You Should Have Come Inside
"You really should've come inside."
"So make it fair. If Han Seoyeon got three, I get three. Doing it once and calling it quits because it's rape-scene acting or whatever is way too half-assed."
I clenched the towel around my waist harder. The plan to get Shim Sona out the door the second I finished washing up was coming completely apart.
"I hauled moving jobs all day. And I've got to be out again before dawn tomorrow."
"I know. You fucked me while you reeked of that disgusting sweat. But..."
A single drop slid off the ends of my wet hair, traced my shoulder, and struck my chest. Shim Sona's gaze followed it down, the rest of the sentence dying on the way. Broader shoulders. A chest and arms that had settled into something solid. I'd never set foot in a gym, but years of wrestling furniture had forced a layer of survival muscle onto me anyway, and it was apparently hard to believe this body had once belonged to the Jjindda club president hunched in the corner of a high-school classroom.
"You look decent once you're washed. You work out?"
"I work at a Moving Center! Where would I get money for a gym? So just go. I'm wiped."
Shim Sona looked up at me like I was pathetic, then slowly opened her mouth.
"A dumbass like you only bounces between bit parts and background extra work, so you wouldn't know, but we shoot a scene at least three times."
"Hey! You looking down on bit parts? We get stuck in the background and run multiple takes too!"
I flared up for no good reason. Fuck. Even a nobody knows a set. Shim Sona ignored me and forced herself upright, barely getting any strength into her legs. They were shaking in plain sight, but she'd rather die than look embarrassed, and I could see her grinding her teeth and holding on out of pure spite. She even crossed her arms while completely naked, apparently unaware that it was flattening her small breasts.
"A bit part the same as a lead? We change the angle and shoot the same scene three times or more. And you're really pulling out because I apologized? A criminal doesn't listen to the victim, remember? Don't tell me you actually thought I was scared when I said sorry. You're a real fucking Ho-gu."
Ah. That voice screaming to pull out, and that one short word — sorry — spat while both her legs shook. I'd swallowed the whole thing. I was such a fucking idiot. Revenge, my ass. I'd thought I got carried away and crossed a line, when Shim Sona had laid the board so I'd cross it from the start. Unbelievable. I was the one planning to hide behind the excuse that it was acting, and I was the one who got hooked. Afterward I'd even showered, smug as hell that I'd wrung an apology out of her. Came on her stomach while she was laid out on the table, thought the revenge had worked, and fled all the way to the bathroom.
Wow. Mortifying. Absolutely fucking pathetic.
I dragged a dry hand down my face, hollowed out. At this point I hadn't fucked her. She'd eaten me alive. The corner of Shim Sona's mouth — she was still barely on her feet — twitched upward. She looked like she was dying of how funny this was.
Was the struggling an act too? Is a guy who figures out too late that he got played really that hilarious?
She stared at my face for a while as if she'd come to watch it, and in the end she couldn't hold it. A laugh broke out of her.
"What. You were serious? Then you really should've come inside. The shot the director wants is the woman completely falling apart."
"That's why I acted it that way. I mean... I did finish outside. Anyway, right now I'm so fucking—"
"Right. That's the problem. That you came outside. In the movie, he comes inside. They'll CG it, but the actor's face has to be real."
"What...? What kind of movie are you even shooting? That's not an adult film. That's just porn, isn't it?"
Shim Sona snatched her bra off the floor and answered my stunned question while putting it on. Thankfully, she seemed to have given up on two more rounds.
"An indie."
"Indie...?"
"Yeah. They call it an art film. They're gunning for Cannes."
An indie aiming for Cannes was shooting a rape film? I'd heard that in this industry the line between art and porn was a single sheet of paper, but hearing it said this bluntly still knocked the wind out of me. Shim Sona finished pulling on her panties and jeans. She'd only wiped the semen off her stomach with a tissue, and she was getting dressed anyway, filthy as it must have felt.
"Ahem... there is a bit of mold, I'll give you that."
Unlike Han Seoyeon, she clearly had no desire whatsoever to wash up in my bathroom. She threw on the black leather jacket that had been lying on the floor and spoke again.
"Doesn't matter if it's porn or art."
"Why? I mean... isn't the genius child-actress image good for life? You do rom-coms too... uh, yeah. Right! School romances. You have no idea how jealous I am."
Shim Sona paused mid-brush, dusting off the leather jacket, and looked at me. Something cold flickered through her eyes.
"The cute little sister. The good daughter. The pure girl. How old do you think I can keep playing those? It works now because I'm young. Past thirty, forty? You think I'll still be in a school uniform, playing someone's first love?"
