Through conversations with my parents, I learned that my sister had left their care long ago, unlike before. They didn’t even know the location where she was abandoned, nor her whereabouts afterward.

Then can I really say this ‘noona (blood relative)’ is the sister I know?

The fact that noona was my only family didn’t change. Even if she didn’t remember me, I had no intention of giving up on achieving the KPI just for that reason.

But if she was abandoned before I was even born, then meeting her again would make no sense, so the sister indicated in the system must refer to the sister who was with me, right?

‘If you made me suffer so much and then say it was a fraudulent contract......’

As I made a certain resolution, the system sent a signal of explanation.

 [SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Manager’ has arrived.

▶ Why do you speak so scary like that? Don’t tell me you think there isn’t even a handover document? Our company isn’t that much of a hole-in-the-wall store, you know?

 Handover, huh.

‘Don’t tell me that means you’re going to shove memories into noona’s head?’

 [SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Manager’ has arrived.

▶ Don’t worry. We have all the data. With just this, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) perfect work familiarity is possible, I am telling you.

 Crazy bastard.

I didn’t know how my sister was living. However, I also didn’t know if she would want the memories of her previous life.

She must have had good things happen in her life. There might be precious relationships she didn’t want to forget.

Are those memories so precious to her that she’d be willing to bear even the wounds of the past along with them? Do I get to decide that?

I recalled the closest examples. If I inserted memories of the 5-member Spark from a long time ago into someone in current Spark, would these guys want that?

‘I can’t guarantee.’

Everyone was already living lives too different from the past. Even if the memories came back, they might not even recognize friends they were once close with.

Relying only on this uncertainty and returning memories to my sister just because I missed her seemed like something I shouldn’t do.

‘I didn’t think you were inhuman, but I also didn’t think you wanted to torment me.’

Ever since the negative emotion recognition rate disappeared, I had been thinking like this.

I figured it wanted me to live a somewhat normal life, seeing how a function I avoided because I feared becoming too dependent only existed when I needed it and then vanished. It was a shame I lost my reason along the way, but still.

But...

‘I can’t decide recklessly without knowing noona’s opinion just for my own satisfaction.’

Maybe I should be satisfied with the fact that my sister was still alive.

This was how I realized there was no end to greed. I completely forgot the days when I thought it would be enough just for her to be alive, and now that I had been given a chance, I wanted more.

Seeing how I wished the sister from back then would return, it seemed my heart never once managed to let her go.

The remaining practice members for today were Park Juu and me. When I said I wanted to stay and practice a bit more, Jeong Seongbin attached Park Juu to me. It was an instruction based on the calculation that Park Juu wouldn’t last long with his stamina and would return to the dorm.

Then Jeong Seongbin himself left the practice room without lingering regrets with Choi Jeho, saying he had to put Lee Cheonghyeon and Kang Giyeon to bed early. Our leader is getting tougher by the day, it’s troublesome.

Anyway, Park Juu and I filled the time practicing singing diligently. It seemed Park Juu’s total energy capacity was bigger when it came to singing; I had to take the lead in tidying up the practice room while leaving behind the guy who was still full of energy.

I quietly watched Park Juu dragging his feet while getting ready to leave.

“Juu.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like philosophical conversations?”

“Uh......?”

Park Juu, who was drinking water left in a bottle, coughed as if choking.

“Talking... is fine. Though I’m not confident if it’s a difficult topic.”

“Then I’ll lower the barrier. Let’s play a balance game.”

“Isn’t that lowering it too much...?”

Even as he protested, Park Juu obediently sat beside me.

“What is it?”

“It’s a simple problem.”

After opening my mouth first, I hesitated for a long time.

“Suppose there is a really delicious cake.”

“Yeah.”

“But to eat that cake, you have to eat a spoonful of gochujang made with Cheongyang chili peppers.”

“Huh......?”

“Then Juu, would you eat the cake?”

“Is the premise that the cake is that delicious......?”

“Maybe not. I think I used the wrong analogy. Let me rethink.”

I hadn’t considered the thought that memories with me might not be precious from my sister’s perspective. I hurriedly changed the expression.

“Imagine someone making a photo album for you. They fill it with photos taken with precious people. Could be friends, could be family.”

“Yeah.”

“But in the album, there are also photos of someone you hate. You can’t take just that person’s photos out. You have to keep the album as a whole.”

“Aha...... meaning I have to endure the parts I dislike.”

Fortunately, Park Juu understood what I wanted to say perfectly.

“In this situation, Juu, do you think you would choose to receive the album?”

