I Became a Wicked Boss
I stared at the mirror.
"..."
In the glass stood a man.
A bulging belly. Thick jowls. Dull skin. A bare, shiny crown.
A mirror reflected the face of the person standing before it.
So this was me.
"This is insane."
I let out a helpless sigh at the sight of my reflection.
There was something strangely familiar about that face.
Just looking at it, I could vaguely tell who this man was supposed to be.
Kang Taeseong, the wicked boss.
The villain character from the game I had been about to play.
The bastard from Show Me Your Smile, the infamous NTR game.
He was actually a fairly important character, too. If I had to put it into game terms, he was a chapter boss—a mid-tier boss among the supporting cast.
The problem was that his role was to be defeated and ruined by the protagonist.
Kang Taeseong’s hobby was stealing other people’s women, and after he laid hands on one of the heroine’s—one of the protagonist’s lovers—he lost everything and disappeared from the game for good.
'Why...?'
Why had I possessed him?
I hadn’t even left a bad review for the game. I’d just played it for fun.
And of all people, why did I have to become a villain doomed to fall?
'...Well, no point in fighting it.'
Denial didn’t last long.
As I kept staring at that distinctively unpleasant face in the mirror, I had no choice but to accept it.
I had become Kang Taeseong from the game.
'No, seriously—this is a thirty-five-year-old face?'
Kang Taeseong was thirty-five this year.
I even checked the resident registration card in his wallet, but I still couldn’t believe it.
It looked like a face that had already blown past forty-five.
The layers of fat made him seem even older.
All of it together created a sly, repulsive impression that made people uncomfortable on sight.
That was the exact face countless players had cursed in the original game.
I pinched the sagging flesh around my belly, irritation boiling up inside me.
Flop.
"...Fuck."
It was shocking.
I wasn’t exactly a fitness fanatic in my own life, either.
Maybe I’d been around average for a modern adult.
A normal office worker with a body worn down by too little exercise.
But this went far beyond that.
In the game, this was just a common character model, but now that I was the one living in it, I couldn’t even laugh.
Climbing a few flights of stairs felt like it might make me lose my breath.
Was I really going to keel over from a heart attack at this rate?
This body looked like it could die of a lifestyle disease before the protagonist even showed up.
Come to think of it, my previous life had probably ended of cardiac arrest, too.
If I had suddenly collapsed and died while playing a game, what else could it have been besides a heart problem?
And now, after reincarnating, I was once again in the body of a likely heart-disease candidate?
There had to be a limit to how cruel a joke could be.
'...Still, I’m okay for now.'
From what I could gather from Kang Taeseong’s memories, we were still in the early part of the game.
More precisely, it had only been a short while since Kang Taeseong had been appointed president of a subsidiary.
The catastrophe that was supposed to unfold in the original story hadn’t started yet.
Surprisingly, he hadn’t seriously laid a hand on any woman yet.
Of course, that didn’t make him not human trash.
He had merely been harassing the female employees, careful to keep one eye on his chairman father, but he hadn’t yet committed the crimes that became a major issue in the original.
'That’s a relief, I guess.'
At least it wasn’t beyond saving yet.
The more I dug through those memories, the more absurd it all felt.
He was buried in work as a company president, and yet his head was filled with nothing but thoughts of other men’s women.
'What an amazing specimen.'
I let out a dry laugh at how pathetic he was.
But from now on, things would be different.
I was Kang Taeseong, but I wasn’t Kang Taeseong.
I had no intention of living according to the original script.
"First, I’m losing weight."
The company could come after that.
Everything had to serve my survival in the end.
First, I had to stay alive.
*
The next day, in the company cafeteria.
I studied the breakfast menu and thought for a moment.
The original Kang Taeseong’s diet was utterly catastrophic.
Bacon, sausages.
Three slices of buttered toast.
A sweet milkshake.
That was breakfast.
Then snacks between meals.
And after all three meals, a late-night snack.
It sounded unbelievable, but it was true—I had confirmed it several times with the cafeteria auntie.
"Is that even a human diet?"
It looked hard to sustain on purpose.
In a way, that was a talent, too.
A human being made of oil and sugar three times a day.
As the saying went, habits were terrifying, and already my body was sending signals.
My mouth watered.
It was screaming for something sweet, salty, and guaranteed to send my blood sugar soaring.
"Tsk, no."
But today was different.
Boiled eggs and chicken breast.
A salad, with low-sugar dressing.
An Americano instead of the milkshake I’d always had.
I did pile on a bit more food because of my size, but that was it.
At my sudden change in diet, the cafeteria auntie blinked.
"President?"
"Yes."
"Are you feeling unwell?"
"Why?"
"No, it’s just... your meal..."
I fell silent for a moment.
Just how much had he been eating for this reaction to be normal?
Even what I’d taken wasn’t exactly a small portion.
"I’m trying to take better care of my health."
I smiled as brightly as I could at her.
It was a smile of encouragement from the company president to an employee, and also meant to thank her for her concern.
Grin.
But the response I got back was nothing like what I’d expected.
"Aah! Goodness!"
The auntie jumped in fright.
She nearly dropped the basket she was holding.
"S-sorry! President! I’ll be going now!"
"No, wait—"
I had been hoping for someone to chat with, since I was bored, but she fled as if running for her life.
Only then did I realize my mistake.
I had forgotten to consider how Kang Taeseong’s face looked to other people.
