# Chapter 32.
CEO Lee Jaei, who had completed the D-50 audition plan utilizing all of his experience and impressive connections, promised to generously invest his personal funds. Doha, who had finished preparing for school in his uniform, shamelessly said while checking his schedule on his phone:
“Hyung, thank you so much. But I think I’m too young to handle this schedule.”
“No. You’re all grown up. It’s fine.”
“You said I’m not grown up. That I’m still too young.”
“That’s different from this. As long as you get enough sleep time and nutrients, there won’t be any health problems. Even I, with less physical strength than you, managed it at about your age, so you can too. This is all with help from professionals.”
“Well, students who study hard sit at their desks for 12 hours a day.”
Doha nodded, accepting CEO Lee Jaei’s explanation. He could feel his burning ambition to (1) ensure Doha passes the audition in one shot, (2) immediately launch him as a leading actor with no unknown period after debut, and (3) make sure he never hears that he succeeded because of Jaei’s influence. Although he had no particular desire to become a top star, if Jaei wanted his success, he naturally wanted to live up to those expectations.
“I can do well. No, I’ll definitely do well. It’s not even that hard. I’m good at enduring difficult things.”
Doha, who typically kept most of the promises he made, confidently declared his future in advance this time as well. Jaei, who had been strictly disciplining him with a backscratcher in hand, soon giggled like a child watching him.
Doha was determined to pass the audition and (1) interfere with the relationship between Jaei and Hong Duyoung, then become a wonderful adult and win Jaei’s heart, (2) show filial piety to his parents who picked him up and raised him with unconditional love, and (3) hope that the mystery of Lee Doha’s natural emergence would be solved.
On days without filming, Jaei would spend about an hour helping Doha practice his scripts. While Jaei was the type to immerse himself in his world, temporarily erasing the existence of staff before delivering his performance, Doha’s thought process wasn’t complicated—he had the mindset of “I just do it in front of others, what else could I be good at anyway?”
“I’ve memorized it all.”
After memorizing all the difficult lines while holed up in a corner of the living room, Doha crawled over and abruptly thrust his round head toward Jaei, who was sitting on the sofa. He was asking for praise. Jaei placed both hands on Doha’s head and tapped his scalp with his fingers as if playing the piano. Then he rubbed his face against Doha’s soft hair.
“Well done, genius.”
Although Doha wasn’t good at memorizing the contents of textbooks, he could easily memorize scripts that seemed like direct copies of textbook content. Senior actor and teacher Lee Jaei defined this as a miracle of the foolish genius. He had continuously educated Doha that humans are complex and multidimensional, so a fool can be a genius and a genius can be a fool in other areas. It’s just a matter of which field one is engaged in.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Doha rested his face on Jaei’s knee. One cheek was pressed against his knee, and the other was pressed by Jaei’s hand. With both cheeks squeezed, his lips protruded like a baby bird’s beak.
Recently, he had been imagining various scenarios about his past while reading scripts and screenplays for different works. As days went by, his curiosity about the past grew, and every story contained in creative works seemed like his own.
“Hyung, what if I were the child of a gambler with a secret?”
“I wonder. What if your biological father hid money he embezzled from a gambling den, told only you where it was hidden, then died, and you lost your memory while running away from gamblers trying to take that money?”
“Seeing how you know all the details, this must be true. What if you get in danger because of me?”
He had a terrible vision of gamblers swarming in, kidnapping him, and threatening Jaei using his life as leverage. Soon after, he put down the script on the floor and replaced his past.
“What if I’m not human but an A.I. implanted in a child’s body to grow?”
“Keep going. Something else.”
“An alien wearing the skin of an Earthling?”
“Another?”
“Could I be from North Korea?”
Doha’s imagination was developing in real-time. Jaei thought that with this level of imagination, it was just a matter of time before he suspected his own reincarnation.
And thanks to this, Doha became able to digest all the scripts assigned to him as if they were his own stories.
* * *
In July of that year, news reported that actor Lee Jaei had ended his exclusive contract with his existing agency and entered the free agent market. It also mentioned the anticipated establishment of a one-person agency. Doha could tell that Jaei was planning to establish a company and recruit him.
As articles about the contract expiration poured out, Jaei’s magazine interview became a hot topic again.
RE: I bought a stock recommended by the company CEO, and it was -55%. Don’t recklessly persuade people who don’t know stocks well and recommend them. You could lose precious acquaintances for life. If it wasn’t for this incident, I would have renewed the contract.
RE: Did Lee Jaei put his entire fortune in and become a beggar? Understandable not to renew, but what stock was that?
