In This Life I Will Die as an Actress Not a Villainess Chapter 2

Looking around, I found myself inside some office.

A woman holding a file folder was rushing me.

“Sera-ssi! Hurry up!”

Hurry up for what?

Wait, who are you?

But somehow, the woman felt both unfamiliar and strangely familiar at the same time.

I turned my head to look at the office, and this odd sensation bloomed—like I’d seen this place somewhere before.

I’d definitely fallen asleep drunk.

Am I dreaming right now?

But what kind of dream is this…

“Sera-ssi! Take this for me!”

Just then, a man emerged from the conference room and frantically thrust a stack of documents at me.

I took the papers unconsciously and stood there dazed in the middle of the office.

Sera-ssi?

“Sera-ssi! Shin Sera-ssi!”

I turned toward the voice, and a sharp-featured woman asked curtly.

“You’re ready for today’s presentation, right?”

“What…?”

“Don’t you dare mess up in front of the director like last time. I won’t let it slide this time.”

My head spun.

Who’s my director?

When I sat down at what seemed to be my assigned seat, my phone rang in my pocket.

I pulled out the phone with fumbling hands and could only gape in shock.

“A flip phone?”

At my instinctive outburst, people’s eyes turned toward me.

What kind of dream is this… realistic?

I smiled awkwardly and opened the phone to see a message from a contact saved as ‘Minho-ssi♥’.

‘Sera, what my mom did yesterday… could you forgive her just once, for my sake? This will never happen again. I love you.’

Reading the text made my head spin.

I have no idea what dream I’m having right now, but it’s clear this Sera girl is a total pushover.

My assumption that this was obviously a dream shattered into pieces the very next moment.

As I walked toward the break room, I heard female employees whispering.

“That Shin Sera, I never would’ve guessed—she’s a total man-stealer.”

“How did she even seduce the director?”

Hearing this conversation made my mind reel.

More precisely, the moment I heard these lines.

I finally realized what world I’d fallen into.

<Cinderella in Flat Shoes>.

My debut work—the script I’d cursed at in a drunken rage and soaked with tears right before passing out.

To be precise, this was the opening scene of episode 14.

Right now, I wasn’t Han Sena, nor was I Yoo Ji-an, the villain I’d played in <Flat Shoes>—I was Shin Sera, the female lead.

Only then did the golden text that had been right in front of my nose when I woke up flash through my mind.

Discover Yoo Ji-an’s weakness?

* * *

I sat there in a daze, pretending to look through the stack of documents while killing time.

The longer time passed, the more anxious I became.

Is this really not a dream?

I’m inside the script?

I instinctively turned on the monitor and checked the date.

December 15, 2012.

I was speechless.

Is this time travel or dimension hopping? What is this?

And as someone else…?

Possession?

The moment I thought the word possession, a scoff-laced sigh escaped.

In twenty years as an actress, I’d seen this setup in countless drama scripts.

Usually, whether time travel or possession or whatever, these things happened to people who regretted their past.

Or were dissatisfied with their present.

In my case, both applied.

Does this even make sense…

My leg trembled under the desk.

‘Do I have to complete the mission to escape from here?’

When that thought occurred to me, my anxiously shaking leg stopped dead.

This time I turned off the monitor and stared at my face reflected in the black screen.

Shin Sera’s face, to be precise.

It was different from the actress who’d played Shin Sera back then.

However, with the round eyes, prominent nose, and overall thin, kind-looking features, the image was oddly similar to that actress.

‘But why Shin Sera?’

That was the most baffling point.

If this really is inside the script, why Shin Sera instead of Yoo Ji-an?

An inexplicable sense of doubt welled up.

This world, the reason for possession—I don’t understand any of it, but discover Yoo Ji-an’s weakness?

Does that mean I need a third-person perspective to figure it out…

Doesn’t the person themselves know their own weaknesses best?

And the reward they mentioned—regression.

Does that mean they’ll send me back to my original world?

It was absurd.

What kind of reward is that?

Bzzt—

Just then, another text arrived on my phone.

‘We are notifying you that Shin Sera-ssi currently has an overdue loan payment of 850,000 won. – KY Bank’

So I really have become Shin Sera…

I closed the phone.

In Flat Shoes, Shin Sera grew up tenaciously and cheerfully in a poor household, paying off her debts without resenting her parents.

Then she fell in love with a man who was a director at her company, welcoming the second act of her life.

After that, Shin Sera faced opposition from the man she loved because his family were slaves to money, and endured the atrocities of the villain Yoo Ji-an.

Every situation around her pushed Shin Sera toward a cliff, serving as conflict.

