The Genius Actor Who Brings Misfortune

Translator: Marctempest
Editor: Rynfinity

Chapter: 1

“Next question! You must be tired of hearing this, but I can’t help but ask. How does it feel to win the Best Actor Award at the youngest age ever?”

I softly lifted the corners of my mouth.

“It’s hard to believe. Actually, everything is hard to believe. It’s still strange to me that I’m on TV.”

“Oh my, it shouldn’t be strange to you anymore~. After all, it’s been quite some time since your debut!”

The woman conducting the interview remained cheerful throughout.

Her bright expression only faltered when she looked at the script in her hand.

She paused for a moment and then showed a troubled expression.

“The next question is about your elementary school days, which recently became a hot topic on the internet….”

“Ah.”

“I’m sorry. It’s uncomfortable for you, isn’t it? We can skip it.”

I shook my head at her apologetic face.

With a light smile as if it was nothing.

“I’ve heard about it too. There’s a rumor going around that I was bullied in elementary school. It’s a bit exaggerated, but it’s not entirely untrue.”

“Really?”

“I got hurt a lot when I was young. A little… to a strange extent.”

It’s harder to find a day when kids of that age don’t get hurt.

But I was different from those kids who got injured while playing recklessly.

“Because the injuries were severe, some friends thought I was unlucky.”

When I finished speaking with a smile, the woman exaggeratedly frowned.

“That’s really a childish thought! Saying you’re unlucky doesn’t make sense with your current career. You’re setting new records with every project you appear in.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Oh~ I’m just stating the facts.”

As the last question, the woman asked, ‘What does acting mean to actor Lee Yeon-jae?’

I paused for a moment and then answered playfully.

“Something I must do to survive?”

“Oh my, you’re more romantic than I thought.”

Seeing her laugh, thinking it was a joke, I laughed along with her.

‘It’s not a joke.’

I became an actor to survive.

To be more precise, I started acting to avoid misfortune.

What do I mean by that?

To explain, we need to go back a few years.

* * *

“Today is the 17th, right? Let’s have number 17 read from the first sentence.”

On a lazy afternoon with the sunlight streaming in, the teacher’s words drew the students’ attention to one place.

Following their gaze, the teacher’s pupils settled on one spot and began to tremble.

And facing that tremor directly, I responded.

“My textbook suddenly disappeared. I’m sorry.”

“…Ahem, then number 18, you read.”

After a brief silence, I listened to number 18’s voice echoing through the air and thought.

‘Even for me, isn’t this a bit much today?’

It started with the mud.

As soon as I left the orphanage to go to school, I felt an unpleasant sensation accompanied by a squelching sound.

Looking down quickly, I saw my sneakers, which I had just cleaned yesterday, buried in mud.

Mud, out of nowhere, on an asphalt road. I tried to clean it off quickly, but it was in vain.

Upon arriving at school, I was hit in the head by a soccer ball that came out of nowhere, and I slipped on an abandoned ice cream stick on the stairs.

During math class, I cut my hand while opening my textbook, and during music class, a perfectly fine recorder suddenly broke, leaving a scratch on my cheek.

It was less than a month since I had started elementary school, and in that time I had visited the nurse’s office about ten times.

The school nurse, who had cautiously asked if I was being bullied, now handed me a bandage with a nonchalant expression.

‘Well, given what she’s seen over the past five years, it would be strange if she were still surprised by this.’

I wasn’t being bullied.

To be precise, there were no kids who approached me closely enough to bully me.

Even among twelve-year-olds who considered themselves practically adults, trapped in one place all day, there were surprisingly no kids who interacted with me in any significant way.

There were more days when I went back to the orphanage without saying a word all day, so that said it all.

‘Wait… is this bullying too?’

I paused while writing down the teacher’s words on the notebook I had hurriedly pulled out.

A teacher who said nothing even though I didn’t have a textbook, a deskmate who treated me like I was invisible. Hmm, I guess I was being bullied.

But saying I had no friends might be a bit more accurate than saying I was being bullied.

An hour passed in the blink of an eye while I pondered over which of these pitiful choices to choose.

“Alright, we’ll start from page 52 next time. Don’t forget your homework!”

As soon as the bell rang, the teacher, who closed the book as if she had been waiting, glanced at me.

“And Lee Yeon-jae, if you can’t find your textbook, come to the teacher’s office. I’ll give you one.”

“Yes. Thank―.”

The teacher rushed out before I could finish my sentence.

At the same time, my deskmate stood up and ran to the kids in the next row.

“Who’s going to the PC room after school today?”

“I can’t. I have essay class starting today.”

“Tough. You’re already going to coding class.”

“Who took the comb that was here?”

I slowly stood up, looking around the suddenly noisy classroom.

As I walked to the back door, I felt eyes subtly following me.

