1
The scene that greeted him when he opened his eyes again was not unfamiliar.
A fluorescent light with one tube missing.
Pitch-black mold blooming in every corner.
And tacky floral wallpaper.
There was no mistaking the one-room apartment he had lived in while working at Wooju Entertainment, with a deposit of 5 million won and monthly rent of 900,000 won, maintenance fees included.
"What? Did I seriously return to the past?"
Park Geon-ho got up and went into the bathroom attached to the room.
When he turned on the light, the dismal bathroom was exposed in all its glory.
But even more dismal was his old-fashioned appearance, which looked painfully unsophisticated.
Just in case, he rubbed cold water over his face.
Then he slapped his left cheek hard with his right hand.
It was cold, and it hurt.
Those were sensations he could not have felt in a dream.
"Haah, fuck. So I really did return to the past?"
He left the bathroom, put on his slippers, and stepped outside.
Then he climbed the stairs from memory and headed for the roof.
These were the days when he had done nothing but struggle in his attempt to become a manager.
The same city view (Urban View) where he had laughed and cried over cigarettes in those days stretched out before him.
"This is driving me crazy. Seriously."
He put a hand in his pocket in search of candy.
He needed the candy he ate whenever he was bewildered or irritated like this.
But all his hand found were cigarettes and a lighter.
"Did I not have them back then?"
Park Geon-ho awkwardly took out a cigarette and put it between his lips.
Click. Click. Click.
After some effort, he lit the lighter and touched the flame to the cigarette.
He thought he might choke because it had been so long since he smoked, but the acrid smoke flowed naturally into his lungs.
"Right. I used to be a chain-smoker."
As he exhaled the smoke that had circulated through his body, Park Geon-ho tried to settle his tangled emotions.
He did not know how any of this had happened.
But it seemed he had returned to the past instead of dying.
2
When had it been?
While killing time on NewTube, he had come across some video about the afterlife.
It claimed to contain accounts from people who had nearly died, but he turned it off halfway through.
"I could make up that kind of nonsense too."
Most people could not even properly remember the nightmare they had the night before.
How could anyone possibly remember an afterlife they claimed to have seen at death's door?
He had thought it was complete bullshit.
It was not.
The afterlife.
It truly existed.
Everything around him had been white.
It was as though he had been dropped into a massive studio painted entirely white.
Then someone in the distance had beckoned to him.
"Mr. Park Geon-ho!"
"......?"
"What are you staring at? We don't have time, so hurry over here."
As though dressed to match the pure white studio, the man wore a pure white suit, shoes, and even a hat. His expression resembled those of the overbearing producers Park Geon-ho sometimes encountered at broadcasting stations.
"Mr. Park Geon-ho. How many years have you been in this business?"
"Almost 20 years."
"And yet you walk off the set without permission in the middle of filming?"
"......What?"
"Didn't you know we were filming?"
The man he had never seen before was saying something absurd, yet Park Geon-ho understood it for some strange reason.
In other words, life was one long drama.
Could that be why the man called it walking off set after Park Geon-ho died in a car accident before his life had ended?
The man clicked his tongue.
"For someone who's eaten from enough catering trucks in his time......."
"I'm sorry."
"Even a supporting character should show some responsibility."
"......A supporting character?"
"Why? Did you think you were the lead, Mr. Park Geon-ho?"
This time, Park Geon-ho did not understand.
Wasn't the protagonist of one's own life supposed to be 'me'?
"You're not."
"I'm not?"
"The protagonist is Ms. Jo So-hee. You're a supporting character, Mr. Park Geon-ho. Nothing more than one of the countless supporting characters who prop up the protagonist, Ms. Jo So-hee."
"......!"
"Why are you glaring at me like that? Fine. I'll correct myself. You're a somewhat important supporting character. Happy now? But what good is importance? And yet you have no sense of responsibility?"
"You're saying I'm irresponsible?"
"An actor who acts however he pleases before filming has even ended is irresponsible. Isn't that right?"
"......!"
"Glaring at me again? Anyway, it was your first time, so I'll let it slide just this once. But when the reshoot starts, do a proper job. I won't forgive you twice. Understood?"
"......?"
"Will you stop glaring? Fine. I'll pay a little more attention to you this time. Wondering how? You'll know when you open your eyes again."
