The Pitiful Poor Student Strategy
With no costumes, no lighting, and no set, it was a script reading carried entirely by voice alone. And yet every scene felt as vivid as if it were playing out right before my eyes.
“Wow, sunbae. Turns out even voices have resolution.”
“No kidding. She's on a completely different level.”
It wasn't just me who noticed—murmurs from the PR team staff drifted over from the back.
It almost felt like the reading belonged to Han Yeo-reum alone.
A Second Glance (C)
Online and offline alike, what a star needs is the public's gaze! Whether it's you in person, your photos and videos—or even the mere sound of your voice—people will stop, look back, and focus on you one more time.
In a single stroke, Ju Jun-seo was buried.
Amid the cast and crew, only Han Yeo-reum's lines rang out with crystal clarity.
“Since a while ago.”
“So you were just watching?”
“Not my business.”
“...Fair enough.”
Even her raw vocal power was in a different league. Every time she tossed off an indifferent line, her voice carried through the reading room with startling precision.
What on earth...?
Chu Ga-eul was flustered.
Despite having studied acting for barely a few months, Yeo-reum was deploying flawless diaphragmatic breathing.
“Ga-eul, Ga-eul! Your turn!”
“Ah! Yes, coming!”
So flustered was Chu Ga-eul that she'd forgotten her own cue entirely.
“Wh-what was that... I'm sorry. Let me go again.”
As she scrambled through her lines, her voice cracked off-pitch.
“Ga-eul, don't be nervous~.”
“Oh my, you're making so many mistakes today!”
Low chuckles rippled around the room.
The pitch slip of a nervous rookie actor was the kind of thing easily forgiven as a cute little mishap.
But Chu Ga-eul felt a primal surge of alarm.
“What's this~? You two were here all alone together? I'm hurt-rrr!”
The fear that she might be pushed aside by a character with no special traits at all.
“What did you talk about? Tell me too! Tell Hina too-o~!”
At her overwrought fussing, Director Jjang and the writer exchanged a glance.
What are we going to do with that? I have a feeling it'll be even worse on set.
We just have to direct her well, I suppose.
Meanwhile, Team Leader Seong's gaze had been fixed in one place for some time.
Han Yeo-reum...
The character Yeo-reum was playing was a flat, unflappable type with little emotional fluctuation.
In the edited cut, sound effects and narration could layer personality onto the character—but right now, this was live, in the room.
“Then next time, why don't you get locked in instead...”
And yet Han Yeo-reum was bringing the character fully to life. Without a single editing trick or sound effect.
Had she already memorized the entire script? Every line dropped naturally into place, one after another.
“I'm heading down. Tell them I was in the counselor's office later—not the rooftop. I'd rather not get marked absent.”
Even her breathing pauses between lines felt fiercely calculated. Team Leader Seong reached a clean, simple conclusion.
She's good.
Director Jjang and the writer seemed to feel the same, muttering quietly beside her.
“This one makes the actual shoot even more exciting, right? No—forget that, I want the edited cut already. Ha, what a voice.”
“Me too.... I can't wait to see her in full hair and makeup....”
Without realizing it, everyone in the reading room found themselves waiting—
—for Han Yeo-reum's next line.
“Ugh, this crazy shoujo manga... what's with the club activities on top of everything.”
They were all staring at the same script, yet somehow the scenes delivered through Han Yeo-reum's mouth were the ones they wanted to see.
“UGH, frustrating!!!”
The moment her schedule ended, Chu Ga-eul shouted inside the van. Her manager, seeing her like this for the first time, was taken aback.
“Ga-eul, what's wrong with you?”
“I don't know. Something's off. I think I bombed the reading today!”
Her manager tilted her head.
Apart from being a little over the top early on, she'd been in decent shape.
She was about the same as usual, though?
Deciding it was just a sensitive actor's emotions, the manager gave a wry chuckle.
“Aw, come on. Everyone did well out there?”
“...Everyone? Who exactly?”
“Ju Jun-seo's not bad for a model-turned-actor. And the female lead was good too!”
Chu Ga-eul remembered herself from earlier—standing next to Han Yeo-reum's steady breath control, her own performance begging to be compared.
Remembered how her breath had run out mid-sentence on every long line, her words smearing together.
It was just a reading, at worst.
Chu Ga-eul resolved to drill the script for every remaining hour until the first shoot.
On set, it would be different.
Viewer reaction is what matters most.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't ignore the effect that styling carried.
