dead reading, the recording.

Ye-won felt her stomach drop.

"Block it," the director said. "Stand. The door's here. Ji-seon, you cross, kiss him, and we'll find the shape."

The room went quiet.

Tae-oh stood, walked to the wall, and turned around.

His face went smooth.

Ye-won knew that smoothness now.

It was the smoothness of a man leaving his own body.

Ji-seon crossed the floor.

She put one hand on his chest and rose on her toes.

He stood while she brushed her lips across his.

Nothing moved.

Not his hands, not his mouth, not a muscle in his jaw.

"Cut," the director said gently. "Take five."

Everyone in the room looked at their scripts at the same moment.

It was awful.

They were all being so kind to him.

Ye-won stood up and said, "Ten minutes, please. Notes."

Nobody argued.

She took Tae-oh by the sleeve and walked him down the corridor.

The green room at the end had a couch and a mirror.

Ye-won shut the door behind them.

"I did it again," he said.

"You did."

"I felt it start. I was fine."

He rubbed his jaw.

"Then she was in front of me, and all of them were looking, and I just..."

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