So I Wouldn't Regret It Anyway - 1
Friday, May 28.
The last Friday of May had arrived.
Between helping with Do-dam’s arena renovation, A-yeong’s live event planning, and RD’s Big Plan business consulting, time had slipped by in a blur.
Before I knew it, a third of this loop was already gone.
My phone kept ringing without pause.
A photo from Do-dam came through.
There, the renovated arena stood in all its polished, respectable glory. It was hard to believe this had been a place where dust had been flying around just a few days ago.
...
Same place.
Completely different atmosphere.
Just like this convenience store.
And just like me, intervening in other people’s lives.
...
I was sitting in front of the store.
The sinking sun gently stroked my face with its warmth, and the rippling Han River threw back a glittering wash of light.
Without thinking, I tapped the outdoor table.
Tap-tap.
...
The familiar sound filled my heart.
The sound of connections and meetings.
Then I looked ahead.
The sunset.
It really was...
an unsettling sight.
When evening finally came, it meant another day was over. And for me, that always meant parting and farewell.
...
Again...
another day was ending.
...
I opened and closed my hand, then tapped the table again.
Tap-tap—
The sound swallowed the scenery whole.
The savage emptiness that had been numbing my heart faded a little inside my chest. It was the same emptiness that had been washed away on the very first morning after I returned, when A-yeong had welcomed me back.
What I had wanted, so desperately and for so long.
That warmth had been granted to me too.
'This loop left something behind.'
A slightly different beginning.
The most important bond.
Money and trust.
And, finally, a goal.
All of it had meaning to me now.
It definitely meant something.
So I moved more diligently than I had in the previous loop, separating Bigman from Seonwoo Taek. With better conditions, I supported more people.
So that more people could be happy...
...
'I heard Do-dam’s new dream, I changed Team Leader Jeong Yu-ri’s position, I supported RD’s passion, and I even got to see Ae-ri.'
Now I knew where I was going.
It was permitted to a regressor too.
One single trajectory.
The inescapable cage called time...
...I had gotten my hands on life.
“Probably.”
But I still couldn’t be completely sure.
...
I looked at my left hand.
My wrist, visible beyond the cuff of my gray shirt, was still empty. As if mocking my ignorance, the sunset cast a long shadow over it.
Like a bracelet.
But it vanished before long.
My wrist was still bare.
I still hadn’t found the key to regression I had discovered in the previous loop... the Five-Colored Bracelet.
That made me a little restless.
'What exactly were the things I saw when I regressed that time? They were things I have never seen once since.'
Light, glitter, and even a voice.
I wanted to see them again.
And I wanted to ask about the principle behind regression.
If I was going to live with other people, how exactly was I supposed to help them? If I wanted to break out of regression, what was I supposed to do?
...
And the clue...
lay only with A-yeong.
More precisely,
with A-yeong from the previous loop.
- Because I like you, oppa.
“Haa...”
I covered my forehead with my hand. Then I lowered my head and let out a sigh. Regret from the previous loop, something I could never take back, came crashing down on me.
'She worked for more than three hours to make that thing for me. I should have at least asked where she got it and how.'
That thought came to me.
...Haa.
The things I had let pass by
were coming back to me as irreversible regret.
...
What if.
What if all of this...
was just one long dream?
What if I couldn't find the bracelet,
and everything scattered apart again?
...
Could I...
really endure that?
I couldn’t answer that question.
I could only keep tapping the outdoor table.
Tap-tap...
...
I looked up again.
The sunset was disappearing between the gray buildings. Darkness was slowly settling over the city.
At last.
It turned dark.
...
At that moment.
A single light flicked on far away.
And my phone rang.
Ring!
“!”
I looked down at it.
It was A-yeong.
It was a text message from her.
Short and direct, unlike her.
I lifted my head.
I could see A-yeong coming up from below the hill leading to the convenience store. She was grinning under a baseball cap, waving at me. Then she bent down and hoisted the large box she had set on the ground back into her arms.
-Oppa~!
'A box? Why is she carrying so much...'
Before the question was even finished, my feet were already moving.
I went over to A-yeong. Then I reached for the box she was carrying. Inside were several envelopes.
“Let me help you.”
“!”
A-yeong shook her head lightly.
“It’s okay, hehe... I just texted because I was happy to see you, and then it might look like I was hinting that you should carry it for me.”
