The First Button
A few days after returning, I'd spent my time just adjusting to the modern world, but it was about time I started thinking about the future.
I'd slogged my way through fifty years of Murim, so ideally I wanted to take a few years off and rest. The problem was that things weren't going to be that easy.
Our family's situation was, shall we say, not exactly neat and tidy.
Meaning I needed to figure out how to make some money and pitch in.
"Is there any honey I can suck out of my regression?"
Despite having gone back a whole five years, I had exactly zero advantages.
The me of that era was an aspiring actor who didn't give a damn about world events, and even if I had cared, there was no way I'd remember any of it after fifty years. The only things that vaguely came back to me were entertainment industry gossip, and what was I supposed to do with that?
Information is only valuable to people who have something to leverage it with — capital, connections, anything at all.
"Well, there's Murim... MMA... yeah, that's out."
Even if it was a half-finished job, a Complete Body Reconstruction was still a Complete Body Reconstruction. I had a decently usable body, and one that had eaten plenty of sword-training, so trying my hand at professional fighting didn't seem like a terrible idea.
But I wasn't crazy about that either. Without my internal energy, beating pros in the ring would mean grinding myself to dust all over again.
I rolled for fifty years, and now I'm supposed to roll again in the modern world? Unless things got truly desperate, I wanted to live a little comfortably for once.
"So it comes back to acting, huh."
The twenty-three-year-old Baek Si-woo had definitely been an aspiring actor.
But now I couldn't even remember why I'd dreamed of being one. Maybe it was to make a lot of money. Maybe it just looked cool.
Or maybe I was so sick of my bloodline-mate butting in about becoming an idol that I wanted to one-up her.
Whatever the reason, twenty-three-year-old me had been pretty serious about it, and worked reasonably hard.
"But I flunked."
Baek Si-woo at twenty-three never became a proper actor — not by twenty-eight, anyway. Just another wannabe scrounging for bit parts and background roles.
That was the ceiling of Baek Si-woo.
"Back then I thought I'd done everything I could. I remember whining about how I couldn't understand why it wasn't working out... but looking back now, that wasn't it. My effort only ever amounted to that much."
Acting like your life depends on it.
I didn't really understand what that meant back then. But I do now. I know exactly what it means to act for your life.
Because in Murim, I always acted for my life.
Within the Divine Cult, my position was the Pima Pavilion Adjutant, in charge of intelligence gathering and external dealings. But I was better known as the Heavenly Demon's First Guard.
In truth, "guard" was a polite way of saying I was errand boy number one for the Heavenly Demon as she roamed the Central Plains, forever wandering at her side.
The Heavenly Demon showing her face in the Central Plains was, by definition, a state of emergency. The moment her location was known, tens of thousands of masters would converge on her — as was only natural, since orthodox or unorthodox, every sect ranked her as target number one for extermination.
So if the two of us were going to roam the Central Plains alone, we had to hide our identities with everything we had, short of dying.
If we'd stuck to remote mountain trails and empty backwaters, maybe it would have been easier. But my lunatic Heavenly Demon only ever wanted to haunt crowded metropolises, famous scenic spots, and well-known taverns and inns.
And wherever people gathered, you could count on the layout: the Secret Shadows, the Murim Alliance's covert intelligence corps; the Night Ravens, the Black Serpent Squad's information arm; and the old powerhouse of the information world, the Open Sect, spread out in full force.
Staying alive in that environment meant truly acting for my life.
Merchant, official, servant, herb-gatherer, farmer, cook — I never met a role I hadn't played. Grandfather and grandson, husband and wife, servant and master, official and maidservant, brother and sister — I worked through every pairing there was.
I remember genuinely putting my soul into it, because I never knew when my cover would be blown. In an extreme environment where a single slip-up could mean actual death, I'd been acting for thirty straight years.
"Thinking about it again just makes me want to smack her upside the head. It wasn't even a food tour of the Central Plains. When I dug in my heels and swore I'd die before going anywhere, she'd still play the role parts for me just fine. What on earth was going through that woman's head?"
Yes, she confessed her feelings(?) right before I died, but that hardly feels like enough.
I should have landed at least one knuckle-rap on the Heavenly Demon's skull. After messing with someone's heart that thoroughly, taking one knock on the head would have been basic jianghu decency, Heavenly Demon or not.
"Anyway, given all this, acting is actually my best bet."
At this point, I honestly couldn't even picture myself being bad at it.
"The problem is, being good at acting alone doesn't guarantee anything."
Skilled actors don't necessarily make it. Plenty of actors could act well and looked the part, and still never broke through.
Entirely my own opinion, but for an actor to rise, looks and acting chops obviously matter — but promotion matters just as much. A company's backing. In a world drowning in aspiring actors like these days, betting everything on talent alone was a bit naive.
