Chapter 42

* * *Daemyung stepped on stage with Dojin. They were to lighten the mood of the play as they passed by a store.They were also going to start a fight with the main character, as two 40 year old men going out for a drink after work. In the scene, they would run into the main character smoking with his friends out on the streets.‘We can do this.’Frankly, Daemyung was surprised by the skill exhibited from his first-year friends. Yurim and Soyeon played their roles perfectly as the mother’s friends. Not only that, Taejoon and Iseul seemed natural during their performance as well.Geunseok was exemplary, as usual. The only people who needed to do well were Daemyung and Dojin now.The two exchanged glances. One mistake here, and they were as good as dead. Dojin was the first to step towards Geunseok, scolding the other boy for smoking. Daemyung’s role acted as support for Dojin’s. But when the time came for Taejoon to respond with, “just keep going on your merry way, misters”, the boy just stood there dumbly. After a few seconds of awkward silence,“Ugh, please! Just leave us alone!” Iseul shouted. She took over for Taejoon instead, causing Taejoon’s expression to change into a slight frown.“You little bitch...”Daemyung changed the “bastard” in his line to a “bitch” instead. Iseul nonchalantly hit back with Taejoon’s line. She must’ve memorized all of the scenes by herself.The third scene came to an end, and the other characters all left the scene, save for Geunseok. As soon as Taejoon stepped outside the green line, he turned to look at Geunseok with distressed.“Ah fuck.”There were no better words to describe the situation for them at that moment.

* * *Kindergarten. After a few minutes of silence, Maru started to hear the joyous sound of laughing children again. Soojin seemed to handle everything on her own quite nicely. Maru peeked down at the first floor after playing with the finger dolls by himself for a while. The kids were smiling again. Since they couldn’t continue with the puppet play, Soojin was playing with the kids with the dolls on her hands. Maru couldn’t help but feel a little sorry. He messed up the entire play trying to go over the top. Soojin had explained to him that his audience would be children, too… He should’ve kept that in mind when performing. Children are naive and oblivious. If you hid behind a door for a second then came out again, they would believe that you disappeared for a second. They understood everything at face value.Of course they would be frightened if Maru roared loudly like that. He just completely ignored what would be considered appropriate and went with it. Despite Soojin’s efforts, she was clearly having trouble handling 50 kids all at once. The teacher offered little relief, since the kids were just going straight for Soojin since she had the dolls.Maru watched this for a second before looking back at the second floor. He remembered seeing something there a while ago… There it was. In the corner of the floor was a fox mask. He put it on and stepped downstairs. Soojin smiled lightly as soon as she saw him and pointed. “Look, there’s a bad fox over there.”“Bad fox?”The kids immediately responded.“Mr. Fox is trying to hurt big sis Soojin. Big sis doesn’t like owies.”From Maru’s perspective, it almost looked like Soojin was a kid herself. She really had a knack for being a kindergarten teacher. He had to wonder at this point what her real job was.“Waaah!”“Bad Mr. Fox!”Soojin pointed at Maru with a sniffle. The kids all ran towards him, grabbed his pants, and started shaking.“Don’t hurt her!”“Bad Mr. Fox! Bad Mr. Fox!”“Yah! Yah!”These little twerps had a ridiculous amount of strength in their little bodies. Maru slowly made his way back to the room where the kids came from. He could play here, but the staircase behind him could be dangerous. That was rule one of acting. Part of its purpose was self-satisfaction, but ultimately, it was a show for the audience. The audience here were the kids, and therefore, Maru would have to put them in the proper environment, for the most amount of entertainment.“Mr. Fox is here to hurt. Fox! Fox!” Maru said.He waded through the crowd of kids with a light voice. He couldn’t remember what foxes sounded like, so he just said “fox fox”, but the kids seemed to enjoy that even more.“Why would a fox go fox fox? Hehehe.”“Then what does the fox say?”“Eh? I don’t know.”“Let’s just say it says fox fox then.”Maru picked up the talking kid and shook the boy lightly. The kid seemed nervous for a second, but immediately burst into laughter. “Me too! Me too!”“Me tooo!”The kids crowded all over him, completely forgetting that he was supposed to be a bad fox. Maru turned to look at Soojin through his mask. The woman was giving him a big thumbs up with a smile.