Seventy Percent Real

Director Park Hae-gang let out a sigh as he pulled off the glasses he'd been wearing, setting them down with a motion closer to flinging them aside.

A dull, throbbing headache had him rubbing his face over and over, while the judge from the production company rapped the table as if to hurry him along. A great deal of time had been lost, yes. But still—

"Just a moment."

The words left him before he could help it, frayed with irritation.

The feeling struck him—snap!

The Choi Mi-so of Whistle had to be Jung Ga-yoon. He'd never dreamed the acting of a nobody like Jung Ga-yoon would appeal to him this much.

If he'd known, he never would have promised the role of Choi Mi-so to So Yul-hee, and he wouldn't have spent all that time wooing the production company and the platform with talk of commercial viability and ticket power, either. Now he was cornered, with no graceful way out.

He had been championing So Yul-hee from the start, so choosing her wouldn't raise much of an outcry. Of course, Writer Yang Bo-hyeon would revolt and set about talking him around, but even if Seong Jin-ung couldn't understand, a few well-stacked reasons would bring him around in the end.

That way the casting would wrap up four-to-one, with hardly any friction. The show's numbers wouldn't suffer much for it, either.

But if he chose Jung Ga-yoon... something in him was certain this project would explode. In the best possible sense.

Which meant, naturally, that he'd have to win over the production company and the platform first — they'd already lined up behind So Yul-hee, ticket power as their war cry.

It would cost him some face, but talking them around shouldn't be much of a problem. Hadn't they all just watched Jung Ga-yoon's performance with their own eyes? And judging by how long the production and platform reps had themselves agonized over their pick, there was real hope.

The wrinkle was So Yul-hee, who had loudly crowned herself the Choi Mi-so of Whistle; she would not take this well. She'd come out of it with a grudge, most likely. Her Choi Mi-so had been good — but Jung Ga-yoon's had been desperately tense, the kind that left your palms slick with sweat, so to speak.

Director Park, who had been weighing the situation with the ferocity of a man gambling his life, finally opened his mouth. So Yul-hee was a problem for later.

"Whew... Let's go with Jung Ga-yoon."

The other judges' eyes latched onto him at once.

"Jung Ga-yoon? Come on, Director Park."

"But if you're factoring in marketing, too, So Yul-hee may well be the safer choice."

The judges from the production company and the platform stared at him in open disbelief, all but scolding him — hadn't they settled this in advance?

"I apologize. You did watch the acting, didn't you?"

"Hah..."

Just as he'd predicted, that one line shut them both up. The performance had been that striking; truth be told, they'd been aching to bring up Jung Ga-yoon's name themselves. The only reason they hadn't was the understanding they'd struck with Director Park — and the fact that, on paper, So Yul-hee's numbers weren't bad either.

"Rather than an option that might be better — wouldn't you rather hold the hand that's sure to win?"

Feeling as though they'd been played for fools by Director Park, the two of them wore expressions gone distinctly sour.

"Hahaha! My eye never misses, does it?"

Writer Yang Bo-hyeon roared with laughter. "Should've just gone with Jung Ga-yoon from the start. What are you going to do about So Yul-hee now? All you've managed is to bruise her pride."

He'd known the jab was coming. Director Park clicked his tongue, wearing a face like he'd bitten down on a stone.

"Tch. The work comes before anyone's pride."

"Oh, I like that — we think alike. Excellent. Then let's call the casting finalized."

And so the villain of Whistle, Choi Mi-so, was cast once and for all.

In the car on the way back from the audition, the evil spirit shrieked, quivering with elation.

"Whoa, seriously...! You were pretty real back there! You know that?"

At the sight of the spirit giddy past all composure, Ga-yoon lifted her hand mirror and angled it toward her collarbone.

The dwindling number galled her, but one way or another she'd scraped it back up to a full fifteen days. Five days' worth, more or less... Ga-yoon tilted her head, eyeing the evil spirit.

What's the standard for how much time I get?

"Oh, it's not that complicated. Remember the first time your time went up?"

The spirit asked it in the tone of a lecturer deigning to instruct. When had that first increase been? After she came back to life — when she laid hands on that supporting actress old enough to be her mother.

"The fundamental arrogance of looking down on other people. Splashing water without a flicker of hesitation. Even laying into an innocent servant. That alone was worth a good ten days."

Ten days? The time I gained back then was seven.

"Ah — but your wrist lost some of its force midway through, didn't it? Cutting corners on me. So I docked three."

The evil spirit planted its hands on its hips and held forth like a schoolmaster delivering a lesson.

...And there went her tongue. How could anyone have such a gift for saying precisely the things that made you want to throw a punch?

Then what about this time? You said it felt real.

"For an audition piece? Decently real! But you can't earn a high score by deceiving and duping people!"

So if I don't strike someone directly, the time I gain shrinks.

"Right, right. And depending on your Realness Score, the lifespan you earn can change as well. What you're doing is, in the end, 'acting,' isn't it?"

At the spirit's answer, one of Ga-yoon's brows arched sharply upward.

Her lifespan could rise and fall with how convincingly she acted? Now that was an interesting proposition.

Can you put a number on it? What's the Realness Score of my audition?

She was, just a little, hopeful. Lead roles had never come her way, but hadn't people always said she could act? Even the veteran actress Yoon Jeong-seon had been unstinting with her praise. And yet—

"Hmm... about seventy percent?"

The raised brow slid quietly back down to where it belonged.

"Seventy percent?"

An awkward sort of number. When she asked whether that meant out of a hundred, the evil spirit bobbed up and down like a nod.

