My parents were profoundly indifferent to both of their children.

They were generally irresponsible and, at times, violent.

My upbringing could be summed up in a single sentence: I only found out people normally eat three meals a day after I started elementary school.

My older sister and I, who had no luck whatsoever when it came to guardians, spent our childhood under neglect, indifference, and a high-pressure attitude.

Her childhood couldn’t have been much different from mine.

But even though we grew up in the exact same environment, for some reason my sister couldn’t stop worrying about her much younger little brother, and she supported me in every possible way until I became an adult.

When I was agonizing over whether I should just give up on college because there was no way to cover tuition.

When I was flipping through part-time job postings, telling myself I’d stick it out at home until I scraped together enough for a deposit.

My sister, who had been grinding her teeth and hoarding money, dragged helpless, can’t-even-take-care-of-himself me out of the house right around the time I graduated high school.

And she even forced me into college.

"This isn’t free money. I’m collecting all of it later."

"...I’ll pay you back as fast as I can."

"Yeah, yeah. Let me get at least a little filial piety out of my kid brother when I’m old."

"You think you can cover your twilight years with fifteen million won?"

"I’ll be charging compound interest, so I’ll be fine."

"Working life really doesn’t mess around, huh."

Either way, with fifteen million won in my hand and no repayment date attached, I was able to cut myself off from home completely.

After that, the only person I had to take responsibility for was myself.

One of my college classmates, after hearing the saga of my errand-boy life at Hanpyeong Industries, once asked me in all seriousness:

"If there are that many weird people at your company, wouldn’t it be better to just quit early?"

Sitting across from him, mechanically editing a video titled "Hyung Line Cute-Fluff Compilation.zip," my answer was, "You think I don’t want to?"

Who the hell wants to keep working at some shitty place that pays you pennies and works you like a dog.

Slapping fruit stickers on the faces of a bunch of guys my age I didn’t even care about, at that.

But I couldn’t. Because I wanted to pay back the debt I owed my sister as fast as possible.

All the more once I was old enough to understand, all too clearly, just how much money a brand-new office worker could realistically save.

I couldn’t even bear the thought of wasting time on a job change, so I held out on sheer spite and grit. The only thing that healed me was watching my balance inch closer to my target.

And then, the day I finally managed to pay off that entire sister-issued loan with the money I’d earned by grinding down my body.

We promised each other we’d at least do something we wanted once a year.

We were both busy and couldn’t meet often, but we’d still chat on messenger from time to time...

"You’re ready to buy me a bag at the duty-free, right?"

"I’m ready to make them run a ‘will Ms. So-and-so please come to the front desk’ announcement at the duty-free looking for you."

"You think I wouldn’t?"

...stuff like that.

And then the very next winter, my sister died in an accident.

It happened not even thirty minutes after we’d parted ways in front of a café near my place.

Our last conversation had been so utterly ordinary that I can’t even remember it.

But that time, that day, was my last meeting with my only remaining family.

Is there anyone who’s never once imagined a dead family member coming back to life?

But the dead don’t come back. That’s what death is. That’s the end.

The turmoil in my heart cooled into something cold. In its place, a directionless rage filled my head.

"How do I wake up from this dream?"

For the first time in my life, I desperately wished my alarm would go off even one second sooner.

So this horrible sleep would end, and I wouldn’t have to relive everything I’d felt over the past two years.

But the alarm didn’t ring. I felt like I’d been left alone, dumped in a silence with no bottom.

 [SYSTEM] Handover is now being carried out to Party B.

 A new message was already flashing in front of my eyes.

It could babble all it fucking wanted.

I yanked the blanket over my head and lay down. If I didn’t lie down, I really felt like I’d slam my head into the wall.

But there was one thing I’d failed to take into account.

When you’re at the point where lettering shows up in midair, there’s no guarantee some new kind of phenomenon won’t happen on top of that.

The contents about this "handover" poured into my head one-sidedly, like I’d just read a book or a document.

 [SYSTEM] Handover Progress

▷ Work schedule notification: February XX, 20XX (Synchronization complete; no further changes allowed)

▷ Manual confirmation

▷ Process confirmation

 Right as I was about to smack myself in the head twice, I spotted something strange among the unfamiliar information.

The year listed under work schedule was a point nine years in the past, counting from this year.

Same for the season. It had still been early autumn as of yesterday, but the schedule was pointing to February.

"It’s not like I went back in time."

I turned my gaze toward the window, where the greenery should still have been thick.

