Washed Up (2)

An Jihee, eyes round with shock, stared hard at Kang Jaeha, who was seated across from her. The impact of his words was still written all over her face.

He meant me, right? He must have. Right, there’s no one else here...

The gloom that had been hanging over her a moment ago ebbed away for an instant, swallowed by confusion. The reason she had short-circuited was simple: Jaeha had just said something so far outside her expectations that her mind had refused to process it. The line he had tossed out kept replaying in her head.

I think you’d be better off as an actress than an idol.

Keeping her eyes wide, An Jihee asked carefully, “S-sorry. Could you say that one more time?”

Kang Jaeha repeated it without hesitation. “I think you’d be better off as an actress than an idol.”

“...”

“Why? You never heard that before?”

“...No. Not at all.”

After hearing her answer, Jaeha looked over her profile again.

Total training period: six years.

An Jihee was twenty, which meant she had started sometime in middle school. Had nobody told her this for six years? It wasn’t that strange. She had been selected because she had potential, and until she was promoted to debut prep, no one would have brought up a side path like acting.

Still, you’d think at least one person would have said something.

Idols and actors. Being handsome or pretty was a baseline either way, but there were definitely faces that suited one world more than the other. Idols needed flash to catch the eye; actors were judged more on atmosphere. From where Jaeha stood, An Jihee was absolutely the actor type.

If she keeps going down the idol route, that face is going to lose all its character.

Maybe they had just written her off as washed-up and let it slide. Trainees had an expiration date too. The longer the process dragged on, the more the color of failure settled over them, and the more they fell out of favor with managers.

Kang Jaeha found it a little regrettable.

But not enough to weigh him down. If she still wanted to be an idol, there was no need to keep talking. That was the extent of it for now. It was still minor.

“That’s just my opinion. If you’re not interested, you can go.”

If she took it as nonsense, she could leave. If she only wanted to be an idol, the answer was to find another company as fast as possible. An Jihee looked as if she were thinking it over, then turned her body toward the door. So she was about to leave the meeting room after all. Then she paused again. Her hand still on the knob, she finally—

-swish.

Sat back down in front of Jaeha.

“Please tell me more. Honestly, I’ve never heard something like that before.”

“First off, your face fits acting better than idols.”

“Mine?”

“Yeah. As an idol, it’s just average. But if I look at you as an actress, my eyes go straight to your face first.”

The word average stabbed deep into An Jihee’s chest. But Kang Jaeha had no intention of softening it for her. She had already faded a lot, and for the An Jihee of now, after six years of this, bluntness was better.

“Have you acted before?”

“...A little, early on as a trainee. But that was just! I only did it out of curiosity.”

“On your own?”

“Yes... It would be embarrassing to call that practice.”

“Can you do it now?”

“R-right now??”

“Yes. Right now. Don’t you have a script?”

“Ah- just a moment.”

Flustered, An Jihee took out her phone and fiddled with it for a few seconds. She must have stored a script or something on there. When she spoke again, roughly two minutes had passed.

“I-I’ll do it.”

“Good. Relax. It’s not like this is an audition.”

She nodded, let out a small breath, and lowered the phone she had been looking at. Her expression turned serious. In an instant, the air around her seemed to sink. Her sharp eyes fixed on Kang Jaeha.

Her gaze changed. Her emotions changed.

“How much longer? How much more am I supposed to keep trying? A month? A year? I am trying, really hard. It makes me sick. But you still want more... more?”

An Jihee’s monologue was calm on the surface, but it was like a balloon ready to burst at any moment. One prick with a needle and it would pop. She conveyed that instability through her acting. What had only been mild interest at first honestly surprised Jaeha a little.

Oh, this is decent.

No, given that she had only been running on the idol track until now, it was more than decent.

Maybe all that diction practice as a trainee paid off.

More than anything, the dampness of the emotion stood out. It was the atmosphere Jaeha had felt when he first saw An Jihee, something uniquely hers. Her emotional depth was deep and murky, and her particular face supported that emotional line well.

That kind of thing couldn’t be learned by practice.

It had to be innate. Talent, then. If another trainee tried to act out this scene, it would probably come off as overblown and explosive, but An Jihee was giving off a strangely sticky, desperate cry. For a beginner, she was already handling expressions that plenty of middle-tier actors couldn’t carry cleanly.

Jaeha let out a quiet laugh inside.

She should’ve gone into acting.

