Living Alone
The acceptance text had arrived.
I could be sure of it now, couldn't I? This body—Son Yuna—seemed to have a real talent for Menhera acting.
"She was a Menhera character to begin with, after all."
Even after the interview, I'd kept practicing on my own, watching one video after another. Other kinds of acting felt a little off, but the moment I slipped into Menhera, I got this distinct sense that it simply worked. At this point, digging into Menhera acting looked like my only real option.
"Of course, if Menhera is all I ever do, a lead role is going to be hard to come by."
Menhera characters were, if you had to pin them down, closer to villains. Playing the heroine wouldn't be easy—but I hadn't had any grand ambitions to begin with. Eating well and living decently was more than enough. More than anything, take a heroine role and sooner or later I'd have to film a kiss scene with the male lead, wouldn't I?
"...I really don't want that."
Okay. Giving up on the lead. Menhera specialist it is.
When I thought about it, there were actors famous precisely for playing villains. Picking a lane and digging into it might actually be a pretty solid strategy. All right. The policy was set.
"First things first—should I start by cleaning?"
I looked around the studio apartment, still as modest as they came. And what was waiting for me, now that I'd passed the interview? Living alone. That was what.
I'd already known Son Yuna's home life wasn't good. A father missing—whether alive or dead, no one could say. A mother who looked at her daughter and saw a stumbling block. Relatives who didn't want to take her in, either.
Isn't this backstory a little much?
Probably some cruel bit of groundwork from the devs, laying the track so they could add Son Yuna as a playable character later. Acting talent: average. Money: a flat zero. Home life: rock bottom. Her only advantage was her face—a Very Hard raising difficulty reserved for veteran players. And thanks to that, the only one suffering was me, the one stuck inside her.
"Tsk..."
I'd gotten into Geumhwa Arts High, but not into the dorms. Was it because they ran the thing by lottery? Or was this, too, the devs being cruel on purpose? Either way, I'd be living in this studio for a while longer.
For the record, Son Yuna's guardian was listed as her aunt. I'd called her once before, and she hadn't seemed like a bad person. It was just that everything about her felt intensely businesslike—as if she were looking after Son Yuna because duty left her no choice, not because she'd ever wanted to be her guardian.
Anyway. That wasn't the important part.
This month's living expenses had come in from my aunt. Add the two million won Son Yuna's birth mother had sent before, and I couldn't exactly say I had nothing.
"I have no idea how many months I can live on this..."
No matter how I turned it over, four hundred thousand won a month was far too little. But I couldn't ask for more. My aunt was already covering the rent and the maintenance fees on this studio in full, and she was probably just an ordinary office worker. I knew perfectly well how hard it was to watch several hundred thousand won walk out the door every single month.
I'd sooner pick up a part-time job—but was there even a shop that would hire me while I was still a middle schooler? Streaming crossed my mind for a second. Then I remembered I'd have to buy broadcasting gear that wasn't cheap, so the startup cost alone was brutal. You also needed real soundproofing, and this studio was hardly a good place to go live. Most of all, pouring a pile of money into it didn't guarantee a single viewer. A pretty face by itself got old fast, and I wasn't even good at games. Right now, the risk looked a little too high.
What else was there to do?
"Until I can actually earn something, I'll have to pinch every won I can."
This world, after all, was the one inside the game Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department. Which was to say it was no exaggeration to call the Professional Actor Class I'd just entered the center of the world. A veteran with decades on the stage still couldn't play a child. Science had come a long way, but nobody had figured out how to grow young again. So whenever a drama or a film needed a student, the casting call landed on Geumhwa Arts High's Professional Actor Class more often than not. Other auditions came knocking, too. Geumhwa Arts High School was a land flowing with milk and honey. There was a reason I'd sat that entrance exam, Menhera acting and all.
...The problem was that it was still January. School, of course, wouldn't start until March. Even if I wanted to learn how to act, I couldn't set foot on campus for another month—and I didn't have any real way to make money, either. A minor, trying to participate in the economy? Not easy.
But—!
"Living alone? That, I'm already used to."
Heh. A laugh slipped out before I knew it. Live by yourself long enough, and you start talking to yourself. It just happens.
