The Line Aggro Meter

The woman thrashed with everything she had, fighting to stay alive until the very last second.

"P-please, spare m—"

Her faintly trembling hand dropped to the ground with a dull thud. Her eyes slid shut. She wasn't breathing anymore.

I stared blankly down at the dead woman's face, my expression gone ice-cold, as if I'd just looked at a bug.

"Haa, fuck. Already dead."

A deep hollowness washed over me — the kind you feel when a toy you've been having so much fun with snaps beyond repair in a single instant. Rain hammered down in sheets as I crouched beside the woman's corpse, pulled out a cigarette, and slipped it between my lips.

"Hah... hah..."

When I opened my eyes, a familiar ceiling stared back at me. My room. I'd had another miserable dream. I had become Choi Dooshik, and I had killed someone. The sensations were so vivid it felt like it had just happened — my whole body was soaked through with sweat, as if I really had been standing in the rain.

"......"

My fingertips kept trembling, just slightly. Fear? Dread? Guilt? No. None of those emotions existed anywhere inside me. It was as if I had been swimming alone across an open sea, or walking on clouds. My mind was utterly still. Utterly calm.

"Fuck, I had another goddamn dream."

The words had come out of my own mouth, and I startled at them.

"......"

I almost never swear. Maybe it was a side effect of the dream. That seemed like the most likely explanation.

Being drenched in sweat from head to toe felt disgusting. I was just about to get up and wash it all off when a blue status window bloomed in front of my eyes.

"Huh...?"

Line Aggro Meter...?

"Lines? Don't tell me..."

I shot up from the bed and bolted to my desk, flipping open the first page of the Traces of Evil script lying there. I already had Choi Dooshik's lines memorized cold — but not the bizarre things he had said in the dream. The original lines. The ones the writer had actually put on the page.

I quietly recited Choi Dooshik's first line.

"The police? You'll be dead long before they get here..."

The status window flickered to life in front of me.

This is ordinary...?

Barely a six...? The line I had just delivered was the original — written by the screenwriter herself.

"In that case..."

I thought back to the line the director had rewritten for me on the spot at yesterday's table read.

"What was it again..."

Ah. There it was.

"You fucking bitch. Why the hell are you running? It's pissing me off..."

"Pretty damn picky..."

Still, the director's rewrite had scored far higher. Which meant it was better than the original, at least...

"Then..."

The line Choi Dooshik had spoken in last night's dream.

"You okay? You're not already dead, are you?"

The instant the words left my mouth, the status window in front of me flashed a violent red.

My eyes flew wide.

"9.5...?"

I recited another line from the dream.

"Don't worry. I'll never let you die that easily..."

"...9.8?"

This was it. I had finally found the exploit.

"Then..."

I rattled off Choi Dooshik's cruel dream-lines one after another.

"Does it hurt a little? It's okay. You'll get used to it soon."

Just as I'd expected. The lines I'd spoken in the dream were scoring through the roof.

Again.

"Stop crying. If you keep that up, you'll go hoarse, and then your screams won't sound pretty anymore."

"No. It'd be a problem if you broke this early..."

"Your breathing's gotten pretty ragged. You're excited too, aren't you? You like this."

"......"

A heinous bastard. A psychotic devil. A son of a bitch who deserves to be struck by lightning. That was complete and total praise. Could Choi Dooshik possibly receive a higher compliment than that?

My heart gave a small, eager thud. My fingertips trembled with a nameless excitement, as if they were itching to close around something. I wanted to act. I wanted to act right now. I wanted to show every last staff member who had questioned the Choi Dooshik casting. I wanted to show them the real Choi Dooshik.

That was when a soft knock sounded, and my door eased open.

"Hm? Oppa, you're up? Your mom told me to wake you... Heheh."

"Hayoung, sleep well?"

"Yep."

"Jina didn't give you a hard time or anything?"

Hayoung's eyes went wide. She shook her head hard, waving both hands.

"What?! No. Jina unnie was so, so nice to me..."

"......"

"But I was seriously shocked. I never thought Jina unnie would be a subscriber to my channel..."

I had seen it with my own two eyes, and it was still completely ridiculous.

"Jina unnie woke up at dawn and went to the study cafe. I even walked her down to the first floor."

A story I had approximately zero interest in.

"Oppa, isn't unnie so hardworking? She went to bed late last night too... She must be exhausted... She really lives her life so diligently."

"Not even a little."

"Huh?"

"She couldn't study, so she's retaking the exam. That's all."

"Ah..."

I had taken too much abuse from that sister of mine over the years to say anything nice about her.

"Oppa, hurry and wash up, then come eat breakfast."

"Yeah."

"What are you doing today? You're going to the company later, right?"

"Well, I'm pretty busy today. I've got a filming schedule..."

That's right. A little kid who just became a trainee and I don't even live in the same world. I'm in the real thing now.

A darkness so thick it seemed to swallow everything around it. The faintest wash of light traced the contours of a pitch-black alley. This was Choi Dooshik's murder scene — the one that would become the promotional teaser. A heavy atmosphere hung over the set, wound tight with tension.

It was Director Kim's low voice that finally broke the silence.

"Ready, action!"

The moment the call landed, the rain truck unleashed a downpour. Rain roared down in sheets — and then a raw, tearing scream ripped through the sound of it, echoing off the walls as the two of them began to act.

"Kyaaaaah—!"