He had gone through the idol side too, but Kang Jaeha’s start as a manager had been with actors. He had been a new hire, and the pressure had been absurd. He had read an enormous number of scripts and scenarios, enough that his eyesight had practically gotten worse from it.

Because he had been a pushover, if someone said jump, he just jumped.

And then, in another world, he had spent eighteen years through things no one on Earth could imagine. Among them were all kinds of human faces and human behavior.

There had been plenty of good people.

But he had also seen and experienced ugliness by the fistful: bottoms, betrayal, backstabs, lies, flattery, and every other vile thing. Naturally, Jaeha had learned to analyze people, read them, predict what was underneath, and handle them in the palm of his hand.

And from Kang Jaeha’s point of view, An Jihee was—

If she stays an idol, she’ll just keep rotting. She needs to change direction and spread her wings as an actress.

She should switch to acting. With that, Jaeha cut off An Jihee’s performance.

“An Jihee.”

“Ah! Yes!”

“This isn’t an order, just advice, but yeah. Acting suits you better, An Jihee.”

“Acting...”

“Of course, if you still want to be an idol, you can keep at it. But—”

From his wallet, Kang Jaeha took out a business card and handed it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to her.

“Call me if you change your mind. If you’re going to keep chasing idols, just throw the card away.”

Roughly two hours later.

After delivering death sentences to every washed-up trainee on his list, Kang Jaeha returned to Team 4’s office. The executions had put him in a foul mood, and his face had gone even nastier.

Either way, the office was empty.

Looking at the time, it was lunch break. Had everyone gone out to eat? Or maybe they had each gone off to do their own work. Jaeha wasn’t hungry at all. He sat at his desk and crossed one leg over the other, when a clear plastic file on top of the desk caught his eye.

That morning, Team Leader Jang Hyeongsu, looking half-dead from exhaustion, had said,

The actress who’ll be attached to you starting tomorrow. You know who she is, right?

It was the profile of the actress he had been handed. The actress Jaeha would be paired with starting tomorrow. He opened the clear file, and a photo of her, along with her resume and details, spilled out in a neat stack. Kang Jaeha gave a slightly crooked smile.

“It’s that crazy psycho. Been a while.”

The actress’s name was Yoon Dayeon. Why did Jaeha call her a crazy psycho? Simple. Because she was already famous for it inside Leon Entertainment.

She hadn’t gotten the nickname “crazy psycho” for nothing.

Kang Jaeha thought back to Yoon Dayeon, whom he had crossed paths with briefly long before he ever went to the other world. Well, there was always a reason people whispered and called her that.

And Yoon Dayeon was in Team 4. In other words, washed-up.

Jaeha looked at the washed-up Yoon Dayeon for a moment, then filed her away for later.

“Tomorrow is tomorrow—”

Something else must have come to mind, because he turned on his laptop.

The title was... Gyeollo, right?

It was the one he had seen through Déjà vu that morning via Team Leader Jang Hyeongsu.

The key point was that the short film Gyeollo would win some extremely rare, enormous grand prize somewhere down the line. And that the screenplay for that very Gyeollo had brushed past Leon Entertainment. The New Business Division had been mentioned too.

Since it had been described as “a long time ago,” the grand prize must have come quite a while after this. Recalling the essentials, Jaeha searched Leon Entertainment’s internal network for the film Gyeollo.

Surprisingly, the answer came back fast.

“There it is?”

The Gyeollo screenplay was already registered in the system. Its location was the New Business Team. Jaeha clicked through a few more things and found a contest being pushed by that team.

It had been running for about a month. As he read the contest details, Jaeha immediately understood its purpose.

It’s corporate image work. Marketing, that kind of thing.

They received barren, out-of-the-way short film scenarios through a contest, selected the most promising ones, and Leon Entertainment invested in them. The money going in was far less than for commercial work.

But it makes the company look like it cares about even the most neglected market.

On top of that, making connections with promising screenwriters and rookie directors was a bonus. With some PR and a little word of mouth, the impact could easily outweigh the money spent.

From what he could see, the contest results would be announced in a few days.

The New Business Team would clearly be busy as hell over this. Resting his chin on his hand, Kang Jaeha combined the Déjà vu he had seen with the contest information and reached a conclusion.

So the Gyeollo that Leon threw away ends up blowing up somewhere later on.

As far as he knew, Jaeha was the only one who knew that right now. His mind started turning. After running the numbers, he downloaded the Gyeollo screenplay, synopsis, and all the related information from the internal network.

