I'd just been reprimanded for falling behind even an intern reporter in views.
Whether the desk had made an example of me to tighten discipline in the office or really meant for me to get out because I was useless, I'd turned his intentions over in my head until I ended up drinking too much.
I walked into the Daily Entertainment Issue office with my mind on my poker face, so that no one would catch how much the hangover hurt.
"Lee San-woo, huge news! Our first server crash!"
Gil Sang-ik, who'd joined the company the same year as me, latched onto my side and kept clapping right in front of my face, so my head started to ring.
"A server crash? What's that got to do with me?"
"I fired it off under your name."
"Fired off what?"
"The Chae-eun article! You called me in the night to say you'd seen Chae-eun, remember."
"...Huh?"
In that instant, scenes from last night that had vanished to the far side of my memory clawed their way through my head.
It was me, standing in a dark alley, swaying on my feet as I talked to Sang-ik on the phone.
'I'm telling you, it's the celebrity Chae-eun. She was just making a scene in front of a club, then got into some man's car and left.'
"...So?"
"When I asked if you had proof, you even sent me a photo, remember. I wrote it up for you before dawn. The desk sent it out the moment he got in, and the server went down. How are you feeling right now, sir?"
I knocked away the fist Sang-ik had brought up to my mouth as if he were interviewing me, then pulled up the portal site's entertainment page on my phone and checked the article.
[Exclusive] Actress A's Midnight Nude Show in the Street... Drunken Rampage 'Shocking'
"A nude show?"
"I wrote that she was making a scene, okay? The desk changed it to a nude show when he sent it out."
Trash reporter. Sang-ik only mouthed that last part, and the grin never left his face.
With a headline like this, I could guess how the comments on the community boards were going.
Appalled by the blatant headline on an article that had gone out under my name, I slowly worked a mouth that refused to open.
"You're saying I told you to post this?"
"Would you have? I wrote it on my own because I was afraid you'd drag your feet over checking again and lose it. It didn't sit right with me, watching the desk go apeshit on you yesterday. How about it, nice having a guy from your own year as team leader, isn't it?"
'I'm writing an exclusive tomorrow, so look forward to it. I'll fact-check once I'm at the office, so....'
Right. I'd added that I'd verify first and write the article after. But thanks to Sang-ik's meddling, the article had ended up as spilled milk.
And with enough impact to bring down Daily Entertainment Issue's server, no less. A bad feeling crowded in on me.
"Did you check this with her agency? Did you hear their side of what happened?"
"There hasn't been a single call from them so far. What is there to check?"
"......."
In the pixelated photo, Chae-eun was crying. As the sight of her wailing with her face contorted came back to me vividly, a chill ran down the back of my neck.
I started searching the phone in my hand for the number of Chae-eun's manager.
Just then, a sharp gasp, the sound of a breath being held, came from the intern sitting next to me.
"...S-Senior. Please look at this."
A trembling voice. When I turned to look, I saw the intern struggling to hide a tense expression. Something had clearly gone wrong.
"What is it?"
"Chae-eun. They're saying she's dead. News Lunch just put out a breaking report."
"What?!"
I shoved the intern aside, chair and all, and this was what the monitor said.
[Breaking] 'Nude Disturbance Allegations' Chae-eun Jumps to Her Death From Her Home, Wrapped in a Blanket
***
It was the rooftop of the funeral hall, where the darkness had settled thick and heavy.
A strong wind wrapped around my whole body. I shouted at Jo Du-hwan, who was standing precariously on top of the railing.
"Please come down!"
By now, I could even taste blood in my throat as I pleaded with Jo Du-hwan.
"Chief Jo Du-hwan—!!"
When I wrung out a voice that wouldn't come and shouted once more, Jo Du-hwan turned around.
His eyes, sunk cold and still, looked down at me as if to pierce right through me.
"Reporter Lee San-woo of Daily Entertainment Issue."
Jo Du-hwan spoke my outlet and my name exactly.
I already had five business cards from Chief Jo Du-hwan of Yong Entertainment, one handed over every time we met.
The man who'd gnawed away at my self-esteem by acting every single time as though we'd never met had finally, only now that we were on this funeral hall rooftop, looked me straight in the eye and said my name.
"Yes......! Please, just talk with me."
I'd never clung to anyone this desperately before. Nor had my life ever held a situation this dramatic.
