TTKWQ Chapter 4
I hate bullies.
Well, I think that the number of types of people that I like is overwhelmingly small.
In my past life, I grew up in the countryside, and every school was peaceful and free of bullies. After my reincarnation, I didn’t attend kindergarten because I was a child actor. Even on weekdays, I worked, and I was also taking lessons from the office to grow.
So, after I became a famous child actor, I didn’t think it would be a problem to go to elementary school. Famous people in dramas and TV programs go to the same school.
Even though I had a bad attendance at school and I had a line in front of my house in the mornings and my rest time was spent surrounded by girls and the acting scenes and business world talks that were endless and me demanding my co-star’s sign[1], somehow, the position of my close friend was being disputed. I was pestered to do an Oooka Judgement.[2]
Boys don’t come with basic skills, but somehow I can make a move on them.[3] Well, boys in elementary school are just idiots. Because of my past life, little kids were just idiots, but my parents scolded me for saying that.
But, I became the target of such an idiot. I don’t know how many times my skirt was pulled up. In the end, I started wearing spats and kept my guard up. …Nowadays, what do they call leggings?
Well, such a thing didn’t happen. Basically, it was only my good will to interact with boys; I could endure if I thought it was fan service. I didn’t have time to relax at school, and school was boring.
There was a time when my good will was turned over 180° in malice.
There was a shoujo manga that was a huge hit, called “You and I in Moderato.”[4] It was made into a drama, and I played the role of the beautiful villain.
The heroine transfers from a commoner’s public school to a private school for the aristocracy where she falls in love with a certain rich dude’s son that was known as Emperor.
It was my character, the villain, who was jealous of the two people and bullied the heroine.
Originally, I was cast as the heroine, but it seems that they couldn’t find a villainous female child actor.
Of course, I declined the demotion to a villain. There’s no merit to doing it, and acting as a villain will damage my image. My clean Yamato Nadeshiko image was ruined.[5]
Even the guarantee is higher for the guarantee… Ehh? Would I accept the beautiful villain role if the guarantee was double? No way~~ The guarantee would have to be quadruple, okay? Well, if the guarantee was triple that would be okay too; I’ll accept.
Shinosaki-san was mad at the producer and director-san of the drama for that. Shinosaki-san tried to change my role, but the role for the heroine, “Yui,” was already taken, and the schedule for the shooting was already fixed.
Shinosaki-san, who was upset, said, “She’s a child actress that plays ‘good’ roles, is this not a problem?”
They said back, “Challenging more acting roles would broaden the scope of the actor,” and, “Find chances in the face of adversity.”
In silence, Shinosaki-san’s veins bulged at her temple.[6]
Painful.
Well, when the recording began, my guarantee was raised five fold, probably because Shinosaki-san was threatening… I guess I worked hard.
I thought I should work more than the salary paid, so I studied how to be a villain. So, I read the original comic that the drama was based off of, I watched an Japanese and Western movies that had a villainous daughter, and I bought a dress similar to the actual costume. Then, at home, I practiced saying “ohohoho,” the elegant and refined loud laughter that I was supposed to say like every three seconds.[7]
Even a smile has to be villainous and cynical. I thought that my brother would see my smile and be scared.
Sorry, why are you laughing, are you not afraid? …You’re shivering a lot. No, mother, I’m not bullying anyone. Look at the mirror? Yes, it’s bad. Enough to give someone a trauma.
So my 3-and-a-half-year-old brother would get nightmares, I played the beautiful villain role with all my power.
In the manga, many of my role’s wrongdoings are revealed by Emperor, my role’s condemned, and my role gets expelled from the school and her clan. So, if you get hate from the readers as a villain, you can expect more pain in your last scene, the one of your judgement, because of the catharsis of the readers.
However, it’s only after the beautiful villain graduates from high school does she get expelled in the original work. The drama is a 1 cour 12 episode one, and the elementary school period takes up 6 episodes. The main part of the story is in the next 6 episodes, and another actress should be playing my role then, so I shouldn’t be the one to get expelled.
But, the script that was handed to me was changed for some reason, and there were 12 episodes in the elementary school arc.
Oh? Isn’t this suspicious? If the high school arc disappears, is this not an original work break?[8] Eh, did the original work’s author-san write the script for this drama? Rather, can’t they refuse the request of the original work’s author-san? Well, I’m okay with it, but, even though my screen time is increasing, my fee (guarantee) isn’t, why? Producer-san? Because my guarantee is five times normal, isn’t that why? I discussed it with Shinosaki-san for a bit… And, the producer ran away with lightning speed. Well, even if the producer runs, Shinosaki-san will still contact you as soon as you come back.
I wasn’t supposed to like acting as a villain, but it’s fine because I got ten times my original guarantee.
However, I shouldn’t have been caught like a fish with money as bait.
