Chapter 92

Chapter 92

We locked eyes and eventually, I muttered quietly, “Thanks... I’ll probably remember that story every time I go in to record now.”

“Haha!” Cheongryeo waved his hand carelessly. “No need to worry. I made that all up, actually. It’s just a new variation of the old studio legend.”

“Hmm. I see.”

“But you do know that the legend is real, right?”

I stared at him with some alarm.

Cheongryeo laughed to himself, babbling on for a bit, before vanishing into the bathroom saying he needed to wash up.

“Phew...” Somehow I’d gotten through that. I tried not to look as fatigued as I felt.

He definitely knows something. He knew something whether it was about the goddamned status window or time travel and had just tried to get a feel for what I knew by using that story as an excuse.

But how does he know? He didn’t seem certain about me, which meant that he hadn’t taken a look at my status himself. Maybe that meant he had some kind of background knowledge and had deduced something using situational evidence.

No... It’s hard to say even that much for certain. There’s still too much I don’t know. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I pretended I was tidying my hair. I needed to decide what to do next.

Cheongryeo returned before long. “Good thing I brought a battery-powered kettle with me. Mix this with some of the cold water.”

“Oh. Thank you very much.” I accepted the device he handed me. I’d assumed it was a vacuum flask, but it was actually an electric kettle.

No wonder the coffee was piping hot. I marveled at the production team’s unnecessary attention to detail, going so far as only providing cold water in the bathroom. Setting those thoughts aside, I turned my attention elsewhere.

Status window! I needed to see his stats. In my experience so far, traits and status abnormalities tended to hint at what kind of person I was dealing with.

Nothing to lose by just looking. There was a hint I wasn’t expecting to see when the popup appeared, however.

[Name: Cheongryeo (Shin Jaehyeon)]

Information not yet available.

* Unmet condition: View the second truth

I quickly turned toward the bathroom to hide my agitation from the cameras. I shuffled slowly inside before closing the door behind me. There were no cameras to be seen.

“Phew...”

I was still wearing my mic though, so I kept my mouth shut just in case I ended up saying something damning. I summoned the status window again.

* Unmet condition: View the second truth

Yep, I read it right the first time. In order to see Cheongryeo’s status window, I had to accept the reward I’d purposely yet to acknowledge.

Is the system pushing me to take it? Alternatively, perhaps Cheongryeo had something to do with all of this, hence I needed to learn the truth first.

This feels like the kind of level-based restriction you’d find in a video game. Both options were a possible explanation and I couldn’t be sure which was true.

Am I supposed to willingly accept a new status abnormality based on this ambiguous hint? That would be crazy. Which was why it was bothering me.

If the goal was to force me to take the reward, the system could have resorted to more extreme methods to make it happen. What if the status window was hinting that Cheongryeo really had some kind of clue to what was really going on?

I need to make a decision. I can’t live with these status abnormalities forever. My assumption that they might one day vanish if I kept clearing missions, strictly speaking, was just wishful thinking. And the maximum I could delay it for was only three hundred days. Beyond that point, I’d be forced to accept the reward.

I should just learn what I can for now. It was impossible to predict Cheongryeo’s behavior as things stood. I would accept the prize since we were trying to figure each other out.

Show pop-up.

[First Place Reached!]

You reached first place on the public TV music show, Inki Music!

Time cap: Satisfied (Perfect)

Status abnormality: “Get First Place or Die!” removed!

: Reveal the Truth ☜ Click!

I slowly lifted my hand and touched the button to reveal the truth. Just like the last time, everything faded to black.

***

I was standing on a rooftop, a frigid wind blowing. There was a man standing nearby and smoking on the roof, the cigarette smoke scattered about by the cold winter breeze. One might have expected him to cough when the cold air hit his lungs, but the man seemed impervious to it.

He simply fixed his piercing gaze on the softly glowing night scenery. An electronic billboard was playing an ad on the opposite building. It was for a brand he’d represented once. Or rather, his group had.

Where did everything go wrong? The man studied the vivid colors of the advertisement, lapsing into thought. Did they attempt to expand overseas at the wrong time? Was it a concept that was ill-suited to the times? Had the members lost their touch? Were the agency’s investors the ones to blame, always coming up with useless ideas? He soon came to a conclusion.

We were doomed to failure from the very beginning. The members were all wrong. Too many of them hadn’t added anything to the group. In fact, they’d done nothing but drag everyone down.

I wouldn’t have picked those people if I’d been the one holding the reins. He could admit it. He’d lived his life wrong.

Emotions, tears. They’re nothing but marketing devices. People were contrary creatures that always wanted what they didn’t have. Personal reasons, unavoidable circumstances... All such things were nothing more than cheap excuses used to sell a product. Acknowledging it gave him relief.

With a smile, he threw his cigarette butt over the railing. Then he followed it, the railing rattling noisily under his foot as he used it to launch himself over the edge. He fell from the high-rise building and straight onto the road.

When he woke up, however, he found himself in a small bedroom inside a familiar house.

“What the hell?”

He picked up the old phone on the side table, which reflected his face on its dark screen. It was his own face that stared back at him... the one he wore before he became Cheongryeo.

***

“Oh!”

Gasping as I returned to consciousness, I immediately turned on the water. The faucet screeched and cold water poured out, which I splashed my face with. The experience had been just like the time I’d learned the truth about Park Moondae—I’d seen his past from a third-person perspective. Only this time... it had been Cheongryeo I’d seen.

