The Birth of a Legendary B-Grade Drama
The male lead had already been decided behind closed doors.
"Ju Jun-seo. There's that guy who used to model."
"A model?"
Which meant he was a green-as-grass rookie who had never properly acted in his life. Not once. Not ever.
"Sniff… Senior Nam, just take a look at the synopsis! And Senior Yeo, stop grilling the meat for a second and look at this!"
Senior Nam took the phone. He skimmed down the screen with an air of how great could this possibly be—and then his expression froze solid.
The Cherry on Top of the Parfait Belongs to the Heroine ♥ — Synopsis
The concept was pretty hardcore from the title alone.
But the problem wasn't the title.
"Hoo… the difficulty level of this thing…"
"Right? It's brutal, isn't it?"
The seventeen I had imagined was never purely sweet.
Running out the door with a bite of crusty toast, the cherry-blossom road to school, bumping by chance into the boy of my dreams, the riotous chaos of the school festival and the friendship of my friends, the tingling thrill of a summer day at the beach.
But those scenes were privileges granted only to the heroine of a shoujo manga.
Me, chewing half-cooked rice from a convenience store while hauling a bag stuffed with workbooks on the way to school. Squeezed onto a packed bus, barely arriving in time. Friends staking their lives on grades and early admissions. The academy's vacation intensive courses that started the moment summer began.
What would happen if you blended that utterly different reality with shoujo manga, half and half?
And what if the heroine of that shoujo manga… wasn't me?
It was the story of a heroine with dead-fish eyes trapped in a reality where shoujo manga clichés broke out endlessly, one after another.
And the role Ju Jun-seo had been handed was the male lead.
"…So he's a brooding, lonely, delinquent-class king. Great."
"Aaagh!!! No!!! This one is genuinely hopeless, no matter what I do!!!"
The woman, clawing at her own hair, hastily poured another shot of soju and knocked it back.
"Life is way more bitter than soju!!!"
It had been a simple business decision. The story was built for teenagers, so they'd picked a face to slot into it and shoved the whole thing through.
"Tsk. Honestly, given the character, doesn't Ju Jun-seo spend most of the show with his mouth shut? Maybe his terrible acting won't become the lightning rod."
"True, but you know that makes it harder, right? Whether he's good or terrible, the whole feel of the thing will swing wildly depending on whoever's acting opposite him."
"Yeah. Where are we even finding a female lead? One wrong move and we're all doing a school arts festival."
"Ugh… The heroine has to grab people by the collar and drag them in, and there's nobody good enough."
Senior Nam patted the shoulder of the flushed, utterly deflated woman and offered an alternative.
"Just tell her it's a no-go. The second the 'parody' tag gets attached, her image is dead."
"I did! I told her the project would sink! And you know what she said to me?"
"Get lost."
…It did not work.
This was the era of web content's great revival. In other words, the growth of internet creators was showing no signs of slowing down.
"No more groveling for scheduling slots, no lobbying needed. Product placement can be slotted in cleanly and on time, so sponsors love the format. And best of all, we don't have to kiss up to the broadcasters—and we get overseas viewership on top of it."
And the entity with the sharpest nose for money was none other than the conglomerate.
"They just refuse to grow this market. 'The project will sink'… will it, though?"
It would be no exaggeration to say JC ENM was making the largest investments in the country when it came to film and video content.
"Then tell her to get lost."
That very JC had chosen it. And pushed it.
Which meant her rice bowl—her livelihood—now depended on this doomed little web drama of a doomed little pitch.
So somehow, somehow, she had to make it work.
"There's no way out! None!"
On top of that, the higher-ups clearly intended to make a proper value judgment on whether propping up Ju Jun-seo was worth the trouble.
"Tsk. Well, you do have some casting authority, at least?"
"Of course. We're handling both the investment and the production…"
"Then bet it all on the female lead and the editing. Come on, the premise itself is fresh, at least!"
Senior Nam patted her back with forced positivity, then kicked his friend across the table—the one who'd been silently grilling meat this entire time—right in the shin.
"Hey! Say something too! You're the senior here!"
"That's right! Senior Yeo! Give us a hand with something, anything!"
Only then did Senior Yeo, who had been transferring grilled meat onto her junior's plate, open her mouth.
"Among the students I've taught… there's one who I think would suit the heroine perfectly."
"What? Seriously?"
"How old is she?"
Senior Yeo scratched her cheek, apparently finding the two pairs of gleaming eyes burdensome, and answered.
