The title floating above Ji-eun's head caught my eye, but what actually held my gaze was the sentence beneath it.
[Veteran Convenience Store Girl Park Ji-eun]
– Copy Condition: She wants to escape this situation. Say that you will take the part-timer role in her place.
– On Copy: You acquire the knowledge and behavior related to the title.
I turned the sentence over slowly.
'So if I copy the title, the ability and the behavior get copied along with it.'
It meant I could make Park Ji-eun's highly practiced part-time work skills my own.
But there was a precondition.
'A situation she wants to escape.'
I raised my head and looked at her again.
The flustered expression at the assistant director's sudden request.
The faint movement of a half step backward, her lips pressed tight as she strained to hide her face.
'...An exact match.'
She was a kid who normally stuck to me like I was her older brother.
And right now, that same girl was looking only at me.
With eyes that begged for help.
And the way to do it was—
For me to act in her place.
My throat went bone dry.
The moment I turned my head, a sheet of paper in a crew member's hand came into view.
The shooting script.
SCENE 07 – In front of the convenience store register
- Customer: "What's this product?"
- Part-timer: "The MZ generation's energy vitamin!"
(The part-timer smiles brightly and recommends the drink.)
- Customer: "Oh~ is it popular?"
- Part-timer: "Of course! It's the hot item these days!"
(The customer nods and picks up the product.)
CUT TO BLACK. (End of scene)
...Two lines, exactly.
The scene was far simpler than I'd expected.
No long dialogue, no need to build emotion. Just enough to speak naturally.
I had been an actor too.
It had been a long time since I'd been anywhere near a stage, but I'd never dropped the habit of standing in front of the mirror at night, muttering lines.
Only where no one was watching, in secret.
But the camera anxiety was still there. Just picturing a lens made my breath come short, and the cold sweat came first.
Even so, when I opened a script, the scene took shape before anything else. The frame, the direction of the lighting, the breath of a line. My body still remembered that flow.
As if the desire to stand on a stage had never gone away either.
'If it's just this much... couldn't I really do it?'
Fear and anticipation crossed each other.
My fingertips trembled faintly, but—
Right now, there was someone trembling harder than me.
Park Ji-eun.
The kid who normally smiled so brightly and stuck to me like an older brother.
But right now she was looking at me with anxious eyes.
Lips pressed shut, backing away. A gaze asking for help.
'Right. Turn away at a time like this and you're not even a person.'
Honestly, I was scared too.
My head was packed with signals saying 'don't do it,' and my heart was pounding fit to burst.
But—
'If I can't manage even this much... I might really have to think about another path.'
I quietly drew a breath in and let it back out.
Then I raised my head and opened my mouth toward the assistant director.
"...I'll do it."
In that instant, light broke across Ji-eun's anxious face. She let out a quiet breath, as if relieved, and looked at me.
"Oppa......"
The gratitude and relief packed into those few syllables.
I nodded without a word.
But the look in the assistant director's eyes changed.
An expression that at first seemed to take me for a mere stand-in shifted quickly into curiosity.
He looked me up and down, then folded his arms and fixed his gaze on me for a moment.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and a trace of a smile spread at the corner of his mouth.
"You, you mean?"
There was an odd expectation mixed into the end of his words.
"Skin tone's decent... visuals are good too......"
Muttering it half to himself, the director soon nodded and clapped his hands.
"Good! This actually worked out! You'll film well, won't you? I'll make sure you get extra for the appearance fee!"
"Haha... thank you."
I smiled awkwardly, but the assistant director's reaction was no joke.
His eyes held both expectation and satisfaction at once.
Behind the laughter, an emotion I couldn't name pressed in on me.
The fact that I had been forgotten as an actor.
The reality that not even a director on set, let alone an audience, recognized me.
And then—
['Veteran Convenience Store Girl' title acquired.]
The moment the sentence surfaced in front of my eyes, my breath caught.
"It actually... worked?"
The words slipped out of my mouth before I knew it.
And right at that moment—
"Hahaha! Interested in being an actor?!"
The assistant director clapped me on the back and burst out laughing. His reaction threw me, but I realized soon enough.
My words had sounded like delight at being cast.
"Hey! Go get the outfit ready, now! Finish shoot prep in ten minutes!"
"Yes, director!"
The crew moved fast, and the set got its energy back in an instant.
"Wow~ oppa, thank you so much."
Ji-eun laughed brightly and clapped.
"I embarrassed myself doing a school play when I was little, so I don't even watch dramas since then."
Park Ji-eun gave an awkward smile, but my attention was already somewhere else entirely.
'I really... got a title.'
This wasn't a hallucination or a dream.
It had unmistakably happened right in front of my eyes.
'If this ability really exists... what kind of effect does it have?'
When I called the title to mind, the familiar window opened again.
Title list.
Inside it, the 'Veteran Convenience Store Girl' I'd just acquired was registered.
With trembling fingertips, I pressed the title.
[Equip title?]
[Y/N]
'It can even be... equipped?'
I hesitated a moment.
But I'd come this far for it, and I got the feeling I'd definitely regret it if I didn't find out.
I quietly chose [Y].
[Veteran Convenience Store Guy Cha Eun-yul]
The instant the letters changed—
My head opened up bright and clear, and an enormous amount of information came pouring in.
How to organize stock, how to work the register, customer service, handling traffic flow during busy hours—
It wasn't simple knowledge.
Like the body remembering.
Like someone who had done it countless times.
Not at the level of copying it correctly, but the sense of already knowing how to do it with ease.
"What is this...!"
