Pick One
Sua's brow drew tight. The cause was a phone call from absolutely nowhere.
Voice phishing? Now?
And yet it was subtly unlike any scam she knew. The usual ones impersonated a public official and tried to coax a wire transfer up front. This caller had introduced himself as an actor, and offered to throw money in on top of it.
"This—"
She was about to shut him down flat. Don't call people with this. She never got the chance.
"Two million won? Fine. Count it as round-trip fare."
"Hm?"
Sua let the doubt show.
There was another oddity, now that she thought about it. The Korean wasn't clumsy in the slightest; the call had come from a normal number; and the diction stayed crisp even down in the lower register.
"In return, come now. We're wasting time."
Heard again, the voice was genuinely excellent—so much so that it didn't feel like a sloppy criminal call at all. Had they gotten that advanced these days?
The line went dead all the same.
Sua muttered before she realized she was doing it.
"What kind of person is this supposed to be...?"
Strange, for voice phishing. But too bizarre to pass for an ordinary call, either. She really had been racking up peculiar experiences lately.
And then, in the very next moment, the phone rang again.
Caller: Jung Soyen
This time it was Soyen unni.
"Hello? Unni?"
"Ah, Sua. Did you just pick up a call?"
"If you mean the one just now..."
Sua cocked her head, then went on.
"I did get one weird call. Said they'd cover the travel, so come right now."
"Aigoo. So that's how it landed. They say Seonil's never had much of a way with words."
"Then what he said on that call was real?"
"Yeah."
Soyen unni agreed.
"Seonil's been on our channel a few times, so there's a thread there. I showed him what we filmed this time, and he must have liked it. That's why he reached out to you."
"Hm. He's a peculiar person."
You like someone's work, so you contact them like that? It didn't feel polite. If anything, it left a bad taste.
"The way I see it, you're the sharpest of the women, and Seonil's the sharpest of the men. He's odd, that's all. He's not a bad person."
"Even granting that..."
"You remember what I told you before? That if a decent chance came along, I wanted to give it to you. This is that chance."
"A connection to Seonil?"
"Yep. Looks like he's got a new drama in the works, and I thought, what if I hooked you into it? Ha! Seriously, there is no guild master like me. All I ever do is think about you making it!"
"It's something to be grateful for, but... wait. Is it something to be grateful for?"
The man called Kim Seonil was simply too strange.
More than that. Sua ran a check on the things she'd already set in motion.
Energy Drink Commercial
Historical Short Film Sword
She'd already put in for two, and with nothing after them catching her eye, she'd been stuck in an awkward spot. This might not be so bad.
"A good opportunity... an opportunity like the sea..."
That was when it happened.
"I can already picture you not batting an eye at an offer like this, which is honestly amazing. You haven't already been cast somewhere else, have you? Other people have eyes. They'd have seen you."
"What kind of nonsense..."
"But Sua, I'm telling you, the offer I'm making is definitely the best one!"
"...Are you listening to me?"
A rock. An absolute rock. Conversation did not get through.
Still, she wasn't losing anything. So maybe it was fine?
"I'm listening. If you have conditions, state them."
"No..."
A long sigh came down the line.
Sua decided she might as well say her own piece.
"This isn't a hidden-camera shoot, is it."
"No. Absolutely not."
"And what did you mean by we."
"Me, Seonil, and a few faces you'll find pretty familiar. I'll text you the address right away."
She thought it over for a moment, then accepted.
The call ended there.
The moment she hung up, the address arrived by text. Only then did any of it feel real. Sua quietly walked the situation back.
"So. In the end, it wasn't voice phishing?"
Now what was she supposed to do with this.
"I said yes, and I still have no idea what's going on."
"Hm. Or do I?"
It wasn't as if she were walking onto a crime scene. Going, listening, and deciding then would probably be enough.
Lee Sua picked up her phone at once, went into the actor gallery, and wrote two posts.
A rather abstract post. Usually, if you put something up like that, the explanations came spilling after it in a line. Afterward she stripped and got in the bath.
A little later, Sua—skin heavy with steam—carefully blotted the water from herself with a towel, thorough even about the damp gathered beneath her breasts.
"...Whoa. They're on fire."
Just as she'd expected, the post was drawing far more attention than it deserved.
"So both of them are a big deal. A little too much..."
A flicker of fear rose, and she hurried to stamp the stray thoughts out. Nerves were fine. They only became a problem if the other person noticed.
She dried her hair, put on her basic makeup, and was properly getting ready when the group chat chimed for the first time in a truly long while.
Sua stopped patting her cheeks and flicked a glance at the screen.
