Rebirth14 min read
The New Favorite: My Second Life as an Actress
ButterPicks12 views
I woke up to a slap, a sound like a broken ruler against bone.
"Ow—what the—" I tasted blood and disbelief together.
A woman in gaudy red—a true show-off—lofted her hand as if she had every right to hit a stranger on a film set. I pushed up from the beaten mat and grabbed her wrist, because old habits die hard even after centuries. I slapped back before my brain finished naming the offense.
"How dare you hit me!" she screeched.
People around us halted mid-breath. I blinked and realized I was staring at a world I did not know: sunlit, noisy, full of cameras and boxes, and people wearing hair colors that would have gotten an entire wing of the palace sent to the emperor's gaze.
"Who are you calling—" I started.
"She hit the lead! She smacked the star!" a voice snapped.
"That was supposed to be stage slapping."
Someone pushed closer; they smelled like sweat and cheap coffee. I let them help the woman to her feet. The crowd's gossip washed over me—"group actor," "can’t act," "he'll blacklist you." Their tones were a strange music of contempt and chance.
"Let her go," the woman I had slapped said spitefully. "This set can do without her."
"It’s okay," a round man murmured to me in a wheeze. "Come with me, Journi—no, come with me, Journi Seidel. You okay?"
He used my name as if it was a small lantern. I didn't know how he knew my name, but I let the man, Hayes Graham, guide me away. When he pulled me behind a crate, I let the memories rush back—the ones that did not belong to this body but sat like a carved seal inside my mind.
I was a noblewoman once. I had the soft silk, the tray of prestige at my back, the emperor’s whispered favor. I had lived in an anteroom of power and been warmed by its shadow.
Now I was a twenty-three-year-old girl named Journi Seidel, renting a dim attic room in a place called Hengdian, trying to become an actress.
"You got slapped by a star and slapped back," Hayes said, trying for light. "You're either brave or crazy."
"I was a... court favorite," I said, more to myself than to him. "I used to command rooms. How did I end up in a dead body extra's costume?"
Hayes snorted. "The costume's yours today, not tomorrow. But listen, there's a job. You're lucky. The director needed bodies for a battle scene. Two hundred yuan plus a box lunch."
Two hundred yuan was two points, the arithmetic of the grim future. I was grateful. I took the money at once, because the other memory inside me was a small, bright voice.
"Welcome, host," the voice chirped in my head like a mischievous bell. "Popularity System has engaged."
"What the—" I sat on a crate. The voice named itself "Little Seven" and said things that felt like terror and promise.
"Host, you have been selected. This system grants hours. One point equals one hour. Newcomer rate: one hundred yuan per point. A newbie package grants seventy-seven points. You now have seventy-seven hours."
"You expect me to—" I held the crate's splintered edge.
"Complete tasks, earn points, or recharge," Little Seven said. "If your points drop to zero, host will be returned to origin."
"Return to where?" I demanded.
A memory not mine pushed through like a tide: the court, its knives wrapped in silk, the emperor's smile like a hinge.
"No," I said sharply. "I am not returning to that." I planted my palms on my knees. "I will stay."
"Then work," Hayes said. "There's a role. Dead body today, half a day. Two hundred."
I played dead.
The sun hammered on me like a curry of heat. I lay still while extras complained, while the director's voice snapped and the principal actors missed their marks. I did this for two hundred yuan and a box lunch. That night the system dinged.
"Task triggered: perform a role with three or more lines, face shown. Reward: seventy-seven points."
Of course. Little Seven liked sevens. My laugh was half a sob.
When I sold a painting later—my hand still remembered ink and mountain brushes—the prop manager paid me seven hundred yuan. I wrapped that money in the nearest bank of immediate need and fed it to Little Seven.
"Seventy-seven points added: seventy-seven hours," he chirped.
I slept like someone who had used a candle to burn away the dark.
Weeks felt like breath. I took corpse work, then a minor cold-palace madwoman role because Hayes had pulled strings. At the cold-palace shoot, chemical pale makeup and a bridal sash that smelled like old linen turned me into something fragile and terrible. The lead actress, Gia Gray, arrived like a clean wind—her walk measured, her presence a polished coin.