"Get up here."
"Sorry?"
"I said get up here and talk. You fucker."
"......!"
At Jo Du-hwan's order, I steadied my shaking legs and climbed up onto the railing. Right now, I had to be grateful just to be given a chance to speak.
"Chief."
When I stood beside him and called to him again, he let out a deep, bitter sigh and began to talk.
"Hah... She was trying to give it all back, apparently."
"Sorry?"
"That thing. That man had bought her those clothes, so she was telling him to take them all back, apparently."
"Ah......."
That was the full story behind the nude show I'd witnessed last night.
Instead of calling Sang-ik to salvage my pride, I should have called Jo Du-hwan first and found out what was going on.
"That kid Chae-eun, she's a girl holding up her whole household. Her sick grandmother is in a nursing hospital, and she earns the money and looks after her all on her own."
This is driving me crazy. Of all things, there's a story like that behind it too.
"That's why she's weak when it comes to money. Even so, I really didn't think she'd go and cling to a money source who'd said it was over. Who does she think Kang Cha-hyeon is, going to him like that?"
Kang Cha-hyeon is counted among the country's top actors. It's a show-business family in which not only Kang Cha-hyeon but his wife, a beautiful actress, and his father-in-law, a film director, are all famous.
So the man who'd been with Chae-eun was a married man.
The reason Chae-eun, a poor and powerless rookie actress, had to jump.
I had no way of knowing the details, but once the beginning and end of the story were threaded together, I couldn't help the bitterness I felt.
"Kang Cha-hyeon, of all people......."
Whoosh— When a fierce gust swept across the railing, Jo Du-hwan's body lurched.
"Chief!"
Startled, I snatched Jo Du-hwan's arm on reflex and pulled him toward me.
THUNK!
By the time Jo Du-hwan stretched out a hand and caught hold of the railing, my body, pushed away by exactly as much as he'd been pulled, had gone as light as a feather.
"Huh...?"
The last thing I took in as I fell was Jo Du-hwan's contorted face, looking down at me.
"And if it is Kang Cha-hyeon. What are you plotting, you trash-reporter bastard, with your eyeballs darting around like that?"
I had no time to answer. I was plummeting fast toward the ground.
***
Gasp!
I jolted upright, flailing my hands at the empty air, and the place I found myself in was a hospital room. Even as I heaved out the breath that had been stuck in me, the hospital smell stinging my nose was familiar.
"This is......."
The person in front of me was Mom. The white blanket over her moved faintly up and down.
Mom was breathing.
'Mom is... alive?'
That can't be. Mom died.
I clearly remember the funeral I held for her with my own hands.
"......."
I took out the phone in my pants pocket and checked the date.
[March 31, 202X]
It was 3 years ago.
I'd regressed. Surely not... is something like a status window going to pop up too?
Ding!
The phone I was looking at sounded a message alert. The sender was me.
Name: Lee San-woo
Occupation: Yong Entertainment Intern
Level: F-Grade (10 points left until next level-up)
Stats: Affinity 0, Quick Wits 0, Decisiveness 0, Negotiation 0, Stamina 0
"......."
A Yong Entertainment intern? Does that mean I'm a manager?
But then.
"F-Grade?"
Ding!
As if in reply to my small voice, one more message arrived.
Level Grade Guide
F-Grade Intern (+10)
E-Grade Full-Time Employee (+20)
D-Grade Chief (+30)
C-Grade Division Head (+50)
B-Grade Executive Director (+70)
A-Grade CEO (+100)
Yong Ent's positions, from intern to CEO, were divided into ranks.
It seemed to be built so that I'd level up once the sum of my stat points reached the threshold.
'Affinity, Quick Wits, Decisiveness, Negotiation, Stamina...? I'm supposed to fill these up?'
It had written out in fine detail everything I'd never had, and sure enough, they were still completely empty now.
"What am I supposed to do with this?"
Just then, ding!
Yet another text message arrived.
[Main Quest Triggered: Become the No. 1 Manager in the Industry]
[Quest Details: Make Yong Entertainment No. 1 in the industry]
[Reward: Wish Ticket]
"Hah...."
I stared at the phone hard enough to bore a hole in it.
Not just a manager, but the No. 1 manager in the industry, it says.
Having already regressed, I had no intention of being shocked by a quest. But making a mockery of that thought, both my hands were gripping the phone like a lifeline.
