The Law of the Male Lead

The backlight made the face impossible to make out.

Chae-won frowned, her voice perfectly flat.

"If a noise this loud wakes you up, why would you even sleep on the roof?"

As if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in reply to her commonsense answer, the intro to a defiantly polished piece of music swelled up — the kind of track you could tell someone had labored over. Then a clean, precise landing. The physicality of a former model, no less.

As the man walked closer, the bright lights caught his face. Red hair whipped in the wind. Sharp, cutting eyes met Chae-won's lifeless ones.

"Well, hel-lo~."

From the visuals to the voice to the gaze — a combination built to set the hearts of every drama-obsessed viewer pounding.

Ae-ta-mi found herself covering her mouth with one hand without realizing it. And then she was startled by the fact that she'd done it at all.

…This is it. Stage four.

The immersion of hardcore drama fans progresses in roughly the following stages:

Stage 1. Watching random clips.

Stage 2. Watching the episodes on schedule.

Stage 3. Catching yourself smiling without meaning to.

Stage 4. Covering your mouth.

Stage 5. Broadcasting every wave of emotion you can't contain onto the internet as it happens.

Anything beyond that, for the record, is beyond saving. That's when the wallet opens and a life gets sacrificed.

This is dangerous.

Mouth agape over a web drama barely ten-some minutes long. Ae-ta-mi had never once been like this before. It was cringe, it was childish — and yet.

"This is good…. I admit it."

It really was good. And she wasn't the only one.

The view counter on the teaser, stretched taut with traffic, proved it.

Pachehi's very ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠first episode hit 80,000 views in a single day. 122 comments, 309 likes. For a web drama that had just gone live, it was showing shockingly outsized influence.

Ae-ta-mi's post began picking up retweets at a rapid clip. Pachehi was off to a successful start.

"We did it!!!"

Team Leader Seong had not stopped monitoring the moment episode one of Pachehi went up. Just like at the wrap party, that unmistakable buoyant feeling of a show that's going to make it was thrumming through her whole body.

"Yes, yes, you enjoyed it? Oh my, well. Our team did put in the work, didn't we."

Contacts were already flooding in from all over. Every single response was positive. Team Leader Seong went straight to the PR department to find Team Leader Hong.

"Team Leader Hong~!"

"There she is."

His side had apparently already gotten the news too, because a smile was already sitting on his face.

"You watched episode one, right? It's seriously insane."

"Heh. The response is great. Once episode two drops today, the press will be running with it all week."

"At this rate, aren't we hitting a million views soon?"

At her words, Rookie Shin, who was carrying coffee over, jumped in.

"Of course. Personally, I think the potential is absolutely there."

He had just finished uploading the Pachehi-related posts to social media, as it happened.

"The comments come in several times faster than on our other posts."

The moment a few behind-the-scenes photos went up, the replies had poured in.

"The top comment is begging Yeo-reum to reveal her Youstagram. Let's fix the tags."

Team Leader Seong couldn't help grinning every time she so much as looked at Yeo-reum's name.

If episode one was already pulling numbers like this, she could hardly wait to see how much buzz would come rolling in once episode three — where the actual acting began in earnest — went up.

Rookie Shin edited the post and tagged the actors' accounts.

"Oh, by the way, Team Leader Seong — did you hear? About Director Jegal Rok."

The moment Jegal Rok's name came up, Seong went rigid. There was no one who would be watching this project more closely than he would.

"What about him?"

"When we sent out our press release, he issued a special directive about Han Yeo-reum."

"WHAT?!"

Team Leader Seong practically shouted. It had barely been any time at all since word came down that he had graciously attended the Pachehi premiere himself.

Telling us to triple the press distribution was already hard enough to believe — and now a special directive on top of that….

At this point, it wouldn't be a stretch to call Pachehi one of the top three projects of the quarter.

"How? What do you mean, how? A spe? cial? direc? tive?"

Team Leader Hong looked at her as if to say it was hardly worth all that shock.

"He says stop bundling her with Ju Jun-seo in the releases — push her solo material too."

Strictly speaking, this was an unprecedented privilege.

When JC had spun up the Web Content division as a special launch, the spotlight had been aimed squarely at one person: Ju Jun-seo. The whole point had been to showcase JC's trendy image.

And now Han Yeo-reum is cutting in on that?

Having watched only a single episode, Jegal Rok had chosen Han Yeo-reum — despite the fact that she and JC hadn't signed so much as a single contract.

"They're going to sign a contract with her?"

"Can't say for sure. But…."

Team Leader Hong downed a gulp of coffee and let the pause hang deliberately.

"Jegal Rok never spends money on the wrong thing."

Episode two of Pachehi went up in immediate succession. As if everyone had been counting down to ten o'clock, the view counter began climbing the instant it posted.

The final scene of episode one had been Chae-won, discovering her own fading self.

