Chapter 1

Chapter 1

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“...”

That did not happen.

What just happened was entirely in my imagination.

“Sigh.”

I’m a web novel author.

I’m currently serializing on a platform called NovelJoA, and despite appearances, I’m not some aspiring writer. I’m a bona fide author.

‘The problem is...’

My novel is damn near completely unpopular.

I did the math, and apparently I’m making less than half the minimum hourly wage.

Still, if I include the income from my older works, I make enough to scrape by.

“Do I...?”

“Meow.”

Honestly, I’m not so sure.

Once I factor in this guy’s food and treats, things are always tight.

Sometimes, when I have to make a single pack of ramen last three meals, I feel like I’m starring in my own apocalypse story.

‘Maybe I should try an apocalypse novel next?’

“...Let’s just watch TV.”

The moment I picked up the remote, a pure white lump sprang onto my lap.

Louis.

Apparently, he’s a Turkish Angora mix. His whole body is white as snow, except for the tips of his ears, which have a faint cream tint.

I’ve had him since I lived in the States, and I brought him with me when I moved to Korea.

Thinking about how much the quarantine, paperwork, plane seat, and everything else cost still makes my heart ache.

But what could I do?

In this tiny world of mine, Louis was the only living thing that ever interacted with me.

“...I seriously don’t understand why people watch this stuff.”

An observational variety show was playing on the screen.

The kind of show I understood least of all.

What was so entertaining about watching celebrities live in luxury?

I couldn’t relate to it at all.

Was I supposed to get some kind of vicarious satisfaction from this?

‘I don’t care how good you people have it!’

Speaking as a professional backseat critic, this kind of thing sucked.

All it did was make me feel deprived by comparison.

Number one on my list of shows that needed to be canceled as soon as possible.

Ironically, though, observational variety shows remained consistently popular.

Just then, my phone vibrated.

A NovelJoA notification.

“?!”

I had just gained one subscriber.

I sprang to my feet on instinct.

“Louis!”

I scooped Louis up and spun around once in place.

Louis stared at me with his tail standing straight up.

“Mreeeow!”

I had no idea who they were, but somewhere in this world, there was now one more person who had read my entire novel and even pressed the subscribe button.

Maybe this was what happiness really was.

Not all that flashy show-off nonsense.

I gently set Louis down and looked back at the screen.

‘They’re still at it.’

Watching them make a huge fuss over absolutely nothing was almost impressive.

For context, someone had just cooked a simple dish, and even that had the panelists clapping like trained seals.

Clicking my tongue, I changed the channel.

‘Oh, hey.’

After pressing the button a few times, I appeared on the screen.

It was a movie that had come out some time ago, and I’ll say it again: that was me.

Well, my face, to be exact.

‘Park Songhu.’

I have an identical twin brother.

But the lives we lead couldn’t be more different.

Unlike me, who never left my room, my brother was what people called a top star.

If you were wondering how that was possible, the answer was simple.

We grew up apart.

Our parents divorced when we were six.

Our father stayed in Korea with Park Songhu, while our mother took me and moved to the United States.

From that point on, we were practically strangers.

The only thing we shared was our face.

Our backgrounds, our environments growing up—we lived entirely different lives.

My brother grew up with our father in the middle of Seoul, wanting for nothing, while I lived alone with our mother in an old apartment on the outskirts of California.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what my life in America was like...

Well... I probably don’t need to explain at length what happens when an Asian kid who can barely speak English gets dumped into a local school.

Whenever they saw me, they’d pull their eyes sideways and go ching-chong.

Anyway, after enough things like that piled up, simply standing in front of people became terrifying, and I grew more and more timid.

By the time I reached high school, I had become someone who stayed completely shut inside his room.

Then my mother passed away.

I was twenty-three.

Afterward, I returned to Korea, and ever since then, I’ve continued living without setting a single foot outside my room.

‘It works out great for Park Songhu. I stay holed up in my room, quiet as a mouse.’

The public didn’t even know Park Songhu had a twin brother.

I didn’t know whether it was his agency’s decision or Park Songhu’s, but they had chosen not to reveal it.

Imagine having a celebrity you’re a huge fan of, only to find out there’s another person who looks exactly like him.