It was the very phone I'd used before I died.
'Could it be......?'
I opened the folder in my phone's album where I kept my screenshots and checked the pictures.
As I swiped through them one by one, a gleam slowly came into my eyes.
The phone held, fully intact, the main screens of the portal site's entertainment page that I'd captured over my 3 years as a reporter.
From all kinds of content spanning broadcasting, film, and the music scene to the incidents and accidents of famous celebrities, every major event that will happen in the entertainment world over the next 3 years is in the palm of my hand.
'As long as I have this information.......'
My quickly moving finger faltered when it reached the last page.
The day I died. In other words, exactly 3 years from today.
What was posted on the main screen of the entertainment page was my name.
[Exclusive] Yong Ent CEO Lee San-woo Dies Suddenly... Aged 30
What Happens to 'Deceased' Lee San-woo's Fortune of Hundreds of Billions? "Inherited by His Mother"
I'd never seen these articles before, but I recognized them as mine because they were spoiling the content of the quest.
It meant that I'd become the CEO of Yong Entertainment.
On top of that, Mom is alive too, and there are even assets in the hundreds of billions.
In that case, this isn't a simple regression. This is a different world.
"So here, I pull it off."
Instead of carrying out the quest, could I maybe turn all the information I have into money right now?
If I poured that money into Mom's treatment, wouldn't Mom live, and wouldn't I be spared dying as Yong Ent's CEO, too?
Now, who has enough money to buy this information? I was just about to open the contacts app on my phone.
Beeeeeeep—!
[Rule Violation Triggered]
[Quest Violated: Become the No. 1 Manager in the Industry]
[Penalty for Quest Non-Performance: Immediate Death]
"Hah, hup! Hack, hack....... C-cancel!"
The breath that had been cut off burst out in a rush, scraping sharply up my throat, and I snapped wide awake.
The penalty for not performing the quest is immediate death, of all things.
I had no intention of dying again the moment I woke up, so the option of dodging the quest was the first thing I had to cross out.
To live, I have to become the CEO of Yong Entertainment and the No. 1 manager in the industry. With the Wish Ticket I get for completing the quest, I should be able to save my life.
This world will be only slightly different from the previous world, or only slightly the same. Or it might be exactly the same, or completely different.
If I wield the previous world's 3 years of information, which only I know, to my heart's content and move one step ahead of everyone else in this world, I have a chance.
I will get as close to my own death as I can and snatch the life that holds hundreds of billions.
But why Yong Entertainment, of all places? For now, I walked out of the hospital's main gate, meaning to go to Yong Ent and get some information.
'I hope it has nothing to do with the previous world.'
But the person who stepped into my path as I was thinking that was, unfortunately, Jo Du-hwan, the last face I'd seen in the previous world.
"Can't you move any faster? You're the punk who said he'd just look in on his mother for a minute, and you took so long coming down that I was about to call you. Where else are you going to find a senior like me?"
Maybe because of our ill-fated tie in the previous world, I felt an instinctive revulsion every time Jo Du-hwan spat out a word.
"......."
Is this Jo Du-hwan the same person as the Jo Du-hwan of the previous world? I was searching every inch of his face.
"The taxi's almost here, so take Chae-eun and get going to the set, quick."
Jo Du-hwan, having checked the taxi's location on his phone, gave me the order.
"...Chae-eun?"
Only then did Chae-eun, who'd been hidden beside Du-hwan and hard to see, come into view. Her face as she dipped her head slightly in greeting looked stiff somehow.
Is she instinctively uncomfortable around me too, maybe?
"I hear the CEO's done with his appointment too. Once he comes out, he'll nag about why you two are still here. You want to end up actually late, standing around listening to him nag about how a rookie going to shoot her debut has no business showing up just on time? Huh?"
You're the one doing the nagging. Jo Du-hwan, who showed no sign of meaning to stop talking, opened the back door of the taxi that had pulled up in front of us and had Chae-eun get in first.
"Chae-eun, have a good shoot. And you, come back to the office once the schedule's done."
"...Yes!"
As soon as Chae-eun answered, I quickly climbed into the taxi too and shut the back door. The cozy taxi, with Jo Du-hwan's voice shut out, had the good sense to pull away at once.
"Haah......."
I have to accept it. In this world, I'm Chae-eun's manager at Yong Entertainment.