The Supporting Actor Who Swallows the Lead
It had only been a short while since I resolved to trust Dracula’s words, yet now his voice was already echoing inside my head.
“Greetings, young man who dreams of the Method.”
It was real. I could actually hear his voice. Among the many functions unlocked by spending points in the Actor Gallery, this was one of them—video call.
“Hello.”
When I greeted him with an awkward smile, Dracula’s face appeared on the blue window floating before my eyes.
“Looking at you like this, you really do seem like a complete fool.”
What the hell? Who was this handsome guy? On the screen stood a dignified middle-aged man dressed in sleek black attire.
“You look different from what I imagined.”
Dracula tilted his head as if puzzled.
“What are you talking about? You’ve seen me act.”
“Honestly, when you’re performing, you look like a completely different person.”
At my words, Dracula smiled with clear satisfaction.
“Attitude—passed!! Excellent. You have a discerning eye.”
“Then what should I do now? First, maybe I should look at the script…”
“Tsk tsk. There’s no time. No time at all. You’re no genius—how do you expect to deliver the greatest performance by cramming in three days like that?”
“Then how should I…”
Dracula flicked his cape dramatically and smiled.
User ‘Dracula’ is spending 300,000 pt.
WARNING: The time axis of this space is being distorted.
“From now on, every hour of instruction I give you will cost the equivalent of one gold bar.”
“What?!”
Suddenly this felt incredibly burdensome. Was this for real?
“This is an acting lesson from none other than me—Dracula, the greatest Method actor in the Actor Gallery and three-time consecutive Laska Award winner. It is worth every penny.”
I wasn’t the one paying, but the price was still insane. So that’s how the value of those points was determined.
“Then when you use those points, what exactly—”
Before I could finish, I received the answer to my question.
“From now on, useless chatter is forbidden. If you feel it’s a waste, then focus. Method boy.”
The space that had clearly been my room began twisting in an instant. A massive grinding sound like giant gears meshing filled my ears.
The space was being reconstructed as if a cube were being solved.
‘Was the world I regressed into actually a fantasy?!’
When the noise finally died down, I stood in complete darkness. The only sound was my own breathing.
“Now, let us begin! Method boy! Welcome to my world.”
Perhaps because everything around me was pitch black, I couldn’t even remember how many hours I had been practicing.
“Pathetic! Your acting is garbage! You’re just stringing together techniques you’ve learned, nothing more. You have no talent! No talent, yet you dream so grandly!”
In the jet-black darkness where nothing was visible, I continued acting without pause while words that carved away at my heart drilled into my ears.
“Ugh…!”
“Stronger! Make it hurt more!”
“Haa… haa…”
“Is that all? That’s it? If that’s how you act, how are you any different from the trash actor you were before?”
“Understood!”
At Dracula’s roar, I kept performing Sang-cheol without a moment’s rest, but he still sounded displeased.
“Abandon that filthy habit of trying to act technically!”
“What you’re doing isn’t the Method. It’s just imitation!”
“Recall the time you threw away. The days when you clung desperately to a single role, forced yourself to smile obsequiously, and turned a blind eye to misery and jealousy.”
“But Sang-cheol isn’t that kind of character…”
“He’s pretending to be good! Just like you! On the inside he covets and envies the lead role, yet on the outside he smiles like everything’s fine. That hypocrisy is Sang-cheol’s true nature.”
“What do you…”
“Savor the sensation of your insides rotting from that dissonance. That is the Method.”
My vision went white and I collapsed from exhaustion.
“Haa… haa…”
After spitting venomous words at me for dozens of hours, Dracula finally spoke in a satisfied voice.
“It’s about time. Rest now, Method boy.”
At his words, I answered in a crawling voice while clawing at the floor with my nails.
“Not yet… I can still do more…!”
I covet that overflowing talent of his. I want everything that bastard has!
Click.
At the sound of Dracula snapping his fingers, the darkness that had enveloped me vanished.
“This is…”
“Your room, Method boy.”
My hazy mind snapped back to reality. What on earth had I been thinking?
“At your current level, immersing yourself any deeper here wouldn’t lead to a very good outcome.”
Dracula nodded. A chill ran down my spine.
What exactly had I been thinking inside that black space?
The sensation of no longer being myself.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to come back?’
Dracula seemed to read my expression.
“As long as I am teaching you, I will not let you cross the line, so do not worry.”