“But it looks heavy.”
“Ugh...! I can carry enou— I mean, shoo! I can carry it.”
...
I opened and closed my hand.
A-yeong glanced at it. Then, a little awkwardly, she smiled and held the box out to me.
“Then let’s carry it together.”
“All right.”
We each took one handle of the box. The heights weren’t quite aligned, so it rattled every time we walked.
I almost regretted trying to help for no reason, but A-yeong said,
“Thanks for helping me.”
“It’s making a bit of noise because of me. I should just have carried it alone... ”
“It’s fine.”
“...”
“It’s nicer when we walk together like this.”
“I see.”
A-yeong looked to the side.
Between the dim buildings of Seoul, the lights were coming on one by one.
Cars passed, their brake lights leaving red afterimages in the air.
“Wow, the night view is beautiful.”
...
“Isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Then it was better for two people to carry it.”
“Pardon?”
“If I’d carried it alone, I wouldn’t have been able to look around or focus on anything else. The night view, I mean.”
...
She smiled brightly.
“Thank you. For helping me see the night view.”
...
A-yeong was still here.
That fact hadn’t changed.
Once I remembered that,
my restlessness quietly receded.
I answered her.
“Not at all. I’m the one who should thank you.”
“...?”
For coming with me.
*
Before I knew it, night had deepened completely.
A-yeong and I sat side by side at the outdoor table. The box we had brought in was now set down beside us.
And A-yeong was on a phone call that had suddenly come in. It was her mother, Lee Eun-ryeong.
“Huh? Where am I? At the convenience store. Yeah. With Taek oppa. Mm-hm... Mm? Dinner? Not yet. Mm, mm... uh-huh...?”
A-yeong tilted her head. Then she covered the phone a little and whispered to me.
“Mom says we should eat together...”
“?”
“She wants to, um, eat di-dinner together...”
“The three of us? Including me?”
“Yes...”
I nodded.
“That sounds good.”
“Re-really...?”
“Yes.”
A-yeong giggled. Then she put the phone back to her ear.
“Yeah, Mom. Yeah. Yeah! I said oppa would eat with us too. Together. Yeah, yeah?”
Once again, she took the phone away from her ear and whispered to me.
“She said she feels bad making us keep leaving the convenience store to go eat somewhere else, so she wants to come here and cook for us.... Is, is that okay?”
...
I nodded once more.
“That sounds good. We have a gas burner and running water here.”
“Hehe...”
A-yeong grabbed the phone one last time, and this time she ended the call after saying she understood. Then she looked at me and said,
“Mom says she’ll stop by the market right away and come over. She said she’s sorry for making us keep leaving the convenience store and going places.”
“I see. But there’s no need to worry about that. The convenience store is... A-yeong, you...”
...
Before I could finish, A-yeong grabbed my hand. Her fingers, unusually warm, pressed down firmly.
She said,
“I’m sorry.”
“Pardon?”
“You’ve been busy preparing for the concert lately, so you keep missing weekends too. And when you do come, you’re so tired you just fall asleep.... No, actually, it’s been like that ever since you became the manager, oppa.”
...
“Anyway, ahem...”
A-yeong cleared her throat. Then she stood up and opened the box beside her. Inside were envelope after envelope, all stamped with luxury department store logos.
She rummaged through the contents for a while.
Rustle.
Rustle.
“The truth is, as of today, I finished all the preparations for the summer live project and the new costume work too. I’ve already thought through the Big Plan I’m going to do after Do-dam’s arena. So I had some free time.”
...
“So I went to the department store with Ae-ri unnie too... Hmm? Where is it? Hold on...”
While A-yeong searched through the box, I thought to myself,
...
New costume, huh.
Did she mean the swimsuit Berry used for the performance? It had looked like they had barely managed to finish it at the very last second, yet they had moved incredibly fast.
'Even if A-yeong front-loaded three hundred million won of the budget, getting a new costume model in one month is fast... Was that possible because the ABCD project itself had been planned for quite a while, so there were drafts already left over?'
In any case.
They were busy all the same.
I had thought A-yeong would be frantically juggling everything by herself, but she was handling a surprising number of tasks quite skillfully on her own.
...
That made me proud.
As that thought crossed my mind.
A-yeong thrust something under my chin.
“Ta-da! Found it!”
“...?”