The classroom grew even louder as soon as I stepped outside and quietly closed the door.

‘It can’t be them.’

Although I had realized I was being bullied in a relatively less sad way, I didn’t think the disappearance of my textbook had anything to do with it.

After all, the kids who avoided even making eye contact with me wouldn’t be brave enough to mess with my stuff just to bully me. At least, not in this class.

“Where could it be?”

Whether a brave kid took it, or it suddenly grew legs and ran off in pursuit of self-actualization, there was nothing I could do about it.

Over time, I had come to realize that most of the things that happened to me occurred on the borderline between unreality and coincidence, without anyone’s specific intent or will involved.

It was easier to accept it as ‘just things happening.’

‘But today has been particularly harsh.’

It was just past noon, but my knee was bleeding, and bandages were plastered all over my hands and cheek.

Feeling the familiar stinging and throbbing sensations, I thought I should be careful for the rest of the day.

* * *

‘I knew this would happen.’

Oddly enough, that was my first thought as I felt my body lift into the air.

All the accidents that had happened sequentially since morning were foreshadowing this.

There was a strange thrill in realizing this, and the pain from my ribs felt dull in comparison.

“Oh my god! Someone call 911!”

I felt the cold sensation of the asphalt against my cheek.

With blurry vision, I saw a car speeding away in the distance.

Speeding and hit-and-run in a school zone. That would definitely result in harsher punishment.

‘…Wow, this really hurts.’

I tried to think about something else to stay conscious, but the pain was too overwhelming.

I felt like I could barely breathe.

“Are you okay?! First… emergency….”

“Here… someone….”

The voices of the people shouting urgently grew muffled, and my barely open eyes finally closed.

I was engulfed in darkness in an instant.

It felt like I had been in that pitch-black darkness for a very long time.

Gradually, sensation returned from the tips of my toes.

But the pain I had expected to hit me hard was not there.

And I was still standing in the darkness.

“…Ah, my voice works.”

I raised my hand and touched my face, body, and legs in turn.

I could vividly feel the sensation of clothes against my hands. The tactile sense was normal.

My voice was coming out fine, so there seemed to be no problem with my larynx, and my hearing was normal too.

What else should I check?

I tried to recall a book I had read a few days ago, but my thoughts were disjointed.

Was my vision impaired if everything looked pitch black? But I could see my hands, albeit faintly.

It felt like I was in a completely dark room with not a single ray of light.

There were no aftereffects I could feel, and it made no sense that a patient would be placed in such a space after an accident.

From this, I concluded that this place was not a real space.

“Is this a lucid dream?”

It was fascinating since it was my first time experiencing such a vivid dream… but was it really a dream?

I doubted it because my five senses were so vividly intact.

I hoped this wasn’t all a hallucination.

If so, was I having a mental breakdown? Schizophrenia? How would I get treated? What about the treatment costs?

I could naturally picture the orphanage director looking troubled.

I bit my lip unconsciously, and suddenly, I sensed something approaching from the far end.

Before I could process my thoughts, something that looked like mist and gray clouds approached me swiftly.

The thing that kept scattering and gathering erratically transformed into a shape and spoke to me.

“Wow! It’s the first time I’ve seen a human here! You’re a human, right?”

Yes, the mist spoke to me.

I seriously considered the possibility of a mental breakdown.

“This is amazing! How did you get here

?”

A woman laughing cheerfully circled around me.

The mist had transformed into the shape of a woman before I realized it.

To be precise, it took the form of one of the teachers at the orphanage.

Of course, there were many oddities.

The excessive blinking of her eyes, the angle of her smiling lips, even the direction her eyebrows curved.

It felt completely different from the usual impression of the teacher.

‘As if someone had possessed the teacher’s body….’

Above all, I had seen the mist coalesce into the shape of the teacher.

Instead, I felt the fog bustling in front of me even more intensely.

Come to think of it, since that thing appeared, it had brightened the surroundings as if the lights were turned on.

Perhaps because of that, I could clearly see the fog using the teacher’s hand to forcibly lift my eyelids.

“Don’t touch me carelessly.”

“You speak well! Why did you suddenly stop talking? Were you distracted?”

It really felt like a human touch, and it gave me goosebumps.

The fog kept talking to me incessantly, whether I glared at it or not.

“You’re really quiet. Boring! But why is your body trembling so much?”

“…Because I think I’m going crazy.”

If I went mad here, there would be no solution. Maybe I should head to the mountains before it’s too late.

No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem like a dream… If this was all a hallucination, am I actually in a hospital?

Standing in the corridor, talking like a crazy person?

Just thinking about it made me feel distant. I rubbed my face with my hands, and the fog couldn’t wait and prattled on.

“Why do you think that? Huh? What seems crazy to you?”

“……”

Please, just stop talking.