He printed out the synopsis and screenplay for now.

When he returned to his seat, Jaeha spread out the thick ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stack of paper. It was the script for the short film Gyeollo.

-flap.

His interest had only been mild at the start, but as time passed, Kang Jaeha’s expression turned serious. About thirty minutes later, as he was reading the Gyeollo screenplay, Jaeha gave a faint smile and muttered to himself.

“Yeah. This deserves a grand prize.”

The quality was excellent.

After that, Jaeha spent some time the usual way and got off work right on time. No one was there to stop him, and the moment he left, he headed for the used-car lot he had already looked up.

“Welcome! Ah, you’re the one who called?”

“Yeah.”

“Haha, this way. I’ll show you the car right now.”

Just like that, Jaeha bought a used car.

The price was around ten million won for a passenger car.

He needed mobility whether he was in the other world or here. He didn’t care much about cars, so he chose something in broad strokes. Something that looked sound and sturdy.

Paid in cash, no financing.

If he had the money, there was no reason to take on debt. Back when he had been the pushover version of Kang Jaeha, ten million won would have been impossible, but for him now, it was no different from swiping ten thousand won.

Another seven hundred million goes in next month anyway. Ten million is nothing.

At this rate, three years would make twenty-five billion won. Once he had used the secondhand car for a while and got used to it, maybe he’d buy a disgustingly expensive one too. When he got back to his cramped one-room apartment, he started his workout routine the same way he had in the other world.

It didn’t last long.

“This is fucking brutal.”

This body had no hope of enduring the routine of a man who had once led a mercenary corps. It would take a long time before he even started catching up by a little.

“Hah. Just do it.”

Kang Jaeha kept going, silently building up the weakened muscles. Before long, his body began to scream. Lying spread-eagled in the middle of the one-room, Jaeha let out a small laugh.

There’s going to be hell to pay tomorrow with the muscle soreness.

He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again.

That was strange. He wasn’t lying down anymore; he was standing. And this wasn’t the one-room either. The stench of blood rising in waves, severed heads rolling around, and countless corpses strewn across a battlefield.

“...”

A familiar sight. The other world where he had lived for eighteen years. Kang Jaeha looked down at himself. His whole body was wet. It was caked in blood. The blood was dripping from the sword in his hand and hitting the ground in steady drops.

Then he heard a voice.

“Commander.”

Looking ahead, he saw a mercenary underling with one arm severed, smiling.

“I’ll go on ahead.”

The next one had half his neck cut open.

“Try to come late as you can, Commander.”

There was even one dragging himself forward with his lower half gone. So many subordinates brushed past him in turn. Before he knew it, Kang Jaeha had the severed head of a monster in his hand. The monster’s head spoke as it pleased.

“Are you having fun?”

And then—

“Hup!”

Kang Jaeha, lying spread-eagled, jerked his eyes open. He checked the time. Around dawn. He had fallen asleep without realizing it. The things he had just seen had been a dream? Too vivid for a dream. Especially the faces of the subordinates who passed him by.

Soon after, Jaeha recalled the line the monster’s head had spat out.

Then he snorted.

“Fuck, yeah. I am.”

The next morning, the 18th.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place was Leon Entertainment’s underground parking lot. After reporting to work, Jaeha could be found not in Team 4’s office but down in the parking garage. Like the day before, both hands were shoved into the pockets of his short padded jacket. He looked a little tired, though.

That made sense.

I barely slept, damn it.

After lying down in that one-room for the first time in eighteen years, he hadn’t slept well. And he’d had a nightmare too. The environment had changed overnight, so it would take some time to adjust.

He was walking toward a white van parked ahead of him.

-creak!

Just as Kang Jaeha reached the van, the side door suddenly opened and a woman stepped out. She wore a gray long padded coat, with long straight hair and clear skin that caught the eye immediately. She met Jaeha’s gaze and lifted one eyebrow.

“You’re the new manager?”

She was Leon Entertainment Team 4’s crazy psycho. No, the washed-up actress Yoon Dayeon. Looking at her, Kang Jaeha thought, Still the same.

At that moment—

Huh?

The world in front of Jaeha rippled. A sense of familiarity hit him. Déjà vu had triggered again. And as always, it came in third person.

The Déjà vu cut off there.

As he recalled what he had just seen, Kang Jaeha met the real Yoon Dayeon’s eyes.

If this keeps going, her ending is going to be bleak.