In This Life, I Will Die As An Actress, Not As A Villainess [EN]: Chapter 2

Looking around, I found myself in an office.

A woman was holding a file and urging me on.

“Ms. Sera! Hurry!”

Hurry with what?

More importantly, who are you?

But somehow, the woman felt strangely familiar.

Turning my head to look at the office, I had a feeling I’d seen this office somewhere before.

‘I was definitely drunk and asleep,’ I thought.

Am I dreaming right now?

But what kind of dream is this…

“Ms. Sera! Take this!”

Just then, a man walking out of the conference room urgently thrust a stack of documents at me.

Unconsciously, I took the documents and stood blankly in the middle of the office.

Ms. Sera?

“Ms. Sera! Ms. Shin Sera!”

Turning towards the voice, a woman with a prickly expression asked sharply.

“You’re well-prepared for today’s meeting presentation, right?”

“Yes…?”

“Anyway, don’t you dare make a mistake in front of the director like last time. I won’t let it slide this time.”

My head went blank.

Who *is* my director?

Sitting down at what seemed to be my designated seat, my cell phone rang in my pocket.

With a dazed hand, I took out my cell phone and couldn’t help but be shocked.

“Why a flip phone?”

People’s attention turned to the voice that instinctively came out.

What kind of dream is this… so realistic?

Awkwardly smiling, I opened the phone, and a message popped up from a name saved as ‘Minho, my love♥’.

‘Sera, about what my mom did yesterday… can you forgive her just this once for my sake? It will never happen again. I love you.’

Reading the message made my head spin.

‘I don’t know what kind of dream I’m having right now, but I can tell that this Sera is a pushover,’ I thought.

That thought, which I had dismissed as a dream, was shattered the very next moment.

As I walked towards the pantry, I heard female employees whispering to each other.

“I never thought Shin Sera was such a fox.”

“How did she seduce the head of department?”

Hearing this conversation made me dizzy.

To be precise, the moment I heard this ‘line’.

I finally realized what world I was in now.

.

The debut work of my life, which I had cursed and cried over the script of, right before falling asleep drunk.

To be exact, it was the opening scene of episode 14.

I was now Shin Sera, not Han Se-na, nor Yoo Ji-an, the villain I had played in .

Only then did I remember the golden letters that had flickered before my eyes when I first woke up.

Find Yoo Ji-an’s weakness…?

* * *

I sat in a daze, pretending to look at the stack of documents to pass the time.

The more time passed, the more anxious I became.

Is this really not a dream?

Is this the world inside the script?

Instinctively, I turned on the monitor to check the date.

December 15, 2012.

I was speechless.

Is this a time-slip or dimension-hopping, what is it?

And as someone else…?

Possession?

The moment I thought of the word ‘possession,’ a sigh mixed with ridicule escaped my lips.

It was a setting I had seen in countless drama scripts during my 20 years as an actress.

Usually, time-slips, possessions, or whatever, happened to people who regretted the past.

Or were dissatisfied with the present.

In my case, I guess I fall into both categories.

Is this even possible…?

I shook my legs under the desk.

‘Could it be that I have to complete the mission to get out of here?’

As soon as I thought this far, my anxiously shaking legs stopped.

This time, I turned off the monitor and looked at my face reflected in the black screen.

To be exact, Shin Sera’s face.

It was a different face from the actress who played Shin Sera back then.

However, the image was subtly similar to the actress in that she had round eyes, a sharp nose, and an overall delicate and kind face.

‘But why Shin Sera?’

That was the most incomprehensible point.

If this is really inside the script, why Shin Sera and not Yoo Ji-an?

An unknown sense of bewilderment surged up.

I don’t know this world, the reason for the possession, or anything, but it says to find Yoo Ji-an’s weakness?

Does that mean I need a third-person perspective to know it….

Doesn’t the person themselves know their weaknesses best?

And the reward was regression.

Does that mean they’ll send me back to the world I was in?

I was dumbfounded.

What kind of reward is that?

Beep-

Then another text message arrived on my phone.

‘This is to inform you that Shin Sera’s current overdue loan amount of 850,000 won [approximately $650 USD] is unpaid. – KY Bank’

I really have become Shin Sera….

I closed the phone.

In , Shin Sera grew up in a poor family, tenaciously and cheerfully paying off her debts without blaming her parents.

In the process, she fell in love with the male lead, who was the head of the company, and welcomed a new chapter in her life.

After that, Shin Sera faced opposition from the man’s family, who were slaves to money, and even suffered the misdeeds of the villain, Yoo Ji-an.

All the surrounding circumstances acted as conflicts that seemed to push Shin Sera to the edge of a cliff.

Yeah, it must have been tough.

Suffocating over a mere 850,000 won.

But…

“But, Yoo Ji-an had it just as hard.”

For some reason, I became emotionally invested and bit my lip in frustration.

