WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

[ Translation - Aren ]

I'm a Reporter, Please let me get off the Stage

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Chapter 2

Long, clear eyes with a reclining almond shape.

Arched eyebrows.

Round, neat nostrils.

The skin…… white as milk, clear, with a nice texture

Not even a hint of grease.

Clean, plump lips without a single crease.

The Atstar News entertainment reporter Kim Doyoon, the Kim Doyoon who would turn 30 next year, certainly didn't have such a good-looking face.

Although I did hear people call it gentle looking and somewhat cute, it certainly fell short (by a ton) from being seen as ‘handsome’.

That was inevitable for a non-celebrity.

I had to think about this more.

……Just what was going on?

I was dazed, holding onto Ire's hand.

Kim Kyosik stared at me for a long time.

He let out a curse under his breath and walked out.

“Hyung, aren't you cold?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Just why did you do that? If you're troubled by something, you should have told me……”

“Excuse me, but…… Where was I found?”

“You don't remember? You fell from the Mapo Bridge and were rescued by lifeguards. You tripped after drinking too much, right?”

Was there really someone unlucky enough to stumble into the Han River after drinking too much?

Did that actually happen to me?

Moreover, there was another completely unbelievable matter.

“Ire.”

“Yes, Hyung?”

Ire smiled brightly, his eyes red from crying. He was as positive as I heard.

“What's my name?”

“Hyung…… Did you lose your memory?”

“Yeah, all I can remember right now is your name.”

Even though it was a pretty cheesy and bad joke, Ire easily laughed it off.

“You're Ahn Yuyoung. The Leader of WEEKANIZ.”

“Seriously……”

So it was true.

WEEKANIZ.

Among all the struggling idol groups they were the lowest who debuted in 2017 and never managed to sell even 50,000 copies during the 6 years they had been active.

And the leader of that group, Ahn Yuyoung.

In 2023, the year I had lived in, he didn’t exist in this world anymore.

As far as I could recall, he died around November 2021……

He took his own life.

The cause seemed to have been his pessimistic personal circumstances.

For that reason, all entertainment media outlets at that time were pouring out articles with titles like ‘Guarantee the human rights of idols.’

Furthermore, some of them even shed light on the malicious comments that were directed at Ahn Yuyoung and WEEKANIZ.

There weren’t actually that many malicious comments since they were unpopular anyway.

Anyway, this happened in 2021, a whole two years ago.

It should be 2023 right now, so there was no way that Ahn Yuyoung was still alive.

“Ire, what’s today’s date?”

“The 17th of November.”

“What year?”

“Huh? 2021. What’s the matter? How scary. Did you actually lose your memory?”

“No way……”

November 17, 2021……

It was the exact same day that Ahn Yuyoung had taken his life.

It seemed like my soul had both left my own body and the year I lived in.

“Haha.”

“Hyung?”

Ire seemed pretty worried when I suddenly shut up and just laughed as if I went crazy, so he cautiously called out to me.

I slowly nodded my head.

“I’m Ahn Yuyoung.”

I muttered furiously.

Then a flash of light suddenly appeared before my eyes.

And what appeared in front of me was a system window with about 40% opacity.

[The first step to growth is self-awareness! Hidden Quest: ‘Know Thyself’ complete!]

[Reward: Item < Shout out to the World > has been provided]

……Didn’t these kinds of things often appear in manhwas and shows where these things suddenly pop out before people and turn them into heroes or something?

One more thing appeared before my eyes.

[Name: Ahn Yuyoung (Yuyoung)

Age : 25

Affiliation : WEEKANIZ

Job : Leader

Position : Sub-Dancer

Appearance : B

Dance : B

Vocal : C

Stamina : 30/100

Notoriety : 89

Notoriety Keywords : Hiatus, Abuse of power]

[There are 5 new notifications]

I never had a nightmare where I got stuck in some kind of game world before, but it sure was refreshing.

I shook my head slightly and looked at Ire.

……In my head I actually thought that this whole situation was just too ridiculous.

I moved about my index finger as if I expected something to happen.

Then a status window appeared next to Ire, similar to mine.

