Call the Police!
I scrolled through the online communities for aspiring trainees and finally realized what I’d been overlooking. Right now, I wasn’t the A-rank executive who had racked up an impressive list of achievements as head manager at Flower Entertainment. I was just another high-school-grad, military-discharged, unemployed nobody.
The Management System was undeniably a cheat key, and the decade-plus of experience running a company was impressive, but none of it could be shown on paper. The only visible qualification I possessed was a driver’s license. And in Korea’s brutal job market, a single driver’s license wasn’t going to keep me alive.
If I could just reach the interview stage, I was confident I could dazzle the interviewers with insider knowledge only veterans would know. The problem was this pathetic resume wouldn’t even get me through the door. Don’t entertainment agencies do blind auditions or something? I searched until my eyes bled, but no such thing existed. Truly a shame.
To clear my head, I walked across the bridge, using the change of scenery to organize my thoughts. Ah, working as a road manager at some trash company… I really, really don’t want to.
I hated the idea with every fiber of my being, yet no other option came to mind. I’d just have to grit my teeth and grind for two or three years, telling myself I was already dead. While pondering which agency might accept a high-school graduate like me and still offer decent prospects, I spotted a woman dangling from the railing.
She noticed me too. Our eyes met. The moment they did, a status window popped up as if it had been waiting for exactly this.
Oh, current top-tier potential. I let out a small whistle of admiration. This was the kind of talent that would be labeled a debut candidate at any agency. I was mildly curious why someone with that level of gift was hanging off a bridge railing trying to kill herself. Only mildly, though. From my experience in the previous round, I knew exactly how exhausting getting involved in these situations could become, so that tiny spark of curiosity was easily snuffed out.
I waved the status window away. She was glaring at me with dark, gloomy eyes. Apparently standing still while staring at empty air had caused a misunderstanding. She probably assumed I was going to lecture her and interfere with her suicide. A completely unnecessary worry. If this were before my regression, maybe I would have. The current me had zero intention of wasting time and money on someone else’s drama. Fall or don’t fall—it was her problem.
That was when a cheap mechanical chime sounded and a quest window appeared.
SS New Girl Group Project
Cheon Jonghun, the producer in charge of SS Entertainment’s new girl group project, is currently struggling to find the final member. Introduce the aspiring trainee Han Gyeowool and strike a deal with him!
Reward:Future Fragment “Medium” (No financial gain restrictions)
It was a rather bizarre request—selling the suicidal girl I’d just seen. This wasn’t the era of slavery; how exactly was I supposed to “sell” a living, breathing person? Still… SS’s new girl group project? Cheon Jonghun? Wait, I know this. I’ve definitely heard this before…
As I dug through old memories, one piece of information struck me like lightning. One year from now, Cheon Jonghun’s first project—SS Entertainment’s flagship girl group Alcest—would debut. Originally planned as a five-member group, Alcest ultimately debuted as four. Cheon Jonghun had left an anecdote about it in his autobiography. He wrote that selecting the final member had been an enormous obstacle. Since it was his first girl group, he wanted to preserve Alcest’s signature cold, razor-sharp color while only using members worthy of being called the best.
But he couldn’t find a trainee who possessed both the right color and the necessary talent to match the other four. Rather than dilute the group’s quality by adding a mediocre member, he chose to redesign it as a four-member act. Although Alcest achieved solid commercial success, as a producer he always believed the completed version should have been five members, and he still felt lingering regret.
If he was still in the middle of recruiting right now, that regret would be even stronger. So what would happen if I introduced that suicidal girl to him?
By my standards, F meant talentless, D was dull, C was average, B was outstanding, and A was genius. I had seen the status windows of every Alcest member in my previous life. Just as his perfectionism suggested, all four were geniuses who maintained A-rank in their primary stats. Yet I didn’t feel like the girl I’d just seen would fall short of them. On average numbers alone, she actually seemed one step ahead.
It made sense—her potential in both vocal and dance sat firmly in A territory. That was exactly the level Cheon Jonghun had been looking for. And the “color” he obsessed over? The way she glared at me was as cold as if I were an insect. The color matched too. Perfect.
If I presented such an ideal trainee to a man who had been so stuck he’d scrapped the fifth member entirely, he would have no choice but to acknowledge her ability. After that, one small request from me wouldn’t be easy for him to refuse. I could say that with confidence because, in the previous round, I had maintained a fairly long acquaintance with Cheon Jonghun.
Getting her directly into SS would be ideal, but I didn’t need to go that far. That kind of demand might be too uncomfortable for him. A single casual line to the right person—“There’s someone with a good eye. Just give him an interview.”—would be enough. The person who couldn’t easily ignore Cheon Jonghun’s words would then contact me. Once that opportunity appeared, the rest was something I could cook with experience. A demonstration show for the product called “Regressor Manager” would become possible.
