Chapter 1: Prologue
TL: Hanguk
"Haah... where the hell did it all go so spectacularly to shit?"
Kim Hyun-woo.
Born March 28, 1991.
A kid from an orphanage who didn't even know his parents' names, I'd clawed my way through life just to survive in this brutal world.
Even from a starting point that bad, landing a spot on the HR team of a conglomerate, the kind of name every single Korean has heard of, was about as close to a triumph of the human spirit as you could get.
But the fact that a dirt-poor nobody with nothing to his name had gotten into a major corporation didn't mean his life suddenly turned into some kind of drama.
No, scratch that. If I'd just lived a plain, modest little life, I might actually have been happy.
But if I'd had that kind of personality to begin with, I'd never have clawed my way up this far, so it's a pointless what-if.
After I joined the workforce, I worked like a man possessed.
I did every single thing an HR rep is supposed to do, studied for certifications after the workday ended, and made it a point to show up earlier than anyone else.
Overtime and company dinners were just part of life, and I took on all the thankless dirty work around the office, never forgetting to butter up my superiors either.
"We are family."
Under that nice, hollow little slogan, I drew up the layoff lists and methodically sorted out exactly who the company no longer needed.
It couldn't be helped.
This was just a job the company ordered me to do, nothing personal about it, of course, and at the end of the day I was only doing it to put food on the table.
And so I lived my life as the company's loyal dog, representing nothing but the company's interests.
Then at thirty-five, I collapsed at work and got my diagnosis: terminal pancreatic cancer.
I'd felt the warning signs that my body was failing for a while before that, but I'd brushed them off as just stacked-up exhaustion. Was this the price for that?
Once I'd been handed a terminal sentence with less than a year left to live, there was no way the company would keep me around, was there?
"We wish you a speedy recovery."
The reward for grinding down my body and my health to nothing was a cheap consolation plaque engraved with some throwaway line, and the rental fee for the hospital bed where I'd see out the end of my life.
"Fuck. You'd think at least one person would show up more than once."
And even the ones who did come, they'd only come out of obligation, because everything they said was identical.
"I hope you get better."
Like that's going to happen.
I'm not exaggerating, I can physically feel my body getting worse day after day.
If there's such a thing as a soul, I can feel that there's really not much time left until the day it leaves this body.
To put it in a nutshell, you could say I lived a comprehensive disaster of a life, an absolute train wreck.
They say a person facing death usually goes through five stages of psychological change, but in my case I didn't even have the spare moment to feel them.
Painkillers don't even work on me anymore. I just close my eyes on the bed, with the endless, gnawing pain as my only companion.
And every time, the thought running through my head wasn't I don't want to die, it was I want to live differently.
When I really think about it, not once have I ever lived my own life.
To survive in society, to survive the competition.
Was a life spent thrashing around just to survive really my life?
Wasn't I basically a slave, someone who couldn't live unless he was bound to something?
If I could live my life over just one more time, I'd never live it like this.
And so, even on the final night of my life, I writhed in pain and regret as I closed my eyes.
And in a dream, I heard a voice.
[Do you regret it?]
"Of course I regret it."
Maybe because it was a dream, I couldn't even feel the pain that had been carving up my entire body.
And the voice, as though that were only natural, kept tossing out questions in a flat, expressionless tone.
[Do you want to do it all over again?]
"Yeah. Because my life was no different from a slave's."
I'm not simply talking about social standing.
I'm not trying to trot out the tired old line about being a slave bound to a corporation, either.
It was a truth I'd only barely grasped at the very, very end of my life.
What I'd been bound to wasn't society or the company, but my own obsession.
The inferiority complex of having been born into worse circumstances than everyone else.
The single-minded resolve to overcome that complex had, before I knew it, become a kind of curse, and that curse had taken over my entire life.
If I'd been a little more composed, if I'd found something that could be the meaning of my life rather than just status or honor, would my life have turned out differently?
But it's all over now, so what good is regretting it at this point?
[You can do it anew.]
"As if that's even possible... no, wait, what is this, anyway? Now that I think about it, who am I even talking to right now?"
Is this the near-death experience people talk about, the one you supposedly have before you die?
[Do you want to start fresh?]
"Yeah, yeah. It'd be amazing if I could start over."
Whether it's a delusion my dying mind cooked up or an actual god, what does it matter?