RE: I believe it was N Studio, which went public in February
After checking public opinion while scratching his cheek, Jaei had a busy morning call with a reporter, saying, “It’s not that I didn’t renew the contract because of stock losses. I didn’t invest much, and I’m very rich, so don’t worry.” Then he suddenly donated 300 million won to confirm that there was no problem with his financial status.
It really wasn’t because of the stocks. Although the CEO had recommended investing in a drama production company established by an acquaintance, and they had colluded with market forces to cheat Jaei, and he had found out about this while talking with other affected actors at a hair salon, that level of loss had no effect on Lee Jaei’s financial status.
Doha, who had endured Jaei’s rigorous training, passed the lead audition for an 8-part special drama “Collapsed Auditorium” set in a high school a month later in August. It was a mystery drama depicting what happens to five high school students trapped in a school, created by a writer and director that Jaei liked.
The female and male leads, who had the largest roles, had already been cast with two famous actors that Doha knew well, and Doha was cast as the intelligent but rebellious key player in the story. His role was the third largest. And in the subtly implied love plot, he was set to play the role of the secondary male lead.
The problem was that a love triangle that wasn’t originally there had been added after Doha was cast. Upon learning this later, Jaei twitched his eyebrows in displeasure.
Jaei believed that once Doha became an adult, he had the potential to become a hugely successful lead in romantic comedy dramas. Of course, Jaei had occasionally performed poignant melodrama acting, and he knew that each time, while Doha supported all of his activities, he had struggled emotionally alone. This was because Jaei regularly stole and read all of Doha’s diaries.
“It’s just work, that’s all. Who else would understand this if not me?”
Although he muttered casually, Jaei’s thin, dry feet were anxiously pacing on the floor. He hadn’t even kissed Doha’s new body yet. Even if all skinship was postponed until Doha became an adult, he was seized by anxiety that he should at least give him a kiss beforehand.
At the very least, he didn’t want Doha’s first kiss in his second life to be stolen. Because he wasn’t just anyone—he was Ryu Doha. He was Ryu Doha who had dated Lee Jaei since the age of eight, shared his first kiss at 13, and would be born as Lee Jaei’s man even if he were reincarnated a hundred times!
“I should have done it when he was younger…”
If he’d known this would happen, he would have planted kisses on his lips as his hyung. At that time, Jaei wasn’t certain that the baby bear was Ryu Doha, but he couldn’t bring himself to kiss his lips with even 1 gram of impure thoughts. It was a tragedy born from Lee Jaei’s morality and conscience.
Doha, who couldn’t possibly know Jaei’s desperate feelings, called his parents abroad to tell them about passing the audition. After finishing the call, he returned to Jaei with a happy face.
“Mom and Dad praised me a lot. And I promised to repay them for raising me.”
“Yes, yes… good boy.”
Jaei, who responded halfheartedly, stared at Doha’s lips with tearful eyes. Right now, Jaei’s mind was completely filled with ‘how can I get a kiss from Doha?’ In this situation, he, at the age of twenty-six, couldn’t just suddenly push his lips forward. The king of the underworld who had destroyed the perfect age balance between Ryu Doha and Lee Jaei was so cruel.
“Sigh…”
“Hyung, why is your face turning pale on such a good day?”
However, if Doha dared to kiss him recklessly, Jaei was ready to pretend to reluctantly accept it. Jaei stared into Doha’s eyes and rubbed his lower lip with his finger. Then, blinking his eyes and simultaneously puckering his lips, he made smooching sounds. Doha asked Jaei with an innocent, almost stupid expression:
“This is imitating a fish, right? We did this a lot in elementary school.”
Doha, who was looking at Jaei brightly with pure eyes that had no ulterior motive, also puckered his lips to imitate a fish.
“Are we guessing which fish it is?”
Watching Doha listing things like carp, flounder, rockfish, mackerel, and croaker, Jaei withdrew both his puckering lips and his desire. Just then, Doha’s handsome face suddenly came closer, and his red lips briefly overlapped with Jaei’s. After giving a quite kiss-like kiss, Doha quickly ran away, and Jaei, covering his mouth with one hand, chased after him, shouting.
“What the~ Are you crazy~!”
Doha, who was running away with two red circles stamped on both cheeks, soon dropped to his knees, clasped his hands together, and shouted:
“I’m sorry! Hyung! I’m sorry! Please forgive me!”
“Oh no~ oh no~ what is this~ oh no~”
Having successfully claimed Doha’s first kiss, Jaei sang a song with a melody attached to words he didn’t mean, while excitedly tapping both of Doha’s cheeks.
