Suspense.
A technique or genre that arouses interest by creating anxiety and tension in the reader or audience.
What creates that tension is the difference in information between the characters and the audience.
If only the audience knows that A intends to harm B while B remains unaware, the audience grows tense whenever A and B draw closer, fearing what might happen. That is the principle of suspense.
"Um...my stomach suddenly feels a little upset. Could I use your bathroom?"
Just like now, while Mark was in the master bathroom and Gillian had taken a kitchen knife from the kitchen.
Shhk-
He took a small whetstone out of the cupboard and sharpened the blade with swift, practiced movements.
Why now, of all times...?
The audience could not help thinking it.
Was he simply using the spare moment to sharpen his knife? But if that were all, the murderous intent in his eyes was so keen that he seemed to be sharpening his gaze rather than the blade. He hardly looked like the same idle, utterly useless unemployed man from earlier.
Then he concealed the kitchen knife beneath the blanket draped over one of the chairs.
Bzzzt-
This time, the lights over the living room dimmed while the master bedroom brightened.
The audience flinched once again.
What the hell is he doing?
Mark, who had asked to use the bathroom because his stomach hurt, had not gone into the bathroom at all. Instead, he was searching the master bedroom.
Moving nimbly without making so much as a footstep, he opened drawers and checked beneath the bed.
Then he muttered to himself.
"Not a speck of dust."
What is this guy doing now?
Was he a thief? If so, that made things even more dangerous.
The man outside had a knife, and the way he handled it looked disturbingly practiced.
Perhaps because Mark's earlier efforts to sell his product had seemed so pitiful, the audience found themselves more worried about him even though he was every bit as suspicious.
The man outside is dangerous... Get out of that house, now!
Mark stepped into the bathroom, flushed the toilet to make the sound of running water, and came back out.
"Thank you!"
Mark thanked him with an utterly innocent expression, as though he had done nothing at all.
But then Gillian...walked into the room Mark had just left.
D-Did he notice?
Srrk-
He glared sharply at the slightly wrinkled sheet, then pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it taut again.
The audience's hearts lurched.
Had he realized that Mark had done something in the room?
"Sir?"
"Oh, I needed to use the bathroom too. I'll be right out~"
When they sat across from each other again, the sight was no longer amusing.
Hahahaha--
They sat facing each other again, both letting out awkward laughter.
Mark was about to pick up the toothbrush once more when Gillian abruptly changed the subject.
"By the way...aren't you afraid to walk around this neighborhood? This is where 'that guy' has been active, so everyone seems too nervous to go out. I suppose nothing will happen in broad daylight, but..."
"Ah, you mean the serial killer?"
"Yes...the world's become such a frightening place. Seriously, be careful while you're out there."
The audience looked confused again.
The fear on Gillian's face seemed far too sincere.
Then maybe he took out the knife because he felt uneasy after letting a stranger into his home...?
That seemed possible.
But then Mark defended the serial killer.
"I think society is the real problem. Do you think that man was like that from the beginning? He probably experienced abuse or isolation during childhood. Isn't that what drove him to it?"
Could it be...Mark?
Was the true identity of this clumsy door to door salesman, who had been trying so hard to sell toothbrushes...the serial killer?
Now that they looked again, there did seem to be something strange about his eyes.
"People like that are born wrong. I heard that bastard has obsessive compulsive tendencies too. He cuts the bodies into perfectly neat pieces, lines them up for display, then takes only one leg with him, right? That's not society's fault. He's just a deranged lunatic."
Gillian's words were chilling once again.
The mention of obsessive compulsion brought to mind the way he had aligned the toothbrushes and the perfectly made bed.
Just who...was the murderer?
Or was it neither of them...?
Mark smiled and changed the subject.
"Now that I hear you put it that way, I think you're right. By the way, sir, it's so hot outside that I'm thirsty. Could I trouble you for a glass of ice water?"
"...Ice water? What should I do? I don't have any ice."
Gillian's expression stiffened slightly at the request.
Was there...something in the freezer?
"Um...then I'm sorry to ask, but could you keep my water in the freezer until I leave? I can't really drink water unless it's cold, and this has gone lukewarm."
Mark took a bottle of water from his bag and held it out.
Gillian did not accept it immediately. He stared intently into Mark's face, as though trying to read something there.
"S-Sir? Is that not all right?"
"It's fine. Give it to me."
He took the bottle, gripped the handle of the large refrigerator with conspicuous force, and pulled it open.
The audience recoiled.
The freezer was packed with large bundles wrapped in layers of newspaper.
Could those possibly be...?
"Wow, your freezer is completely full."
"My father runs a butcher shop, so he brings me meat in bulk."
"I'm jealous. You must get to eat a lot of good meat."
"Top quality. The kind ordinary people never even get to see. Would you like a look at the color?"
