Chapter 2

Spread Your Wings and Follow Your Dream (1)

“You said I can become an actress?”

Doye looked at me as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard and asked again.

What else was there to say?

“Yeah. You can.”

“Really?”

“Has this dad ever said one thing and then changed his mind?”

“You did it a lot when we were little. You promised to take Unni and me to the amusement park, but you forgot you had a shoot that day and didn’t take us.”

“That… happened?”

As expected, my second daughter only had a good memory when it came to things like this.

Well, I suppose that’s why she was so good at memorizing scripts.

Thinking about it now, it wasn’t as if my second daughter had absolutely no talent for acting.

In fact, she had plenty of qualities that could help her succeed.

Not only did she have an appearance that naturally attracted people’s attention, but she also had a good personality. Her memory wasn’t bad either.

If I helped her improve her acting skills, she could grow much faster than Doye had twenty-five years later.

Even so, there had been a reason why I had opposed Doye’s debut in the entertainment industry in my previous life.

The entertainment industry wasn’t a place where having talent automatically guaranteed success.

It was a harsh world. I had stubbornly opposed her dream because I vaguely wanted to keep my daughter from experiencing that kind of despair.

But twenty-five years later, I realized that my decision had actually become poison.

So this time, I decided to choose a different path.

Not as a father who opposed his daughter’s future.

But as a father who supported and helped her.

“Instead, promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“No matter what happens, never give up on this path too easily.”

It would be a difficult road.

That’s why she needed to be prepared.

Doye seemed to understand exactly what I was trying to say, because she nodded firmly.

“Okay. I’ll do what you say, Dad.”

Rather than becoming a successful PD myself, I wanted my second daughter to succeed.

Perhaps this was the purpose and reason why I had returned to the past.

In August 2015, I was working on a drama called Kim Teacher, Who Appears Here and There.

The ratings weren’t particularly good.

The highest rating we had reached was only around five percent.

Most of the time, the ratings stayed below that.

In 2015, there were dramas that sometimes reached ratings of twenty-five percent.

Of course, to me at this point, that was still a distant story.

The ratings are only going to keep falling as time goes on.

Not only cable TV, but also OTT services and video platforms like AcaTube would gradually become more popular.

TV dramas would also have to adapt to these changes.

Of course, the same applied to me as a PD.

How many episodes of the current drama do we have left?

Considering the footage we had already shot, we would finish in about five more episodes.

The entire script should already be completed.

Since it was my own work, I remembered the synopsis as well.

It was simply strange to suddenly find myself responsible for a drama from twenty-five years ago.

For now, I decided to deal with the evening meeting first.

The reason for the meeting was simple.

A problem had come up during the location process, so an urgent meeting had been called to find a new filming location.

I was the last person to take a seat in the meeting room.

Seeing the old staff members I hadn’t seen in twenty-five years, I couldn’t help but admire them silently.

Kim the director and Writer Jung… They’re all so young.

It wasn’t as if I had never seen what they looked like when they were young.

Still, for some reason, my team members felt strangely unfamiliar today.

“Hello, sunbaenim.”

“You’re a little late today.”

“Yeah. I had something to take care of.”

Director Kim became interested when he heard my answer.

“What happened?”

“It was about my daughters’ future.”

“Doye?”

“Yeah. She said she wants to become an actress. So I told her that Dad would help her and that she should give it her best.”

“Huh?”

Not only Director Kim, but all the staff looked shocked.

“Sunbaenim, you always said you would never recommend anything related to the entertainment industry to your daughters.”

“That’s right. You always said that whenever we drank together.”

That was how I had been back then.

But…

“From now on, I’m going to think differently.”

People’s feelings could change at any time.

The difficult part was simply making the decision to change.

“Let’s leave my family matters here and talk about the location first. That’s why we’re all here today, isn’t it?”

“Well…”

I could feel the staff exchanging glances with one another.

“Normally, before starting a meeting, you always hold a review session about the previous shoot. You talk about what went well, what didn’t, and what we should improve. But today, you went straight to the main topic.”

“That’s right. You always told us to keep thinking about the shoot even after leaving work. You could easily talk about that for two hours.”

“You always emphasized that work had to come first.”

They weren’t wrong.

The me from the past hadn’t originally been this obsessed with work.

The reason I had become crazy about work wasn’t because I wanted to regain my past glory.

It was simply…

For my family… for my daughters.

After I divorced my wife because of various problems, I ended up getting full custody of my daughters.

It was because I wanted it.

I was confident that I could raise Dobin and Doye better than my ex-wife could.

But that sense of responsibility soon changed me.

A father who was obsessed with nothing but work.

And eventually, my daughters went back to their mother.

And I…

became alone.

I lightly shook my head and swallowed a bitter smile before speaking jokingly so that nobody would notice.

“What? Do you want me to go back to doing things that way?”

“N-No, of course not. I was just saying it. Ha, haha!”

The FD let out an awkward laugh.

Maybe it was because I had returned to the set after such a long time.

I felt like I wanted to start filming again as soon as possible.

As the meeting continued, we discovered an even bigger problem than the filming location.

A phone call suddenly came in.

When Writer Jung returned to the meeting room after finishing the call, her expression didn’t look good.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“There was an actress who was supposed to appear in a minor role tomorrow, but her agency just called and said it might be difficult for her to appear.”

“She backed out?”

“Yes.”

This problem with actors suddenly backing out hadn’t changed at all, whether it was twenty-five years ago or later.

Well, it wasn’t as if this had only happened once or twice.

“What should we do, sunbaenim?”

