“How can you call yourself a human being, PD-nim?”
I couldn’t be bothered, even with an idol in tears right in front of me.
“Why?”
“No one with a conscience would have edited it like that!”
I gave her a once-over as she screamed in fury. She was part of a competition show for trainees who never debuted despite long years of training, and she’d ranked fourth. Not a bad result.
Above all, it was a result I’d made for her.
Through editing, to be precise.
Genius of editing, talent bestowed by the devil, a genius PD at just 33. Those were the tags that followed me, Seo Hoyun.
I was quite fond of them.
In the sense that money followed.
“You placed fourth.”
“So what? Everything that matters is already gone. The public calls me crazy. I lost contact with friends I trained with for ten years. I get egged if I step outside.”
“You’ll live a long life, then.”
“What?!”
“They say if people curse you out, you live long.”[1]
I pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between my lips. I flicked the lighter—click, click—and it caught. I took a deep drag, then blew out the smoke. The idol looked at me like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“You know you can’t really sing, right?”
“What did you say?”
“Early on, you said you wanted to be famous no matter what. I liked the passion, so I edited the footage and pushed you. As the rude-but-genius-dancer concept, the kind of celebrity who’s annoying but keeps catching your eye. I put you on screen so much people joked you were my niece. We don’t even look alike.”
I repeated what I’d seen online word for word, and her face turned red and purple.
“You said you wanted to succeed, and I helped you do that.”
It was the obvious truth. Without me, she never would’ve placed fourth. I told her as much, purely objectively, but her jaw trembled with rage.
“Is that what I wanted?”
“At first, didn’t you say that alone would be enough?”
“…”
“If it gets tough, check your bank account. That should cheer you up.”
I do the same sometimes. When the department head pours booze over my head and loses his shit, when the whole world feels meaningless—I check my bank account. Then I pat myself on the chest.
Yeah. What’s the big deal about life? Money’s all you need.
She gritted her teeth and hung her head. I glanced at my phone. It was time to go.
“If that’s all you have to say, I’ll get going. I’m busy.”
“…PD-nim.”
The moment I turned and took a step, she called out to me. Then, eyes rolling back like a ghost, she hurled a curse at me.
“I hope you crash and burn, PD-nim. The day will come when you regret this. The day our positions are reversed and you understand how I feel. When that day comes, no amount of groveling and crying will save you.”
“Haigo, how scary.”
I snickered. My luck had been off all day. Who knew something this entertaining would happen?
I left her behind, still spitting curses, and picked up the pace. I had to get back to the production department and keep editing.
So yeah, I’d intended to write it off as an amusing little episode.
Until the system window appeared.
***
Ding!
Ding!
Ding-a-ling!
[Infamy Points +100]
[Infamy Points +350]
[Infamy Points +500]
[Infamy points have been accumulated. Conditions for game start have been met.]
[Loading…]
“Ah, what the hell.”
The nonstop dinging was driving me up the wall. Even dreams should know when to quit. I’d been chugging energy drinks just to get through some editing. I’d barely slept four hours in three days. It was probably just my alarm going off.
I was about to force my eyes open in irritation when—
[Congratulations, Seo Hoyun-nim! You have been selected as a player for Nugu Idol Tycoon. Congratulations on your 10-year rejuvenation!]
[Seo Hoyun: Small agency nugu idol.
Age: 23.
Traits: Completed military service. Has absolutely zero talent for dancing. Was once a genius PD, but no one remembers him.
(※Specific individuals excluded)]
[If you fail to clear the game, you will be permanently unable to log out.]
It was like getting clubbed in my sleep.[2] When I opened my eyes and sat up, a system window was floating there. I stared at it, let out a hollow laugh, and turned away.
“Go to sleep, go to sleep.”
I tossed my phone aside and crawled back under the covers. I must have been editing too hard because now I was seeing things.
“What kind of bizarre dream…”
I must have pushed myself too far yesterday. But the system window hovering on the ceiling didn’t disappear. It glowed a soft blue in the dark room. A wave of unreality washed over me.
Ding!
“……”
Ding!
“……Some dream this is.”
The relentless dinging made it impossible to force myself back to sleep. I hauled myself upright, shaking, and the system window came into sharp focus.
[Quest Arrived: “Reality Check Time!”
Accept your reality. You are no longer a genius PD—you are a player of Nugu Idol Tycoon. You have become a nugu idol.
Accept reality: 0/1
Success: Title—”Failing Idol”
Failure: Permanently unable to log out]
“Permanently unable to log out?” The ominous sound of that got me on my feet fast. What in the world am I dreaming?
I rubbed my face and got up. This dream seemed to be sticking around, so I might as well wash my face. I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on myself to shake off the grogginess. Then I turned to the mirror.
“…What the hell?”
The dark circles from endless overtime that never went away, the face that had been getting haggard—all of it was different.
My skin was smooth. No, that wasn’t the only problem. My face was…
Seo Hoyun from ten years ago.
This was pure terror.
