Drama Audition! (1)
Around two in the morning, in a writer's studio.
The interior was a cramped little space of barely thirty square meters. The floor was buried in food wrappers and empty drink cans. None of that stopped the woman at the desk from hammering away at her laptop.
Click. Clack-clack-clack.
The only sound in the room was the rattle of the keyboard.
"Shit…"
Something on the page had clearly failed to please her. She was Kim Eun-joo, one of the few remaining television drama writers left in Korea, and she lifted her hands from the keys and dragged them down her face.
That was when it happened.
Bzzzzzt.
A phone she'd flung somewhere on the floor started buzzing. Kim Eun-joo paid it no mind whatsoever and reached instead for the energy drink sitting beside the desk.
"Let's try this again."
There was only one reason she was ignoring the phone.
Kim Eun-joo had written seven short-form dramas and ten full-length series, and not a single one of them had failed. Granted, her last piece had ended with every character exploding, and she'd eaten a mountain of hate for it — but it hadn't so much as dented her.
Of course it hadn't. Spending time getting roasted and wallowing in despair was a luxury. Writing the next drama was infinitely more important.
This one, moreover, was a collaboration with the director they called a master, Kang Wonseong, and it had drawn a flood of attention from the very start.
"Oh, for fuck's sake…! So what if it has?! I haven't even finished episode three!"
Filming started in a month. By now she should have had at least seven or eight episodes in hand. The script sitting in front of her amounted to a grand total of two.
Bzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzt!
The phone still buzzing was, without a doubt, another call demanding to know when the pages would be ready.
"I know! I'm sorry! When they told me to hire an assistant writer, I should have hired one! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm an idiot!!"
From her very first success, people had been telling her to bring on an assistant. She had ignored or refused every last one of them. A drama she wrote with her own hands, untouched by anyone else's opinions or fingerprints — that, she had believed, was the only kind that truly belonged to her.
She had been wrong. The reason so many writers hired assistants wasn't to steal their work. It was to use a brutal clock efficiently. She had figured that out far, far too late.
"Should I ask them to find me an assistant even now? But… how much would I have to pay? Do I even… have money? How much have I made, anyway? I don't know… uuugh… I want to go home… I don't want to eat tuna crackers anymore…"
Alone in the room, Kim Eun-joo cried and laughed and raged — and kept pounding the keyboard the entire time. Industry people who had stumbled onto this spectacle had taken to calling her psychometry.
Then—
BANG BANG!
Someone hammered on the front door.
"Eek! Wh-who's there… d-don't tell me… I didn't pay the rent? Or… the police? Did the neighbors report me for making too much noise…"
"Hey! Kim Eun-joo! Open the damn door!"
"Ah…"
The voice on the other side melted the panic right out of her. It wasn't the police, and it wasn't the landlord. It was Director Kang Wonseong.
"What is it."
The weeping, wailing wreck from a moment ago had vanished without a trace. She opened the door looking perfectly composed.
"Do you have any idea what time it is? I thought you were the cops."
"There she goes again… No, that is not the point right now! Come look at an audition with me."
"An audition? Casting's already done, isn't it? What audition are you even—"
Mid-sentence, Kim Eun-joo understood. The urgency on Kang Wonseong's face. The fact that he'd shown up at this hour at all. Something this urgent could only mean one thing.
"Don't tell me! You found her? That last cornerstone?!"
"Yeah. She's the exact image I had in my head. There's just… a problem."
"What kind of problem?"
"Look at this first."
Kang Wonseong pulled out his phone and played a video. It showed a girl busking alone on the street.
"Wow… she's beautiful. She's exactly like the Kang Sora I imagined, and… wait."
Kim Eun-joo caught something odd, but she kept her mouth shut until the video ended, then spoke.
"Director Kang… don't tell me… for Kang Sora? C-cast her. Right now."
"Yeah… I'd love to. Problem is… she's a civilian. No agency."
"Ah! That's why you need an audition. All right. The timing is… not great, but for my drama, I'll make it work."
Kim Eun-joo's mind was already racing. Sixteen episodes total, and I'm on six now… factoring in the rewrites in between, I have to get through episode twelve by the end of this month.
A hellish forced march loomed, and even so, Kim Eun-joo was excited. The girl in the video had the face and the voice of the Kang Sora she had pictured — as if the character had stepped straight out of the type on the page, just for her.
"Good… I've got a spark."
Kim Eun-joo hurried back to her desk and started hammering the keyboard again.
