TIGAHR 2

TIGAHR

Chapter 2

Just knowing that they had been alive, even if I never saw them again, must have given me enormous strength.

After I found out through an article, I contacted the company. Even if things had fallen apart, they had still been like family to me. How could they not even tell me about the funeral?

Were they really like family?

Only afterward did it hit me—had I really been that much of a stranger to them? Well, I was never very perceptive. Maybe I simply never understood where the line was.

After attending Director Do Jaeyeon’s funeral—the one I only learned about that way—my home became a wreck. It turned into such a pile of trash that there wasn’t even room left to put down another soju bottle.

I had stopped, but thankfully, the industry I had left behind had not.

I spent my time watching the dramas and films that kept being made.

That became my whole life.

The phone call came one winter.

For once, it wasn’t spam. It wasn’t my uncle’s family calling to ask for money either.

No.

Actually, I didn’t know who it was.

I couldn’t read the caller’s name.

…Huh? Come to think of it, why couldn’t I read it?

It was strange.

I had good eyesight. At this distance, there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to read the letters.

I reached for the phone on the dining table to get a closer look, but slammed my foot into a chair.

“Fuck!”

While cursing and hopping around in pain, I stepped on an empty soju bottle and fell backward.

My head slammed hard against the marble floor so violently that my vision went white for a moment.

At first, I thought it was the kind of injury that would be fine if I just lay there for a while.

…but it was worse than I expected.

Blood was running from my head.

This isn’t good.

Lying there, I fumbled frantically for my phone.

I was going to call an ambulance.

But the moment I picked it up, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.

Am I really alive?

Not a single person in this world wonders about me.

Whether I’m alive or dead.

I don’t enjoy my life at all.

I don’t even think it’s worth regretting.

And yet… am I still alive?

Just as I let the hand holding the phone fall back down—

[The current date is December 25, 2047.]

[Remaining lifespan: 23 years.]

[A deal is proposed.]

[By consuming the executor’s life…]

[Would you like to move to a random point in the past?]

Ha.

That’s ridiculous.

“Say it so I can understand in one go, you demon bastard.”

[Warning.]

[The executor’s life will be consumed.]

[Warning.]

[The executor’s life will be consumed.]

No, that’s scary—just say it once. I get it. My life gets used up.

The phone in my hand started ringing again.

I narrowed my eyes and held it closer.

Now I could see it even more clearly.

I still couldn’t read the caller’s name.

It looked smeared, as if something had been spilled over it.

I rubbed the screen hard against my clothes, but nothing changed.

A chill ran down my spine.

Was this the demon’s doing too?

[So.]

[Would you like to move to a random point in the past?]

The demon pressed me.

If I went back to some random point in the past, maybe—

just maybe—

I might be able to see the Leader Actors family again.

At Managing Director Gam Suhan’s funeral, none of it had felt real.

But at Director Do Jaeyeon’s funeral, I finally understood.

I had truly lost everyone I loved.

…I just want to see them once.

Isn’t that how it always is?

When you want to see family who’ve left this world, the wish isn’t grand.

You just want to share a meal with them.

That’s all.

I should eat jokbal.

The three of them loved it so much that they always ordered it late at night.

I had never even tried it.

[The deal has been completed.]

[Consuming the life of ‘Lee Heeyoon.’]

[Death confirmed for December 25, 2047.]

[Returning to a point in the past.]

When my contract with Leader Actors had just been terminated, I hadn’t known.

But now, five years later, I did.

Leader Actors had been brought down deliberately.

It wasn’t baseless paranoia or some conspiracy theory.

They weren’t a giant corporation, but they had been firmly established in the industry.

A company like that didn’t just collapse overnight.

And probably…

the three of them, including Do Jaeyeon, had been dragged down with it.

So I would make Leader Actors bigger.

Big enough that no one could ever destroy it.

And to do that, I had to become an even better actor than I was now.

Acting is, in the end, an extension of life.

If there are emotions you truly cannot understand, you can’t portray them properly.

Warmth. Love.

Those feelings had never come naturally to me.

I had never experienced them, so I could never deeply understand them.

Happiness. Love.

Teenagers who would risk their lives for friendship.

Children who throw tantrums because they trust in their parents’ endless love.

