The Heroine Goes Dark
— What the hell. How annoying.
Hina was there.
— …Hina?
— I have no interest in hanging out with you two. Move.
There she stood — Hina, gone dark.
The viewers watching live wasted no time spreading the word about the unexpected twist, and Ae-ta-mi was no exception.
“It went full angst route~!”
Hina — the sunshine-bright, adorably bubbly heroine — had, somewhere along the way, become a rebel. Guitar case slung across her back, she brushed past the two of them, shoulder-checking them as she went.
— This is… don't tell me…
— However it plays out, Hina's still the heroine, isn't she?
Jun and Chae-won began their grim prognosticating in earnest.
The rustle of a page turning. What followed was an account of Hina's crooked, spiraling day. She skipped school entirely and slept the hours away in the nurse's office. The friends who'd grown close to her came looking, worried sick —
— This has nothing to do with you.
— and she spat out the same line to every one of them before running off.
Hina wandered the streets. On a pedestrian overpass drenched in sunset, she clenched her fists and stared down at the city below. And then—
— Keep scowling like that, and you're the only one who ends up hurting.
— …Hah.
— Losing yourself like this. You should stop.
— And who even are you?
— A senior who's walked the road you're standing on? Haha.
Yet another boy appeared. The budget-tier, gentle-onii-san-type second male lead Jun had warned about.
Chae-won and Jun, seated side by side on the stairs, simultaneously spread both hands across their faces and heaved a sigh.
— Yeah, that tracks.
— Ugh….
A sticky note slapped itself down over both their heads: Extras can disappear depending on the protagonist's attributes!
— So this isn't just a school drama at all, is it? Turns out it's Hina's journey to find her dream. I'm calling it — she could debut as a band.
— And there she'd meet a manager or some other celebrities… which means the real male lead might come from that side.
— Right…. And the two of us will only ever show up in drunk-Hina flashbacks. Reminiscing about our brilliant high school days… possibly recycled as lyrics for her original songs.
Before anyone noticed, the orange glow of dusk was retreating from the overpass and the sky had deepened to indigo. The white streetlamps flickered on.
Jun, who had been silently watching the sky, called out to Chae-won — as if the two of them had finally grown comfortable with each other.
— …Hey.
— What.
— You and me. Do you think we could go back?
— Don't say cliché stuff like that. The moment you do, we really won't be able to go back.
— God, the clichés.
Jun laughed quietly. It was the first time Chae-won had ever seen him smile.
Watching him, Chae-won found herself wearing a drained little smile of her own. She was still carrying the debuff, after all.
— I'm getting back no matter what.
Chae-won rose from the stairs and brushed off her clothes.
Then it happened. Her body turned translucent again. Her focus blurred. She couldn't move.
Beep— A ringing filled her ears. Her vision went dark.
— Chae-won.
What appeared on screen next was the back of a seated woman. Slowly, the focus shifted to whoever the woman was looking at.
— You have to wake up.
It was Pi Chae-won, lying in a hospital bed.
The camera panned lazily across the room. Pi Chae-won's gray school uniform hanging on the wall. stacks of shoujo manga piled on the nightstand, and Ppepero snack sticks bought and left there even though everyone knew she couldn't eat them.
— Our Chae-won needs to hurry up and wake up so she can go back to school.
The woman took the sleeping girl's hand in hers. Then she traced the life line on her palm — pressing it with her fingernail, drawing along it again and again, the way you would if you truly believed the person would come back to life.
Beep— beep—
The machine in the hospital room let out its small, steady noise.
Chae-won's finger twitched, ever so slightly. As if that tiny movement was all she had.
[The Cherry on Top of the Parfait Belongs to the Heroine!]
“AAAAHHH!!! THIS IS INSANE!!!”
Ae-ta-mi screamed.
View count for episode 7 of Pachehi: 870,000 in a single day.
Do Gyeo-ul crumpled the scenario in her fist. It was the Pachehi script her agency had passed along to her. What the video had captured was a far more realized thing than anything the written word could convey.
“Han Yeo-reum….”
As if that world truly existed. Han Yeo-reum unfolded before her eyes, leaping clean off the page.
She remembered the battered old script Yeo-reum had held in the reading video. Somewhere inside that scenario — with even the sticky notes stuck to its edges crumpled and worn — Yeo-reum's analysis had to be written. She found herself desperate to know what that analysis might have said.
“I want it.”
Winter murmured the words, then rewound the video all the way back to the beginning.
She watched, and watched, and watched again — until she had every line memorized, as though she could carve each one of Yeo-reum's gestures directly into her brain.
It was nothing like the performance Yeo-reum had shown on the first day of lectures. She had grown so much further since then.
Winter stared at the wall — one entire wall filled wall-to-wall with Han Yeo-reum. There wasn't just one or two places where the footage diverged from the script she'd received. It was as if Yeo-reum had discovered her character anew, on the spot, in every single scene.
“Ahaha.”
Winter laughed softly, as if something amused her.
Han Yeo-reum. Yes — that was the answer. A mere web drama generating this kind of shockwave was entirely, one hundred percent Yeo-reum's doing. Of that, Winter was certain.
Winter had always performed her roles exactly as the script dictated. Some called her flawless. Some called her obsessive. Others said she was an actress who knew how to respect a writer completely.
Idiots, every one of them.
They were all wrong. Understanding other people was agonizingly difficult for Winter. It always felt as though a wall stood between her and everyone else.
