The Choice Is Yours. What'll You Do?

The next day, Sua did something unusual. She turned the game back on.

It wasn't that she had given up on quitting. Soyeon unni had asked her to run a raid, and that was all.

"Right there, right there! This is the pattern where you dodge!"

"Come on. You don't even have to tell me."

"Oh? You cleared it way faster than usual. Wow — see, I keep saying it. Put Sua in the party and the clear gets fast."

Whew. Even an RPG that used to feel like nothing but homework was honestly fun, now that it had been a while. So — what was she supposed to do from here?

What else? Ask about the thing I've been dying to know!

That was what Sua told herself. It wasn't nearly as easy as the thought. Starting a conversation with someone else was, quietly, difficult.

And right then, Jung Soyeon was the one who spoke first.

"Sua, anyway, congrats on passing. What did I tell you? With a face like yours, getting in was already in the bag."

"I'm glad I passed, but..."

Escaping unemployment was a relief. That hardly meant nothing nagged at her. Even just now, Jung Soyeon had brought up her looks and her looks alone — not a single word about the acting.

So I only got in because of my face?

Had she passed on her acting, or on her appearance? It had been sitting heavy in her head since the raid began, since before she had exchanged a word with Soyeon. A very important worry.

In the end, Sua decided to ask. How much the Special Privilege had actually raised her skill. How it would have looked to other people. Whether this was truly the talent she had been searching for. She was too curious to stand it.

"Unni, what about my acting?"

"Hm?"

"I was a little curious how I actually ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did, too."

"Well, you did well, so you got in, didn't you? Honestly — you're only asking because you want a compliment out of me, aren't you?"

"That's not it..."

Sua let the rest of the sentence fade. Asking like this clearly wasn't going to get her anywhere, and just then a good idea struck her.

The acting I did? I can just watch it myself, can't I?

"Unni."

"Yeah?"

"By any chance, is yesterday's audition still saved somewhere? As a video?"

"Yeah, it is. We keep everyone's performances, just in case people start saying we played favorites."

"Then could I have the one of me acting, too?"

"Course you can. Hang on, I'll grab it real quick."

With that, the voice chat with Soyeon came to a stop for the time being.

Hmm. What to do until then.

Maybe I should try the Special Privilege a little more?

Come to think of it, the most entertaining toy in the world had just been set in Sua's hands and left there. That toy was her third Special Privilege. What if she actually did something with it?

It was right around then that word arrived: the café had approved her.

Good news, for Sua. Being able to get her hands on more scripts meant, put another way, that she could probe the Special Privilege in far finer detail than before.

"Yes!"

She downloaded several scripts in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a hurry. Printing every one of them and finishing the work of slipping them into binders took barely a moment. The instant she set her hand on the neatly stacked bundle—

Shwoooosh—!

That buoyant lift, familiar enough by now. Her mind, drifting far away.

Sua passed lightly over the notification windows she had already grown used to. What mattered was that the doors no longer looked the way they had.

Long nameplates had been set into them.

Two dramas whose scripts she had taken from the café, and both were works Sua liked well enough. Back when she still had a job, she used to leave them playing on her phone off in some corner.

Catch Me If You Can was a crime thriller. Speeding was the saga of a race driver's run to a championship.

Sua's eyes still glittered, as if she couldn't quite believe any of it.

"So from now on, I can experience these however I want?"

She had been dragged through the audition script without knowing a single thing that was in it, but this was different. The through-line of both these works was still sitting clear in her head.

"..."

Sua swallowed, throat dry.

"...How am I supposed to resist this? I can't!"

She flung a door open hard enough to break it and charged through. The handle she had just turned belonged to Speeding.

Bang—!

"Ghk!"

The moment she was inside, though, she had to eat a serious collision. Panic came first. The pain — her forehead felt ready to split — came after.

"Ow, ow..."

Rubbing her forehead, Sua looked around past the door. She had been sure she would drop straight into the world of the script. She hadn't. All there was, if it even deserved the description, was a single booth like a pay phone.

"...A pay phone? Out of nowhere? Did I just get scammed?"

Then she saw the directory hanging beside it, and understood.

"Ah. Right. I have to set the role."

So she only had to dial whichever number she wanted? And now that she thought about it — the protagonist, Kim Hyuncheol, was a man. A tangle of worries turning over in her, Sua moved her fingers anyway. She lifted the receiver and pressed three digits. 001.