If I could understand those things a little better—

if my life became just a little more colorful—

then maybe, no matter how much of a wreck I was, there would still be sets looking for me.

Come to think of it, being able to act again was good too.

When I thought that way, my remaining twenty-three years suddenly felt perfectly spent.

Not a second of it felt wasted.

Still, if I died here, it felt like no one would ever know.

So first, I called emergency services.

Then I lay there and started counting.

I didn’t even make it to five before I blacked out.

And as I died, I had one thought.

In my life, there really was nothing but Leader Actors and acting.

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was the system window.

[The current date is June 6, 2025.]

[Remaining lifespan: 20 years, 6 months, and 19 days.]

I was sixteen.

If I had gone to school, I would have been in my third year of middle school.

If this had been the demon’s intention, then it had chosen a very fitting time.

After my parents died when I was seven, I had been raised by my uncle.

As a child actor, I barely slept, so of course I couldn’t attend school properly.

I had entered middle school only to immediately begin the withdrawal process, and by then I was no longer counted among the enrolled students.

Even a half-day time difference on a plane can leave you disoriented.

There was no way I could instantly adapt after jumping this far through time.

But I had no choice but to come to my senses immediately.

“Whoa—what the hell?”

I was hanging from the railing of an apartment rooftop.

It was a foggy day, and the ground below flickered in and out of view.

Cursing, I scrambled back over the railing.

“Almost died again.”

As I turned around, gasping for breath, my legs trembled so badly I nearly collapsed.

I rolled up the long sleeves I was wearing in the middle of summer.

My whole body was covered in bruises.

This was around the time I learned that going to the police would only get me told it was too troublesome.

I kept climbing onto rooftops like this, yet I still kept handing money over to the family who abused me.

It wasn’t surprising.

A kid who never even properly finished elementary school wasn’t exactly capable of making rational choices.

Thinking of them as my only family even after I turned twenty—

that went beyond lack of education.

That was just born stupidity.

But now I knew.

My family was with Leader Actors.

Sure, they had kicked me out.

But in the end, the only people who had ever loved me were them.

My fake family.

Let’s start over.

Again.

First, let’s see if revenge is possible.

I clenched my jaw.

Then immediately nodded.

“Yeah… absolutely not ready to pick a fight yet.”

Unlike the man in his thirties who had grown used to all kinds of action scenes, sixteen-year-old me was as fragile as a dandelion seed.

During my child actor days, I had always been underfed and sleep-deprived.

Maybe because I had spent my whole life eating too little and sleeping too little, I never grew as tall as my genes probably intended.

I went down the stairs, headed to my uncle’s apartment, and packed my things.

That was when my uncle’s son, Lee Seonggyu, came home and spotted me.

“What are you doing?”

He had started attending an acting academy recently, so he cursed less now.

Sometimes he even pretended to stop his father from beating me.

Seeing him again made me strangely glad.

“Hyung.”

“I asked what you’re doing.”

“Make sure you become an actor. Seriously.”

That way, I can pay you back.

You need a little fame for that.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and continued.

“I’m running away. Not coming back, so I guess it’s independence… Ah, no. More like escape.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Before Lee Seonggyu could process it, I opened the front door.

I figured I’d get caught if I took the elevator, so I bolted down the outdoor stairs instead.

Maybe he figured he couldn’t catch me anyway.

By the time I had raced down three flights and out of the building, Lee Seonggyu was leaning over the balcony, staring down at me with a baffled expression.

His eyes said:

Where the hell are you going? You’ve got nowhere to go.

I raised both middle fingers at him and ran out of the complex.

Of course, I ran like hell in case he tried to catch me.

When I had really been sixteen, I had never dared to leave home.

Back then, I had thought this was family.

I believed that if I kept pouring myself into it endlessly, that fragile fence of family—always crumbling like grains of sand—would eventually become solid.

But sand stayed sand.

And my money never became a river.

At best, it only became groundwater.

And in the end, I was forgotten.

“Still… I really don’t have any money.”

Once I’d run away, I stopped to think.

Sixteen years old.

Officially out of school.

A secondhand 2G phone.

My entire fortune was the transportation money on my transit card.

Wait… do I even have bus fare?

It was so hot I thought I’d die, so I jumped onto a bus.