"Just turned twenty."
The sighs came pouring out at once.
"Tsk~. Are you kidding me? Twenty? So she's never been through the wringer on a set."
"Exactly! This is a role where actual skill has to carry it! And twenty means she's barely out of her entrance-exam grind. Ugh, forget it. What a waste. Cheers to that. Geonbae!"
At that, Senior Yeo made an expression they almost never saw on her.
"She has none of that grind in her. She's a blank canvas."
She raised her eyebrows, lending her own words absolute conviction.
"She's acted for six months."
The two men, soju glasses frozen halfway to a clink, went stiff.
"…Six months? You're joking? Someone who's done 180 days?"
"Senior Yeo, I've never seen you talk like this. You've truly become a teacher now. Is this the rose-tinted glasses thing where your own student looks beautiful no matter what she does…?"
Their incredulous reactions fell entirely within the range she had predicted.
Senior Yeo pulled a phone from her pocket and opened social media.
She pressed down hard on the screen, and Yeo-reum's profile photo rose up.
There was a face beaming brightly under cool, limpid blue lighting.
"…This kid?"
"Well, the visuals are certainly nothing to complain about. Set her next to Ju Jun-seo and their face chemistry would be great, too."
The power of a well-taken profile photo was considerable. Onscreen, Yeo-reum pulled the two of them in within seconds.
"But six months of experience… that's just… ugh, it's really…"
"That's what worries me too. What you see isn't all there is."
Senior Yeo furrowed her brow as if the very idea were absurd.
"This one is different."
"How so?"
"Different starting with her voice. Hear her deliver one line and you'll know it too."
Team Leader Seong seemed to hesitate for a moment, but faced with Senior Yeo's unshakable conviction, she decided nothing ventured, nothing gained.
"Fine. Then the student you trust that much—let's at least have her come in for an audition."
"A web drama?"
—Yeah. Not a lead role handed to you outright, but a proper audition.
"Could you tell me the title by any chance, Teacher?"
—The Cherry on Top of the Parfait… something or other. I'll send you the brief synopsis and the audition date.
"Yes, ma'am! Thank you so much!"
The moment I hung up, I shouted.
"The Cherry on Top of the Parfait Belongs to the Heroine!!!"
This was it. The work that would one day be called the origin of all B-grade web dramas.
"It's got plenty of legendary lines and legendary scenes, so even ten years later people are still recycling it as memes…"
It twisted every cliché there was inside out and upside down, so the story itself was genuinely fun.
"The only problem was that the entire cast was a disaster…"
But they wanted me to do this? I read over the synopsis Senior Yeo had sent and closed my eyes. Unforgettable scenes—scenes even ten years hadn't managed to erase—came flooding back.
—Believe in yourself, and believe in us—that's how you make friends!
Especially that useless, useless encouragement scene from the shoujo-manga heroine.
That one went viral as a 'friends don't exist' meme until the day I died.
It was my first drama. Was I really allowed to do this one?
"JC ENM is producing it and all, but…"
Because it was one of their earliest works, they hadn't pushed it particularly hard back then. Which meant there was every chance I'd end up as nothing more than a consumed image.
As if it had heard my thoughts, the status window flickered back to life.
Mission: You, on the Screen
🔑 Keyword: First Video
It is time to show the world your acting! Present a video featuring your face to 100,000 people.
✔ Success Condition:Shares must reach 1,000 or more
It had even slotted a red highlight onto the 100,000 and the 1,000 shares, just to drive the point home.
"…Well, right now, this is the best option I've got."
After all, my current title was Unknown.
If I wanted to burn my face into the public's memory even once, there was no better choice than this.
"100,000 views and a thousand shares…"
For that, The Cherry on Top of the Parfait Belongs to the Heroine—
"No, seriously, why is this title so long?"
I'd just shorten it to Pachehi. Anyway, this was a mission only possible through the story and buzz that Pachehi carried.
"The public's reaction is the actor's job to earn."
One way or another, I was going to win that lead role and act my heart out. Properly this time.
Well then—off to the audition.
Conveniently, I happened to know all the behind-the-scenes stories. Passing the audition wouldn't be hard.
The lead role is mine.
JC ENM's headquarters, located in the heart of Cheongdam-dong.
The fifth-floor audition hall was already lined with a surprisingly large number of people, seated in rows.
When is she supposed to show up?
The junior colleague to whom Senior Yeo had recommended Han Yeo-reum—Team Leader Seong—glanced at her watch yet again.