She could never reach the character on the other side. No matter how thoroughly she memorized her lines, no matter how perfect she made every expression, there was a ceiling on her acting.
“It's me, ma'am. It's Winter.”
But that was different now.
Do Gyeo-ul had called her agency. She'd kept her distance from acting all this time under the pretense of college entrance exams — but now, she felt she could do it.
“Please put me forward for that scenario. I want to play something bright, as bright as possible. A rom-com.”
She could do it. No — she wanted to. Like that. Like Han Yeo-reum.
The Pachehi scenario in Winter's grip was falling apart at the seams. Every single place where the filmed version departed from the script had been checked off, marked, and annotated.
This was the MBS Drama Center in Ilsan. On the seventh floor, the center director was checking the ratings graph with the expression of a man who'd just been punched in the gut.
“…Does this even make sense? Huh?”
Saturday and Sunday — the golden prime-time slot of ten p.m. A drama featuring actors whose names alone drew headlines, and a director whose previous work had cleared the teens in ratings with a solid mid-tier hit.
“Beaten — BEATEN — by InTube, of all things!”
Yet from the midway point on, the early-episode ratings had gone sour.
The numbers dipped between the ten- and fifteen-minute marks, then climbed slightly afterward. The cause analysis came back with astonishing results.
“Pachehi? Eh? Even the title sounds like a kid's plaything!”
Low budget. Rookie cast. But above all, what wounded the Drama Center director's pride was the simple fact that they hadn't even lost to a cable channel — they'd lost to a mere 'InTube.'
“A platform where anyone can rewatch anything for FREE, as many times as they like! And MBS is losing to THAT!”
It was absurd. The very idea of someone putting off watching a terrestrial drama because they were busy on InTube had been unthinkable.
“Sir. This is hardly the time to sit around like this — shouldn't we be activating our own InTube channel as well?”
A long silence followed. Then someone in the room raised a hand with visible courage.
“I've heard JC ENM is already shopping scripts for a follow-up web drama to Pachehi.”
“Honestly. This once, they got lucky — that's all. How do you know the follow-up won't flop?”
“…Because it's being helmed by Jegal Rok.”
At the name Jegal Rok, no one could muster a rebuttal. If anything, the argument for activating an InTube channel only gained momentum.
“The highest view count on any MBS channel right now is 780,000. In reach and in engagement, we're not even in the same league as Pachehi.”
Faced with undeniable facts, the center director bit his lip.
As InTube grew, the terrestrial broadcasters had each carved out channels and uploaded everything they could think of — but the public was ruthless. Nobody felt more than passing interest in something they'd already seen.
Six hours out of twenty-four.
That was all the time the public had to spend on media.
Broadcasters, the film industry, the sports world, countless brands, online shopping malls — celebrities and influencers desperate for fame clenched their teeth and fought tooth and nail over the scraps of the public's attention.
If this keeps up….
Everyone felt it. The authority of the broadcasters was in danger.
This was nothing less than the destruction of an ecosystem.
“Still, once Pachehi airs its final episode, things should ease up a little, shouldn't they?”
Someone tried to muster hope, but the director shook his head. Anger aside, he understood reality well enough.
“No. From now on, people will want videos like Pachehi — provocative, fun, short, and fast. They won't even bother looking for anything else.”
Social networks that gathered people of similar hobbies. Feeds curated to show you only what you loved. Platforms where a mere reach of the hand brought free entertainment straight to you. Society had already begun running entirely on individual preference.
“Looked at from the other side… that means anything with a different flavor can't survive….”
The trigger had already been pulled. A new trend was surging in like a tsunami.
“Yeoreumie's here!”
“Director Jjang~!”
The Pachehi team, finally on the verge of the finale, had gathered once more. It was the wrap party.
The moment I pushed open the restaurant door, the writer and the director came rushing to greet me. The crew members scattered around the room each waved a hand as I passed. I gave them all little nods and headed in.
“I can't wait. Seriously.”
Team Leader Seong giggled, swishing soju around in her mouth like mouthwash. The whole restaurant was steeped in that particular giddiness that only a successful project produces.
Pachehi had finally smashed through one million views. An unrivaled run for a web drama. Clips from every episode were circulating everywhere — and even those clips were racking up huge numbers.
“Look at this. Someone's already blogging about the finale.”
“That one's not us, is it?”
“Nope. They wrote it on their own, just chasing the views.”
Everywhere you turned, people talked about how well Pachehi had done — and then talked about it some more. Amid the sizzle of grilling meat, the joy of a monster hit spread through the room. Even the big-name content streamers with massive followings had latched onto Pachehi unprompted.
It was a positive signal — the launch of JC ENM's next web drama would be smooth sailing.
“Our Chaewonie~. Our little lucky charm.”
The writer wrapped me a lettuce bundle stuffed with five — five — pieces of meat. Apparently, offers to sign me for their next project were already pouring in from all directions.
“Later on… we absolutely… have to work together again, okay?”
Same words as Director Jjang. My cheeks were so stuffed I couldn't answer, so I just nodded furiously. Ju Jun-seo, sitting beside me, poured me a cider.
“And now!!! At last!!! The final episode of Pachehi!!!”
Up on the wall, the huge InTube screen showed the finale video going live.
“Right now!!! We press play!!!”
Amid everyone's cheering, the video was clicked.