Beautiful World — Song Dahyun
The novel's setting is a parallel-dimension Earth.
8:50 p.m.
The appointment was around nine, yet the intercom was already ringing. Song Dahyun's face appeared on the screen from inside her car, and the moment Jiyu saw it she hit the gate release.
"Hey. Don't tell me the guest you said was coming is Song Dahyun?"
"Yeah. You know her?"
"She was a year ahead of us at school. Osung Arts High."
Korea really was a small country. Even expanded to the three northern provinces, one degree of separation was usually enough to connect almost anyone. I had been a fan of Song Dahyun, but I had never known which high school she had graduated from or which university she attended.
"Hmm… are you close?"
"No. Not me. Hye-yun unnie is. They were in the theater club together—Dahyun unnie and Hye-yun unnie."
"Oh… so with the friend-cover and you, that makes three I could strip and eat?"
"What the hell. Hmph. This is getting awkward—I'm just going next door."
"Why?"
Jiyu stood up abruptly and headed for the stairs to the second floor. She was clearly planning to cross over to the neighboring house via the second-floor terrace.
"I get how Dahyun unnie must be feeling. And watching someone I know get eaten by you is kind of… a lot."
"Hmm… fair enough. Go on up."
Jiyu nodded and disappeared up the second-floor stairs.
Emily was staring blankly after her.
"What, you want to go too?"
"Yes. Thinking about it, if I'm here Dahyun-ssi will probably get even more nervous. It's for the role, sure, but in a way it's basically body lobbying."
"Hmm… yeah, I guess so."
"I'll head up as well. Introduce me later."
"Why? I said she's an actress—makes me want to eat her."
"Honey!!! Honestly. I'm going."
Emily's face flushed bright red; she scrambled to her feet and vanished upstairs after Jiyu.
Being alone in a house this big suddenly made the silence feel heavy.
If this were a real-sex film, it would be a massive decision for any actress—yet she had told Jeong-eun she would take the supporting role. What must she have been feeling?
Song Dahyun was a rising CF star, but she still hadn't earned recognition as an actress. She had appeared in a few youth dramas, always with a question mark hanging over her acting ability. She was probably aiming for a radical image overhaul. Her figure was good enough that she would have felt confident about it.
But this wasn't even acting. This was sex—just so the two roles could get comfortable with each other. I still couldn't understand the state of mind that would make someone accept an offer like that.
Well… it is pretty insane.
It felt like a catastrophe brought on by my physical peculiarity. Once filming started, whether my trait was on or off, the moment I was inside her she would be unable to keep acting—either too wildly aroused or in too much pain.
Let's see. A woman who gets her drugs from me, the dealer, and then gets tamed by a huge cock until she's completely loyal?
Jeong-eun had half-remembered her own mother and improvised the role on the spot. Her late father had been a pure thug, yet her mother—tamed by that huge cock—had never been able to leave him. Jeong-eun had never understood it. Only a few hours ago she had finally said she understood her mother and fleshed the role out in detail.
Sorry, Jeong-eun, but your mother isn't my type.
The photo Jeong-eun had shown me. She had claimed she took after her father and, with a nervous expression, held out a picture of her mother. The woman was too thin, and her looks were utterly ordinary.
I already farmed that one out to Kang Ho.
Of course, when she looked disappointed at the rejection I told her I knew a friend with a huge cock and gave her Kang Ho's number. Mother-daughter cover was fine in theory, but the woman still had to be pretty. It would be hard enough as it was; I no longer wanted to take in any woman who wasn't a beauty—even as a bitch.
My thoughts had wandered from Song Dahyun all the way to Jeong-eun's mother when the front doorbell rang and a beauty's face appeared on the intercom.
Big eyes, a perfect cat-like beauty standing there looking tense. I picked up the intercom, told her to come in, and opened the door.
"Please come in."
I had finally pressed the bell.
I had hesitated over coming here more times than I could count. The self-loathing that this was no different from selling my body kept tormenting me without rest.
My popularity as a CF model had risen since high school. Then in my senior year I landed my first drama role and slammed straight into the wall of reality—the wall of talent. Only then did juniors like Hye-yun start looking like rivals, and little by little I began tasting frustration and defeat.
The drama At School had been a massive hit, yet a few netizens still called the acting awkward—and I was never left out of those comments. Was that when it started? I enrolled in private acting academies, even sought out great actors and begged for lessons, but I never once felt my acting improve.
