A Wretched Startup
At midday, on Mapo Bridge.
“Hey, there! Over there!”
“There’s a man hanging off the bridge!”
At the very edge of the railing, a man dangled precariously and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“JH Medical stole our company’s technology!! Why won’t anybody believe me?!”
The person screaming in a drunken haze was Kim Siwon.
The founder of TA Medical.
The founder of a startup that had been ruined beyond recovery after its technology was stolen from under him unfairly.
“Sir, I’m listening to everything, and I believe you, so please calm down a little. Talk to us. You have to think about your family, too.”
The police and civilians gathered around him were doing their best to soothe him from a distance.
But their words weren’t enough to calm Kim Siwon.
“What family? I grew up in an orphanage from the time I was old enough to remember!!”
Kim Siwon had truly risen out of a ditch to become a dragon.
He’d grown up in an orphanage, but taught himself to enter a gifted high school at the top of his class, graduated early, and then finished college as the valedictorian of Korea University’s computer engineering department.
He was a genius.
So, under the expectations of countless people, he’d boldly started a company of his own.
But the graph of his life had come crashing down along with that company.
“You should go home, sir! Calm down and come this way!”
“Why would I go back there?!!”
At the word home, Kim Siwon let out a bitter laugh.
It reminded him of the state of his place, where nothing but debt collectors ever came knocking.
People pounding on the door day after day under the pretense of debt collection.
His landlord was even threatening to give him moving expenses just to make him leave.
TA Medical had collapsed, and Kim Siwon had started to drown in financial hardship the moment it became entangled with JH Medical.
“Our company’s AI finds lung cancer incredibly well on X-rays, okay!?”
“I understand. I believe you.”
“I’m telling you, it’s true!? It’s not like we launched later than the competition for no reason, but our product is better!”
TA Medical had begun as a startup club inside Korea University’s computer engineering department, where Kim Siwon had been the chairman.
None of them knew anything about management or marketing, so they had simply been building what they called an “AI for highly accurate image analysis.”
Then, after learning that the same technology could also be used to detect diseases like lung cancer, they created a product called “AI Lung Cancer Diagnosis Through X-rays.”
But since they were late entrants, had no doctors or medical organizations on their side, and possessed not a single international approval such as CE certification, the only place that showed interest in their product was JH Medical.
JH Medical, the number one healthcare company in the country.
“JH Medical promised to invest, okay? So we poured every last bit of money we had into developing the product. Then they stabbed us in the back and destroyed us!!”
JH Medical had requested a partnership agreement with TA Medical.
Along with that, they had promised investment and product purchases.
In the process, they took every technical document they could get their hands on—and the moment they had them, JH Medical vanished, then filed patents on the entire technology and released the product officially as their own.
“If we’d only gotten an upfront contract payment, huh!? If we’d filed the patents first, huh?! If we’d even had a lawyer look at it, we never would’ve signed such an unfair contract!!”
Rising anger surged through Kim Siwon, and he turned his head back down over the railing.
Now, in his field of vision, he could see not only the river below but also the rescue team approaching by boat from a distance.
Seeing those rescuers running toward him with everything they had, Kim Siwon’s fury finally cooled by a single degree.
He had a gut feeling that even if he jumped now, it would fail anyway.
“Nothing ever goes the way I want it to……”
Kim Siwon turned the thing he wanted over in his mind.
Did he really want to die?
Or was he simply in so much pain that it felt like death?
What was it that he hadn’t managed to achieve?
Death? Revenge against JH Medical?
Or business success?
“That’s it.”
At last, Kim Siwon made up his mind and slowly let the strength drain from his arms.
It had been a life full of resentment.
……That was what he thought, at that moment.
“Sir!”
Strong arms suddenly wrapped around him from behind.
It was a police officer.
“Sir! Please calm down a little and let’s talk more at the station!”
Startled, Kim Siwon struggled, but the officer mistook his resistance for a sign of danger and tightened his grip even more.
