In This Life, I Will Die As An Actress, Not As A Villainess [EN]: Chapter 37

“Saena, Han Saena! Hey!”

My whole body was shaking.

I heard someone’s voice shaking me awake.

It was Min-young unnie’s voice, which I hadn’t heard in weeks.

I opened my eyes to the hard wooden floor.

Back in the practice room.

There was no silk blanket to welcome me anymore.

Suddenly, this space felt unfamiliar.

I blankly got up, following Min-young unnie’s touch…

Soon, a fierce smack landed on my back.

“An actress! Not taking care of herself! How are you going to live as an actress!”

“Ah, ah! How dare you!”

“What?”

Min-young unnie’s expression, which I hadn’t seen in a while, turned blank.

“I’m cold…”

“…?”

Min-young unnie’s dumbfounded gaze soon changed to worry.

Ah, this isn’t the tone I should be using.

“No, I’m just cold…”

Then, Min-young unnie brought a blanket from the corner of the practice room and covered me.

“Unnie, what time is it?”

How much time has passed in the real world?

“You’re asking early. It’s nine o’clock, nine o’clock! I came down from work thinking maybe, and you were sweating all over, sleeping on the cold practice room floor with nothing on!”

Listening to her rapid-fire nagging, Sang-sun’s face came to mind.

A strange smile escaped my lips.

What am I going to do? I already miss him.

Min-young unnie cupped my face with a truly worried hand.

“Is it because you’re having a hard time?”

I took her hand, shook it off, and got up from my seat.

“No. It’s because I’m happy.”

“…Are you still not fully awake?”

“…I’m fine.”

I need to do something about this speech pattern [말투, mal-tu] first.

I left the practice room, led by unnie’s hand.

* * *

Three days later.

Inside the office, which I hadn’t seen in a while.

As I was spacing out with my chin propped up, Min-young unnie kept giving me worried glances.

“Did you get some rest? By the way, last time… you were practicing Gyeol-kkot [a fictional historical drama] in the practice room, right?”

“Ah.”

That’s right, I did that.

“Ah?”

Unnie mimicked me and then looked at me with a dumbfounded expression.

“Unnie. Have you heard anything?”

“From where?”

“Gyeol-kkot…….”

Min-young unnie sighed deeply at my question.

And then spoke seriously.

“Saena, failing an audition is a big deal, but then again, it’s not the end of the world. If you’re going to have your mental state shattered like this every time, how are you going to survive as an actress in the future?”

Unnie’s words didn’t register.

Why haven’t I heard back?

They said the reward was casting, right?

I went through all that trouble to complete the quest, didn’t I?

I felt like clenching my fist and slamming it on the desk.

“Has the actress been confirmed?”

Unnie shook her head at my question.

“Not yet. Lee Nara and Seo Jaeyeon are working together to weigh their options and are asking the broadcasting station for huge guarantees, I heard.”

“Ah…”

Unnie looked at my complexion and continued.

“Oh, right. Are you looking at the response to the ‘Morning Dew’ commercial? The number of views is no joke, and the reactions from the advertisers and viewers are all good.”

Unnie was trying to divert my attention from the audition, using appeasement tactics.

“Ah.”

A forced answer.

“Ah? Ah?!”

Unnie rolled up a bunch of papers next to her and started swinging them at me.

“Hey, where did you leave your mind!”

“How dare you!”

“…?”

Min-young unnie stopped the arm she was swinging and stood there blankly.

Silence filled the office for a moment.

“Let’s never prepare for historical dramas again.”

Min-young unnie muttered to herself.

My face instantly turned red.

“Ahem, ahem. Oh dear, I keep saying strange things…. I’ll go buy lunch!”

And with that, she opened the office door and rushed out.

On the way to the bakery, wearing a hat pulled down low.

“Why is everyone so unfriendly.”

I kicked the stones on the side of the road.

I wanted to complain about the system in the script.

No hints, making people suffer, manipulating emotions.

And how am I supposed to receive the reward?

By the way…

I looked up at the clear blue sky.

‘I wonder how everyone is doing.’

I thought of the sky I saw in Joseon [historical Korean kingdom] in the script.

This Gyeol-kkot was different from Flat Shoes in many ways.

“In Flat Shoes, everything flowed as I knew it would.”

Of course, Yoo Ji-an’s appearance at the end was unexpected, and that emotion supported my acting, but…

The events were all the same as in the script.

It was just hard to get hit by the car.

Unlike Flat Shoes, this time I was busy running around trying to get a sense of things.

I could still see the golden letters ‘Reward: Casting’ in front of my eyes.

“So when and how are you going to give me the reward.”

I felt drained.

Is this a scam?

If it were a game, wouldn’t rewards be automatically received?

No way.

Do I have to do something else again?

I suddenly felt uneasy because the system was so unfriendly.

In Flat Shoes, I felt like I was moving passively overall.

The reward followed automatically.

If so, Gyeol-kkot, where I had to move actively all the time…

The thought made my heart beat like crazy.

I quickly changed direction and started running back to the office.

“I can’t be late!”

Han Saena, you idiot!

Why did you think the reward would come naturally?

This isn’t a game.

If my guess is correct, I should have contacted the production team first.

Neither Seo Jaeyeon nor Lee Nara has been chosen yet, but since I haven’t been contacted either, they may be waiting for a third person.

I stopped running.

Even if I contact them, how…?.

I can’t just contact them and ask them to reconsider.