"Ga-yoon, sorry — I was on the phone and missed that. What was it?"

Min-ji glanced at her through the rearview mirror. Apparently the murmur had slipped out of her mouth unbidden.

"It's nothing, unnie. I was just talking to myself."

"Oh, is that so? Got it. Yes, yes, sir. Right now?"

Catching Ga-yoon's eyes through the mirror, Min-ji flashed her a smile and carried on with her call. She seemed to be speaking with the agency's CEO.

Ga-yoon smiled back, then sank into thought once more.

Seventy percent. Even on a school exam, seventy was a maddeningly middling score — a touch shy of good, and by no means bad. Expecting a perfect hundred was hubris, she knew. Still, she'd assumed she'd manage at least an eighty.

I still have such a long way to go.

Ga-yoon bit the inside of her lip, dissatisfied.

No, wait. Or was this actually a good thing? The better her acting became, the more her lifespan would stretch in turn. True, getting inside the head of a serial-killing psychopath and playing him convincingly was no small feat. But the closer she drew to a hundred percent, the sharper her craft would grow — and the longer she would live.

Ambition surging, Ga-yoon's eyes had begun, somewhere in the last minute, to spark and shine.

Just then Min-ji, coming out of a curve, finished her call and spoke up.

"Ga-yoon. I just got off the phone with the CEO — he wants you to stop by the agency for a bit. That's all right, isn't it?"

Min-ji was checking whether she had anything personal lined up.

"Oh — yes. That's fine."

She could guess well enough what the summons was about. The contract renewal, most likely.

"Oh, and — congratulations. Just heard it straight from the CEO... Choi Mi-so. The role is officially yours!"

"Congratulations, Ga-yoon. You've worked hard."

She'd returned to the agency straight from the Whistle audition, and there to greet her was Hwang Mu-jin, CEO of Until Entertainment.

"Hardly work at all."

CEO Hwang, who had been seated at his desk, sprang up and crossed the room to pat her shoulder.

"It'll be a while before filming gets properly underway, I suppose?"

Her hand drifted, without her quite noticing, to her collarbone. No one else could see the thing, but it preyed on her mind enough that she'd taken to wearing clothes that covered her clear up to the neck. It would be getting warm soon, though. Would makeup be enough to hide it?

CEO Hwang studied the calendar, gauging the timeline.

"Hmm. A contemporary piece. Pre-production does seem to be moving quickly."

With the scripts finished, the table read would follow soon enough, he said — and he smiled, promising to let her know the moment a date was set.

"Good grief. Thank heaven Writer Yang took such a shine to our Ga-yoon."

Min-ji, seated at Ga-yoon's side, heaved a sigh before her indignation boiled over.

"I know casting reversals are practically this industry's favorite pastime, but how can people flip their hand over like a turned palm?"

Hwang Mu-jin nodded and clicked his tongue softly.

"Cancelations stacking up even after a casting's been locked in — something's not right there. I think we need to dig deeper into the reasons they gave."

"And the whole time, every one of them was too busy singing our Ga-yoon's praises!"

If Writer Yang hadn't dug in his heels for her, landing her next project would have taken even longer. And in the gap between, she might well have wasted away watching her lifespan drain.

"From here on out, there may be more of it — but there won't be less."

Ga-yoon looked at CEO Hwang with a bittersweet smile.

Nineteen: she'd met CEO Hwang for the first time at the auditions for The Doll. Twenty: she'd joined Until and signed her papers. And then, seven years. Every moment of her time here had been good ones, so renewing her contract had always been a given. And yet.

Perhaps he read something in her eyes, because the CEO's expression stiffened.

"There's something I need to tell you."

"Ga-yoon."

"Baek Ga-yoon has made up her mind to drag me down."

Ga-yoon laid out the reason behind this latest cascade of canceled castings. All of it had unfolded exactly as Baek Ga-yoon intended — and not just this time. From her debut onward, Baek Ga-yoon had been a constant, meddling hand in her career.

Hightop sat at the very top of the agency food chain, or as good as. Baek Ga-yoon had admitted it herself, freely: she'd been sabotaging Jung Ga-yoon's castings since as far back as The Doll. Just as she always had — perhaps worse from here on. She had declared she would block her path so thoroughly that she couldn't gain so much as a foothold in the industry.

"What?"

CEO Hwang and Min-ji wore the faces of people struck dumb.

Min-ji exhaled a long, heavy breath and voiced her disbelief.

"Why on earth would she do that?"

"That's exactly what I'd like to know."

No one wanted that answer more than Ga-yoon herself. She said it with a shrug.

"Somehow I did manage to get cast in Whistle this time — but she'll move to trip me up midway through filming, or right at the point of release."

After all, hadn't they spent seven years tending an actress who could genuinely act, and yet whose road ahead kept inexplicably closing? Honestly, Ga-yoon thought the company would be well within its rights to let go of her hand.

There was no reason her agency should have to shoulder Baek Ga-yoon's sabotage alongside her — it wasn't as if she brought in that much more money for it. Renewing with her as things stood, Until stood to lose more than it gained.

Without an agency behind her, this might turn into a long, lonely war — a lone egg hurling itself against a rock. However modest, the shelter of an agency's walls was a different animal from standing entirely alone.

Even so, to stamp her seal all the same, pretending the years of their kindness hadn't happened — that would prick her conscience far too much.

"About the renewal..."

At that, CEO Hwang clapped his hands — crack! — and boomed:

"Right! Signature first!"

"I— what?"

No, honestly, sir. Where exactly did everything I just said go?

In the space of a blink, a renewal contract and a fountain pen sat waiting on the desk before her.