Chapter 02

Suddenly, I heard someone’s voice.

“Ms. Ha Eun-rae?”

A woman was standing in front of me.

Am I in a hospital?

Then was this woman… a doctor? But she looked far too shabby to be one. She wasn’t even wearing a white coat.

Horn-rimmed glasses, a plaid shirt, and a round, adorable face.

…Wait a minute.

This woman was a famous film director.

Jegal Se-yeon.

She had to be well over forty by now, but she looked a little younger than I remembered.

And the next words out of her mouth were—

“Aren’t you here to audition for* Living with a Ghost*?”

Living with a Ghost?

That was the title of an independent film directed by Jegal Se-yeon.

It was the very first movie I had ever auditioned for.

“We need to set up the camera, so please wait a moment  After saying that, Jegal Se-yeon went into the  audition room.

Left alone, I looked around and finally realized what had happened.

I’ve regressed.

It was the kind of quick conclusion you would expect from someone in the film industry, accustomed to the liberties movies took with reality.

Of course, I did have some evidence to support my theory.

The date displayed on my phone: XX/XX/20XX.

And more importantly—

The script in my hands.

Living with a Ghost.

This was Jegal Se-yeon’s graduation film from the film academy.

Twelve years ago, a photographer who had attended the same school as Jegal Se-yeon introduced me to the audition.

But the word graduation film hadn’t exactly thrilled me at the time.

“A graduation film? So, a student production?”

Back then, I was already earning pretty good money as a model for online shopping malls. The opportunity didn’t seem particularly appealing.

“It’s a film academy graduation project, so it’s not just some student production… Besides, it’s a feature-length film. They’ll probably pay pretty well.”

But the moment I heard they’ll pay pretty well, my eyes lit up.

At the time, my family members kept getting into trouble one after another, and no matter how much money I earned, it never stopped disappearing.

I didn’t even know what a film academy was back then.

The film academy in question was one of the most prestigious film schools in Asia.

Many of its graduation projects were submitted to international film festivals, making an opportunity to appear in one an incredible chance for an actor.

But I knew absolutely none of that at the time. Naturally, I assumed I would get the part.

And honestly, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

After all—

I looked at the mirror across the hallway.

Young.

Beautiful.

Well, I was still beautiful twelve years later, but…

Twenty-one-year-old Ha Eun-rae had a unique, unmistakable charm.

Photographers were practically falling over themselves to feature my face in their personal projects, and even film students I met by chance contacted me almost every day, asking me to appear in their films.

And on top of that—

Look at my skin. It’s practically glowing…

I marveled at my own reflection.

After the debt scandal, all the cosmetic procedures I’d undergone whenever I was stressed had ruined my face. But now, it was perfectly fine.

No Botox injections along my jawline, no fillers in my forehead, no fat repositioning.

Without any of that nonsense, my facial muscles moved freely, and my expressions felt natural.

It was like being a national-level gymnast who had returned to the days before a career-ending injury.

Is this what people mean when they say they’ve hit the jackpot?

I smiled at my reflection.

This was what made me happier than anything else about regressing.

I haven’t met Kim Do-woon yet.

The last emotion I’d felt before dying had been regret.

Regret toward my foolish younger self for choosing Kim Do-woon in an attempt to escape my godforsaken family.

I looked at my bare ring finger and made a silent vow.

I’m not going to live like that this time.

I’m going to think about myself, not my family.

Me. The things I love. The one place where I’d always felt the freest.

My life as an actress.

That’s all I’m going to focus on.

It was just as I made that resolution that someone called my name.

“Ms. Ha Eun-rae.”

“Yes?”

When I turned around, a male staff member gestured toward the audition room.

“Please come inside.”

It seemed the audition was about to begin.

For the record, twelve years ago, I’d walked out of this very audition after suffering one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

Naturally, I’d been rejected.

But with my acting skills now, I had no reason to be nervous.

There was just one problem…

…I haven’t even read the script yet.

