Worthy of the Ticket Price
Thankfully, the next shoot went off without a hitch. That night, even after filming wrapped, no one wanted to step outside the police substation. It was because of Baek Geonwoo, who claimed he'd heard laughter coming from outside. Everyone was so terrified they peppered him with questions, and the same testimony kept coming in from the other staff as well.
I briefly considered asking the Demon what was out there, but the thought of him finding it entertaining made me stop myself. And if he actually confirmed something was out there... that would be far too terrifying to bear.
By the time filming ended, it was the middle of the night.
On the drive home, I found myself thinking that arriving at Wooheonjeong alone would be scary. It's a beautiful house, but at night, sometimes it gives me the creeps.
I asked Vice President Gam Soohan, who was behind the wheel.
“Hyung, you're staying over at Wooheonjeong, right?”
“Yeah. I'm too wiped to make it all the way home.”
Phew. What a relief.
By the time I pulled up to Wooheonjeong, reassured, it was three in the morning.
Exhausted as I was, sleep wouldn't come. And since I couldn't drift off, the Demon finally decided to chime in.
[Just go to sleep already!]
[You're the face of the Demon, you know]
[If you look terrible, it affects the shoot]
...So now that I was playing a demon, the Demon had appointed himself the guardian of my face. Fair enough, I suppose. Even the finest raw gem can be worth everything or nothing depending on the craftsman who cuts it. Better take care of it, then.
[I just chased it off, lol]
[What's there to be scared of? Some pathetic water ghost]
He talked like he'd swatted away a stray bug. If you could chase it off, you could've done it ages ago, buddy.
Still, this was probably the first time the Demon had actually been useful.
After the laughter incident at the filming location, the faint of heart were noticeably on edge.
Team Leader Do Jaeyeon, who had already been flailing around because the set scared her, was the worst of the lot.
“Seriously? They said a child was laughing on set?”
“I heard it. Geonwoo-hyung supposedly made eye contact with something too, but he just trembles and won't tell me what it was.”
“Wh-what was it?”
“A water ghost, probably.”
At my explanation, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon's face drained of color.
“I'm sorry, but I absolutely cannot go to that set ever again...”
Watching someone who was genuinely terrified made me feel oddly calmer. Made me wonder if I looked like that much of a scaredy-cat to everyone else, too.
Even rattled as she was, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon had a job to do, and she pressed on.
“Anyway, I booked the venue for your fan meeting.”
“Something like a cafe, right?”
“No. An art hall. Three hundred and thirty seats.”
“...And how exactly am I supposed to fill that?”
Before my regression, I'd never even held a fan meeting in the first place. Even if I had, would twenty people have shown up?
So I'd assumed we'd gather quietly somewhere like a cafe. I never dreamed she'd book an actual performance venue. Where were these fans of mine supposed to come from, enough to fill 330 seats?
When I stared at her in disbelief, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon hurried to backpedal.
“Hey, I didn't set it that big expecting you to pack it. Just fill it decently, decently is fine.”
Wouldn't you have to fill at least half before anyone called it 'decently'?
I tried to gauge the fans who'd been in my debut-day cafe. Were they still around? If they were, and each of them brought a few friends, maybe we could manage.
...I suppose I could ask them to bring friends.
Username: Crape Myrtle.
Bae Dohwan, Lee Heeyoon's maternal grandfather, discovered a shocking comment in the fan cafe 'Eunhasu,' which he visited faithfully every single day.
“...B-bored? He's bored?”
Was this simply the boundless stamina of the young? To Bae Dohwan, who spent every day scrambling to keep up with the ever-multiplying dramas and teasers churned out by production companies and agencies alike, the fans' complaint of boredom was nothing short of earth-shattering.
A few days earlier, he had finally come to understand the term 'Eight-Foot Rabbit' that fans used for Lee Heeyoon. It meant the face was a rabbit's, but the height was eight feet. He'd puzzled over it for ages — the boy didn't look the least bit like a rabbit, so why a rabbit? — until he thought back to his daughter's face when she was little, and decided it did look rather rabbit-like after all. And if she'd looked like that, then perhaps it was only natural for the grandson to be a rabbit too.
Bae Dohwan diligently compiled the fans' responses into a table, as meticulous as his nature demanded, and sent it off to Lee Heeyoon.
The list contained a handful of songs currently topping the charts, along with several short-form video challenges. He had no idea what was fun about short-form content, but it was what the young folks liked these days, so he accepted it without question or complaint.
Barely had he sent it when a reply came back from his grandson.
What was that supposed to mean? Thankfully, a second text arrived to clarify.
His throat tightened.
