The Actor Who Brings Misfortune (17)
"Yeonjae! Tomorrow, the misfortune factor is going to transfer to this human!"
"What?"
I asked again, unable to believe my ears. It wasn't the transfer of the misfortune factor that stunned me — it was the fact that Angae had taken on the form of Actor Lee Jeonghyeon.
"I'm meeting Actor Lee Jeonghyeon tomorrow?"
"Looks like it! The accident is going to be pretty serious! They say you get burns all over your body?"
"What?"
As much as I didn't want to, I couldn't help but keep asking dumb follow-up questions.
So what this meant was that tomorrow, while he was with me, Actor Lee Jeonghyeon would be caught in a fire.
This absolutely could not be allowed to happen.
Watching from the sidelines and trying to stop it was far riskier than simply making sure it never happened at all.
As if reading my thoughts, Angae crept closer, eyes sparkling.
"Yeonjae, so you'll be acting tomorrow, right?"
"It's not acting, I told you — it's pretending to be someone else."
"Same thing! Kkuah, I'm so excited! I'm going to see the energy again!"
I asked him to watch his terminology, but for better or worse, Angae was thrilled beyond words at the prospect of seeing my energy for the first time in a while.
"It's been so long! Isn't this the first time since you started going to school?"
That was right. I hadn't done it since the semester started, so it had been almost two months.
Over the winter break, Angae and I had run all kinds of tests together.
Since lives could be at stake, we needed to understand the mechanism as precisely as we possibly could, within the limits of what was safe.
The first question: would it work if I didn't imitate any specific person, but simply acted as though I weren't myself?
—It did. Whether it was Park Haeun or Kim Suhan, the moment I concentrated hard enough to momentarily forget that I was Lee Yeonjae, the misfortune factors would come raining off me like leaves in the wind.
The second question: did the person I imitated have to actually exist?
—They didn't. It worked when I copied characters from dramas too. Of course, merely mimicking a character's expression or a line or two of dialogue wasn't enough. In other words, whether the subject was a real person or a fictional character, I had to immerse myself in them to the point of genuinely believing I was someone else.
The third question: how long did I have to stay dropped from my body's misfortune factors for the day's misfortunes to be prevented entirely?
—It wasn't exact, but on average, I needed to imitate someone else for at least an hour and twenty-seven minutes for the effect to hold for the entire day.
Put another way, if I woke up in the morning and spent about an hour and a half in my room before stepping outside, pretending to be someone else the whole time, the day would pass in peace.
But once school started, I no longer had that kind of slack in my mornings.
As for pretending to be someone else outside my room — the risk was too great for me to even consider it.
I'd tried it once, just in case, and after a private meeting with the Director, I gave up on the idea entirely.
So this was the conclusion I'd reached:
Whether the target was me or someone else, if the accident wasn't something I could shrug off, I would start my day by pretending to be someone else — even if it meant waking up at dawn.
"It's been way too long! Even when I asked you to do it over the weekend, you wouldn't listen!"
"I can't help it. Every time I reuse a character I've already imitated, the effective time gets shorter. What am I supposed to do?"
I'd made it sound simple, but it was anything but.
When I imitated a particular character, the time it took for the misfortune factors to distinguish whether that character was me or not kept shrinking with each use.
If I repeated the same character imitation over and over, the rate at which the factors reattached sped up, and the tangled flow of my energy snapped back to normal faster. So Angae said.
I wasn't Actor Lee Jeonghyeon, after all, and I had no ability to swap personalities at the blink of an eye.
To fully embody a single character, I had to rewatch scenes over and over, analyzing every detail, and the act of imitation itself demanded a considerable amount of mental energy.
Which meant that unless there was an accident I absolutely had to avoid, there was no reason to burn through my remaining uses just because I could.
"I want to see it now! I wish tomorrow would hurry up and come! Heehee!"
"Sure. And this time too, only look at the black stone for as long as you can manage."
"...Okay!"
The grin that had been spreading across Angae's face froze, just slightly.
He agreed reluctantly, and I was grateful enough that I made a point of asking about my energy again to lift the mood.
At that, his expression brightened once more, and he launched into the 'Lee Yeonjae Energy Appreciation Review' — a performance I'd already heard at least eight times.
I let Angae's excited chatter wash over me and turned my thoughts to the black stone.
The black stone... what on earth is it?
The thing that clung to me despite how brightly my energy shone, dragging hordes of misfortune factors along with it.
Over the dozens of tests we'd run, Angae had tried his best, at my request, to figure out what the black stone actually was.
But no matter how hard he tried, the answer was always the same: he couldn't look directly at it, and if he stared at it for too long, he felt like he would be swallowed whole — it terrified him.
I couldn't very well demand more from someone who admitted he was scared, so I figured if I just kept asking him to try, one day we might finally learn the cause.
For now, though, avoiding tomorrow's accident was the top priority.
The moment I wake up tomorrow, I'll start imitating someone else.
Who should I pick this time? Maybe one of the characters Actor Lee Jeonghyeon has played.
Hachihoon from last time worked pretty well... oh, wait a second.
"Angae."
"Yeah?"
"So you're telling me it's already fated that I'll transfer the misfortune factor to Actor Lee Jeonghyeon tomorrow."
"Right?"
"Which means my meeting him tomorrow was also fated?"
"...? Aren't those two the same thing?"
Angae looked at me as if to ask why I was stating the obvious.
Well, sure — the factors couldn't transfer unless we met, so it was a fair point... but wait, that's obvious?