For an actor like me, who just wanted to coast along and skim the honey, landing a good agency was priority number one.
A talented, good-looking actor signs with a strong company? Short of a school bullying scandal or an actual crime, success tends to follow.
"For a good company to come sniffing around, I'll have to scatter good bait. Which means the first button matters most. The first button, huh..."
Something clicked, and I started slowly browsing a few internet articles.
And there it was — exactly the one I was looking for.
The article announced that a new drama from PD Yoo Myung-woo and Writer Min Woo-hee had officially entered production.
Genius Copywriter, Yoon Seoeun was a drama set at an advertising agency, and it marked the third professional-genre series the two had made together, following Hot-Blooded Prosecutor Do Tae-soo and Regressed Doctor Jung Hee-tae.
With two solid hits already behind them, public anticipation had been high — and the drama delivered. It had peaked at around twenty percent on a public network, if I remembered right.
In this day and age, that was an unqualified smash. So successful, in fact, that even I — a man who'd spent fifty years rolling around Murim — still remembered it.
I knew this drama had been produced around this period, though I couldn't recall the exact timing. As it turned out, I'd regressed at precisely the right moment.
The reason I cared about this drama was PD Yoo Myung-woo, plain and simple.
That man was an interesting character.
For my debut, I'd wanted to go through him if at all possible — and now his new project was just getting underway. The timing couldn't have been better.
"Ah, wait — I'll need to talk to Father first. This was back before I'd even told the family I wanted to act, wasn't it?"
Right. I'd have to break the news about becoming an actor to the family first.
***
I waited until my parents got home from work, then came clean: I wanted to be an actor.
"Ha, an actor! Well, if it's my son, he could be the greatest actor on Earth. Oh! Should I get your autograph now? Once you debut, I'll blow it up and put it in the shop. Nice and big, right over the door."
My father, eternally sunny about everything, was solidly in the cheering section.
"An actor? Out of nowhere? Ha! This is because you've been filling her head with nonsense, isn't it!"
"Ow. How is that my fault? She's the one who's lost it."
"Quiet, you!"
My mother delivered a power smash to the backside of our family's black sheep.
"Ha, fine. When have you two ever listened to us anyway? Just live however you like."
My mother wasn't exactly opposed either. No — "resigned surrender" was probably the more accurate description.
I figured the only reason she was like this was that her bloodline-mate of a daughter had already wrecked the household once before. All hell had broken loose when the black sheep first signed on as an idol trainee.
So did that mean I was, however inadvertently, reaping the benefits of that girl's nonsense?
I'd gotten a similar grudging blessing before, and getting it again made me feel a little guilty. But she'd come around quickly enough last time.
My mother's excessively detached attitude was a bit sad to see — but this time, I genuinely had confidence.
"Wow. You're actually insane. Does the entertainment industry look like a shark tank to you or what?"
"What was that? Failed audition finalist. Pot, meet kettle."
"I did NOT fail the audition finals!"
"Mm-hm. You fail eventually anyway."
Ironically, it was my bloodline-mate black sheep who reacted with the most disgust — and she was insufferably smug about it, too.
She got so carried away that I casually dealt out a few facts and prophecies of my own, which sent her into a frenzy.
Drop out for real, would you? So hurry up and find another path. As you can probably tell from my attitude, that girl really does wash out of the debut group.
Right now she's preening about being a promising finalist, but that won't last much longer.
Come to think of it, maybe that was only natural. Idols aren't for just anyone. Making a debut requires looks, skill, and character — and that girl was rotten at the foundation. Her face was fine, since the raw material was good enough to pass, and I couldn't speak to her skills, but the most fundamental part of all, character, was a lost cause.
The company she'd joined was a big-name agency every soul in Korea knew, and the bigger the company, the more ruthlessly they screened for character.
After quitting her trainee life, right up until I got kidnapped to Murim, she'd studied beauty and worked as an apprentice at a well-known salon — and she'd said it suited her. So I could only hope she switched career paths, and fast.
"Oh, right. This is no time for me to be sitting around."
"Who are you calling?"
"Hm? Ah — Chan-soo."
"Uncle Chan-soo?"
"Yeah. The guy's an industry insider, isn't he? There's got to be something in it for us. My son's becoming an actor — his old dad's got to do something for him."
Just as I was wondering what to do about that scoundrel, my father picked up the phone and dialed someone. It was a friend of his who dropped by our shop now and then — someone I knew well too.
Uncle Chan-soo, huh.
So it flowed this way after all.
Frankly, the only reason I'd told my father about acting in the first place was because I'd been counting on exactly this. If he hadn't reached out, I'd have had to contact the man myself — but everything seemed to be moving along just as planned.
Now all I had to do was wait for the results.
I'd grumbled that my regression came with no perks at all, but knowing at least this much in advance made the whole thing feel worthwhile. My mood lifted considerably.