“What role is it?”

“Hwang Soyeon.”

“Hwang Soyeon. Hwang Soyeon…”

I searched through my memories.

Among the characters in Kim Teacher, Who Appears Here and There, there was a character named Kim Ohjoo.

She was the female lead, played by actress Kim Sunah.

Hwang Soyeon was the character who appeared as Kim Ohjoo’s niece.

“What was Hwang Soyeon’s character setting again?”

“She is a second-year high school girl, and the script says she’s a little rebellious. Her role isn’t very large, so I don’t think it will cause a serious problem for filming, but…”

“When is the shoot?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Finding a young actress willing to take a minor role with only two days’ notice is going to be difficult.”

Time was the problem.

“How many lines does she have?”

“Not many. In Scene 23-2, she has a few lines with Sunah. There are only about three lines.”

“Still, the fact that she has lines is important.”

There was a huge difference between having dialogue and not having dialogue.

Find a young actress who could take the role of Hwang Soyeon within two days.

The staff looked extremely flustered by the sudden assignment.

To be honest, I was no different.

If someone had suddenly asked me to solve a problem like this immediately after returning twenty-five years into the past, how many PDs wouldn’t be flustered?

I could guarantee there wouldn’t be many.

Still…

I have to do it.

It was my drama.

If I didn’t do it, who would?

“Give me a moment.”

I decided to use my connections.

I took out my smartphone and was about to search through my contacts when Writer Jung, who had glanced at my phone screen, suddenly became excited.

“PD! Who is that girl on your wallpaper? She looks exactly like Hwang Soyeon! Couldn’t we ask her to appear in the drama?”

It was a teenage girl making a finger heart and smiling brightly at the camera.

Coincidentally, this girl was someone I was very close to.

“My second daughter.”

“Oh! R-Really? I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

“No, it’s okay.”

Actually, this was even better.

Since things had turned out this way…

“Let’s give her a try.”

An opportunity had suddenly come to my second daughter.

There was no experience more valuable than actual experience.

At least, that was what I believed.

But my second daughter seemed to think differently.

“You want me to appear in a drama?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you say you wanted to become an actress?”

“But still, I haven’t prepared anything yet…”

“You’ve already prepared.”

When Doye confessed that she wanted to become an actress, there was one thing she hadn’t told me.

“You’ve been secretly attending an acting academy since last year, haven’t you?”

“How did you know that, Dad? Did Unni tell you?”

Dobin already knew that her younger sister had been attending an acting academy.

But Dobin wasn’t how I had found out.

Twenty-five years.

Through those twenty-five years, I had learned that Doye had been dreaming of becoming an actress for a very long time.

But I couldn’t tell the Doye of now about everything that had happened during those twenty-five years.

She wouldn’t believe me even if I told her I had returned to the past.

And explaining everything sounded tiring.

So I decided to give her a vague answer.

“This dad knows everything.”

Thanks to my memories of the future, there were many things I knew about my daughters.

Doye let out a deep sigh.

It was practically the same as admitting that I was right.

“Mom doesn’t know, so keep it a secret from her.”

“Then you have to tell Mom yourself later.”

Even though we were divorced, she still needed to know what was happening with the children.

“Okay. I’ll do that.”

My second daughter might look like this on the outside, but she was actually quite obedient.

Anyway.

“Are you going to do it?”

“If I do… will it be okay?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t it a difficult role?”

“You only have three lines, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Do I have someone acting opposite me?”

“Of course.”

“Who?”

“Kim Sunah.”

Suddenly, my second daughter’s eyes grew wide.

“Then… I’m going to act with Sunah unni?”

“If you say you’ll do it, then most likely.”

“Wow… So this kind of opportunity comes because Dad is a drama PD.”

There were advantages, but there were also disadvantages.

“Since you’ve decided to appear, you need to act well. Otherwise, people might say that you only got the role because your dad put you in the drama even though you can’t act.”

Of course, I wouldn’t reveal from the beginning that Doye was my daughter.

I planned to proudly tell people she was my daughter only after she had established herself.

That way, viewers could judge Doye’s acting objectively.

If people had preconceived ideas about her, it could seriously interfere with her growth as an actress.

I had watched that happen for a long time.

After thinking for a short while, Doye finally made her decision.

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

And with that, my daughter’s first debut was decided.

When my daughters were very young, they had occasionally visited the filming set where I worked.

But after they entered middle school, they had never come to the set again.

My second daughter looked around in amazement as she visited a drama set for the first time in many years.

Since she didn’t have a manager, I personally introduced her to the staff one by one.

“Wow, Doye. You’ve grown so much.”

“Oh my! You’re so pretty now!”

“Do you remember me? When you were little, this uncle gave you candy.”

The staff enthusiastically greeted her, but Doye could only respond with an awkward smile.

But it was still too early to relax.

“There is one more person you need to meet.”

“Another one?”

“A drama requires the efforts of this many people. Once you start working as an actress, you’ll understand. So remember it well.”

Doye nodded.

I took her to the actors’ waiting room.

After knocking first, I opened the door.

A woman who had just finished her makeup greeted us.

“Hello, PD. Oh, who is that?”

Kim Sunah immediately became interested in Doye.

“My second daughter. She’s playing Hwang Soyeon today.”

“Oh, really? It’s nice to meet you.”

As Sunah spoke to her first, Doye’s voice began to tremble badly.

“I-I… It’s n-nice to meet you too!”

She shouldn’t be trembling just because she was saying hello.

It seemed like she still had a long way to go before she could get used to the set.