4
# Chapter 4
Click, click!
“Run!”
Someone shouted.
The two men carrying cameras sprinted toward the end of the hallway.
Both Jang Mi-su and I were hit by a barrage of camera flashes.
The lenses had already captured us, and the two men ran without hesitation.
I turned to the side.
Jang Mi-su was looking at me with startled eyes.
It wasn't the innocent gaze of a young girl. It was the expression of someone who had broken free from shackles, with both confusion and fear mixed together.
“Stop right there!”
I shouted, but they disappeared at the end of the hallway.
I made my decision at that moment.
Their real target wasn't an ordinary office worker like me.
It was the youngest daughter of the chairman of Changseong Group.
The youngest daughter of the chairman had been caught leaving a hotel with an unrelated man?
“If this gets reported, I'm finished!”
And the moment the Tiger Chairman found out about this, he would never leave me alone.
I had to catch those guys at all costs if I wanted to survive.
The instant my foot pushed off the floor, my heart began pounding violently, as though preparing for battle.
Thud-thud-thud!
My thoughts had taken some time, but the actual decision had been made in an instant.
I instinctively threw myself forward.
I ran at an unbelievable speed.
My body felt light, and my reactions were incredibly quick.
“Was Yoon Jun-ho's body always like this?”
This was definitely not the body of the Yoon Jun-ho I knew.
I had gone through countless bodies during my many reincarnations, but my current body was particularly unusual.
The muscle responses and breathing rhythm were at the level of a trained fighter.
“Give me that camera!”
I shouted fiercely as I closed in on them, causing both men to flinch.
Then they accelerated even more.
I chased after them at full speed.
“Split up!”
One of the men ran toward the elevator, while the other headed for the emergency stairs.
Both of them were carrying cameras.
“The elevator will take too long. The emergency stairs are faster.”
If I lost them, I was finished.
The chairman might even hunt me down himself with a hunting rifle.
I slid down the stairs almost effortlessly.
My body was overflowing with vitality and agility.
Before long, I had caught up to the man's back.
Smack!
I grabbed the man's shoulder, but unintentionally caused him to lose his balance and fall forward.
And he was on the stairs.
If he rolled down them, it could result in a serious accident.
“No!”
I instinctively wrapped myself around him and rolled down the stairs with him.
Thud!
“Ugh…!”
The impact was tremendous, but I endured it as best I could with a breakfall.
As soon as I landed, my body reacted immediately.
The fallen man then muttered,
“…Thank you. If you hadn't caught me, I would've been seriously injured.”
The man bowed his head and said,
“Here, the camera.”
His eyes were slightly frightened.
His shoulders were tense.
Just moments ago, he had been secretly taking pictures, but now he was obediently handing over the camera.
The sudden change in his attitude only made me more uneasy.
It wasn't that he had accepted his humiliation. I suspected that he was still hiding something.
He was probably acting this way because the other man I had missed had taken the pictures.
I snatched the camera he handed me and grabbed him by the collar.
“How did you know Ms. Jang Mi-su was here?”
The man looked confused and asked,
“Who is Jang Mi-su?”
The paparazzo's gaze was strange.
The fear had disappeared from his eyes, replaced by the sharp gaze of a beast that had spotted its prey.
“He doesn't know Jang Mi-su?”
That was impossible.
But what mattered now was that their target wasn't Jang Mi-su.
It was me.
“…More importantly.”
I glared at the man again.
“How did this bastard know I was at this hotel?”
“How did you know I was here?”
I asked while pulling harder on his collar.
When I brought my fist close to his face, the man's shoulders trembled.
“If you hit me, Actor Yoon Jun-ho, I'll die.”
“…Die?”
“I saw it on TV. You smashed ten slabs of marble with a single punch.”
……What?
“I smash marble with my fists?”
Who the hell was this Yoon Jun-ho?
Was he an actor and a martial artist?
My head became even more confused.
The memories of being an ordinary office worker and the reality unfolding before my eyes collided.
The Yoon Jun-ho I knew was nowhere to be found. Instead, he had become an entirely different person.
This wasn't the first time the framework had been shaken by repeated reincarnation and regression, but it was the first time it had changed this fundamentally.
My confusion was greater than the situation unfolding before me.
The ordinary life of Yoon Jun-ho that I knew had already been shattered.
This regression had been completely distorted.
I calmed myself down for a moment before asking again.
“What newspaper are you with?”
The man smirked.
“Check tomorrow's newspaper.”
I fell silent at those words.
