Episode 2
In the novel, Lee Jae-heon was a villain that no one could deny.
It’s not just a story about when I entered the underworld.
Normally, he was quite an old man and a piece of trash who saw people as tools rather than people.
Lee Jae-heon was already a sufficient villain, even though he didn’t do anything extremely bad like murder.
He was a person who had no qualms about abusing his position as a manager.
Thanks to this, I didn’t get along very well with the main character who was serving as an assistant manager in the same department.
Although he pretends not to be, the main character is a very good person, so Lee Jae-heon and he have clashed several times before.
To be honest, even now that I remember my past life, I still don’t like the main character.
To begin with, Lee Jae-heon’s past life was also not one with a very good personality.
However, Jaeheon Lee, who knew what would happen in the future, was willing to put aside his pride for long-term gain.
He had a reason to be seen well by the protagonist.
‘First, let’s give an unexpected image.’
He came outside dressed lightly, unlike usual, and looked around.
Lee Jae-heon looked for a house near his office so that he wouldn’t have to commute to work, but it was generally difficult to find a house for rent in the middle of Seoul.
And it was the same for Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho, the main character of this world.
Of course, Lee Jae-heon didn’t know it before he remembered his past life, but Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho was commuting to and from work in an area that took over an hour by car.
In the novel, it is said that he chose the cheapest house in order to become completely independent on his own.
Anyway, the place where he lived was a quiet neighborhood that did not seem very prosperous even to Lee Jae-heon.
The only good thing about it is that it has a walking trail, and Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho went for a light jog here every weekend morning.
As expected, he was so cruel that he possessed basic physical strength and agility as befits the main character of a 19+ film about survival of the impoverished people.
Lee Jae-heon thought of Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho, who was running from the promenade, and noticed that there was an ice cream discount store among the shopping malls listed next to it, and then walked on.
The place he stopped by was a liquor store next to the discount store.
“welcome.”
When I opened the rusty door and entered, there was a variety of alcoholic beverages lined up, ranging from wine to sake.
I thought about it while searching on the Internet, but even though it is a small store, it seemed to be quite practical.
Of course, the quantity and quality were lower than the specialty stores I usually go to, but since the goal was not alcohol itself, it didn’t really matter.
Jaeheon Lee just needed the probability of coming here.
He slowly blinked and opened his mouth to the store owner.
“I contacted you yesterday, but I came to look for Shaoxingju.”
“Ah ah… it’s him.”
Shaoxing Province.
Also called Shaoxing Old Wine, it was the name of a liquor often used in Chinese cuisine.
Surprisingly, the distribution of alcohol was not very smooth in Korea.
What can be ordered through courier delivery is generally limited to traditional liquor, and if you want to purchase more authentic alcohol, it is usually impossible to get it through delivery.
Moreover, compared to other alcoholic beverages, Shaoxing liquor was not easy to obtain nearby.
If it was an alcohol like cocktail or wine, it could have been easily found near Jae-heon Lee’s house, but if it was an alcohol that most people didn’t know the name of, it would have been worth it for even heavy-hearted Manager Jae-heon Lee to take the step himself.
As expected, he quietly watched the store owner find a bottle of alcohol and take it out with dry hands.
“Actually, not many people are looking for this, so we only have a few in stock.”
“I’m not going to buy a lot, so it’ll be okay. “All it takes is one bottle.”
“Ah, do you want to use it for cooking?”
“That’s not true… I’m just concerned that the display case is empty.”
It wasn’t wrong.
Jaeheon Lee is a very vain person.
So he was very careful about decorating his house, and of course displaying expensive or rare collections was also his hobby.
Therefore, naturally, he also had a dazzling liquor cabinet.
But if you ask whether this is the complete truth, of course it is not.
‘Because it was just an excuse to begin with.’
Lee Jae-heon looked at the hands of the store owner, who was diligently packaging the alcohol.
He was vain, but not a drinker.