"So, you're saying I would have appeared in the drama even if I'd never met you?"
The only reason I'd been able to take the drama role was that meeting Angae taught me there was a way to escape my misfortune.
There was no way I — knowing nothing at all back then — would have done it otherwise. Confusion creased my brow.
I opened my mouth to ask something, anything, out of sheer frustration, only to be met with the same clueless face as before.
He wouldn't know anyway.
"Fine. What matters is handling it well, starting tomorrow."
"Right! Heehee, I can't wait to see the energy!"
Angae couldn't stay in one place, hopping around and twirling in delight.
Good for him, honestly, that he's so happy...
"How's my genius actor been?"
When I stepped out of the orphanage, I spotted an enormous van that looked like it could seat eight grown men.
Actor Lee Jeonghyeon rolled down the window and made a grand gesture for me to get in.
Seriously, what am I going to do with his whole 'genius actor' obsession.
"Hyung, if you keep calling me that, I'm going to stop calling you hyung."
"...! Wha— then, *khm*, I think hyung would be really sad. Hmm. Just thinking about it makes me upset."
I regretted opening my mouth the moment the words left me. I should've just stayed quiet.
The look on his face clearly read, Are you seriously calling that a threat? Good grief. and I felt my will to live drain right out of me.
Without so much as a flinch — actually grinning wider than before — he waited as I quietly buckled my seatbelt.
"It really has been a while, hasn't it?"
"Since the second shoot, so almost four months. Are you done filming now?"
"Yeah, next week is already the finale. Time really does fly."
Somehow a month and a half had already passed since the first episode of Tail: Tracing the Traces aired.
We'd kept in touch regularly, but this was only the third time I'd seen him in person.
If Angae hadn't warned me beforehand, I probably would have frozen in shock when the call came asking if I could come out to the front of the orphanage.
"Sorry for showing up out of nowhere. I had a schedule today, but it got canceled."
"It's fine. You're so busy — are you sure you shouldn't be resting?"
"Being with you is resting. And I promised, remember? A promise is a promise."
A flicker of when did we ever promise that? crossed my mind, but I'd already come out, so I let it go.
Besides, having spent over two hours that morning imitating someone else as a precaution, I was feeling a little worn out anyway.
The rice cake café we arrived at, following Actor Lee Jeonghyeon... was, frankly, shockingly delicious.
The first thing set before me was a rice cake cake crowned with blueberries, and I put a piece in my mouth without thinking — only for my eyes to go perfectly round.
The texture was impossibly soft, melting away the instant it touched my tongue.
It didn't feel like rice cake at all — it was closer to cotton candy.
I'd expected Actor Lee Jeonghyeon to tease me with a mischievous grin at my wide-eyed reaction, but he simply smiled.
"Well? Good, right?"
"Yes. It's so good."
"Let's get some packed before we head back. You can share it with the teachers there."
And then, before I could even open my mouth, he got ahead of me: "And for the record, I've already paid."
When I thanked him, he just smiled silently and sipped his coffee.
Maybe he was tired from his packed schedule lately — his energy was noticeably lower than the last time we'd met.
He watched quietly as I emptied my plate piece by piece, and only after I set down my fork did he speak.
"I'm glad you're enjoying it. Honestly, I've been so grateful to you that I really wanted to treat you."
"Grateful to me?"
"Episode one blew up because of you, remember? That's what really got the drama going. And it had been a while since I'd done a drama, so I was pretty nervous."
"Oh, right — Special Task Force, the one where you played Hachihoon, that was your last drama, wasn't it?"
"Huh? You know about that?"
His voice, quiet the entire time until then, suddenly swelled.
Watching the fatigue around his eyes come alive again, I nodded obediently.
"Yes. I found a movie and drama app on my phone. I watched everything over the break."
"You even watched them? Good grief... I'm touched."
Had he completely forgotten that he was the one who bought me the phone — and even paid my monthly bill?
He was this moved just because I'd watched a drama, and somehow that left me feeling a little deflated.
"You were really good in it, by the way. I was honestly in awe watching you."
"Haha, thanks. So, are you looking at anything for your next project? Anything you'd like to do?"
"Sorry? No. I'm not going to act."
"What?"
Had I said something so shocking?
Actor Lee Jeonghyeon deployed every last one of his facial features to express his shock, and even his words began to stumble.
"Wh-what's making you decide that? So suddenly? Is there a reason?"
"It's not sudden... I never planned on it in the first place. The drama was just a coincidence, and I've never even studied acting."
"No, but—"
He went silent for a long moment, and when he finally spoke again, he'd barely managed to reclaim his smile.
"Then this is the perfect time to start learning. Want to go to an acting academy? Don't worry about money — I'll pay."
"..."
"If you're okay with it, I could even teach you myself. I'm free these days, anyway. I live alone, so I could teach you at my place too."
I found myself studying Actor Lee Jeonghyeon anew — the way he smiled, feigning nonchalance.
What is it with him... ha. Am I really right about this?
It was a topic I'd hoped never to bring up, but at this point, I decided it was better to address it at least once.
"Um, hyung. There's something I'd like to ask you."
"Sure?"
"I'd like to ask it a different way, but I'm a bit clumsy with these things. It might be offensive, so... I apologize in advance."
"...? Okay. Go ahead, it's fine."
Watching Actor Lee Jeonghyeon smile, the corners of his eyes folding gently, I opened my mouth slowly.
"Hyung... do you, by any chance, have feelings for me?"