JERS 02

CHAPTER 02

Who Is Cha Eun-young? (1)

The nurse tilted her head and handed me a wallet.

“Take a look, Miss Cha Eun-young. It’s your wallet.”

It was an expensive foreign-brand wallet — too fancy for a college-age girl.
The leather was a little worn, but still obviously high-end.

What… is this?

Inside, I found an ID card.
The face in the photo looked even younger than the reflection I’d just seen in the mirror — and I froze.

[Name: Cha Eun-young]
[ID No: 0X0309-3XXXXXX]

A kid.
She was barely twenty.

As I stared blankly at the ID, the nurse returned from the reception desk holding a phone.

“A firefighter said this was yours. Can you confirm?”

I accepted it automatically.
It was locked — fingerprint recognition required.

When I hesitantly pressed my thumb to the sensor, the phone unlocked.

“Looks like it’s really yours,” the nurse said, relieved. “We couldn’t reach your guardian, so we processed your admission with the ID info.
The clothes you were wearing were ruined during rescue, so call your guardian to bring you something clean.
Once you’ve paid the bill, you can go home.”

Call my guardian?
I didn’t even know who I was, let alone who that might be.

And “paying the bill”?
That meant money.

I opened the wallet — there was one debit card and about 20,000 won in cash.
Definitely not enough for an ER visit.
Hopefully, the card had money on it.

But before that… what am I supposed to wear?

When I told the staff I didn’t have anyone to call, they exchanged surprised glances.

“Really? No parents or anyone?”

Even if she did, how would I know?

Then, one of the clerks whispered to another:

“Hey, that name — Cha Eun-young, born 0X? Isn’t she that kid?”
“Oh… right.”

They murmured among themselves, then a male nurse came over and handed me some casual clothes.

“Here. These are mine — you don’t need to return them.”

His tone carried a quiet pity.
I guessed why.
This girl, Cha Eun-young, must have been brought in after attempting suicide.

Still… something about their looks told me there was more to the story.

Before I could ask, the nurse hurried off to tend to other patients.

***

Luckily, the card had enough money to pay the hospital fees.
When I finally stepped outside, night had fallen.

Now where do I go?

I checked the ID again — it listed an address in an upscale apartment district.
But on the back, there was a sticker with an updated address.

So this is where she lives now…

Unsure how much money she had, I turned on her phone to open the navigation app — and froze.

What the—? Why does it say the year is 2X?

I checked the calendar.
Three years had passed since the last day I remembered being alive.

Three years… since I died.

My old body must’ve decomposed by now.

Out of morbid curiosity, I searched my old name online — “Yoo Jin-heon.”

Hundreds of memorial articles came up — colleagues and junior singers commemorating my first and second death anniversaries.

So it’s true.

I knew I was dead, but seeing it laid out in news headlines… felt surreal.

Maybe I was dreaming.
Maybe I was just a brain floating in a jar somewhere.
Nothing about this felt real.

Still — the wind on my skin, the pavement beneath my feet — all of it was real enough.

“Hey! Don’t just stand there blocking the sidewalk!”

A passerby who had bumped into me yelled irritably.

“Ah— sorry.”

That jolted me back to reality.
Whatever was going on, I needed a roof over my head.

So I took the bus to the address on the ID.

***

What awaited me was a shabby basement studio apartment, its wallpaper yellowed and peeling.

“Wow…”

Calling it a “home” felt generous.
Instant-ramen cups, dried-up takeout containers, and piles of garbage covered the floor.

“Ugh.”

Yet among the trash were luxury items — branded shoes, bags, and clothes — all too small for this body.

Weird.

I looked around and spotted something beneath a sheet of glass on the cluttered desk — an old newspaper clipping.

[Joy Entertainment CEO Yoo Jin-heon Donates Organs to Save Four Lives Before Passing Away.]

“…What?”

Below it was another clipping, carefully pasted beside it:

[Boy Who Lost Family in Fiore Hotel Accident Receives New Life Thanks to Yoo Jin-heon’s Gift.]
[“With CEO Yoo Jin-heon’s corneal donation, Cha Eun-young can see the world again.”]

The words hit me like a shockwave.

And suddenly—

Screams. Smoke. Fire.

A flood of memories that weren’t mine crashed into my head.

Children crying, doors locked, people clawing to escape the flames.

“Eun-young, can you hear me? It’s Uncle Seung-wook. Do you recognize me?”
“I know it’s hard to accept, but… your parents — your whole family — they didn’t make it.”
“From now on, I’ll take care of you.”

Then — grief, betrayal, loneliness.

Her uncle sold the family house, saying it was “too big for her alone.”
He took over her parents’ money, promising to manage it for her.
Too broken to protest, Eun-young handed him everything.

He moved her to this dingy room, claiming it was “comfortable enough.”
She was left alone — ignored, depressed, and traumatized.

Every night she woke from nightmares.
She stopped going to school.
No one truly cared for her.

And then, after three years of that emptiness…

She finally gave up and jumped.

The visions faded, and I found myself back in the present, breathing hard.

So — this girl had lost her family in an accident.
She’d received my donated eyes.
And now that she’d chosen death… I was living in the body she’d left behind.

A second life, bought with her despair.

The mysterious voice’s words echoed again in my head:

“You’re not meant to die yet. There are more fools you need to save.”

I didn’t fully understand what that meant.
But it was clear enough — this new life wasn’t for me.
It was a second chance to help others.

***

As Yoo Jin-heon the singer-turned-CEO, I’d always believed in giving people opportunities.
Even when I lost money, I invested in people — in their potential.

If they succeeded, great.
If they failed, at least they’d tried — and maybe I’d helped them find hope.

That philosophy had made Joy Entertainment one of the top five companies in the industry.

“We deal in people, not products,” I used to say. “You have to invest in people — even if you get burned.”

My staff thought I was too soft, but I believed it was my duty as someone who’d once been exploited.

“Maybe that’s what the voice meant,” I thought. “That I still have people left to help.”

But first—

“I need to clean this dump.”

No deep thinking was possible surrounded by garbage.

I bought trash bags and started sorting through the mess.

“Ugh, the smell…”

By the time I’d scrubbed the floors and taken out the recycling, it was past midnight.

Then another thought hit me.

“How’s my company doing now?”

I’d left it in the hands of trusted executives.
Surely, they were keeping things steady.

I opened the phone’s browser and typed: Joy Entertainment.

What came up nearly made me drop the phone.

“What the hell happened to the stock price?!”

Every article screamed disaster.
The best departments had been sold off.
Joy Entertainment was an empty shell — even the name had changed.

“They sold everything to a foreign private-equity fund?”

At the center of it all was a familiar name.

[New CEO: Ki Sung-hoon]

My old business partner.
My friend.
The man who’d built the company with me — and held the second-largest share after mine.

And now, it seemed, he’d sold out everything we’d built together.