Um, I Think I'll Drop Out
They had rented out the entire top floor of a study café.
A full three writers were pouring themselves into the script. A college student dreaming of becoming a writer, a YouTube scriptwriter who did this for a living, an assistant writer besides—every one of them looked dead serious. Delivery containers had piled into a mountain, and not a single person had managed to clean any of it up. It wasn't laziness. There simply wasn't time to do anything but touch the script.
"What are we doing with this role? Cut it?"
"No. Without this, the story doesn't even get off the ground..."
"Mm, but leaving it untouched feels a little shaky, doesn't it?"
"We've got to change it somehow. There's no actor who can pull it off."
These were not high-caliber writers, the sort who prepared scripts for network television. That much went without saying. They were simply people who seemed to have a bit of talent, gathered together to write a scenario—and then, riding YouTube's boom, they had succeeded beyond anything they'd imagined.
Now that they were finally trying to buckle down and do it properly, it was not easy at all. God, it was hard. So hard.
"Ah... I'm actually going to lose my mind..."
In the end one of them toppled backward and let out a wail.
"We succeeded way too much for our actual skill. Back when we wrote whatever came to mind with zero thought and the views just kept climbing—those were the days... ugh..."
"YouTube back then really was a land flowing with honey. It isn't anymore. Everyone's gotten too good."
"That's what I'm saying. That's exactly the problem."
Greed for the money that came with view counts was part of it, but that wasn't their only driving force. They had simply kept at this work long enough to want real recognition as writers, and all that remained was the frustration of not being able to write something good.
On top of that, they had already posted something like this to the community.
A post put up to show off their ambition and their resolve. The comments, of course, were nothing but people showering them with praise. But...
...following through on it was the hard part.
Just then, one of the assistant writers' phones rang.
"Ah, yes, I got your call! Soyen! Yes!"
The voice on the line was frantic, of course. Somehow it had come out sounding an awful lot like an excuse.
"So, we've got the character pinned down, but I don't know if there's a role that'll fit, and we're stuck... I'm really sorry to say this, but would it be all right to push the shoot back a little?"
A moment later, that voice was soaked through with bewilderment.
"Huh? What? The script is fine as it is? We can really go with this?"
Even as they spoke, they weren't sure they believed it. The role written into this script was, frankly, far too demanding to ask for on YouTube, and that was the entire problem. And yet Jung Soyen's answer, coming back down the line, was not what anyone expected.
Go with it like this? Why?
Had she given up on being ambitious?
But then the next thing she said left them no choice but to be shocked.
"What? You found an actor who can actually play it?"
A short while later, they changed venues and picked the meeting back up. This time it was a café with a truly beautiful view. The story writers, who had been grinding on the script until they looked like beggars, rose to greet the directing team and Jung Soyen.
Jung Soyen burst out laughing.
"Aigoo, look at my kids. Not a single one of you looks like a functioning human being. How hard have you been suffering lately?"
"...Don't even start. We got greedy about wanting to do better, so we've been pulling all-nighters and going at it for real."
People kept filtering in and taking their seats, one after another, until—before anyone quite noticed—the entire Snack Movie team was gathered in one place.
"Um, Soyen!"
Before Jung Soyen could even finish studying the menu and deciding what to order, one of the assistant writers, who had been watching her face the whole time, called out. Curiosity had won.
"This isn't a hidden-camera prank, right? You really found someone to play that role!"
"Yeah! Honestly, I was so curious I couldn't stand it!"
"That role isn't something just anyone can pull off, you know?"
Faces clustered in like baby birds, every one of them desperate to hear Jung Soyen's answer as soon as humanly possible. Jung Soyen, for her part, only let out a short puff of laughter, as if she fully intended to let them stew.
"Look at you lot. No fun if you hear it ahead of time, right?"
"Ah... you're really going to leave us hanging like that?"
"I already gave you the answer, didn't I?"
"Aaaaaah—"
Just as the writers broke into a chorus of whining—
"Cute little things."
Jung Soyen switched on the TV in the café's meeting room, the one they had paid a hefty sum to rent, and set about syncing it to her phone.