Acting just stopped being fun.
Bitterness. I had started as a supporting actress, and now I had been demoted to quasi-supporting roles in morning dramas. Naturally my CF work dried up as well. After two years stuck in supporting parts, even when I dropped my rate from three hundred million a year to one hundred million, the ads stopped coming.
Then the agency president had awkwardly pushed a scenario across the desk.
Beautiful World. Scenario. Director: Ahn Jeongeun.
Who was Ahn Jeongeun? Classified as non-commercial cinema, yet she had already taken Cannes twice. Word had spread through the industry that she was finally shooting a commercial film—and that scenario had landed in my hands.
Ordinary people might not know her, but every actress—especially every actress—knew the fatal flaw of her work: she was a real-sex-obsessed pervert.
The moment I took the scenario, Ahn Jeongeun's previous films flashed through my mind. Beautiful visual aesthetics. Colors like a watercolor painting—that was the first impression. And every film contained several bed scenes, rendered with genuine sensuality. Like paintings. Lavish backdrops, a man and a woman inside them—animalistic yet painterly, an irony. Always too obscene, yet after watching you never felt it as mere obscenity; the editing left only the beauty of the male and female bodies lingering in your mind. Controversy always followed, but the impression that remained was never filth—only the beauty of the human form.
I read the scenario over and over in my studio apartment and fell completely for the lead role. I had never known a man, so I was terrified—but if I could pull off that lead, it felt like it would become a massive turning point for my acting.
I have to do this.
I couldn't rot away as a quasi-supporting player in morning dramas. Every actress who had worked with Ahn Jeongeun had, at some point, exploded in skill and become a rising star of Chungmuro. Exposure… as a woman it was shameful and something to hesitate over, yet the fruit I would gain in exchange for baring this body to the public looked impossibly sweet.
But she rejected me—said I looked too young, not mature enough. The despair of that. I had steeled myself to that degree and still the refusal came instantly. Devastation. My hunger for the role only grew, but what could I do when the director herself said no?
After that, every scenario that came in looked childish next to Ahn Jeongeun's script—juvenile teen comedies, forced and without any logic, nothing that would help my filmography or my craft. And once I had accepted the idea of her film, the agency started casually sliding me commercial scripts with high sexual content. Shame and self-loathing washed over me; my self-esteem plummeted to the floor. Those films were stuffed with bed scenes that the story didn't even need. Obviously destined to flop.
When I was worn out from the quiet pressure, the agency decided there was nothing left to squeeze from me and terminated the contract. From last month I had been hunting for work without an agency or manager, growing more exhausted by the day.
I was crying in my studio after an audition rejection text when another message arrived. I wiped my tears, checked it, and had to read it several times, certain it was a prank.
There was an address and other minor details attached, but the only words that registered were "Director Ahn Jeongeun."
Lee Muhyeok was a supporting role, yet in the scenario he drove the film's central conflict and had nearly lead-level screen time. Drug addiction. A woman tamed by a huge cock. The lead herself eventually transformed into something like that by the end. It felt like a character created specifically to foreshadow how the lead would change. I thought it over for a moment.
Hmm… I won't be able to show the psychological shift, but Director Ahn will pull the visuals off properly.
The full scenario hadn't arrived yet, but if I just overacted beyond the lead's final shocking state, that would be enough. I found myself leaning more and more toward accepting Director Ahn's offer.
I couldn't understand Director Ahn's message at all. Why did getting close require sex?
After I admitted I had no sexual experience, no reply came for a long time. Anxiety mounted. Was she going to give the role to someone else?
I should have just said yes… you idiot.
It was a clear statement that she would look for another woman. Panic hit. What did it matter if I had sex with a stranger? Director Ahn was offering me the part.
I frantically typed on my phone.
In that instant I stared blankly at my phone and realized exactly what I had just done. Devastation, self-loathing, shame—every negative emotion crashed over me. I showered and, in the car heading to the hotel, cried without stopping. Midway the address changed and I had to reroute toward Mapo-gu, which only prolonged the tears. I hesitated for a long time in the parking lot before finally pressing the bell.
Now that it's come to this… I have to catch Director Ahn's eye.
The door opened. With trembling hands I pushed the handle down and stepped inside. My legs shook violently, but I clung to the thought of my career as an actress and forced myself to overcome the sense of wrongness this den of a house gave off.