Chapter 2: An Actor?
A tide of rising yellow spilled from the curtains as sentience slowly dripped into Dan Woo. He felt his body was quite warm and heavy, yet awfully comfortable, with a nice scent wafting toward him.
He squinted his eyes through the morning haze as he tried to turn toward his interrupter to silence the not-so-pleasing tunes. As he moved, he felt a brush across his bare skin, while another sound that was not his phone grazed his ears.
It was a soft exhale of comfort as he noticed hands that were not his linked across his frame. A slender build with a well-built figure, curves, and a warm comforting sensation clung loosely against his own frame.
Dan Woo, noticing the unfamiliar woman in his bed, jumped off, startled. The woman loosely dropped back into the bed, embracing the lingering warmth of the sheets.
Dan Woo studied the woman, slightly unsure if he was acquainted with her. His mind clawed back through yesterday’s memories, trying to match the current puzzle that was the woman to any of the events he could recall, yet he found nothing.
His phone continued ringing through the room, pulling his jumbled mind from the puzzle that was the woman to a new one—the name of the contact calling him that morning.
Lee Hyun Ju.
He read the barely familiar name as his brain struggled to recall it through the hazy fog.
"Wait, isn’t that Han Soo Hee’s manager?"
He took another look at the woman in his bed to make sure it wasn’t really Han Soo Hee.
It wasn’t. The face was different, even though the body frame was almost similar to hers.
So why is she calling me? he thought.
His finger hovered over the answer button before he finally received the call.
"Hello?" he began meekly.
The voice boomed through from the other side.
"You moron, are you still asleep?"
Dan Woo was taken aback by the familiarity and energetic nature of the tone.
"I... I am awake..." he stammered in a soft voice.
"Wait, don’t tell me you’re still in bed. And why are you speaking softly?"
"No reason..."
"Wait, don’t tell me you have a woman with you! Can you even be responsible? Don’t you remember what day today is?"
"Today?"
"Dan, can you use more than your second head to think? Have you already forgotten the plan? How do you expect to clear your scandal when you can’t think beyond what’s between your legs? If this character falls through, your career might go up in smoke."
"I..."
"I am giving you ten minutes to freshen up and be ready. I am coming."
The phone suddenly cut before Dan Woo could get any words in.
He was left stammering, still reeling from all the unfamiliar events happening in succession.
His eyes still felt heavy and clogged, as if there was something within them. He rubbed his globes, hoping that maybe he was just having a weird partial hallucination from his still-sleepy body, yet it did nothing to calm him.
He decided to quickly head for his bathroom to try and splash himself with water. Maybe that way he could ease his heavy eyes and chase away any remnants of sleep causing such bizarre hallucinations.
In the bathroom, the tap water ran cold as Dan Woo splashed his face with two palms of it in succession, making sure his face had been thoroughly soaked.
As he looked up into the mirror, he was still in a daze.
Then his image in the mirror registered.
It was still him, yet it wasn’t.
It felt like he was looking at a different version of his usual reflection. The face didn’t quite feel right, neither did his chest or hands. He stepped back to try and see what exactly was different, yet he couldn’t seem to figure it out.
He kept staring into the mirror when he saw something at the edge of his vision.
He wasn’t sure what it was, and until now he hadn’t recognized it, but now that he noticed it and gave it a thought, a holographic screen quickly materialized.
It shimmered with a blue tinged with purple glow, a holographic screen filling his immediate field of view and hovering right in front of him.
He tried to interact with the screen, yet it seemed to have no function other than the display of what he could only think of as a countdown.
16:53:06... 05... 04...
The numbers continued counting down.
Dan Woo was puzzled by the numbers, and as his focus on them faded, they receded.
He felt his confusion only deepen further as more questions came into play. He relaxed himself before deciding to take a complete plunge and bathe, hoping the mounting questions in his head would calm down.
The shower hit him with a refreshing touch, washing away the night’s filth together with the anxiety and disorientation. After a few minutes in, he got out feeling refreshed, walking to his room to get ready. After all, he still needed to head to work for the script reading session.
"Hi, handsome."
A low, sultry female voice hit him just as he walked out of the bath.
"You’re awake?"
Dan Woo was startled as he clutched his towel, though he tried to maintain his composure.
"Well, how could I sleep with all the noise around? You’re usually more... subtle."
"I am?.. I... What I mean is... do we know each other?"
"Huh! Wow... I mean, Dan... you really never change."
The woman said as she jumped off the bed, her luscious brown hair bouncing with her motions.
"Do you mind if I use your bathroom to clean up?"
"..."
"Nope, I’m sure you don’t, seeing as you’re usually gone by now. Your permission must still count though, right?"
The barely clothed woman walked past Dan and into the bathroom before closing the door behind her.
Dan Woo barely registered her actions as he moved mechanically to pick out his clothes for the day. Within a few minutes, he looked neat and well put together, the strange woman still in the shower.
He walked to the kitchen to get something light to eat, but as he did, he heard someone at his front door entering the code.
Soon enough, another woman was there in the kitchen with him, grabbing him and urging him to get out.
