“Sujin!” “Sujin!”

Both Nam Jiyeon and Kim Chunja entered the ICU. Nurse Kim reminded them to keep quiet. Two more people entered the room. One was Min Seoyoung, and the other one was…

Sung Jinwoo.

The Miraclebringer. Super Manager. Midas’s Hand.

Sujin also heard a bunch of other cringey titles as well, but yeah, this was the man who earned them.

He was… tall. Model level tall. It's just… his face was not exactly model level. It was not as if he looked ugly or anything. It was more like… 6/10 instead of the 8/10 and 9/10 models had?

It is said that men are evaluated by society more by his achievements than his beauty. So, this guy was actually popular amongst ladies. He was sure to become a powerful CEO in the future, everybody expected that. A guaranteed success, should nothing unfortunate happen. Sujin could understand. If she could get the chance to date and marry this man, she would 100 out of 100% take it.

It was hard to blame Seoyoung for anything. This man is the one who found out the acting talent of the least skilled member of the girl group she belonged to and created an opportunity for her to shine, after all. Now she was probably more famous than her former team members. She owed her whole success and career to this man. It was more than enough to steal the heart of a young girl, Sujin couldn’t deny. But still...

‘Is it really okay for both of them to arrive together? They got involved in a scandal just yesterday, after all.’

‘...We were out for two weeks, Sujin.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

“What the hell, Sujin! You just had a drink with us that night, and then we heard that you were in a coma!” Nam Jiyeon almost screamed.

“Yeah! Do you know how worried we were?!” Kim Chunja was the same.

“Ladies, please do not put any more strain on her.” Nurse Kim warned them again.

“Sorry guys, I… didn’t know my wish for a vacation will come true like that.” Sujin joked with a weak smile. Both of her friends sighed.

“I guess you are almost okay now as you are able to spout stupid stuff like that.”

“Just take care of yourself, okay?”

“Hm, I will. Thanks for worrying about me.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right? Come to the bar when you completely recover. It will be on the house.”

“Okay.”

“U-unni?”

Sujin saw Seoyoung slowly walking towards her with teary eyes. She looked relieved, and… full of guilt?

“Hey, Seoyoung. That guy didn’t bother you anymore I hope?”

“...He was found and arrested.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“...so..y.” Seoyoung mumbled.

“What did you say? I couldn’t hear.”

“I—I’m sorry!” She started crying. “Because of me… because of me you almost died! If I hadn’t gone with you—”

“Then I wouldn’t have been there to even help when that guy eventually would approach you. Or he might have even tried to barge into your apartment? It should be secure though. But you can never underestimate the crazies.”

“But—”

“Well, what happened was definitely not the best outcome, but it was not the worst one at least. I am alive, and now all things are goo—ow.” She stopped talking as her head started throbbing.

“Unni!” “Sujin!”

“Miss Sujin, you should not talk this much,” said Nurse Kim while tending to her. “Maybe it's time your visitors left. I would like you all to leave for now and return at the next visiting hours.”

They all agreed. Sung Jinwoo approached her before leaving.

“Miss Lee Sujin. Thank you for trying to protect Seoyoung. I am glad that she is in safe hands. And do not worry about the hospital bills and your work. The agency has decided to pay for everything, and you have been given paid leave for two months. Please rejoin again after full recovery, okay?”

“...Thank you for the message, Senior Manager Sung.”

The man smiled.

“You’re welcome, Manager Lee.”

Then they left. Nurse Kim was pleased to see Sujin close her eyes and take rest. She continued to attend to her other duties, without knowing the stormy conversation inside her head.

‘Senior manager even though he joined the profession almost at the same time as you, huh? Impressive.’

‘Well, he had racked up enough achievements and showed enough capability of getting fast promotions. Not to mention he is quite friendly and humble. To be honest, a man like him is kind of a refreshing breeze in the hellhole that is the entertainment industry. You will probably meet more jackasses in the next month than you have met in your whole… previous life.’

‘Hm, I guess so. But is this guy really that simple? He was kinda looking funny at us.’

‘...What do you mean? He seemed quite friendly to me.’

‘Friendly… I guess he was? But there was a kind of… shock? Weariness? I am not sure what to call it. I saw that in his eyes. Probably nothing bad though.’

‘...You should really learn to trust in people more.’

‘I’d rather not. It's never too much to be careful. Saves you a lot of hurt in the long run.’

‘...Whatever. So… I guess we can now start thinking about what to do from now on?’

‘That we can. I must say, I am not liking the fact that I have such a huge debt on my shoulder. I am both glad and surprised you did not start gold digging or some escort business or something to cover the debt.’

‘...I did not want to embarrass my family any more. Although I won’t say that I never thought about it. Its just… I couldn’t bring myself to take that decision.’

‘You did good. These kinds of things always leave dirt somewhere. You never know what comes to bite you in your ass in the future. But still… it's a huge debt. You also want to help your family right? With Doyoon’s operation as well? You will become a 40 year old lady before you accomplish all that.’

