Aura of a Genius Actor

Nicholas, a drama producer at CRD, tilted his head when he heard the assignment was to portray a zombie.

A zombie.

Originally rooted in Haitian Vodou, the word referred to a corpse animated through sorcery. In modern film and television, however, zombies had become the quintessential monsters of the apocalypse.

The supernatural explanation was often replaced by a virus or a biological weapon designed to bring down an entire nation.

A zombie... as the protagonist?

The horror of zombie stories came from watching someone you knew become a monster.

A friend.

A family member.

A lover.

The tragedy lay in being forced to kill the people you loved while they still looked like themselves...

—or becoming their next meal.

That was why zombies were almost never the protagonists.

More often, they served as the environment itself, the relentless force that cornered the main characters and heightened their psychological terror.

Maybe he'll spend most of it as a human... then transform into a zombie at the end.

"Woooooo!!"

The young Asian contestant stepped onto the stage.

His clothes were ragged, caked with sweat and blood. The makeup artists had worked wonders; compared to moments ago, he looked several kilograms thinner, his cheeks hollow with starvation.

When the rising star hailed as a genius actor stood alone beneath the lights, Nicholas felt something strange.

The audience's cheers were louder than they had been during the first assignment...

Yet the atmosphere itself had become quieter.

Even before the performance began, a suffocating tension settled over the theater.

Gradually...

The applause faded into silence.

"We'll begin."

The lights went out.

Then, from the darkness...

A chilling sound echoed through the theater.

"Graaaaaaah..."

A single beam of deep violet light cut across the stage from one corner toward the center.

Eyes rolled so far upward that almost no black remained visible.

Limbs twisted into impossible angles.

Joints locked into grotesque deformities, preventing proper movement as the creature lurched forward, shaking its entire body with every step.

Even with the lighting doing part of the work, it was unsettling.

Still, audiences had already seen countless horrifying zombies enhanced through cinematic editing.

Impressive, certainly...

But not astonishing.

More like—

Oh... that's convincing.

He really looks like a zombie.

Then...

The zombie suddenly accelerated.

Tap tap tap tap!

It sprinted toward the front of the stage.

Leaped.

Spun its back to the audience.

Then, with a savage crunch—

It sank its teeth into something.

The people seated in the front row felt the blood drain from their faces.

A mutant zombie...?

(Traditional zombies were generally depicted as unable to run because of rigid joints, but many films featured mutated variants with enhanced physical abilities.)

Nicholas, seated in the very front of the invited guests' section, watched it unfold only a few feet away.

His heart pounded wildly.

The realism far exceeded anything he had expected.

Then—

The zombie, frantically tearing at its prey...

Slowly turned its head toward the audience.

Nicholas flinched.

The face was no longer merely filthy.

Some hidden mechanism had activated.

Dark red blood now drenched the entire face, drawing small screams from several women in the front rows.

But it wasn't the blood.

It was...

The expression.

His mouth hung slack.

His face was completely blank.

And yet there was unmistakably...

Satisfaction.

Not a human expression.

The primal satisfaction of a wild beast that had finally caught its prey.

Nicholas instinctively tried to lean away.

His back struck the chair.

Screams blared through the sound system.

The creature paid them no attention.

Still wearing a human face, it slowly chewed whatever remained inside its mouth.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Then—

Swallow.

The blood pooled around its lips...

The unmistakable motion of something sliding down its throat...

Every detail etched itself vividly into Nicholas's eyes.

What kind of acting is this...?

No... wait.

If he's already a zombie from the very beginning... then how is he supposed to portray the transformation from human to zombie...?

Before the question could fully form...

Reason returned to the zombie's face.

"AAAAAH!!"

"Wh... what...?"

"AAAAAAAH!!"

The clarity returned to the man's eyes.

Then terror flooded them.

He frantically spat the contents of his mouth into his hands.

The moment he saw what had fallen into his palms...

He froze.

His eyes began trembling violently.

Soon the trembling spread to his hands.

Then to his entire body.

"N... no..."

"I... again..."

"No!!"

Nicholas felt his palms growing damp.

He didn't understand how...

But somehow, the man had turned back into a human.

And only now realized...

He had just killed...

And eaten...

The person standing before him.

The despair.

The absolute horror.

Again...

So this has happened before...

The man collapsed into helpless sobs like a child.