"All right, all right. Better you just watch it yourselves than listen to me talk. Hurry up, drink your coffee and look. I didn't gather you here for a meeting in the first place. I gathered you to show you this."
"Huh? That's what this was?"
Instead of answering, Jung Soyen played a video, and the connected TV began to spit the scene out onto the screen. An audition clip from one of the participants. The one on camera was Lee Sua.
The assistant writers' mouths fell open in unison.
"Oh... she's pretty..."
"A little early to be marveling at just that, don't you think?"
Jung Soyen asked, for the moment.
"First impression? Besides pretty."
"Mm, sharp and intense? Feels like the roles she could actually carry would be pretty limited."
"She's a completely different texture from our script, though?"
"Yeah. Her look is so strong, there's not really a role that suits her..."
But then.
The face they had all called intense—Lee Sua's face—crumbled in a single instant. Here was a face that looked incapable of even grasping the concept of despair, and yet it was seized by terror; bewilderment, and a thick, complicated ache, came through with an uncanny, unfamiliar clarity. The very flaw every one of them had been discussing was, as if to prove a point, transfigured into a strength. A face you could read at a glance. A performance you absolutely could not.
Jung Soyen said nothing. She simply handed her phone to the assistant writers, and they replayed the video as if they had been waiting for the chance. There was no end to the replays.
"No way. This face... does acting like that?"
"This shouldn't be possible, and yet it kind of works...?"
The assistant writers' mouths fell clean open.
"With skill like that, how come none of us know her? This is my first time seeing her."
"No credits. Says acting's just a hobby."
"...Soyen, you're teasing us, right?"
"It's real. She says so herself."
Jung Soyen meant every word. In the first place, the person who understood the situation least of all was Jung Soyen herself. Because—
Sua used to stay logged into that game for absurd stretches of time. She'd never once mentioned going to an acting academy, or anything of the sort. Is this really what you call talent...?
Meanwhile the assistant writers' mouths kept dropping.
"Doesn't look like we've got anything to worry about. We could just go straight ahead..."
Meanwhile, in Lee Sua's studio apartment.
"...Huh?"
Sua, checking the video she had received from Jung Soyen, let out a sound of pure confusion. The scene in front of her was not the one she had expected.
"Wait? Huh? What?"
She watched the footage of herself acting, over and over. Even a conservative count put it at nearly twenty times. At last she had no choice but to admit it.
"I'm... kind of good at acting?"
Facing herself on a screen was embarrassingly awkward, but acting ability was a separate question from that.
"No—I'm actually pretty good at it?"
It felt like watching an entirely different person. As if it weren't Sua in there at all, but the role she had experienced inside the script. The reproduction she herself had performed had come out far better than she had expected. Sua's eyes sparkled.
If this is how it is, every single problem gets solved in one shot!
First, the grade written on the script. Her fear that it might be Grade 5 (Flawed / Risky)—because she thought she had failed to reproduce the role properly—turned out to be unfounded. It was now clear the grade was a measure for judging whether something would be a hit.
And then there was the way the Snack Movie team had behaved after the first audition, and everything Jung Soyen had said. All of that, too, finally made sense.
"So I was actually being treated like someone impressive?"
Summed up, the situation was simple and perfectly clear. She had obtained a Special Privilege that let her experience a script, and her skill at reproducing it wasn't bad. And that wasn't all—she could even check the grade of a work that wasn't finished yet.
This...
Then...
If she played it right...
"An actress...! Can I really become an actress...?!"
A rose-colored carpet unrolled across Sua's mind. And right then—
♩ ♪ ♬
A call came in from Soyen unnie.
Sua no longer hesitated to pick up. Heh. I already know I've got a knack for acting.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Sua, it's me. You busy?"
"Nope?"
"Got it. It's nothing much, just..."
Jung Soyen went on.
"I'm going to send you the script now. Want to give it a read?"
"Of course!"
Sua answered without a shred of doubt. Once, she would have been full of nothing but worry. Now she was full of nothing but excitement.
I've got a perfectly solid third Special Privilege. That's what I've got.
However.
S#2. A SCHOOL WHERE THE ZOMBIES APPEAR / DAWN
"...?"
Sua's eyes flew wide before she knew what she was doing.
What? Zombies?