Even if the situation twisted and the opportunity never came, the reward the system offered was valuable enough to pursue. I had used a Future Fragment before and seen the second-place lottery numbers; the contents had a high probability of delivering immediate benefit. The phrase “(No financial gain restrictions)” probably meant exactly that.
This would work. This would definitely work. I had to take this quest.
The moment conviction hit, I spun around and sprinted back the way I’d come. Afraid she might fall while I ran, I yelled at the top of my lungs.
My nonsense seemed to work; she froze mid-motion.
“Heek… hek.”
I tried to steady my burning lungs after the sudden sprint. She looked at me with complete disinterest, then suddenly turned back and stared like I was an idiot for trying to lecture her. It was the kind of gaze that made me want to look away, but it wasn’t nearly as spicy as the way Ban Seongcheol had treated me.
First things first—I had to stop her suicide attempt. What was the most effective way to stop someone trying to kill themselves? My mind spun as I searched for an answer. Persuasion, threats, violence, empathy, humor… I weighed every option.
Humor could backfire if the vibe was wrong. Threats or violence might cause a terrible reaction. Persuasion required too many abstract principles. After considering every scenario, I reached the optimal conclusion. Empathy it is.
“Life isn’t easy, is it?”
“…”
“It must be confusing, having some weird old guy suddenly appear and say stuff like this. You might even feel angry, wondering who I am to act like I understand. But what if you imagine there’s another wounded person standing right here?”
“…”
“It’s not something worth hiding. I’ve attempted suicide before, too.”
I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the scar on my wrist. It was actually from a stone chip that had flown up while I was mowing grass during my military service, but at a glance it looked exactly like a suicide scar.
“I took a bunch of sleeping pills and did it while I was half out of my mind. I couldn’t tell if it was a dream or if I’d really cut my arm—it was genuinely dangerous.”
Of course it was a lie.
“You might think it’s different because I wasn’t in my right mind, but the fact that I was that cornered is true.”
Another lie.
“Life really isn’t easy. Sometimes the best choice you can think of leads to the worst outcome. Sometimes you try your hardest in a hopeless moment only for things to get even worse.”
“…”
“You might feel like the whole world has abandoned you, like no one cares and no one will help. But that doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no one who will.”
Even as I spoke, I felt zero empathy for my own words. Instead of people willing to help, I’d be lucky if someone like Ban Seongcheol didn’t stab me in the back. Still, I figured what a suicide attempter needed wasn’t harsh reality but dreams and hope, so I kept bullshitting.
“If you can’t think of anyone like that right now, I’ll help you. I may not look like much, but I’m an adult. I might be useful. So how about you come down from the railing first and we talk?”
Her eyes trembled violently. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad sign. I simply prayed it was a precursor to her stepping down.
“…Um.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, then spoke as if she’d come to a decision.
“I wasn’t trying to commit suicide.”
“…Huh?”
She casually lowered the leg that had been hooked over the railing, stood up normally, and repeated herself.
“I wasn’t trying to commit suicide.”
Ah. A misunderstanding.
Only then did I properly take in her appearance. Her hair was blonde with visible black roots, clearly a sloppy home bleach job. Pink hair rollers sat in her bangs for curling. The red Adidas jersey looked brand-new, as if she’d bought it yesterday. Her school skirt was shortened to a dangerous degree. Her sharp face, heavy eyeliner, and overall vibe screamed that she had studied soju and cigarettes far more diligently than any textbook. A butterfly tattoo decorated her neck. She looked like the textbook definition of a delinquent. She overflowed with far too much life force to be a suicide candidate.
Having grasped the situation, I quickly apologized.
“Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
She hadn’t been glaring because she thought I would try to stop her suicide. She simply didn’t like my face. Still, one question remained unanswered.
“Then why were you climbing over the railing of a bridge high enough to guarantee death if you fell?”
“That’s…”
She trailed off, clearly uncomfortable. She didn’t want to say. While I was wondering how to coax her into following me to meet Cheon Jonghun, she suddenly burst into tears.
“Huk… huk huk, keuheung, heuaa-ang!”
“Hey, what’s wrong? Talk to me. I’ll help you.”
She answered through snot and tears, words tumbling out incoherently.
“Huk… the wallet I put in my pocket slipped… I tried to grab it but accidentally kicked it away… huk.”
I focused with everything I had to parse her explanation. Apparently she had come up from the countryside for an audition and the wallet she needed to stay in Seoul had been accidentally knocked off the railing.
I double-checked. “So you were climbing over to retrieve the wallet that got caught on the suicide prevention net?”
She nodded while crying like a complete loser—an expression that clashed violently with her delinquent appearance.
Having understood the full picture, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was:
“You didn’t think to just call the police…?”
A person had nearly died trying to retrieve a wallet.