Menhera Stalker (1)
Even people with no particular interest in subculture had, somewhere along the way, grown comfortable tossing around the word tsundere. Menhera seemed to be seeping into ordinary conversation in much the same way, a little at a time. You'd hear someone say they'd been kind of menhera lately, or that so-and-so had completely menhera'd out. Watching it happen left me strangely impressed, and a little reassured besides. If the word was spreading like that, then tastes like mine were perfectly normal, weren't they? Everyone has preferences. I liked menhera characters.
There was something about that desperate edge that got its hooks in me. I watched the ending where Son Yuna wound up working at a bar, and I scrambled to download Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department.
It was a shame she wasn't a playable character, but I liked Son Yuna a great deal all the same. The characterization was good, and the character design in particular had won me over.
"Not that I ever wanted to become Son Yuna herself."
I let out a sigh.
I woke to the stale, musty smell peculiar to a cheap studio, a dull ache already settled through my back and lower spine. There was no bed. I'd slept on a blanket spread over the floor.
"Ugh. I'm so stiff..."
What came out was a slightly high soprano, and I flinched before I could stop myself. My line of sight sat a little lower than it ought to. My hands were slender. And once I'd confirmed the swell of my chest as well, I sighed and pushed myself upright.
I padded across the room. No bed, no desk—only a shabby refrigerator, a few worn blankets, and a handful of hangers dangling from a drying rack, all of it sliding past the edge of my vision. The bathroom I stepped into was absurdly narrow, and the view inside was poorer still. No bathtub, of course. A shower hose, a mirror over the sink, a toilet. That was the entire inventory. I couldn't help frowning, and yet the woman frowning back from the glass was still beautiful.
Ha.
"Pretty. Disgustingly pretty."
I had to say it.
Dark brown hair spilled down in soft waves. Her skin was white as polished jade, and her irises shone red, like a carefully cut gem. Large eyes, a straight, finely shaped nose, features cut clean and distinct—a face assembled from every element of beauty had no choice but to be beautiful. The problem was that, aside from being pretty, the body came with no remarkable advantages at all.
"Looks like going back to my old self is off the table."
I pinched my cheek on the off chance this was a dream. It hurt, of course. Today marked the third day since I'd arrived in this world, and no matter how much time passed, I was still Son Yuna. Maybe I was going to have to live as her for the rest of my life.
"Not even a little bit happy about it."
The face was pretty, but she'd failed her idol audition for lack of talent—she probably couldn't sing. Her ability as an actress sat at a thoroughly middling level, and she wasn't rich in knowledge of the craft either. Her character was poor. So was her wallet; she was broke enough to be living in a rundown studio like this. The most decisive problem of all was that Son Yuna's home life was a wreck.
Her father was missing. He'd sunk too deep into gambling and fled in the night. Her mother had remarried after an affair and treated Son Yuna as an obstacle. The relatives were just as reluctant to take her in, which was why her ending had already been written as ruin. She clashes with the protagonist over a lead role in a drama and loses, then drops out of school and lives out her days working at a bar.
"How am I supposed to work in a place like that...? They could've at least dropped me into some other character..."
I spat the complaint out, but nothing in particular changed. It didn't look as though I'd be escaping Son Yuna's body. I just couldn't accept it. Son Yuna was unquestionably a menhera character, but I only liked menhera—mentally, I was an extremely healthy person. The only thing to say was that someone had read the address wrong.
I raked my fingers through my hair, then hunted down my phone and checked the date.
Geumhwa Arts High School's interview exam would be held on December 12. In other words, I had about forty-eight hours left. The situation was hopeless, but I had never been the sort of person who liked to give up. If I couldn't go back to the way things were, then I would simply try everything I could do as Son Yuna. And the first thing I had to do was get into the Professional Actor Class at Geumhwa Arts High.
Son Yuna doesn't have a scrap of talent. Even so, it's not as if there's no way at all.
This was the world inside a game, and I had played Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department more times than I could count. I had the knowledge of the original to show for it. The game was so stuffed with random events that I honestly wasn't sure how much that knowledge would help—but it had to be better than nothing. Either way, if I wanted to make use of it, I obviously needed to become a student at Geumhwa Arts High School.
Fail to get in, and the only future waiting was a job at a bar!
"The lucky part is that the interview is a fixed event."
In the game, the interview was the segment that served as the tutorial, so it played out the same way no matter the run. I already knew the prompt.
And if I had to name the acting I was most confident in...
"...It really is just the menhera act, isn't it."
No matter how I turned it over, there was nothing else.
A Korean film had taken a prize at an international film festival, and on Netplus, Korean dramas had claimed the number-one spot in viewership more than once. On the strength of that, the Professional Actor Class at Geumhwa Arts High School received government support, and tuition was free. Put another way, the nation's pride was on the line. That was why getting into the Professional Actor Class had to be difficult, staying enrolled had to be difficult, and graduating had to be difficult too.
Today was Friday, December 12. The day of the Professional Actor Class interview.
"I wish we'd cut more of them in the first round. I can barely remember the performances from the front of the line."
"Doesn't that just mean they didn't leave an impression? Don't think too hard about it, Director. You only need to pick the performers who caught your eye."
"I don't know if I should say this, but there's no middle ground."
The man let out a heavy sigh.
"There were a few students who stood out, I'll grant you, but most of them felt as if they didn't really understand their roles."
"I think that can't be helped. They're children. They don't have the experience."
"Still, some of them have a sense for it. Once they've built up a bit of experience, we can just take the ones who look like they'll be worth keeping an eye on."
The admissions examiners were trading remarks like that. The Professional Actor Class interview was conducted by five examiners in all. Three of them were teachers employed at Geumhwa Arts High, and the remaining two were a drama director and a working actor invited from outside. Satisfy even one of them, and you could consider the entrance exam passed.
"Let's see... Next is applicant number 431, Son Yuna."
An examiner called the name. With a creak of the hinges, the door opened, and a girl stepped into view.
"Oh."
One of the examiners let out a quiet breath of admiration.
A face that could have put an idol to shame. There had been a few pretty applicants among this round's candidates, but it was no exaggeration to say the student before them stood in a class of her own. She was a little too poised to be called a third-year middle schooler, and yet something youthful still clung to her. It was a worn-out way to put it, but her eyes were like jewels—closer to garnet than to ruby, perhaps. Deep-set, and possessed of a pull that drew a person in.
"Ahem... Thank you for applying to Geumhwa Arts High School. That is..."
The examiner cleared his throat before he realized he was doing it. He looked over the application a few more times, but Son Yuna was indeed a third-year middle school student. She didn't appear to be wearing anything like makeup, and yet a face that overwhelming left a person no choice but to be flustered. He steadied his surprise and spoke calmly.
"The theme of this interview is 'the performance you are most confident in.' Please act it out in front of us."
"Yes. I understand."
Son Yuna nodded. Watching her, the examiner tilted his head. She was calm to an unnatural degree. The interview's theme hadn't been announced beforehand, and when the other students were told to perform on the spot, every one of them had panicked. Son Yuna wasn't surprised in the slightest. She only looked quietly over the examiners, one face at a time. In a good way, she didn't seem like a child at all.
Just as that thought settled, Son Yuna opened her mouth.
"The performance I'll be giving is a menhe— no. I'll be performing a stalker."
That was what she said.
...What?
What had she just said she was going to perform?