Chapter 63: Holly
‘……What’s this? Why is she like that?’
Yuchan waited for Muyoung in front of the theater. He hesitated as he saw his friend walking towards him from afar. He was walking slowly, his waist bent forward as if he were carrying something heavy on his shoulders.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
“Ah. Yuchan, let’s go inside first, not talk.”
“Did you get heatstroke?”
“It’s not like that.”
A ghost was riding on Muyoung’s shoulders. Her long hair was hanging down, and she was stomping her feet like a child.
‘Ugh. If I’d known it would be like this, I would’ve just kept my mouth shut.’
I didn’t know at all.
I didn’t know that ghosts like the ghost lady, who have a bound spirit nature, need a medium to move to another place.
‘Now that I think about it, the rule about not picking up things outside carelessly is similar to this.’
Other people can’t feel anything no matter what’s attached to them because they don’t know about its existence. But Muyoung was different. The more he walked, the more tired he felt and the heavier it got.
“She’s not even a kid…….”
“Huh? What?”
“Never mind. I was just talking to myself.”
She seemed to really hate her feet touching the ground outside. He had tried holding her in his arms, then on his back, but it didn’t work, so he ended up carrying her on his shoulders. Muyoung muttered as he entered the theater.
“Can you come down now? It’ll be okay since this is where you wanted to come, right?”
Swoosh.
What a difficult ghost. She slowly moved away from Muyoung and then slowly walked down the stairs. Finally, he could breathe a sigh of relief. Muyoung stretched his bent back and neck and let out a refreshing cry.
“Ugh!”
“What’s wrong with him? Are you really okay?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. Is anyone in the theater?”
There were signs of people, but the stage was empty. Yuchan pointed to the back and just shrugged his shoulders.
“There are some troupe members, but they’re from another team, so I’m not really close with them. They’re going to perform in the first half of this year.”
“It’s really complicated. Are there different teams within one place?”
“It’s because this place is affiliated with the Korean Cultural Foundation. It’s old and worn out, but a lot of people have passed through here. Would you like something to drink?”
Yuchan threw a can that was lying in the corner. Then he handed over a script. It was also Shakespeare, the one he was reading earlier.
“Are you going to test me on this?”
“Yeah. The work isn’t decided yet. If I knew what it was, I’d do that, but since I don’t, I’ll have to go with the most basic one.”
Hmm. The basics. In a good way, it’s solid, but in a bad way, it’s too common and obvious. In other words, it’s boring. Muyoung flipped through the paper and skimmed the script.
‘He worked hard on it. That’s so like Yuchan.’
The papers were so worn out that they were falling apart. There were interpretations and points written in various colored pens.
Muyoung, who was wondering what role to play, noticed a ghost peeking her head out from behind the door.
‘……?’
She slowly waved her hand as if to say, ‘Come here.’ In a dark theater like this, she really looked like a toll collector on the highway to the afterlife. Muyoung took a sip of his drink and stood up.
“I’ll go to the bathroom for a moment.”
“The door is right on the left as you go out.”
“Okay.”
He said that, but Muyoung turned right, following the ghost. She stomped her feet and entered the place with a ‘storage’ sign.
Squeak-
“Oh my. It’s full of dust.”
There were all kinds of props, papers, and boxes piled up high. The ghost spun around as if to say, ‘Follow me quickly.’ But he would’ve known even if she didn’t guide him.
“Oh.”
He could see something shining in the darkness.
It was mixed with dust and looked cloudy, but it was definitely shining. Muyoung pushed aside the objects and reached the innermost corner. It was only wide enough for one person to sit.
He stretched out his hand and barely managed to pull out a small box.
Rustle-
“Ah. Is this it?”
Then he looked up at the ghost lady. It was a few scripts of
“Is your name Dohai? It’s pretty.”
Unlike the gloomy aura she had now, she was smiling brightly in the photo. She didn’t look like someone who would commit suicide due to depression at all. She, too, stared blankly at her own photo.
“It looks like the people who were preparing the play together cleaned it up. Was it about a year ago? There are still things left.”
Since the lead actress died, the play must have fallen apart. Tears streamed down her red eyes.
He didn’t know what she remembered or what she was holding onto, but he knew one thing for sure.
‘Regret.’
She couldn’t even think of wiping her tears and just kept shedding silent tears. The narrow floor was soaked with blood.
Muyoung stood up and wiped the ghost lady’s tears.
“Stop crying. What’s the point of regretting it now? Just think about the future. I don’t know what the afterlife is like, but when you get there, there’ll be things to do there, too.”
Twinkle- Flower pollen fell from the photo.
Muyoung shook it gently and asked Dohai,
“Can you see this? It looks like sparkling flower pollen.”
Dohai slowly shook her head.
“Oh. You can’t see it. I guess only I can see it. But Dohai. Dohai? That’s a really crazy name. Oops. Sorry.”
When he said ‘crazy,’ she gave him a sullen look. But since it was probably her actual nickname, she didn’t react much. Muyoung picked up two scripts and left the storage room.
“What’s that?”
Yuchan was reviewing Shakespeare by himself. It was only natural for him to be curious when his friend, who said he was going to the bathroom, came back with a script.
“I found it lying in the hallway.”
“Huh? In the hallway?”
For some reason, it seems like he’s been lying more and more lately. Muyoung ignored the nagging of his conscience and acted nonchalantly.
“I read it briefly, and it looked interesting. Let’s use this to warm up.”
“Let me see. Holly, huh. I’ve never heard of it.”
Yuchan flipped through the paper. Muyoung sat next to him and did the same. Hai crouched in the middle and stuck her face out. Her neck had become abnormally long…… but Muyoung tried to ignore it.