‘...Can’t you help me? You can code right? Don’t computer engineers earn a lot of money? We can get a job in some software firm and earn enough to cover everything!’

‘...And why will they even hire us? What are you going to write on the CV? A former idol trainee, never studied anything more than high school math, now wants to become a programmer? They would laugh at our face.’

‘We could ask them to arrange a test of us—’

‘They wouldn’t even contact us back. They might even joke about it themselves or even post it in social media. Or they might even ask for other—quote unquote—favors. Too risky. We will have to have a rich portfolio or something to even think of it.’

‘Then… are we going the freelancing route? Or make our own company or something?’

‘Company? Not yet. But yes, freelancing is the best way right now. Unfortunately, even freelancers have to sometimes compete for jobs to get contracts, which means interviews; which means— we will need to show achievements regardless.’

‘...And we have nothing to prove ourselves. Damnit, how are we going to earn money then?! ...Should I try streaming? Girls can make a lot of money from streaming, right? If I manage to get a decent number of simps, I will be able to pay off my debts soon! …Stop blasting me with disapproval, Jason. You know this is the fastest way to earn money.’

‘...So, you want to wear a tank top or a bra that shows your cleavage and tight yoga pants and what? Do squats? Accidental ass and cleavage shots? Cause that's how you earn money from streaming. Girls who actually try some art or gaming do not earn much. Do you really want to do that?’

‘...I think I’ll keep it as a last resort. I don’t want to lose the little bit of love and respect I earned back from my family.’

‘Good decision. Well then, Sujin, have you forgotten what I used to do for a living?’

‘...Oh. Oh.’

‘Now that is a good way to build up our portfolio, right?’

‘Yep, it is. And we also know the formulas that would actually get hit. So we can earn a lot of money as well.’

‘While I am not exactly proud of plagiarizing popular games from my world, you are right. We cannot deny the free money that will come with it. We can actually cover some of the debts with the money. Of course, we are making our own games as well. Gamedev’s pride.’

‘And while we are at it, maybe we should also get admitted to a diploma or bachelor's degree in computer science in a good university? A proper certificate wouldn’t hurt right? I think it will actually be helpful in getting better jobs and faster promotions in the future. With your help, we can easily breeze through the exams. What do you say?’

‘What happened to having your own company?’

‘I’d prefer to have a stable job at this age, if possible. I won’t have to manage finances and take risks if I just work for some other big company, right? I’ll just do my job and then get the salary at the end of the month. That’s safer.’

‘...If you say so. But I’m pretty sure you will choose to have your own company in the end. One will not accept the chains of slavery after they have tested true freedom.’

‘Except I now fear that freedom after I saw my family business got wrecked from a bunch of bad deals.’

‘But aren’t we working with hit recipes? We won’t suffer that much. Maybe we will also get called Midas Hand like that Jung Sunwoo guy?’

‘Its Sung Jinwoo. Hmm… okay, do you think he’s also like us? I mean...’

‘Dunno, he might just be super skilled. He isn’t really writing new songs or scripts or anything, he is just good at choosing jobs for the stars, no otherworldly stuff yet. Those rumors about him having foresight or time travel seem not so farfetched anymore, huh. Because… our situation is also quite supernatural, right?’

‘...Maybe you are just a figment of my imagination and I really need to go visit a psychiatrist?’

‘Well, many young people would be really envious if they learned that you can just cook up the imagination of a veteran coder and just learn coding like that. All you need to do is to get hit by a flower vase and not die.’

‘Heh. I bet that’s how we will appear to the world, right?’

‘Yep. Not that we care, we have debts to solve.’

‘So… how do we even go about making games? I only have a laptop that can do spreadsheets at most.’

‘Well, we can only afford small hypercasual mobile games now. We can upgrade our gears when we earn money though. I am not exactly a big fan of making these types of games, but they do earn you a decent amount of money in a short time.’

‘Hypercasual games? You mean…’

‘Yep, simple games that do not require you to do much and you also get tired of it after a few days, maybe months if it's that addictive. Like Temple Run or Flappy Bird.’

‘Yeah… those. We can make them with much less effort, that’s true. But I am not sure… we will have to make sure they do not exist at all. I do not want to get involved in any copyright related stuff and plagiarism accusations. Those rules are much harder in my world.’

‘Yeah, we will have to be careful. We never know whether the very same concept has been already in use under different names. Even if it does, we will have to just make it different enough to have it stand out on its own.’

‘Yeah. But we cannot do anything without internet access. I don’t think we will be allowed to use it until we recover enough.’

‘So we wait.’

‘...Yes.’

Jason could feel Sujin’s impatience, but they both knew that hurrying would not do them any good. Their current body had a close brush with death, after all. So she had to just… wait and do… nothing… just lie down all day… for days...

“What a pain…” Sujin complained.

“Pain? Are you feeling pain, Miss Sujin?” Nurse Kim approached her with pure concern in her eyes.