Kshhhhh—!

At the same time, her mind went far away.

"Whoa..."

A little later, Sua appeared in the corridor with an extraordinary look on her face.

"Whoa... whoa..."

Quietly, she looked down at her own hands.

"With my — my own hands... I won the championship...!"

A second later she crossed her arms without meaning to, trying to press down the electric thrill climbing from her toes to the crown of her head, and the goosebumps still standing all over her body.

"Ahh...!"

She shuddered with the pleasure of it. The feel of the wheel was still vivid in her hands, and the right leg that had floored the accelerator with everything she had was tingling even now. Never mind the time she had turned a race she was about to lose inside out with a drift.

Catch Me If You Can had been no different. Leading the investigative agencies around by the nose while she stole works of art had been a pure delight.

"Thrilling. Fun. Should I just live here for the rest of my life?"

The audition script had been nothing short of the worst. A fun script, though, was closer to a pleasant dream, and the exhaustion was strikingly light.

And that was when it happened.

"Huh?"

Something caught the eye of Sua, who had been nothing but delighted.

A new line had been added beneath both works.

"I get experience complete. ...But what's a grade?"

A few guesses sprang to mind at once. Was this its way of saying she hadn't pulled the role off?

"I don't think that's it."

Slowly, she shook her head. The instant she entered an experience, Sua thought as the role and moved as the role. She wasn't simply dropped into that world. It felt as if she had become the person outright. So what else was there that a grade could be measuring?

"Grade, grade, grade..."

She turned the word over and over, and then realized she was doing something idiotic. Come to think of it, there was someone in her studio apartment far smarter than she was. Its name was Computer.

"Right. I'll ask that guy."

Shwooo—!

Out of the Special Trait Hotel, Sua went straight to the computer and set her fingers flying across the keyboard. Nothing more than searching each drama's title sent a long column of articles unspooling down the page.

First, Grade 3 — Go Ahead, Try and Catch Me.

Average viewership: 6 percent.

And Grade 5 — Speeding.

Average viewership: 1.8 percent.

Speeding bombed that hard?

Sua found it hard to believe. She had been completely taken with it after catching it by chance while it happened to be on, but everyone else's taste had apparently run the other way. The more she dug, the tighter the net drew.

Every expert out there heaps praise on Speeding, and the grade is still low. So it isn't a grade for artistic quality.

Which left only one likely candidate.

Grade 3, Go Ahead, Try and Catch Me. Viewership, 6 percent. Grade 5, Speeding. Viewership, 1.8 percent.

Is it grading how well something performs? Sure seems like it.

Once her thoughts reached that far, Sua made straight for the Special Trait Hotel without another pause. Something had just flashed through her head.

Stickleback. This one wasn't a file shared on the café. It was something she had hauled in from a casting notice — which was to say, a thing that hadn't even been born yet. An unfinished work.

"No way. If I experience this one too, does it get a grade?"

And what good was only saying it? Sua threw the door open at once.

"Agh..."

And a little while later.

"Urgh... ghh..."

Sua crawled back out through the door. Truth be told, she wasn't even crawling properly. Writhing was closer to it.

"A shrimp boat... I'm losing it... Why is the title Stickleback..."

She muttered it in a voice more dead than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠alive. No, seriously — what on earth had to happen before a story about boarding a shrimp-fishing boat could be titled Stickleback? She resented whoever had done it. Maybe she ought to hunt them down and have it out with them.

But the moment she barely managed to lift her head—

"...!"

Life rushed straight back into eyes that had gone slack and spent.

"I can see it! A grade!"

Sua kicked off the floor and was on her feet at once. The misery of working a shrimp boat on two hours of sleep at a time was already gone. She could see the grade of a work that hadn't even premiered, and as far as Sua was concerned right now, no fact in the world was greater than that.

Shwooo—!

Out of the space, she tore through the internet like a woman possessed.

Of those, Sua took every last one with a script attached.

If that grade really was a number for how well something would perform — if she could look ahead and see the grades of works that weren't even finished—

"Hehe."

Sua laughed before she realized she was laughing.

And right then.

Riiing—

A call came in from her guild master, Soyeon unni.

An answer key had arrived — one that would wipe clean not only her doubts about her own acting, but her doubts about the grades of scripts as well. Sua opened the link at once.

At last, it was time to come face to face with herself.