“Haha…”
“You performed inside my space, so you won’t die, but you acted nonstop for three days. You must be exhausted to the point of death. Lie down and listen.”
At Dracula’s words, the tension left my body and I collapsed spread-eagle onto the bed.
“Thank you.”
So three days had passed. Or rather, that was how it felt. Inside the space Dracula created, it seemed as if time itself had vanished.
‘There are so many things I’m curious about regarding that space.’
But right now I didn’t even have the strength to ask.
Dracula spoke first.
“So, how was it? Your impressions?”
Impressions, huh… Although I hadn’t been taught by Dracula for very long, there was one thing I could clearly tell. This guy reminded me of the bald drill sergeant from that one drumming movie I’d seen before!
…He probably wasn’t asking for that kind of answer.
I thought for a moment, then nodded.
“I thought what I’d been doing until now was the Method when I tried to act as Sang-cheol. This time it felt a little different.”
“Of course it did. Because what you were doing wasn’t the Method.”
“Pardon?”
“You’ve been paying far too much attention to technique. If you were at least on the level of those trash technique-faction people in the gallery, it might be tolerable, but you’re not.”
“That’s because I thought something like the Method was only possible if you had talent.”
I had believed I lacked talent. That was why I had worked myself to death trying to compensate for it with technique.
At that moment, Dracula asked as if puzzled.
“Talent?”
“Something like the immersion that Lee Se-rin possesses… I don’t have that.”
“Ah, that woman who played Ha-rang, the one you showed me. Indeed, a child like her deserves to be called a genius.”
It seemed that even in Dracula’s eyes, Lee Se-rin appeared as a lump of pure talent. That was what I was thinking when he continued.
“However, when it comes to the Method, we do not call that sort of thing talent.”
“Excuse me?”
I couldn’t understand what Dracula was saying. If Lee Se-rin’s acting wasn’t talent, then what was it?
“It seems difficult to understand. Even I—Dracula, three-time consecutive Laska Award winner—do not possess much of what people simply call ‘acting talent.’”
“Haha. No way.”
Dracula’s words weren’t humility; they were deception.
But he kept speaking.
“In the Method, talent is not the ability to imitate something well.”
“Then what is it?”
At my question, Dracula’s demeanor shifted slightly.
“The craving to become something. The grotesque pleasure of turning into an existence that is not yourself.”
“The instinct that drags you inside before you even realize it.”
Dracula bared his teeth in a wide smile and continued.
“It is the pathological madness that stakes your entire being on the game of stealing another person’s life!”
At that sight, goosebumps rose all over my body.
What was he even saying? He sounded like a madman.
I swallowed hard.
I had been fooled by the gallery’s vulgar appearance, its kindness, and its outward demeanor.
This was the true nature of the monsters known as Actor Gallery users.
I felt a terror as if I had encountered something not of this world.
‘Even if I died and came back to life, I don’t think I could ever understand that way of thinking.’
Because I couldn’t empathize, I could only yearn for it.
That was what I had been thinking.
“What is that smile?”
“Smile? What smile?”
“Look at your own face.”
At Dracula’s words, I glanced in the mirror.
“…”
There stood a man smiling so widely his mouth looked like it would split—just like Dracula.
Dracula laughed as he spoke.
“See? As I thought, you and I are the same kind. Method boy.”
The day of Sang-cheol’s final rehearsal. Today’s rehearsal was the highlight of Act 3—the scene where Sang-cheol confronts Min-woo, who has become nothing but an empty shell after Ha-rang’s death.
“Is anyone there?”
Standing on stage, I took a deep breath.
“Hoo.”
It was all thanks to Dracula. Even though I didn’t have the Director’s Vision ability right now, my senses were perfectly linked with Sang-cheol’s.
That was when I saw Kim Chan-uk in the distance.
Normally I would have been conscious of Kim Chan-uk’s blessed appearance or the fact that he was the lead actor.
But not now.
‘Fake.’
Now that I had become Sang-cheol, I could tell. Kim Chan-uk was not Min-woo.
“Hoo. Let’s do this.”
It was a thought I would never have had before. But now I could say it with absolute certainty.
Today, I would crush Kim Chan-uk with my acting.
I would become the supporting actor who swallows the lead. The master of this stage today would be me—the one who even envies and devours Min-woo’s life.
‘It’s Sang-cheol.’