"Out of all the idiots that fill that accursed world, you had to choose the most boring, bland, and incompetent of them all! The sheer fact you managed that is… beyond impressive!"
The words struck the room like thunder, bouncing off the high ceilings, long windows and polished surface of the long oval table.
Papers rattled.
Coffee cups trembled.
Writers and producers froze mid-gesture, some gripping pens, some leaning back in their chairs, unsure whether to laugh or cower.
"You know what? Clap for his failure!"
A hush fell. Hands hovered awkwardly over laps. Then, slowly, hesitantly, a wave of applause filled the room, part mockery, part shock.
The director, sharp-featured and perpetually scowling, raised a hand.
Silence returned instantly, a velvet pressure settling over the group.
From the shadows of the long table, the Casting Director emerged.
Thin, wiry, seemingly fragile, yet each movement carried a peculiar certainty.
He didn't rush.
He didn't need to.
The room felt it: the air had changed.
"Let me tell you… something," he murmured at first, almost shyly, voice soft, silk over steel.
He stepped closer to the table, fingers trailing along its edge, pacing slowly.
"Eight point two billion people. Eight billion, two hundred million souls… and yet, I chose him."
"Why…?" the director asked, fingers steepled, leaning forward slightly.
"Ah… patience," the Casting Director said, almost whispering, letting the word stretch like elastic.
"The heroes everyone adores—they are perfect, yes. Handsome. Clever. Flawless. Dashing. Look at your Misney movies. Duo Leveling. God of Preschool. One Full Piece. Bleached…"
He paused, head tilting as if listening to a melody playing on a frequency only he could hear, then let his hands drift wide in the air, theatrical but slow, deliberate like a maestro leading an orchestra into a slow waltz.
"Even the ones that… drive us mad. And the audience? They adore them. They cheer. They marvel."
He slowly leaned in, eyes bright, with just a dash of mania.
"But they are distant. Untouchable. Perfection is… boring."
The room shifted, leaning forward without realizing it.
Pens hovered.
Breaths were held.
He paced, slow, deliberate.
"You watch perfection. You admire it. But you cannot feel it. You cannot touch it. You cannot see yourself in it. And… the audience? They need to feel. To live. Every heartbreak, every triumph, every fleeting, fragile moment—they need to experience it as if it was their own. And for that I needed someone… Ordinary. Fragile. Real."
The room was silent, leaning in.
His voice rose, just a whisper at first, then stronger, more feverish.
"I chose someone with a life already in motion: a brother who loved him, a future family, a career full of promise. Someone who… could break."
Silence swallowed the room. Even the director's frown softened, curiosity taut in the air.
"And when he breaks…" the Casting Director continued, pacing now with a measured rhythm, each step deliberate, fingers brushing the table like a conductor drawing invisible lines.
"When the world gives way beneath him… we see life itself. Ordinary, mundane, fragile life… transformed into something extraordinary. Magnified, because it comes from someone we recognize. Someone we… see ourselves in."
The staff nodded slowly. Some scribbled furiously. Some just looked at him in awe.
He stopped.
His manic energy flickered, almost gone, leaving a strange stillness. For a moment, the room could breathe again.
Then—snap. A single finger snap, sharply, echoing. Eyes glittering again.
"Right! Enough philosophy! Let's see our hero in action, shall we?"
He gestured to a large screen that flickered to life behind him, its cold blue light washing over the polished table.
"The moment of transference. The pivot upon which his old life turns to dust."
On the screen, the scene was achingly mundane. A grainy, slightly elevated view from a traffic camera.
A young man was frozen mid-stride in a crosswalk, a grocery bag in each hand, cheap white headphones trailing from his ears.
He was laughing at something, his face alight with a victory that was still warm in his chest.
The Casting Director clicked a button on the remote, and the scene jerked into motion.
Rio bolts, a frantic, hopeless dash.
The bags tumble, fruit spilling and rolling toward the gutter.
The truck—a white Japanese vehicle—doesn't swerve.
It corrects.
It aims.
It collides.
The sound was muted, but the impact was visceral. A sickening, meaty thud that was felt more than heard.
His body was thrown, a rag doll of broken angles, coming to rest against the concrete curb.
The room was dead silent.
The camera angle switched, zooming with impossible clarity on Rio's face. His eyes were wide, not with understanding or even shock, but with sheer, animal TERROR.
Blood trickled from his temple.
His lips moved.
The Casting Director unmuted the audio. A raw, wet gasp, then a whisper, fractured and faint, pushed through the speakers and filled the silent writer's room.
"Felix… I… love you."
He clicked the remote. The screen froze on Rio's lifeless face, his final, loving confession hanging in the air.
The director's voice broke it first, low, somber. "A bit on the nose, don't you think? 'I love you'? Dying words are rarely so… coherent."
The Casting Director waved a dismissive hand.
"Semantics! The sentiment is what matters! The anchor! It's the tether that will pull him, and the audience, through the void. Without that love, what's the point of the struggle? What's the point of trying to coming back?"
A producer raised a hand timidly. "And… the truck?"
The Casting Director lit up, clapping his hands like a delighted child.
"Ah! Truck-kun! He needed to stretch his legs!Or wheels? And what better way to make a statement! To show that the mundane can be crushed, upended, mauled into something magnificent?"
He spun, arms thrown wide. "It is theatre! It is poetry! It is—dare I say—art!"
Then, with sudden reverence, he lowered his tone. "And now… the destination."
He clicked the remote again. The screen changed, no longer showing the grim city street seeping with blood and tomato juice, but a swirling, star-dusted vortex of color and light. It was entrancing and terrifying at the same time.
"This," the Casting Director announced, his voice dropping to a reverent hush, "is the Kaleidoscope. The space between worlds. It's not a tunnel of light. It's not a river of souls. It's… potential. Raw, unformed narrative energy. And he's going to swim though it."
He zoomed in on a tiny, faint spark of light tumbling through the cosmic storm.
"Is that?" a young writer asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"Who else?" the Casting Director beamed.
"Right now, his consciousness is a fading ember. But soon… soon he will be offered a choice. A selection of new worlds, new roles.
He will think he is choosing his destiny." He turned back to the room, his grin sharp enough to cut. "But we know better, don't we? "His role was chosen for him long before that truck ever started its engine."
He let the image of the swirling Kaleidoscope dominate the screen.
"The old life is gone. The grocery run, the brother, the girl… all of it, gone. All that remains is the haze of a feeling and a journey through the sublime."
He bowed his head slightly, his performance concluding.
"Next stop… the new world. Let's see what our unremarkable hero becomes."
The hero was chosen.
The stage was set.
The story could now truly begin.