Nicholas could see it vividly.

In the middle of a ruined city...

A human body, reduced to mangled flesh by his own hands...

Lying beside him...

While the man himself crumbled, unable to accept that he had become a monster.

It was no longer the tragedy of a monster attacking people.

It was...

The tragedy of becoming the monster that attacked people.

Perhaps that was why practitioners of Vodou had feared not zombies themselves...

But becoming one.

To lose every trace of humanity forever.

To wander without rest as a monster.

That ultimate terror was unfolding before them with horrifying realism.

"I have to die."

"A gun."

"I need a gun."

Staring blankly into space, he continued speaking to himself.

Somehow, he alone alternated between human and zombie.

Every time he regained consciousness and discovered another human victim at his feet...

He had tried to kill himself countless times.

But any injury short of instant death only triggered another transformation.

Before he could die...

He became a zombie again.

Only one method remained.

Destroy the brain in a single shot.

Blow the head apart.

For that...

He needed a gun.

But the apocalypse had progressed so far that almost no living humans remained.

No gun with bullets could possibly still exist.

"The transformations..."

"They're happening faster."

"Before it happens again..."

Bang!

The sound of a grenade exploded through the theater.

Red lights flashed violently before disappearing.

When the light returned, he was crouched low.

Was he wounded?

Then—

Crack.

His body bent into impossible angles.

Against his own will.

Crack.

Crack.

"N... no..."

"I don't..."

"I don't wa—"

"Grrr..."

His body jerked with violent spasms.

His facial muscles twisted grotesquely.

"GRAAAAAAAAH!!"

Watching him slowly become a zombie once more...

The audience no longer found it frightening.

They found it heartbreaking.

Devastating.

Because they now understood.

More than death itself...

He feared becoming that again.

What if...

Someone made a television drama about zombies...?

Watching the performance, Nicholas felt adrenaline surge through his veins.

The idea flashed through his mind.

It was 2007.

Neither The Walking Dead nor Dead Set had yet entered the world.

"Any survivors?!"

The man had become human again.

He lay motionless, eyes empty of all hope.

A voice echoed through the speakers, searching for survivors.

He sprang to his feet.

Without moving the camera's focus, the audience could tell someone had run up to him from offstage simply through the direction of his gaze.

"How are you alive out here?!"

"Where..."

"...did you come from?"

"We're soldiers protecting the southern survivor zone. We thought Los Angeles had been completely wiped out."

"You must be the only survivor."

"Come with us."

"The only..."

"...survivor."

"So my mother really is dead..."

A single improvised line.

Yet it connected flawlessly with the earlier prequel.

Even audience members who had been slow to notice suddenly realized how the first assignment and this one fit together.

Their eyes widened.

"Is that..."

"...a gun?"

"Yes."

"We've got a spare firearm."

"Take it and come with me to the helicopter."

"We're searching for people who've been bitten by zombies but haven't fully transformed."

"They're humanity's only ho—"

Bang!

Before the recorded dialogue even finished—

Another sound exploded across the stage.

A gunshot.

The man raised an imaginary pistol beneath his chin.

Without the slightest hesitation...

He pulled the trigger.

"No..."

"Why?!"

He collapsed.

A smile slowly appeared on his face.

Did he not realize he had just thrown away humanity's last hope?

Or...

Did he know...

And simply wish, more than anything else...

To die as a human?

Nicholas Pandas felt a chill run down his spine.

Could it really be a coincidence...?

Pandora had been the first human to choose to live as a human.

This man...

Was the last human to choose to die as one.

Could this be the theme running through Shin Yu Myeong's entire career?

A life built without compromising what it means to be human...

And even death transformed into an act of will.

Choice.

Responsibility.

What am I thinking...?

Nicholas let out a disbelieving laugh and shook his head.

Then his thoughts immediately shifted elsewhere.

How am I supposed to convince that actor to star in next year's television series?

He desperately began turning possibilities over in his mind.

Domenico finally managed to pull himself away from the television screen, his face having drifted so close it was almost touching it.

He licked his dry lips.

Logic and paradox?

To hell with them.

What he had just witnessed could not be explained through logic or reason.

Perhaps words he normally despised—

"Aura."

"Energy."

"Inspiration."

—could barely begin to account for it.

In a panic, he searched for Yu Myeong's profile.

My God...