Along with the shock came the feeling that my body was about to move on its own.
It was as if the memory of working long years at a convenience store had been transplanted into me whole.
In that case, how far did this ability go?
"Huh? I put that up there to sort it out myself."
I heard Ji-eun say it, but I had already reflexively picked up the drink can sitting on the counter.
At that moment—
[Beverage: carbonated / Shelf life: 3 months / Display location: refrigerator, 3rd tier]
A brief line of information brushed through my head.
Like a tag was attached to it, data surfacing automatically the moment my gaze passed over it.
I stopped short.
'...What? Why is that coming up?'
I dug through my pocket and pulled out a packet of medicine I'd bought a while back.
But this time nothing came up.
So items a convenience store doesn't handle were useless after all.
'Then what about other things?'
I looked around.
An unsorted snack box and a medicine box came into view.
The moment I saw a familiar product name, the information surfaced naturally this time.
[Hi-Renal: dosage 1-2 tablets per use / convenience store sale permitted / contains no restricted ingredients]
[Green Onion Crackers: snack / Shelf life: 6 months / Display location: 2nd shelf unit, 3rd row]
Only then did I start to get some sense of how far the title's range extended.
Products a convenience store handles, and situations related to them. Step outside that line and my knowledge stayed at an ordinary level.
I looked around and muttered.
"It's not perfect, but... this much is pretty usable."
If it was this much for a convenience store—
Then if there were other titles, didn't that mean I could pull off other work just as easily?
For example, copy a cooking title and be like a chef.
Get a driving title and move like a chauffeur.
If I could make another person's experience and skills my own without ever doing it myself...?
The thought alone made my heart beat a little faster.
This wasn't just an ability. It might be the way I could start over.
But then, suddenly—
'Why me, though, of all people?'
Just as the thought crossed my mind, someone approached from the edge of my vision. A man who looked like crew.
"Hello."
"Ah, yes. Hello......"
I returned the greeting awkwardly.
"Just do it exactly like this and you're set."
He handed me a page of script.
The shooting script.
I took it without thinking.
In that moment, something settled into my head as though seeping in.
Like a switch had been flipped, my senses sharpened. An unfamiliar energy spread through my body. My shoulders straightened, and the corners of my mouth slowly lifted.
Confidence with no reason behind it.
Vitality with no basis.
My heart felt a little lighter.
This wasn't my own emotion.
It was unmistakably a reaction the title had drawn out.
And soon, a clear sentence surfaced above my head.
[Convenience Store Part-Timer (No Name)]
The title itself was familiar, but the phrase tacked on behind it, 'No Name,' snagged on me.
'...No Name?'
For a second I tilted my head up without meaning to. I couldn't see it, but it felt like that sentence was floating somewhere above my head.
Why had my name vanished, leaving 'No Name'?
Was it just because it was an extra's role, or did it mean I really didn't know who I was right now?
I quietly lowered my gaze to the script.
- Customer: "What's this product?"
- Part-timer: "The MZ generation's energy vitamin!"
The short lines circled in my head.
And I could tell instinctively how they had to be said.
Bright and light.
Cheerful enough that a customer would take an interest on their own.
Without forcing it, in a natural rhythm and tone.
This wasn't thought. It was reflex.
Like a sense already programmed into me.
'...Is this really the power of the title?'
Just then, a crew member handed me a part-timer's vest.
I took it quietly, and he was looking at my face when he suddenly stopped.
"...Huh? You're the one from before, right?"
When I raised my head, the assistant director, who had been in front of the camera, turned my way.
"What is it?"
Then his eyes went wide and he shouted.
"Yes, that's much better than before! Your expression right now is completely fine, isn't it?"
He immediately waved his hand and called out.
"Good! The feel is good right now! Let's go straight into shooting!"
I threw the vest on over my sweats.
The crew member quietly cleared away the 'part-timer concept outfit' he'd set to one side and said,
"Just as you are is fine. This is far more realistic."
Just then, the convenience store mirror set beside me caught my eye.
When I turned my gaze without thinking, an unfamiliar face looked back.
The line of my eyes lifted lightly, and a soft, composed smile had spread at my mouth.
An entirely different look from the blank face I'd had that same morning.
A clear, lively expression.
For a moment, words failed me.
The me inside the mirror was a stranger.
Like long ago, the day I first stood in front of a camera.
The first day of shooting that sitcom.
Shaky and clumsy, but with eyes shining with excitement.
I slowly smiled and met the eyes of the me in the mirror.
In that instant, a shiver ran through my whole body.
'Is this... really my own expression? Or is it a shell the title created?'
If my mood, my expression, all of what I felt right now was thanks to the title, then who was I at this moment?
"...What is this."
This wasn't simple acting.
I wasn't just arranging my face. The emotion itself was changing.
Just then—
"All right, lighting confirmed! Cameras rolling!"
The cinematographer's sharp shout rang out across the set.
'Uh... w-wait a second!'
A moment both familiar and strange.
The enormous lens turned toward me.
"......"
Camera anxiety had been darkness to me. Cold and damp, a place where even breathing was hard.
An endless cave that, once you fell in, you could never come out of again.
The camera pushed me into that darkness every single time.
Into a closed world where the light didn't reach.
But right now—
Click.
The sound of the camera rolling rang bright somewhere in my head, like the sound of a lighter catching.
And that small flame lit up a darkness I'd endured for three years, far too easily.
I slowly drew in a breath.
And I raised my head and looked straight ahead.
The camera lens was the same as ever, but—
It wasn't dark anymore.