I looked down.
What A-yeong was holding was a necktie. A high-end piece with a luxurious yellow base and blue patterns woven into it.
'That looks pretty expensive...'
She held it against my neck and said,
“Oppa, Do-dam said you looked incredibly cool when you were being the manager.”
“Pardon?”
“Do-dam did.”
...
“She said you were really cool, talking smoothly in front of those company presidents after going to that huge mansion meeting, and answering everything so confidently in front of the RD people too.”
...
A-yeong looped the tie around my neck. Over my T-shirt, she tied it up in a clumsy, haphazard way, so it ended up looking a little ridiculous.
“The first time I heard Do-dam say someone was cool... besides, you know, a pro gamer? A god? A GOAT? Anyway, someone like that, that was the first time.”
“I see. I imagine Do-dam was only seeing me in a suit for the first time, so that’s probably why she felt that way. People usually rate a side of someone they know quite highly when they see an unfamiliar version of them.”
A-yeong shook her head at my words.
“No, oppa really is cool.”
...
My words were rejected outright.
And then A-yeong muttered,
“Ah, there.”
She let go of the tie.
It was loosely fastened beneath my collar, and of course, tied sloppily over a gray shirt, it didn’t look particularly elegant.
But A-yeong clapped her hands.
“Wow! It suits you! I was really torn— I mean, I had a hard time choosing the color. Ae-ri unnie kept saying neutral tones would suit you better, so I couldn’t decide, hehe.”
...
I fiddled with the tie and said,
“This thing must cost at least several hundred thousand won. I appreciate you thinking of me, but for A-yeong... ”
“Nuh-uh!”
A-yeong cut me off,
and pinned a polished silver tie clip onto it.
Looking at it, I said,
“That’s a brand item worth well over a few million won... ”
“Nuh-uh!”
“This watch too is worth several million... ”
“Nuh-uh!”
“And this belt and pen are...? Wait a second, A-yeong.”
“Nuh-uh!”
She was, quite literally, behaving like a treasure goblin.
A-yeong giggled as she added one luxurious accessory after another to me. Every time she did, the memories of a loop spent indulging in luxury spoiled the prices of the items for me in advance.
'If I add all this up, it has to be over tens of millions...'
I looked at A-yeong.
“A-yeong. This is too much, I feel bad—”
“Manager.”
...
At that familiar title,
the ten-thousand-won bill in my pocket rustled.
A-yeong patted both sides of my shoulders and spoke in a calm, confident voice.
“I still don’t really understand why you spent money on me like that, and why you helped such a tiny VTuber. I don’t understand why you told me the lottery numbers, either, or why you persuaded Bigman to invest the way you did...”
...
“I honestly still don’t know whether that ten thousand won was worth all of this.”
...
“But.”
A-yeong let go of my shoulders and took both my hands.
“I’m going to start investing too.”
“In what...?”
“In you, oppa.”
...
I was left speechless, looking at all the expensive items draped over me. Seeing me like that, A-yeong smiled faintly.
“Since you’re the weird manager who invested in a tiny VTuber, I want to be the weird part-timer who invests in the manager.”
...
For some reason,
I had nothing to say.
So.
I just nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
*
In the dead of night.
The last bus rolled into the southern Seoul bus terminal. A white-haired woman staggered out of it.
People passing by kept glancing at her.
...
'Is she a movie actress? Looks like she’s coming back after filming.'
The white-haired woman, Baek Hyang, paid no attention to those looks. She only muttered in a tired voice.
“I was trying to get to Seoul, and I ended up going all the way to Busan by mistake...”
She had taken the wrong bus from Chungcheong Province and ended up in Busan.
Then she had taken the wrong train from Busan and wound up in Daegu.
After wandering around the country like that, she had...
finally made it to Seoul after a whole week.
Baek Hyang was terrible with directions.
She muttered again, voice drained of energy.
“I should have just called Su-cheol and asked him to make the reservation...”
With a sigh, she took the Five-Colored Thread out of her bundle. The moment she sensed the threads of connection and tried to find the regressor, Baek Hyang suddenly remembered another reality.
“...!”
'Oh, right. I don’t know my way around Seoul, so Su-cheol is supposed to guide me...'
And then.
Baek Hyang realized she had no phone. And there wasn’t a single person in sight inside the southern terminal.
...
What now.