Gillian made the sudden offer,
and the audience swallowed hard.
Eva was watching the performance from the audience today.
There had been one aspect of her script that had worried her.
Building layer upon layer of anxiety within the confined setting of a house, all within a ten minute time limit, was no easy feat.
But Derek and Yu Myeong.
One was an actor of the highest caliber, so exceptional that she had chosen to appear on Casting Vote just to entice him into selecting one of her works.
The other was a miraculous actor who could read and perform even the parts she had been unable to express in writing, despite her constant frustration with the limits of language in conveying the world she envisioned.
Seeing those two actors become characters in her story filled her with overwhelming exhilaration.
They're perfectly matched. I thought they would be, but...how can this even be possible...?
Even if Yu Myeong had already been recognized as the best in his own country, he was still so young.
How could he divide the stage so evenly with Derek, who had stood among Hollywood's top actors for more than a decade, ever since his early twenties?
She kept her eyes fixed on the stage, rubbing the goosebumps that swept over her arms every few seconds as she concentrated, determined not to miss a single moment.
Thud-
One of the large newspaper wrapped bundles was taken out.
Gillian placed it beside the sink and picked up a large kitchen knife. When he unfolded the newspaper, it revealed a neatly butchered slab of meat.
As Mark moved close beside Gillian to inspect it, the audience's anxiety intensified.
"What kind of meat is this? It looks a little different from pork or beef."
"Ah...the outside has oxidized a little, but it is pork."
"Come on, I don't think it is."
The atmosphere between them had changed.
Unlike before, Gillian stared down at the meat with a careful, tenacious gaze.
Mark had quietly discarded his obsequious manner and now contradicted him with sly ease.
Thump-
The warning not to provoke him rose to the audience's throats.
"I'm telling you it is. Look, if I cut away the oxidized part..."
That was when it happened.
Gillian clenched the kitchen knife tightly in his left hand, snapped the switch down with his right, and swung the blade violently behind him.
The stage plunged into darkness, leaving only the afterimage of Gillian's terrifying face as he swung the knife.
"Eek!"
A woman in the audience let out a small scream.
Thud- Clatter- Crash-
A strobe flashed across the darkened stage.
Each burst of white light captured the men's movements in broken, photographic fragments. They were fighting. The breathless sequence of action unfolded with the urgency of a meticulously choreographed struggle.
Mark narrowly avoided Gillian's knife and hurled himself toward the living room. His movements were agile, while Gillian pursued him with the face of a demon.
Crash-
Mark bundled up the blanket draped over the chair to shield himself from the knife, then instinctively seized the kitchen knife that fell out from inside it. Clang- Gillian's descending blade struck the knife Mark raised to block it, metal ringing against metal.
Then the lights went out once more, leaving only the sounds of bodies rolling and objects breaking in the darkness. The audience clasped their hands together, able only to imagine what was happening.
When the lights came back on,
Mark had lost his knife and was pinned beneath Gillian, gripping Gillian's left wrist with his right hand and straining desperately against the blade.
No...!
"W-What are you doing?!"
"Door to door salesman, my ass. You're a thief, aren't you?"
"What are you talking about?!"
"You messed with the master bedroom earlier, and no ordinary person moves like that. You came to rob an empty house, then panicked when someone was home, didn't you? Heh. But you picked the wrong house, you poor bastard."
Mark's frightened face seemed unable to comprehend what was happening.
Gillian chuckled and brought his face close to Mark's.
"That serial killer we were talking about earlier? That's me."
"...!"
"The police have been tightening their checkpoints lately, so I haven't been able to work...and now you walk right in on your own. Hahaha."
"W-What? Please, just spare my life...! I'll pretend I n-never saw anything here...!"
Gillian pressed down even harder on the struggling man, a deep, bottomless smile spreading across his face.
"Society didn't make me this way. I really am just a deranged lunatic. I've been like this since I was a kid. I can't control it, so try to understand~"
He shoved aside Mark's trembling arm and slowly forced the knife downward.
The tension climbed to its peak, and just as the audience shrank back in their seats,
a strange sound rang out.
Click-
Gillian whipped his head around in shock.
A palm sized gun in Mark's left hand was aimed at his side.
"W-What...?!"
"What do you mean, what? You murderous bastard. The recording's finished."
Mark flashed a bright, delighted smile, then twisted free from beneath him and sprang to his feet in an instant.
"Hello. I'm a detective. Lieutenant Mark Rowen~"
It was an absurdly cheerful greeting for someone holding a gun to another man's side.
As though the trembling salesman from moments ago had never existed, he subdued Gillian with ease, then kicked hard into the back of his knee and forced him down.
He did not look like a particularly good natured detective.
"...How?"
"We narrowed the search area down to this neighborhood and have been conducting door to door investigations, idiot."
Gillian looked up at him in disbelief.
