Chapter 2

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A few hours earlier.

[Hello?]

“Hey, Junyoung. Long time no see. What’s up?”

Mina’s father, Ryu Seongwoon, had received a call from his old friend Song Junyoung.

[Hey, Seongwoon. You doing well?]

As they briefly exchanged greetings.

“So what did you call about?”

[Hey, do I need a reason to call you?]

“You usually do.”

Seongwoon decided it was about time to get to the point.

[...Can’t argue with that.]

‘Figures.’

Junyoung had even stopped showing up to group meetups with friends over the past few years because of work.

So of course Seongwoon could only assume he had called because he needed something.

[You know... Mina, right?]

“Huh? Uh... Mina, why?”

‘Why is Mina coming up...?’

That little troublemaker had been causing nothing but accidents lately.

Seongwoon tensed slightly, wondering if she had done something else without him knowing.

[Have you ever thought about letting her appear in a commercial?]

“A commercial...?”

Fortunately, the actual topic wasn’t anything he had been worried about.

But since it was something he had never imagined at all, Seongwoon’s brain froze for a moment.

“...Can you explain?”

[You know I work at an advertising company, right?]

“Yeah.”

[We just got an outsourced ad project for a new smartphone being released by Shinsung Group.]

“Seriously? That Shinsung?”

[Exactly! Even I can’t believe it?!]

Seongwoon had heard that the advertising company Junyoung worked for had been growing tremendously lately.

But he hadn’t realized it was doing this well, so he couldn’t hide his surprise.

“Hey, seriously, congratulations. Next time, you’re buying me an expensive meal, got it?”

[Of course.]

Seongwoon congratulated Junyoung and returned to the main topic.

“Anyway, you want Mina to appear in that ad?”

[Yeah, we need a child actor.]

“Okay, I get it, but... there’s something I’m curious about.”

[What?]

“Why Mina specifically?”

He understood that they needed a child.

But there were plenty of other kids, and they could probably even cast a famous child actor.

So he asked why Junyoung had specifically singled out Mina for the offer.

[...Are you seriously asking me that?]

“Huh?”

[I mean, obviously it’s because Mina is the prettiest and cutest kid I know, including actual child actors.]

“...Huh?”

[Hey! You’re Mina’s dad, so why are you pretending you don’t know!]

“No... I know Mina is cute and pretty too.”

Because he saw her every day, he wasn’t as struck by it as he used to be, but Seongwoon knew Mina was exceptionally good-looking.

The other day, Mina had caused trouble yet again, and Seongwoon had tried to scold her.

But when he saw Mina’s gloomy face, his anger faded and he couldn’t even properly reprimand her.

“Still... because of that, you want Mina...?”

[Yeah.]

‘She’s definitely going to cause some huge incident on set too, and he still wants to cast her...?’

There was one thing Seongwoon had overlooked.

The last time Junyoung had actually seen Mina in person was when she was five.

Recently, he had only seen Mina through photos.

On top of that, because they had both been busy living their lives, they rarely kept in touch and were only speaking again today after a long time.

There was no way Junyoung could know about Mina, who had been revealing more and more of her true nature lately.

“Okay... I understand for now. I’ll talk to Mina about it.”

[Thanks. I’ll text you the details about the ad.]

“Yeah.”

[Let’s seriously meet up and grab a meal sometime soon.]

“We should.”

_____________

“That’s what happened.”

I looked over Dad’s story and the contents of the text message and summarized it.

“So... you need to film a smartphone commercial, and the concept is ‘a smartphone that can be used by all age groups,’ so you need a child actor, and Uncle Junyoung thought I’d look good in that role, so he suggested me, right?”

“Exactly.”

“And separate from the appearance fee, Shinsung will even give me a smartphone as a gift?”

“Yeah.”

“And even the scene I appear in will only be five seconds at most?”

“That’s what he said.”

After saying it all out loud, I thought it over once more, but I could only reach the same conclusion as before.

“There’s no reason not to do it, is there?”

Still, there was something that bothered me, so I immediately asked Dad.

“But if I say I want to do it, do I automatically get the role?”

Even if my screen time would be short.

For a commercial by a major corporation of that scale, normally.

I understood that the usual process was to choose a child actor through an audition.

So I was curious why I had received a direct casting offer rather than a request to ‘audition.’

“Ah, that’s because your role is ‘a daughter who gets tired of waiting at home and video calls her mother while she’s on her way home from work.’”

“...Huh?”

“So apparently it’s a role anyone can pull off, which means they’re choosing mostly based on appearance. And Junyoung knows perfectly well there’s no way you’d fail at something that simple.”

“Ah... so that’s why...”

