Look Only at Me!
Look Only at Me! (D)
Immersion +30%
A simple trait — and an extraordinary one — had appeared.
Immersion was what you needed to sink into a song, to inhabit a role when you acted. Even just living as a person, you needed a certain measure of it.
I decided to test it.
The trait is now in effect.
A faint light seeped into my body. Had it taken hold?
I lifted an arm. I checked myself over, top to bottom. I had used the trait, and I could not find a single thing that had changed.
Did it fail to activate?
I called up the system and looked.
Currently active
It was running just fine. I still had no idea what was different. Maybe the rank was too low for me to feel it?
I turned toward the script on the desk and reached for it.
That was when the door slammed open.
"Jiwoo-chan! Come play a game with me!"
Tsuki burst in with the door flung wide. Her outfit was, to put it mildly, light — a thin T-shirt and a pair of short shorts, and that was it. Until a few weeks ago she had still been wearing pajamas to bed.
"I'm busy right now... huh?"
What was that? A second ago I had been completely occupied checking the trait. For some reason, I suddenly wanted to play a game.
"Sure..."
"Yay! Over here, hurry!"
Tsuki grabbed my hand and pulled me along. She led me out to the living room, where a console sat hooked up to the TV, and a controller was pressed into my palm.
"Okay, here we go!"
"Yeah."
On her cue I started moving the sticks. A few hours later — or maybe it could have been a lifetime — I found myself thinking I could keep playing forever and never get bored.
For someone who had done nothing but work until now, this stretch of time was unbearably sweet.
"Hahh... that was close..."
I had nearly blown the entire day on games and erased every other thing on my schedule. I barely tore myself away, bolted for the bathroom, and twisted the shower on.
Water roared down in a hard, driving stream. I stripped fast and stepped under it, trying to shock my head clear.
"Ugh... cold."
Cold water was the right medicine for snapping yourself awake.
"Ah... still, that game was really fun..."
Slap!
"Get a grip...! Games are over for today! You already played for six hours!"
I smacked my own cheeks and wrenched my gaze away from the direction of the living room.
Focus. Focus. Focus...
This was bad. The stray thoughts would not leave. Even with ice-cold water soaking my hair, my head was nothing but the game. I could not go on like this.
I told myself I would rinse off fast and just go to sleep, and I reached for the shampoo.
Click.
The bathroom doorknob turned. Fortunately the door was locked — I must have thrown the bolt without thinking when I came in.
"Someone's in here."
I said it so they would know, and turned back to the shower.
Click. Click. Click.
The knob kept turning. Irritation spiked, and I snapped.
"I said there's someone in here! I'm in the middle of a shower!"
"Ah..."
The sound that came through the door was a voice I had never heard before. Could you even call that a person's voice? It scraped, like something dragging across a throat, and a dank, crawling chill slid over my skin.
Wait... did I actually turn on the cold water?
I looked at the stream coming out of the showerhead. White steam was billowing off it in lazy curls, and the faucet was cranked all the way to hot. But no matter how I touched it, there was no heat at all — only a cold that clung to my hands and my body.
What the hell is this...
Click... creeeak...
The bathroom door opened, and someone stepped inside.
Splat... splat...
Wet footsteps crossed the tile and stopped at my back.
"W-who's there... Unnie? Is that you? You're messing with me, right? W-why did you turn the boiler off? I almost caught a cold..."
I kept talking, my voice shaking.
"...."
Nothing answered from behind me. Only a faint, prickling hostility.
Not my sister, then?
Then who else could even be in this house? An intruder? That was possible. This was a house of only women, after all.
Well. I was not particularly scared. If it was some creep, I would spin, hit a vital point, and run. I was not the type to just stand there and take it.
One... two... three!
Eyes still shut, I whipped around and kicked.
My leg cut through empty air. No impact. Nothing. If a person had been standing there, there should have been some kind of sound.
If it had been a person...
A person...?
I felt that crawling aura again. It was not merely cold. Goosebumps stood up over my whole body.
"Who... who are you..."
"Ah...."
That scraping sound again. My shoulders hunched in.
"I said who are you!"
Silence still hung in the air. I took one step back.
Thump.
My back hit the wall. There was nowhere left to run. I needed to open my eyes, but I was too terrified to do it.
"Ah..."
The scraping went on, and I flinched.
"What... what do you... what do you want from me!"
"Give it.... back..."
"Give what back, what are you even—!!!"
I opened my eyes.
And what I saw in front of me was—
"KYAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
The master of the ruins I should never, ever have entered.
"KYAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
"J-Jiwoo-chan? Are you okay?!"