Even though I already knew it wasn’t something to decide lightly, my heart was pounding.

Park Juu answered after long deliberation.

“I would accept it.”

“Really?”

“I don’t want to give up good memories just because of a few bad ones.”

Park Juu spoke his opinion quietly and clearly. It was an answer befitting a guy who was affectionate and fond of people.

“Then... I should make you an album someday.”

“Really?”

“Excluding people you dislike, filling it only with people you like, Juu. How about it?”

“By entrusting it to a printing service?”

“I can just edit the layout and print it as a photo book. I know how to use InDesign.”

“I don’t want to give hyung extra work......”

Park Juu, whose eyes were shining, declined my offer to make it everything by hand with a sad face.

Then he looked at me carefully and threw a question.

“Can I... do a balance game too?”

“What is it?”

Park Juu said, fiddling with his fingers.

“Hyung has a very precious friend. Hyung likes that friend so, so much but... other people say that friend is a bad person so it would be better not to stay close.”

In this case, what would you do, hyung?

It was similar to my question but different in nature.

In the first place, there was no way I would maintain a relationship with someone that everybody deemed as human trash, so such an assumption would be meaningless. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

“That’s a difficult question. It would require a lot of thought.”

“......Right?”

“Still, if I had to choose one side, I’d want to follow the words of the people around me.”

“Why?”

“My desire to protect the problematic friend is for that friend, but the people telling me to distance myself from the friend are probably advising me for my sake.”

At my words, Park Juu blinked his eyes.

“There might be people doing it on purpose to drive a wedge between me and my friend! But then the story gets complicated.... People who know that friend is the only one I have wouldn’t go that far on purpose to isolate me, right?”

“Ahaha.”

Park Juu laughed softly. It seemed he understood that I was doing my best to answer sincerely.

One day living as a musical beginner, one day as a chaebol successor, one day as a rogue monitoring agent—having seven bodies still wouldn’t be enough.

Here, dividing the daily routine into being a diligent member of society during the day and a nonstop nagger at night, even fourteen brains wouldn’t be enough.

I was so overwhelmed that I seriously considered using the time-stop the system gave me. I barely held back because it was too powerful a force to use for such trivial matters.

The current time was 10 a.m. On the ‘chaebol successor day’, I had to be a polite junior on set when the cameras were off, and a fearless young master when they were on.

During the few days I was absent, there was much progress in Ham Yiseo and Gong Jichan’s secret coverage.

They found out all the facts: that Cheonju Group picked civilians completely unrelated to the group when internal problems arise, cut off their livelihood or threatened them by mentioning their families, made them do dirty work necessary to solve problems, and then induced them to take their own lives.

Ham Yiseo “Why do such things to people who aren’t even part of the group......!”

Gong Jichan “Probably exactly because they aren’t even part of the group. They have to keep themselves flawless.”

They didn’t even make sweet offers like “If only you sacrifice yourself, your family will live without money worries for the rest of their lives,” as seen in common dramas.

A warning that if they didn’t listen, they wouldn’t be able to set foot anywhere in South Korea. And the power to make threats a reality came as terror to people who had no expertise in such fights. They targeted only the weak, who could barely even find a way to refuse.

At the center of all these acts was Cheon Yoonsung. Choosing the method to crush a person to death, and instructing to implement it, all depended on Cheon Yoonsung.

Judging by the story so far, Cheon Yoonsung seemed likely to meet an end where he got killed in the work. His crimes were too severe for him to get a peaceful “die in his sleep” finale. If it was going to be like this, they should have warned me earlier that he wouldn’t die peacefully.

‘It’s going to be hard to clean up this image, isn’t it?’

Visualizing a future where I died as the world’s worst piece of trash, I cried inwardly. They say once you play a villain, your image often gets fixed. I didn’t think my villain acting would be that unforgettable, but I could only hope it wouldn’t hurt Spark’s activities.

“Mr. Iwol, you have a lot of lines today, huh?”

Ms. So Saeyoung approached and spoke to me. Indeed, today was practically my one-man show. One page of the script was entirely a scene where I talked alone. Thanks to that, I pulled an all-nighter.

“Must be tough with so many emotional scenes. Did you eat well before coming?”

“I will do my best......”

“I feel a sense of dissonance every time I see Mr. Iwol like this. So different from the screen......”

The actor playing Gong Jichan gave me undeserved praise.

Having heard such words, I must work hard. I burned with enthusiasm, pulling up even the calories of the jjolmyeon I ate in the morning. Fortunately, filming ended without trouble.