A few months later, I regretted it.
The beautiful villain in the drama was malicious and spiteful. Instead of portraying her doing the bullying herself, it’s shown in the drama that she uses her followers to do the bullying. She’s the type that saves her “friend” while mocking the “friend” secretly.
The villain dirtied Yui’s slippers and lent out clean new ones; she’d do the same with gym clothes too. With such a hypocritical[9] bullying, she’d create trust and get information, so she could better split Yui and Emperor apart.
And then, she shut down the heroine’s parent’s flower shop using her financial power. I didn’t think elementary schoolers could be such human trash.
But, Emperor and Yui talked to Yui’s parents and found it suspicious. Then, one of the villain’s followers betrayed her and told that the cause was actually the beautiful villain. From there, the story makes a sudden turn. Emperor made the necessary arrangements, and then, the beautiful villain was publicly executed. Well, it was just a big class trial; nobody died.
With Emperor’s political power, he transferred the beautiful villain to a catholic girl’s boarding school to imprison her. Nobody looked back at such a miserable looking villain, and Emperor and Yui got together with a happy end.
The shooting progressed smoothly, and the broadcast started. “The child actress, Hanasaki Nana-chan. This time, she challenged playing as a beautiful villain!?” Headlines like that appeared, boosting the original work’s popularity and increasing the ratings of the show. With such a feeling, the first weekly releases were peaceful.
However, as the drama progressed, there weren’t people around me, and, in the mornings, my slippers were dirtied. And, in the drama, this was the bullying that my role did to the heroine.
Well, they’re elementary schoolers, it can’t be helped if they can’t differentiate between a drama and reality, but, when they started saying, “Don’t bully Yui-chan” and started crying en masse, it was chaos.
Because it’s a drama, it’s a fictitious character, and I don’t have an ear to listen no matter how much they say. I discussed about this with my homeroom teacher, and she told the class, “Everyone, apologize.” However, because nobody understood what they were supposed to apologize about, I dropped out of school.
Although it’s compulsory education, I’m not forced to go, and I was thinking, when the fuss was over, I would go back. My house’s flower beds were stepped on, graffiti was painted on the wall, and the camera crew camped in front of my house for this wide show.
Even there weren’t any scandals, how did this happen…
As to not trouble my family I wanted to quit being a child actress, but Shinosaki-san stopped me from quitting. She told be to wait a while because she’s doing her best.
Before the drama ended, I moved to the mansion where the security is good and where I live now with Shinosaki-san’s arrangement. Besides, the rent is completely taken care of by the office. This mansion is 10,000,000 yen a month, is that okay?[10]
At the same time, my sponsor, the chairman of the Rokujou group and the grandfather of Sayuri-chan, sent me a CM.[11] Attached to it was a recommendation to go to Sakuranagi Academy.
My stormy private life calmed down in no time, but my image as a child actress was still bad.
This time’s wide show caused a huge uproar. “This isn’t an act that elementary schoolers can do; originally, her character was bad~” or, “The main child actress didn’t really act~ The crying was all real~ She was afraid of Nana-chan~” or, “The child actress’ family was poor and in rough times~ Her parents used her to get money, but Nana-chan’s personality warped not because of that~” and other things of the same line…
The chubby wide show host that said irrelevant things as he pleased didn’t help.
My personality is… not good, but it’s not as bad as the manga’s beautiful villain. I’m acting as myself. But, I was certainly acting like a Yamato Nadeshiko before, where’s all of that? Originally, I was a middle-aged man.
It was also true that the heroine’s actor cried during the shooting. She cried very skillfully, I was impressed. I can’t fake cry. Sorry.
My family is in rough times… It’s just been rough recently because of me. But, my parents don’t take my guarantee, and tell me to leave it for the future. I don’t use my guarantee at all. Since I’m a child actress, I need to buy various things like bags and a car, but I’m told that, as a child, I shouldn’t worry about such things.
I think these statements are half-true. Since I feel irritated about those things, if those things appear on this baldie’s wide show,[12] I’ll take off his wig and throw it like a Frisbee. It’s likely to fly well.
Because the image I built as, “Hanasaki Nana,” was being ruined, Shinosaki-san took the next job.
“Reincarnation as a villainous daughter!? ~It’ll be modest, and we can aim for a better appearance~”
In order to avoid dying, the former OL[13] who was reborn as the beautiful villain in the world of “You and I in Moderato,” tries to do what every other person in this situation—but in an otome game instead of a manga—does. She tries to live as nicely as possible to not encounter a bad end.
I thought it was okay to have a second adaption of the manga, and it seems that the original work’s author helped with the script.
It would be handled the same as a spin-off movie, and the director of the drama said that the spin-off movie’s casting would be the same as the drama. In addition, when the movie premiered, the comic would’ve been finished.
