Episode 5. The Boomer System (4)
My mood plummeted straight back down to hell.
I’d traveled back in time a whole nine years, only to end up boarding the overtime train of my own accord all over again. It was miserable.
In exchange, I lost my stamina, happiness, and sense of accomplishment, and gained basic steps and 20 EXP.
“A rewarding fucking day.”
I felt disillusioned with life.
Even so, instead of giving up on everything, I began tidying up meticulously. The security guard got off work at midnight, so I had to vacate the practice room before then.
Nothing would make others work overtime because of me. If that happened, I’d feel so guilty I might just die.
After turning off every light in the practice room, the already deathly silent office building felt even more desolate. The familiar air of overtime work settled over me.
Just as I was about to sink into gloom, I sensed a presence in the lobby. Soon, the shadow of a tall figure stretched across the corridor.
The shadow belonged to Choe Jeho.
He was merely standing at the desk, yet Choe Jeho looked incredibly grim.
It definitely wasn’t because I disliked the guy that I was only seeing his negative sides. Really.
Choe Jeho, who’d been walking toward me, pulled out his earphones when our eyes met. I asked him in a voice full of suspicion.
“You haven’t left yet?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m only asking just in case, but were you waiting for me?”
“Yeah.”
Choe Jeho answered every question with a single word, as if annoyed.
“Why were you waiting?”
“Do you think a guy who came to the company for the first time today can even find the dorm properly?”
“Don’t tell me you stayed because you were worried?”
“Jeong Seongbin said he’d stay, but it was too late for the kids to be out.”
He meant he hadn’t stayed because he wanted to, but so what.
Our prospective leader was eighteen years old. If anyone had a conscience, Choe Jeho should have been the one to stay this late instead of a minor.
Still, because I knew Choe Jeho’s personality well enough—he truly lived alone in this world—I patted him on the back and sent him wordless praise for his consideration, forcing at least a strained smile.
Choe Jeho was greatly displeased.
* * *
When we got back to the dorm, Lee Cheonghyeon, who used the top bunk above me, was still awake waiting for us.
“Why weren’t you asleep yet?”
“I was waiting for you, hyung!”
When I pointed at Choe Jeho, Lee Cheonghyeon pointed right back at me with a bold look.
Were there toxic hazing rituals in the idol world too, like newbie initiations?
Things like buying thirty cups of coffee by yourself. Or washing everyone’s shoes at the dorm.
When I looked at him with eyes that said, *I didn’t know you were that kind of guy…,* Lee Cheonghyeon panicked.
“Why are you looking at me with such fierce eyes?”
“Nothing, I just wondered if you were about to haze me.”
If he were going to do something cruel at this hour, it’d be making me buy lunchboxes from every convenience store brand, or ordering packed bone hangover soup from a 24-hour restaurant and having me deliver it to the front door before it got cold.
To someone like me who’d run cigarette errands from Gangnam to Gangbuk, that was nothing.
I steeled myself and was trying to recall what restaurants we’d passed on the way when Lee Cheonghyeon spoke.
“Who would order hazing like that!”
“You’re not going to?”
“Of course not! Why would you say something so scary?”
I’d already been running a simulation in my head asking the hangover soup owner to pack some diced radish kimchi too. If not, never mind.
While Choe Jeho, who had lost interest in us early on, went to wash up, Lee Cheonghyeon sat on the floor next to my bed. I ended up sitting on the floor alongside him.
“They say Gang Giyeon has inflammation in his ankle. I saw earlier that he was wearing a brace.”
It seemed Lee Cheonghyeon had waited for me to talk about Gang Giyeon’s ankle.
He’d been the noisiest when Gang Giyeon said it hurt, but now he seemed to have calmed down quite a bit.
“Then he’ll have to take a break from practice for a while.”
“Who knows? He’s terribly stubborn.”
He was the stubborn type, all right. I nodded in agreement with Lee Cheonghyeon.
“How did you know, hyung?”
“What, about Giyeon’s ankle?”
“Yeah. None of us knew.”
“I just… I didn’t notice when I was up close. I saw it when I looked from a distance.”
If I said here…
*I came from the future, and thanks to the proxy stanning the boss ordered me to do at the company, I learned Gang Giyeon has a weak ankle, so I was confident my guess wasn’t wrong.*
…there was no way he’d believe me. I didn’t really want to explain at length either.
Whether he truly believed my half-hearted answer or not, Lee Cheonghyeon’s eyes went wide.
“You must have good dynamic vision, hyung. It’s not easy to notice something like that at a glance.”
Usually, when someone who doesn’t know anything happens to guess right, people just chalk it up to beginner’s luck, don’t they?
This kid must be pretty generous with his assessment of others.
“I must’ve just gotten lucky. If you rewatched the video, you’d probably see it right away too.”
“I actually watched the video with Seongbin when we got back to the dorm, and it didn’t show at all. I think your eye for detail is no joke, hyung.”
It wasn’t an eye for detail but years of accumulated big data, yet I kept my mouth shut.
If I was going to stand out, I’d rather do it by improving my skills through practice, not by drawing attention for strange reasons.
I took the chance while Choe Jeho came back from washing up to say I should wash up too and stood from my spot.
Lee Cheonghyeon looked disappointed but returned to his place obediently. He was quick to read the room.
After finishing my shower and lying down in bed, I finally felt that the day had ended.
*If possible, I want to figure out more about the system at times like this. But will it be difficult?*
Nothing was more of a headache than issues popping up out of nowhere while you were quietly working.