What I saw instead were a few bare, spindly branches.

"...!"

The scene outside was winter, plain and simple.

The sun was up, but the window was fogged over, and leafless, empty-looking branches were clearly visible, shaking in the wind.

"Where’s my phone?"

I reflexively reached for my phone. It was sitting right where it usually was, right next to my pillow.

But the model wasn’t the same as mine. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the same as my phone now.

What I had in front of me was the 2G phone I’d used almost ten years ago.

Back when everyone else was using smartphones, I’d bought it to save on device costs and force myself to focus on studying.

In a Korean society where over ninety percent of adults used smartphones, a brick phone that looked like it should only be used for caller-ID-blocked calls had appeared.

Too many things were off.

The much younger face of Center Emperor Choi Jeho compared to my last memory. The phone that definitely should have been thrown out ages ago because it wouldn’t even turn on.

All of it pointed to only one possibility.

Like I was in some kind of trance, I punched in the old password I used to use on my lock screen. And just like that, the lock came off.

Even harder to believe was the date displayed on the phone.

"...Nine years ago."

It was the same date listed in the system as the work schedule, and the time when I used this phone to look up English vocabulary words.

The year when Center Emperor Choi Jeho, who’s the same age as me, was twenty years old, and SPARK was probably running full speed toward their debut.

I felt like all the blood was draining out of my body.

I ran both hands down my rough—no. My face, which had gotten about 3,400 days younger and dewier compared to yesterday.

Noona...

I think I’m fucked...

A bright winter morning.

A room so quiet it was almost peaceful, thanks to the person sleeping deeply nearby.

Me, sitting in that room, having woken up to find myself suddenly nine years younger.

And now being forced to become an idol with my sister and my future held hostage (age 29 / office worker).

I checked my face, faintly reflected on the dead screen of the phone.

Even in the black glass I could see how much better my complexion was, and how much my dark circles had faded. It was exactly the face I’d had right after I graduated high school.

"I really did get younger."

So the reason I felt so refreshed when I woke up was because I’d turned back the clock? If that’s the case, I kind of feel like crying.

If I were the only one who’d gotten younger, that’d be one thing, but with all of time running backwards like this, it felt more accurate to say I’d come to the past.

If I could get on the internet I could be totally sure. But with this brick phone, that was a pipe dream.

A sudden, ominous thought hit me.

"Don’t tell me I died and ended up in some kind of afterlife?"

I knew it sounded insane, but if this was the afterlife, it wouldn’t be that weird for letters to appear in midair.

But the odds that a twenty-nine-year-old guy suddenly drops dead in his room while making a disbandment banner for an idol group felt about as low as the plausibility of my current situation.

Something had definitely gone seriously wrong, but I didn’t feel like a guy who’d suddenly keeled over in the middle of a perfectly fine life.

And on top of that, they’re going to debut someone who died like that as an idol in the afterlife?

Have they lost it.

It was way more reasonable to say time itself had rewound.

"Wait."

If time itself had rewound, I didn’t need to debut as an idol just to save my sister, did I?

All I had to do was go see her right now and convince her to live a long, long life.

I hurriedly opened my contacts to look for my sister’s number. But the address book was completely empty.

The phone that used to be packed with numbers for every company president under the sun was now unnervingly clean.

Luckily, I still had my sister’s number memorized. I quickly punched in the digits and made the call.

— The number you have dialed is not in service.

What came back was an automated voice I hadn’t expected.

I checked the number again, but it was definitely right. Something was off.

"My sister never changed her number, though."

Not that it really mattered. If I couldn’t reach her by phone, I could just go find her.

I grabbed my phone and got out of bed.

My momentum didn’t last long.

"Where did my sister live again?"

I couldn’t remember the neighborhood or the name of the building she’d lived in. Every other memory was vivid, but it was like someone had carved just that part out of my head.

Right about when I’d chased my thoughts that far, another long block of text surfaced.

This time it was closer to a document than a message.

 [SYSTEM] The "Life Reuse Manual" is now being delivered to Party B.

▷ If you wake up at a point in the past relative to your previous life, your life is considered to have been reused.

▷ Once a reused life has begun, returning to your previous life is not permitted.

▷ Memories and knowledge acquired in your previous life may only be used within the permitted scope. Violations will result in sanctions.

▷ If memories and knowledge acquired in your previous life are deemed to interfere with accomplishing the tasks of the reused life, use of existing memories may be restricted without Party B’s consent.