Yoo Ji-an also lived a life as difficult as Shin Sera, but in the end, Shin Sera got everything, and Yoo Ji-an lost everything.

Yoo Ji-an grew up like a puppet in a family where money was the top priority, just like the male lead’s family, and met the man she loved for the first time in her life.

She risked everything with the determination to protect her love, but she lost even that man to someone else.

To Shin Sera.

However, Shin Sera was kind and good.

So much so that Yoo Ji-an couldn’t resent her.

And all the evil deeds that others cursed, even if they couldn’t be understood, were all Yoo Ji-an’s.

That’s what the life of a villain was like.

There was no mercy given while life headed towards destruction.

Still… I could have expressed that unfairness better.

To realize it only now.

It was bitter.

But… if it’s episode 14, wasn’t it around the time this drama was reaching its climax?

A sudden ominous feeling came over me, and I tapped the shoulder of my colleague sitting next to me.

The colleague mechanically pounded on the keyboard in front of the bulky monitor and looked this way.

“Hey.”

“Why, you. Why do you keep sitting there with a spaced-out look? The manager is getting angry.”

I immediately realized a new fact from the way she spoke, rapping quickly and whispering.

‘This person is a typical female lead’s friend,’ I thought. Her speech is rough, and she has a goofy side, but she always cries with the female lead on her difficult life journey….

A typical cliché.

I recalled the script in my head and barely remembered her name.

“Bora, did we have plans after work today?”

I tried to act as much like Shin Sera as possible, with the motions and voice of a 20-year-old female lead.

Merrily, brightly, like a lark….

‘To be doing this at my age, my life is really something,’ I thought.

Bora looked around and lowered her voice even more to answer.

“You’re meeting the head of department, aren’t you!”

“Where… where were we supposed to meet?”

“Seriously. Did you get hit by water from the *madam* [referring to the head of department’s wife] yesterday and lose your mind?”

‘Did I even experience that yesterday, my friend?’ I wondered.

“It’s the head of department’s birthday today, so you’re going to a nice place, you.”

At that moment, my head went blank.

“Was there a weather forecast for snow today?”

My voice grew louder in desperation.

Then the manager sitting in front answered irritably.

“If you know that, at least do a good job with the presentation so you don’t make my commute home any harder.”

At that moment, I realized the most important fact.

Tonight, Shin Sera is hit by a car driven by Yoo Ji-an.

That was the ending of the episode 14 script.

* * *

After finishing the presentation in a sweat, everyone left the office.

I vaguely sent everyone away and lay down on the cot in the empty break room.

“If you push me into the scene where I get hit by a car as soon as I’m possessed, how am I supposed to find the weakness and how am I supposed to get out of the script?”

A series of irritated mutterings came out.

Then my cell phone rang again.

‘Sera, you must be very angry. I’ll wait until you come.’

I shook my head at the cliché male lead demeanor.

“Such a rookie.”

But my fingers were sending a different reply than my heart.

‘Something came up. Let’s talk again next time.’

Anyway, I’m Shin Sera right now.

After sending the text, I looked at the time on my phone, and it was almost 7 o’clock.

The time when Shin Sera is hit by the car driven by Yoo Ji-an was 7:30.

Since was my debut work with my first role, I had read the entire script more than fifty times back then.

20 years have passed, and my memory has become hazy, but…

Important information like that was still in my head.

During filming, I sometimes even recited which scene was in which episode to the staff who were wandering around looking for the next cut.

Thanks to that, I was loved by the great writer Lee Si-young of the drama world.

A faint smile came to my face in this situation.

That’s how it was back then.

Then, as the clock soon pointed to 7:29, my hands became sweaty with tension.

What if I don’t move, and the world twists, and the villain comes in a different way to kill me?

All sorts of imaginations made my heart clench.

Then it became 7:30.

My heart was pounding, and all the senses in my body became sensitive.

I spent a long 60 seconds.

And just as I was sighing in relief when nothing happened….

The golden letters flashed before my eyes.

[You have failed the mission.]

“What?”

Before I could even grasp the situation, my vision suddenly went dark.

“Ms. Sera! Hurry!”

When I came to my senses, the woman I had seen during the day was starting with the same line again.

It was again the office spinning around 정신없이 [jeongsin eopsi – meaning ‘mindlessly’ or ‘in a daze’].

The man walked out 정신없이 [jeongsin eopsi] and handed me the stack of documents.

“Ms. Sera! Take this!”

“You’re well-prepared for today’s meeting presentation, right?”

Even the manager’s hysteria.

‘I’m back… back to square one?’

I had returned to the point when I first fell into the world of the script.

Failed the mission?

Before I could even organize my thoughts, the company’s daily routine that I had to do again was sweeping over me.

‘I’ll die as an actress, not a villain, in this life,’ I thought.