The Second Regressor

"The ticket booth is on the right side of the Basement 1 theater right now."

The scattered fragments of my memory began clicking into place like shards of a broken mosaic.

That's right. Around this time, the Blue Art Center was still tiny.

It was only years later, riding the drama adaptation and box-office success of Will the Wind Blow?, that they managed to swallow up the first floor as well.

It's fine, though. I can brush this off naturally as a simple mix-u—

"And that performance on the first day of class. Those were the director's cut lines. Word for word, without missing so much as a syllable."

...I could not.

"Yes. Honestly, I think the director's cut version resonates a little more... with all of you, doesn't it? Right here, the female lead begs the male lead to skip class with her and shouts, 'If you don't come, you're a traitor!' But betrayal is something you can only commit against your own team—against someone on your side, in other words."

"Ahh—so the two of them were already on the same team, weren't they? Which means their hearts were connected from this moment on."

"Exactly. But at first, I thought I should lean a little harder into the cute image, so I actually went with 'Come on, hurry. Are you making me go alone?'"

Later on, the director's cut had spread far and wide as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a short-form clip, becoming vastly more famous—chopped up and mixed with cutesy background music until it spawned its own dance challenge. That was why I'd completely forgotten.

Forgotten that what I'd delivered that day was never the original line at all.

I was screwed.

Even by my own reckoning, the strange things piled up faster than I could count.

Freshman Welcome Party was a film that had only just finished its theatrical run. Two weeks, at most, since its release.

Which means the director's cut shouldn't be out for ages yet...

Hit movies typically didn't release their director's cuts until two or three months after leaving theaters. And yet here I was, with the director's cut lines memorized, the layout of an art center that wouldn't expand for years committed to memory, and—on top of all that—a play's script from a production that premiered today spilling effortlessly off my tongue.

...Hold on.

But how did he know all of that?

Bzzt—. Bzzt—.

"Ah, that's my phone..."

Myeong Je-ha picked up the phone he'd left on the table, as if reluctant to let the moment go.

He began gathering his laptop to leave.

Only then did I finally manage to breathe.

Thank god. Hurry up and go.

The instant Myeong Je-ha turned his back, I planned to pull up my status window.

"I've got another engagement. I'll head out first, then."

And the very moment Myeong Je-ha rose from his seat and turned away—

Stats beyond anything I had imagined materialized before my eyes.

How on earth...?

Three-Network Acting Daesang?

Myeong Je-ha hasn't even been debuted for a full year, has he?

Those were titles that should only attach themselves to the Myeong Je-ha of ten years from now...

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

The instant the thought crossed my mind, a shrieking, ear-grating sound effect split the air, and cracks spiderwebbed across Myeong Je-ha's status window.

Glaring red letters blazed with errors, swelling larger and larger before my eyes.

"Ah, that's right."

And at that exact moment, Myeong Je-ha turned around and smiled at me. The long, folded creases of his eyes looked almost tender.

"I'll listen to your prepared lie next time."

As if he already knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that whatever answer I gave would be a lie.

Left standing there alone, I listlessly ran a hand over my goosebump-ridden arm.

"...What are you?"

What on earth is your deal, Myeong Je-ha?

"Sis!"

"..."

I had stayed up all night sifting through countless hypotheses before finally arriving at an answer.

"What're you doing?"

"..."

Myeong Je-ha is a regressor.

"When I leave for school, hang the laundry out as soon as the washer's done. And don't just walk off, either! You've gotta wring it out properly first."

I gave a short nod, closing the book on my speculation.

"You nodded. Don't you forget it, seriously."

Between the scenarios, screenplay collections, and bestsellers I'd devoured over the years, I had enough stockpiled material to fill a bookshelf.

So it didn't take long to land on the one—and only—setting that could explain this bewildering situation.

Myeong Je-ha's existence is a walking cliché.

There was no rule saying a regressor had to be the only one in the world.

But there's a problem...

Namely, why on earth had he gone out of his way to hint—so roundaboutly—that he was a regressor in the first place?

"One thing's for sure: it's not on the friendly side of things."

Just remembering the moment I fell into Myeong Je-ha's artful probing was enough to raise goosebumps all over again.

He didn't even limit himself to a single question.

It felt like being a hamster trapped inside a maze he had designed himself.

Myeong Je-ha, by contrast, had been something like a vast, transcendent being—every time I spun around to flee, he herded me straight into another dead end.

