In This Life, I Want an Oscar, Not a Husband - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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This life, I choose The Oscars over a husband.
Chapter 2

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A voice suddenly reached my ears.
“Ha Eun-rae?”
A woman stood before me.
Was this a hospital?
Then this person was… a doctor? But the outfit was far too shabby for a doctor. No white coat, either.
Thick-rimmed glasses, a checkered shirt, a round, adorable face.
‘…Wait.’
This woman was a renowned film director.
Je-gal Se-yeon.
She had to be well past forty, yet her face looked younger than I remembered?
And the next words that spilled from her lips were—
“Aren’t you here for the audition for 【Cohabitation with a Ghost】?”
【Cohabitation with a Ghost】?
That was the title of the independent film Je-gal Se-yeon made.
It was the first audition I’d ever attended.
“We need to set up the camera, so please wait a moment.”
Je-gal Se-yeon finished speaking and disappeared into the Audition Hall.
Left alone, I glanced around and came to a realization.
‘I’ve regressed.’
It was a swift judgment befitting a filmmaker accustomed to cinematic logic.
Of course, there was evidence to support this conclusion.
The date displayed on my phone: 20XX, month XX, day XX.
And more than anything—
this script in my hands.
【Cohabitation with a Ghost】.
This was Je-gal Se-yeon’s graduation project from Film Academy.
Twelve years ago, a photographer who attended the same school as Je-gal Se-yeon had introduced me to this audition.
Yet the word “graduation project” did little to brighten my expression.

“A graduation project? That means it’s just a student film?”

At that time, I was already earning quite a substantial fee as an online shopping mall model, so it wasn’t a particularly attractive option for me.

“It’s a Film Academy graduation project, so it’s not just a student work… Plus, since it’s a feature film, they’d probably pay quite a bit, right?”

But the moment I heard “they’d pay quite a bit,” my eyes lit up.
Back then, my family members were constantly causing accidents, so no matter how much I earned, money kept slipping away without pause.
‘At that time, I didn’t even know what the Film Academy was.’
The Film Academy was one of Asia’s most prestigious film schools.
Graduation projects were often submitted to international film festivals, so appearing in a Film Academy graduation project was considered an enormous opportunity for actors.
But back then, knowing none of this, I naturally assumed I would be selected.
And for good reason—
I gazed at the mirror across the hallway.
Young.
Beautiful.
‘Beauty lasts even twelve years from now.’
Twenty-one-year-old Ha Eun-rae possessed a distinctive charm that was utterly unique.
Photographers were desperate to feature my face in their personal projects, and film students I happened to meet would contact me almost daily, begging me to appear in their works.
Even—
‘Look at this skin. It’s absolutely radiant….’
I marveled at my own face.
After the debt scandal, my face, which had been ruined by procedures I underwent whenever stress hit, was now perfectly intact.
Botox along my jawline, fillers in my forehead, fat redistribution.
Without any of those things, my facial muscles moved freely and my expressions were natural.
It felt like a national-level gymnast had returned to the days before their injury.
‘So this is what they call hitting the jackpot.’
I smiled at my reflection in the mirror.
What brought me the most joy from this regression was this very thing.
‘Right now, I haven’t met Kim Do-woon yet.’
Just before death, the final emotion I felt was ‘regret.’
Regret for my foolish self, who chose Kim Do-woon to escape from my wretched family.
I looked down at my bare ring finger and thought.
This time, I won’t live like that.
I’ll think only of myself, not my family.
Myself, what I love, that very place where I felt most free.
A life as an actress.
‘That’s all I’ll focus on.’
It was the moment I made that vow.
Someone called my name.
“Ha Eun-rae.”
“Yes?”
When I turned around, the male staff member nodded toward the entrance.
“Please come inside.”
The audition was about to begin.
For context, twelve years ago, I suffered my first major humiliation at this very Audition Hall and left in defeat.
Naturally, the result was rejection.
But with my current acting ability, there’s no reason to be nervous.
The only problem is….
‘…I still haven’t seen the script?’
I’ve only watched this film twice?!

