Outside the door, the mischievous child Andrew, played by Mark King, was urinating on his grandmother’s worn-out shoes. Even though he was sitting in the front row, Mark King could still hear some angry voices coming from the audience.

Andrew, who grew up in Seoul, ended up living together with his mute grandmother, who had never been farther than the small town at the foot of the mountain. On the big screen, the conflicts in the story kept escalating. The mute grandmother, unable to speak, was a poor, optimistic, patient old woman living alone. The city boy needed TV, game consoles, hamburgers, and KFC fried chicken to keep him company, but in the poor mountain village, there was only a broken TV, mountain streams, and rows of vegetable plots. Worse yet, the batteries for his game console had run out. Matthew even stole his grandmother’s hairpin to exchange for batteries, but got lost and left his grandmother waiting by the roadside, exhausted.

During this process, the mischievous Andrew trampled on his grandmother’s love for him again and again. Yet the grandmother never stopped caring for and loving her grandson, not even for a moment.

Mark King sat dumbfounded in the very front row. He hadn’t expected how painful it would be to see all those scattered shots pieced together. Even during filming, sometimes, even with just a single shot, he would feel it was cruel and hard to accept, often causing quite a few retakes. But in the cinema, facing such a huge screen, he didn’t even have the chance for a retake, to the point that Mark King even started to hate himself a little.

Many in the audience began to sigh and murmur in unison as the story unfolded. Even some reporters started to forget their jobs and joined in with the chorus of sighs.

When the film reached its first climax, Andrew wanted to eat fried chicken, but his grandmother didn’t understand him and killed the family’s precious chicken to make stew. When Andrew once again pushed away his bowl, rejecting both the food and his grandmother’s love, the entire theater erupted in a collective “ya”—a sound akin to a curse word.

The audience watched the plot, while industry insiders looked for the craft. The movie stars, directors, and critics in the front rows had already realized that Lee Jeong-hyang’s film was undoubtedly a success. There was nothing pretentious about this movie, inside or out. Up to this point, the number of actors who had shown their faces, including those in the car, hadn’t even reached twenty. The young actors’ performances were passable so far, but their command of the lines was outstanding. As for the actress playing the grandmother, who hadn’t spoken a single line, her performance was already phenomenal. All the critics were ready to go home and lavish praise on the director and the elderly actress who played the grandmother. After all, for a film of this genre, if the box office did well, the media wouldn’t be allowed to criticize it. So, for now, they’d go home and praise the director and actors; if the box office succeeded, they’d heap on even more praise. If the box office failed, they’d discuss things like a weak structure or how it was a pity the young actors weren’t perfect.

But just two minutes later, they no longer planned to talk about the young actors. Because what followed was a collective outburst from the three child actors, especially Mark King, who became exceptionally brilliant, turning into a soul of the film alongside the grandmother.

In the movie, Andrew pushed away the bowl with the chicken drumstick, making his grandmother sad and guilty, not knowing what to do. That night, Andrew, hungry and restless, secretly ate the drumstick. It was from this moment that Andrew began to change, and the film entered a series of climaxes along with his transformation.

The next morning, Andrew discovered that his grandmother was ill and lying on the mat, unable to get up. Andrew began to try to take care of her. When he saw his grandmother using an iron pin as a hairpin, Andrew returned the hairpin he had stolen, putting it back in her hair. He tried to steam the chicken for his grandmother, but in his clumsy efforts, it took him from morning until noon just to barely reheat it.

Afterwards, Andrew went out to play and met the only two other children in the village, Arthur and Sophia. Arthur was a hardworking and honest mountain boy who often brought food to Andrew’s elderly grandmother and worked hard every day. Sophia was a simple and lovely village girl who secretly liked Arthur very much.

Arthur was playing with a calf on the mountain, carrying a wooden board, and Andrew was drawn over, then cheered for Arthur’s bravery together with Sophia. But then, when Sophia turned around, she saw that Andrew, in his excitement, had crushed the plastic bottles she had stacked up for playing house. Sophia pointed at the broken little bottle, and Andrew lowered his head, pulled his foot back, not knowing what to do. Sophia waited a while, then directly scolded Andrew: “Don’t you know how to apologize?” Andrew was mortified, but only used his foot to push the small stones that formed a plate back into place.

“Go away!” Sophia squatted down to tidy up her little plastic house.

“I can do it too,” Andrew mumbled.

“I’m not playing house with you.” As Sophia tidied up her play table made of plastic bottles, she looked up and said something that sounded rather funny: “People like you will never get married. When we grow up, there will be more girls than boys, but you’re really unlucky!”

At this moment, Andrew squatted down and asked Sophia an even funnier question: “Do you know how to make KFC?”