Chapter 150: Chapter 150

It feels like I’m dreaming.

I can barely remember how the last few hours went by.

Did I cry on stage during the award ceremony? Did I give my acceptance speech in English or in Korean?

Blinded by tears and deafened by the sound of applause, I couldn’t see or hear anything.

Immediately after the ceremony, it was just an endless string of congratulations.

“Congratulations, I believed in you, you’ll do even better in the future” and then some foreign language blabbering, followed by clapping… clap, clap, clap…

Holding the award plaque that I hadn’t even looked at closely, I followed the director here and there, bowing and greeting people.

Wait, no, was it Director So Tae-woong I was following, or CEO Baek Seung-won?

“No, no, no! That’s not what I meant!”

Kim Byul regretted, within five seconds of starting the conversation, that the ‘smartest person’ she had thought of last night was this punk in front of her.

Yet, with just one sentence, he had completely shaken her, proving once again that Moon In was truly a master of words.

However, Kim Byul had now grown enough not to get dragged down by Moon In’s casual provocations. After all, they had grown closer.

“Hey! You! Stop making those self-deprecating jokes! Someone who’s so full of themselves even without parents…! You don’t actually feel bad about being from an orphanage, do you?”

“Memo… Actress Kim Byul… is the New Light Spring Orphanage some sort of badge of honor…?”

“When did I ever say thaaaat—!”

Today, once again, Kim Byul found herself tangled in Moon In’s pace, struggling against him.

He’s an insufferable little brat who’s impossible to beat.

But now, Kim Byul has gained enough composure to add one last word.

“Hey, don’t just write me down as an actress in your notes, change it to Cannes Best Actress winner.”

“Memo… Kim Byul… I’m not like other actresses… Cannes Best Actress winner…”

“This is driving me crazy.”

Finally, Kim Byul managed to shut Moon In’s mouth of hell after ordering something resembling a strawberry yogurt smoothie in clumsy English from the hotel café staff.

Even though Moon In, the strawberry yogurt smoothie connoisseur, muttered grumpily, he still wiped the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief in satisfaction.

“This isn’t a strawberry yogurt smoothie; it’s closer to strawberry milk sherbet… but since it tastes good, I’ll let it slide.”

“If you keep eating such sweet stuff, it’s not good for your health, you know?”

“Kim sunbae, do you find yogurt sweet? For me it’s bitter. Because life is bitter…”

“What are you even saying…?”

Despite her curt response, Kim Byul’s eyes couldn’t leave the strawberry milk sherbet.

She knew a dessert like that meant 45 minutes on the treadmill, but the kid sitting across from her was eating it so deliciously that she couldn’t help it.

Kim Byul called the waiter again and, with stuttering English, ordered her own dessert.

Moon In’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What’s this, you’re actually eating dessert?”

“If you’ve won Best Actress at Cannes, you’re allowed to eat it.”

“I guess you’ll have to win another award next time if you want to eat it again.”

“That won’t take too long.”

Moon In chuckled at Kim Byul’s feigned bravado.

It was a smile like one you give when watching a child’s cute antics.

Looking back, Moon In had always treated her like a child.

It was hard to understand, but it felt so natural at times that she occasionally leaned into it.

Like he was a reliable adult…

“There’s a boy who won the Best Actor award at Cannes when he was 14 years old. He’s Japanese, but I don’t quite remember his name…”

Yagira Yuya, who won Best Actor for Nobody Knows, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. Kim Byul already knew that.

But she didn’t say anything. Once again, it seemed Moon In was about to guide her, like a wizard from a fairy tale.

“As soon as he won, he shot to stardom. They called him a once-in-a-lifetime genius, and Japan was in an uproar.”

“But apparently, life didn’t go so smoothly for him.”

Moon In took another spoonful of his strawberry sherbet and continued speaking.

“It was impossible for him to meet the sky-high expectations that surrounded him, and he was always under scrutiny, as if people were testing whether he deserved the award. Eventually, over a decade later, things started to go well for him, but during those ten years, he was hospitalized from taking antidepressants. Just imagine how heavy the burden of that award must have been.”

