ch.02

“HAAAH!”

My breath exploded out of my lungs all at once. An agonizing pain ripped through my chest, like a drowning man breaking the surface of the water for the first time.

“I survived…”

I survived, for now. I need to call emergency services right away—

“Wait.”

My hand froze.

There was nothing. No rain, no wrecked van, absolutely nothing.

Pitch-black darkness surrounded me from all sides, as if I were trapped in an endless void.

“What is this…”

I quickly pinched my cheek.

“It doesn’t hurt?”

It’s a dream, then! Of course. It was just the absolute worst nightmare a person could possibly have.

Everything will go back to normal the moment I wake up.

There won’t be a horrific accident, Kang E-yul will be perfectly fine, and I’ll go back to my ordinary life.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I absolutely cannot go to that cursed schedule.”

But a long time passed, and the void remained unchanged.

“……Did I actually die?”

Honestly, surviving a crash that gruesome would have been the weirder outcome.

So, this is what the afterlife looks like.

“Hah, if you’re going to take me, just get it over with already. Whether it’s to heaven or hell…”

The moment those words left my lips.

Accompanied by a blaring noise, a blinding light illuminated the entire space in a split second.

“ARGH!”

A light so intense it nearly blinded me, followed by a sudden, cheap sound effect.

“……Huh?”

On what, for fuck’s sake?

The mysterious status window began rattling off an endless string of numbers. It honestly looked kind of pathetic, seemingly gasping for digital breath as it neared the end.

“What the hell is this?”

Then, a painfully low-quality animation started playing on the window. It explained some ridiculous lore about the Ruler of the Underworld spinning a roulette wheel with the names of the dead, and the lucky winner receiving a “Dead Man’s Wish Ticket” that grants a single wish.

But what’s the deal with “inappropriate use”?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I’ve just been handed a miraculous second chance.

“Can… Can I make a wish related to life and death?”

“Did… Did Kang E-yul die too?”

“…WHAT?!”

My mind blanked for a second.

“That bastard Go Jae-sung is the ONLY one who escaped unscathed?!”

They say the good die young and pricks live forever; I really should have cursed that scumbag a little less.

“Can I turn back time?”

The status window asked, as if reading my exact intentions.

“Yeah. All I have to do is not go to that schedule.”

“The root cause…”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have to think hard about that.

Why was Impacter shoved into a remote, rural filler gig in the first place? The answer was painfully simple.

“……Because they’re failed idols.”

So, the crash that killed me and Kang E-yul was destined to repeat itself no matter what, as long as the fact remained that Impacter was a flop group?

My mind flashed back to the self-deprecating posts fans made on social media, joking about whether failing as an idol was a sin punishable by death.

Sure, there were several reasons for their failure. Garbage planning, atrocious styling, and low-quality music.

But the absolute main cause was glaringly obvious.

It was Go Jae-sung and his catastrophic scandals. The fallout from his pathetic excuses and the agency’s sluggish response swallowed the entire group whole.

But for the other four members, who suffered endlessly because of him, to be dragged into a fate that ends in death?!

“THAT IS SO FUCKING UNFAIR.”

Without realizing it, my fists were trembling. And once the storm of rage washed over me, only cold, hard reality remained.

Slowly, I voiced the solution.

“I… I can take his place.”

If the troublemaker Go Jae-sung disappears, the group won’t fail. And if the group doesn’t fail, that horrific accident won’t happen either.

But the status window read my thoughts once again.

A destiny already sealed…

“That means I can’t change Impacter as a group that has already debuted. I have to go back to before that destiny was set in stone.”

In that case, there was only one way.

“…THE SURVIVAL SHOW!”

I formulated the sentence in my head over and over again.

There was no room for error. This was my one and only shot.

“Turn back time to 4 years ago, and put me in the idol debut survival show Boys Code alongside Kang E-yul!”

If I couldn’t just swap out Go Jae-sung in an already-debuted Impacter, I would enter the survival show right from the start, crush him, and debut in Impacter myself.

An idol? I had never dreamed of such a thing in my life. But right now, I wanted it more desperately than anyone else in the world.

Because it was the one chance my life—and Kang E-yul’s life—depended on.

“This time.”

If that bastard is currently celebrating his lone survival, I hope he enjoys it to the fullest. Because it’s going to be the absolute last moment of happiness in his miserable life.

“I WILL DEBUT, NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES.”

To save Kang E-yul.

And as the pitch-black darkness returned, my body plummeted into an endless freefall.

“……HAAAH!”

I shot up, panting violently.

Am I back in the afterlife?

“ARGH!”

A stinging pain nearly tore my back in half.

What the hell? This tragically familiar palm strike definitely belongs to…

“Are you FINALLY awake?! Didn’t you say you had to leave early today?!”

“……Sis?”

It was my only blood relative, Yoo Sung-ah.

“Yes, your older sister! Who else would I be?!”

I rubbed my eyes fiercely in disbelief. I squeezed them shut and opened them again, but the scene didn’t change.

“What… What year is it right now?”

