Chapter 2
Translator - Zofu
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My consciousness, submerged in sleep, gradually awakened. The racket around me made it impossible to keep sleeping.
No—more than that, it felt like someone was hitting my body.
*Thud! Thud!*
"This bastard's been blowing us off since earlier, what the hell."
I opened my eyes and looked around. Familiar faces came into view.
*Kim Hyun-gu? That bastard Nam Min-gyu is here too? What is this? A dream?*
It was disorienting to see past grudges right before my eyes. These were the guys who tormented me for four years.
*Was it the last day before vacation?*
My memory was probably correct. But I still didn't think this was reality. Because the kicks from those bastards didn't hurt at all.
So I decided it was a realistic dream. I closed my eyes again and waited to wake up.
Choi Seong-joon, who'd been watching from behind the guys beating me, made a strange face as I lay there without reacting.
"Hey. Hold up a sec. This bastard didn't get hit somewhere wrong, did he? Why isn't he reacting?"
Hearing this, the other guys finally sensed something was off and stopped to examine me.
"He's still breathing, right? Maybe he just passed out?"
"Guess so? Let's call it a day and hit the PC bang."
"Oh, and Squirtle, don't ignore our messages during vacation. Crawl your ass out here."
"Idiot, he's passed out. You think he'll hear your shitty words?"
"Ah! Right."
"Moron. Hehehe."
The voices of those bastards laughing and walking away together gradually faded.
The nickname Squirtle. It'd been ages since I heard that. It was given because I supposedly looked like some animation character.
I opened my closed eyes, glanced at the back of the departing bastard's head, then closed them again.
But before long, I heard a gurgling sound from my stomach. And that sound kept growing louder.
My stomach started hurting seriously from hunger, and my whole body began losing strength. Sensing something was wrong, I got up from where I'd been lying.
Even getting up was hard. My head was spinning too—this didn't seem like a normal situation.
*Shit? This wasn't a dream?*
You can't feel hunger in a dream. I ran home quickly. Fortunately, my place wasn't far, so I thought I'd arrive soon. But the situation got serious in an instant.
Strength kept draining from my body, and from my stomach came sounds like thunder.
That sound coming from a person's stomach was too loud.
I barely made it home. I entered my small basement studio room filled with the smell of mold, opened the fridge to see if there was anything to eat, but it was empty except for water. Then I spotted a single instant ramen on the sink, tore open the packaging, and devoured it frantically. The amount was far too insufficient, so I hurriedly ordered delivery.
"Hello, Chinese restaurant? It's xx Villa, unit xxx. Bring me some jjajangmyeon and fried rice. Hurry!"
After ordering, I collapsed right on the floor. My body had lost all strength, making it hard to even stand.
In what felt like a life-or-death situation, the delivery thankfully arrived. At the sound of the delivery, I barely managed to bring the food in and started eating. I wolfed it down in an instant.
Even after eating, the hunger didn't subside. So I kept ordering more food.
Only after consuming an enormous amount of food did I feel like I'd survive. I could see more than ten bowls of jjajangmyeon and fried rice stacked up in the room, along with pizza and chicken boxes.
With my stomach full, sleep began to come now. Unable to resist the irresistible temptation of sleep, I fell right into slumber.
I dreamed.
I saw three men talking to each other. They seemed to be saying something, but I couldn't hear them.
And at some point, I came to my senses.
I opened my eyes and looked around. I saw the room I'd lived in before joining my former organization.
I saw bowls and pizza and chicken boxes piled up like a mountain.
*Wasn't it a dream? Come to think of it... Didn't I get done in by that bastard Park Hyung-sik?*
I tried to get my lying body up. But the hand supporting the floor sank right through. As my body tilted, I tried to support myself with my other hand, but it sank through just the same.
"Huh? What's going on?"
I moved carefully, putting as little strength as possible into my movements. Thankfully, when I moved with minimal force, I stopped destroying the floor. And as I moved slowly, I saw that all my clothes were torn. Under the ripped clothes, I saw a sharply defined, muscular body.
And on top of that, my little buddy had changed. It'd been slightly above average for a Korean, but not like this. Looking at this enormous size you'd only see in porn, I cautiously moved in front of the mirror.
The reflection in the mirror was someone I didn't know at all.
Back then, I was definitely 164cm tall, and I grew to 178cm by age 20 after a sudden growth spurt at 19.
The physique, the muscles, the face—all were appearances I had no memory of.