Scratch. Scratch.

The sound of a pen nib dragging across paper. Chae-won raised her palm at once. Letters began writing themselves across it.

Graffiti from someone presumed to be the author. The lifeline across Chae-won's palm was flooding red.

Having read it, she clenched her fist tight.

"…So what you're saying is I can't just lie down and take it. Right? Right now?"

Even a girl as indifferent to everything as Chae-won made an exception when the matter at hand was her own continued existence.

She assessed the situation in an instant. Taking a small breath, Chae-won stared at the palm that kept blurring in and out of focus.

As if arriving at some decision, she closed her eyes.

The next day, Chae-won took matters into her own hands.

"Right — can anyone tell me the answer to this one?"

"Me."

Chae-won threw herself into class. Hand shot straight up, answer out the door.

"Good. Nicely done. Next, then. And the correct answer to this one is?"

"Me! Me!"

She still wore her trademark dead-fish eyes, but she threw herself into the work with visible enthusiasm, fighting tooth and nail for every scrap of screen time she could grab.

And yet something was off. Chae-won swept her gaze around the classroom and thought to herself:

"Is it just me… or is nobody… actually paying attention to class? Any of you?"

This was a shoujo manga universe. Studying only ever appeared briefly, during the heart-fluttering episodes.

Going to the library to cram for exams together. Comforting someone crying over a botched test. Or maybe locking eyes across the classroom.

"Here's the formula for this place."

The camera angle rotated exactly as Chae-won's gaze did.

Ju Jun-seo — red-haired, in other words Jun — was gazing broodily out the window, and Hina, seated beside him, was nudging him and asking what he was thinking about.

The extras were no different. All of them lost in their own little worlds, not a single one sparing the teacher's lecture a shred of attention.

"So this segment is a throwaway part, huh…."

Only then did Chae-won understand. No matter how hard she concentrated or stood out in class, it meant nothing.

"There's a pop quiz tomorrow. The rankings will, of course, be posted where everyone can see them. Study hard, everyone!"

Whether or not anyone listened to a word he said didn't seem to bother him in the slightest — the teacher strode out of the classroom grinning ear to ear as the bell rang. The room came back to life all around her.

"Oh, come on…. I can't believe I have to study even after falling into a shoujo manga world…. This is seriously insane."

Apparently there is no universe, fictional or otherwise, in which a student of this peninsula can escape the tyranny of exams.

Chae-won thought it through. Getting attention during class was utterly useless — but if she placed first on the pop quiz, she might at least wring out a little more screen time for herself.

She let out a sigh and was plucking one textbook out of the towering stack when a sticky note went fluttering down through the gap.

A heroine who was unfairly kind even to the extras. Chae-won swept the sticky note aside with the flattest of dead-fish eyes.

"…She really is something else…."

And the next day, the results of the quiz Chae-won had poured her whole heart into were posted.

"Look, look! First place is, as expected—"

"Ahh, my grades tanked again~."

The extras' lines faded out at the edges. Chae-won rose on tiptoe, straining to see the posted rankings.

"Nobody even studied. Obviously I'm first."

The dry thought slipped out as narration.

But the result was not what she expected.

Jun — a boy who didn't so much as study, who regularly skipped out on class altogether — was first. Chae-won knit her brow as the memory surfaced, hollow and useless.

"That's right…. I'd forgotten about the Rules of the Male Lead…."

A firm line had been drawn under the last one.

Chae-won's body went blurry again. Far off in the distance, she could see Hina — surrounded by friends, laughing happily. It was the smile of a girl born to be called a happy high schooler.

"…."

The camera pulled back wide. Chae-won, standing alone and expressionless, and Hina, beloved by everyone — placed in stark, deliberate contrast.

And in that instant, fragments that appeared to be Chae-won's memories flashed past in a brief, jumbled rush.

Spliced together in black and white, the scraps made it painfully obvious even to a stranger that this girl carried her own story — a total inversion of the warm, sunlit picture spread out before her eyes.

But she didn't dwell on it. Chae-won turned her back without a trace of regret, as if friends were something she could do without. And yet—

"Hah…. I really, really didn't want to do this."

Before long came a close-up of Chae-won's face, set with unmistakable resolve, and then a cut to someone's back the next morning as they got ready for school.

The camera climbed slowly from the feet upward. White tights. A hand reaching for pink perfume. Everything framed so the audience would be certain it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was Hina.

But then the shot caught the long black hair streaming down that back. Contrary to every expectation, the person on screen was Chae-won.

"…Fine. I'll do it."

A voice grinding down its own reluctance, like someone forcing themselves through a chore they despised — and just as the camera shifted focus to finally show her face,

the closing music swelled and the title card dropped.

"AH!!! And then WHAT?!"

Ae-ta-mi, who had watched the broadcast with total earnestness, rolled back and forth across her bed like a pill bug.