And so Kim Siwon was taken to the police station, and only after he had completely sobered up was he allowed to go home.
Even that happened while he was still loaded into the back of a police car.
“Sir, I don’t know the details of what happened, but you can’t let go of hope.”
Of course, that didn’t land well with Kim Siwon at all.
But the officer kept talking to him stubbornly, all the way to the front of Kim Siwon’s apartment, while Kim Siwon only stared blankly out the window.
Then, at the doorway to his place, the officer handed him a business card.
“Here’s my card. If things ever get too hard, call this number. If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll help as much as I can.”
Only then did Kim Siwon turn his gaze to the officer.
He looked a year or two older than him, but his eyes still shone with a kind of brightness that left an impression.
“Thank you.”
That was all Kim Siwon could say.
Yet despite his curt tone, he held onto the card with surprising care.
Then, carrying it gently all the way home, he turned things over in his mind alone.
This was really the kind of scene I’d only ever seen in dramas.
Inside a house plastered with overdue-payment notices everywhere.
Soju bottles rolling all over the floor.
And the sight of a failure sitting there like garbage in that garbage dump, drinking himself deeper into ruin.
I never imagined that figure would become me.
“Haa.”
I let out a long sigh and picked up the soju bottles rolling around the floor one by one.
“So I really was living in a trash can.”
As I tidied up every corner of the house, I found myself feeling better than expected.
My head seemed clearer than when I was drinking, too.
Finding all the old things I’d never gotten around to throwing away was kind of fun as well.
“Huh?”
Then, wedged into the narrow gap beside the wardrobe, an old laptop caught my eye.
“Whoa. This is the one I used back in college, isn’t it?”
A laptop so old and clunky it had been called a piece of crap even when I was a student, especially compared to today’s featherweight models.
Right. With this computer, I’d once dreamed of becoming both a developer and a businessman, churning out planning documents with lightning speed.
“Does this even turn on?”
With a wistful feeling in my chest, I pressed the power button.
And, surprisingly, the laptop turned on even though it hadn’t been charged in ages.
“Wow. It actually works.”
I stared at the wallpaper that appeared after a long loading process.
Maybe because I’d never been the type to organize anything, all sorts of business plan files I’d written in college were still there.
“I really had a lot of dreams back then.”
Looking through those files one by one made my chest ache.
I could feel my eyes stinging as I remembered the ambitious version of myself from the past.
But through the tear-clouded blur of my vision, something strange caught my eye.
All at once, a little dog walked out to the corner of the Word screen, a speech bubble floating beside it.
[How can I help you?]
“The Office Assistant?”
That nasty yellow speech bubble and line—I hadn’t seen those in ages.
Wasn’t that the Office Assistant dog that disappeared after Office 2003?
The program that used to help users when Microsoft software ran.
No. That wasn’t right.
That dog was yellow, but the one before my eyes now was a spotted black-and-white dog, like a badugi.
“Am I still drunk?”
I stared blankly at the dog and the speech bubble.
Well, help, huh.
What exactly could you help me with?
“Make TA Medical surpass JH Medical.”
My small, yet enormous wish.
A wish for a cheated startup to get the chance to rise above the number one company in the country.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but—”
The moment I said the words, I gave a helpless laugh and shook my head.
> [Request received.]
“What do you mean, request received?”
I was about to ignore the speech bubble.
But that was no longer possible.
Rrrrumble.
The words had barely left my mouth when something suddenly went wrong—an earthquake, no, a vibration, no, something like that.
“What the—?!”
> [Loading 0%]
Then, a loading window appeared before my eyes.
Was this a dream?
Or had I finally lost my mind?
I didn’t even have time to think before the loading bar raced toward 100 percent.
> [Loading complete 100%]
And the instant the notification that loading had finished appeared, a blinding light burst out of it.
“What the—?!”
I threw both arms up and covered my face against the sudden flash.