Mark smiled broadly and explained with almost excessive kindness.
"You really did clean up after yourself without leaving evidence. That's why the only clues we had were obsessive compulsion and collecting human flesh... At first I honestly thought you were just some unemployed loser, but what kind of man comes to answer the door with the heels of his shoes perfectly straight instead of crushed down?"
Only then did the audience look at his shoes
and realize that he was wearing gleaming dress shoes that did not match his tracksuit.
"Just...from that?"
"Sometimes one utterly trivial detail represents the whole."
Just as Gillian was an obsessively meticulous serial killer disguised as a slovenly layabout,
Mark's politeness and desperation had also been an act.
He calmly cuffed Gillian as he spoke.
"You have the right to remain silent..."
The lights slowly faded to black as he recited the Miranda warning.
Two actors.
When two actors who could both be called the very best seized the stage and volleyed tension back and forth like a ball, the audience felt as though they were standing in the middle of a clash between two enormous predators, looking up as the beasts drove each other back and forth.
It was, without exaggeration, a performance worthy of being called the best.
And it was also the performance that placed the final mark on Casting Vote, the show that had shaken America for months as its excitement rose to ever greater heights.
Waaaaaaaaah!!!
As though their bodies, frozen stiff with tension, had finally thawed all at once,
it took the audience several moments before they erupted into a deafening roar.
Backstage, Derek turned to Yu Myeong, his eyes still blazing with excitement.
"Wow...this is killing me. I'm still tingling all over."
"Great work!"
"You act against me without yielding an inch, but earlier, why in the world did you..."
Before he could finish, Jerry called them out.
"All right! Let's bring together the four actors who gave us today's greatest performances. Yu Myeong Shin, Marta Garcia, Natalie Kassen, and Derek McCurdy, please come out!"
When the four actors appeared onstage, the excited audience once again screamed themselves hoarse.
"Incredible. Those performances were so intense that the very air above the stage felt heavy. There are so many things I would loooove to ask these seasoned warriors, but we're running out of airtime, so we'll move quickly. First, let's see the judges' scores for our opening performance, Killing Smile: Spin Off!"
George: 96. Kyler: 97.
"Wow! We're starting off with extremely high scores. Next, what did Natalie and Yu Myeong receive for Analog Love?"
George: 98. Kyler: 100.
"Kyler gives out a perfect score here! Was it really that good?"
"Yes. Especially-"
"No, no, Kyler, you can't talk about it yet."
"?"
"We still have the final episode left. We need to save the judges' detailed critiques for the ratings of episode twenty two."
Boooo--
The audience gave Jerry a playful chorus of boos.
"Now let's see the scores for Derek and Marta's Natural Enemies!"
George: 99. Kyler: 99.
A tie this time.
"All right...this is the last one. That performance still has my heart pounding. What is the result for Derek and Yu Myeong's finale, The Door to Door Salesman?"
Everyone expected both George and Kyler to give it a perfect score.
But Kyler...
George: 100. Kyler: 99.
He deducted one point.
Anyone sharp enough would have watched Derek's expression rather than Yu Myeong's at that moment. Sure enough, Derek's face twisted slightly.
Analog Love and The Door to Door Salesman. Yu Myeong Shin appeared in both, so the difference was Natalie and Derek.
Yet Kyler had awarded Analog Love a perfect score and The Door to Door Salesman a ninety nine.
Of course, the one point difference could have been attributed to the scripts or to differences in Yu Myeong's interpretation of the roles, but...
Kyler rated me lower than Natalie.
That was how Derek took it, and he barely managed to suppress the seething expression of a man with plenty of questions to demand answers to.
Jerry raced excitedly toward the conclusion.
"The audience votes...and the viewer votes have all been counted.
The final winner of Casting Vote, who will receive the leading role in Director Kyler Unshow's next film, the final star of this unprecedented reality audition that has made us laugh and cry for months...is...!"
Haa-
Yu Myeong breathed in the presence of the audience, which had gone as silent as death.
He remembered the day he had chosen Casting Vote from the three options Yu Seok had offered him.
It had not been out of a desire to become a star.
But his longing to encounter good roles and good colleagues in a short period of time, and to experience a wider world, had led him all the way to this enormous stage.
I did my best.
A deep, satisfying sense of fulfillment, available only to those able to acknowledge themselves, swelled within him.
"...Yu Myeong Shin! With overwhelming support of over ninety percent in both the audience and viewer votes, you are the winner of Casting Vote. Congratulations!"
Waaaaaaaaah--
Every inch of the space filled with cheers.
The world seemed to move in slow motion.
The audience, looking even happier than he was, slowly brought their hands together in applause. Natalie, Derek, and Marta, standing beside him, rushed forward to embrace him. Beyond the cameras trained on him, he could feel the viewers cheering.
April 13, 2007.
Yu Myeong won Casting Vote.
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