He clearly intended to keep his identity hidden until the very end.
A chill ran down my spine.
At this rate, pictures of Jang Mi-su could end up in the newspaper.
At that moment, I instinctively realized something.
One article would be enough to ruin me.
“What newspaper are you with?! If pictures of Jang Mi-su get published, I'm dead!”
It might have been nothing more than gossip to him, but for me, it was a matter of survival.
At my desperate words, the man tilted his head again.
“…So, who is Jang Mi-su?”
……Damn it.
Mentioning her name in the first place had been a mistake.
---
In the end, I lost one of the reporters.
And I couldn't take all of their cameras, either.
There was nothing I could do but return to the suite, breathing heavily.
When I arrived at the room where Jang Mi-su and I had been staying, it was completely empty.
“…She's gone?”
I stood blankly in front of the door for a long while.
I was certain this was the room.
So why did I feel so cold and uneasy?
The space that had still held warmth just moments ago was now devoid of even a trace of it.
Even the conversation and laughter from moments ago felt like an illusion.
My heart beat anxiously amid the heavy silence.
“Let's start by figuring out this whole ‘I'm an actor’ thing.”
Something had become seriously twisted.
It wasn't merely a small difference. The sense of unfamiliarity that came from the very foundation of my life having changed seeped through my entire body.
And as reality and memory collided with each other, my head became increasingly dizzy.
I looked down at the sleeve of my crumpled dress shirt and muttered to myself,
“…Actor Yoon Jun-ho?”
I looked in the mirror, and it was obvious.
This face wasn't ordinary.
Skin that seemed to shine even without lighting, balanced features, and a smooth, flawless nose without even a hint of blemish.
Anyone could tell he was handsome, the kind of face that looked destined for success.
He could even flash a killer smile.
I had reincarnated and regressed countless times.
In one life, I had been a farmer. In another, a general of a dynasty.
But this was the first time I had lived a life as an “actor,” someone who made a living off the love of the public.
That unfamiliarity was a crisis, but at the same time, it was also an opportunity.
The man in the mirror was no longer the ordinary employee who had sat at an office desk clutching reports.
He was the face of a star who monopolized the spotlight on stage, and that fact filled me with both anxiety and a strange sense of anticipation.
Even amid all that, my mind calmly organized the situation.
“Tomorrow morning, my face and Jang Mi-su's face will probably be side by side on the front page of a sports newspaper. With only our eyes roughly mosaicked.”
I'm screwed.
If a huge photograph of me together with Jang Mi-su at a hotel were published, the Tiger Chairman would kill me.
“I'll really die….”
But then, one possibility suddenly crossed my mind.
“What if I really am actor Yoon Jun-ho?”
Even the Tiger Chairman wouldn't be able to swing a baseball bat at me like a maniac, right?
Even if he was a major figure in the business world, he wouldn't be able to recklessly mistreat an actor loved by the public.
At least not publicly.
This subtle difference could become the key to my survival strategy from now on.
I had already learned something through my many lives.
Status itself was a weapon.
When I wore armor as a general of a dynasty, I didn't need a sword. When I had money in my hands as the master of a merchant guild, power followed naturally.
Now, the mask of an actor could protect me.
My head was already a mess.
“But more importantly, what year is it?”
Whenever I reincarnated or regressed, I had to determine what point in time I had returned to.
Every plan and decision had to be built from that point.
I immediately picked up the calendar on the table.
1996.
There was a bank advertisement in the corner of the calendar.
“…About two years before the country goes bankrupt?”
It was right before the infamous 1997 Asian financial crisis.
That meant South Korea was on the eve of a storm.
On the surface, the economy looked prosperous, but cracks were already spreading everywhere.
Corporate debt was growing like a snowball, and foreign capital was slowly preparing to shake South Korea.
I took a deep breath.
Through my countless past regressions, I had already learned how to turn crises into opportunities.
On the battlefield, the enemy's confusion had been an opportunity. In the marketplace, fluctuations in exchange rates had been a source of money.
Now, a national catastrophe called the IMF crisis was fast approaching.
“Good. Whether I survive as an actor or go back to being a wealthy office worker, the opportunity is now.”
My eyes gradually changed.
Now, rather than simply surviving, I could use the enormous crisis that was approaching to make an even greater leap forward.
Reality had become twisted, but hidden within that distortion was an opportunity.
Wait.
Something didn't add up.
If this was truly 1996, why was I already a top star?
And why was I dating Jang Mi-su?
Who had changed my life?
More importantly…
Who had changed the past?