The ride to Elvin Production's audition hall took about forty minutes.
The whole way, Averie secretly observed the interior of the car. It was so different than his time; so much had changed.
Meanwhile, Hyerin kept asking about his condition and if he needed help preparing. She wanted to contribute—that much Averie understood. Still, he found it funny that the applicant was confidently humming a song he had recently heard while his friend struggled to keep calm.
'Anyway, the music industry has also flourished,' Averie thought. 'Great bands rose and fell, and now, they have become legends. Songs from four decades ago are available for free online, and new music keeps pouring in every day. Musicians can find audiences far more easily than before. And still, their egos have only inflated.'
He didn't mind, though. He loved art, and he loved artists. They were funny beings. They created great pieces—even as their personal life turned to ashes. They were extremely flawed creatures, but their ingenuity earned them respect.
And once upon a time, Gene Conti too was extremely revered.
'But will Averie Quinn Auclair be similarly loved?' he wondered.
No matter what, he was going to enjoy it. Everything he couldn't do in his previous life, every ingenious idea he had but could not execute—all of it will be given a medium in this life.
"You should join an acting school," Hyerin suddenly said. "There are some good ones that I know."
It nearly made Averie chuckle.
'If there is someone capable of teaching the actor forged in Hell, I would love to meet them.'
"No thanks," he said, hiding his rising smirk. "I would rather teach myself."
Yes, that was the most pleasant experience—learning by oneself. But even then, Averie had little to learn. All he did in the past fifty years in Hell was gamble and act. There was no one else to act with—as other actors were facing their own punishments—so he acted alone. He invented new methods, subtle yet impactful.
Instead of thinking and behaving like his character, he trained himself to become the character itself. To imagine their life day and night—to live it. To create a delirium induced by your own mind and to persist in it for hours before escaping with a new identity.
Yesterday, he had done exactly that. In a state of confusion caused by the lack of sleep, he had grasped the core of Asmodeus in the script.
'What made him what he is?' he asked himself.
And so, he understood Asmodeus more thoroughly than his creator ever could.
He gave him a life and an identity exempt from the shackles of the script. He developed him far beyond the means provided to him. And once a clear enough image emerged, he painted it with the artistic flair of the script.
"It's your day off, right?" Averie asked Hyerin. "You should have rested today. I could have done this on my own."
"You came to my interview for the job, remember? How could I not do the same for you?"
"Well, I have had a few too many jobs. I thought you would be tired by now."
Hyerin chuckled. "I never get tired of this, and this one is special."
"Yeah," he smiled. "This one is special."
As they drove towards the stylish four-story building in the middle of a busy commercial district, Averie was surprised to see the number of foreigners in Seoul.
'This world is indeed different.'
The line between Eastern and Western cultures seemed to be fading every day. The import and export of culture had become far smoother.
He recently read in an article that because of ample opportunities, a sense of adventure, pop influence, and people exhausted of wanting change, migration from East to West and vice versa had become extremely common.
Averie thought that was for the best. A well-connected world was never a bad thing. But then again, people have always found ways to ruin a good thing. In the end, they were migrating from one gutter to another gutter. It changed nothing. Every place had its own problems.
'This is why art is the most precious thing in the world. It makes us forget, and it never disappoints.'
"We are here," Hyerin said, tugging at Averie's arm.
The entrance had a large, stylish plaque that read: Elvin Production.
Hyerin took him to the second floor after greeting the receptionist, who looked like an acquaintance of hers. She talked to another employee in the corridor, who guided the two to the waiting area. He also looked like an acquaintance of hers.
"Take a seat. I will go confirm your name on the list," she said before taking off.
'She is capable,' Averie thought, observing the room.
There were quite a lot of applicants than he had expected. Around forty were in this single room, and he was certain there were more in other rooms on the same floor.
While half of them were experienced enough to sit calmly, the other half couldn't do the same. They were either nervous or obsessed with the pages in their hands. It reminded him of how children would cram for exams. He understood the sentiment. They were new to the profession, after all. They had yet to learn how to relax and to distance themselves from the prying eyes.
Averie wanted to go around and scare every other applicant just for the fun of it, but he held back. Such behavior was appropriate for a denizen of Hell. Unfortunately, this wasn't Hell. Honestly, he missed it a little. Laughing at people in excruciating pain, throwing balls of blood and ash at terrible criminals, and making fun of Belphegor for always occupying the toilet were some of Averie's fondest memories.
'I should take a rest,' he thought.
He folded his arms and leaned against the chair. It was time for a short nap. But as he closed his eyes, he heard someone click their tongue.
"Look at that; he is here to sleep," a raspy voice said. "Amateur half-breed."
A pair of voices snickered.
The sadistic tendencies nurtured in hell awoke something inside Averie. A malicious grin spread across his face, and his eyes curved like that of the devil. The itch to destroy and burn he could hardly hold back.
And as he turned towards the source of the voice, his eyes shone with bloodlust. He wanted to tear them into tiny pieces. He wanted to drown them in the bubbling lava of the underworld. Oh, he wanted to break their spirits and watch them suffer.
Unfortunately, the men who sneered at him were on the verge of losing sanity. Just one look at Averie's twisted expression was enough to make them understand what fear of the unknown meant. They forgot their reason for being there, and they forgot each other's names. Their heads lowered out of fear, and their gazes stuck to the floor.
"Is something wrong?" Hyerin, who had just only returned, asked.
She hadn't seen even a quarter of what had transpired, but her friend's disappointed face worried her. He looked heartbroken. It looked as if he had lost something very precious.
"Just some flies disturbing the room," Averie replied, sighing deeply.
Hyerin couldn't spot any flies, although she did see a trio of heavily sweating applicants.
"My god, they look so scared," she whispered to Averie. "I have seen plenty of new actors, but none have looked that anxious."
Averie chuckled.
"Must have seen Asmodeus," he joked, closing his eyes.