"You'll stand there," the director said. "When she approaches, you say, 'You are all trash, trash.' Then, 'My lord, I am your treasure.' Later, after the heroine leaves, you will whisper, 'This place is the safest.'"
I repeated. "You are all trash. Trash." I felt the words like a blade.
They filmed and re-filmed. On set, my eyes wore death like a costume.
After the takes, the director called me into the small office. He had ink in his beard and a kind of hunger in his gaze. "You paint," he said. "You write characters. Your brushwork is a shame to keep to a corner. Give me your contact."
"Of course," I answered with a bow that was automatic.
Later, I stood at my small rented room and felt the system hum.
"New task: boost role popularity. Get a trending mention. Reward: three hundred thirty-three points."
Little Seven's voice had the tone of a child who had a kitten and wanted it fed. "Limited time: seventy-seven hours."
I stared at the phone. Three hundred thirty-three points equaled more than two weeks. The number felt heavy and sweet.
Then Hayes came back into my life with the kind of good news that tasted of iron: Director Dennis Chevalier wanted to give me more than a cold-prison turn. He wanted me for a proper costumed part—"a favorite," he said, grinning at Hayes like they had a private conspiracy.
"You, Journi Seidel," Dennis said when he first addressed me in his office, "have a presence that's not just pretty. I want you to own the idea of a favorite who doesn't need to be soft. Can you be commanding? Can you be cruel?"
"I know command," I said.
"Do you know arrogance?" he smiled.
"Let me show you." I took the script, felt the words come to life under my tongue. "Don't play sanctimony. Don't hide being demanding. Let them hate you, but fear you."
Dennis's grin widened. "You're hired."
"Thank you, Director Chevalier," I said with a bow so sincere it sounded like a promise.
Bianca Novikov, the screenwriter, touched the page. "We will make her small in scenes, but memorable. A single glimpse and the audience will know what she takes from the world."
"You'll be the kind they love to hate—or else they will love you," Dennis said.
The set gave me costumes that were more than fabric; they were small architectures around a body. When the hair and make-up artist smudged rouge across my cheekbones, I felt an old habit surface: posture, stillness, that thin distinction between drawing attention and stealing it.
At dinner that night, I met people who would shape the next weeks—Marco Xiao, the dance coach with a patient, precise hand; Lucas Smirnov, the established lead who wore seriousness like a cloak; and Jaqueline Winkler, a young actress whose laugh always seemed to be a challenge.
"You're new," Jaqueline said with a perfumed voice when she first saw me at the catering table.
"Journi," I answered. "I work."
"She'll get in the way," a girl whispered. "She'll be dangerous."
"Don't be childish," Jaqueline said. "You don't know the game."
"Teach me," I said, smiling as if to throw a rope to a drowning girl.
Jaqueline's smile tightened like a trap. She did not teach. She tried to destroy.
Before I knew it, I had hired Hayes as an assistant. "I'll be your shadow," he said, earnest and ridiculous, "but also your muscle and your money manager."
"You'll be my shadow, Hayes? Try not to fall in love with me," I teased.
"I wouldn't dare," he said, eyes shining.
One day, while rehearsing a dance with Marco, Bianca mentioned something that made my heart flicker like a match.
"There's a film director—Leaf Varmin—who's auditioning the heroine for a new horror film," Bianca said. "His lead just pulled out. The director is nervous. If they want a dark queen of the screen, he might look at you."
"You mean the one with the sinking mansion?" I asked.
"Yes," Bianca nodded. "He wants a woman who can move like silk and break like glass."
That night, after we practiced until our muscles hummed, I went to sleep with a plan: play everything like it mattered.
The audition was tight. I walked in, covered, and unmasked in a moment of spliced humanity. I was asked to perform a bride's fall into disgrace, a forced marriage where the groom was not a man but a verdict.
"Present it," Leaf Varmin said.
