I Think So Too

Did Sua do all right?

That was the question on Jung Soyen's mind as she sat at home the way she always did, an RPG running, presiding over a guild whose name carried real weight.

She was a woman who had struck it rich on nothing but luck, riding cryptocurrency to a fortune. Afterward, almost as a hobby, she had gathered a few people and tried her hand at a Mutube channel — Snack Movie — and the thing had succeeded beyond anything she had imagined. Success had swollen the operation. It had turned professional. And the result was now.

The channel's been shooting up lately, and the applications have piled up with it. Even yesterday, the competition looked brutal.

This wasn't the real entertainment industry. It was Mutube. So college students with decent faces sent in applications on the thought of maybe I'm about good enough, and unknown actors applied in the hope of getting their faces out there. Lately, even working actors who had enjoyed the channel had started reaching out.

Why does everything I touch these days go so well?

If a goddess of fortune really existed, she had planted herself completely on Jung Soyen's side. That was the thought Soyen had been living with.

Which made what came next land all the harder.

Sua announcing, out of nowhere, that she was setting the guild aside to go live her real life — it had been a shock like nothing else.

Of course, Soyen had no intention of talking her out of the admirable decision to focus on reality. This wasn't some mine worked by slaves. Putting the game down to live hard in the real world was something to cheer on.

Even so.

My tie to Sua.

That was what Jung Soyen truly hated to lose.

What kind of person had Sua been in the guild? The quiet one who got the work done. The one who kept showing up even after every other member had drifted away. The one who, when conflict flared between guildmates, had the good sense to lay a bridge across the middle of it.

Yes. Jung Soyen simply wanted Sua to do well. That was where it had started.

"Want to come on my Mutube channel?"

An outrageous proposal, that one.

This was a field that required acting, so she couldn't parachute Sua in by sheer force of will. She could encourage. She could not force.

If Sua happened to be pretty in person — if she held up on camera — if her acting went no further than being able to read the lines...

I wanted to put her in even a short scene and then, under one pretext or another, get some money into her hands. Because I wanted to help.

That was all she had been thinking. Then she actually saw Sua, and took the first hit.

...What is that face? She's this pretty?

Wasn't it usually the photo that looked better? But the moment she saw Sua in the flesh, she knew. The picture she had seen before had failed to hold the real person at all.

Enough. On looks alone, she could stand her in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠front of a camera. The thought arrived at once.

Tap, tap. She was still lost in the sight of Sua when someone patted her shoulder. A staffer from the Snack Movie team.

"Channel owner — Soyen, what are you staring at like that? Wait, no. I get it. Whoa."

"Right? You see it too?"

"...This is unreal. Who is that? Did she come because she wants to be on our channel? Please let that be it!"

The staffer glued to Soyen's side had to concede it on the spot. Sua's looks were that beautiful. In fact, among the applicants about to join the waiting line, a few of the women simply turned around and walked back the way they had come.

The staffer folded their arms.

"That applicant... we don't even need to look at the acting, do we? If it's a role with no lines, I feel like we could throw her at anything."

"The raw material is incredible. Honestly, slap nothing but that face on the thumbnail and one upload would pull views without even trying."

"Right?"

"Still, let's wait and see. She might surprise us and actually be able to act."

"...But then she'd go to the real industry, wouldn't she? She wouldn't stick around a channel like ours."

The staffer shrugged.

"And honestly, I don't think the acting will be any good."

"What makes you say that?"

"If I had to pin it down, the impression is closer to a model than an actor. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face is too pretty. You don't really expect acting from that, do you?"

"It does feel a little like that. The impression, especially."

"Exactly! The impression! For one thing, that mask is just too set in stone, isn't it? The range of roles she could actually play looks insanely narrow."

The staffer clicked their tongue.

"Since we're Mutube, we honestly try people out in all sorts of different parts."

"True."

"She feels a little off for that."

"Well, we'll know once we see it with our own eyes. Now hurry back to your seat and get to work. Look at you, slipping into a chat like it's the most natural thing in the world."

"Agh. Caught."

She sent the staffer — who had been angling, ever so casually, to slack off — back to their post. Truth be told, Jung Soyen's own feelings weren't all that different.

Lee Sua.