* * *

Je-gal Se-yeon, seated as the director in the Audition Hall, was in a state of anxiety.
While preparing her Film Academy graduation project, she had rewritten the screenplay multiple times.
As a result, a problem had emerged—namely:
‘The script just isn’t sitting right with me….’
Given her preference for comedy, she had conceived a witty and spirited work, with the core concept already firmly established from the start.
‘A cohabitation between a woman who believes herself to be a ghost, and a man who knows she isn’t.’
The female protagonist, Soo-in, survives a traffic accident that kills her parents.
Unable to overcome the guilt of being the sole survivor, she lives in a delusion—convinced that she is already dead and wandering the nine realms of the afterlife.
Because of this, she eats only ritual meal offerings, avoids sunlight, rarely bathes, and sleeps on the floor instead of a bed.
All of these are self-destructive behaviors born from guilt over surviving alone, yet they are all expressed in a somewhat comical manner.
Yes.
Up to this point, all the professors had praised it as entertaining.
But—

“Everything falls apart once the male protagonist appears?”

Every professor’s evaluation was identical.
‘I… can’t write romance.’
A woman who thinks of herself as a ghost, clinging to someone else’s home.
And a man who appears to drive her out.
The moment I decided to set these two in a romantic relationship, every clichéd line imaginable spilled out, and the dynamic twisted into something grotesque.
That’s why her initially promising work kept falling further behind with each script revision.
From the moment the two characters met, everything began to collapse entirely.
As a result, Je-gal Se-yeon’s mind was consumed entirely by thoughts of the script, leaving her unable to focus on the audition.
Then, at that moment—
“Um… Director.”
A woman called out to Je-gal Se-yeon.
A feline-like face with a distinctive mask. Porcelain skin and striking, well-defined features.
The kind of beautiful face that would make anyone on the street do a double take.
But—
‘Actors always look like that, so what.’
Even with such beauty, most of them lose all their charm the moment a camera is pointed at them.
While thinking such things, Je-gal Se-yeon glanced at the camera she’d set beside her.
‘…!’
Wait, isn’t her face actually better through the camera?
Especially her eyes—they’re alive. The beautiful face I saw with my own eyes seems almost magnetic through the lens.
And if it wasn’t my imagination—
‘She somehow knows the angles that flatter her.’
Rare for a newcomer, she’s aware of how she appears on camera.
‘Like she’s been acting for ten years…’
Yet her résumé doesn’t even list experience in typical short films.
So this must be—
‘Natural talent.’
Je-gal Se-yeon was admiring this when—
“If you don’t mind, could I modify the script slightly and attempt an improvised performance?”
The audition applicant, Ha Eun-rae, said something unexpected.
Modify the script?
Je-gal Se-yeon’s expectations deflated at that moment.
The mask was excellent, but if she had a personality that nitpicked the work, she’d be somewhat troublesome.
There were actors like that sometimes.
Actors who’d studied directing themselves and tried to meddle with the storyboards.
‘They treat independent films like some kind of joke.’
Was this actress that type?
But Ha Eun-rae’s eyes…
Je-gal Se-yeon stared intently at Ha Eun-rae’s eyes through the camera and nodded.
“Yes. Well… give the improvisation a try. Which scene will you perform?”
Ha Eun-rae pointed to a specific scene in the script in response to her question.
“The scene where the two of them meet for the first time.”
“…!”
The scene Ha Eun-rae had indicated was, by cruel coincidence, precisely where the script began to unravel.
In other words, it was the first meeting between two people who were supposed to ignite a romance.
Surely not….
‘Did this person sense that too and deliberately point it out?’
The moment Je-gal Se-yeon entertained that thought, she felt as though the twenty-one-year-old girl standing before her could see right through her—a woman of thirty-three.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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