When I squeezed my eyes shut, all I could hear was the dangerously loud thudding of my heartbeat.
An explosion? A hallucination?
I couldn’t even begin to understand what was happening.
I was frozen there in a tense stupor for what felt like forever, when a lazy, childish voice suddenly tickled my ear from behind.
It was a truly young voice, the kind you’d expect from someone in their early twenties.
“Kim Siwon. You asleep?”
Asleep?
At a time like this?
Who was making that kind of ridiculous comment?
“You came to the club room just to sleep?”
Another young voice followed.
But wait.
Had he just said the club room?
Club room?
“Hey. You really need to open your eyes. Class is late.”
Open my eyes?
“Huh?”
Only after hearing that did I gently open them.
And when I did, an unbelievable sight spread before me.
“Why are you all here?”
All five of the startup club’s original members were standing right in front of me.
And the place I was in was no longer my studio apartment, either.
It was the university club room I’d used back then.
“Why else? We have to go to Startup Theory I.”
“What, are you planning to skip orientation?”
Startup Theory I.
The class our startup club members had all taken while dreaming of building a startup together.
In other words, a general education class I’d taken in my third year of college.
They were going to orientation for that class? At this age?
“Why would I go there? No, wait—what’s with that screen?”
Only then did I realize something.
Everyone in front of me, all looking at me with expressions full of pity, seemed younger than they were in my memory.
“Why would we go? Attendance matters, so of course we go.”
“No matter how much you want to start a business, you can’t just throw away your grades.”
The kids grumbling and lecturing me were younger than the versions I remembered.
What’s more, Choi Yeonghun, who had always kept his hair straight after graduation, now had a perm, and Jeong Gihun was wearing a computer engineering varsity jacket.
“What is this?”
One thought filled my head completely.
Was this the kind of thing you always see in web novels or webtoons? Regression?
“Where’s my phone?”
“Your phone? Here.”
Choi Yeonghun, seated next to me, tossed me an unfamiliar phone.
It was a very crude phone, with a bezel so thick it was absurd.
“Huh?”
But on closer look, it wasn’t unfamiliar at all.
It was the phone I’d used back in college.
When I turned the screen on, even the wallpaper and the app icons had regressed all the way back to those days.
“This can’t be real.”
The date shown on the screen was from the year I’d been a third-year college student.
“Yeah. You slept a lot. Hurry up and let’s go—we’re all going to be late.”
“If you’re not coming, just go back to sleep, oppa~”
The others left me there, dazed, and headed off to class. After staring blankly for a moment, I decided to follow them for now.
“Wait for me!”
Could this really be regression?
I hoped so.
If I’d been granted that kind of chance, I would use it better than anyone else.
Seriously. By any means necessary.
“You’ve all come rushing in right before attendance, haven’t you?”
By the time we reached the lecture hall, the professor was already there.
A professor whose name I couldn’t even remember.
Back when this professor was diligently teaching business-related lectures, I had always been in the corner coding on my laptop.
“I’ll begin roll call.”
But I had no intention of sitting in the corner coding now.
First, I needed to learn as quickly as possible what business actually was and how it was supposed to flow.
If I started studying the fundamentals now, I’d be able to build a better company than before.
> [It would be faster to use me than to sit through that class.]
While I was trying to focus on the lecture, a speech bubble popped up on my phone.
A speech bubble.
And beneath it, the same black-and-white dog from the laptop was walking toward me.
“What the hell?”
I jumped and grabbed my phone, stepping out of the classroom.
The dog that had been on the laptop only a moment ago had suddenly burst out of my phone.
> [What do you mean, what the hell? I’m the one who’ll make your business succeed.]
Before I could answer, the speech bubble changed again.
> [Need help or not?]
“Yes! Help me! Please, help me! Please, I’m begging you, help me!”
At my frantic cry, the dog inside the phone curved its eyes in a smile.
> [Then starting today, try living seriously.]