The Downfall Gathers Speed

The downfall is accelerating.

It had to be my entrance into school—and taking the top seat—that knocked the original timeline off its rails. Damn it. This is exactly why you're supposed to leave everything untouched. I've watched that many time-travel movies and I still ignored the number one rule. Did I learn nothing from them?

Hold on.

Come to think of it, spending so much time around Woo Woongbae lately, I think I'm starting to pick up his way of talking. Is it just my imagination? It had better be just my imagination……

Anyway, the sheer absurdity of that warning must have rattled me more than I realized. I grabbed the nearest cup and gulped it down in one go—it was soju.

"Whoa, whoa! That's booze!"

To a horrified CEO Gam Seongbeom, I said, "Who drinks soju out of a cup?"

"I was aggravated……"

I'd been a full-blown alcoholic in my past life, but downing half a cup of soju with a sixteen-year-old's pristine liver made the room spin. The blessing in disguise was that the buzz actually snapped me back to my senses.

There was no time to lose. I had to get to school and find one person.

The mastermind behind the downfall of Leader Actors.

Assuming the person in question was Han Dohyun—the youngest son of Segang Heavy Industries, the company I'd piled up grudges against in my previous life—then my only chance to cross paths with him was before the school year even began.

Unlike an ordinary high school, Gongsan Arts High—especially its acting department—was mercilessly busy before enrollment. Students were required to shoot an enormous volume of video assignments and submit stacks of written reports on top of them.

And I'd actually managed to watch every single film and drama on the assignment list, and I was still this swamped. I genuinely wondered how the other students were keeping up.

Every video I had to shoot was filmed for me by Woo Woongbae, who was just as buried in work as I was.

Having a friend before you'd even officially enrolled was a genuinely wonderful thing. Even on reflection, I was quite the disagreeable piece of work, and introverted on top of that—making friends had never come easily to me.

Even so, I'd memorized a good number of faces among the seventy-eight students in the acting department before school started. I couldn't help it—I ran into them that often, and quite a few were faces I already knew.

That period, honestly speaking?

It was happy.

Credit where credit is due.

I could watch dramas and films until I was sick of them, surrounded by kids my own age who loved acting and genuinely wanted to pursue it. Most of our conversations had nothing to do with acting, but not a single one of them ever brushed me off when I blindsided them with shop talk out of nowhere.

Once I'd grown reasonably close to all seventy-eight of them, we were invited to a production staged by the graduating third-years. Only faculty and the seventy-eight incoming acting students were invited as the audience—literally a welcome play for the new class.

And there, most likely, stood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Han Dohyun—the man who, before my regression, would orchestrate the downfall of Leader Actors.

The graduating class had staged one of Shakespeare's comedies: The Winter's Tale.

The Winter's Tale begins as a tragedy: Leontes, King of Sicilia, grows convinced that his wife Hermione is having an affair, and goes so far as to cast out their own daughter.

I had come to this play, truly and sincerely, to watch Han Dohyun.

But contrary to my careful plan—find something, anything, to praise in his Leontes so the man wouldn't hold a grudge against me—my eyes locked onto the actress playing Paulina, the nurse to Leontes.

It was a face I knew far too well. Really, a face I couldn't possibly know any better.

That enigmatic face beneath her trademark bob cut.

Son Jion.

In the future, she starred in films I loved—and she was an actress anyone who loved film as much as she did couldn't help but love.

Paulina is the one who stakes her life on rebuking the king—a man so blinded by the delusion of his wife's infidelity that he abandoned his wife and his children, and drove her husband to his death as well.

Feeling every ounce of the indignation, the grief, the burning sense of justice.

Paulina's performance, shouting down a king who had lost his reason to jealousy, was……

"……Something's off."

Just plain wrong.

It was so wrong it unsettled me. I couldn't believe that Son Jion would act like that, so I watched closely—and saw that her hands were trembling.

She was terrified of the stage.

Son Jion had stage fright?

That can't be……

Oh.

And in that instant, I remembered CEO Gam Seongbeom's voice, roaring at me before my regression.

"……"

My karmic debts. I honestly can't remember the half of them.

Vaguely, though, it came back to me.

Son Jion was a textbook slow starter—someone who needed time to adapt to unfamiliar situations. Being thrust into a welcome play for new students had apparently thrown her badly off balance.

Then I remembered what I'd said the very first time I acted with her, and clapped a hand over my own mouth.

Son of a—

I'd been mistaken. I'd assumed Han Dohyun was the only one holding a grudge against me.

But I'd forgotten that even without him, the list of people with grievances against me would stack up like a mountain range.

The reason I'd forgotten that outburst of mine was that Son Jion actually went to the hospital after hearing it. She learned that the cause of her stage fright, striking without warning at unpredictable moments, was a panic disorder—and from then on, I heard, she kept up steady treatment.

And when she came back to set, Son Jion slapped me across the face. I'd told her to go ahead and hit me. And the words she said after that slap were starting to surface now, too.

And CEO Gam Seongbeom, by way of apology, took the opportunity to bring Son Jion—then mired in trouble with a hostile agency—over to Leader Actors.

Everything worked out in the end, so I suppose that's why I'd filed it away and forgotten.