I touched my face, prodding at it, then recoiled. No matter how deep in a dream I was, it couldn’t be this vivid.
How many people could just go “Hell yeah, I’m young again!” in this situation? I fled the bathroom and burst out of my room.
“What, hyung?”
“S-Seo Hojin.”
“Geez, you scared me. Did you finally lose it?”
My dongsaeng, Seo Hojin, had been gulping down water. He answered without much thought, but when he saw my face, he spewed water everywhere.
“Pfft! Cough, hack… H-hyung, did you get plastic surgery?”
“What?”
“What happened to your face? Wait, can plastic surgery do this overnight? Has medicine in Korea advanced that far? You look like Seo Hoyun from ten years ago…”
Seo Hojin strode over, grabbed my face, and turned it this way and that.
He looked the same as always. Normally I’d have lost my shit—how dare you grab the face of your great and mighty hyung—but I couldn’t.
[Seo Hojin]
[Seo Hoyun’s younger brother. College student.
※This individual remembers you.]
Because of the system window that popped up next to him.
“Move.”
I hurried to grab my wallet. That’s when I spotted my ID card next to it. The first digits of my resident registration number had changed.
“What is this?”
[Once again, congratulations! Seo Hoyun-ssi, you have become a player of Nugu Idol Tycoon.]
“Hyung?”
Seo Hojin mumbled in a daze, looking like he was the one dreaming. With trembling hands—like I was on something—I picked up my phone and searched my name. A single page came up.
[HowHow / Real name: Seo Hoyun
Daepaseong Entertainment idol
Debuted 20XX]
No matter how I looked at it, it was my face. Even though what should have come up was QBS Broadcasting PD!
The news articles that used to appear—”Devil Editor Seo Hoyun, Is This Right?”, “Petition to Sanction PD Seo Hoyun’s Broadcasts,” “PD Seo Hoyun’s Program Breaks Highest Ratings Record”—all those articles that simultaneously praised and cursed me were gone.
All that remained was a flopped idol’s profile page.
[How How! HowHow, Daepaseong Entertainment’s newest idol—pleased to meet you!]
“What the fu—”
“Hyung!”
I clutched my head with both hands against the splitting headache.
Genius PD, talent bestowed by the devil, genius of editing—this Seo Hoyun? Became a nugu idol?
***
“I’m sorry, hyung.”
After sitting down with a pale-faced Seo Hojin and talking it through, this was the conclusion:
- This isn’t a dream. (I asked Seo Hojin to hit me to wake me up. It just hurt.)
- I’ve been pulled into a game Seo Hojin had been playing. (A mobile game called Nugu Idol Tycoon. Apparently a game where you raise idols.)
- I’ve become 23, while everyone else stayed the same. (Seo Hojin is still twenty-three.)
And… the most important thing of all.
“Hyung, an idol… You mean the kind of idol I’m thinking of? The kind who get their MR removed as a matter of course and get torn apart for not knowing the answer to a single general knowledge quiz? The kind who have to smile rain or shine—that kind of idol?”
“Seo Hojin… you’re pissing me off with those weirdly specific details, so shut up…”
“Shutting my mouth.”
I had become an idol. A nugu among nugus. The kind where searching on the green window only pulls up a single measly page.[3]
What on earth was happening? My head was throbbing, so I pressed a hand to my forehead. The system window was still bobbing along beside me.
[Quest Complete! “Reality Check Time!”
Accept your reality. You are no longer a genius PD. You have become an idol.
Accept reality: 1/1]
[Success!]
[You have earned the title: “Failing Idol”!]
Watching the “Failing Idol” title spin in circles above my head made me want to throw up.
Why? Why me of all people? No… where even is this?
“Then what about the file I was working on until yesterday?”
[Gone!]
I’d been hitting Ctrl+S religiously and even backed it up. And now it was gone?
“Fuck… fuck… fuck!!”
I clutched my head and muttered like a madman. Seo Hojin rolled his eyes.
“Isn’t that kind of not the priority right now?”
“Shut up.”
The very first system window I’d seen came back to me.
Infamy Points. The people who cursed me every time a program stirred up controversy. And the idol who’d hurled that final curse at me.
—I hope you crash and burn, PD-nim.
Yeah, I crashed and burned.
—The day our positions are reversed and you understand how I feel.
I get it now. Can’t I beg just once?
—No amount of groveling and crying will save you.
Ah, no use, after all…
“Hyung, get a grip!”
“My save file…”
I dropped my head and muttered. The conclusion was clear.
It seemed I had, in fact, become an idol.
[1]욕먹으면 오래 산다 is a Korean proverb that essentially means “getting hated on means you’ll stick around”.
[2] “Getting clubbed in my sleep” is from the idiom 자다 홍두깨를 맞다, literally being whacked with a hongdugae (a traditional wooden laundry bat) while asleep. It means being blindsided.
[3] 초록 창 or “green window” is a slang for Naver. The logo, the search bar border, the whole interface of Naver is green.
