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# Chapter 1
In the early hours of the morning, inside a hotel suite.
I woke up on my own.
The chilly atmosphere of an unfamiliar place seeped into my skin.
“Where am I?”
An unfamiliar ceiling.
The plain patterns characteristic of standardized hotels and the cold, neatly arranged colors came into view.
Even though I had never seen this place before, it somehow felt familiar.
It was probably happening again.
An unfamiliar place, an unfamiliar body, an unfamiliar reality.
It was a pattern I had already repeated countless times.
“Did I sell my country in my past life or something?”
To be honest, by this point, I was sick and tired of reincarnation and regression.
The excitement I had once felt at the prospect of starting over again and again had disappeared. Now, it simply felt like another burden I had to carry.
Of course, I liked it at first.
Being able to die and start over was certainly an opportunity.
But in the end, things always went wrong.
Without exception, every ending had been tragic.
For example, my previous life had been relatively comfortable because I had been born into a chaebol family.
A rich kid from Gangnam.
Studying abroad, supercars, an apartment in Cheongdam-dong.
But the problem was my family.
Greedy relatives and a jealous older brother.
Eventually, I fell victim to their schemes and died in what was made to look like an accident.
Reincarnation and regression had always gone like that.
The beginning was glamorous, but the ending was always tragic.
I had burned to death, been poisoned, and been stabbed on a battlefield.
The pain never disappeared with time. It had been etched deep into my soul.
“Knowing too much is a curse.”
That curse had spread all the way into my soul.
The knowledge left behind by failure, betrayal, wounds, and death had failed to guide me properly. Instead, it kept dragging me down.
“The most horrible life was probably when I was King Gongyang at the end of Goryeo.”
I had never even wanted to become king, but Yi Seong-gye had threatened me with a sword.
After ascending the throne, all I had was surveillance and schemes.
Nothing ever went according to my wishes, and in the end, I disappeared, leaving behind nothing but my name.
The memory came back to me.
That day when Jeong Do-jeon came to find me.
[His Majesty must die as a king.]
[…What did you say?]
[For a new country to be established, Goryeo must come to an end. Your Majesty must remain in history as the final king of Goryeo.]
[Jeong Do-jeon, what in the world are you talking about?]
[I apologize, Your Majesty, but it has already been decided.]
[This is why I said I didn't want to become king! I said from the very beginning that I wouldn't do it!]
[Even if Your Majesty had refused, the result would have been the same.]
[I should have just died when that bastard Yi Seong-gye threatened me with a sword. If I'd known this was how it would turn out!]
[…Your Majesty, please calm down.]
[Calm down? You people made me king without my permission, and now you're telling me to die? Does that make any sense?]
[That is how history flows.]
[To hell with history! It's my life, yet I couldn't even choose what happened to me!]
The crown had been nothing but heavy, and freedom had never been granted to me.
Power in name only had instead become shackles.
“It was similar when I was reincarnated as the Wanli Emperor of Ming.”
I had literally been reincarnated as the Wanli Emperor.
If I had truly been the emperor of Ming China, I wouldn't have stubbornly helped Joseon to the death while knowing the path that would eventually lead to the fall of Ming.
But I was different.
[Your Majesty, sending troops to Joseon is absolutely out of the question!]
[Why not?]
[The national treasury has been depleted. We are already struggling to defend the frontier.]
[If Joseon falls, Ming will be next.]
[Your Majesty, please think this through carefully!]
[My decision will not change. We will help Joseon.]
The officials of Ming vehemently opposed me.
But I stubbornly stuck to my guns until the very end.
I helped Joseon, and whenever Joseon sent ten thousand nyang of silver in gratitude, I would send twenty thousand nyang back because I was worried about the people of Joseon. I even sent one hundred thousand seok of rice.
Even I had to admit that was a pretty good thing to do.
Of course, as a result, Ming lost most of its national strength and ultimately planted the seeds of its destruction at the hands of the Qing.
“The most ridiculous death was probably when I was Nobunaga.”
It was during Japan's Sengoku period, when I was reincarnated as Oda Nobunaga.
Akechi Mitsuhide, whom I had believed to be a loyal retainer, set fire to Honnō-ji.
Amidst the flames, that bastard shouted at me.
[If my lord hadn't teased me about being bald, I wouldn't have done this!]
“What? That's not what's important right now!”
[You wouldn't understand! Do you know how humiliating it was in front of everyone?]
[So you rebelled? Over baldness?]
[That's right! This is the revenge of the bald!]
That was when I learned a lesson down to my bones.
You should never casually make fun of people.
Especially bald people. You should never mess with them.
“Then again, there was one exception.”
It had been my most ordinary life.
It had been so peaceful.
I went to work, had a can of beer after getting home, and went hiking on weekends.
I certainly hadn't made a fortune, but I hadn't lived a miserable life either.
“The life I lived as Yoon Jun-ho.”
After graduating from Seoul National University, I got a job at a mid-sized company and worked diligently. I dated, too, and gave my parents spending money.