If I were to be honest, I liked dinner parties where I could lead employees under me and reaffirm my power, but I was not one of those people who drank alcohol alone at home.
However, Lee Jae-heon needed to pretend that he was not and deceive the suspicious protagonist.
The employees below me had to tolerate my old behavior several times, so they vaguely knew my home address. There was no way that Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho, who was a cool employee on the outside but didn’t know what he was like on the inside, would not be suspicious of me here.
Even before entering the secret world, I refused to be stalked or cause any unexpected misunderstandings.
That’s why Jaeheon Lee threw away the Shaoxing liquor from the display case last night to make an excuse to come to this neighborhood.
I thought about just drinking it, but I thought there would be a problem if I had to drive and I was still drunk.
Honestly, it doesn’t seem like a big deal by my standards, but there’s no way the main character, who secretly questions the law, would allow drunk driving.
I wonder if Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho would ever come into my house and check the display case, but the details are important anyway.
If there was anything Jaeheon Lee learned from his past life, it was that there was nothing wrong with being thorough.
He held the paper bag given by the store owner in one hand and checked the watch in his other hand.
‘The main character goes for a morning jog from 9:30 to 10:30…’
And the incident that Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho witnessed the day before entering the secret world occurred while the main character was returning from his morning exercise.
Lee Jae-heon took a look at his watch and naturally gazed at the situation outside the window.
“….”
A vaguely familiar figure caught my eye from a distance.
“Take care.”
“Goodbye.”
Lee Jae-heon, who gave a dry greeting just as he did when he came in, left the liquor store and walked down the sidewalk.
I had to walk a bit to get to the ice cream discount store next to the liquor store.
The moment when the main character, who had been jogging for some time, gets closer and a child from an ice cream store runs towards a woman on the walking path.
Lee Jae-heon intentionally pulled the child’s back with his eyes wide open.
“uh?”
―Kkiik Boom!
“….”
Immediately after that, a black car passed in front of the child.
The silence seemed to be overshadowed by the loud noise that was out of place in an old, peaceful neighborhood, but as if she had realized the situation properly, a woman who appeared to be the child’s mother screamed.
“…Kaaaaaaaa!”
“Car accident…! keen! just now!”
“What, is someone dead?”
Shock, surprise, fear.
Jaeheon Lee unconsciously covered the eyes of the child he was pulling as the cruel interest that anyone would have was revealed in the faces seen between them.
It was an extremely reflexive action.
Only then did the child, who seemed to understand the situation, burst into tears and grab my arm.
“Huh huh huh huh…!”
“….”
Thanks to this, the hand that covered my eyes became damp.
Even though I lowered my hand to cover my eyes out of strange discomfort and inexplicable embarrassment, the child seemed to have no intention of letting go of my forearm.
Thanks to this, the lightly worn shirt became saggy.
Jaeheon Lee felt strangely embarrassed and saw the woman running from the other side.
“Mi Minhong. Minhong…”
“…Take him with you.”
“ah! thank you “Thank you, thank you…”
Lee Jae-heon frowned as he kept repeating the same words while stroking his child with trembling hands.
It wasn’t because I was in a particularly bad mood, but because the sight of the woman talking that way was like looking at a broken machine.
I felt like he was about to say something else, but I didn’t want to get caught up in something unnecessary, so I just shook my hands off and left.
Fortunately, the woman’s attention quickly returned to her child, who looked like he was going to cry.
Of course, I don’t know if this child was her son, but since the main character in the novel also considered the two to be a mother-son relationship, I didn’t think there would be a problem.
Above all, hasn’t he already achieved the reason he came here?
“…Deputy Jeong?”
“…Oh, Manager.”
Lee Jae-heon took out his cell phone from his arms and called the main character as if he had seen him by chance, and a smile filled with joy appeared on the main character’s unsmiling face.
Lee Jae-heon, who was snorting inwardly at the quick change, held out his other hand to him without bothering to reveal his twisted intentions.