Her particular atmosphere was so sharply defined that the acting would probably disappoint. Maybe it came from having put so many people in front of a camera, but Soyen had developed an instinct for it: one look, and she knew. In any case, that had been the first impression.

And Soyen's guess had probably been right. Sua hadn't even seemed to be studying the script with any focus. Was it the attitude of someone who had already given up for good, figuring she couldn't act even if she tried?

And yet.

The moment Lee Sua's performance began, that thought shattered like a pane of glass.

"Dead...? Hey — hey...."

The faces of the Snack Movie crew became something to behold. Every one of them wore a look of serious shock, and the shock each of them felt on the inside seemed much the same.

Lee Sua. An applicant who had come crashing in like a meteor, smashing every prejudice as she went.

"No...! I said no...! My life — my life...!"

And yet all the script had written on it was that single line.

Sua did not pour herself into performing nothing but bewilderment. She looked as if she had already posited an entire world of her own.

Jung Soyen's mind spun, still reeling from the blow.

The restaurant as a place, every character besides herself, the situation... She built all of that in under a minute? In this much detail?

She had to admit that the conversation she had shared with the assistant director had been miles off. Sua's acting had been extraordinary from the conception alone.

...And that eyeline. Is someone directing her?

The way Sua handled her gaze, the paths her body traced — they landed another enormous blow.

She knows. If there's a camera, she knows exactly where it will point.

Brilliant acting on its own would have been enough to tear a gasp out of anyone, and on top of it she was clearly accounting for exactly how her own image would be captured. For a while, the interview room turned into a set.

So it was only natural, afterward, that Kim Chaerin asked what she asked.

"...Don't tell me the acting is just a hobby, too?"

"Well. Something like that."

This was a hobby?

A line fit to kill off more than a few people who acted for a living.

Lee Sua met most of the barrage of questions with short, blunt answers, and the judges could only startle, now and then.

That was how the interview ended. And now—

"Hey, hey, hey!"

Jung Soyen kicked up a fuss over nothing and called over that same staffer from before.

"Yes, yes!"

"How was it?"

The staffer swallowed dryly, then answered.

"...It was insane?"

Meanwhile, Sua was wholly occupied with studying her third Special Privilege.

"Hmmm. Sure is a puzzle."

An unsolved question. There was nothing for it but to go back over everything from one to ten. Sua did her best to gather up the memories left in her head.

The last Special Privilege unlocked out of nowhere, and along with some strange notification window I got dragged off to a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meadow.... That's definitely what happened.

The third Special Privilege Sua had obtained: Time to Act.

After being pulled in, she had lived through killing a person, and it was far too vivid to dismiss as nothing but a dream — the blade driving into flesh, her entire body shaking from the shock. Even now, reproducing that scene didn't seem as if it would be difficult. As if a moment like that had truly existed in her own life.

Like some situation, and the memories that came with it, got forced into me?

Genuinely bizarre, and she had no other way to put it.

Back when she had gone through reincarnation, Sua had been confident there would be nothing left that could surprise her. She had thought she would never run into anything stranger than that. That certainty had just broken. The third Special Privilege was genuinely strange.

Don't tell me it's a privilege that lets me live through whatever I'm about to act, ahead of time? Is that what it means, calling it an acting-field privilege?

A strong guess. Sua kept digging, one thought biting the tail of the last.

Let's pick the activation condition apart, too. At what moment did it unlock? Right — it was definitely when I touched the script with my hand.

Yeah. That's right.

Sua immediately looked around. She wanted to trigger the third Special Privilege this very moment. She badly needed to get the hang of it as quickly as she could.

"Let's find any old script and touch it. A script... a script..."

But of course it wasn't easy, right from the start.

A script? As if she would have one of those lying around the house. A computer, though — that she had. She went straight to ransacking the internet.

"Damn it."

These days, with copyright troubles raised more gravely than ever, downloading anything like a scenario script was about as easy as plucking a star out of the sky. After digging ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for ages, all she managed to turn up was a single clumsy piece of erotica.

"...Even so, this is pushing it."

Wasn't there some other way? She was turning the problem over and over when—

"Huh?"

"Finally found one. A script!"

A casting call for an independent film? She wasn't interested yet. Sua downloaded nothing but the script and printed it on the spot.

And then, the moment her hand smoothed over the printed pages—

Yes! I knew this was it!

She felt her mind being sucked away somewhere.