Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

It turned out Emmeline had not merely been considering helping Park with his social media.

She had planned the entire thing before he ever agreed to it, the way a spider plans the web and only later informs the fly it has a starring role.

By the time Jessie finished her wine, Emmeline had produced a brand-new phone from one of the shopping bags beside her, still sealed in its box, handing it across with the casual confidence like passing over a spare pen.

The device had apparently been purchased somewhere between the watches, the grooming studio, and the point at which Park stopped tracking what anything cost—which, in his defense, was roughly the same moment his brain started calculating how many unpaid rent notices a single designer jacket could silence.

He stared at it.

"You need a clean one for work."

"I have a phone."

"You have a personal phone. This is for your public accounts, agency contacts, schedules, promotions, and whatever future scandal requires a separate number."

’Nothing says rising star like preparing a second identity for the inevitable moment someone digs up the first one.’

Jessie nodded thoughtfully. "Smart."

Park looked between the two of them. "Am I the only person at this table who didn’t arrive prepared to launch a celebrity?"

"Yes," Emmeline said.

"Basically," Jessie added.

Beautiful. His career had formed a government without consulting him like taxation without representation, except the tax was his face and the representation was two women who already knew the password.

Inside a few minutes Emmeline had the phone activated, secured, linked to his personal device, and lying face-up between them while all three of them bent over the screen arguing about names.

Park had never held an official public account in his life. His predecessor had left behind a couple of abandoned personal pages carrying barely enough followers to fill a small lift, none of them connected to acting in any way a casting director would ever find.

The old accounts felt like ghosts of a man who had tried to exist online and then quietly given up; the digital equivalent of dying alone.

That situation resolved itself quickly.

On Witter he became @Nathaniel_Park. On Igram,Nathaniel.P_223, because the cleaner version had been claimed seven years earlier by an inactive account that had posted a single photograph of soup before vanishing entirely from civilization.

"Can’t we report him?" Park asked.

"For what?" Jessie said.

"Identity theft."

"He had the name first."

"He wasted it on soup."

’A crime against aesthetics if nothing else.’

Emmeline ignored both of them and bought verification on the platforms where verification could simply be purchased.

’On this world too even the sacred blue tick had eventually knelt before capitalism.’

The others required a minimum following, public recognition, or confirmation from an employer, but Witter and Igram were the ones that mattered today.

Money, as always, remained the purest form of authenticity.

Park watched the little symbols appear beside his name.

Nathaniel Park.

Technically Park’s current status as an actor and artist sat below rookie status.

A rookie was a signed talent, represented by the agency (in Park’s current situation), and working; Park had already had a role, yes but agreement with the agency was a verbal one at best, an understanding and nothing with a signature on it.

The agency had pulled him into the intake, placed him in The City, and invited him back for the singing audition, but no contract existed yet.

But that would very probably change tomorrow, because once they heard him sing they would either rush to lock him down or require medical attention as a group.

And when he did sign, they would want his accounts—full control if they could get it or a shared access and approval rights and posting schedules and an exhaustive list of things he could and could not say if they could not.

The modern actor’s first real downfall was never with the agency first but with the algorithm, and the algorithm did not negotiate.

Tomorrow’s problem.

’Today’s problem is followers.’

Emmeline fired his new usernames into several group chats and instructed her friends to update their existing posts with the proper tags of his name and mentions of his account @Nathaniel Park and Nathaniel.P_223.

Jessie had already started editing hers before Emmeline finished the sentence.

’The two of them move with the practiced ease of people who’ve launched prettier, dumber boys before and still found the process mildly entertaining.’

Park’s new phone buzzed against the table.

He picked it up expecting Jessie.

{New follower: @clause.nine}

Park frowned...

Before he could open the profile on Igram a second notification arrived on top of it.

{@clause.nine mentioned you in a post}

He tapped through.