“The red berries of the holly symbolize the blood Jesus shed, and its sharp leaves symbolize the crown of thorns on His head. Those who cut down the holly will be visited by misfortune, for it is an act of cutting down faith…….”
The preamble was unusual.
Holly was a work that depicted what happened when a woman who claimed to be Jesus’ messenger appeared in a village.
The protagonist was Mari. This must be the role the ghost lady played.
“There was a work like this.”
“It was an original play that they tried to put on but ended up canceling.”
“What? How did you know that?”
“……There was a piece of paper stuck in the back. Huh? Where did it go?”
Muyoung lied blatantly, looking around as if to prove it. Ugh. He felt so bad every time he opened his mouth like this. But Yuchan didn’t seem to care and just kept reading the script.
“Cutting down the holly probably means killing the woman, right?”
“I think so. The misfortune that comes to the villagers after the woman dies is depicted alternately. The directing will be very important.”
The two of them put their heads together and analyzed the work. It had been a while. They used to talk like this at the acting academy when the principal gave them a script.
‘It’s been less than a year since I was nineteen, but it feels like a long time ago. They say an adult’s time passes quickly. Is this what it feels like?’
He’d heard that life goes by twice as fast in your twenties and three times as fast in your thirties. The past and memories had somehow become the same word.
“Let’s do this. I want to try this part.”
At that moment, Yuchan showed him a page and said,
It was a scene where two men trying to cut down a tree confronted Mari.
“Of course. I’m here to help you.”
This is perfect. He glanced at the ghost lady.
“Should Mari’s part be imaginary acting?”
“Yeah. It’d be nice to have one more person, but it’s okay if we don’t. Let’s just pretend we each read our parts.”
It’d be pointless if they took turns imitating a woman’s voice for no reason and broke their immersion.
Muyoung held the script loosely and nodded.
‘Ghost lady. Ghost lady, you do Mari’s lines.’
To think that they’d be performing the lines of
Meanwhile, flower pollen kept falling. Muyoung wiped it off, pretending to wipe away his sweat.
“Shall we start?”
“I’ll play the carpenter. You be the village chief.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
The two of them stood up. Since they’d just seen the script, they hadn’t memorized it perfectly. They gathered their emotions while holding their books.
“Get out of the way. I have to cut this down today, no matter what.”
Muyoung spoke first. Then the ghost lady slowly squeezed out her voice as if wringing it out and recited her lines.
-No. You’ll be unhappy.
It was a small but surprisingly resonant voice. Muyoung was slightly startled and looked at her.
The dripping red blood reminded him of the berries of the holly. It was even deeper and more poignant.
“I’m sick of hearing that kind of talk. If you’re really that great messenger of God, you should be able to stop something like this easily. Why? Can’t you do it?”
Yuchan spoke with a thoroughly vicious expression. It was the first time he’d seen his acting in a long time. Had it matured in desperate times? It had much more depth than before. His diction…… and something he’d never seen before…….
‘Emotions that strike quickly and then disappear.’
If there was one thing that was always disappointing about him, it was that he could only express intense emotions easily. Whether it was laughter or anger, Yuchan only shone when the amplitude of the emotion was high.
But not anymore. He moved forward naturally and surely like water, even if only for a fleeting moment.
“What? You!”
“Huh? Why?”
“You’re really good!”
Muyoung laughed and clung to his shoulder. No matter how much he complained about quitting, Yuchan was still Yuchan. Muyoung realized that he couldn’t escape the path of acting.
“Based on just one line?”
“You’ve gotten so much better. Really. Can’t you feel it yourself?”
“I just do what I do every day.”
Unless someone tells him next to him, he wouldn’t know.
There was no principal, of course, and no Bora next to him. There was no one around who remembered the old him. Ah. There was Hyungju, but he hadn’t seen him in a long time because he was busy with college life and hadn’t been to the practice room.
“Let’s do this from the beginning, except for Mari’s role. We’ll take turns. I’ll play the young man, the bard, and the doctor.”
Properly, seriously, and with all their hearts!
The two of them, no, the three of them, stood at either end of the stage to put on their own version of
Then the curtain rose on the stage. Since it was a script they were seeing for the first time, it was awkward, but they managed to lead the play skillfully.
“Hey! Come out of there! What are you trying to do now?”
-But if you hang a branch of this holly, good luck will come. The doctor’s wife asked me to do it.
“That woman has neurasthenia. She wakes up at the sound of the wind while she’s sleeping, so don’t pay attention to her.”
-You’re wrong! Watch what you say!
They analyzed the characters on the spot and poured out their unique acting. They were in a completely free atmosphere, and laughter never left them.
“Hahaha! Hey! You didn’t do that just now!”
“So what? Doesn’t this fit better?”
They didn’t even notice that a guest had arrived at the dark small theater. It was the director. Drawn by the noisy chatter, he hesitated at the familiar lines he heard for the first time in a long while.
‘Where did they find this? And who’s that?’
He was full of questions, but he patiently sat in the audience and waited. The acting of the two young friends was truly sparkling and fresh. It was acting that only youth could show.
“-So be careful of the thorns. If blood flows from a wound caused by its leaves, Mari will be sad.”
About an hour later. When Yuchan delivered the last line, applause burst out from the corner.
Clap clap clap!
“Yuchan. You’re better than I thought.”
“Huh? Director!”
“But who’s the one next to you? A friend?”
Muyoung touched his sweat-soaked bangs and looked at him. Then a bright smile spilled out.
“Hello. I’m Ha Muyoung.”
The area around the man called the director was sparkling-
It was the same thing he saw in the storage room, the flower pollen.