I stood by the railing and looked into the lens.
What was I supposed to do? Smile?
I forced the corners of my mouth upward with facial muscles that rarely moved, only for a sharp voice to stab into my ears.
“Your expression is way too stiff. And don’t look at the camera. Stand at an angle and stare at your phone like someone emotionally numb. You’re lost, but you haven’t realized it yet.”
I took out my smartphone and fiddled with it as instructed.
I had a rough idea of the kind of shot she wanted, so it was not particularly difficult.
“Now turn around and look at the river. Like you want to jump in right now, but you’re too scared to do it.”
At Yukimura’s direction, I acted like a modern person exhausted in both body and mind.
After I humored her demands for a while, she finally gave the signal that we were done.
It had looked like we were shooting a movie, and apparently that was not just an impression. She had actually been filming video.
She had not been taking pictures at all.
She had never specifically told me she was recording video, but I could tell that much from the way she handled the camera.
“Can I go now?”
When I asked because it seemed to be over, Yukimura tilted her head.
“Go?”
“Aren’t we finished?”
“We still have to review the footage.”
Wait.
Were we actually making a movie?
Why did we need to review anything?
I was thoroughly baffled, but I walked over to Yukimura and looked at the camera.
At this point, I at least wanted to see what she had filmed.
Yukimura worked the controls, and soon I appeared on the screen.
Fiddling with my smartphone.
Looking down at the river.
Dropping into a crouch and sighing.
I watched the clips one after another and understood.
Yukimura really was making a movie.
Whether it was a photograph or a video, the framing and direction changed depending on the intent of the person behind the camera.
When the goal was to upload something to social media, people tried to make it look as impressive as possible. When the goal was to preserve a memory, they tried to capture it as faithfully as possible.
And in that sense, the footage I had just watched was clearly framed and directed more like a film.
There was no lighting or props, so it looked rough, but the underlying structure was unmistakable.
“Hm.”
Apparently dissatisfied with something, Yukimura replayed the footage several times before frowning.
“What are you? An aspiring actor?”
An actor?
Where had that come from?
An aspiring actor. I might have wanted to be one at some point.
Back when my dreams included becoming a scientist or the president, acting had probably been in there somewhere too. Along with becoming an astronaut for good measure.
“No. Why?”
“You’re not?”
Yukimura’s expression turned strange.
Apparently, the fact that I was not an aspiring actor came as a major surprise to her.
Why was that surprising? The only scenario in which someone could mistake a shut-in novelist—currently unemployed—for an aspiring actor was if their eyesight had failed.
I lowered my gaze toward the camera. The footage we had just shot was still playing.
Watching it again, I began to understand why Yukimura had mistaken me for an aspiring actor.
Anyone who had ever stood in front of a camera and done something resembling acting would understand.
There was always a gap between how you thought you looked and how you actually appeared on camera.
When ordinary people were told to act, they usually tried to behave as naturally as possible.
That did not mean they actually looked natural, but in any case, most ordinary people thought good acting meant behaving exactly as they did in real life.
That was a misconception.
Acting exactly as you did in real life was not a particularly good method.
More precisely, trying to show natural behavior by simply behaving the same way you did in reality was not a good method.
When you acted exactly as you did in real life, the footage often made it look as though you had not acted at all.
This was not about whether it looked natural or unnatural.
It meant it looked like you were doing nothing.
Acting and reality were different. An actor needed to know how to exaggerate in front of a camera. That was how things came across properly on screen.
Of course, too much exaggeration looked unnatural, so you had to find the right balance.
Why was I suddenly talking about all this?
Because the version of me on the screen at least looked like someone attempting to act.
It was the performance of someone who, at minimum, understood what camera angles and framing were.
Gasp. He acts naturally. Could he be a former child-acting prodigy?
Of course not.
What kind of orphan became a child-acting prodigy?
This was simply a remnant of my former life.
Embarrassing as it was, I had once tried running a YouTube channel.
It was easiest to think of it as me briefly losing my mind while writing and doing something stupid.
Film was the pinnacle of commercial art.
So back then, I had believed that making films myself would help me grow as a creator.
Now that it was all over, I knew I would have been a hundred times better off spending that time writing.
Anyway.
The idea of uploading short films to YouTube had been closer to a hobby than a serious commitment, but that did not mean I had no intention of succeeding on the platform.
I had taken it somewhat seriously.