As he concluded, Kim Byul’s eyes widened.

“I think it’s highly likely that Kim sunbae’s life will turn out similarly.”

Moon In nodded as if this was the most obvious future.

Kim Byul was furious. Is this jerk here to give advice or to curse me?

“Hey! What do you know? Have you seen the future? Did you see the future?!”

Kim Byul looked ready to grab him by the collar, but Moon In just shrugged nonchalantly.

“I didn’t go and check out Kim sunbae’s future, but I know your personality quite well.”

And then came Moon In’s ominous prophecy.

“First of all, your mother will pressure you like crazy, and people around you will cross their arms, stick out their lips, and go, ‘Hmph, is that all she’s got?’ as if they’re judges or something. Since your mind isn’t fully mature yet, you’ll always try to meet people’s expectations, and little by little, you’ll wear yourself down. Sure, you’ve got plenty of grit, so you’ll eventually pull through, but honestly, if you gave up early, life would be easier. Instead, you’ll grit your teeth and hold on, and end up a wreck.”

Kim Byul felt that this prophecy was disturbingly plausible.

This brat wrapped in a blanket understood her far better than expected.

Kim Byul, almost unknowingly, leaned forward, as if she were a housewife entranced by a shaman’s spell.

And like a shaman writing out a talisman, Moon In boldly delivered his conclusion.

“So! Since you won’t be able to bear the weight of that award anyway, let’s just quit ahead of time!”

“Just erase the burden of being a Cannes Best Actress from your life. I mean, even if you go through all the struggles and meet everyone’s expectations, are those people going to give you another award? You’ve already got one.”

“Popularity comes and goes. Tomorrow, some nasty reporter could spread a false rumor about you being a drug addict, and half of the people praising you now would turn into haters. The expectations people place on you are that light.”

“So from now on, just take your time and think about it. What is life? What should I be doing? What is my art? How can I improve my acting? What should I do about my relationship with my mom and dad? What about my agency after the contract ends?”

“In the end, you have to find the answers yourself, and that’s not an easy thing to do. So start by letting go of the things that you don’t need to worry about right now. In my opinion, the first thing to let go of is that award.”

Cannes, the southern port city of France, the sparkling sea, the film festival. The roar of supercar engines, the golden palm leaves. The sound of camera shutters. The cheers…

Kim Byul’s mind, once filled with all sorts of glittering and noisy things, suddenly felt clear, like a bright sky.

It felt like waking up from a dream.

Of course, nothing had been resolved. From tomorrow, countless events and crises would descend upon her.

But the moment she let go of the weight of that award in her heart, it felt like she had gained the strength to overcome those things.

The very first thing Kim Byul did after waking up from that dream was, as expected, to say thank you.

“No, I mean it. Just… thanks.”

Moon In looked at her with a doubtful expression but soon smiled softly.

And so, the two old souls looked at each other and, for the first time in a long while, smiled as they should at their age.

A distant camera shutter sound could be heard.

The next day, a dating scandal between Kim Byul and Moon In broke out.

「It feels like waking up from a dream.

The classroom, once filled with monsters devouring each other, had somehow transformed.

The two friends who were always together became conjoined twins. Their voices always came from the same place.

The boys sitting in the front loved soccer. It seemed like that was the only thing in their heads. So I turned their heads into soccer balls, and they became the Three Soccer Balls.

The kid who always ate lunch twice turned into a pig, and the one who wore headphones all day had his ears turned into headphones.

One by one, each of them.

They stopped being monsters and turned into something else.

Then at some point, when I looked around, everyone looked as bizarre as me.

The flesh-eating monsters, the stench of rotting corpses, and the growling sounds were all gone.

Now there were witches, astronauts, soccer balls, pigs, and colored pencils…

Monsters making their own different sounds were scattered everywhere.

In my mind’s eye view, in the midst of all those bizarre appearances, being a blind girl didn’t seem that strange.