‘Lookism exists here too...’

I guess it really is true that if your face alone is exceptional, you won’t starve wherever you go.

“But are you okay with your face being on TV?”

“What’s the big deal?”

If I were an adult, I might have thought about it a little more, but right now I was just a ten-year-old kid.

Even if it became annoying because people recognized me on the street for now, there was no way that would still happen ten years later.

“That’s all experience too.”

And I could tolerate the minor risk of some temporary annoyance.

‘Because being able to get a smartphone right now is such a huge benefit that it outweighs all of that.’

You only had to look at Mom, who had been silent this whole time.

She had been making that expression like she’d bitten into something disgusting ever since she heard they would give me a smartphone as a gift.

“Mina’s dad, isn’t Mina still too young to have a smartphone?”

‘So she really wasn’t planning to buy me one until around middle school...’

“Mina’s mature, so wouldn’t it be okay? As long as she uses it in moderation—”

“You haven’t forgotten ‘that incident’ from before, right?”

“...Of course I remember.”

‘Ah, I’ve got nothing to say on this topic.’

Actually, a few years ago, there had been a time when I briefly owned a feature phone.

‘Though it got taken away after only a month.’

This was what had happened.

‘No! Why is there so little you can do with this thing!’

I had somehow managed to get a feature phone.

But using a 2G phone again after so long came with far more restrictions than I remembered.

There were games, but the ones you could play for free.

Were basically trial versions that ended after ten minutes.

The moment you used even a little data, extra charges were added.

And even if you wanted to use Wi-Fi, the phone itself didn’t have Wi-Fi functionality.

‘Do I really have to live like this...?’

Then I suddenly had a moment of existential crisis.

And once that hit, the mindset of a civilized person who had enjoyed modern civilization kicked in.

The mindset that said having a phone but being unable to play games on it made no sense.

‘Hahaha, this is fun.’

So I bought every game I wanted and used Nate constantly like it was nothing.

Of course, I knew perfectly well that doing that would incur extra charges.

So I did it while being somewhat prepared for the inevitable disaster.

‘It’ll probably be fine.’

The bill wouldn’t be charged until the following month anyway.

So I got complacent, thinking I could enjoy myself for a full month and relying on the invincible shield of being young.

That’s right. I got complacent.

This... turned out to be far more problematic than I expected.

Especially because I had been ignorant about how much things cost back then.

‘No... I didn’t know the bill would get that high...’

I knew how much the paid games cost because I had seen the prices with my own eyes before purchasing them.

But the data charges easily exceeded my expectations and went beyond anything I had imagined.

‘Ryu Mina!!!’

In the end, when the massive bill arrived the next month.

Mom and Dad got angrier than I had ever seen them and scolded me horribly, and the incident ended with my feature phone being confiscated too.

‘I really did do that way too thoughtlessly when I didn’t even have enough information...’

In that sense, this incident left me with an important lesson to estimate things as carefully as possible.

And only do things I thought I could handle—

“I was planning not to buy Mina a smartphone until she entered high school.”

‘...Huh? Wait, what did you just say?’

Bang!

“High school?!”

Thinking I must have misheard her, I hurriedly stood up from my chair, planted my hands on the table, and asked again.

“Of course. You’ve got a record.”

Hearing Mom’s firm words, I became certain.

“I’ll shoot the commercial! I’m doing it! Don’t stop me!”

Certain that if I missed this chance, I would absolutely have to wait until high school!

“O-Okay... Then I’ll tell them you’ll do it?”

“Wait! Mina’s dad, we seriously need to think about this again! Filming the commercial is one thing, but either we should use the smartphone ourselves or refuse to accept it entirely!”

Mom hurriedly tried to stop Dad, but I trusted my dad.

I believed he wouldn’t be swayed by something like that.

“No, if she wasn’t doing the commercial at all, that’d be one thing, but doing that would be a little much.”

‘I knew I could trust you!’

“Hear, hear! Hear, hear!”

“Wouldn’t it be better for us to make sure Mina uses the smartphone properly instead?”

“Exactly! Exactly!”

I stuck close beside my incredibly dependable dad and enthusiastically cheered him on—

“Then... you’re fine with us managing it so you can’t play games or use any weird apps at all, right?”

“Huh...?”

‘What the hell is this now’

“Wouldn’t that be fine?”

“Dad...?”

“Oh my~”

“No, no, Mom?”

“If Mom manages everything, then I don’t mind letting you use it.”

“M-Mother?!”

I hurriedly looked at Dad with eyes full of hope.

“...Sorry. Even I can’t do anything about this.”

But the answer I received was the exact opposite of what I had hoped for.

...My world collapsed.