At any rate, that must be why Son Jion had suffered so much. She got into a comprehensive arts university, where rumors rang out loud and clear that the department had a once-in-a-generation acting prodigy—yet when her own audition came, she'd blown it.

I found myself thinking: what if Son Jion had skipped that headache of a shady agency altogether, and started with screen acting rather than stage work?

None of that was possible unless we brought her to Leader Actors first.

The moment the play ended, I contacted Leader Actors and asked them to look into Son Jion, a third-year at Gongsan Arts High. With the matter handed off to the company, I lingered nearby, fishing for a chance to toss Han Dohyun a compliment.

But Han Dohyun, popular even within this school, was surrounded by a crowd of students, and not a single opening presented itself.

I needed to build a smooth, unremarkable relationship with him now, before any grudge could take root.

Then it dawned on me—I'd been so busy worrying over Son Jion's performance that I hadn't actually watched Han Dohyun's acting at all. Well, there has to be something to watch before you can watch it, and something to praise before you can praise it……

……Careful. Careful.

Alarmed that I might have said that thought out loud, I glanced around in a hurry. Thankfully, nobody was reeling in shock. Must have stayed inside my head.

Just as I was mulling all this over—

Han Dohyun came over to me on his own and spoke first.

"You're this year's top-ranked first-year, aren't you?"

"Ah. Yes."

He offered a handshake, and I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shook it.

I was supposed to compliment him. But my cursed tongue wouldn't move. Because there was nothing to say. I'd searched high and low, and there was genuinely nothing to compliment!

Though if I really stretched, I could manage one thing.

"You're very handsome, sunbae."

"Am I? Thanks. What did you think of the play?"

Ha. This kid doesn't pull punches……

With our senior-junior relationship inverted from my past life, Han Dohyun felt even more awkward to deal with than before. If he'd had a rotten personality, maybe I'd have known what to do—but the man was downright gentlemanly on top of everything else, which left me with nothing to grab onto.

I answered with what felt like blood, sweat, and tears: "It was truly wonderful."

"Glad to hear it."

Fortunately, I happened to possess acting skills good enough to dress up any lie and pass it off as the truth.

So it seemed to go over smoothly—until Han Dohyun said something else to me.

"By any chance, you……"

But then, impossibly strangely—

The rest didn't reach me. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠His mouth was moving.

"Sorry? What was that?"

"By any chance, you……"

Not the second time, either.

A cold shiver ran through me and I stepped back.

It wasn't that I'd failed to hear. Everything after the word "you" was simply—gone, as if someone had hit mute.

Damn it.

Damn, that's terrifying.

I'm kind of a huge coward, actually.

I nodded along and glossed over the phenomenon with whatever instincts I had. Han Dohyun furrowed his brow slightly, as if something felt off, but he said nothing more and simply walked away.

Then the demon decided to strike up a conversation again.

Unlike every line of text I'd seen from it so far, this was—genuinely—a voice.

Desperate to get somewhere with people I actually knew, I started walking as I muttered under my breath.

"Don't talk to me. You're giving me the creeps."

[Curious why you can't hear it?]

"You're just going to demand lifespan for the answer. I'll figure it out myself. If you shave off any more, I won't be able to do anything."

I had to protect my thirty-two years.

There was an important promise waiting for me. I'd sworn to appear in Woo Woongbae's debut film.

[I was going to give you a discount, too.]

"A discount from what?"

[Five years?]

"That's not a discount. Who structures a deal like that?"

[But a demon's gotta…… you know……]

And there it went, turning on the cuteness again.

It was absurd—but somehow, after listening to that worthless attempt at being adorable, I was a little less scared.

So I walked on—until I stopped.

Then, steeling my frightened heart, I turned back toward where Han Dohyun was. He was heading for the car his ever-present chauffeur always drove him in and out of school.

I caught the car door his driver had opened for him. The driver didn't stop me—Han Dohyun and I were wearing the same uniform.

I asked him point-blank.

"Your acting."

"Hm?"

"It wasn't memorable."

During that mute moment just now, I'd become certain: this guy really was the mastermind behind the downfall of Leader Actors. Something about him was clearly, undeniably off.

So I decided I'd rather earn his grudge instead.

Because then that damn demon would flash me a warning that the downfall of Leader Actors was accelerating.

Time wasn't something I had in abundance.

Han Dohyun stared at me without a word, and I pressed on.

"Paulina, who watched Leontes grow up, said it all, didn't she? That he was savage, base, puerile—possessed by a miserable, worthless delusion."

"……"

"I'm sure you had your own interpretation of the role. But Shakespeare is a writer of many, many words. You don't even have to bring your own reading to it—it's all written down already. At the very least, you express each line, each beat, and then layer your interpretation on top. So when I ask myself whether it was acting that made an audience marvel—'so that really is the man'—the way your scene partner portrayed him……"

"……"

"No. It wasn't anywhere near that."

And with that, I delivered my vicious little tirade.

But no warning popped up.

Oh.

Could I have…… misread the whole thing?

Unlike in my past life, when I'd been the sunbae, it was Han Dohyun—the actual senior this time—who stepped back out of the car. And he was genuinely tall.

Damn it. Life really is a pothole-riddled off-road trail……