Practice Makes Perfect
The moment I finished reading the script PD Jang had sent over, one thought came to mind.
So my expectations for Yoo Seul-ho are still rock bottom, huh.
Despite how the latter half of the meeting had somehow seemed to tilt in my favor, the weight of the character I'd been assigned was remarkably modest.
Looks like the Useless title is sticking around this time too.
I'd heard the nickname once or twice before.
Supposedly it came from the fact that while he did show up on screen, he only ever played pointless characters who had no real purpose in the story.
And after spending the past week going through every one of Yoo Seul-ho's recent works, I had no choice but to agree.
Whatever expectations I'd had—how useless could he possibly be, really—were thoroughly crushed. He'd spent his entire career playing roles that were, frankly, a complete waste of screen time.
If I'd been Yoo Seul-ho, I'd have quit acting out of sheer wounded pride.
It actually struck me as strange that he'd kept at it while swallowing all that vicious abuse online.
Time to settle the books.
There was no way I could keep dragging around the Useless label forever.
Not that I had any grand ambitions about screen time. Hell, a role with barely a few lines of dialogue and a paycheck attached—that's free money, isn't it?
But I can't settle for money like this.
Knowing how celebrities rake in money by the hundreds of millions, the earnings Yoo Seul-ho stood to make from this project didn't even qualify as pocket change.
We were talking about a salary a twenty-year-old kid fresh out into the world would make more of working part-time at a café.
Whatever sat in Yoo Seul-ho's personal bank account was just as pathetic.
If I want to make real money, I have to get out of this position first.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why he'd signed with this trash heap of an agency in the first place, but if I wanted to hit my financial targets, Yoo Seul-ho had to become an actor worth something.
Only then could I find a good agency—one willing to legally and completely untangle this contract for me.
Look, even if I marched into my current agency's office right now and demanded to know if they honestly thought this contract made sense, nothing would change.
With a company this far gone, you don't try to fix it. You escape it, fast. That's the answer.
And to do that? Simple. More companies needed to start drooling over Yoo Seul-ho.
"Well, a man's got to eat, even if it's scraps."
So instead of sending PD Jang a reply full of complaints, I wrote back proposing a face-to-face meeting three days out.
Then I got to work practicing, so I could do justice to the character I'd been handed.
"Hyung, come here for a second."
"…! Wh-why? What? I was being quiet! I didn't say anything. What now?!"
Hyun Jin-gae, Yoo Seul-ho's manager, backed away with a face drained of all color.
Apparently the beatings I'd been dispensing lately had done their job—he was already trembling at the mere sound of my voice.
The old me would have sent him off with a gentle pat on the back, but seeing as I currently needed to play a raving lunatic, I had no choice but to summon the manager yet again.
"Did somebody say something? Get over here already."
"Hah…."
The manager, looking for all the world like a man walking to his own execution, dragged himself one step, then another, and only reached me after a small eternity.
I stared at him in silence for a long moment before asking.
"Hyung, which would be more painful for you?"
"Wh-what would."
"What kind of behavior would hurt you more? Say I acted like I wasn't going to hit you, and then did. Or would it be worse if I just kept hitting you the whole time?"
"Not hitting me isn't on the table…? Nobody beats on people these days. Let's use some common sense here, Seul-ho."
I beamed at the manager as he trembled like a fragile little lamb.
"Hyung, I'm playing a psycho. You can't demand common sense from a psycho."
"……."
"Acting really is hard. I don't exactly want to become some crazy bastard who beats people up, but man, this profession is brutal."
"Doesn't look the least bit hard from where I'm sitting…."
"What was that?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all!"
The manager averted his eyes and scrunched himself into the corner of the sofa.
When I'd first started roughing him up, he'd fought back hard, but in just a matter of days he'd turned into a docile little sheep—and honestly, that transformation felt familiar.
Violent people only understand violence. Works every time.
Frankly, considering everything Yoo Seul-ho had suffered at this guy's hands, what I was doing now barely qualified as a warm-up. This much was practically child's play.
After taking hits for two straight days, he must have decided enough was enough, because he started flapping his mouth—"Hey! I'm going to report you! This is manager abuse!"—so I smashed his phone and his laptop on the spot.
Then I locked him in the room so not a shred of evidence could point my way, and spent an entire day gaslighting him. The result was a surprisingly useful little assistant.
"Who usually watches rom-coms?"
"Well… everyone, really. Men and women, young and old. The precise target demographic shifts depending on the show, though."
Apparently Hyun Jin-gae wasn't just a pretty badge at the agency—he actually knew a fair amount about how sets and productions worked.
For someone like me, whose only knowledge of the industry was celebrity gossip and who knew absolutely nothing about films or dramas, the information I could squeeze out of him was genuinely useful.
"So who's the target for PD Jang's project?"
"One look at the script tells you everything. The setting's a university, for starters. Spring semester, cherry blossoms in bloom. Usually it's young women who watch these dramas, but a lot of middle-aged viewers in their forties and fifties go for them too."
Whether it was fear of getting hit again or not, the manager had started answering with real diligence.
According to his rundown, PD Jang's new drama, Space of You and Me, was a rom-com that followed every cliché in the book.
