“So we meet again, manager Lee Sujin.”

Sujin turned her head as she heard a deep voice addressing her and immediately stood up as she noticed the great Midas Hand extending his hand for a handshake.

“It will be my pleasure to work under you, senior mana—Team Leader Sung Jinwoo.” Sujin shook her hands with the tall, broad-shouldered charismatic man. As she had already said, the man was not exactly model-level pretty, but he could be easily considered attractive. He was the emerging supernova of the entertainment industry—well, not the ones in front of the camera, but among the ones behind them.

It was kind of the fate of normal folks to simp over the idols they adored. Then what about the idols themselves and those who managed them? Who did they simp for?

The answer would be the exceptional behind-the-scenes people like the managers, the composers, the lyricists, the directors, the CEOs and so on. A good manager would be able to deal with any unwanted complications they would have to face themselves otherwise, allowing them to solely focus on their crafts. The directors and CEOs would be able to use their money and connection to bring the bigger jobs every star desired. Singers and idols fought over lyrics written and music scores composed by the most experienced lyricists and composers the same way normal folks fought over their autographs. In Jason’s world, a lot of artists would probably sell their souls to obtain a song from Lukasz Gottwald or Max Martin. Not that it was any different in Sujin’s world.

She could feel the glare from some of her female coworkers piercing her back. She even knew a few of them—some of them were the fellow trainees that were either on the same batch as her, or maybe a year senior or junior—and they had the same fate of not having enough talent or luck (or both) and submitting to the fate of babysitting the children that actually possessed those. However, it was only Sujin who was personally requested by the great Midas Hand himself. How dare she?

‘Just what kind of skill did she have to completely blow off his mind, huh? Or was it something else that got blown?—I bet those bitches are thinking something along that line.’

‘Well, something did get blown off—your gray matter, that is.’

‘Haha very funny.’

‘But still, I am not sure why he wanted you to work for him. Out of pity maybe? You did put your life on the line for Seoyoung, who he really cared for.’

‘Maybe. I am not stupid enough to deny the guaranteed success knocking on my door anyway.’

“Well then, miss Sujin,” Jinwoo gestured his hands towards a transparent office room and said, “let us go inside my cabin and discuss your new responsibilities. Would you prefer tea or coffee?”

“Black coffee, please,” replied Sujin.

“Good choice,” said the fellow black coffee lover with a smile. Okay, at least she could look forward to one good thing.

After a few minutes, she and her new boss were sitting facing each other. Sujin noticed a huge pile of documents that was on his desk, waiting to be checked and signed by him. Poor guy, she thought. Getting a promotion was not always a happy thing. The more you rose up the ladder, the more heavy the responsibilities became. It was probably especially true for people who have not experienced a single failure since the beginning of their career. Why? Because when normal people failed, no one would bat an eye. People fail sometimes, that was normal. But when special people mess up, people tend to make it a thousand times bigger of an issue.

For a moment, Sujin imagined Jinwoo posing like DJ Khaled (was he even a thing here?) and immediately snorted.

“Anything wrong, miss Sujin?”

“N-No, not at all, Team Leader Sung.”

“Kuhum. Well, how is your health now?”

“Better than ever.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Thank you.”

Sung Jinwoo had the system scan her again. Yep, it was still glitched like before. After meeting Lee Sujin, he had tried scanning quite a number of people to check if there were more people who were the same. The result was negative.

Sujin shifted uncomfortably due to the stare he got from him. She felt like she was getting scanned by a machine or something—and no, there was nothing lustful about it. She was old enough to tell those apart.

“T-Team Leader?”

“Hm? Ah, sorry, I was just thinking about something. Oh, now that I think about it, I never really told you about why I asked for you, did I?”

“N-No, you didn’t.”

“You see,” the man said with the most big brotherly smile both Sujin and Jason had ever seen in both of their lifetimes, “Seoyoung was really worried that you might be pushing yourself a bit too much—or rather, someone else might force you to work too hard. So she asked me to take care of you until she returned from her work in China.”

“...She is making it sound as if she were the big sister,” she said smilingly.

“Well, I am for once glad that she has more people in her life,” Sung Jinwoo said as he sipped his cup of coffee, “she usually takes a lot of time to warm up to people. Her new manager is already having trouble dealing with her. Poor guy.”

“Well, things will be better for him after four to five months, I believe.”

