Chapter 4
Her new life was off to a remarkably smooth start.
There had been a few hiccups, of course—like failing her first audition spectacularly, and being identified as the prime suspect during her second audition. Just your typical, Beika Town-flavored incidents. But in the end, Fan An had successfully found a job, taking the first step into her new life.
“Starting today, I’m a resident of Beika Town.”
The residency application process in Beika Town was surprisingly easy.
Fan An had expected the staff to conduct a thorough investigation into her financial status, income level, and academic credentials. To her surprise, the moment the official heard she wanted to move to Beika, he immediately grabbed her hands with fervent passion. “You’re the one who chose to come here! You can’t back out! There’s no turning back now! Born a Beika resident, die a Beika ghost! You will be buried alongside this city’s crime rate!”
The official stamped the documents with a thump-thump-thump, his arm moving so fast it left afterimages, as if terrified to give her even a second to regret her decision.
“Welcome to Beika Town! We wish you a pleasant life!” the staff member said, cheerfully escorting Fan An out. On their way, they passed a line that snaked around in countless bends, a sea of dark heads stretching as far as the eye could see.
An’an asked curiously, “What are all these people lining up for?”
The staff member’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s the window for processing applications to move out of Beika Town.”
So many people are being forced to leave. Life in the big city really is tough, she thought. I’m so lucky I found a job right away.
Musing to herself, Fan An left the service hall, just missing the desperate wails that erupted from the “move out” line: “LET ME LEAVE THIS CITY—I DON’T WANT TO DIE-AAAAAAAH—”
Director Matsuzaka’s rented bus was parked on the street. He waved Fan An aboard, already itching to start filming his inspired masterpiece.
“I spent a long time scouting locations and even paid an info broker for intel. I’ve finally found the perfect filming spot,” Director Matsuzaka said excitedly. “The place we’re going to isn’t just any old abandoned distillery.”
At his words, the actors all adopted an “I know, I know” expression.
Male Lead: “A murder happened there, right?”
Female Lead: “Someone definitely died there.”
Second Female Lead: “Detective Mouri must have left his footprints there.”
Second Male Lead: “Is the chalk outline of the body drawn by Inspector Megure himself still there?”
“Of course not!” Director Matsuzaka loudly denied. “What building in Beika Town hasn’t had someone die in it? That’s not special at all.”
“I paid a fortune for this address from an info broker in Shinjuku,” Director Matsuzaka stressed again. That info broker, a guy named Orihara Izaya, had quoted him a high price after hearing his request.
(T/N: Orihara Izaya is a famous info broker from the anime/manga “Durarara!!”, also set in a district of Tokyo.)
Client’s Request: Find an unknown, abandoned distillery. Suburban, secluded location, eerie atmosphere, convenient for body disposal. Preference given to places with rumors of being haunted.
Orihara Izaya: Right up my alley. Leave it to me.
Let the professionals handle professional work. The bus stopped in front of a pitch-black building. Fan An followed Director Matsuzaka off the bus and gave his choice of location high praise.
“The feng shui here is excellent. You can tell at a glance it’s a happy home for a special-grade cursed womb,” the girl complimented the director. “If this were a Jujutsu Kaisen set, you wouldn’t survive the first episode.”
(T/N: A reference to the anime/manga “Jujutsu Kaisen.”)
Director Matsuzaka: And you think it’s easy to survive one episode on a detective show set?
A mere special-grade curse? Its body count isn’t even a fraction of a detective’s. Don’t come to Beika Town to embarrass yourself.
The abandoned distillery was massive. You had to crane your neck until it ached just to see the slivers of daylight filtering through the old glass and the dust motes dancing in the air.
After scouting for half a day, Director Matsuzaka and his team finally settled on a filming location.
While the director gathered the main cast to explain the script, Fan An stood alone in a corner, memorizing her lines.
She was a newcomer with no connections to the main actors. Her role totaled less than ten minutes of screen time. She would start filming and wrap up on the same day. The crew didn’t even have to include her in the head count for lunch boxes.
“Hey. Our scene is up next,” the second male lead sauntered over, speaking in a flippant tone. “A pleasure to work with you, Miss Evil Spirit.”