I lifted my chin and went through the motion. I cross-stepped a slow step over the fire basin, I pretended to truss myself up in cloth, and then I ripped the veil away and collapsed, writhing without pain. I took the audience of directors into my own chest.
They watched. Lucas Smirnov followed every move and offered a whisper of surprise. Leaf Varmin sat still like a man being carved.
"You're hired," he said in the end, and I felt the room tilt.
The film paid me ten thousand yuan up front—an advance—and promised more. It filled my phone with a new kind of weight. I paid part of it to Little Seven and watched as hours multiplied like coins in a fountain.
"Seventy-seven upgraded to seven hundred?" Little Seven sang. "Completed: task 'gain influence'—333 points added."
The system carried me like a boat. It trained me, gave me the memory of a thousand practiced emotions. One night I spent fifty points and found myself inside an other woman's memory—a ghost role taught by a perfect performance—being that exact person, tasting her fear and her charm. It was like a cheat code. I learned the minute details—how the eyelid flicked at a certain thought, how the throat tightened before a secret. I kept the secret in my bones.
They filmed my film and my TV show simultaneously because time is an economy I learned to spend carefully. Marco's dances made me lighter and more dangerous. Dennis's sets made me feel regal even when the scene called for ruin. Lucas Smirnov was polite and precise in his work. He came to me between takes.
"You were perfect," he said, voice low, eyes honest. "Do you remember what you used for that last look?"
"A memory," I said. "A borrowed step."
He looked like a man deciding whether to love or be content to admire from a safe distance. "You wear your craft like armor."
"Then wear it carefully," I told him.
Word swam. The cold-palace footage leaked as a snippet. People called me the "most beautiful favorite." I rode the wave, but my eyes were always on the taskboard: the system's little list of missions.
One task lit like a flare: "Perform a scene where you are beaten—minimum three minutes—reward: seven hundred points."
I stared at the number until my eyes blurred. Three minutes being hit on camera might sound like masochism to some. For me, it was currency. The scene had not existed in either of my contracts. I began to think of it as an experiment: could I turn humiliation into ascent?
"Journi," Hayes said one night, hands nervy at his belt. "You don't have to take humiliation to be famous. People respect strength."
"Strength can be patient," I told Hayes. "Being beaten on-screen is not humiliation if it tells the truth. It makes people feel like they've seen stillness inside a storm."
He swallowed. "Then let's find the beat."
Jaqueline, in the meantime, grew cruel. She started by cutting into my costume, then whispered rumors into the ears of the producers. She used money and debt and small cruelty—things powerful girls use when they want to unsettle others. She thought my origin as a girl with strange upbringing made me fragile.
She was mistaken.
Her next misstep was to send men to my hotel.
I found them at dawn. They knocked like thunder and demanded that I open. I opened with a wardrobe bar in my hand and a plan carved into my mind. Hayes wasn't there; he was running errands. But I was not alone.
"You won't ruin me," I told Jaqueline when she stepped into my doorway with two hulking men. Her father, Dominick Hahn, stayed at the edge, face a careful mask of concern.
She laughed with a poisoned clink. "You think you belong here? You think charm and a few tears will buy you stage time? You're a child with a borrowed face."
"Stand down," I said.
She lunged. I moved. The wardrobe bar—a long stainless rod—felt right and old in my hands, like a priest's crozier. I struck hard but not to kill. The men crumpled because they were not trained for the precise anger of someone who had been trained to survive a court where a glance could decide death.
"You're badly advised," Dominick said, staring at the men being led away by embarrassed security.
He took a card from his pocket and offered it with a flourish. "Ten thousand on the house," he said. "A gift for the trouble."
"I'll take the card," I said, folding it into my pocket, "and I'll take the rest in the public record."
"You will not shame my family in public," Jaqueline warned.
"Public record matters," I said. "What I will do is ask for the only currency you actually respect: reputation."
The next day, I made a move the court favored: I exposed her.
"Come to the press conference," I told Dennis and Bianca and Leaf Varmin. "Bring the cameras, the lights. Bring anyone who wants to know."