“Hm, maybe. But she feels especially indebted to you for protecting her—and all of us who care for her as well. I will once again say thank you.”

“Eh, ah no—that… uh, I did what I thought was right. She does not really have to feel indebted to me.”

“Too late. You cannot escape from her grasp anymore,” said her boss, while smirking.

“Oh no. What will I do now. I am trapped,” she also returned the humor.

"Well then, time to talk about your new duties, miss Sujin."

She wondered what her new job would be. Taking care of a new star, perhaps? Or maybe part of a manager unit for a big idol group? Maybe Stardust themselves? She found herself getting excited with the anticipation. What would it be?

 

---

 

“I should have known,” Sujin grimaced as she dealt with the neverending pile of documents she had in front of him.

Since she recently recovered from coma, it would be cruel to send her to ‘stressful’ jobs like going around with the stars. Thus, she was handed a bunch of documents to fact check them and enter them into the servers—which was apparently ‘less stressful.’ It was only half an hour and she was already cursing her shitty luck along with her new shitty boss.

‘Hey, the guy is not that bad. He only handed you one-third of the documents while he dealt with the rest on his own.’

‘I know! But… but… where the hell does he even get this much stamina? He just keeps going on and on and on and—’

‘Phrasing, girl. And yeah, this does show why he is so damn successful. The man does work like a machine. To be honest, most of the people—even the ones that I knew—who actually achieved proper success are like that. They work day and night relentlessly to achieve their goals. CEOs and other big bosses that do nothing but hit gyms and party around can only be found in terrible fanfictions written by teenage girls.’

‘Oh really? I thought there were handsome CEOs and rich people's daily routines in your world’s YouTube?’

‘Having a bunch of Instagram accounts or YouTube channels and selling your merches is not the same as being the CEO of a company with hundreds of employees, Sujin. Also, I am pretty sure there are so-called CEOs like that in your world as well. They have turned the word CEO into a fucking joke. That calculation is wrong, by the way.’

‘Oh! I almost missed it! Damn, having you around is like having a second brain! This is a cheat of its own!’

‘Is it now? It sounds way less cooler than foresight or time travel though.’

‘Anything beats being a vegetable on a hospital bed to be honest.’

‘That it does. Well, for now, let’s keep doing our job while looking for a Macbook. I hope we will actually get some time to look for one, though. It will be bad if we are stuck with desk jobs for the rest of our lives.’

‘Hey! Our luck cannot be that bad, right?’

 

---

 

‘Okay, I’m kinda starting to hate it now.’

It had already been two weeks, and she neither managed to get past the desk work situation nor did she manage to find an easily accessible Macbook. At this rate, she would get trapped in the current lifestyle and lose the initial moment she obtained in the beginning.

‘...Hey, Jason.’

‘What?’

‘Do you think we should look for a different job?’

‘A different job? With your qualification, I am not sure we will be able to get another one with as many benefits as this one, though. You get health insurance benefits and the company is even allowing you to stay in a dorm with the trainees.’

‘...That is true, but… Hey! Maybe I can try asking Jiyeon or Chunja to get us a job in their place?’

‘...You have zero makeup skills, Sujin, so Chunja’s place is out. And about Jiyeon’s place… have you already forgotten about the abomination you made last time instead of a cocktail?’

‘Ugh!’

‘That purple sludge which had green fume coming ou—’

‘Please don’t make me remember that!’

‘Not to mention Min Seoyoung. When she returns, she will throw a fit when she learns that you quit the job. From what I learned from your memories, she is the type that takes time to open up to others, but also gets quite possessive of them once that finally happens.’

‘B-But she can also get used to her new manager, right?’

‘Only in two or three weeks? I doubt it.’

Sujin sighed. She really was a bit too sweet on the girl. And she really did not wish to lose the current benefits.

‘Ah well, I just thought maybe I would be able to pass their tests this time since you are here. Our motor skills are twice better now, since we can focus on two things at the same time.’

Thanks to her… uh, ‘parallel processing’ cheat, she was finishing her paperworks much faster. She was also having much less trouble in noticing mistakes and errors, it was harder to miss them as there were two people scanning for them.

Sujin and Jason kept doing their work as she heard someone’s footsteps. Jason signaled her to not worry about the documents as he focused himself on them, allowing Sujin to split her attention towards the approaching person. She tried her best not to look towards that person, as Jason was already looking at the documents. If they tried to look at two different things, their eyes tended to move separately—like chameleons. It was a bit too freaky, even for them.