"We’re already late, Dan! If you don’t move right now, we might miss the table read session, and this might leave a bad impression."
"Table read session?"
"Come on, we don’t have time for this."
Dan Woo found himself in a van on the road with a group of people who he was both familiar and unfamiliar with.
There was Lee Hyun Ju, who was now his manager; Oh Se Young, her assistant, makeup artist, and stage hand; and Kim Hwi Gwi, who was the driver and bodyguard. They were all people Dan Woo was unfamiliar with, yet their names seemed to ring a bell.
Lee Hyun Ju was busy explaining things to Dan Woo, yet he was fading into his own thoughts, trying to understand how all this had come to be.
He initially thought maybe he was dreaming, but his vivid senses, memory, and cognitive capacity told him otherwise. He then considered hallucinations, but apart from the weird floating screen, he didn’t have anything else that felt like a hallucination.
But how could he be sure?
He put that down as a possibility, and then an idea came to mind.
What if he had traveled to a parallel reality?
But how was that possible?
The question came up as soon as he thought of the possibility.
His mind then ran back to all the things he had done yesterday, from his social meetups to his cleanup for Eternal Knight to his nitty-gritties with PD Eun Soo.
All of that didn’t seem out of the norm.
Then his mind brought up his impromptu ritual.
Right.
He had done a ritual to have his dream come true.
So had the wish been granted?
His mood suddenly lifted as he considered that a possible explanation, but even so, he felt his life was far too different from his previous one if he really had pursued writing beyond romance.
"Is it Script Matters?" Dan Woo suddenly asked Lee Hyun Ju.
"What?"
"I mean, for the table reading. Is it Script Matters?"
"Dan, what are you talking about?"
"Is your issue still with Baek Ha Ri?"
"..."
"You should have thought more with your upper head instead of your lower one. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation."
Dan Woo went silent, not expecting that answer. He turned it over in his mind.
Then if it wasn’t his wish being granted, how had he come to this parallel reality?
He couldn’t see another explanation.
Then, quickly, an answer cropped up as if he were a drowning man clutching at a straw.
It must have been that he had revised the title in this world.
He felt that line of thinking made sense. Revisions of titles weren’t that uncommon.
He turned to Lee Hyun Ju to ask about the script for today, yet she was on a call with someone.
He decided to let her take her time.
He felt that he had found an answer that would definitely fit his situation, so it felt like all the questions from the morning vanished apart from the weird countdown.
He squinted again at the strange image at the edge of his vision, and the countdown came up once more.
It was:
16:01:03
...and counting down.
He pondered what the countdown might be.
Was it a counter for when his wish would be fulfilled?
Or maybe a refresh of some kind, where he could only experience said wish for a day before being able to wish for something else?
His mind rolled through the possibilities when suddenly he heard the words appearance fees.
Appearance fees for a writer didn’t make sense in the context of a table reading session.
Was she not talking to Eun Soo?
But the voice was definitely hers.
As he tried to make sense of the conversation he had just eavesdropped on, he suddenly felt his memory jogged.
Yesterday, after doing the ritual to have his dream fulfilled, there had been a message accompanied by a creepy nursery rhyme.
"A price has to be paid," Dan Woo suddenly muttered.
His eyes turned back to the countdown.
What if the countdown wasn’t a refresh but his timeline for paying said price?
Dan Woo’s body was suddenly filled with dread as he tried to think of the possible payments he would have to make to this supernatural creature that had granted his wish.
It was said that people had to pay with their souls if they made a deal to have their wishes fulfilled.
So did he have to pay with his soul?
That meant he would be dying in the next sixteen hours.
He hadn’t even gotten a chance to enjoy his wish.
And what about Han Soo Hee?
He didn’t feel ready to die without talking to her.
As these thoughts formed, the van suddenly pulled up at the location for the table reading.
Seeing that he was there, Dan Woo thought he could at least attend the script reading for his masterpiece before searching for her in the building.
With luck, maybe he would see her in the table reading room, but he could only dream.
Han Soo Hee was more of a romance actress than anything else.
The group walked, making their way to the reading room.
---
In a closed room with two long tables lined with cramped chairs sat the most important cast for My Eternal Knight.
The main focal point was at the center while the others sat a bit farther back.
The session began with the main cast introducing themselves, yet Dan Woo was left in a position he couldn’t understand.
He had been so entranced looking for Han Soo Hee, only for himself to be led to one of the lead seats, only realizing it when they began introducing themselves.
The realization became even more shocking when he saw the title.
My Eternal Knight.
Yet he wasn’t the writer.
He was one of the actors for the leads.
In this world, he was an actor.
The very realization seemed to send him into even greater despair.
If he wasn’t even a writer, didn’t that mean his wish had been botched?
The cast quickly introduced themselves, their characters, and their vision for the project. Yet when it came to Dan Woo, he was mechanical, answering briefly with little emotion, still contemplating his revelation.
Soon they opened the script to begin the reading.
Immediately, when he opened the script, he felt like he had just opened up a life, and it wasn’t an exaggeration.