Twenty six...

His acting possessed the flashes of inspiration one associated with an open minded teenager.

The energy of someone in their twenties.

The technical mastery of an actor in their thirties.

The maturity that usually came only after forty.

He possessed all of it.

And at only twenty six...

He was already beginning to earn genuine fame.

Casting Vote was unquestionably the hottest program in America.

Even so, many believed that, like most stars born from survival auditions, its contestants would struggle to maintain that popularity afterward.

Until yesterday...

Domenico had believed the same thing.

But after watching tonight's live broadcast...

For the first time in his life...

He experienced something he had always despised.

A premonition.

This actor...

...will become someone worthy of being called the greatest actor in the world.

A shiver ran through him.

The moment the thought formed...

It felt less like speculation...

And more like an obvious truth.

Hypotheses required verification.

But this no longer felt like a hypothesis.

It was certainty.

[domi] Everyone. I have something to say.

[b.qao] Go ahead, Chairman. Though... are we absolutely sure they didn't secretly splice in pre recorded footage loaded with every editing trick imaginable?

[blanc] Qao, let's not jump to conclusions. Assuming what ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) we just saw is genuine, we need an entirely new logical framework. But go ahead, Domi.

[domi] I'm joining Shin Yu Myeong's fan club.

Silence.

A fan club.

An organization built around idolizing and unconditionally supporting a single person—

Exactly the kind of irrationality they had always despised.

[b.qao] I mean... I was impressed too, but... a fan club? You, Domi?

[domi] Blind faith. Unconditional trust. Support. I've always hated those words. But perhaps... in certain circumstances, they have their place. If that's another truth of the world... then I think I need to walk that path.

[est] Domi...

He opened his phone.

Without hesitation...

He pressed 1, Shin Yu Myeong's voting number.

The moment I press this...

I'll be saying goodbye to the person I used to be.

With the utmost seriousness...

He slowly pressed SEND.

His vote had been cast.

His friends were still in an uproar inside the chat room.

There would be plenty of time to convince them after the broadcast ended.

Now...

The program moved on to the judges' comments.

"As many of you probably guessed..."

"Yu Myeong and Selina created a prequel on the spot during the first assignment."

The audience erupted into thunderous applause.

"Improvisation is extraordinarily difficult."

"Especially during a live broadcast, where the pressure alone is enough to make anyone stumble over their words or freeze completely."

"But to improvise a story whose beginning and ending connect perfectly..."

"Without a single contradiction..."

"And while maintaining dramatic tension throughout..."

"I still can't quite believe what I witnessed."

"I honestly found myself wondering whether I could have done it."

Natalie's sincere words brought the theater into respectful silence.

That was the kind of actor she was.

Even after reaching the pinnacle of her profession...

She could still watch another perform and honestly admit that she herself might not have been capable of it.

Derek's confidence.

Natalie's humility.

In the end, they sprang from the same source.

Both were virtues possessed only by those who had completely devoted themselves to acting.

Yu Myeong bowed his head slightly in gratitude.

"I'll make absolutely sure my next film never opens the same weekend as Kyler's."

George shook his head, still marveling.

"It honestly felt like I was watching an entire drama unfold today."

"As a writer..."

"Casting Vote has become an incredible source of inspiration for me."

Eva's eyes had grown slightly red as she spoke at length.

Then Derek took the microphone.

"To be honest..."

"I suspected today's improvisation might somehow tie into the main assignment."

"Oh? Really?"

"Well, you were the one who decided to make the improv challenge a two person performance and assigned the teams."

"But wasn't that conclusion a bit of a stretch?"

"It wasn't the only correct answer."

"But..."

"It's probably what I would've done."

"I was just curious whether there was another lunatic out there who thought the same way."

He looked directly at Yu Myeong.

Then put on an expression of mock frustration.

"Turns out there is."

Jerry burst into laughter.

"Wow..."

"Yu Myeong, how does it feel to be officially recognized as crazy by a certified madman?"

Yu Myeong couldn't help laughing.

"And now..."

"It's time to reveal the judges' scores!"

"So far, Antoine is in first place!"

"He received 90 from Derek, 92 from Natalie, and 96 each from George and Eva—for a total of 374 points!"

"Now then..."

"Let's reveal Shin Yu Myeong's scores!"

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The numbers on the electronic scoreboard began to climb.