I Accidentally Became A Superstar

[MISSION SUCCESS. MOVED 39 INDIVIDUALS TO TEARS.]

Thirty-nine?

That wasn’t even the number of contestants.

He turned his head slightly, gaze sweeping across the room.

There were staff members—camera operators, lighting crew, producers, and even interns—all dabbing their eyes, turning away, or biting their lips to keep from sobbing.

Some were full-on red-nosed, nose-blowing, trembling messes.

Zeno slowly raised a brow. He hadn’t expected that. He knew the story had a kick, sure.

But, to move this many people to tears…

Was his writing really that good?

He let out a small breath through his nose and shook his head faintly. He was good at a lot of things—writing, improvising, manipulation, pretending to care when he didn’t (most of the time)—but apparently, Zeno in his feels was far more dangerous.

His eyes eventually landed on Risa, and he shook his head.

She was crying again, even harder than before.

Her entire face was flushed red, her shoulders hunched and trembling as she cried like a child, the kind of cry where your nose bubbles and your breathing skips like a scratched CD.

She looked like she’d aged backwards into some little kid who had just lost her favorite person in the world.

He sighed. He didn’t mean to do this to her.

He reached into his pocket and quietly handed her a handkerchief. She took it without a word, burying her face in it.

Before he could retreat back into himself, Bacon PD cleared his throat.

It was a thick, uneven sound. His voice had cracked just a little.

“Th-this—” he started, then stopped. He sniffed once. Then again. “How did you come up with this?”

His first instinct was to wave it off and say something distant like, ‘I read a lot of web novels, or it just came to me.’

But he caught Ari beside Bacon wiping under her eyes discreetly with the sleeve of her blazer.

Zeno glanced at Risa beside him again, who was still hiccuping softly into her hands, waiting for her to answer. However, it appeared she was in no condition to.

He sighed.

Guess he had no choice but to answer.

“Existential crisis is hard to portray,” he began, looking forward. “Most people write about the absence of meaning. The emptiness. The lack. And while that’s valid, that’s not really what it is.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“More likely… It’s the contrast. The conflict between having a life and not feeling like it exists. Between knowing you’re here, but wondering why it doesn’t feel like enough. Or anything at all.”

From the table, Bacon muttered, “That’s exactly what I was worried about.”

“He got it right on the dot,” Ari said softly, in awe of Zeno’s intelligence.

Zeno continued.

“The Mind Beats the Heart,” he said. “That’s the title for a reason. Because even if people think emotions are the loudest thing in the room… they’re not. The mind processes them. The brain holds the memory of the love, the pain, the happiness.”

He looked down briefly at the stage floor.

“When the mind can’t hold on anymore, the heart forgets, too.”

“People say it’s the heart that matters,” Zeno went on. “That it remembers what the mind can’t. That it loves even when it hurts. But the truth is, the mind makes that love mean something. If the mind is broken, if memory is shattered, then even the deepest emotion fades like chalk in the rain.”

A few contestants looked down at their laps.

Others just stared.

“What I’m saying is…” Zeno’s gaze drifted back to the judges.

“Existence itself is hard to explain.”

He glanced at Risa, who had calmed now, her fingers clenched tightly around the damp handkerchief.

“Even if something’s there,” Zeno murmured, “if you can’t feel it, can’t remember it, can’t make meaning out of it, it’s like it was never there at all.”

He paused.

“Enough is never enough,” he whispered.

His words faded like dusk before silence settled again

Unfortunately.

It happened again.

[MISSION UPDATE: ADDITIONAL 7 MOVED TO TEARS. TOTAL: 46.]

Zeno stared blankly at the updated notification in front of his eyes.

Forty-six?

How?

He looked around the room slowly, and it was… devastation.

“Zeno,” Ari said softly from her seat, finally recovering from her silent crying session. “Who wrote the script? Primarily, I mean.”

