Rebirth: King to Superstar

Joon-won scrolled down on his phone, reading and watching reviews and performance videos of the Roses Drama House the next while Gah Soo was taking care of the customers. The morning went by normally with his workout and job. As he took some rest, he used it to check out the drama house he had to go to and how their works were for their reputation to be so high. 

As he scrolled down and read the reviews, he thought the reviewers were exaggerating about their experience and even thought all these reviews were fake. But he quickly scratched that off when he heard Gah Soo behind him exclaim, "Oh, that's the Roses Drama House. Are you going there to watch a performance? Let me tell you it's worth the high price." 

He turned around and saw her excited face. Confused about her reaction he asked, "Do you know about this Drama house?" 

He immediately noticed Gah Soo looking at him strangely, as if he was an alien as she slowly asked, "Are you even studying acting in your university? How can you not know about the Roses drama house even after acting and learning how to act? It's widely known as one of the top 3 drama houses in the city and one of the best in the entire world. Many people from different countries come to this city and won't go back until they get to see at least one performance." 

After hearing her he immediately knew all the reviews were true and wanted to know what made this particular drama house so unique and famous. 

"What's so good about this drama house to make it famous? Is it the acting? The story? Or anything else?"

"It's definitely the story. Even though the acting is really good it's overshadowed by the story. Their stories are so real and relatable that other drama houses can't mimic them." Joon-won was intrigued when he heard her confidence. Most of the drama houses were famous for their actors but it seemed like this particular one was famous for its stories. 

"So you watched one of their dramas? What kind of stories do they perform?" 

"Yeah, I watched one of their performances one year ago. The trail to get those tickets were so hard that I had to use a few friends to get me those."

"Anyway, the performance I saw was so good that I can remember even now. It was a story about a girl. A girl who had dreams and would do anything to achieve them. They showed how cruel human nature can be when they want to achieve something. The girl who was supposed to be the heroine was more like a villain because of it but that was what made her very relatable." 

Intrigued by her description, he asked, "Can I find a recording of this drama you saw online?" 

Gah Soo nodded and took out her phone. She opened an app and gave the phone to him while explaining, "Here this is the drama house's app. You can book tickets from it but also watch their performances if you have a premium account, which is lucky for you, I do." 

Joon-won nodded and looked through all the videos they uploaded. He noticed each video was about 2-3 hours long which constitutes an avg play. He scrolled down until he finally found the video of the performance Gah Soo saw and clicked on it. 

He took out his headphones and slowly watched the performance in the shop as Gah Soo took over the counter for the remaining time left to give him time to watch it. Joon-won was at first very leisurely about the performance but as he watched he clutched the phone with both his hands and watched very intently as if he could not see anything around him. 

The performance was luckily only 150 minutes or 2 and half hours long and so he gave the mobile back to Gah Soo while sitting in silence, thinking about the performance. He now understood why the drama house was famous from that one video. It was as Gah Soo said. The actors were good but not great to make the drama house stand out and it was the stories that made it stand out.

He calmed the various emotions he felt while watching the performance. As he watched the main lead, he saw himself in that position and remembered many things from the past. 

The story was relatively very simple and common. It was as Gah Soo said, it was about a woman with a dream and her journey on how she achieved her dream. But the journey was so real, raw, and close to being realistic that made his feelings erupt a little. 

The story started with an abandoned girl who grew up in the streets and was later picked up by a family to work in their house. She wanted to become rich and wanted to do anything for it. So she started studying while the people in the house were away and picked up many things quickly. 

The family found out that the girl was being out of control and studying, which made them angry. They wanted to punish her but before they did, she lit the house on fire and escaped while killing the family for her own survival and goal. She later uses that knowledge she gathered to create websites that allowed her to scam people easily making them believe it's for god. 

After making enough money, she started her own company and slowly rose. Her business expanded and attracted the attention of many competitors, which wanted her not to flourish. But before they took action, she attacked them and their company, destroying her competition completely before it even started. 

She used every possible method to become rich, even if she knew it was cruel for the other end. But she didn't care and reached her goal to be super-rich. After becoming very rich and having enough money to live a few lives freely, she died of cancer. 

Even in her last breath, she didn't care or feel guilty about all the things she did to reach where she was. Even though the main lead was an obvious villain who took out anyone in her way it was more relatable to the people who were desperate for their goals. The story was very good and made people realize how humans were better. Overall, the drama house did not hold back at all. Typically, these types of raw and realistic dramas were a double-edged sword. If their execution and story were not perfect then they could receive backlash from the people and also potentially lose business. 

Even he never performed or even tried to perform these kinds of dramas in his past life because it was very hard to find one which wasn't offensive and also understand what was offensive in the first place. So it was a thin line which he didn't dare to walk on. 

He looked at Gah Soo and handed her phone back, as it was almost time for his shift to end. As he gave the phone back, Gah Soo asked, "So, how was it?" 

He nodded and replied, "It was really good. The drama house deserves its fame if all the dramas are like this." 

"Yeah, it does. But why were you so curious about this drama house suddenly? Do you want tickets? If you do then you are probably will have to try for shows next month. The shows this month are probably all full." 

"No, I'm going to this drama house today to start working and learn there." 

"What? You are going to work there? You mean you are going to be one of the actors there? But what about the audition yesterday? How did that go?" 

"I don't know if I will act in any dramas. My main aim is to learn and the boss there said to come after my shift ends here. And I failed the audition yesterday so this is my next route until the end of summer." 

"You failed? Even with how good you act? Don't feel bad, man. I'm sure you will get another chance very quickly. I can just feel it." She started to assure him. 

Joon-won didn't bother to correct her and just changed the topic until his shift was done. He changed his clothes and got out. He looked around for cabs and couldn't find any. So he walked towards the university. 

And as he expected, there were many cabs for the students and so he walked up to one of them by the driver's window. The window rolled down as he was about to knock and a middle-aged driver smiled at him. 

"Where do you want to go?" 

"The Roses drama house." 

"Sure, get in. I'll take you there as quickly as I can."

Joon-won nodded and got in the backseat as the driver drove towards their destination.