"...Uh, well. Even so, with your acting you could take on more varied roles..."
"That's why I'm trying those varied roles now, dumbass. Who's going to want a pure face pretending her pussy's never been fucked, once I'm that old?"
I lost whatever I'd been about to say. My mouth opened to argue, and nothing came, because she wasn't wrong. I was the proof. If this were an industry where roles quietly rolled in just because you could act a little, I wouldn't still be hauling furniture — and I'd tried so hard my dick nearly fell off.
Shim Sona looked at me with the leather jacket zipped to the throat. Minutes ago that face had been crying, laid out on the table. Now it was dry, without a trace of moisture.
"Acting? There were plenty of senior bitches who acted better than me. I took their spots anyway. Because I was younger."
"...Ah."
"I'm the same. A few years from now some younger bitch will show up and take mine."
I couldn't deny that either. I wanted, as far as my conscience would stretch, to tell her it wasn't so. Fuck. Who am I to say it isn't? Young, pretty rookies burst out of the entertainment world every year, and Shim Sona was an actress who'd climbed by taking other people's places in that fight. She'd know better than anyone — that someday her own place could be taken the exact same way.
Then she took a step closer. The old linoleum gave a small creak. It wasn't the look that had been mocking me a moment ago. She stared straight through me, venom in her eyes.
"But I'm never ending up like that. Starting now, I'm tearing that shitty child-actor image down completely. Better to rip it apart in one go than scramble for sexy roles later. Right?"
With that, she went to the full-length mirror standing in a corner of the studio. I'd snatched it on a moving job the moment the owner said they were throwing it out. She stood in front of it and put her disheveled clothes back in order piece by piece, brushing the leather jacket over and over in case anything had stuck, obsessive enough to set even a single strand of hair perfectly with her fingertips.
Watching that, I recognized the Shim Sona I knew. Not just fussy — pathologically obsessed with cleanliness. And a woman like that was choosing this, of all things? The shame of having swallowed her acting whole, and the anger at being used, had already evaporated, so I couldn't hold the question back.
"You're not just neat, you're insane about it. You can't stand anyone even touching you. And you're fine with the whole world seeing you naked?"
Shim Sona stopped in front of the mirror. She turned and answered with a face that genuinely didn't understand.
"So? You've already seen it. And if the whole world sees me naked, my price goes up. Spill coffee and kick the blankets through a hundred rom-coms, and what's left? You're just busy padding the male leads' filmographies."
She only ever picked the parts that were true. Rom-coms were mostly watched by women, and more often than not the male lead walked off with the popularity. In Hollywood, on the other hand, there were cases where a single shower scene changed a rookie actress's life. The only problem was that the strategic price had been getting naked.
Then Shim Sona swept her own face in the mirror once more and turned back to me. She pointed, blatantly, at what was under the towel I still had on.
"And a dumbass like you is scared to pull his dick out even once? You're a nobody, right? If a director who's won at Cannes asked you to shoot a movie in exchange for showing your dick one time, you wouldn't do it?"
"Hey! Why are you suddenly coming at me! I was thinking of you—"
"Don't pretend you're worried. A guy who shoved his dick in raw because he wanted revenge doesn't get to worry. Disgusting."
Haah. Dead center.
In the end I flopped onto my back on the bed and waved a hand. The towel gaped a little, but she'd already seen everything, and I didn't have the energy to cover up now.
"Fine. Go, then. I try to play the senior for once in forever, and this is what I get."
At that, Shim Sona — putting her shoes on by the door — stopped again.
"Play the senior? Ha. You? A Jjindda, a Ho-gu, a dumbass?"
This time she walked toward me with the shoes still on. My studio was old and filthy, sure, but stomping across the linoleum in shoes was still a bit much. As the one who lived here, I figured I ought to say something. I worked up the nerve to open my mouth, and it snapped shut.
No. I folded. It was hard to believe this was the same face that had been crying on my dick minutes ago, acting her heart out. The presence of a lead who'd drawn ten million viewers didn't come from nowhere. She was short, and still the look coming down at me was nothing but a blade.
...Fine. Shoes were allowed. What was linoleum, anyway.
"You weren't a senior in high school either. You were just a convenient errand boy we could work to death. Same thing now."
Shim Sona came right up beside the bed and stood there. Beneath the leather jacket the line of her jeans showed, and the fact that my dick had been inside her, under all of that, suddenly felt unreal. I was clutching the towel as it tried to slip, looking up at her, when she spoke.
"Still. Today's acting practice was useful enough. We'll do it properly again next week. I'll bring the morning-after pill."
What?