Ahn Hyemi, the victim, fled covered in blood. Choi Dooshik followed. He looked like he was running, but his steps were unhurried, almost light. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ahn Hyemi reached the dead end of the alley and finally tripped over her own feet, crashing to the ground.

"Nngh...!"

She must have twisted her ankle in the fall. She couldn't get up. Choi Dooshik strolled toward the fallen Ahn Hyemi with a leisurely expression, whistling as he came. A low, idle tune, twining itself through the hiss of the falling rain into something unholy. A strange, sick harmony.

"......"

The moment that atmosphere and that sound locked together, every staff member on set felt a chill race down their spine.

"Wow... Director. We might not even need a background score for this. The atmosphere is just..."

Director Kim didn't answer the directing staffer's hushed murmur of awe. He had forgotten to reply at all. He just stared, dazed, at Jinwoo's face on the monitor, watching as if he could burn a hole through the screen.

Damn... the second he steps in front of a camera, the whole feeling changes...

He had already seen Jinwoo act twice — once at the audition, once at yesterday's table read. Both times had been brief. What he was looking at now was something far thicker. Far deeper.

On the monitor, Choi Dooshik settled into a crouch and tenderly brushed the cheek of a terrified, trembling Ahn Hyemi.

A gentle voice. A merciless act.

A wet, tearing sound effect split the air — and a scream detonated with it.

"Kyaaaaah!"

Another stab. Another wet punch of sound.

"Kyaaaaah! P-please, spare me!"

A fountain of blood sprayed across Choi Dooshik's face, painting it red. Even like that — even dripping with it — he smiled, perfectly at ease. It was a scene so grotesque, so bone-deep unsettling, that it barely looked human anymore.

Hwang Mina, the lead actress, swallowed hard and rubbed at the goosebumps standing up along both arms, brushing them off like dust.

"Ah... Director. When exactly did our drama's genre change to horror-thriller?"

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Director Kim's mouth.

"Heh. Idolman's acting is something else, isn't it? They say that's his first time acting."

"Come on, that can't possibly be true..."

"Why not? You were pulling performances like that at his age no problem."

"I don't think I was quite at that level..."

The assistant director stepped in then and murmured something close to Director Kim's ear.

"Director. I think we have more than enough footage at this point."

Director Kim gave a small, reluctant nod. The assistant director threw a hand up and called the OK.

"Cut! That's a take! Wow... that was perfect! Great work, everyone!"

With the cut, the once-pitch-dark set flooded with bright light, the world snapping back into ordinary color. Director Kim stood up looking thoroughly unsatisfied.

"Aigoo. We waited all that time and it ended in a single take."

They had gathered in the early evening as the sun went down and sat around waiting for it to get properly dark. More than two hours of standby — and the actual shoot had lasted maybe five minutes. Not a single NG. One take, and it was over. That kid. That brand-new rookie actor.

"Ah... what a waste. I wanted to watch Idolman act a little longer..."

Director Kim smacked his lips and glanced sideways at Screenwriter Lee, who was standing there in a daze.

"Hey, Writer Lee. Don't you think we ought to give Choi Dooshik more scenes? Acting that delicious, and we're just going to leave it like this...?"

But Screenwriter Lee didn't seem to hear him at all. She just kept staring at Jinwoo, her expression completely gone.

"Hey. Are you even listening to me right now?"

Only then did she jolt and whip her head around.

"Sorry? Ah... I'm sorry, Director. What did you just say to me?"

"Wow. The great Writer Lee, so far gone over Idolman's acting she can't even form a sentence..."

She laughed it off, sheepish under the teasing — but the words were a plain, unvarnished fact. She had come to set today after hearing they were shooting the promo, figuring she'd do a light bit of monitoring. Just check whether the actors had interpreted the characters the way the script intended. Whether they'd found the right tone.

"......"

The Choi Dooshik that Seo Jinwoo had just put on camera was astonishing beyond anything she had language for. It was a performance that had completely transcended the original author's intent. She had gotten chills at the audition, too — but watching him act in front of an actual camera was a different feeling entirely.

Wow...

She even felt a kind of awe. Wonder kept spilling out of her, one gasp after another, and she couldn't stop it.

He's insane. He really is...

She had walked through countless sets over the years and watched any number of actors work — everyone from raw newcomers to well-established veterans. She had seen more performances than she could count.

This is different...

The depth of the acting she had just witnessed from Seo Jinwoo was on another level. It was as if he had taken Choi Dooshik's spare, roughly sketched lines and run them through some kind of transcendent translation of his own. He had created a new Choi Dooshik entirely.

Most rookie actors didn't have the nerve for something like that. They were too busy watching the director's face, the writer's face. A newcomer who ignored the writer's script and casually rewrote the lines into his own ad-libs? In twenty years of writing dramas, she had never seen it happen.

And yet she didn't feel the slightest bit offended. Because the Choi Dooshik Seo Jinwoo had interpreted felt so much more real than the one on the page. The faint unease she did feel came from how painfully convincing the performance had been. It had felt like standing there and watching someone actually murder a person with her own two eyes.

The ad-lib Seo Jinwoo had murmured just now still wouldn't leave her. It kept circling her ears, over and over.

How the hell did he even come up with a line like that?

They were words no one who wasn't an actual serial killer — an actual psychopath — should have been able to say.

Should I revise the script...?

Just as the director had said, it seemed like it wouldn't hurt to expand Choi Dooshik's role a little further.