That would probably feel kind of weird.

Not that it mattered.

I stayed home all the time, so what difference did it make?

I simply liked my life the way it was.

No one looking at me, no one talking to me.

My quiet, peaceful, safe little room.

Park Songhu and I had agreed on that much.

Maybe he had a conscience after all, because every now and then, he sent me what amounted to consolation money.

Though I couldn’t tell whether it was actually an unspoken warning to keep myself locked away in my room.

“The world outside the blankets is dangerous. Right, Louis?”

“Purrrrr...”

“Okay, okay. I won’t bother you.”

Yeah, that was a lie.

I pressed a finger into Louis’s belly fat, and his hind leg shot out like lightning and smacked the back of my hand.

He hadn’t used his claws, so this was Louis’s version of a warning.

Do it one more time and the next one would be real.

I obediently withdrew my hand.

‘Wow... he’s seriously terrible at acting.’

On the screen, Park Songhu was staring out a window with an unbearably cheesy expression.

Classic wooden acting.

Look at me, I’m thinking. Look at me, I’m sad. Look at me, I have so much on my mind...

“Pfft!”

Ah, this was funnier than the variety show.

I genuinely burst out laughing.

Park Songhu got criticized for his acting all the time.

He was practically one of the entertainment industry’s poster boys for bad acting.

And yet Park Songhu was currently the lead.

If you were wondering how that was possible, once again, the answer was simple.

‘All he has is his face.’

You know the type.

The entertainment industry’s resident face genius.

The male celebrity whose name always comes up first whenever people talk about looks.

On top of that, he was 186 centimeters tall, with a tiny face, so his proportions were ridiculously good too.

“...Ah.”

Was I complimenting myself right now?

I happened to glance at the mirror hanging beside the TV.

[So pleeease!]

[Just listen to me, okay?]

[We don’t have tiiiime for this right now!]

“Puhahah!”

That had definitely been an acting performance of someone desperately holding in diarrhea.

There was no way that was supposed to be an emotional scene from the movie’s climax!

Anyway, Park Songhu had become a top star on the strength of his face alone, but lately, he had barely appeared on TV.

That was because last year, a video had surfaced of the lunatic cursing his head off in private.

I had no idea who filmed it, but Park Songhu had been absolutely furious, spewing every swear word imaginable.

‘The headlines were huge, going on about a top star’s personality scandal, and the drama channels happily spread it everywhere...’

Things had calmed down somewhat now, but for a while, he had been torn apart nonstop.

‘Come to think of it, didn’t he have to pay penalties too?’

Even when the controversy broke, I didn’t contact him or anything.

I just ate rice with egg and soy sauce while watching people dig up my brother’s entire history in real time on online communities.

‘Once the personality scandal broke, every old comment he’d ever made got dredged back up so people could bash him for those too.’

People said everything he felt showed on his face, that he couldn’t hide his temper, that they’d always known it was only a matter of time before he crashed and burned...

When he was at the height of his popularity, people packaged his bluntness as part of his charm, but by now, he had long since been reduced to someone with a rotten personality.

‘Being a celebrity sounds miserable too.’

Bzzzzzt—

And right then, as if on cue, Park Songhu called me.

‘Why is he calling me out of nowhere? Did something happen? No matter how much I think about it, I can’t imagine why he’d have any reason to call.’

For the record, my brother hadn’t called me once in the past several years.

‘Ah, answering is going to be awkward...’

Wait.

What if he suddenly asks me to lend him money?

“...”

As if!

No matter how far he’d fallen, there was no way he had less money than me!

Then what the hell was it?

I swallowed hard and cautiously answered the phone.

“...H-Hello?”

And then came his next words.

“...?”

***

The moment I hung up, I immediately started getting ready to go out.

When was the last time I had left the house?

It had been so long I couldn’t even remember.

I opened my closet.

I barely owned any clothes anyway, so there was nothing to agonize over.

Then came a black cap and a black mask.

Since Park Songhu and I had the same face, I needed to cover up as much as possible.

“Meeooow.”

Once I finished getting ready, Louis followed me all the way to the front door and looked up at me.

His owner, who practically never went out, was suddenly leaving the house. He must have thought something was wrong.