A few days later.
I got up early, took a quick shower, and left the house. A few days back, Director Kang Wonseong had called and begged me — practically pleaded — to come in for an audition, and I hadn't been able to say no.
A guy who looks fifty bowing his head at me over the phone. How was I supposed to ignore that.
Even as a man, I'd been told I was too soft-hearted more times than I could count. I just hadn't expected it to still be true.
So changing the outside doesn't change what's inside, huh.
Whatever. Fine by me.
Today's appointment was at four in the afternoon — possible only because it was still summer break. As I'd already told him, I had to go back to school soon. Even if I passed, actually joining a drama was out of the question.
He can figure that part out himself.
Over the last few days I'd been putting my newly acquired skill to work. I'd been mimicking the performances of actors in dramas, sinking into those characters, practicing ten minutes a day. The results had been a roaring success. It wasn't a huge jump, but I could tell my acting had genuinely improved.
How did I know?
Well.
I opened the Status Window.
Trait: I'm a Natural Genius (C)
Acting had climbed from C to C+. On top of that, I'd been hitting achievements every day and dumping every point I earned into Stamina. The person looking back at me from the Status Window was nothing like the one who'd first opened it.
And all of it in less than a month.
"Right. No time to stand around. I need to hurry."
Around four in the afternoon, I arrived in front of the meeting place near Pangyo Station. I tipped my head back. A seriously tall building loomed overhead.
"That's high… which floor was it again?"
I could have walked straight in, but I pulled out my phone and checked the time and the designated location two, three times. About ten minutes left until the appointment, and the place was correct.
I confirmed the sign posted on the building: floors six through ten belonged to Athena Studio.
ATHENA STUDIO — Floors 6–10
"Guess that's terrestrial TV for you. Looks like they've got money."
After Kang Wonseong's call, I'd looked it up. Athena Studio was a production company so huge that broadcast networks and streaming platforms were constantly at each other's throats trying to poach it.
"Am I going to end up coming to places like this later, too?"
When that day came, I'd rather walk in as a VTuber than as a celebrity — but that was a problem for another time.
The hour was just about here, so I headed inside and called Director Kang Wonseong.
"Miss Jiwoo. Have you arrived?"
"Yes, I'm on the first floor."
"Understood. I'll be right down."
Huh? His voice felt different. Before, he'd been shouting with excitement and dropping informal speech left and right. Now it was polite, even, and calm.
"He's coming down himself, though? Does that mean he's greeting me in person?"
A director ought to sit pretty high on the food chain. I wanted to wonder why he'd personally come down to meet a guest — but past experience had already taught me the answer. It meant the role I was auditioning for today mattered that much.
A few minutes later, a woman approached — not Kang Wonseong, and not even the same gender.
"You're Lee Jiwoo, correct?"
She was an assistant director, she said, sent down at Kang Wonseong's request. I followed her up to the seventh floor.
A lot of people were already there besides me.
"These people are…"
"All contestants here to land the role of Kang Sora."
Contestants?
Nobody had mentioned that.
I'd been told to drop by, take a quick look at an audition, and go home. I hadn't imagined anything on this scale.
Did I come here for nothing?
Just the people visible in the waiting room numbered well over thirty. Tattered paper scripts hung from their hands, the kind of wear that shouted how hard they'd analyzed and worked, visible even from a distance.
I found an empty seat and sat down to wait my turn.
"Who is that?"
"A face I've never seen. Did she wander in by mistake?"
"Doubt it. She came in with the assistant director."
I could feel the stares gathering, the silent pressure stacking up, and cold sweat started to bead — and then my savior appeared.
"Miss Jiwoo. This way."
I'd been in the waiting room for barely three minutes, and my back was already soaked.
"Director!"
I stood as I looked at Kang Wonseong's face, and he smiled, as if to tell me I could relax.
"You'll be going first, Miss Jiwoo. And I'm sorry. Things ended up like this. Originally I only wanted to see you, but the investors put the squeeze on us, and we had no choice but to run the audition this way."
"No, I'm grateful you're looking out for me at all."
"And in here, please call me Director, not PD."
I walked into the audition room with Kang Wonseong, and the whispering behind us only got louder.
"A parachute hire?"
"If she's not a parachute, what is she? I've never seen the director smile like that, though."
"She's definitely a parachute. That's why he's being so nice to her. All we ever get is that ice-cold stare."
Kang Wonseong's appearance only sharpened the looks aimed at me.