Dan Woo was supposed to play Lee Woo Je, a man who couldn’t get over his wife, yet had to choose whether to continue chasing her or allow her happiness, as she was destined to never be his.
It was a romantic story of a love spanning centuries.
Yet Dan Woo was playing the second male lead—the man who had spent his entire existence with the female lead until their divorce, only for her destined knight to come and swoop in.
As he relived Lee Woo Je, he couldn’t help but feel that they had a lot of similarities.
In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they were the same person, cut from the same template.
Soon, his part came.
INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY
...
He could picture the scene as he felt the world dissolve around him.
This was supposed to be an exchange between the SML and the FL, where the second male lead tries to rekindle their relationship, only for it to be crushed as the female lead had already moved on.
He could taste the sense of loss and grief.
Dan Woo played the segment with such raw emotion that everyone on the team couldn’t help but be moved.
Yet as soon as the scene ended, he burst out of the room.
If he only had a few hours left, he hoped he could make up with Han Soo Hee, or at least find closure before his demise.
He looked at his ticking clock, only to find that it now read:
17:34:02
He was confused as to why he suddenly had more hours added, yet it still ticked away.
He moved through the agency looking for Han Soo Hee while his team tried to convince him to return to his post.
He didn’t care for their words.
He was going to die soon anyway, so all that mattered was that he fixed his relationship with Han Soo Hee, or at least got to say goodbye.
Yet nothing.
He searched through familiar routes and reached out to familiar contacts.
Nothing.
He even went to their childhood home, only to find it no longer there.
He felt tired and angry by the time he was done.
The day had already gone by, and finally his manager and team had caught up to him.
He was seated at a certain convenience store, drinking himself away.
Lee Hyun Ju went to his seat, ready to escort him away, yet when she saw the raw sadness on his face, she decided to sit across from him and try to soothe him before figuring out a way forward.
She picked up a bottle of liquor before extending it toward Dan Woo.
"Cheers."
"Cheers," he said.
"What are we drinking to again?"
"To life, Lee Hyun Ju. To life."
"I see."
Lee Hyun Ju said before taking a huge swig and exhaling with an umph.
"That’s good wine."
She said before going silent for a bit.
"Dan oppa, I hope you’re okay."
"I want to say yes, but..."
"Is it..."
"Have you ever been in love?"
"...Why are you asking this?"
"Just answer the question."
"I... I’m not sure."
"Well, for me, I have. It is a wonderful feeling. It makes food, scents, passions—everything in life feel better. You always feel like you’re in a fairytale where everything makes sense whenever you’re with your person. It is a kind of bliss beyond comprehension. A world that defies everything, yet..."
Dan Woo suddenly took a huge swig of liquor.
"The happiness is your highest high, and whenever the person is not close to you, you feel like something is missing. Then finally, when it ends, it is the lowest low one can feel. It feels like you were floating in the sky and then suddenly you’re falling toward the ground. What’s worse is when your love belongs to another. That is when the heart can be wrenched the most—a bottomless abyss."
"Is this about Baek Ha Ri?"
When the words reached his ears, he couldn’t help but scrunch his face before beginning to wail.
Lee Hyun Ju immediately tried to comfort him as she helped him stand up, his body limping against hers.
She moved him toward the bodyguard and driver, relaying his condition as he assisted her in getting him to the van.
Lee Hyun Ju stood there for a moment, her gaze lingering on Dan’s back as she tried to catch her breath.
"You idiot," she muttered softly.
After taking a huge swig of alcohol herself, she also headed toward the van.
As they did, dusk soon fell and night quickly approached.
In his stupor, Dan Woo saw the beautiful orange sunset meld into red.
Then his mind clicked.
He looked up at the full moon again.
"Is that moon red?" he asked the team with a slur.
"No, it’s white," Lee Hyun Ju replied with the attitude of lulling a child.
Yet it looked ominous to Dan.
Then it clicked.
He wasn’t in a parallel world.
He was in his own story.
His wish had been answered, just not in the way he expected.
He tried to remember the address of his main character in this story, yet his mind couldn’t recall it.
Suddenly, the holographic screen appeared as loud beeps echoed within his mind, making him agitated.
It was no longer blue with purple hints but red, growing darker and darker, the font becoming spookier.
[Warning! Warning! Warning!]
[Insufficient character development. Insufficient character development. If not completed, host will be devoured.]
The message from the window blasted through his mind.
He tried to interact with the window to shut the message off, and as he did, a new window suddenly popped up.
The holographic window was now interactive.
[Character Name: Lee Woo Je]
[Portrayal (Incomplete)]
Performance Tension: C
Character Understanding: A
Subtle Acting: D
Line Delivery: C
...Partial Evaluation...
Reward: ... Insufficient development. Cannot issue reward.]
Wait.
Wait.
Is this a system?
As Dan Woo gazed at the information before him, he quickly realized he had been transmigrated not only into his story but also had an acting system.
He switched back from the character tab to the countdown.
He had approximately six hours to finish his portrayal.
Or he would be devoured.