Utsukushii Kare/ My Beautiful Man [ENGLISH TRANSLATION]

Chapter-2; PART-6: Bitter Sweet Loop

                                 Translator: White Lotus

                                                               ◈ ◈ ◈ ◈

Hira couldn't believe that he and Kiyoi were now sitting face-to-face on either side of the coffee table. The 24-hour coffee shop was filled with the languid atmosphere of weary part-timers and customers waiting for the first train.

"I thought you were going back with that person from earlier."

"Iruma-san?"

"I-I heard that you two are lovers."

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Ah, um, the people sitting next to me at the afterparty said that."

"It really is an industry full of rumor-mongers."

Kiyoi snickered before denying it.

"Not your lover?"

"No."

Hira was relieved by that simple answer. Even though it was clear that he himself was incapable of getting him——

"Ah ...... I thought you were a model, so I was surprised to suddenly see you as an actor."

"I'm not serious about being an actor, though."

It seemed that the main focus of his work was on modeling, and he occasionally played supporting roles in commercials and TV dramas. In the past, he happened to get a ticket to a theater performance, which turned out to be unexpectedly interesting. After that, he started to participate in the rehearsals of his acquaintance's theater group and occasionally performed in some small roles on stage, but since he didn't go through an agency, he couldn't do anything spectacular.

"Besides, I'm still a student."

"Are you going to be an actor in the future?"

"I haven't decided yet. I've got four years of university to think about that."

"Yeah, that's right. You've been working on this since high school, so I thought you'd already made up your mind."

Hearing this, Kiyoi looked at him with an astonished look on his face and said, "How can it be so easy to decide?"

"A job is a lifelong thing. In my perspective, anyone who talks so casually about making a living as an actor at the age of nineteen is nothing but an inebriated, ignorant person. Unlike ordinary workers who get a fixed salary every month, if you let things screw up too badly, you need to be prepared for the possibility that your whole life will be wasted."

Hira understood what Kiyoi was saying. It didn't imply that they'd lose their passion*. They were the generation that grew up being taught from an early age that they could only fit a five-millimeter object into a five-millimeter gap. The so-called dream meant the wish of stuffing something one centimeter into the gap of five millimeters, and it was also their generation that was more likely to consider the risks of failure than their imagination of success at such times.

(T/N: The term "冷める" (sameru) is an intransitive verb that means to cool off. "Sameru" can also be used figuratively to mean that someone has lost interest in or has lost their passion for something.)