Anyone with a pulse was An’an’s senior. She was always respectful to her seniors. “The pleasure is all mine.”
The second male lead flipped through his script with a loud fwap. He deliberately puffed out his chest, looking down at Fan An. “The script says you’re supposed to choke me from behind. How exactly are you going to do that? It looks like you can’t even reach me on your tiptoes.”
The dark-haired girl was slender and not very tall, which made her look quite cute.
An’an didn’t catch the provocation hidden in his words. Instead, she thought his concern was very reasonable and that she ought to clear up his confusion.
“It’s no problem,” the girl said gently. “You just have to kneel.”
Before the words were even out of her mouth, she kicked the back of his knee, swung her arm around his throat, and pulled back forcefully.
“Like this.”
Subduing a grown man was far easier than subduing a grown pig. An’an explained as she demonstrated.
Not only did she not need to stand on her tiptoes, she even had to bend down slightly to get her arm firmly around the second male lead’s throat.
“Gah!” The agony of suffocation made the second male lead’s eyes roll back. He struggled with all his might, only to be met with an ever-tightening grip.
Catching pigs is a science. A pig destined for the New Year’s feast is harder to catch than an eel in a river. Fan An had long since forged a heart of stone; the harder he struggled, the more ruthless she became.
Maybe I should just choke him until he’s foaming at the mouth. It would make it easier to use the knife later… An’an the pig butcher fell into her old thought patterns, only snapping out of it when she reached into her pocket and didn’t feel the handle of her knife.
Oh, right. She was here to act, not to butcher pigs.
“My apologies, Senior,” the girl said, sheepishly releasing her grip. “Was my demonstration effective? Should we do it one more time?”
The second male lead shook his head so hard it looked like it might fall off.
He clutched his throat, hissing for air. He suddenly recalled the snippets he’d heard from the director: two actors had vied for the role of the evil spirit, Muranaka had killed Kanda, but in the end, the girl before him was the one the director chose.
The second male lead had previously suspected some sort of under-the-table deal. Now he saw that Director Matsuzaka truly had a discerning eye, a real talent-spotter!
Wait a minute. The second male lead’s face turned pale. Besides the strangling, the script also has a skinning scene…
It’s special effects, right… It has to be special effects. Haha, don’t scare me…
“It’s special effects,” An’an confirmed, then added with a hint of regret, “Sigh. We really don’t have to spend the money, though. Special effects are so expensive. Just give me a knife and a pot of boiling water, and that’s more than enough. We could save a lot on the budget.”
“And the audience would definitely prefer a more realistic scene.”
Second Male Lead: Who cares what the audience likes?! Can’t you spare a thought for whether I live or die?!
There was no need to sacrifice himself for art to this degree. He was here to work, not to be buried.
“Can we try to get it in one take?” the second male lead pleaded cautiously. “You don’t actually have to choke me that hard. I can totally just pass out on my own.”
How could I possibly do that? Fan An had plenty of strength and technique to spare.
Second Male Lead: I’m begging you! Let me pass out on my own!
…
Director Matsuzaka stared at the monitor.
“The second male lead’s performance is excellent,” he said in surprise. “Especially that expression of terror and shock on his face. It’s so vivid. I never knew he had that kind of acting range. That kid’s got hidden depths.”
Good acting is infectious. The on-site crew and the waiting actors couldn’t help but be drawn into the scene by the second male lead, feeling his fear as if they were right there with him.
The scene was done in one take. The male lead, who was friends with the second male lead, was thrilled. He slapped his buddy on the back. “Dude, that was so realistic! I almost thought you were actually scared to death by a little girl!”
The second male lead turned, his face the color of overcooked vegetables, and asked weakly, “The… the bathroom… where’s the bathroom?”
The male lead’s hand hung in mid-air as he watched his friend clamp his legs together and scurry pidgeon-toed into the depths of the abandoned distillery.
Him: “Huh?”
The director’s “Cut!” still echoed in her ears. An’an knew her part was over.
One take. Does that mean I did a pretty good job? Maybe I’m quite talented. Well-suited for this acting gig. The first director hadn’t been lying to her after all. It really was just a matter of being in the wrong race.