Jason immediately grabbed her hand with both of his hands.

“Please divorce your husband and marry me.”

“Eh?”

“Eh? Ah, sorry I just… haha! Got Ya! It was just a joke!” Sujin immediately released her hands.

Dr. Yoo, who was just standing beside her, took out a notebook and furiously started writing something, while Nurse Kim was laughing awkwardly.

‘Dammit Jason, stop being such a creep and making me look like one as well!’

‘Sorry. But she is really fun to tease.’

‘...Just stop.’

 

---

 

“What was that?” Sung Jinwoo did not have an answer. He had seen something like that for the first time. He still remembered the information he saw for her.

 

But what he saw a few hours ago was… he wasn’t sure how to describe that.

Name: Lee Sujin/█████ ██████████	Gender: Female/████	Age: 28/██	Profession: Entry-level Manager(active), ████ █████████(active),  Part-time Waitress, Background Dancer
Stats (Current/Potential): Singing: D/█ Composition: B/█ Dancing: D/█ Choreography: D/█ Acting: D/█ Scriptwriting: E/█ Stage Awareness: B/A Others: A/█ Star Quality: C/█	Evaluation: E̴̜̿͛̐̽͋̌͂̒̎͘R̵̹̩͇͍̮̽̂̇͛̈́̾̏̀̇͌͑͝͝Ř̵̳̤͖̎̓̿̆́̓̚Ö̷̼̭̼́̒͜R̶̫͖̲̻̤̄̓̀̌͠:̸̨̧̡͈̱͙͎͙̟̥̰̤̼̂͛̓̍̂͂͘̕ ̵̨͉͍̤̈́͒̐Ċ̴̢̨̧͇̩̖̩̩͙̳͓̂̋͆͗͗͂̔̏͘̚͘Ą̵̖̰̺͔͓͔̭̤͈̔̐̕̕͜N̷̦̯̬̹̟̈̑̆̒N̷͉͕̟͌̆̌̊͑̒͝O̷͕̙͙̊̿́̃̈̍͠Ţ̸͕͈̜͇͂͂̔ ̴̧̡̖̩̜͓̬̦͘͜Ệ̷̓͜V̸̢̹̞̜͕̈̅̇͊ͅĄ̷̯̘͙͕̍̒̈́̕L̶̯̳͉͚̥͇͔͕̙͓̲̭͆̀͑̏͂͐̓̀̔̚͘͝ͅͅƯ̵͓͍̲̟̱̦̘̼͉̲̺̙͖̆́̂͛̀͝͠Ą̴̦͇̤͖̹̲̥̙̪̐̉̍̆̓̔͘͝͝Ţ̶͙̙̭͓̺̜̜̫̜̝̪͈͌̕͜E̵̺̣̤͈͈̼̹̼̹̜͖͆.̶̪̮̙̼̲͂͑̓̑͆̚ ̵̡͈̞͙͓̝̫͇͇̗̫̪͔̱̒C̸̨͓̳̗͙̣͚̻͙͈̠̉̑̇́͋͒̽̍͋̀̍̂O̷̢͈̞̜̱͓͈͖͉̩͓͎̓̃͆̃̑́͜ͅR̵̳͕͈̲̟͙͑̀̓̈́̾̈́̌͊͑̚͠R̵̨̛̖͍͚͙̩̘̭̯̯̆̆̑͗͒̀̈́͌͜ͅŮ̶̠͋͝P̸̢̨͔̖̳̻̈͐̐͛̊T̷̡̢̝̹̮͓͈͈͈̟̖͕̠̀̎͆́̂͗̀̚͜͠E̶̘͓͚͚̘̯̪̔͊̎̈́̊̔͋̓̀̓̚̚͜D̵̨̦̬̖̟̠̮̗̈̂͋͊͛͗͑͝͠͝ ̸͔̥̺̗̬̟͑̐̕̚͝Ḑ̸̗͖͖͚̭͍̩͖̗̖̲̝̜̅̽̍͊̓́̑̉̋͠͝͝Ä̷͙͍̙́͑͆̈̂̽̇͗̓͋͑̒́̎T̷͖̥̞̝͇̱̜̙͇̗̮͗͒̀͂̏̃̈́̐̅͌À̴̧͔̦̪͓̣̹̻͛́̓.̵̨̧̠̫̘̣̤͖͖̙͚̅͐̿͂̽̌́̍͌̎̒̇̅̄͘

 

“Did the system somehow glitch out? Is that even possible?” He did not want to believe it. The system had not failed him so far. But then again, how was he supposed to explain this?

“Did an accident like this happen last time? I didn’t hear about any news of any trainee getting into an accident like this. Is this some butterfly effect?”

He tried to recall all of the important events of the upcoming seven years from the time before he regressed, but nothing came to his mind. But then again, things were changing little by little. He was not a Minus’ hand anymore.

Then, what caused the glitch in the system? Did she also go through something similar to him? Another system in play? Or maybe it's something completely different?

He would have to keep an eye on her.