They looked puzzled but intrigued.
"Jaqueline's father paid to have men threaten me," I said when the microphones were on. "He paid for thugs at my hotel. He thought bribery would buy silence. He was wrong."
Jaqueline went white. Her father rose like a man struck. He reached for his phone, for bank transfers, for private shouts in corridors. That was money in the old language—an attempt to buy back truth.
"This is a set," Dominick said into the microphones, a careful man slipping from one mask to another. "These are overblown allegations."
"Show us the security footage," I said.
Jaqueline's face started to move like a cracked doll; she tried to laugh it off, to become the rehearsed star who missed no cue. People murmured into their phones, the press smell of hot electronics and electric sweat.
"Open the hotel's surveillance," Bianca demanded.
A manager stepped forward and played the footage. Four minutes of grainy video showed two men pacing outside my door, fingers in fists, pausing as a thin rod of steel was pushed through the frame. The footage was small, flat evidence. The room went still.
Jaqueline's expression shifted: confidence dissolved into denial.
"This is edited!" she spat, flailing for a corner. "You can't run a smear campaign."
"Watch the video again," I said. "Where is the edit, Jaqueline? Where are your men? Who paid for them?"
"That is slander!" Dominick barked. "We will sue you."
"Fine," I said. "Bring any court you like." My voice did not shake. "But right now you stand in front of cameras and ask for sympathy."
People took out their phones; they tweeted and filmed. "Mask off," the headlines favored. The hashtag throbbed—#FavoriteTruth. The system chimed in my mind like a sly friend: "Task triggered: expose antagonist publicly. Reward: five hundred points."
It felt grotesquely like a child came to watch a trial. Jaqueline tried a move she thought would erase the moment: she pushed through the press to a small platform and tried to make a speech on shame—an implausible plea for the public's compassion.
"Journi accused us!" she cried. "They want to smear my name because I opposed them! They want to use me as a stepping stone."
A camera panned straight into her eyes. They were not strong. She had practiced anger; she had not practiced being found wanting. The coughs in the crowd were like pebbles. Someone in the back, a junior reporter, read from an emailed bank transfer that had been circulated overnight by an unknowable anonymous benefactor—five thousand dollars wired to an athletics club which had been used as the front for the men who had harassed me.
Dominick’s mask slipped. He gestured wildly for the managers to cut the feed. The room, however, tilted onto its spine. People needed a spectacle more than money. The truth tasted like an addictive thing.
"Dominick Hahn," I said, voice steady, "your security and your men are on film. Your personal assistant's messages show the arrangement. You thought money could buy discretion. You were wrong."
"Children," Dominick whispered into his chest, "will be hurt by this."
"I was hurt," I said. "I was scared."
I told the story clearly. I talked about the men at my door, about the rod of the wardrobe bar, about Hayes and how he feared for me. I spoke of the theft of safety, and I spoke of a small woman who refused to bow.
Jaqueline's reaction changed through the sequence: at first a petulant child's sneer, then a blink of denial, then a flaring anger, then, as the room's light cut into her, the real collapse.
"You're a liar!" she screamed. "You—"
Her voice broke in the middle. People pressed their phones forward like silver knives. Bloggers started to stream. The security footage replayed with timecode. The hotel's general manager was interviewed live and confirmed the call had been logged. A reporter found messages on Jaqueline's assistant's phone where someone arranged "helpful men" and a cash handoff.
The winds shifted.
The watchers in the room murmured with appetite. A group of extras I had worked with walked toward Jaqueline and clapped slow and hard. "We stand with Journi," an older woman said. "We won't be pushed."
Jaqueline knelt on air; she began to cry real tears, not the calculated ones she used for auditions. Her father's face contorted into anger and then to pleading. He tried to push a PR man in front of him. The PR man, seeing all cameras pointing, tried to reframe the story as "a misunderstanding." But the misunderstanding was clear.