“I feel like I could really make a long-term career in acting,” An’an mused aloud. “If one day, my cousin and aunt see me on TV, they’ll surely be shocked.”
Not on TV as a criminal suspect with a black bar over her eyes, but as a highly-regarded actress in an interview.
In the interview, she would speak fondly of her eighteen years working part-time back home. The slaughterhouse would become a pilgrimage site, boosting the entire town’s GDP. The small town would become a metropolis. The mayor would weep with gratitude and erect a giant, gold-leafed statue of Fan An in the city center. Everyone would come to burn incense on holidays…
No, no, no. An’an shook her head forcefully. No incense. I’m not dead yet.
But if she could become an actress on par with Sharon Vineyard, all of those fantasies could become reality.
One step at a time. Fan An did a quick calculation. Once Director Matsuzaka’s web drama was officially released, she would have her debut work. If it was well-received, finding more work would become easier.
“Great Saiki Kusuo, please bless this web drama with a smooth release,” the girl prayed piously.
(T/N: A reference to the main character of “The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.”, who has god-like psychic powers.)
Her prayer was necessary. What if one of the actors in the crew suddenly had a change of heart and switched careers from “actor” to “killer”? The entire show could be at risk of being pulled.
In Beika Town, the probability of such an accident was not small.
Just in case, Fan An looked it up online and saw some heartening news: even if the entire cast went to jail, the show could still air smoothly, as long as the offending actors were registered residents of Beika Town.
As expected of the City of Crime. So user-friendly!
An’an felt relieved. Just then, Director Matsuzaka called out to her. “Have you seen the second male lead? What’s taking him so long in the bathroom? Did he get lost?”
“It’s possible. I’ll go look for him.”
The bathroom in the abandoned distillery hadn’t been used in years and was in a very remote location. Fan An searched for a long time before finally finding the disoriented second male lead.
“Thank goodness,” he breathed a sigh of relief. “You found me alive.”
He was not being dramatic. This sort of thing happened all the time in Beika: someone in a group leaves to go to the bathroom. Person A doesn’t come back. Person B is sent to find them. Person B eventually finds Person A’s body in the bathroom, face-down…
“There’s another version,” said the veteran Beika resident, the second male lead. “Person A doesn’t see Person B coming to find them. Person A returns to the group on their own. But then Person B doesn’t come back. After a frantic search, the group finds Person B’s body in the bathroom, face-down…”
“Is it possible,” Fan An deduced, “that Person B finds Person A, they return to the group together, only to find a whole field of face-down bodies at the meeting point…”
Second Male Lead: I die, you kill a whole group. Does that seem right to you?
Who’s the veteran Beika resident here?
“Don’t be so dramatic. Our crew is full of law-abiding citizens,” the second male lead said, starting to walk back. “And we’re the only living people in this whole abandoned distillery.”
Fan An didn’t answer. She tilted her head slightly.
“Do you hear a third set of footsteps?”
The dark-haired, dark-eyed girl’s voice was very soft.
The empty, desolate distillery was all around them. A cold wind blew past, and a dense layer of goosebumps erupted on the second male lead’s arms.
He swallowed hard. “Don’t try to scare me. Evil spirits don’t exist in real life.”
“Shh.” An’an raised a finger to her lips. “The footsteps are getting closer.”
She listened intently for a moment. “There are three people over there.”
Three people. That meant it wasn’t an evil spirit. The second male lead let out a sigh of relief and said casually, “It’s probably just a small group exploring the distillery. You know, urban exploration streams are really popular right now. The more remote the place, the more popular the stream.”
The abandoned distillery had several floors. The bathroom was on the third floor. The footsteps An’an heard had stopped in the spacious hall on the first floor—the same path the crew had used to enter and would use to leave.
If that group didn’t leave, the crew would definitely run into them on their way out.
“You have a point.”
An’an peered through the gaps in the railing and saw the three people in the hall below. She confirmed the second male lead’s suspicion. “One of them definitely looks like a streamer.”
“Waist-length silver hair, wearing a black trench coat and a black fedora in the middle of summer. A strange man who would rather risk heatstroke than compromise his aesthetic—he must be a streamer!”