It was a gesture exactly like a command to a dog.
He continued speaking while acting as if he was very embarrassed by the current meeting.
“Uh uh. okay. for a moment.”
“Oh yes….”
“Did Assistant Manager Jeong live here? “Okay, just wait a moment.”
It would be nice if this idiot, repeating what he said, seemed embarrassed by an unexpected situation.
Jaeheon Lee thought so and called an ambulance.
He wondered if people would already be gathered together to help the person in the car, but he knew after reading the novel.
Among the few people gathered around the car that hit the utility pole, no one helped the driver.
They were so embarrassed that they called an ambulance only after the driver stopped breathing.
Perhaps because he was the assailant who almost killed the child, the main character did not provide any extra help, but it was quite another thing for Lee Jae-heon, who already had a lot of hate, to just leave the injured person alone.
To be honest, I didn’t want to help the driver, but I had to help him to improve my image.
Lee Jae-heon, who had called an ambulance, entered the crowd of people who were just gathered and opened the car door.
‘Smell of alcohol.’
It seemed like he was a drunk driver.
It’s so brave in broad daylight.
Lee Jae-heon was also a driver who was not much different from the driver in front of him, but he suddenly thought that if he had fallen asleep after drinking Shaoxing wine yesterday, he could have been in big trouble.
In another way, I almost hated the main character.
Lee Jae-heon, who was closely checking the condition, decided to take simple measures instead of taking the driver out.
The car was quite dented, so it seemed like if I touched it for no reason, it would only cause more damage.
He took off the bandage on his arm that he had wrapped at the hospital yesterday, stopped the bleeding on his forehead, and made his way through the crowd of people looking at me.
Since it doesn’t look like he’s going to die anyway, shouldn’t the people who came in the ambulance take care of it from now on?
Lee Jae-heon said with a distorted face to the main character, who was looking at me with pitch-black eyes.
“What are you doing, Assistant Manager Jeong? “It’s not moving.”
“yes yes?”
“Are you going to contribute to such a noisy cause? “If Assistant Manager Jeong gets involved, it will be a pain for me as the manager, so I just ignore it and come quickly.”
The protagonist’s face became quite strange at those words, but Lee Jae-heon urged him on, recalling his past self as much as possible.
It was quite difficult to keep the way I spoke from my past life from popping up without my knowledge.
Lee Jae-heon thought as he felt the gaze of the protagonist following him from a reasonable distance.
‘It might be strange.’
If you look at the way he talks, it looks like he’s an old man.
If you listen carefully to the line you just said, it sounds like a trash person who doesn’t care whether an accident happens or not and doesn’t want to get involved in troublesome matters.
However, Jaeheon Lee was the one who saved a child who was almost hit by a car just a moment ago and even treated a driver who almost hit him with his car.
Even though the words and gestures were the same, the reaction would have felt quite disparate from the protagonist who was watching the situation closely.
Even that old man manager? Didn’t the guy who talked bullshit like he was eating a meal and didn’t even value anyone taking sick leave save two people today?
I think it would be weirder if it didn’t feel strange.
Even if I wanted to improve my image, I felt like I was rushing something that should have been done step by step, but there was nothing I could do about it.
‘If it wasn’t now, there was no chance.’
Aren’t they going to be eaten by the secret world tomorrow?
If there was time, there was only today, and there was even an opportunity that could be advantageous to Lee Jae-heon.
What if I miss such a great opportunity?
Lee Jae-heon, who swallowed his true feelings, opened his mouth to the protagonist, who had a dumbfounded expression on his face.
“That’s right. “I guess Assistant Manager Jeong lives here?”
“Yes…? I knew the manager lived near the company, but somehow he ended up here…”
“Ah ah. “I have some business to run…”
He deliberately blurted out his words.
In the past, Lee Jae-heon would not have bothered to tell Assistant Manager Jeong that he came all the way here to fill the liquor cabinet.
