Love Will Always Be A Lesson (Let's Get Out Of Its Way)

Now and Forever

Lights.

Things begin the first time Jeongguk meets Taehyung, when he's cramming three wheat thins sandwiched with Philadelphia cream cheese into his mouth, crumbs on his fingers and on the cover of his book—a textbook, by the looks of it, from the way it's bound in brown paper bag so the Bible-thin pages are protected from the grime of a scatterbrained college student. He is hardly the picture of one of Hollywood's next biggest stars but here he is, slathering another cracker or three with cheese and shoving it into his mouth like it's the first thing he's eaten all day.

"Kim Taehyung?"

Taehyung looks up, mid-chew, hand loaded with two more crackers already. There's a bump in his cheek where the cardboardy edge of a wheat thin protrudes into the soft inside of his mouth. He chews one more time and swallows, before saying, "You've got some," and brushes the corner of his own lips. Jeongguk reaches up self-consciously, and his fingertips come away chocolated and sticky. "Hungry, huh?"

Camera.

Jeongguk doesn't know how to take it, this guy pointing out the remnants of his Haagen Dazs vanilla milk chocolate almond bar instead of answering his question, but just this once, he decides to take it well. This is Hollywood, after all, and people like to see a smile whether or not you are happy.

"I was in a hurry."

"Aw, you didn't have to be," Taehyung says. "The director is running late for the cold reading. Weather, apparently, but I think she's wringing some poor junior screenwriter by the neck in the conference room upstairs." When Jeongguk doesn't reply, he looks up again, and laughs at the look on his face. "Hey, don't look like that! I was just kidding, almost."

Jeongguk slides his backpack off his shoulders, taking a seat next to Taehyung at the round table. The room is large, and empty save for them, and jitters start in his toes when he thinks about how it'll fill with the rest of the cast and crew for the cold reading. The casting director had been kind, and the director had seemed to be very pleased with Jeongguk's initial screen tests, but this was going to be a make or break.

"What do you think of this?" Taehyung says, flicking the corner of his script with his index and middle finger. "I'm really looking forward to getting to the character study, but it'll be my first time doing something so big, I'm nervous as fuck. Here, have one."

A wheat thin is thrust into Jeongguk's hands and he's starting to get the idea that Taehyung eats to cope with nerves, and wishes he had the metabolism to engage in stress-eating. "Me too," Jeongguk says, biting one delicate corner off his cracker. "Who are you playing?"

"One of the mains," Taehyung says, and his voice is knotted with anxiety and pride. "Aeterno."

"Oh." Jeongguk extends his hand. "Then it's nice to meet you, fellow costar."

"No way?" Taehyung says, a smile coming over his lips. "You're playing, what's the name—Dusk? You're Jeon Jeongguk?"

"Dusk," Jeongguk repeats, and holds the name of his character tight on his tongue. "I'm Jeon Jeongguk."

Action!

The Timeshaker is Pia Ly's second work and a departure from her first modestly successful romcom that she had debuted with three years prior, Jeongguk learns. Her vision this time is one of a boy who has maybe a few years left at best, who falls in love with one who will live forever—a Now, and a Forever, as the the script calls them. Dusk is the first Now that Aeterno meets after the Hourglass War and the mass genocide of Nows, after he'd grown up his entire life shut away and protected in the cellar of a family of adoptive Forevers. And, of course, it is by some cruel fate that dictates Aeterno will fall in love with one of the only people that will not be around to share a forever with him.