He already had a vicious expression just standing there, and then I had gone and smiled on top of it.
From her perspective, I probably looked like some bandit about to snatch her daughter away.
For her, it must have been a horror movie.
"Haah..."
I now had one more reason to lose weight.
At the very least, I needed to shed the fat covering my face if I wanted to talk to people like a normal human being.
I silently chewed and swallowed the bland salad.
...
The first week was hell.
I was hungry.
Not just hungry.
I was starving in a way that made me feel like I might go insane.
This body had already been soaked in late-night eating.
Now I was trying to change thirty-plus years of that overnight.
I’d expected it to be hard, but it was even more painful than I’d imagined.
11 p.m.
Out of habit, I opened the refrigerator door.
My head knew I shouldn’t.
But my body wasn’t listening.
Beer, jokbal, fried chicken, pizza.
This wasn’t a refrigerator; it was practically a pig farm.
Was it even possible to have a fridge this big at home? I marveled at that for a second, but I could also see myself, eyes rolling with appetite.
"Ugh..."
Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
After a suffocating battle of nerves, I finally shut the door.
"I’m not eating."
I decided to get rid of the refrigerator first.
The food felt wasteful, but that was better than letting myself stare at it and binge like an animal.
That night, I barely slept because I was so hungry.
*
The company basement gym.
I was standing on a treadmill.
Within exactly five minutes, I was drenched in sweat.
Ten minutes in, I was already gasping for breath.
After fifteen minutes, I felt like I was going to die.
The problem was that I hadn’t even run once.
I had only been walking.
"Haah..."
Just as I let out a sigh of despair—
"President?"
I turned at the voice.
A middle-aged man a little older than Kang Taeseong, but with a completely different, solidly built body of muscle.
It was the head of the security team.
"Yes."
"What are you doing here?"
"...Exercising."
"Pardon?"
"What, can’t you tell? I’m exercising."
My tone came out sharp because I was too exhausted to soften it.
But maybe because the original Kang Taeseong had always been that kind of man, the security chief didn’t react at all.
Instead, he looked at me as if he’d seen something curious.
Well, Kang Taeseong had been the sort of man who wouldn’t even walk one floor if there was an elevator.
So seeing him on a treadmill was odd, naturally.
"Have you taken up a hobby?"
I answered, half annoyed and half serious.
"I don’t want to die."
"..."
The security chief left the gym without another word.
No, wasn’t he supposed to be here to work out?
Somehow it looked like I’d driven him out. Should I tell him not to worry about me and just exercise beside me now?
“Hek... hek....”
But my body wasn’t listening to anything I said.
I had enough trouble handling my own nose; I had no time to worry about anyone else.
The security chief would work out on his own, I figured.
...
Two weeks later, I stepped onto the scale again.
112 kilograms.
When I’d first possessed this body, it had been 124 kilograms.
Twelve kilos gone in two weeks.
Since I’d started out morbidly obese, the weight was coming off frighteningly fast.
"...Oh."
Honestly, it felt good.
There hadn’t been some dramatic visual transformation yet.
My belly was still there, and the bulldog jowls were still hanging on.
The shiny head was unchanged, too.
But some things had shifted.
My jawline had started to show.
The puffiness in my face had gone down, and my features looked tidier.
More than anything—
"My complexion’s improved."
The face that had looked like it was about to die any second had become one with actual color in it.
In other words, I looked healthier.
My body felt a great deal lighter, too.
I could now climb a few flights of stairs without huffing and puffing.
Staring at my reflection, I murmured, "This might be doable."
I had tried dieting plenty of times in my previous life.
But it had always ended in three-day bursts of enthusiasm.
This time was different.
If I couldn’t lose the weight, I would die. For real.
The motivation was so strong I couldn’t stop.
Then the original plot came back to me.
This was the point in the story where Kang Taeseong would begin losing control of his desires and start putting his hands on company employees.
'The point where Kang Taeseong starts to fall...'
I looked at myself in the mirror again.
That future would no longer exist.
At the very least, my health was improving little by little.
Then it was time for the next step.
'The company.'
From the start, I couldn’t just focus on my health if I wanted to survive.
The biggest reason Kang Taeseong ended up ruined was that the company itself collapsed.
In the original story, KJ Group had been slowly rotting for years under corruption and reckless management.
They bullied employees into submission. Placed loyalists in key positions.
Used company money for private purposes.
Whenever a problem surfaced, they crushed it with brute force.
And that eventually led to bankruptcy.
"I’d better start paying attention to the company, too."
I picked up my water bottle.
My health was now on the right track.
It was the moment I decided to start digging into the company—
Ping.
Suddenly, a translucent window appeared in front of me.
"...?"
The sudden message stopped me in my tracks.
Condition achieved
Wicked Boss/Villain Nurturing System activated
"What?"
I rubbed my eyes.
But the window still hadn’t disappeared.
Instead, a new message appeared.
The NTR Point System is now available.
The NTR Shop is now available.
Current NTR Points: 0
Purchasable items ....
"Huh?"
Why was this happening now?
And then, below that, another message appeared, as if speaking directly to me.
Congratulations.
You have taken your first step toward becoming a true wicked boss.
"No, why?"
I’d been losing weight.
I’d been working so hard not to become a wicked boss.
So why?
I frowned.
For some reason, a deeply ominous feeling was creeping over me.
---