"Right. I haven't said a word in there since the Special Privilege unlocked."
Soccer, golf, swimming—even Sua, veteran of countless humiliations, had found games fun. Talent or no talent. Gaming friends had gathered around her as a matter of course, and a group chat had followed. For Sua, who after her reincarnation had neither family nor friends, it was the closest thing she had to a place to rest, even if she had never once met any of them in person.
With a faint wash of color on her lips, Sua touched the phone.
"Ah?"
Now that she thought of it, one more of them had gotten a job. The friend with the mouse on their profile. She was fairly sure they'd said they were a reporter.
"Nah. Let's not say it yet. I'd only embarrass myself."
Sua let out a short laugh and tapped the screen.
After that the chat plastered itself in endless jokes and howling laughter, and she didn't mind a bit. The particular ease of this place always undid her tension.
For the first time in a long while, Sua left the house smiling.
She passed the address to the taxi driver, and the destination turned out to be an enormous café. Sua stared blankly at its sleek face for a good long while.
"...Whoa. So I really do end up in places like this."
The sort of café the upper class would drift in and out of. To Sua, who had no eye for photographs and none for coffee, it was simply a pretty building.
More messages, from Jung Soyen.
Telling herself there was no need to shake this hard, Sua climbed the stairs.
Four people were waiting.
Jung Soyen. The other three, she didn't know.
"I'd like to get straight to the point."
And so they did.
She learned who the three were afterward, as the greetings went around: drama writer Lee Geumsuk, actor Kim Seonil, actress Seo Yeon-ju, and the guild master who was also Sua's own acquaintance, Jung Soyen. There was history there, or so the story went—they'd grown friendly while running a channel on MyTube.
"All right. As for the actual point, Seonil said there was something he wanted to say first. Sua, this is your first time seeing him, yes? His way of speaking is rough to begin with. I'd like you not to take it too much to heart."
"Sua doesn't look like she'd be cowed at all, though? Even right now. If anything, I think Sua's scarier..."
While Seo Yeon-ju answered Writer Lee Geumsuk in her place, Sua finally turned her head and took in the room.
Kim Seonil came into view.
Kim Seonil.
She didn't need anyone to explain. He was a man the words she'd seen in the comments—Classy Trash—fit like a second skin. The clothes were black from collar to cuff, and calm for it; set over that calm was an expression that edged into rude.
An actor was an actor. Like Seo Yeon-ju, the air around him was simply of a different class. If Seo Yeon-ju was light, Kim Seonil was darkness.
Kim Seonil tipped his head at a crooked angle.
"I'll show you a few scripts. You pick one yourself. I'll give you all the time you need."
Tap. Tap.
His fingernail struck the table. Besides the coffee and the dessert, five thin scripts lay there.
"Every one of them written by Writer Lee Geumsuk. Look them over."
"Tell me what you want."
"Pick the one you think is best. I'll give you a chance to be in that drama. With an eye as lacking as mine, I can't choose."
Sua sighed on the inside.
I knew it. So the chance doesn't come for free.
She wasn't entirely without a sense for people. Kim Seonil had put her on the stand on purpose. Telling her to choose only one of five made the demand obvious: pick the best one. Pick the one closest to the right answer.
"Too hard? You can give up. I did."
"No."
But—
"It won't take long. One moment."
A handful of words. That was all Sua gave him.
How much time had passed?
A sneer took shape at the corner of Kim Seonil's mouth.
Yeah. Of course.
As far as he could see, Lee Sua's behavior was nothing short of bizarre. She flipped the pages at a tremendous clip—at that speed, you couldn't honestly say she was reading. Impatience, obviously. Only her hands were moving.
And every so often she did something stranger still. She would lay a hand on a script and close her eyes for a beat. Communing with it? Trying to feel its energy? Absurd. A scoff was one breath away from slipping out.
Didn't even take the second round. She just got scared and ducked it?
Someone who flees a script they're afraid of, and someone who cleanly picks out a bad script and throws it away—the gap between them was as wide as heaven and earth. The first was a coward. The second was first-rate.
He had hoped, for a moment, that Lee Sua might be first-rate. Five thin scripts, and she was already floundering. The answer was plain.
Right. Lee Sua was no newcomer armed with real conviction. She was nothing but a coward who had been afraid of the second round.
Forget it. Kim Seonil was about to say as much.
That was when Lee Sua pushed her eyelids up.
Their eyes met. Pupils bright as cut jade—and the face around them was not blank. The corner of her mouth had risen, just a little.
"..."
Kim Seonil felt a sense of wrongness he couldn't place.