The man raised a hand and patted Park Geon-ho on the shoulder.
Had Jo So-hee been beside him, she would have shrieked at the man for daring to touch her manager.
Unfortunately, Jo So-hee's voice was nowhere to be heard.
Instead, familiar shouts came from somewhere nearby.
"We're rolling!"
"Camera rolling!"
"Sound rolling!"
"All right, let's go! Ready, action!"
Park Geon-ho instinctively closed his eyes at the sudden flash.
And when he opened them again...... he was in his one-room apartment.
"It's still absurd no matter how many times I think about it. So I'm a supporting character in the drama of Jo So-hee's life?"
More than having the life he had worked so hard to build dismissed.
What infuriated him was how naturally the thought arose that the man was not entirely wrong.
"So what? What do you expect me to do? Live in Jo So-hee's shadow all over again?"
He flicked off the cigarette ash and glared at the sky.
But he did not have the courage to lift his head all the way.
What if none of this was a dream and it truly was reality?
-I won't forgive you twice. Understood?
Even if he planned to defy the man, Park Geon-ho first needed to assess his current situation rationally.
"By the way...... where's the trash can up here?"
Park Geon-ho looked around, then tucked the cigarette butt into his pocket.
The rooftop was littered with cigarette butts.
Perhaps half of them had been discarded by him.
Was it because he had returned after living as the manager of South Korea's greatest actress?
He could no longer carelessly throw away cigarette butts as he had in the past.
3
The room felt impossibly cramped after he returned to it.
"How did I ever live here?"
Was it about 16.5 square meters—no, perhaps 13?
After excluding the tiny kitchen beside the entrance and the bathroom across from it, the living space seemed to be less than 10 square meters.
"Haah......."
He sat at the desk with a heavy sigh.
It might have been listed as a furnished room, but the desk was so old and musty it looked as though someone had picked it up off the street. He examined it, but there was no laptop or tablet in sight.
Just in case, he opened the drawer.
Inside were an old-model smartphone and a black notebook.
"Right. I used this back then."
Wooju Entertainment, which he had joined full of dreams, was one of South Korea's five major entertainment agencies.
But unlike its stature in the industry, its systems were outdated across the board.
"A notebook? Seriously? Everyone else was walking around with a tablet."
When he opened the notebook, crooked handwriting filled the pages.
No one else could read it.
The Geon-ho script that only he could decipher.
Rather than nostalgia, embarrassment made his face burn.
He put down the notebook and checked the phone.
April 1, 2025, was displayed on the screen of the shared phone Wooju Entertainment issued to its lowest-ranking managers.
The day he had been hit by a car while fleeing Jo So-hee was April 1, 2040.
"I've come back exactly 15 years."
He moved his finger and opened the Wooju Entertainment manager app.
He logged in with his fingerprint.
When he opened the schedule section under My Page, the relevant appointments appeared.
11:00—Actor Han Do-hoon, commercial shoot (Ilsan)
12:00—Actress Jo So-hee, meeting with Writer Woo Yeon-hee (Gangnam)
The corners of his mouth twisted at the familiar name.
"Right. I used to follow Do-hoon hyung around back then, didn't I?"
After spending two years as a road manager.
The first artist assigned to him when he became a full-fledged manager at Wooju Entertainment was Han Do-hoon.
Han Do-hoon was the first artist Park Geon-ho had managed for more than a year.
Unlike most actors, he was easygoing and genuinely kind, and Park Geon-ho remembered following him like an older brother.
And the next one was Jo So-hee.
"They're complete opposites."
Han Do-hoon, whose acting left something to be desired but who was endlessly considerate, versus Jo So-hee, who was good at acting but cared only about herself.
If he had to choose one of them as a manager?
There was nothing to consider. He would choose Han Do-hoon without question.
"I can polish Do-hoon hyung's acting while I work beside him."
Just then, BZZZT, the phone vibrated.
Team Leader Han Sang-woo.
He was another man just as good-natured as Han Do-hoon.
And the supervisor who led Team 5, which included Han Do-hoon and Jo So-hee.
"Hello?"
Park Geon-ho answered in a pleased voice, but a torrent of abuse came back at him.
-You crazy X! Where are you? I asked where you are!