▷ For smoother life reuse, auxiliary items (résumé, scheduler, etc.) will be provided.

 I didn’t fully understand what it was saying, but one thing was clear.

Something had gone very, very wrong.

My eyes opened so I got up, and yet they were already treating it like my life had been reused.

It was like getting handed a defective product that came pre-opened from the factory and then being told, "Opened items are non-refundable."

Sure, I’d wanted to change my lifestyle, but that didn’t mean I wanted to change my whole life.

By the time I got to the fourth bullet point, I wanted to stop thinking altogether.

Put simply, it sounded like if I tried to take some dark side route to that so-called final reward—reuniting with my sister—without fulfilling the KPI, the system would force my hand.

For example, by erasing the memories that connected me to my sister, which were my pathway to contacting her.

"If I were to swear I’ll go to the place where the accident happened and wait there until my sister shows up..."

I tried my hardest to remember my sister’s death anniversary and the location of the accident.

And failed. It was like there was a hole in one corner of my brain; nothing would come.

What are the odds that, at some point in your life, you suddenly start going against the flow of time?

And on top of that, you’re suddenly forced into a career change you were never meant to have, with your family and your future held hostage?

And the job they assign you is something that has to sparkle and shine—an idol?

If you refuse, you have to work for life at the company that had you doing seven straight days of overtime up through yesterday?

I don’t know exactly what the numbers are, but I do know this is a completely fucked case.

After running through denial and anger, I slipped into resignation.

With the condition that my sister could live attached to it, I didn’t have the option of saying no.

I hadn’t been able to show her all the filial piety I wanted while she was alive. There was no way I could refuse.

And I never wanted to have anything to do with that godawful Hanpyeong Industries again.

Which meant the only thing left for me was to make a dazzling debut in a six-member boy group.

To debut with SPARK...

Cold. It wasn’t just a knife; it was like everything went black in front of my eyes as the blade slammed into me.

Objectively speaking, SPARK wasn’t a bad group.

I just had a personal grudge, but if you looked at their individual stats alone, they were the kind of group I’d be begging to let me in.

If you broadly divided idols active in Korea into:

Idols with issues

Idols with no issues who still get beaten up for no reason

Idols who vanish without a trace without anyone even knowing they debuted

Three groups like that.

SPARK had one foot in the "idols with issues" group and one in the "idols who get beaten up."

Every member’s public record was clean. No drugs, either.

But starting with personality controversies, SPARK got tangled up in some scandal or another every time you turned around, and they secured their place as the new issue-makers of the idol scene.

≫ Those who wish to learn noise marketing, raise your heads and look upon SPARK

└ SPARK isn’t noise marketing, they’re just pure noise, no?

└ Marketing my ass, their name recognition shot through the roof every time a new issue blew up lol

Now ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) imagine me stuck in that group.

When you put one ordinary person into a visual group whose faces are the only thing no one ever drags, the expected reactions go something like this:

≫ One loach ruins the whole stream, right? One guy single-handedly wrecks the visual average, right? That’s a talent too, you know?

└ Five of them are first-class water quality and one is toxic waste, so the pollution is insane. Not naming names though^^

└ Is this really the face level of an "idol"? My chest feels tight with pettiness

And if you put one ordinary person into a group that was being talked up as a presidential candidate-level act in the idol scene based on skill alone, the reactions were just as easy to predict.

≫ One loach ruins the whole stream, right? One guy single-handedly turned it into a clown show, right? That’s a talent too, you know?

└ I’m getting so much secondhand embarrassment just watching, but the guy himself is insanely confident. His mentality is first-string

└ Fuck, what good is a first-string mentality when the actual body is low-tier trash?

My existence was about to pour gasoline onto a group people already wouldn’t shut up about. Just imagining it was the worst.

Why did it have to be me.

Why did it have to be SPARK.

I could think of at least two hundred people who’d kill to debut in SPARK instead of me.

With what were probably dead eyes, I stared at the message still floating in midair.

And then, all of a sudden, my gaze snagged on one part.

 ▷ For smoother life reuse, auxiliary items (résumé, scheduler, etc.) will be provided.

 Auxiliary items, huh.

Like a welcome kit? Hanpyeong Industries was such a shit company they never gave us anything like that.

I glared at the screen and wondered how I was supposed to receive these auxiliary items.

And then a new screen really did appear.

What came up in front of my eyes was a résumé with a very familiar layout.

My résumé. The résumé of one "Kim Iwol."