I must have thought that saying that the manager of a large company came all the way to buy alcohol would damage my image.
Of course, regardless of that, the protagonist would have figured out why he came here.
I pulled the child’s back and fell once, but I was so distracted at the time that I saw that he had left the alcohol in the paper bag behind.
Of course, Lee Jae-heon didn’t really leave because he was out of his mind, but at least that’s how the main character saw it.
Lee Jae-heon’s face hardened for a moment, as if he had only just realized that he had left his drink behind, but then he relaxed his expression as he looked at Assistant Manager Jeong in front of him.
Even though all of this must have been confirmed, the protagonist’s dull skin was not broken.
‘I was definitely more scared of these guys in my past life.’
Lee Jae-heon clicked his tongue internally and continued speaking on the outside, acting like his old self.
“Keuhum that’s it. “It’s a bit awkward to say this, but…”
“Yes, Manager.”
“Don’t go anywhere and tell me what I did today. Do you understand? “You know it gets annoying when you get strange calls from drivers or parents later, right?”
“Ah… what if this is a strange communication…?”
“Why are you acting innocent? Who knows, they might demand compensation for damage just because they touched it for no reason.”
This too was bullshit.
Of course, it was bullshit in the sense that it was not because he believed in the goodness of the people gathered there today, but because he calmly blurted out something that he had no intention of saying.
What did they do well to compensate for the damage?
After hearing what I said, the main character’s expression also turned strange, as if he didn’t really empathize with it, but Lee Jae-heon continued his acting steadfastly.
If I were to show some doubt here, wouldn’t it be worth the effort of timing and getting this far?
Fortunately, Jaeheon Lee was quite talented at acting.
He continued, recalling his former self.
“Well… no, anyway. Doesn’t Assistant Manager Jeong even help the manager when he’s going through so much trouble? “I’m not doing this because I hate Assistant Manager Jeong, it’s just that I really have no attitude.”
“Yep, sorry.”
“If saying you’re sorry is enough, then why have a law? “What a clever person.”
It was no different from usual behavior, but unlike his smooth face before, Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho’s current expression was a little distorted.
It meant that Lee Jae-heon’s trick had worked to some extent.
Lee Jae-heon, who figured it out with the help of his past life, inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
I’m putting down all my pride and acting like a clown, but if I hadn’t made even this small change, it would have been quite a pain.
This time, the plan was based on the protagonist’s quick wit.
Traffic accidents are more hectic than you might think.
Most ordinary people were firstly disoriented by loud noises they had never heard before; secondly, they had no sense of reality because something they had only seen on the news was happening right in front of their eyes; and thirdly, they were shocked by the shattered surroundings. .
Therefore, only those who were nearby would not have known that he had saved the child before it was hit by a car.
Since it happened so quickly and the car was destroyed right after, it was obvious which direction the attention would be drawn.
However, under the assumption that the main character would be recognized as a secretly crazy person, he searched for locations in the novel one by one and made up an excuse to come all the way here.
I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t recognized it.
Lee Jae-heon opened his mouth, clenching and opening his empty hands as if he regretted the bottle of alcohol he had left behind.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry for nagging you on your day off. “You know I’m saying this with all my thoughts in mind, right?”
“Of course, Manager. “I am listening to everything carefully.”
“I’m going to work tomorrow, but I got cursed at. Assistant Manager Jeong goes in carefully as well…”
At this level, today’s goal has been achieved.
His goal today isn’t to completely take the piss out of his opponent.
It was impossible, something that could easily cause misunderstanding, and it wasn’t something that could be done in a hurry.
Lee Jae-heon was a worthless villain in the novel whose death was used as cider.
A sudden change in personality would only increase the other person’s wariness, so Jaeheon Lee only provided an opportunity to see himself differently through the unexpected appearance he showed today.
As it was a matter directly related to people’s lives, the other world will also be given time to look back on what happened at that time.