More problematic than the changed appearance was the power coming from my body.
I placed my finger against the wall and pushed with just a little force. And without any resistance, my finger went into the wall.
"Holy shit..."
No matter how much I thought about it, that black marble I'd put in my mouth during the fight with Park Hyung-sik must've had something to do with it.
It still felt like a dream, but returning to the past was already crazy enough—having this power on top of it was just too unrealistic.
In this unrealistic situation, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. The vivid sense of reality made me realize to some extent that I had truly returned to the past.
Once I'd calmed down somewhat, my thoughts focused on these absurd physical abilities.
*First, I need to know the extent of these physical abilities.*
I found some clothes decent enough to wear in public and carefully opened the front door. I couldn't help but be cautious with every single movement.
Outside, it seemed the sun was beginning to rise as it gradually grew brighter.
I walked toward the small mountain in the neighborhood. I thought I was walking as carefully as possible, but it took longer than expected. Still, I somehow arrived.
Since there was no one at the entrance, I thought I'd climb up with moderate force.
*Bang!*
"Ugh-ack!"
But the moment I put strength into my first step, my body shot forward like a bullet. To stop my flying body, I tried to grab whatever was in sight, but everything I touched shattered.
My flying body stopped. It was my body, but I had absolutely no control over it.
I once again minimized my strength and climbed to the mountain summit. It wasn't a very high mountain, so I could reach the top quickly.
First, I decided to punch the rock in front of me that was about the size of a compact car. I was curious how destructive my power was.
I set my stance and started to put in maximum force, then stopped. Instinctively, it felt like I shouldn't use full power.
So I pulled back some strength and swung my fist.
*Boom!*
With a sound like a bomb exploding, the rock before me vanished.
"Holy fucking shit..."
Returning to the past was great, but first, getting this goddamn power under control seemed like the top priority.
***
Two weeks had passed since I spent time controlling my power like that. I seemed to be adapting to my changed body faster than expected.
As usual, I'd climbed the mountain early in the morning to train, and was now lying down looking at the sky.
I blankly stared at the sky, passing time. I was worried about what to do next.
Returning to the past and gaining crazy physical abilities was all great. But now that I was back in my youth, I wanted to live my life freely and enjoyably.
I'd lived such an intense life that I'd never properly enjoyed anything.
"Maybe I should live my own way, enjoying things moderately..."
Then suddenly, thoughts of revenge surfaced.
*Revenge...*
Ever since returning to the past and training to control this power, I'd forgotten about revenge.
And I wondered if I even needed to take revenge. Returning to the past and having powerful physical abilities meant I could live a better life than my previous one. If I used my knowledge of the future, I was confident I could be even more successful than before.
If those traitor bastards just didn't cross my path, I didn't particularly plan to go out of my way to crush them.
*If they don't cross my path, that is.*
I finished my thoughts on revenge and moved on to thinking about future plans.
My current goal was to buy Bitcoin, which would definitely make me rich in the future. I turned on my smartphone and checked the current Bitcoin price.
As of February 2016, it was about 480,000 won per coin.
The problem was money. The remaining balance in my account was only 20,000 won.
*Meaning I need money.*
I thought about the easiest way to make money. First, robbing a bank came to mind. With my physical abilities, I was confident I could rob a bank and escape smoothly. But this had the major drawback of drawing too much aggro.
The moment you rob a bank, it's such a huge case that it'll be all over the national news, and police will be deployed nationwide to catch me. And though there are fewer than in the future, CCTV is everywhere, so they could find a clue to track me down anytime, anywhere. So I ruled this out.
The fastest way to make money with the knowledge and power I had was to prey on criminal organizations.
And creating my own organization wasn't a bad idea either.
In this Republic of Korea, an honest and kind person cannot succeed. Even if they're lucky enough to succeed, I've never seen it last. Because scumbags always rush in to leech off them.
It's common for big corporations to demand blueprints from small and medium-sized enterprises under the name of a contract, then make and sell the product themselves.
Meanwhile, the reality of this country is that criminals commit crimes, make their money, and only get a few years in prison at most.
I needed the power to protect my money. Though I have strong physical abilities, I only have one body, and it's too much of a hassle to catch and crush every single politician, businessman, or criminal organization one by one.
Come to think of it, I acted like that to impress those bastards—looking back now, I feel like such an idiot.
First, I needed a loyal organization of my own. Guys who would supply me with money, starting with the tasks I found bothersome to do myself.