Oh f*ck. He’d traveled back to the past, too. It wasn’t hard to guess that he’d mucked up his career somehow, then made it successfully the second time around. An incredulous laugh escaped me as I realized that he was the perfect subject material for a web novel, but I was intensely annoyed more than anything else.

Is this why I couldn’t see his status window? The truth reward would have been rendered pointless if I’d learned of his past by looking at his status window. More importantly, why was learning about his past even considered a reward?

Park Moondae’s past was directly linked to my situation, so I could understand being shown parts of it. But what did Cheongryeo’s past actions have to do with me and how was learning about it supposed to be a reward?

The system should have given me a hint about my status abnormalities! It took a long time, just submerging my face in cold water for my anger to subside. Only once I’d literally cooled off did I manage to arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

This means I should be able to learn from him. Certainly, if I could question someone who’d experienced the same strange, supernatural phenomena that I had, I’d have an easier time understanding what was going on.

In that sense, the status window seemed to be slipping hints to me from time to time, just like one would progress through a real video game.

Ding!

Receive an Award or Die

: You will die unless you receive a Rookie of the Year award from the most reputable awards ceremony in Korea.

Days remaining: 365

But then again... maybe it just wanted nothing more than to see me suffer.

This is better than the last one, at least. TeSTAR winning a Rookie of the Year award was all but guaranteed unless something went seriously wrong.

The vague wording regarding winning it from the most reputable awards ceremony bothered me a little, but there were only three it could really be referring to. Objectively speaking, we would be very hard to beat. Popularity was very difficult to win these days and no new idol group that debuted in the latter half of the year was likely to outdo TeSTAR of Idol Inc. fame.

Getting first place on public television is much harder. Feeling a little calmer, I wiped the water from my face. Then I took the kettle Cheongryeo had handed me and left the bathroom.

“Thank you very much. It was useful.”

“No need to thank me. I’m glad it came in handy.”

After returning the kettle, I sat down opposite Cheongryeo before retrieving some snacks from my backpack. “Since we’re trying to stay up all night, would you like some sweets?”

“Oh, thanks.” He accepted a handful of the candy but only pretended to eat them.

I can’t tell if he’s on a diet or just suspicious of me. Pretending to rummage through my backpack, I checked his status window again. This time all the details were visible.

[Name: Cheongryeo (Shin Jaehyeon)]

Singing: B+ (B+)

Dancing: S+ (S+)

Physical attractiveness: A (S-)

Charm: A (A+)

Trait: Appraisal (A)

Status abnormality: Revision (deactivated)

What the hell? His stats are damn impressive. I’d been intending to look into his traits first and foremost, but his stats gave me pause. I nearly bit my tongue.

At least he doesn’t have infinite potential. I’d sort of assumed that his stats would all be marked with EX like mine, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Be that as it may, let’s take a look at that trait first and foremost.

[Appraisal (A)]

: That which is valuable is rare and there’s garbage everywhere you look.

- Human resource appraisal ability +150%

So he’s got some kind of beefed-up businessman talent. If the scene I’d been shown earlier was real, then he might have gained this ability by thinking back to his previous life. One thing that bothered me was that he only had one trait.

Did he not get given the chance to use a trait slot machine? That would be a pretty stark difference to my own status window. I moved on to the status abnormality.

Revision (Deactivated)

: Let’s try again

- Return to the beginning, should you fail.

I felt a chill go down my spine, as I thought back to the conversation we’d just had.

“He was shocked but did his best to right the mistakes of his previous life and make sure he succeeded without incident this time around... But what do you know? He kept on dying in accidents and each time it happened, he was sent back once more!”

That creepy story he’d told me earlier... Was it his own story? Did this mean that if he failed to remove a status abnormality like mine, he’d go back to the first moment the status window had appeared?

It was an eerie prospect. However, this particular status abnormality had been deactivated. Learning as much was in itself huge. It meant there was a way to deactivate them.

Well, looks like I’ve managed to figure out the basics. Now to do some additional investigation. I put down my backpack and looked over at Cheongryeo again.

“Are you done looking through your snacks?”

“Yes. I seem to have brought fewer than I thought I did.”

“Haha.”

You aren’t sure about me, are you? This bastard still hadn’t figured me out yet. He’d only been feeling me out. That meant I had the upper hand when it came to what we knew.

My turn to play some mind tricks. Let’s see how you like it.

“Uh, Cheongryeo. Would you mind giving me some advice?”

“Of course. I’m not sure if I’m qualified to give it... but is something bothering you?”

“Yes. The thing is, I’ve been wondering how things were between you and your members when you first started.”

“Uh, by first started, you mean...?”

I picked up my coffee, which had grown cold, and slowly took a sip. I continued explaining, “My group was formed in a peculiar process... It gave us something to bond over, you see. I was wondering how it works for other groups.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Can you tell me about the process that led up to your group debuting together?”

He stared at me without speaking. In the scene I was shown, he’d concluded that it had been his members who’d been the main cause of VTIC’s failure.

This bastard replaced his old members for sure. I wasn’t sure how a mere trainee could have managed to do so, but I was all but certain. The current iteration of VTIC was a solid, top-tier group that had experienced no controversies.

“Hmm, that’s an interesting question.” Cheongryeo smiled and took a handful of the snacks I’d given him.

The nuts crunched as he chewed on them thoughtfully, and I waited, wearing a serious expression, for him to continue.

Time for you to feel nervous.