A male lead ground down by a lonely, exhausting life meets a heroine who's like a ray of sunshine, and through her finds happiness—a story you've seen a hundred times.
And my role in all of it? The male lead's older brother.
Not that it had any real bearing on the two leads' romance.
I was nothing more than a serial domestic abuser who beat on the male lead whenever the mood struck, and a piece of garbage who hit on the heroine even though she was younger than him.
There was no plotline where my character's presence accelerated their relationship or drove the story anywhere. Nothing.
You could pluck this character out of the script and the story wouldn't hit a single snag. Truly, by definition, a useless role.
"If you want to act well, you start with understanding your character."
"The only thing my character does is beat up his little brother. What exactly is there to interpret?"
"He doesn't just beat up his little brother, he also hits on the heroine! And you've been beating me up plenty these past days, haven't you? Right? So since you've practiced that part to death, how about working on something else for a change?"
"You're not seriously telling me to practice hitting on you."
"No! You crazy bastard—wait, no, what I mean is it's time to practice something other than hitting people. You meet PD Jang tomorrow, remember."
Hmm. Fair point, actually.
The manager had a case. But I had zero desire to practice flirting by making moves on my manager, so I told him to get lost—which, judging by how fast he bolted from the room, suited him just fine.
A psycho, huh….
Only when I was finally alone did I fix my gaze on the script and study it.
It was, without question, exactly what the requirements called for. A villain the audience could tear into with gleeful abandon.
Honestly, the whole "practice" thing was just an excuse to beat on the manager—portraying a pathetic loser like this didn't call for any deep philosophical examination. I'd watched degenerates like this my whole life. All I had to do was imitate one.
I don't even need to look far for a model.
Woo Jun-seo, the man playing the male lead—I could just copy his private self. How many times had I watched him cozy up to woman after woman, and bully whichever coworkers or friends seemed easiest to push around?
But while Woo Jun-seo was serving as my reference material, the male lead he'd been cast to play was a kind, tragic character.
I found it genuinely hilarious that a man like Woo Jun-seo would be playing a role like that, and it got my gears turning.
My character exists to make the male lead shine, right?
A piece of trash is just trash—but a piece of trash set beside the male lead? That's the kind of villain audiences love to hate, isn't it?
For hours, I pored over the male lead's various lines—lines designed to make viewers fall for him—and held each one up against my own meager handful of dialogue.
By the time I'd worked nearly through the night, the day of the face-to-face meeting had arrived.
"Aren't you tired? I swear the lights were still on in there all night."
The manager, who'd been sleeping curled up in the corner of the sofa, rubbed his eyes and asked.
I'd ordered him not to even think about going home and to stay camped out in the living room I was using, and by the look of it, he was following instructions to the letter.
"I've never needed much sleep."
Just like the original me, who'd never slept more than four hours a night, Yoo Seul-ho also seemed well acquainted with insomnia.
Then again, I'd already figured that out when I saw the pile of sleeping pills stacked on his nightstand.
I am tired, though.
In the ten days I'd been living as Yoo Seul-ho, I hadn't once managed a proper four hours of sleep.
Going ten consecutive days without proper rest left my body feeling heavy, sluggish.
Maybe I looked even worse than yesterday, because the manager kept glancing at me nervously the entire way to the meeting.
—Ding.
"Hello."
"There you are! Oh, and you brought your manager too, wonderful."
The meeting place was not occupied by PD Jang alone.
"Senior, we meet again."
Woo Jun-seo cut in yet again, flashing his saintly smile.
I met his gaze—and returned the smile—while staring at the very face I'd used most often as reference material during all those days of practice.
"Yes, likewise. You must really like PD Jang, Mr. Jun-seo. You're at every single one of these meetings."
"Ah, well. I've been entrusted with an important role this time around, and the PD has been so kind as to place a great deal of faith in my judgment."
At his bright, crinkling eye-smile, I gave a small nod.
"You're the one who requested me, aren't you, Mr. Jun-seo? Thank you for that."
"Haha, don't mention it! Like I said, I'm a fan of yours, Senior. I've always wanted to see you act in person."
But beneath that good-natured laugh, the eyes watching me were steeped in mockery and contempt.
The feeling came through crystal clear: he can't wait to watch me butcher this performance with his own two eyes.
"Shall we get right down to business, then?"
"Ooh, yes, let's. Do you need any extra time to prepare?"
I turned my head toward PD Jang, whose eyes were burning far brighter than they had at our last meeting.
"No, I'm ready now."
"You only had three days, so don't be too nervous. Today's really just about getting a feel for it—no pressure at all."
This isn't even the actual shoot. Pressure for what?
Letting PD Jang's words wash over me, I pulled out the script I'd been rereading to the point of fraying over the last three days.
"Then let's start with your first appearance scene."
"Right, let's see, let's see… oh! This is the one you're in with Jun-seo. Jun-seo, be a dear and read the other part for him, would you?"
"Of course, PD-nim."
Woo Jun-seo settled obediently into the seat across from me.
I could feel the eyes of the manager beside me and PD Jang across the table on the both of us.
"Whenever you're ready, Senior."
Looking at the man grinning at me with barely concealed glee, I shot to my feet.
"…? Senior—"
Cutting off Woo Jun-seo's bewildered words, I spat out my line.
"You still not dead yet?"