“D-Don’t worry. I can go and come back all by myself.”

“Meow...?”

“I-I mean it! I’ll be back!”

I boldly opened the front door.

‘Calm down.’

The finger pressing the elevator button trembled uncontrollably.

It’s okay.

I’m just going to the hospital and coming back.

Then I’ll take another taxi home and that’ll be it.

‘Simple.’

The doors opened.

There was already someone inside the elevator.

‘Eek!’

Our eyes met.

I instinctively lowered my head and pressed myself into the corner.

Why did the ride down to the first floor feel so unbelievably long?

[First floor.]

I darted out as quickly as I could.

Two women walking toward me in the distance glanced my way.

A man passing beside me turned his head.

Did they recognize me?

Could someone really recognize a person from nothing but the eyes showing above a mask?

Ah, or was I walking weird?

The moment I became conscious of it, I could feel my gait turning unnatural.

How was I supposed to swing my arms naturally?

When people walked, did their arms go this way or that way?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I was moving like a robot.

The Kakao Taxi I had called in advance was waiting in front of the villa.

The moment I climbed into the back seat, I gave a quick bow, then pretended to stare out the window.

“You’re quite tall. Careful you don’t hit your head.”

“...”

“Lovely weather today, isn’t it?”

“...”

The taxi driver had initiated small talk!

“Ah, yes! Great weather! The weather is amazing!”

The driver gave me a puzzled look through the rearview mirror.

His expression clearly said, Is this guy sick or something?

“Your destination’s a hospital. Are you feeling ill?”

“Ah, well, no, um, it’s...”

For some reason, the driver nodded as though that explained everything and didn’t speak to me again.

Thank goodness.

“Th-Thank you for the ride!”

After all kinds of twists and turns, I finally reached the hospital.

Just as my brother had told me, I entered through a separate entrance connected to the underground parking garage.

Apparently, the VIP ward didn’t require you to go through the lobby.

Something about security being everything.

Park Songhu was the one whose career had gone down the drain, yet somehow I felt like I was the criminal.

[VIP Room]

I stood in front of the door.

I raised my hand, then lowered it.

After taking a deep breath, I raised it again.

“Hoo...”

Knock, knock—

“Come in.”

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Only then did I remove my cap and mask.

My brother, dressed in a hospital gown, was sitting propped at an angle against the bed.

“Oh. You came?”

I kept glancing at him before finally managing to speak.

“H-Hello.”

“I told you to drop the formal speech.”

“Ah, but, um, on the phone, you clearly said...”

Over the phone, my brother had abruptly told me he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Yet the person in front of me looked far too healthy.

His complexion looked fine, he didn’t seem to have lost any weight, and his voice still had plenty of strength.

He looked exactly like the person I’d just seen on TV.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“Ah, no. It’s not that...”

“It’s true. Pancreatic cancer.”

“...”

“They say pancreatic cancer barely shows any symptoms. That’s why they caught it so late.”

My brother looked up at the ceiling.

“I only found out yesterday. I’d been feeling like absolute shit lately, so I went in for a checkup. Never thought they’d tell me it was pancreatic cancer.”

“But, um, don’t celebrities get health checkups pretty regularly...?”

“Indigestion, back pain. At first, I figured it was just stress. You know what kind of time I’m going through right now.”

He was on hiatus.

Because of the personality scandal.

“Then they told me I’ve got about three months left.”

“...”

I wasn’t really sure what expression I was making right now.

“Hey, we’re twins who came out of the same womb. At least pretend to look sad.”

That was what Park Songhu said.

...Honestly, he was right.

It was shocking, sure, but I wasn’t exactly devastated.

Identical twins or not, we had been separated at six and had lived as strangers ever since.

I didn’t know anything about his childhood, his tastes, what he usually did with his time—nothing at all.

We hardly even contacted each other.

For me, there was only Louis.

So, to put it truly coldly, he was basically a stranger...

“You little bastard. I even slipped you spending money now and then. Guess that was all for nothing.”

“Ah, th-that, I really am grateful for!”

“Hey. If you’re really grateful...”

Park Songhu looked me straight in the eye.

“Go on a variety show in my place tomorrow.”

“?”

Excuse me?