[Name: Ire (Iro)

Age : 19

Affiliation : WEEKANIZ

Position : Rapper

Stamina : 40/100

Appearance : A

Dance : B

Rapping : A

Infamy : 89

Notoriety Keywords : Hiatus, Abuse of Power]

My eyes seemed to have widened in surprise when I saw that status window. Ire, however, looked like he didn’t know what was going on.

It seemed like only I could see those windows.

I had already given up on questioning my current situation, thinking that I should take care of one thing at a time.

First, I should check out those 5 new notifications.

[‘World of Karma’ data loading completed]

[Server and user synchronization completed]

[Karma retrieval completed]

[‘Know Thyself’ completed. Check inventory for rewards.]

‘Inventory.’

As I softly muttered that word, a 4*4 square shaped item window opened before me.

There was a smiling emoji in the first column on the left side.

[<Shout out to the world> : The Player’s voice reaches everyone in the room!]

Why was the description so vague? Was this thing good or bad?

The way these notification windows looked made it seem as if they came out of some kind of Nurturing Role playing game.

[‘World of Karma’]

When I looked at these three words that seemed to describe my current strange situation, an explanation window suddenly popped up.

[Welcome to ‘World of Karma’!

‘World of Karma' lets you live another life based on the data of your previous life.

Have you enjoyed making other's lives spiral down to hell? ٩(๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)]

What was with that provocative message?

[You must perform ‘Redemption Quests’ for the amount of hurt you have inflicted on others in your previous life.

Check out the quests you need to complete below.]

[Redemption Quest : Synchronizing……]

I felt quite nervous.

I watched the string of numbers that had been constantly changing stop at 1.

That was a relief. I didn’t live that messed up a life after all.

[……5.832 hours left until fully loaded.]

……No, it seemed like I was quite the criminal.

I should just move on to the next one.

[This time exists for you to clean up your past, so it’s pretty meaningless for you to live a lazy life, right? (〜￣▽￣)〜]

Wasn’t that thing being a bit too harsh? How badly did I live?

[If you do not proceed with the quests, your stamina will continue to decrease regardless of any life prolonging activities such as eating and sleeping.

If it reaches 0, this program will be forcibly shut down, and supporting your life isn’t possible anymore in that case.]

“Huh?”

[This program is currently in the process of collecting data.

Please understand that the current data is insufficient to derive any valid play trends related to rankings and endings.^^]

So what that thing meant was to just shut up and go along with what it said.

If I didn’t want to kick the bucket, that is……

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wasn’t even angry…… I was just…… stunned.

I looked down at Ahn Yuyoung’s arms and legs in utter shock.

A light beep sound rang in my ear, followed by a new pop-up window appearing.

[Your current notoriety is too high! Lower this value ASAP.

If your notoriety reaches 100, you will die!]

[New Quest : ‘Prevent Disbandment’]

What was with these cheerful chimes when it basically threatened me with death?

This status window, I hoped that karma would get to it for what it was doing to me.

I really wanted to refute that stupid status window straight up for teasing me……

[[[[[ You’ll die! ]]]]]

……I meant, I wanted to solve this whole issue through words.

“Sigh……”

Rather, I felt like I was calming down.

Having lived as a ‘pitiful’ hyena looking for any gossip I could get in my hands, I tormented many idols to a disgusting degree.

However I had also been a ‘pitiful’ hyena who had to follow instructions from someone above me.

Resignation and compliance were like second nature to me.

Fine. When in Rome do as the Romans do.

While in Ahn Yuyoung’s body, I would follow the rules he had to live by.

I had to learn about those first so that people would believe what was going on with me.

Right now, I had no idea what to do as Ahn Yuyoung or Park Doyoon.

First, I stood up and faced Ire, who had been staring at me since some time now.

“Ire. Let’s go to the office.”

“……Hyung, we don’t have an office.”

“Huh……”

……Did I need some cash item for this?

* * *

I remember writing a certain article around August 2021,.

It was based on something posted by Ahn Yuyoung’s personal SNS account.

Its content was……

the shocking news that their album had been made through donations from fans.

It was some very fresh dirt like something one would find on freshly pulled carrots.

Naturally, there were many cursing them for ‘Sucking their fans dry’.