After all, growth was more efficient when enough people were there to leave feedback.
So I invested part of my savings in a camera, filming equipment, and editing software.
Then I filmed sketch comedy and short films by acting alone and editing everything myself.
I kept at it without stopping for about six months.
As you can probably guess, the results were not very good.
Had they been good, I would not have looked back on my life before taking over this one and thought, I should have at least gotten a part-time job.
And that was why Yukimura had mistaken me for an aspiring actor.
From the perspective of a movie-obsessed—not really—movie friend, it was understandable that she would jump to that conclusion after noticing I seemed to have acting experience.
Of course, I could not tell Yukimura about my former life.
So after firmly denying that I was an aspiring actor, I casually asked,
“So how was it?”
“How was what?”
“My acting.”
Creators were people who went out of their way to show others what was inside them.
To put it another way, they were the sort who masturbated in public.
People who craved attention.
There were several kinds of attention seekers.
Some wanted attention by doing bizarre things, while others simply wanted people to pay attention to them.
Creators were generally the latter.
They became creators because they wanted people to look at what they had made and then give them an honest evaluation.
It was rather shameless of me to talk so grandly about creators when everything I had written recently belonged in the trash, but I had still written plenty over the years.
I could probably say this much.
“Your acting?”
“Yes. You must have felt something if you asked whether I was an aspiring actor.”
When I asked with a trace of expectation, Yukimura looked incredulous.
“Do you really want to hear it?”
There was such a thing as nonverbal expression.
Gestures, facial expressions, eye movements, and the like.
People handled eighty percent of communication through nonverbal expression alone.
And since I was a person, I understood eighty percent of what she was thinking.
So I already knew what answer was about to come out of Yukimura’s mouth, but I nodded anyway.
Creators wanted to hear any evaluation, no matter what it contained.
At my nod, Yukimura answered in a firm tone.
“It’s not good. If acting is your dream, you should give up.”
“Is that so?”
I had expected as much.
All the acting knowledge I possessed had been picked up haphazardly from watching movies and filming YouTube videos.
I had never taken lessons or studied acting separately. It would have been stranger if I were good at it.
Even after hearing such a harsh assessment, my expression remained calm.
It had done no damage.
I had not even been acting seriously in the first place. If that had hurt me, would that not have made me far too emotionally sensitive?
Besides, as a creator, even if you thought, What a load of garbage, you were not supposed to show it on your face.
The ideal response was to listen quietly, discard what was useless, and accept what was useful.
The reason was simple.
It kept you from looking pathetic.
So what I wanted to say was that I would have reacted the same way even if Yukimura had criticized my novel.
It was not important.
Moving on.
Silence settled between Yukimura and me.
We had both been quiet before, but this felt different.
Yukimura was watching my reaction.
Was she worried that criticizing my acting had bothered me?
I had noticed it when we first met, but Yukimura was surprisingly softhearted despite her appearance.
Judging by her face alone, she looked like someone who would not care about other people’s feelings at all.
It was strange how completely wrong that impression was.
Had I known this would happen, I would not have asked for an evaluation.
Now I felt unnecessarily guilty.
“Hey.”
Yukimura broke the silence.
I raised my head and answered.
“What?”
“How was it?”
Her tone was flat, but there was a slight note of expectation in her voice.
I suddenly felt like smacking my forehead.
She had not been worried because her criticism might have hurt me.
She had been watching my reaction because she wanted an evaluation too.
And here I had thought there was something wrong with the idea that appearances never lied.
“I’m not a film expert.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Is that so?”
It would have been ridiculous to keep refusing when the person involved said it was fine.
And now that I had permission, I freely voiced every thought that had been running through my mind, without filtering any of it for the first time in a long while.
“The story is terrible. I don’t know how you plan to direct it, but what kind of direction can you even do with a story like this? It’s all too obvious. I have no expectations whatsoever. The character is obvious too. Is depression and aimlessness really all you can think of when you hear ‘modern person’? This setup could not have come out of even one second of serious thought. Are you making this movie against your will because someone forced you to?”
It was close to verbal abuse, but that was fine.
Yukimura was, nominally, an aspiring actor and a creator.
She would be unaffected by words like these.
Right?
“…”
Yukimura pressed her lips together and glared at me.
When I met her gaze, tears welled up in both her eyes.
Faced with that deeply wounded expression, I blinked.
Apparently not.
Well, then.
That was unfortunate.