After making his decision up to that point, Jaeheon Lee took a natural step forward, and a strangely clear voice caught him.
“Boss.”
Lee Jae-heon blinked at the call that clearly had some intention.
“what.”
“When did you hurt your arm?”
“….”
Oh shit.
‘I forgot this.’
Yesterday and today, I keep forgetting about injuries of this magnitude because they were so insignificant in my past life.
Even though it would seem like a very big wound to the general public today.
So Jaeheon Lee calmly treated the driver and used the bandage wrapped around his arm.
At the time, I only thought that the bandage the doctor had wrapped yesterday could be put to good use, but the sharp-eyed protagonist would not have been unaware of the meaning of the bandaged wound.
Jaeheon Lee rubbed his fingers on the injured arm without looking away from the protagonist.
“….”
His eyes sank at the familiar touch.
When I think about it, the doctor yesterday told me not to move too much with this arm, but I guess I moved it a lot today.
He was finally aware of the sensation of the wound opening and blood flowing through his shirt.
Jaeheon Lee thought for a moment before answering.
“…I had to go to the hospital yesterday because I got scratched by a protruding nail.”
I was a little embarrassed, but not to the point where I couldn’t handle it.
No matter how sharp his eyes are, the current protagonist is an ordinary person without any abilities.
It would not have been possible to find out what shape the wound was in the short time the bandages were removed.
Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho looked slightly surprised when Lee Jae-heon said that the wound was caused by a nail instead of a knife.
“Oh my, a nail? “I don’t want the wound to get worse.”
“That’s right… Well, I’m not lucky anyway. “Yesterday and today were just a mess.”
This was half sincere. The thought that he could have died without knowing anything even if he had not remembered his past life invaded his mind, but then disappeared in an instant.
Jaeheon Lee touched his forehead with his other non-bloody hand and sighed.
“Anyway, Assistant Manager Jeong, please stop going in.”
“…Yes, Manager. Please go in carefully.”
“….”
Lee Jae-heon, who astutely noticed that momentary gap, turned his gaze to the hand that was pressing between his eyebrows.
That wrist, to be exact.
“…ah.”
“….”
“The clock is broken.”
He muttered inwardly, annoyed that he had been outmaneuvered by his opponent for a moment.
‘…This bastard is faking…?’
The glass of the delicately made watch was broken due to some kind of shock when it fell.
Thanks to him, it was obvious even without explaining what state his wrist was in.
The wound on his arm was not what Inho Jeong was aiming for.
What he wanted to check was how familiar Director Lee Jae-heon was with pain due to the wound on his wrist where the watch broke.
It goes without saying, but Lee Jae-heon, at least the old Lee Jae-heon, was not used to pain.
Isn’t there a time when the company’s stapler got stuck incorrectly and I screamed like crazy?
Even if the arm thing happened yesterday, the pieces of glass that had just gotten stuck in my wrist and nearby were something else.
Lee Jae-heon admitted that he was used to new wounds.
However, only mentally ill people were familiar with pain and injury.
Yes, those crazy people who infested the world of my past life.
No one could even know what it would mean to be accustomed to pain in a world so calm and quiet.
That’s why Jeong In-ho noticed that the current Lee Jae-heon was different from before.
At least you felt that sense of disconnect.
Perhaps in a direction that Jaeheon Lee did not want.
‘I didn’t want to be thought of as being used to pain…’
It’s a misunderstanding, but I didn’t want to create an excuse to be used harshly as a labor force in the underworld.
If a person with whom you already have a bad relationship is accustomed to being hurt, is there any way that a person who has been pushed into a corner will not push that person into another corner?
He was skeptical about human goodness reaching its limits.
Lee Jae-heon’s eyes met the other person’s pitch-black eyes.
“I was so distracted that I didn’t even notice that my hand was hurt.”
“….”
“Right?”
The protagonist responded.
“okay.”