Also, she did not really need to look at her boss to recognize him. Judging from the smell, he also had two cups of coffee. Good boss.

“I hope you are not feeling strained, miss Sujin,” said Sung Jinwoo as he handed her a cup of the black coffee she liked.

“Not at all, Team Leader, thank you,” she received the cup from him, “this much is nothing compared to what you handle regularly. I must confess, this does make me a little reluctant to get promotions.”

“You wouldn’t feel reluctant when you finally see the numbers adding to your balance,” Sung Jinwoo smirked. Sujin just snorted in return. The man then had a genuine smile on his face.

“I am glad that you are not angry at me, miss Lee Sujin. I was worried that you might not like the… boring tasks I gave you.”

“...”

“...”

The man’s smile faltered a little at Sujin’s unintended silence. She hurriedly said, “n-no, there is no way I would be angry at all, team leader Sung! Ah, the coffee is really good by the way!”

Sung Jinwoo just sighed and gave a wry smile. “Well, I guess I deserved it. Anyways, we have a new job—something that , and I will need someone to help me out.”

“A new job?” Sujin asked. Okay, finally she was going to be free from all the paperworks! ...For a while, at least.

“Yes, a new job. Have you heard about the new collaboration contract between LME and Moonlight Entertainment?”

“Yes, I have.”

It was something Sujin knew about even before the coma incident. Moonlight Entertainment, a new struggling name in the entertainment industry. It was a world of cutthroat competition after all, not every company could rise to the top. Then why was Moonlight special.

It was because of its Chairman and CEO, whose name was… Kim something. Too bad, Sujin forgot what it was. Even then, she knew of the man’s mental issues. Yep, that was what she called it.

The man actually was once the CEO of another big entertainment company named Lotus Entertainment—which was not as big as LME, but it was famous. In fact, the man actually was the 2nd son of the company Chairman. He was quite famous for his meticulous and perfectionist nature and his good track record—not that it was any rare thing in the top order of this industry. For that reason, everyone expected him to be the one to inherit the company in the future.

Unfortunately, everything went to drain when the man fell in love with some cafe waitress girl who reprimanded the man for trying to cut the line or something. Apparently the man had never been rejected like that before, and so he took an interest in the girl and started showering the girl with expensive gifts, much to the annoyance of the poor girl. He actually even bought the whole cafe when the girl would not even allow him inside.

Well, stuff happened and the girl actually developed feelings for that guy. Sujin… was not a skeptical person, but she did sometimes wonder whether the girl actually played hard to get intentionally. Anyways, things went south when this whole buying expensive gifts and even the cafe caused a little imbalance in the company budget, which eventually led to the company missing on an important Hollywood contract. The board members and investors were clearly unhappy with the situation. The Chairman? He was even more unhappy that his son was in a relationship with some girl from an ordinary family.

The elder brother of the CEO, who apparently was of a different mother, took advantage of the situation and got the younger brother kicked out of the company, becoming the new CEO of Lotus. So the younger brother started his new company.

‘Wow. This is straight out of a teenage girl fiction. I just hope I will never meet century old glittering vampires that stalk high school girls.’

‘...Me too, Jason. Me too.’

“Good. As you know, both our Chairman and our CEO have taken a keen interest in this company. The Chairman—despite his momentary infatuation over a girl, is skilled and capable. It is also a way to keep Lotus in check, which is supported by our rival Heaven Entertainment.”

“Corporate proxy war, huh,” Jason muttered.

“Yes,” Jinwoo returned a wry smile, “it might sound bad but that is how it is. But it is not our concern. We have jobs to do. This file has the details. Read it while we prepare for our meeting with Team Leader Park.”

“Umm… am I really supposed to attend the meeting? I am not even a senior manager.” Sujin was not sure why she was needed in the meeting.

“Well,” Jinwoo shrugged, “the CEO ordered me to handle this task personally, and all the other senior managers under me are busy. I could use an extra hand. Also, Team Leader Park wishes to meet you as well.”

“O-Oh.” That was unexpected, but oh well. She was finally free of the documents!

And to be honest, she was a little curious as well. It was finally her chance to closely see the great Midas Hand in action—and maybe figure out just what exactly the man was.