Even though I think that it’s too early to have a spin-off of a drama when it’s still airing, but Shinosaki-san made plan over plan to improve my public image. …That’s not manager-level, that’s already like a movie producer…
However, I thought I wouldn’t be okay with such easy-to-implement plan to fix my image, but Shinosaki-san worked really hard, so I didn’t put my thoughts to my mouth. Even though I didn’t say anything, Shinosaki-san still flicked my forehead.
“Did you think that you wouldn’t be okay with such an easy-to-implement plan?”
“Are you an esper!? Hah! Perhaps I have satorare?”[14]
“Your face reveals everything. Also, it’s better to have an easy-to-implement plan. In this case, everyone who has a bad image of Nana is a fool. If the image of Nana acting as the ‘beautiful villain’ is bad, you have to recover your image by acting as the ‘beautiful villain.’ Believe me.”
Or so Shinosaki-san tells me, but I still entered the shooting of the spin-off with some distrust. It was a quite fast schedule with the drama’s last episode airing a month before the movie’s nation-wide premiere.[15] I worked with all my power.
Inversely to how much I’m liked, the drama had high viewership, and the money spent for the movie seemed to be pretty good. And, my image, which used to have a minus sign in front of the number, came back up again in a V shape. Rather, my popularity was greater than before and was heaven-piercing.[16]
When I heard this, I thought, “Ehhh…” and I voiced my thought accidentally. It’s popularity MAX if you play a hated villain, and then you play a loved heroine character. My palm went to the other side of my hand;[17] I was mean enough to make grass stop growing.
“Jeez, I’m not going to act as a villain anymore!”
When I told that to Shinosaki-san in a falsetto, she replied, “Don’t take on a villain role without permission even if they lure you with money.”
Sarcastic. I reflected on it, and I swore to not take the villain role again.
Though, since I can do it, I might take the role if the guarantee is high.
“This time, I was naive so it’s my responsibility, so Nana doesn’t have to feel responsible for this,” Shinosaki-san murmured and gently stroked my hair.
Somehow becoming embarrassed, I said, “What, it’s not my fault, and I already reflected on my loss.”
When I said that, my cheeks got pulled. It hurts.[18]
It was only for a few months the situation was like that. Moreover, I didn’t go to school that often in that period, so I was only bullied for a few days. But, at that time, it was really frustrating in both body and mind.
It was because I was an adult in mind, I understood that I could quit if it became difficult. I properly talked with Shinosaki-san, my parents, and my homeroom teacher, (who was useless as sh*t) and then, I stopped going to school. And, if the next school wasn’t okay, I would transfer. There are as many escape routes as the there are many people that protect me.
But, normal elementary schoolers wouldn’t understand this, and wouldn’t consult their parents or the school if they were bullied.
When they’re bullied, they have no friends to talk to, and nobody to protect them.
Therefore, I want to be the one who protects this crying child trapped in a cleaning tool locker.
That’s what I think.
[1] サイン(sain); meaning autograph. Also, Nanami-chan is surrounded by girls too! Hah, Hiroto, Nanami-chan is better than you!
[2] 大岡裁き; click here for what this means. [Sera: Ooka Tadasuke on Wikipedia. Basically, a righteous and fair judgment.]
[3] ちょっかい; can mean to meddle or to make a pass on someone.
[4] 『僕と君でmoderato』(boku to kimi de moderato)
[5] 大和撫子 (Yamato Nadeshiko); the Japanese ideal woman/housewife. I’m surprised that Nanami-chan actually had the Yamato Nadeshiko image. Remember chapter 3?
[6]
<– like this
[7]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW1QY76d-40]
[8] 原作ブレイク(gensaku bureiku); means something like not following the original work.
[9] マッチポンプ(matchiponpu); I’m translating this to hypocritical and not translating this to match pump because this is a Japanese-made word from both English (match) and Dutch (pomp) whereas the other words were actually taken from English except with a slightly different definition.
[10] 10 mil JPY = ~10k USD = ~1.2 bil IDR = ~5 mil PHP
[11] No clue what a CM is. Probably a commercial message since it fits. [Sera: Though it’s still really weird…why would they send a commercial? Maybe it was gig for a commercial?]
[12] Note that 禿(hage), meaning bald, can also mean idiot. Also note that 禿び(chibi) uses the same 禿 character.
[13] Office lady.
[14] サトラレ(satorare); a fictitious disease where your thoughts “leak” out from your brain.
[15] ロードショー(roudoshou); Road show meaning premiere.
[16] idk if anyone cares, but it says tengen toppa, the same tengen toppa in TTGL. Yōko is my favorite character, by the way.
[17] 手のひら返し(te no hira gaeshi); a Japanese idiom that means to change abruptly and surprisingly.
[18]