WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Regressed Assistant Manager Kim Can Read Minds ◈
Chapter 2
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“Seongjun?”
Someone was calling me.
It was a young woman’s voice.
“Seongjun...!”
I opened my eyes.
A light wrapped in traditional Korean paper hung from the ceiling.
The smell of sesame oil lingered in the air. I could hear quiet music and the clink of dishes.
This wasn’t the stinking sewer I’d been in moments ago.
I was sitting on the floor in a suit.
“Are you okay?”
The moment I saw the woman in front of me, my breath stopped.
Yun Hyejin.
But she wasn’t the fifty-one-year-old Yun Hyejin I knew.
A thirty-year-old Hyejin was looking at me, her long hair neatly tied back.
She was wearing a pale pink hanbok.
“You must be nervous. You’re so pale.”
My father-in-law and mother-in-law sat beside her.
They were both young.
When I looked across the table, I lost the ability to speak.
“Seongjun?”
It was my mother.
My mother, who had died of cancer seven years ago, was alive.
She didn’t have a single gray hair.
“Mom...”
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling ill?”
My father sat beside her.
His face looked healthy, just as it had before he collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.
I started to reach out, then stopped.
I couldn’t tell whether this was a vision before death or a dream I was having after I’d already died.
“He must be nervous.”
My father-in-law laughed.
“If a grown man gets this nervous over an engagement ceremony, he’ll faint at the wedding.”
An engagement ceremony.
The words sent my memories spinning.
The Cheongyeon hotel.
The day our families had formally met and exchanged engagement gifts.
I searched my pocket.
My fingers closed around a heavy silver phone. It was the flip phone I’d used long ago.
I flipped it open.
Saturday, August 12, 2006.
12:47 p.m.
Three months before I married Hyejin.
I checked the numbers over and over.
I hadn’t misread them.
The wallpaper showed my thirty-three-year-old self and Yun Hyejin smiling side by side.
“Are you really okay?”
Hyejin laid her hand over mine.
It was warm.
This wasn’t an illusion.
I raised my head and looked in the mirror.
A face without wrinkles.
Black hair.
Even my shoulders, hunched from a lifetime of staring at monitors, were straight.
I clenched and opened my hand.
There was no pain.
‘Have I gone back?’
I’d fallen into a sewer and opened my eyes twenty years in the past.
It made no sense.
But my parents, who had passed away, were right in front of me.
I slowly breathed out.
‘Those twenty years couldn’t have been a dream... Did I regress, like people do in TV dramas?’
I didn’t need to figure out why I’d regressed right now.
First, I had to understand the situation.
Today was my engagement ceremony with Hyejin.
Three months after this ceremony, we got married.
And exactly twenty years later, on the day I lost my job, Hyejin handed me divorce papers.
I looked at her hand resting on mine.
My memories were clear.
The face that had never answered when I asked whether she’d ever loved me.
“You must be tired after working so late last night.”
Hyejin whispered.
That was when it happened.
I heard someone’s voice.
[Junseok said he’d be in Seoul today too.]
I looked up.
No one in the room had opened their mouth.
[It’s over. Having a few feelings left doesn’t count as cheating.]
It was definitely Hyejin’s voice.
But her lips weren’t moving.
Instead, she was smiling as she poured water into my glass.
“Seongjun, have some water.”
I heard the voice again.
[I’m glad I saw him at the hotel one last time last night. We won’t be able to meet often once I’m married.]
My fingers went stiff.
‘What is this?’
Was I hearing things?
Maybe this was an aftereffect of hitting my head when I fell into the sewer. Regression itself wasn’t something I could explain rationally.
I looked at Hyejin.
“Who’s Junseok?”
Her hand froze mid-pour.
Water dripped from the spout and spilled outside the glass.
“Where did that come from?”
[How does he know his name? Did he look at my phone? I deleted the call history.]
Hyejin smiled as though nothing was wrong.
“He was ahead of me at college. I’ve mentioned him before.”
A chill ran down my spine.
Hyejin hadn’t spoken.
But I’d heard her.
The words in her head, exactly as she thought them.
I looked into her eyes.
“Did you see him last night?”
“What? Why would I see him? I was home last night.”