That look in his eyes as he gazed down at me... it genuinely scared me.

Getting tangled up with someone that dangerous carried far too much risk.

My mind was made up: for the time being, I would stay far out of Myeong Je-ha's line of sight.

Networking or not, he looks every bit as dangerous as Do Gyeo-ul.

Just as I was hardening that resolve—

DING!

...Another mission had appeared.

"I've barely been done with the last one for any time at all."

Why were they coming so fast and furious? And why had the difficulty suddenly spiked like this?

"A hundred thousand views... a thousand shares?"

I swallowed a sigh and pressed a hand against my forehead.

What was I supposed to do about this?

But no matter how long I turned it over, the answer remained exactly one.

"What do I do about it? I do it."

There was no other way.

Click, click, click.

I took a quick survey of the current InTube market. The laptop screen soon brimmed over with tubers of every stripe.

"Not many creators have cracked a million subscribers yet, which means I've got a real shot here."

If influencers were already saturating the platform, the number of available comments would inevitably be finite—but that wasn't the case now.

"From the look of it, a video with around fifty thousand views pulls in a hundred comments without breaking a sweat."

The answer sheet flickered brightly in my head.

"...There's only one answer. A web drama."

A web drama. A drama series distributed through new media platforms like InTube.

Several years back, when Acebook was at the height of its dominance, short skits had been all the rage.

In the beginning they staged nothing longer than one-minute, three-minute, five-minutes-max sketches—but the scale kept swelling with each passing year.

"Eventually they were even doing early-access premieres through paid memberships."

Collabs on InTube were a given, ad deals came easy, and memberships let them gather subscribers and churn out exclusive behind-the-scenes content. It had grown into a rock-solid market.

"And then the corporations jumped in with both feet, and quite a few works got genuinely famous."

There was even the occasional overseas fan base springing up. Call it a snack culture—bite-sized, quick to consume—the perfect light trial run for any idol hoping to cross over into acting.

"...Huh. Wait a second, though."

But there was one thing I had overlooked.

"...It hasn't... really taken off yet, has it...?"

The web drama market of today was barren wasteland.

It was an era when the very word influencer still sounded foreign.

"It's me! It's me, Mr. Ssen!"

"What is that? On the big screen... Is it a celebrity?"

"No, I heard they're an InTuber or whatever."

It was the period when beauty bloggers were becoming tubers one by one, and users were migrating from Acebook over to Youstagram.

Fledgling MCN agencies—talent firms that gathered and managed internet broadcasters and influencers under one roof—were being founded like mushrooms after the rain.

Riding the explosive growth of the platforms, these companies joined hands with their influencer rosters ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and cranked out view counts without breaking stride.

Of course, even among them, there existed a separate breed of MCN dedicated entirely to the 'aspiring actor'.

...The problem was that the whole ecosystem ran on nothing but shock-value stories, all in the pursuit of views.

The 'Teaching My Friend a Lesson' series, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠which preyed on teenagers with far too much free time, and the TottoFiction series, which transplanted twenty-somethings' counseling episodes onto the screen verbatim, were the most famous of the lot.

The image of today's web dramas was, plain and simple, that of a 'time killer'—or at best, a 'guilty pleasure'.

"No, seriously, this is too much even for them!"

This was Cheongdam-dong—the site of JC ENM's gleaming new headquarters building.

—or, more precisely, a greasy little pocha bar right next door to it.

"Auntie! One more bottle of Isul over here!"

A woman chewing on meat sizzling away over the tabletop griddle let out a bitter groan.

"It's bad enough as it is, y'know? Handing something way too difficult to a girl who's never acted a day in her life. Honestly, this is their way of telling me to go screw myself."

"It's a web drama, you said? What is there to actually act in something like that? I hear the runtime's tiny."

She was Team Leader Seong, an employee of JC ENM.

"It's not a film, not a drama, and definitely not a musical or a play—right from the moment I got assigned to this brand-new 'Web Content' team, I smelled something rotten!!!"

It had been obvious the higher-ups intended to run the whole venture as nothing more than a trophy project for show.

And sure enough, the trouble began with the very first shoot.

"This thing is—at absolute best, people will mock us if we pull it off, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and if we fail, it's rock bottom for everyone involved..."

"What about the male lead? That's the single most important casting, isn't it?"