So he sent over the songs he loved, and another reply came.
“Aigoo, you sentimental fool.”
Those few short characters of text brought tears to his eyes. But the fans' requests had to be delivered in full, so he steeled himself against the tears and typed out more.
...Now that he looked at it, it did seem to have grown rather long as he wrote.
My grandfather seems to have found his life's vitality in fan cafe activities these days.
He shows me all sorts of nice comments, and lately he's even been writing up the fan meeting merchandise the Eunhasu cafe members want. He said that since our company has grown quite a bit and can manage its own designs now, it should be doable.
A few days later, the second round of filming was scheduled for Exorcism Investigation 2. We started prepping from early morning, grueling from the get-go — the demon makeup alone took five hours.
It reminded me of the makeup on Giyeon. That one had been a complete mess, terrible for the skin, but this time it was on another level entirely. The taste of money is sweet.
While the makeup artists worked, I checked my tablet. Team Leader Do Jaeyeon had sent me a long list of things deemed feasible for a fan meeting.
First, acting.
That one's fine. If it's reading aloud the masterpieces I love, I could do it for five hours straight. But beneath it, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon had written:
*Do NOT run it long. If they wanted to watch acting, they'd have gone to the theater. 30 minutes MAX!
They say the fan meeting runs ninety to a hundred and twenty minutes. If I only get thirty, what am I supposed to do with the rest?
Next, talk segments.
I could put on a magic show that puts the whole audience to sleep in three minutes. They might feel it wasn't worth the ticket price, granted.
Games and cooking? What even is this list. Why would an actor do... no. I've decided not to think that way anymore.
And so I fell into the greatest trial of my life since regressing.
The next slot read: songs and dance.
Dancing is truly not my domain.
Never mind whether I can do it or not — I simply have no desire to do it in front of other people.
And yet the challenges Team Leader Do Jaeyeon recommended overlapped with what Grandfather had written.
I suppose I'll have to do a couple...
Even Grandfather was straining to keep up with what the young people liked these days. How could I refuse? So I resolved to practice.
I wanted this life to be a little different from the last one. I wanted people to remember me now and then, to think of me fondly.
Maybe it's innate, or maybe it's just what a lifetime in showbiz does to you, but I have one incurable disposition.
I want people to be interested in me. As many as possible, and as deeply as possible.
Anyway, next was the song. Singing I can do. That much, at least.
Vice President Gam Soohan, who had been watching me agonize from behind, asked:
“Heeyoon-ah, can you actually sing?”
“I can sing well.”
“Is that so?”
Vice President Gam Soohan looked pleased, but Team Leader Do Jaeyeon, standing beside him, wore a grave expression.
“This guy Lee Heeyoon claims he's good at literally everything. Hey. What are you going to sing?”
“Piano Man.”
A song by an artist the same age as my grandfather.
Wrestling to stitch together my pre-regression memories, I recalled that I'd even taken vocal training specifically to sing this song.
Back then, the role was the lead in a romance drama. The drama's ratings hadn't been great, but I played a member of a band in it, and that stretch was probably the height of my fan count in my previous life. Of course, the moment I opened my mouth to sing, they ebbed away like the tide... anyway.
I may have a personality disorder, but I have zero problems with diligence. Whenever a role demanded it, I took any training there was. It was a question of polish, after all.
Come to think of it, the director had once asked me what I wanted to sing in the scene where the female lead falls for my character.
I'd picked this song without a moment's hesitation.
Because it was the song my mother used to love. I just hadn't known that she'd come to love it because Grandfather played it for her. I found that out just now. Yet another thing I've learned this time around.
Having settled on the song put me a little more at ease. Both Lees* at Leader's seemed fairly satisfied too.
Vice President Gam Soohan said:
“That's a classic you've picked.”
“My grandfather recommended it.”
At that, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon perked up.
“I have to tell the MC to work that line into the show.”
For the first time in days of worrying over the fan meeting preparations, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon's face brightened.
She had every right to worry. The number 330 kept circling through my head, too. I think I finally understood why I'd never held a fan meeting before my regression. To be precise — why I couldn't have. Not wouldn't.
Finally, glaring at the section that demanded I write down anything I absolutely wanted enforced, I typed:
I couldn't care less about anything else, but if people are paying money, I want to give them a long show.
Thinking it over, there was really no need to agonize over the content at all.
They're coming because they like me, aren't they? Just looking at my face will be entertaining enough, won't it?
Then I'll show them my face in every variety — and at length.
When I wrote down exactly that, Team Leader Do Jaeyeon said:
“You are, truly, an entertainer down to the marrow of your bones.”