The picture had been taken earlier that afternoon near the private designer galleries—Park standing between Jessie and another of Emmeline’s friends, Jessie leaning into one side of him and smiling, the other girl holding his arm, Park in a dark jacket looking like a man who had accidentally inherited an entire fashion floor. The camera had caught him mid-breath, expression somewhere between polite endurance and the faint awareness that both women were soft, warm, and currently using him as expensive furniture yet it was so perfect and beautiful thanks to Perfect Crown.

Above it sat one short line.

{Proud of you, handsome prodigy.}

Park read it twice.

The account itself gave him nothing; there was no profile photograph, biography or other public posts.

The follower list was hidden, the following list was hidden, and the account had been created at some point that the app declined to specify.

It felt less like a fan and more like a locked door that had decided to introduce itself.

He turned the phone toward Emmeline.

She read it, then brightened. "Look at you. You already have a mysterious supporter."

"That isn’t suspicious?"

"It’s social media. Suspicion is part of the furniture."

Jessie leaned across to study the screen, her perfume brushing close enough that Park caught the warm edge of it: "Somebody from the production, maybe."

"Or the agency," Emmeline said. "Either way, somebody already knows how good you are."

"Yeah," Park said. "I guess."

Or somebody already knows something else.

He turned the phone back toward himself and looked at the line again.

Whoever it was had also arrived first; his first follower!

More followers came in after that; Jessie. Emmeline’s friends, fashion accounts which swam in after they saw the post of thrice elites and Young nobles.

People who had seen the post and wanted to arrive early before curiosity turned into popularity and popularity turned into one of those unbearable fandoms where everybody claimed to have been there first.

Park looked out through the glass.

Aurora lay under him, burning gold in the afternoon, and for the first time in either life the future did not look bleak. Back on Earth every good thing had lived permanently somewhere in the middle distance, always approaching and never once arriving.

Here, opportunities were coming at him faster than he could count them—a role, an agency, a new name, thousands of people looking at his face before he had even signed anything.

Everything was going suspiciously well.

’Lucky maybe?’ Had to be.

Deep in thoughts, under the table, something brushed lightly along his lower leg.

Park did not move his foot.

He glanced across at Jessie and found her looking down, apparently registering that her ankle had made contact with his by accident.

For half a second she seemed prepared to withdraw it and pretend nothing had occurred.

Then she changed her mind, and left it exactly where it was, her eyes came up to his.

"Yes?" Park said, smiling.

Jessie took another sip of wine, entirely unhurried about it. "Can we exchange numbers?"

Emmeline’s head snapped round. "Oh? You’re collecting rich girlfriends already, Park? Planning to abandon your sugar mommy now that you’ve found an upgrade?"

Park nearly laughed into his glass. "You are not my sugar mommy."

"I bought your entire life today."

"You’re my good friend."

Emmeline pressed a hand to her chest. "Just a good friend?"

"My closest, most annoying, financially irresponsible good friend."

"Better." She pointed her fork at him. "Just don’t forget me now that you have Jessie. I get jealous."

The words had a playful edge that still carried the faint, possessive bite of a woman.

Jessie’s cheeks warmed: "It isn’t like that. I only want us to be acquaintances."

"Yeah, right," Emmeline said, rolling her eyes.

Park set his glass down, rested one arm along the edge of the table, and looked directly at her.

"Jessie."

"Mm?"

"Some men aren’t capable of being only acquaintances with women beautiful as you."

The teasing went out of her face and something more careful arrived in its place.

"That’s a very smooth way of saying no to my friendship," she said.

"It’s a very honest way of saying I’d be lying to you inside a week." He looked directly in her eyes.

"You’d message me about something harmless. I’d take four minutes deciding how to answer, and then I’d answer in a way designed to make you smile at your phone. You’d notice. You’d let it go the first time, and the second time, and around the third you’d start looking forward to it, and then one of us would say something we couldn’t take back and we’d both have to pretend it hadn’t been building since a restaurant hanging off a bridge."

The words came out clean, almost gentle, but the dark comedy of it sat underneath like a blade under. He was already describing the exact path to ruin while her ankle remained pressed against him under the table, neither of them moving, both of them pretending the contact was still somehow innocent but Jessie had gone very still.

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