Yeah, must’ve been really hard.

Living suffocated by a mere 850,000 won.

But…

“But Yoo Ji-an had just as hard a life.”

For some reason, I felt emotionally invested and bit my lip in frustration.

Yoo Ji-an also lived a life as difficult as Shin Sera’s, but at the ending, Shin Sera gained everything while Yoo Ji-an lost everything.

Like the male lead’s family, Yoo Ji-an grew up like a puppet in a household where money came first, until she met the man she loved for the first time in her life.

Determined to protect at least her love, she risked everything, but lost even that man to someone else.

To Shin Sera.

But Shin Sera was good and kind.

Too kind for Yoo Ji-an to resent her.

And even if she couldn’t be understood, all the wicked deeds that everyone cursed belonged entirely to Yoo Ji-an.

That’s what a villain’s life was like.

As life headed toward ruin, there was no mercy given.

Still… if only I could’ve expressed that sense of injustice better.

To realize it only now.

It left a bitter taste.

But… episode 14 was around when the drama reached its climax, wasn’t it?

A sudden ominous feeling struck, and I tapped the shoulder of the colleague sitting next to me.

The colleague looked over while mechanically typing on the keyboard in front of a chunky monitor.

“Hey.”

“What, bitch. Why do you keep sitting there with that dazed look? The manager’s gonna get mad.”

From the rapid-fire whispered delivery like rap, I immediately realized a new fact.

This person is the typical female lead’s friend.

Rough-talking with foolish quirks, but always there to cry with the female lead through life’s hardships…

A typical cliche.

I traced through the script in my mind and barely remembered her name.

“Bora, what am I supposed to do after work today?”

I tried my best to act like Shin Sera, moving and speaking like a female lead in her twenties.

Cheerfully, brightly, like a lark…

Doing this at my age, what a life.

Bora glanced around quickly, then answered in an even lower voice.

“You’re meeting the director!”

“Where… am I supposed to meet him?”

“Girl, seriously. Did getting splashed by his wife yesterday mess up your head?”

I went through that yesterday too, friend?

“Today’s the director’s birthday so you’re going somewhere nice, girl.”

In that moment, my head rang.

“There was a weather forecast for snow today, right?”

My voice rose urgently.

The manager sitting in front snapped irritably.

“If you know that much, do well on your presentation so you don’t make my commute home more miserable.”

In that moment, I realized the most important fact.

Tonight, Shin Sera gets hit by a car driven by Yoo Ji-an.

That was the ending of episode 14’s script.

* * *

After finishing my presentation drenched in cold sweat, the office was empty with everyone gone.

I’d awkwardly sent everyone off and now lay on a cot in the empty break room.

“If you shove me into a car accident scene the moment I possess someone, how am I supposed to find any weakness and get out of the script?”

Irritated mutterings poured out of me in succession.

Just then, my phone rang again.

‘Sera, you must be really angry. I’ll wait until you come.’

I shook my head at the cliche male lead behavior.

“Such a rookie.”

But my fingers were typing a response different from my heart.

‘Something came up. Let’s talk again another time.’

Either way, I’m Shin Sera right now.

After sending the text, I checked the time on my phone—it was almost 7 o’clock.

The time Shin Sera gets hit by Yoo Ji-an’s car was 7:30.

Since <Flat Shoes> was my debut role, I’d read the complete script more than fifty times back then.

Twenty years later, my memory had faded, but…

Important information like that still remained in my head.

During filming, I’d sometimes recite to wandering staff members which scene was in which episode.

Thanks to that, I’d won favor from the drama world’s grande dame, Writer Lee Si-young.

A faint smile escaped in this situation.

Those were the days.

Soon the clock pointed to 7:29, and my palms sweated with tension.

What if I don’t move—will the world twist and the villain come kill me in some other way?

All sorts of imaginings constricted my chest.

Then it became 7:30.

My heart pounded wildly as every sense in my body heightened.

I endured the long eternity of sixty seconds.

And when nothing happened, I finally exhaled in relief…

Golden text flashed before my eyes.

[Mission Failed.]

“What?”

Before I could grasp the situation, my vision suddenly went black.

“Sera-ssi! Hurry up!”

When I came to, the same woman from earlier started with the exact same line.

I was back in the chaotic office.

A man rushed out and handed me a stack of documents before leaving.

“Sera-ssi! Take this for me!”

“You’re ready for today’s presentation, right?”

Even the manager’s hysteria.

‘I’m… back to the starting point?’

I’d returned to the moment I first fell into the world inside the script.

Mission failed?

Before I could organize my thoughts, the company routine I had to complete swept over me once again.