I’d only watched this movie twice, for crying out loud!

Jegal Se-yeon, sitting in the director’s chair in the audition room, was feeling anxious.

While preparing her graduation film for the film academy, she had rewritten the screenplay several times.

And that had created a problem.

I’m not happy with the script…

As someone who loved comedy, she had envisioned a witty, unconventional story. The original premise had been decided from the beginning.

A woman who believes she’s a ghost, and a man who knows she isn’t. They end up living together.

The female protagonist, Su-in, had been in a car accident with her parents and was the only survivor.

Unable to overcome her guilt over being the sole survivor, she began living under the delusion that she was already dead and wandering the earth as a restless spirit.

As a result, she prepared her meals as if they were offerings for the dead, avoided sunlight, rarely washed herself, and slept on the floor instead of in a bed.

All these self-destructive habits stemmed from her guilt over being the only one who had survived.

Yet every one of them was portrayed in a somewhat comical way.

Yes.

Up to that point, all her professors had praised the story as entertaining.

However—

“Things start going wrong as soon as the male lead appears.”

Every professor had given her the same assessment.

I… can’t write romance.

A woman who believed she was a ghost and was squatting in someone else’s home.

And a man who appeared to kick her out.

The moment Jegal Se-yeon decided to turn their relationship into a romance, all sorts of clichéd lines began spilling onto the page, and the dynamic between the characters became twisted.

With every revision, a project that had initially been considered promising gradually fell further and further behind.

That was because everything began to fall apart the moment the two characters met.

As a result, Jegal Se-yeon’s mind was so consumed by the screenplay that she couldn’t concentrate on the auditions at all.

And then—

“Um… Director?”

A woman called out to her.

Catlike eyes and an unusual face. Snow-white skin and sharply defined features.

She was the kind of beautiful woman that a hundred out of a hundred passersby would turn around to look at again.

But—

Well, actors are all like that.

Plenty of people looked gorgeous in person, only to lose all their appeal the moment a camera was pointed at them.

As Jegal Se-yeon entertained that thought, she glanced casually at the camera beside her.

…!

What the hell? She looks even better on camera!

Her eyes, in particular, were alive. A face that was already beautiful in person became so captivating on camera that you could almost feel yourself being drawn into it.

And if Jegal Se-yeon wasn’t imagining things—

She somehow knows which angles make her look best.

It was rare for a rookie actress to be so aware of how she appeared on camera.

She looks like someone who’s been acting for ten years…

Yet her résumé didn’t even list a role in an ordinary short film.

Which meant that this was simply—

Natural talent.

Just as Jegal Se-yeon was quietly marveling at her, the woman spoke again.

“If you don’t mind, could I make a few changes to the script and try an improvised scene?”

The auditioning actress, Ha Eun-rae, had made an unexpected request.

Change the script?

Jegal Se-yeon’s expectations immediately dipped.

The woman had an incredible face, but if she was the type to challenge the work itself, she might be a little troublesome.

There were actors like that from time to time.

Actors who claimed they had studied directing themselves and tried to interfere with everything, even the storyboards.

She thinks an independent film is some kind of joke.

Was this actress one of those types?

But there was something about Ha Eun-rae’s eyes…

Jegal Se-yeon stared intently at the eyes looking back at her through the camera, then nodded.

“Sure. Well… go ahead and try an improvised scene. Which scene would you like to do?”

In response, Ha Eun-rae pointed to a scene in the script.

“The scene where the two characters meet for the first time.”

“…!”

As it happened, the scene Ha Eun-rae had chosen was precisely where the screenplay began to fall apart.

In other words, it was the scene where the two characters, who were supposed to embark on a romance, first met.

Could it be…?

Did she notice the problem, too, and deliberately choose that scene?

At that thought, Jegal Se-yeon felt as though the twenty-one-year-old woman standing before her could see right through her.

Right through her, a thirty-three-year-old woman.