There were two types of reactions from reporters

‘If you show so openly that you don’t have any money, you won’t sell.’

‘So, who even are they?’

I also wrote an article agreeing with both these statements.

<Hello, WIZ. This is Ahn Yuyoung, the leader of WEEKANIZ.

I came today to ask all of you for a favor.

We have been told that our agency is currently unable to support the release of our new album.>

It might have seemed less pathetic if it had been written in a less stiff way.

It seemed like there had been quite the scary situation where they had been branded as ‘begging idols’ followed by many fans defecting.

I had been too busy covering some actors’ romantic relationships, so I didn’t really know that much about it……

If I had known things would turn out like this, I would have tried to get closer with Ahn Yuyoung.

First, I decided to visit Kim Kyosik, who had flown in here like a kingfisher and attacked me like a stinging wasp, one more time.

My current quest was actually perfect for what I wanted to do as it required me to visit the people around me.

I removed the medical tape that was stuck to my right wrist.

I also pulled out the IV needle exposed underneath it.

“……Wait, Hyung! What are you doing?”

“What?”

“You can’t just pull this out randomly, you know?”

“I’m fine. I’ve already done this a few times. I won’t die.”

“No, but still let’s talk to the nurse first……”

“I don’t have time for that.”

Ire was shocked after seeing the small amount of blood dripping out of the place where I had pulled the needle out of.

I roughly wiped it away with my thumb and looked around.

“Where are my clothes?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were left somewhere else because they were too wet?”

“Hah…… Fine. Let’s just go like this then.”

“……Are you going out wearing just the hospital gown?”

“That might make things easier.”

Hmpf. I’ll show you that sympathy operations didn’t only work on the people involved.

* * *

“I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore either?”

Finding Kim Kyosik wasn’t difficult.

It seemed like he was contemplating driving away in his car, but ended up hanging around the hospital just in case.

And there he was smoking one cigarette after the other around the back of the hospital.

“Don’t you know that it’s prohibited to smoke in the entire hospital?”

“Did you look for me just to say that?”

His eyes had a harsh look in them. Wow, just looking at them made me feel dirty.

What was that guy on about…… Everyone always thought that they could do whatever just because they were a CEO.

It was a well known fact, that this guy got involved in a sexual harassment scandal at a drinking party while working for a certain major entertainment agency, got fired and set up his own one-person agency, which didn’t work out as well as he hoped.

Well, those were the rumors floating around the reporter circles at least.

‘Should I just crush him with facts?’

Actually, this was a lot more convenient for me. All I had to do was to record that and report it.

Another way would be to write and distribute press releases myself.

It would take me less than half a day to write an article about this.

……Ah, it was my occupational disease acting up again.

“……It’s just my heart that doesn’t want to see you anymore, but since we are bound by a contract, we need to sort things out.”

……However, right now was the time to speak calmly.

I needed to approach this matter in a slightly more moderate way.

First of all, I wasn’t Park Doyoon now.

From Ahn Yuyoung’s perspective, it wouldn’t be the best move to start a battle of public opinions through press releases.

“You knew that and yet you still dared to jump into the river, you punk? It’s only a matter of time before those reporters get wind of this. I didn’t tell you to jump, now did I?”

Kim Kyosik grumbled like an ignorant person.

Well, in that case.

“……I’m sorry.”

“……What?”

I shouldn’t be the one to ‘clean up’ this matter, but others.

At the same time as I mumbled these words with my head down, Kim Kyosik dropped his cigarette.

What a waste, it probably would have lasted him for a bit longer……

“I’m sorry. As I said, we are bound by a contract and I’m in a position that should make a profit for the company, and yet I almost put you at a huge risk, let alone guaranteeing profit. Please accept my sincerest apologies.”

“What’s wrong with you, you punk? Did you reflect in the river or something?”

It might be because he was stupid, but he couldn’t even properly take the things that were basically handed to him on a silver platter.

“Yes, I had a lot of time to reflect. So this is the conclusion. What I’m trying to say is that disbanding us won’t work out.”

“What?”

I raised the corners of my mouth. It was a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.

“I said, Disbanding. Us. Won’t. Work out.”

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