I needed something to reverse the situation.

Something with concrete persuasiveness that I must be Soon-im.

* * *

Bang-!

I kicked open the office door as if to break it down.

“Oh my gosh!”

Min-young unnie, who was sitting down, widened her eyes in surprise.

I was breathing heavily.

“I thought you were going to buy something to eat?”

“Let’s order delivery.”

I quickly answered unnie’s words and started rummaging through the office bookshelf.

“Oh my, Saena, what’s wrong?”

After searching the bookshelf for a while without answering, the Gyeol-kkot script placed at the end caught my eye.

“Found it.”

The script after episode 6 that I hadn’t read.

I heard unnie’s embarrassed voice.

“Saena. Why are you so obsessed? You failed, didn’t you, huh?”

At those words, I took my eyes off the script and looked at unnie.

“Then why didn’t unnie throw this script away?”

“Well…”

Min-young unnie’s words were cut off.

And then she sighed and spat out the words again.

“We have lingering feelings about this.”

“I don’t have lingering feelings.”

I took the script bundle to the table and sat down.

I could feel unnie’s gaze watching me.

“I’ll go buy something to eat.”

And with that, unnie left the office.

From then on, I started flipping through the script pages like crazy.

“This isn’t it.”

Flipping through two or three more pages.

“This isn’t it.”

It’s different from what I experienced.

I frowned as I read, but the final part 2 of the script was missing.

Is the writer still writing it?

I quickly grabbed the scrap paper and pen on the table.

‘Clearly, the world I lived in was much richer than what I read in the script.’

First, I was going to write down what was specifically different between the script and what I experienced.

Above all, Sang-sun.

Sang-sun was nowhere in the script.

Clearly, in the place where I stayed for a not-so-short time, the king’s emotional lines were complicated by the addition of Sang-sun to Soon-im.

Even in the final battle with the Queen Dowager, the process of bringing the king’s side from the outside was realistic.

In the current script, the king is depicted as persuading the people of the palace to strike the Queen Dowager.

This isn’t meticulous.

The more I read the script, the more it lacked the fun of the world I actually experienced, and…

I couldn’t see the people’s eyes, nose, and mouth.

It wasn’t three-dimensional.

The scenes also lacked coherence.

What is at the heart of these problems?

My head started spinning.

To put the world I lived in into this script…….

I held my temples and stared at the script for a long time.

Tick-tock-

The sound of the clock ticking in the office was annoying.

And soon.

“Ah.”

The hand holding the pen gained strength.

I started writing down the most important moment in the world I was in.

The moment when my emotions were most shaken.

I was confident that this scene was the only scene that would penetrate the Gyeol-kkot world I experienced.

Scribble, scribble.

The sound of letters being embroidered on the paper filled the office.

While I was playing with the pen, I had the illusion of meeting Sang-sun and Soon-im in front of me again.

* * *

In front of a quiet cafe.

“Teacher!”

I opened the door and waved my hand happily.

The teacher smiled slightly at my fully armed appearance with a mask and cap.

“You’re a celebrity. Do you have something to ask for?”

“Yes, shamelessly again.”

“Okay. Tell me about it.”

The teacher said playfully.

“This.”

I handed the teacher the paper I had prepared.

The teacher read the words written on the paper with a puzzled face.

“This is…?”

“I wrote it myself.”

“Hmm?”

“Teacher. I want to shoot a short film. Please act for me.”

“…?”

The teacher’s face was filled with embarrassment.

“If you touch this wrong, the director or writer can be very upset. It’s a dangerous thing.”

The teacher continued with a voice full of worry.

“I don’t know the commercial video scene well, but they are proud writers. If you get on their bad side once, you may not get any work.”

“Yes, I know.”

“What are you…”

The teacher made a dumbfounded expression.

“But I still want to do it. It’s not ‘This setting is absolutely necessary!’ but… it’s an idea that started from ‘What if there was such a scene?'”

“So why are you, an actor and not a writer? It’s an overreach.”

It was an expected word.

And I also thought that if I couldn’t persuade the teacher first, it would be impossible in front of the production team.

“It’s the last struggle of an actor who failed the audition.”

The teacher didn’t answer.

“That last struggle requires tremendous logic. Evidence that I am an essential person for this work. I want to show them my understanding of the world and characters in the work.”

For a long time, silence settled on the table where I sat facing the teacher.

“You.”

After what seemed like more than ten years, the teacher opened his mouth.

“Don’t touch it if you’re going to do it clumsily.”

I smiled at those words.

Then the teacher also smiled slightly.

“Then I’ll get up first and go to the practice room to prepare things.”

And with that, I hurriedly got up and moved towards the door.

* * *

In the cafe where Yoon Young-jae was left alone.

Yoon Young-jae picked up the script that his junior had written again.

‘Did you write this script just to show your understanding of the main character?’

“Geez. A lie.”

A smile flowed on Yoon Young-jae’s lips.

‘That sly guy.’

In Yoon Young-jae’s view, it was not a script for such a simple purpose that anyone could see.

Besides…

Yoon Young-jae put the lines into his mouth one by one.

“How did you come up with this scene? A guy who’s not even a writer….”

He chewed on the script and expressed his surprise that he couldn’t express a little while ago.

‘It’s worth challenging to this extent.’

Yoon Young-jae nodded and looked at the seat that his junior had vacated.

And he raised one corner of his mouth.

“I’m still a great guy.”

I will die as an actress, not a villain, in this life.