“Sung-woo, you’re talking a lot of nonsense today! Are you really at the top of your class?”

“…”

“Does your school only have 10 students or something?”

“Sis, how old are you right now?”

“Can’t you do basic math? I’m seven years older than you, I’m twenty-six.”

I, who had been only one year younger than my sister in my past life, was suddenly a full seven years younger than her!

I slowly turned my head and picked up my phone.

July 6th, 202X. It really was 4 years ago.

“……Then how old am I right now?”

Yoo Sung-ah shot me a look of pure pity.

“What is wrong with you this morning? You’re actually going to be late if you keep this up.”

The door slammed shut.

As soon as Yoo Sung-ah disappeared, the status window popped up, as if it had been politely waiting for her to leave.

“Good lord, you should have told me before I got smacked into next week by my sister.”

This thing totally just ignored me, didn’t it?

“Hah……”

To suddenly become a nineteen-year-old again.

This Ruler of the Underworld was oddly realistic about the most bizarre things.

“……As long as you were gonna de-age me, you could’ve at least made me a little bit younger than this.”

He placed me right on the absolute maximum age limit for an idol debut.

It made no sense, but I had no choice but to accept the reality staring me in the face. Especially since my back was still throbbing from Yoo Sung-ah’s spike.

I cautiously stepped toward the mirror. There were no dark circles from pulling all-nighters at the studio, no sunken cheeks. My face automatically broke into a grin when I saw my skin looking as smooth and polished as a peeled egg.

But as I was laughing widely, I suddenly caught a glimpse of something shining on my teeth.

“Oh, my god.”

I had forgotten one crucial detail.

“I didn’t expect this part to be recreated too.”

Nineteen-year-old Yoo Sung-woo had braces. I panicked for a second, but then realized that a trainee with braces was actually an in-demand niche with its own unexpected charm in this industry.

“Alright. Not bad.”

But the real tragedy was somewhere else. This scrawny physique didn’t have a single ounce of muscle on it.

“I suffered like a dog to build my old body—”

I could practically cry just thinking about how much money I spent on protein powder alone!

I shoved my grief aside and organized my thoughts on my current situation.

So, the very first thing I need to do right now is—

“HEY! AREN’T YOU GOING TO THE AGENCY?!”

The door flew open, and Yoo Sung-ah screamed at me.

“The agency?”

A high school student going to an entertainment agency—

Yoo Sung-ah furrowed her brows. She had told me in the past that this was the exact expression she made whenever I spouted absolute nonsense.

“Don’t tell me you made all that fuss about getting street-cast and it was all a lie?!”

At that moment, something clicked in my head.

A week ago. The scout who handed me a business card on the street. The name printed on it: NYX Entertainment.

The contract, the practice room, the survival show.

The forgotten memories flooded back all at once.

“Insane.”

The after-sales service provided by the Ruler of the Underworld was genuinely top-tier.

The one single silver lining of Impacter’s massive failure was that NYX Entertainment hadn’t moved out of this building once in the last four years.

And the moment I pushed open the exact same glass doors I knew from before the regression…

“It went down.”

This was the very first time since I came back that this unmoving number had shifted.

I had no idea what it meant, but the label ‘Danger Level’ alone was sketchy as hell.

“…You sure have a way with words.”

That was just a polite way of saying it wasn’t going to tell me shit. I swallowed my sigh and walked inside.

Beneath the familiar NYX Entertainment logo, signed CDs from famous artists were densely displayed.

Casting Director Song In-hyuk, who had scouted all sorts of top-tier idols for major agencies, and Visual Director Kwon Jae-hyuk, who had garnered massive praise for his exceptional artistic taste.

Although their management skills devolved so catastrophically over time that they became known by the derogatory combo nickname “The Disaster Duo” instead of their real names, they were genuinely renowned as masterminds of the idol industry before founding NYX.

So this is what the agency lobby looked like. I imagined for a brief moment the view Kang E-yul saw every single day when he came in to train.

I headed toward the practice room, guided by a staff member.

The moment I opened the door, I scanned the faces in the room, but I couldn’t find the one face I was looking for.

My heart plummeted into my stomach.

Then.

“As we previously announced, there is an important notice today.”

Song In-hyuk stepped into the practice room.

“Starting next week, we will be holding an internal survival program to select the final debut lineup.”

Tense murmurs immediately filled the room.

“A survival program?”

Taking a look at the bewildered trainees, Song In-hyuk spoke again.

“And this entire process will be broadcast on C-Net.”

This time, it wasn’t just murmuring; it was closer to cheers of pure joy.

“I-Insane.”

“We’re gonna be on TV!”

“Oh my god…”

Everyone was completely buzzing with excitement, except me. I was in an entirely different world.

I was going insane with anxiety.

At that very moment.

The practice room door opened once more.

“I apologize. I’m a bit late.”

A familiar voice.

Those few words alone were enough to make my heart jolt and react before my brain even could.

And the moment I turned my head, my eyes locked with the person standing at the doorway.

Kang E-yul… Kang E-yul was alive and well.