The Hero Show (Tales of the Unusual)

My memory is a bit hazy, but I think it was from "Tales of the Unusual." There was a man who worked as the lead in hero shows and his friend, the protagonist. One day, after they went to visit the protagonist's younger brother (who was a fan of the hero and was scheduled for surgery soon), the man got hit by a car and left in a coma. The man had an unmissable job coming up in a few days, and since the protagonist happened to be a similar build, the man's agency pressured him to fill in and wear the hero costume instead. With the audience watching, the protagonist, unable to move like the real hero, kept getting beaten up by the villains. Scenes of the brother's surgery and the original hero lying in the hospital were cut in, and eventually, a villain's clothesline hit the protagonist right in the neck, causing him to collapse on the spot. Then, the hero's spirit rose from the unconscious man's body and possessed the fallen protagonist. Moving like a totally different person, he brilliantly defeated the monsters. Soon after, the man regained consciousness, and the brother's surgery was a success.

If it ended there, it would be a heartwarming story, but the twist was that right before the possession—when he was hit by the clothesline and fell—the protagonist had actually died from a bad landing. Even though nobody was at fault, I remember feeling a lingering sense of unease, as if only the protagonist had been sacrificed.

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