The Second Lead is Fate’s favorite.

He knows this should make him the hero if he were living in another story, but for this genre, that only means being bound in an inextricable fortune of misery: cruel family, mountains of debt, whatever’s most thematically suitable. He comforts himself with the thought that being hated by Fate in this much meticulous detail must be some kind of special favor, compared to the promiscuous happily-ever-afters flung haphazardly at the lucky First Lead. The First Lead doesn’t even realize how lucky he is. The Second Lead is certain, at least, about the superiority of his character arc.

•

The Second Lead is the audience’s favorite.

The camera caresses him, and he twists his beautiful face into an expression of distress carefully hidden from everyone else. Nobody watches except for the viewers’ voyeur eyes. To them, he will play up, lay all his cards on the table. It might be a losing game, but that doesn’t mean he can’t go out in style. He shouts at his father and spends the night out in the cold, gets into fights, so that blood can be artistically smeared across his cheekbones and in the plush corner of his mouth. The Second Lead is certain, at least, about the superiority of his bone structure.

•

The Second Lead is having a bad day.

It’s the same as every other bad day, arranged so that he comes close, so close, to his cure, but the solution to this equation is an impossible one. He can’t bury his sorrows in someone else as a false answer, because fate and this story demand that he remain true. He cannot create any opportunity that might alter the course of his destiny. He is cursed to meet her, the reason for his existence, in every other scene; but she turns away behind a curtain of hair and disappears into the arms of the First Lead. Caught in their own ephemeral bad days as the music swells and the cameras swoop around to catch their kiss in many frenetic angles, neither of them notices him lurking under the trees. The Second Lead, wearing an expression of more sincere distress than usual, goes home and stares at his reflection in the lens to make sure he’s there, that he hasn’t disappeared yet. He is certain, at least, that he’ll last until the final credits roll.

•

The Second Lead is allowed one wild card confession.

He hoards it, biding his time, spinning out the spool of friendship as long as it lasts, until the perfect moment. Of course, his timing won’t matter, perfect or not. Whatever he might say or feel or pretend will come too late to change her mind. This doesn’t keep the Second Lead from hoping that, this time, perhaps he will get it right. Perhaps he will get her on a day when she’s just a little extra pissed at the First Lead for what he has or hasn’t said; perhaps he will arrive at the hagwon just a few minutes earlier with an umbrella to catch her as she leaves; perhaps they will sit talking about nothing on the swing set like they have so many times before—but, this time, their laughter will fill the night sky overhead, so that there is no room for the audience, for the First Lead, for the story to snatch them apart.

Perhaps, once, he will be able to make her choose him. He hopes, nothing certain, but if he gives up hope, he has no function left.

•

The Second Lead ponders his future.

After the last scene he’s grateful to get a few lines in, he catches up on sleep. Takes a vacation and allows himself to smile at another pretty girl that, blissfully, he will never see again. Does passably well at work or school and stays out of trouble. It’s a quiet life, revived from time to time by discussion threads, fanfictions, demands for a spin-off. He’s gone through it so many times before.

After all, a happy ending is not the true ending. Neither is an unhappy one. So long as he is remembered, he may persist.

***

Cressida Blake Roe is a biracial writer of speculative and literary fiction, with work appearing or forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Chestnut Review, Lightspeed, Tupelo Quarterly, XRAY, and elsewhere. Recent stories have been nominated for the Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist. www.cblakeroe.wordpress.com