People's responses were a chorus: surprise, outrage, applause, the click of cameras. Reporters asked about payments, partners withdrew soft support from Jaqueline’s upcoming promotions. Her sponsors made statements that they "were looking into the matter." Friends who had smiled that afternoon avoided eye contact.
Jaqueline's fall was not a single blow; it was a slow, layered collapse. Her poised smile that had served her through so many casting parties dissolved. She begged for time; she begged for privacy. The crowd, ravenous for either villain or victim, instead fed on real consequence.
In the end, Dominick forced a statement through lawyers promising "internal correction" and "compensation," but the words were like paper thrown on a fire. Jaqueline's publicist resigned live on social media with a curt message: "I cannot work like this." The major brand she had hoped to endorse put their deal on indefinite suspension.
The punishment was not a jail; it was worse for their world—the slow, public loss of status, the extra months of whispered questions and the empty seats at brand launch parties. She sat in an interview that evening and watched people ask questions not of me but of her: "Did you organize the men? Were you threatened by Journi? Did money change your mind?"
She tried to compose herself. She tried to fashion an apology. It fell like a poorly-made crown. Her audience, her currency, drained. For someone who relied on privilege and charm, seeing the charmed circle thin in front of her was a kind of death.
In the days that followed, Jaqueline's columns were filled with articles—some sympathetic, most not. Sponsors issued statements about corporate values. Her father wrote a stiff letter to journalists that read like someone trying to mend a sieve with thread. People on set watched her like a wound.
I had not enjoyed this. The system did not find joy in revenge. It counted hours and points. But the world had a way of balancing itself if you placed truth at the center of the scale. The men who sent bystanders to my door left the industry quickly, quietly, carrying with them the shame of being easily pointed to on a screen. Jaqueline's purge of reputation was a careful, public business. She moved from podium to podium apologizing, then avoiding, then shipping herself abroad for a "wellness break." The industry reports tracked every move.
And me? I received a surge of messages from people in dressing rooms and production offices. "We support you." Hayes nearly burst with pride.
"You handled it," he said, holding my hands like I was precious glass.
"I handled it," I corrected, because I had done nothing but speak the truth. "They forced my hand."
Days folded into months. I kept acting. I learned how to make arrogance look like policy, and how to let vulnerability stitch itself into a performance. I practiced in the system's small lessons and in real rehearsals. I choreographed with Marco until my limbs could carry the story of a woman who had been broken and rebuilt.
As my work aired, audiences called me many things: provocative, regal, dangerous. I earned awards and small pockets of money. The system's hours kept me breathing.
"Little Seven," I'd say at night on the cheap mattress in an unfamiliar city, "how many hours left?"
"Host, remaining: calculation unpredictable," Little Seven would say with a mischievous beep. "But new tasks await."
"Then we work," I would whisper to the dark, because work was survival and art.
Hayes waited at my side like a loyal old soldier. Lucas Smirnov sent me messages of approval and a quiet invitation to dinner once we wrapped the final scenes. His eyes held decades of old roles, and I took those moments for what they were: gentle favors, tender as a brick.
In a quiet night, when all the lights in the city were a soft bruise, I opened the system's menu and watched my life like an inventory. Points, hours, tasks. I remembered my other life always, but less like a wound and more like an instrument I had learned to tune.
"Are you happy?" Hayes asked me once, sitting on the balcony eating watermelon like two conspirators.
"I am alive," I said. "And I am learning how to take the world like a woman who has owned the emperor’s room and walked away."
He laughed. "You always did like to leave people speechless."
"I like to keep them guessing," I said truthfully. "And I like to write my own endings."
When the final episode aired and the credits rolled, a small bell chimed in my head—the system had one last task, a quiet one.
"Task: keep being real. Bonus: 777 points if host helps three people in need."
I smiled. The numbers to the system were appetites, but our world was more like a kaleidoscope: a truth we could rotate, crush, and make beautiful. I had been a favorite; now I was my own.
At the end, when a fan asked me at a late-night panel about the strange little voice that had saved me from nothing and everything, I answered simply.
"The voice told me: don’t go back," I said. "And I listened."
The End
— Thank you for reading —