Looking back now, perhaps that had been the most human life I'd ever lived.
And perhaps it had also been the happiest.
But this time, I had a feeling something was different.
The texture of my senses had changed.
The feel of the fabric beneath my fingertips, the movement of my muscles, even the beating of my heart were all different from before.
And there was one decisive fact.
The face reflected in the mirror was… Yoon Jun-ho's.
“This time, it's regression.”
And not just any regression.
I had returned to that most ordinary and peaceful life.
“Nice.”
A life where I worked diligently as an office employee, had drinks with friends, and lived without anything particularly extraordinary happening.
Even if I never achieved great success, at least I wouldn't suffer some catastrophic downfall either.
“I hope this life can just pass by peacefully and uneventfully….”
But that was when it happened.
“Ah….”
For a moment, I nearly stopped breathing.
She wasn't simply beautiful.
Perfect features, deep eyes, flowing hair.
And most importantly, she was naked beneath the covers.
“…Damn it.”
This was definitely not a peaceful beginning.
A hotel, a naked woman, an unfamiliar morning.
It was obviously the kind of incident that would bring trouble.
In one of my previous lives, the door would have already been smashed open and men in black suits would have stormed inside.
Back then, I had been a gigolo.
It was during the days when I entertained older women at a Gangnam cabaret.
That day had been the same.
I had brought a woman I met at the cabaret to a hotel.
The mood was good, and we'd had just enough to drink.
We were just about to get down to business.
Click.
The hotel door suddenly flew open.
[Huh? What the hell?]
Three men rushed inside.
[You bastard! How dare you mess with my wife?]
[Y-Your wife? Damn it!]
That was when the one-sided beating began.
In the face, the stomach, the legs.
Fists and kicks came raining down.
In the end, that day, my bank account was broken just like the legs of a Gangnam gigolo.
I later found out that the woman was a legendary femme fatale who specialized in breaking the legs of gigolos.
I had been completely destroyed, both physically and financially.
Anyway, trouble never comes with a warning.
The moment you opened your eyes, you had to quickly figure everything out.
The environment, the body, the people.
Observe carefully, make quick judgments, and if necessary, act ruthlessly.
“Come to think of it, my shortest life was probably when I was a mayfly.”
I flapped my wings a few times, got hit by a raindrop the size of a house, and died.
“My longest life was when I was a dragon.”
I ruled over mountain ranges, interacted with humans, and lived for tens of thousands of years.
In the end, I gave my heart to a hero as if committing suicide.
Back then, living for so long had honestly become unbearably boring.
“But this time, Yoon Jun-ho?”
He had been an ordinary office worker.
The days I spent clutching reports at a desk in an office and the situation I was in now simply did not connect.
“Wait.”
That woman looked familiar.
“Changseong Group?”
It was the company I had worked for.
And she had been an intern who came there.
“Did our Jun-ho wake up?”
She casually wrapped her arms around me.
“Jang Mi-su!”
The youngest daughter of the chairman of Changseong Group!
Chairmen sometimes secretly put their children into their own companies as interns.
But at the time, I hadn't known that.
So I had treated her as nothing more than a junior employee.
I had been indifferent to her, made her work overtime, and scolded her whenever her reports were lacking.
Then one day, she said:
[Thank you, Assistant Manager Yoon Jun-ho. I learned a lot thanks to you.]
“And then the real incident happened.”
After her internship ended, she appeared together with the chairman of Changseong Group.
I honestly thought my heart was going to stop.
[Excuse me?]
[Ah, you didn't know, did you? He's my father.]
[So you're Yoon Jun-ho, the assistant manager?]
[Yes, Chairman.]
[Whenever our Mi-su got off work, all she ever talked about was you.]
At that moment, I thought I was really going to die.
I hadn't done anything wrong, but I hadn't exactly treated her particularly well, either.
The chairman smiled, and Jang Mi-su quietly left the department.
For the next few months, I lived as though I could barely breathe.
But surprisingly, nothing happened.
“So why all of a sudden?”
When I had lived as Yoon Jun-ho, I had definitely never been this close to her.
This kind of relationship was completely new to me.
“Did something change because of the regression again?”
Reincarnation and regression were never exactly the same.
Variables appeared little by little.
My memories remained the same, but reality changed.
This time was no exception.
“Why are the two of us… here?”
“Because we sneaked in.”
“What?”
“I liked it.”
…What?
How many women in this world would actually say that they liked it?
The woman smiling casually beside me right now, Jang Mi-su!
She was undoubtedly one of that tiny minority.
“She was pretty bold even when she was disguised as an intern.”
The male employees at the company took Jang Mi-su's side, saying that even her boldness was attractive.
But I wasn't one of them.
By my standards, Jang Mi-su was, in a word, immature.
She would gloss over company rules, change instructions to suit her own methods, and handle things however she pleased.
She was a problem employee.
So I genuinely gave Jang Mi-su a hard time.
[Jang Mi-su, this company isn't your playground.]
[I know that.]
[Follow the rules that have been established.]
[If there's a better way, why shouldn't I change it?]