Tsuki was shaking my shoulder. Ah. It had been a movie. Because of the trait, I had sunk too far into the protagonist. Earlier, when we were playing, I had felt the pain every time my character died. Now I could immerse myself in a film the same way, which made it more vivid, and more—
"J-Jiwoo-chan... h-hurry, the bathroom! Get to the bathroom!"
"Huh...? The bathroom?"
"L-look down!"
At Tsuki's panic I dropped my gaze.
"Ah... you've got to be kidding me."
The sofa was soaked. So were my pants. Seventeen years old, and I had wet myself.
"Ah, damn it.... this is so embarrassing.."
I am never using this trait again.
The next day. May 5th. Sunday morning, around ten.
"Yes, one iced americano and one cafe latte, is that right? That'll be 7,000 won."
A quiet cafe, even on a weekend. The little family-run shop saw fewer than a hundred customers on an average day and pulled in a paltry three hundred thousand won — deep in the red.
"Haa... I don't have time to be doing this."
Today's one-day cafe part-timer: Kang Jina. Bullied into it by her parents, she had given up her weekend lessons and shown up at the shop first thing in the morning.
She finished the two drinks with care, handed them off to the customers, and was on her way back behind the counter when her phone buzzed in her pocket. A short vibration — a text.
"Who is it? Who texts someone this early."
She pulled out her phone ready to curse whoever had the nerve to message her while she was already working.
Regarding any future complaints...
She could not believe it.
Three months. That was all it had been since she passed the audition. In that short span, a lot had happened — or not much at all, depending on how you looked at it.
"Cheapskate. Pervert... filthy womanizer..."
The curses spilled out of Jina in a greasy rush, and they were earned. Zero Entertainment, the place she had walked into with her heart pounding as a brand-new trainee, had been an absolute nightmare. That toad-faced man hovering at her side the whole time. That weird, dirty little smile he wore.
The worst of it was the things that toad had asked her to do.
Fuck... forget the age gap, how could he even ask for something like that... disgusting.
Jina's face twisted. There were still customers in the cafe, and scowling was bad for business, but this was a physiological reaction. She could not help it.
Good riddance, honestly... I was going to walk out of that filthy place myself. I was going to tell them tomorrow. This is better. I don't even have stuff there — and even if I did, it was all cheap junk. No real loss if I just leave it...
Jina sank down onto the floor. Disgust and revulsion had her hands and feet trembling; the strength had gone out of her.
That was when a song came through the cafe speakers. It had been playing for a while already. The previous track had ended, and the next one had come on.
And yet.
This voice...
Her eyes drifted toward the speaker before she knew she had moved.
"Wait? This song.... is that Kuro-nim? No way?"
"Kuro-nim? You watch anime now?"
"No! How do you not know who sang this?! Here, look."
"Whoa... she's pretty. That's Kuro?"
The buzz-cut guy smacked his handsome friend upside the head.
"Is Kuro-nim your buddy? And it's not anime, it's a VTuber! Just listen to the song."
The cafe's only two male customers sat perfectly still until the track ended, not even touching their drinks, just listening.
Jina listened quietly from the side as well. Almost no one came in at this hour anyway. She felt a little bad for her parents, but you could practically say the place was empty.
I knew it... this voice.
She had a pretty good idea who it was.
"So? What do you think?"
"Yeah... she can really sing. But this Kuro...."
"Nim."
"Right, the VTuber called Kuro-nim? Is she famous?"
"Obviously! She completely crushed first place in the VTuber Music Project they just held! Shame she doesn't stream much, though."
"How come?"
At the handsome guy's question, the buzz-cut one grumbled, disappointed.
"How should I know... she just said she can't right now because of personal stuff. Before that she only ever showed up on Luna's stream. But she said she's working hard getting ready to broadcast, so I'm gonna wait!"
The buzz-cut guy clenched a fist. He still looked like a student, and Jina almost envied how much fire he had.
Then—
"Anyway, what about Jiwoo? Did she text you back?"
"Nope. Either she's too busy and she's leaving us on read, or her phone exploded."
"Ah... yeah, even my phone's getting blown up by the class group chat right now... I can't imagine how bad it is for her."
Jiwoo?
Was he talking about the Jiwoo she knew? Lee Jiwoo, who had auditioned at Zero Entertainment with her and was now making waves in a drama.
So you're doing well. Not that I'm surprised. Even back then you could sing, and that acting you showed us... the dancing wasn't really dancing. You just acted your way through the choreography.
Jina picked her phone back up and opened social media. Popularity like that, and an agency would have no reason not to set up an account. She was sure it would already be live.
Found it!
In barely an hour since the account had gone up, Jiwoo's followers had already blown past a hundred thousand.