He opened his mouth, about to give the safe, standard answer—that it was both of them. A team effort.

But before he could say a word, a small, shaky voice beat him to it.

“It’s Zeno,” Risa said, still sniffling, her nose red and her lashes damp with tears. “It’s him. He wrote everything. I just—I just wanted to bring it to life. He did such a good job that I had to act it out.”

Her voice cracked a little, and she covered her face again with the now very soggy handkerchief.

Zeno glanced at her sideways, the faintest line between his brows. Why’d she say it like that?

Ari, however, smiled faintly at the moment.

“25 is still good as always,” she murmured to herself.

Ari knew this. It was a silent agreement among all Rennis in Avalis.

25 has always been diligent. He may not admit it, but he worked harder than anybody else.

But then, her smile faded.

Because she looked down again at the marked script, one she was finally allowing herself to read.

And as her eyes skimmed the pages, it felt like she was stabbed in the chest.

The simplicity of it was pretty heartbreaking.

This wasn’t the writing of someone who didn’t feel and didn’t understand what it meant to exist painfully.

She looked up and looked at Zeno, who appeared the most unaffected among those in the room. She shook her head slightly.

The more she read, the more something fragile pressed against her throat, and she had to force it down.

Tears threatened, but she blinked fast and exhaled, blinking again, distracting herself with the click of her pen.

It really was quite… sad.

After a few seconds, she looked back up at them.

“Thank you,” she finally said, her voice still slightly shaky. “You may go back and wait for the results.”

Zeno gave a short nod, as did Risa, and they turned to leave the stage.

As they walked away, Bacon PD leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in amazement, staring at the script and wanting to make it into a real movie.

“Zeno Han,” he muttered. “That kid’s not just talented. He’s a completely different species.”

Ari would’ve laughed.

Technically, he was.

But she knew what Bacon meant.

Even among Rennis and everyone she knew, Zeno felt different.

Like he didn’t quite belong anywhere. Not on Earth. Not with them. Not even with his own kind. He was floating somewhere in the in-between.

And somehow, in that space of non-belonging… he wrote the most human story anyone had ever seen.

When Zeno and Risa walked back into the viewing room, silence greeted them.

No one spoke.

No one dared to look at them.

Zeno glanced around, taking in the state of the other contestants—and they were wrecked.

Billy was openly wiping his eyes with his shirt. Misha had a tissue plugged in one nostril. Shin was staring blankly into space like someone had unplugged him. Even Phoenix, competitive as he was, dabbed the corner of his eyes with the inside of his jacket sleeve, then pretended he was scratching his face.

Zeno tilted his head.

He must be really talented in writing.

He turned to Risa. “Did I actually write something sad, or is everyone just tired?

Risa hiccuped.

That was his answer.

Just then, someone launched himself toward Zeno.

Hero suddenly slid onto the floor in front of Zeno on his knees, his arms spread out in a grand dramatic gesture, tears running down his cheeks, and snot glistening at the end of his nose.

“MASTER!” Hero screamed, sniffling. “You are the greatest! Please… please make me your disciple!”

Zeno looked at him before stepping back. “What are you doing?” he sighed.

Hero clasped his hands together, crying harder now. “I didn’t know writing could do that! I thought words were just words, but you made them into something different!”

Ian looked like he wanted to join Hero, but Zeno held out a hand toward him before that could happen.

“You’re getting snot on my shoes,” Zeno clicked his tongue.

“I’ll write it into a journal!” Hero cried. “Day one: Master stepped on my tears and told me to control myself. It was the best day of my life.”

Zeno stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Discipline me, Master!”

“No.”

“Please!”

“No.”

“PLEASE—”

“I will write you out of my journal.”

And with that, Zeno turned on his heel and walked to his seat—while Hero dramatically flopped forward and wailed like he’d been rejected by his first love.

The room finally broke its silence with laughter. However, even with laughter in the air, everyone knew that they’d remember that performance for a very, very long time.