Chapter Text
ii. betrayer
Lee Kwang-soo is tired of acting out.
Whatever you do in front of the cameras is forgiven, that’s Yoo Jae-suk’s lesson. They’re entertainers. It’s all in a day’s work. They play it up all the time for laughs. Acting the same way once the cameras have shut off—now that’s unprofessional.
He’s taken it to heart, going after Song Ji-hyo and even female guests without holding back. He takes the hits and the jokes as the maknae, and then promptly stabs the others in the back at any chance as easy as blinking. He lashes out viciously, yanks down Kim Jong-kook’s pants on-screen, and in the sly voice of Framer Kwang-soo, says compromising things about Ji-hyo because he knows exactly how to get a rise out of her, what it takes to get that Bad Ji-hyo character out in front of the cameras.
Off-cameras, he listens to all of Ji-hyo’s rants, because they’re all in this together, and maybe they’re a little the same: she the lone female member, and he the youngest of the group, with no variety experience (funny to think of that now)—and of course, they’re both actors.
Sometimes, he’s just tired.
Doesn’t have to do it all the time, of course. Sometimes they’re on the same team, and then he holds Ji-hyo back, or makes sure she’s okay, or backs Jae-suk up when he needs it.
There was that kid, during one of those missions. Recognised Jae-suk off the bat, of course. Kwang-soo? Babo ajusshi. Part of the character, of course—stupid, ambitious, cowardly Giraffe, but it stings for the moments it takes for him to let it roll off.
The thing about acting is, you can leave the role behind, sort of. Hosts like Jae-suk will bring it up, of course, when you go on variety shows, or talk shows, but that’s the kind of meticulous attention to detail that has given him the title of the Nation’s MC. With its peculiar blend of reality and fiction, variety is a lot trickier. People sometimes mix up the character with the person, even if you’re playing an exaggeration, a caricature of yourself that makes the show work. Hard to shake the Betrayer image, now.
He wonders sometimes about how it’s affecting his acting career. It’s always the comedy roles now. Detective afflicted with bad luck, how about that.
He’d say he’s sorry once the cameras shut off, once they clap for the slate, and the filming for the week is done and they begin to wind down and pack up to leave, but is he really sorry if he’d do the same thing again the next week? Because that’s what it means, being Lee Kwang-soo, filming Running Man. He can say he’s sorry, but next week, he’d be back to those sly, underhanded punches, the shouting, the exaggerated fool, because that’s who he is on the show, and that’s what makes the dynamics work.
It’s what the viewers want, and it’s what catapulted him to popularity as the Prince of Asia.
Even then, sometimes, Kwang-soo is just tired of it.