Why had I ended up possessing Son Yuna? Maybe there really was a god in this world, and maybe that god had stuck me in her specifically to put me in a bind. But me? I'd been living alone since before I was Son Yuna.
There's a saying: otakus are broke. To keep up with gacha games on a salary that amounted to pocket change, I'd had to shave my living expenses down to the bone. The fully maxed Menhera characters that had passed through my hands numbered more than ten. In other words, when it came to saving money, I was already a specialist.
From here on, call me the Queen of Frugality.
And so I, Son Yuna, Queen of Frugality, opened an online shopping app.
One thing I'd learned while living as Son Yuna was that her stomach was small. Every time I looked in the mirror I thought her face was beautiful, but she couldn't even finish a whole fried chicken. A body optimized for living alone, truly. So one serving of frozen fried rice came to about two hundred grams. Buy a three-kilogram bulk bag, and that was fifteen meals.
In other words—972 won a meal! Cheaper than filling up on instant ramen! And who was eating three meals a day anymore? Two meals was the trend now, wasn't it? About sixty meals a month, then. Buy twelve kilograms of frozen fried rice, and my food costs for the month came to a mere sixty thousand won...! Aunt had sent four hundred thousand for living expenses this month. Which left me three hundred and forty thousand?
"This is an absolute steal."
There was no way I could leave it sitting there. I ordered the frozen fried rice on the spot.
The Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John—and the gospel of frozen fried rice. Thus I, Son Yuna, could rightfully be called Queen of Frugality, Queen of Fried Rice, and Queen of Defrosting. Eating nothing but fried rice every day did get a little old, I'll admit. Even so, a specialist at living alone is a genius at not spending money, and I got through February just fine without burning through much of anything. On the days I couldn't face another bowl, I fell back on ramen.
And then came March.
With the entrance ceremony behind me, I had safely become a freshman in the Professional Actor Class at Geumhwa Arts High.
"Hmm... today's a happy occasion. Maybe I'll eat something good tonight."
In honor of getting in, a special meal seemed allowed. A convenience-store lunch box on the way home, then. I was thinking it when the door at the front of the classroom opened.
"Hey, kids. I'm Oh Yeo-jeong. I'll be your homeroom teacher for the next year."
Click-clack. Click.
Her heels rang out across the room, and then the woman introduced herself. Teacher Oh Yeo-jeong. A name I knew. She was an NPC who showed up often enough in Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department that there was no mistaking her.
"It's nice to meet all of you, so eyes on me! Starting now, you're each going to come up front and introduce yourselves!"
"What? Introductions? Up in front?"
"Yep! You all came here because you want to be actors, right? So you don't get to be shy about something like this!"
Teacher Oh Yeo-jeong answered the student at full volume. Kind and warm by nature, yes—but not the sort who let anything slide. A little intense. Still, as homeroom teachers went, she was a good one.
Huh. This is kind of amazing.
An NPC I'd run into so many times in the game was moving, vivid and alive, and a fondness I hadn't expected welled up in me. For all my complaining, I really had loved Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department. If I hadn't been dropped into Son Yuna, I might have enjoyed this moment a little more innocently.
"All right, let's start the introductions! From the front row!"
"Huh? You mean me?"
Teacher Oh Yeo-jeong pointed at the girl in the very front seat. It was the first day, so regardless of attendance numbers the students had sat wherever they liked. I'd taken the very back and hadn't seen who was up front—until that girl rose, hesitant, and I finally saw her face.
"Ghk..."
I caught my breath without meaning to. No surprise there. Just like Teacher Oh Yeo-jeong, it was a face I knew. Unlike the teacher, though, I couldn't feel even a scrap of fondness.
"Hello. I'm Lee Hana. Um, so... I hope we can all be friends! Please look after me! Hehe..."
If cherry blossoms in full, reckless bloom could become a person, wouldn't they look just like that? A cotton-candy softness, and with it the buoyant, tipsy feeling of someone floating. An innocent girl who seemed to have stepped straight out of a fairy tale.
Lee Hana. One of the five protagonists of Geumhwa Arts High School Acting Department—the first of them unlocked as a playable character, and the face on the game's very icon. The character who stood for the game itself. Her greatest gift was a genius for method acting.
And she was also the reason Son Yuna had dropped out of Geumhwa Arts High.
A sigh slipped out of me before I could stop it.