The throbbing in his temples was the only thing keeping Woo Jin anchored to reality. It beat with heavy strikes, as if someone were driving nails into his skull. He tried to take a breath, but his lungs filled with stagnant air. It smelled of sour wine, old dust, and something decaying.
Muffled voices drifted from behind the door.
"Locked himself in again. Did you hear him screaming yesterday?"
"Finally drank himself into a stupor. Since this morning, the stench in the hallway has been enough to make your eyes water. He's a corpse that's still breathing."
"Quiet! He might hear you."
"What difference does it make? He forgets his own name by lunchtime anyway."
Woo Jin forced his eyes open.
This wasn't his home.
In his apartment, where every book was arranged strictly in alphabetical order and the air smelled of expensive fabric softener, such a stench could never exist.
"Get up, you bastard. Breakfast is ready."
The voice was young, sharp with poorly hidden disgust. Finally, Woo Jin's vision cleared. A tall youth stood over him. Black hair, dark blue eyes, and impeccably clean clothes.
Woo Jin blinked.
He looked up, expecting to see a film director, but saw only the ceiling. An intricate ornament seemed to come alive in the dim light, its swirling patterns twisting into a wild dance of small demons.
"Do you hear me?" The youth frowned. "Evelyn is already waiting downstairs. Or do you plan on rotting here until evening?"
Woo Jin sat up, struggling with the weight of his own body. He glanced at the bed; it was massive, large enough for four, but now it looked like a pile of filthy rags. Then, his gaze fell on his hands. His palms were unusually broad. Dirt blackened the space under his fingernails.
He shuddered. The OCD he had kept under control for years flared up with such fierce intensity that it instantly pushed aside his nausea.
"What… is your name?"
Woo Jin rasped, not recognizing his own voice.
The youth standing before him froze. A look somewhere between pity and deep loathing flashed in his eyes.
"It's a miracle you even remember you have children," he spat. "I'm Kyle, 'Father.' Your eldest son. The one you promised to disinherit yesterday. Remember now?"
Woo Jin fell silent. The names Kyle and Evelyn suddenly echoed in his mind like a sharp flash of light.
"Water."
Kyle gave his father a cutting look, grabbed a heavy pitcher, and poured water into a goblet. He handed it over as if giving alms to a street beggar. Woo Jin drank greedily. The icy water burned his throat but momentarily cleared his clouded mind.
"Come down if you can still walk," Kyle snapped, turning abruptly and slamming the door behind him.
Left in the oppressive silence, Woo Jin forced himself to stand, fighting a wave of sickening dizziness. The floor beneath his bare feet felt foreign and hostile. In the corner, behind a large wardrobe, lurked a mirror. He approached it, hardly breathing, afraid to scare away the remnants of his sanity.
A stranger stared back from the reflection.
A man in his thirties, whose aristocratic features even unkempt stubble couldn't erase. Tangled hair the color of a raven's wing. Despite his pathetic appearance, the mess, and the smell of stale booze, the man was hauntingly beautiful.
Woo Jin slowly raised a hand and touched his cheek. The reflection obediently mirrored the gesture.
"This isn't makeup."
He froze, his gaze locked onto the obsidian eyes in the mirror. Fragments of last night began to play in his head like a film strip. A stack of written pages. A title embossed in gold on the script's cover: The Last Curtain.
It was the novel being adapted into the grandest film project of the decade. Woo Jin, who had lived in isolation for the last few years, had agreed to step out of the shadows only for this role.
The role of Victor von Hellsworth.
Only yesterday, he had admired the complexity of this character—his aristocracy and his vice. He remembered the character description from the first chapter:
"A man whose beauty was a curse and whose heart was a scorched desert. Victor, who destroyed his wife and turned his children's lives into a living hell, was destined to fall by their hands so the world would drown in blood."
The plot of The Last Curtain was a classic tragedy disguised as dark fantasy. The entire first volume was a chronicle of the Fall of House Hellsworth. Victor wasn't just a "bad father"; he was the one who tore his own home apart.
He was a tyrant, an aesthetic alcoholic, and a despot whose downfall was predestined from the very first page.
Woo Jin smiled bitterly at his reflection. The author had written Victor as a completely flat villain whose only function was to die beautifully in the first chapter and thus set the gears of war in motion.
This man had no allies, no secret excuses, or tragic pasts to justify him. Only four children who woke up every morning with the same distinct thought: "When will he finally drop dead?"
"I auditioned for the role of a corpse."
The realization hit harder than the hangover.
He remembered his audition.
The pavilion, the directional lighting, and the director's quiet request: "Show me the terrifying grace of someone who is already dead inside. No emotions, only emptiness."
Woo Jin had simply frozen before the lens back then, not moving a single muscle, while the entire crew watched that perfection with bated breath.
He looked at his hands again. The dirt under his nails. The chaos in the room. The asymmetrically scattered bottles.
His OCD—Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder—revolted. It wasn't just being "tidy"; it was a mental illness where the brain fixes on anxiety and doesn't rest until everything is in perfect order.
For Woo Jin, the sight of filth meant an immediate panic attack and physical nausea that couldn't be ignored by willpower alone.
And it was this painful perfectionism that made him look at his new role differently.
Victor in the book was pathetic. The script described him as a degraded animal wallowing in self-destruction. But Woo Jin never played "just villains." He was used to bringing his characters, like his life, to a frightening level of perfection. He couldn't afford to be a filthy nobody, because this character's chaos caused him actual pain.
"If I must play a tyrant," he slowly straightened up, his 190 cm height making the room feel instantly smaller, "then it will be the greatest performance in the history of this world."
He felt a familiar surge of excitement. The same one that always made him forget about food and sleep while working on a complex character. Но now the stakes were different. This wasn't a one-night performance under spotlights. This was an immersive production with no intermission, where the only paycheck was his own life.
Woo Jin quickly analyzed the plot structure.
"To save my neck, I need to save this damn world. And to save the world, I must give my children no reason to kill me. Но I must do it in a way that doesn't make them suspect an impostor."
He understood: if he suddenly became a "sweet daddy," Kyle would think he'd finally lost his mind, and Evelyn would see it as another twisted trap. A sudden change is a lie. And a lie leads to failure.