I'm dying either way, so I'll just close my eyes thinking it'd be nice if there were a next life.
[What kind of life do you want to live?]
"Well... a life where I rule, instead of being treated as somebody's slave, that'd be nice."
A life where I'm not bound by anything, where I carve out my own path by my own free will. I want to try living a life like that.
[Understood.]
Those words were the signal.
Whoosh.
Everything around me seemed to be swallowed up into a pitch-black void.
[In exchange.]
And then I couldn't hear anything, and I couldn't feel anything at all.
*
How long had I been out?
I'd been certain I was a goner, but it seemed I still had a few more days left to live after all.
Then again, if I'd gone through something like a near-death experience, the end really must be close.
Maybe all the sensation in my body had gone haywire, because even the feel of the hospital blanket I always lay under seemed strangely different.
But something was off.
Not just the feel of the blanket, even the smell seemed different, and above all
"Why doesn't it hurt?"
The pain that always greeted me whenever I opened my eyes, the kind that made me think dying would be better, had vanished without a trace.
"You've got to be kidding me?"
I was reaching for the bell to call the nurse when I froze right where I was.
The room I saw the moment I opened my eyes was nothing like a hospital ward.
"What is this?"
Had my condition improved while I slept and they'd moved me to a different room?
No. This space was alien enough that anyone could tell at a single glance.
The floor space had to be around forty, forty-five square meters, give or take. [TL Note: the original gives 12 to 13 pyeong, a Korean unit of area; roughly 40 to 43 m² / 425 to 460 sq ft.]
In the center of the high ceiling hung a crystal chandelier, the headboard of the bed I was lying in was carved with intricate patterns, and slim brass rods for a mosquito net were folded against the canopy posts above.
"And what's with this wallpaper? Is this a movie set?"
The walls were plastered all over with wallpaper repeating some kind of hunting scene, and the window had a set of French doors, with direct access out onto the balcony.
No matter how I looked at it, this was no hospital room.
I couldn't even begin to guess why I'd been moved to a place like this, but one thing was certain, my body didn't hurt anymore.
To think that starting the day in good health was such an enormous blessing.
Wondering whether that bizarre experience yesterday had actually done something, I unconsciously looked at the mirror hanging on the wall.
And then.
"Gyaaaah! Fuck! What the hell is thiiiis!"
A scream of genuine horror burst out of me.
The person reflected in the mirror was not the face of Kim Hyun-woo that I'd looked at my entire life.
A young white man, easily six feet tall, with strong, sharply defined features.
A face I was seeing for the first time in my life, yet one that stirred a contradictory, all-too-familiar feeling, was staring back into the mirror with horrified eyes.
At the same time, a single hypothesis surfaced naturally in my head.
"So that wasn't just some crazy dream?"
Had some godlike being really granted me a second life through a miracle beyond comprehension?
If so, then where was this place
Bang!
"Master! Are you all right? I thought I heard a scream."
The moment I tried to collect my thoughts, the door suddenly flew open and a young man in a sleeveless jacket came rushing into the room in a panic.
If there was anything notable about him, it was that he wasn't white like me, but black.
And then.
"Master, did you have a nightmare, perhaps? Or is there somewhere you're feeling unwell?"
Bowing himself extremely low, carefully studying my expression, he called me Master.
Furniture that looked Rococo in style yet was kept spotless as though brand-new, and an old-fashioned mansion.
A young black man dressed like a butler, calling me his master.
He looked to be about my age, but in his eyes there was not only worry but a kind of fear coiled together with it.
When I pieced together these fragments of truth, I could roughly guess at the situation.
At the same time, the conversation I'd had with that bizarre voice yesterday flashed through my head.
[Well... a life where I rule, instead of being treated as somebody's slave, that'd be nice.]
[Understood.]
Godlike being, my ass.
"Understood" what, exactly, you fucking moron!
I said I wanted to be the master who rules over my own life... who the hell asked you to make me live a life literally ruling over slaves!
Are you kidding me?
What am I supposed to do now?
Letting out a hollow laugh as I turned my gaze away, I noticed the calendar sitting on the desk pointing to a date: May 21, 1856.
"Master... are you all right? Shall I call a doctor?"
It seemed.
My second time around at life had become an absolute train wreck, in an entirely different sense.
*****
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