While I wanted to minimize such unfortunate incidents as much as possible, the system really appeared before my eyes. It seemed like if I just desperately wished for it to come out, it showed up.
This time, the message that appeared was the one I’d seen before.
+
[SYSTEM] Handover Progress Status
▷ Work Period Notification: February 1X, 20XX (Synchronization Complete and Cannot Be Altered)
▷ Manual Check
▷ Process Check
+
Instead, two of the items had lines drawn through them. They seemed to indicate completion.
*The manual must mean the Life Reuse Manual.*
Just thinking about that manual made me furious, so I decided to set it aside.
That left only checking the process.
I tried imagining checking the process hard in my head. Then text related to the process naturally appeared. The speed at which it linked with my brain was considerable.
+
[SYSTEM] ‘Process’ applies to ‘Party B.’
▷ ‘Work’ or ‘KPI’ will be delivered to ‘Party B’ on an irregular basis.
▷ ‘Welfare Points’ will be granted according to ‘Party B’s work performance.
▷ The issued ‘Welfare Points’ may be added to ‘Mastery.’
▷ As the handover progresses after the process application, the difficulty of ‘Work’ increases. (Disadvantages occur upon work failure)
[SYSTEM] ‘Party B’s job class is set to ‘Producing Member.’
+
Fuck, if you’re going to make me do producing and all that, couldn’t you have made me a new hire in the planning team instead of a member?
The mention of disadvantages was nauseating in and of itself.
If I couldn’t debut, I wouldn’t be able to save my noona and I’d end up rejoining the company. What more penalties could I possibly need?
I should’ve kept my distance from this dogshit boomer system from the moment its way of talking became exactly like Manager Nam’s.
I’d nearly tried looking for an option change like swapping out a navigation voice, but I held back. I didn’t want to look at the system or whatever it was anymore.
Still, I liked that I could use points to raise my stats instead of buying ice cream with them.
I felt uneasy taking the results others earned through blood, sweat, and tears too easily, but with my family’s life and a lifetime contract on the line, I had to use every dirty trick available.
*At least it isn’t a condition that I have to promote with them for seven years.*
The condition for completing the mission was clearly debuting.
In other words, it might mean I could debut and then withdraw without issue.
I could just take out a loan for the penalty fee and spend my life paying it back.
It would be better for the team too if a good-for-nothing like me got out quickly in the early stages rather than sticking around.
Strictly speaking, since this was a false entry, I should at least contribute enough to cover the losses from a member’s early withdrawal before leaving.
Feeling the prick of conscience, I opened my shabby hologram resume.
+
Performance Evaluation (100)
— Vocal Mastery: 4/20
— Dance Mastery: 1/20
— Self-Promotion: 12/20
— Work Ethic: 18/20
— Organizational Adaptability: 10/20
Accumulated EXP: 40
Accumulated Points: 0
+
The precious 40 EXP earned through indomitable dance practice and overtime work was displayed.
Wait.
So right now… even though I danced like a rabbit at a tiger’s birthday banquet and even volunteered for overtime, it meant I couldn’t raise my mastery by even 1 point.
It wasn’t a cowardly trick, but practically the ultimate compressed learning of life.
I guess I’d been searching for my conscience in the wrong places. Seriously, I was naive, not even knowing my own life was the shittiest thing of all.
Anyway, what I had to do right now was clear. Gather EXP diligently and earn points.
At that moment, collecting 60 more EXP felt incredibly distant.
However, the very next day, I would fill all the EXP in an instant and receive points.
* * *
The incident stemmed from a new work order that sparkled from the morning, screaming for attention.
+
[SYSTEM] A ‘New Task’ has been assigned.
▷ Take your first dance lesson
▷ Reward: EXP(20)
+
After getting caught only giving 20 EXP at a time, this system didn’t even bother hiding the reward EXP anymore.
Because it was the first time the company had created an idol group, it remained in the stage of developing a program to train trainees.
Perhaps that was why, instead of having trainers stationed at UA, a vocal trainer and a dance trainer visited once a week.
Today was the day the dance trainer came.
At the same time, it was the day I would present something called ‘dance’ before a professional for the first time in my life.
Before the dance instructor I’d seen a few times on Spark’s reality show, I flailed about with all my might.
The result was that I ended up proving I was a spectacularly empty wagon.
The prospective Spark members’ faces were filled with nothing but shadow, not a hint of laughter.
They seemed fed up with my hopeless appearance, having helped me so diligently the day before.
*It’s because you guys don’t smile like that that whenever I sent retouched photos, I’d get an earful from Manager Nam every day—“Our kid wants the corners of his mouth lifted just a little. It’s no big deal, so you can do it quickly, right?”* Just thinking about it pissed me off again.
The instructor, seeing me staggering around in a trance-like state, hesitated before opening her mouth.
“Lee Wol-i…”
“Yes.”
I stood with my hands clasped politely.
I could feel the instructor struggling to choose her words.
This silence, this tension.
Everything was perfectly set up for me to get ripped apart.
The instructor, trying to refine her language even in this situation, was a true person of character.
“You’ll have to practice a lot.”
“Understood.”
“Just practicing a lot isn’t enough. You have to practice really, really hard, and more sincerely than anyone else.”
“Yes, I’ll do my best.”
I had more confidence than anyone that I could say “I’ll do my best” with utmost sincerity. Because my noona’s life and my future were on the line.
Moved by the desperation welling from my heart, the instructor didn’t add anything more. I was nothing but grateful.
The problem was that this bastard of a system popped out and opened its trap.