"Me? I'm at home?"
-Home? Home? Hooome? Have you lost your mind? Do you know what time it is?! What time is it?!
"It's... 11?"
At that moment, Park Geon-ho realized what he had overlooked.
He had become so preoccupied with accepting his inexplicable regression that he had missed Han Do-hoon's schedule.
Given Han Do-hoon's strict punctuality, he must have gone to the set on his own.
It seemed Team Leader Han Sang-woo had belatedly learned what happened.
'Sang-woo. Even so, isn't cursing me out like that a little much?'
Had Park Geon-ho regressed two years later, he might have voiced his resentment.
But as he remembered it, Team Leader Han Sang-woo was someone he hardly dared look in the eye at this point in time.
"......I'm sorry."
-Forget it. Return everything you were issued and get lost! In all my life, you're the first bastard I've seen blow off a schedule just one month after officially joining!
The call that had been spitting fire abruptly cut off.
Any other rookie manager would probably have been terrified that he was about to be fired.
But Park Geon-ho, who had survived almost 20 years in this industry, was different.
"He talks big now, but if I actually say I'm quitting, he'll buy me a drink and try to talk me out of it."
Park Geon-ho called Han Do-hoon first.
Han Do-hoon's voice came through as though he had been waiting for the call.
-Oh, Mr. Geon-ho! I'm at the studio now.
"I'm sorry. Do-hoon hyung—no, Mr. Han. I only meant to change clothes, but I passed out."
-Haha. It's fine. I had a feeling that might have happened. Anyway, I need to get my makeup done now, so I'll see you later~
"Yes, sir. I'll be there right away."
Team Leader Han Sang-woo had raised hell as though a disaster had occurred.
But the schedule was proceeding without a single problem.
Even if Park Geon-ho set out at a leisurely pace now, he would arrive at the studio before the shoot ended.
After that, all he had to do was look after Han Do-hoon and return to the company.
"But...... do I really have to do this all over again?"
Park Geon-ho lowered himself back down after half-rising.
Somehow, he had returned to 15 years ago.
And it was still before he had become properly entangled with Jo So-hee.
Even though that ill-mannered bastard had called it a reshoot.
Did Park Geon-ho truly have to live exactly the same life as before?
"No. If that were the case, there'd be no reason for me to regress with my memories intact, would there?"
No matter how much easier military service had become these days, no one wanted to serve twice.
That was because they remembered how fucking miserable military life was.
The same applied to being a rookie manager.
He had already endured it once. Repeating that fucking miserable life would be idiotic.
"What else is a reshoot? You do it because you weren't satisfied with the first take, don't you?"
Park Geon-ho convinced himself with a plausible excuse.
To be blunt, even Jo So-hee in her prime could not perfectly reproduce a scene she had already filmed.
"And I'm not even managing Jo So-hee right now."
He tapped his fingertips on the desk as he organized his thoughts.
"There's no need to force myself to stay at Wooju. I'll move somewhere decent. I can build experience there, then join Jo So-hee when she goes independent, can't I?"
If the past repeated itself, he would become entangled with Jo So-hee next year.
And the year after that, he would begin managing her.
After struggling for three years, he would follow her when she declared her independence in 2030.
"Was I truly useful to Jo So-hee during my Wooju days?"
At the time, he had mistakenly believed he was.
But judging it objectively, he had not been much help to Jo So-hee while they were at Wooju Entertainment.
He had been nothing more than a quick-witted manager who was reasonably good at keeping her happy.
He had probably proposed changing companies thinking it would be nice if Jo So-hee came with him, but that it would not matter if she did not.
"Five years from now is what really matters. There's no need to get involved with Jo So-hee before then."
At that perfectly timed moment, Team Leader Han Sang-woo called him.
"Yes. This is Park Geon-ho."
Park Geon-ho deliberately lowered his voice.
If the man started spewing bullshit again, he intended to confront him.
But Team Leader Han Sang-woo's voice had changed in the brief interval.
-Hey! Where are you?
"I'm on my way back now."
-Don't come to the company. I'll text you an address, so go there.
"......?"
-You know Writer Woo Yeon-hee, right? Go there and keep Writer Woo Yeon-hee occupied for just one hour! Hurry!