Chu Ga-eul thought of her shop in Cheongdam—the one only famous celebrities were said to visit.
“Manager-nim, there's something I want to ask the writer.”
It felt like a real shot at capturing the web drama's target demographic.
“Oh, sure. What is it? I'll pass it along right away.”
Chu Ga-eul decided to sacrifice the hair she'd been carefully preserving for her next role.
“I want to discuss whether I should dye my hair pink.”
So that viewers would recognize The Cherry on Top of the Parfait Belongs to the Heroine's female lead as Chu Ga-eul herself.
“A shoujo manga heroine needs to start with the hair color.”
Chu Ga-eul wanted to be the heroine.
“Oh, right—there's no appearance fee for this, is there.”
Agency? None. Manager? None. And most importantly, money?
“Gone...!”
I had no money.
A single broadcast-grade hair-and-makeup session easily ran into the tens of thousands of won.
Even warehouse shifts couldn't cover it—warehouse shifts would never cover it.
Makeup costs were the kind of sum that made the warehouse-worker spirit inside me boil over, then cool right back down. Idols and actors got a daily allowance for it, but for an unknown, unaffiliated actress like Han Yeo-reum? Not a chance.
“What am I going to do.”
Wasn't there somewhere decent out there? This was a crisis.
Of course, I have every shop famous actors frequent memorized by heart, but...
I couldn't burn hundreds of thousands of won over the course of a few shoots.
Even if it's far from the set... as cheap as possible...
While checking Youstagram for shops running sponsorship DMs, I stumbled onto a photo that had landed on my feed.
“...Huh?”
For a moment, I didn't recognize her—she'd changed that much.
Chu Ga-eul was sporting bubblegum-pink hair, as if she'd leapt straight out of a manga panel.
The comment section was thriving too. She was hardly the only one wanting to copy Chu Ga-eul's style.
...If this keeps up...
Given the nature of the drama, I couldn't afford to ignore the cast's hair and makeup. Things like who wore that outfit, who wore those shoes, who carried that bag were all pulling attention alongside the show itself.
Chu Ga-eul is eating my influence alive!
The Pi Chae-won character was already muted and drab by design in the early episodes—if Chu Ga-eul crushed me with pure styling, she'd steal my slice of the pie. For a rookie actress, buzz volume was genuinely everything.
Not everyone watches the drama itself.
No matter how well I acted, the public's eye wasn't fair. Some people remembered you; some people glanced past you.
This is bad.
Chu Ga-eul had signed with a pretty solid agency, so her hair and makeup quality came at that level.
How do I beat a pink head?
At a loss, I let out a sigh.
“Haaa...”
“Hey. What's with you all of a sudden?”
Dokgo Min, who'd been working away at her computer screen, narrowed her eyes into triangles at me.
“Ah, sorry. I didn't think you could hear.”
“I'm sitting RIGHT behind you, how could I not!”
Ever since I'd started dodging Myeong Je-ha, I'd been spending every free period holed up in Dokgo Min's studio. It had become so familiar that I basically lived there now.
“I'll sigh quietly from now on.”
“What's wrong? Tell your u. ni. e. all about it.”
Dokgo Min seemed oddly fond of that term, putting unusual emphasis on the word unnie.
Now that I think of it, Dokgo Min's connections are pretty impressive.
Whether it was raw talent or the fact that her personality was an absolute wreck, the woman knew everybody.
If I play the pity card, maybe something shakes loose.
Calculation complete.
I smiled a bitter, long-suffering smile, the picture of a broke college student.
“I got cast in a web drama... but I don't have the money for it.”
“What? You have to pay to shoot a drama? Hey, that's a scam! Guys like that all need to be locked up!”
Kicking back her chair, Dokgo Min demanded to know if scammers like that still existed these days.
Apparently I'd summarized a bit too aggressively.
“No, no—not that. Celebrity hair and makeup shops are just expensive... I wouldn't qualify for a daily allowance or deferred payment anyway.”
At my words, Dokgo Min paused.
“Daily allowance... deferred payment... shop...”
Then she looked me up and down, inspecting my pitiful beggar's expression from every angle.
“Follow me.”
She scooped up the phone lying on the table.
The wretched-poverty operation was a success.
If even one thing comes out of this, great.
And so, with appropriately modest expectations, we arrived at our destination—
“...You want me to go in there?”
It was a place that blew my predictions clean out of the water.