Rebirth: King to Superstar

Chapter 23 - Meal

"Well, that's it for my role. It's pretty small and most of it is narration. We wasted time practicing this role. So now tell me which part do you want to start from." He sat back on the chair and asked her.

"It's ok, I got you to act for real. It looked like you were really very angry at the two leads. How do you control and twist emotions like that? It was very expressive. I want to do that too. Give me a few hints." She asked excitedly. His acting was that good and the best out of all the students she saw.

Even though his standards were still far off from the star actors in their country but were good enough to be ranked highly in the middle-ranked category like C and B. Actors were all categorized into different groups based on their popularity. It went from D to S and above S were the heavenly kings and queens.

If anyone knew her evaluation of Joon-won, they would brush it off as she was crazy and inexperienced. But given what she saw, she believed he could do more.

"It takes a lot of time and visualization. I told you this before and I'll tell you this again, it's practice and dedication which can either make or break a person's life. If you have both of them, the sky's the limit, but if you don't then you're destined to only look at the skies and dream."

"Ah, you say that so easily. Do you really not believe in talents?"

"I think talent is something we humans came up with as an excuse to prove ourselves that we are inferior. Of course, there might be people who are naturally better than us at something, but they won't remain to be better if we put in the time."

Joon-won meant it. He never had a knick when it came to acting and it was all the hours and dramas had he honed his skills for decades. Only after doing the same thing over and over again for a long time, it was natural for him to pull something off like that easily.

"Well, it looks like I shouldn't be wasting my time too much like the last year. Well, I feel it's a pity that your role is just bad and small that it doesn't even have an ending. I guess Roh Ji was just too busy making her dream lover Hyeong Myung look good to care about other characters." She commented about his role.

"Well, she has a brain of a chicken, only thinking about one thing. Leave it, it's not like we will fail. Her writing is very bad and if she passes, then it's either that this university's quality is decreasing or she knows someone to pass her." He shrugged it off.

"Ok, enough with this gossip talks. Let's continue practicing your role. We only have a few hours left. So start turning pages and decide which part." He changed the subject.

Both of them continued to practice all the parts Jung-hwa felt were difficult. Time passed by and the sun was already setting. Both decided to end their practice session, and Jung-hwa decided to treat him to some dinner for helping her.

Joon-won didn't reject her kind intentions and accepted. Both of them walked out of the campus after Jung-hwa dropped the keys at the staff room. Joon-won just followed her behind as she took him inside a ramen stall near the university.

"The ramen here is very good. I eat here at least once a week." She commented as they sat down on the counter. She looked at the man preparing ramen for the other customers in the stall and ordered their food. Joon-won on the other hand was excited to have a new type of food.

After his passion for acting the only other thing, he got into after leaving it was food. Back when he was a king, he had an urge to try out all the different types of cuisine. He went to such length in this new passion that he held a grand contest for cooks every year, and it was open to chefs from the whole world.

So, after coming to this world, he also thought about the food other than his main goal acting. But he is dirt poor, unlike his previous life to buy himself good food every day. He followed Jung-hwa's recommendations and looked at the food before him.

'This looks similar to one of the cuisines back in my world. But it smells so different. That cuisine mainly had sweets, but this is the exact opposite. I can smell the spice coming from it.' He peeked at Jung-hwa to see how they eat it and followed her.

He took the pair of chopsticks and the spoon in another hand. He followed her movements and slowly slurped some noodles along with the broth. He couldn't help but let out a satisfied sigh when he swallowed it. It was really delicious.

'This ramen is really good. It has a good amount of spice and salt ratio. It is really savory. The soup goes well with the noodles. But I shouldn't be having this daily mostly once a week, it's too unhealthy.' he evaluated the dish.

Stopping his thoughts, he continued to eat the bowl of ramen in front of him. Jung-hwa paid for the food, and both of them walked back to the campus. He felt bad to take a meal from here only because of some advice and didn't forget to promise her a meal after the exam was over.

He walked back to his room with a satisfied stomach, noticed it was only 7 and he still had time to spare. After entering the apartment and thinking about what he should do, he decided to watch another movie on the television.