[Did someone tell him they saw us at the hotel coffee shop? Mijeong? No. Mijeong doesn’t even know Junseok is back in the country.]
She was lying.
I could hear her words and thoughts at the same time.
One was smooth, the other frantic.
My heart began to race.
These weren’t imaginary voices.
At least, not unless I’d gone mad.
“Seongjun, you don’t look well.”
My mother took my arm.
At that moment, several voices flooded into my head at once.
[What’s wrong with my son?]
[Who’s this Junseok bastard?]
[We can’t ruin the mood on such a happy day.]
[Surely Hyejin isn’t still seeing that bastard?]
[That lunatic. Why today, of all days?]
[We just have to get them married. Just get them married.]
My ears rang.
I pressed my temples.
The thoughts tangled together.
I couldn’t tell who was thinking what. The murmur scraped at the inside of my head.
When I closed my eyes, it grew a little more distant.
When I looked at one person again, only that person’s thoughts became clear.
It was my mother-in-law.
With a worried look, she put an arm around Hyejin’s shoulders.
“Seongjun, there seems to be some misunderstanding, but today is the first time our families are formally meeting. Couldn’t you two talk this over calmly later?”
Her voice was gentle.
[If they break up today, what are we going to do about Boseong Distribution’s debt? The bank said it had to be settled by the end of this month.]
Boseong Distribution.
It was the distribution company run by my brother-in-law, Yun Taesik.
It went bankrupt the year after we got married. Hyejin had never once told me the debt existed before our marriage.
She’d simply cried and said her younger brother had suddenly been scammed.
I’d taken out a loan against our newlywed home.
It took nine years to pay that money back.
“Is Boseong Distribution having serious trouble?”
The smile vanished from my mother-in-law’s face.
“Pardon?”
“My brother-in-law’s... No, I mean Yun Taesik’s company. I hear it’s in debt.”
“Why would you suddenly bring that up...?”
My father-in-law put down his spoon.
“Son-in-law Kim.”
I wasn’t even his son-in-law yet.
But in my previous life, he’d called me that from the start too. He’d tied me to the family with that title before asking for the money he needed.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but there’s nothing wrong with Taesik’s company. And this isn’t the place to discuss it.”
[How could he know about the 160 million won? Hyejin couldn’t have told him.]
I could even hear the amount.
I looked at my father-in-law.
“160 million won is hardly a small amount, is it?”
His eyes wavered when I gave the exact figure.
My mother-in-law drew a sharp breath and watched our reactions.
In my previous life, I’d believed my brother-in-law had been scammed.
They’d told me his family would end up on the street unless Hyejin and I helped.
So I’d stamped the papers.
It had all been planned before the wedding.
Had Hyejin known?
I looked at her.
[I told them to wait until after the wedding to bring up the debt. How many times did I tell them Seongjun would never turn his back on a family problem?]
She’d known.
They’d all known.
I was the only one who hadn’t.
Jeongho’s words flashed through my mind.
Because you can’t read people.
In my previous life, I’d been smiling even at this very table.
I’d drunk the liquor my father-in-law offered. When my mother-in-law took my hand and asked me to take good care of Hyejin, I’d promised to make her happy.
I hadn’t asked about Hyejin’s past.
I hadn’t checked her family’s financial situation.
It never occurred to me that the people I was about to become family with would deceive me.
I’d thought trusting people made me a good person.
It didn’t.
Trusting without checking wasn’t kindness.
It was closing my eyes and leaving the responsibility to someone else.
“Seongjun.”
Hyejin took my hand.
“I’ll explain about Junseok. But behaving like this now is disrespectful to both our parents.”
She was right.
Questioning my fiancée about her past and her family’s debts at a formal meeting between our families could be considered rude.
In my previous life, words like that had always stopped me.
Manners.
Keeping up appearances.
Family.
The company.
Let’s end this on good terms.
I’d never counted the cost of giving in to those words.
I slowly removed Hyejin’s hand.
A red ring box sat in the middle of the table.
Inside was the engagement ring I was supposed to put on her finger in a few moments.
In my previous life, I’d put that ring on her finger and promised to protect her for the rest of my life.
And I’d truly kept that promise.
When the company told me to work late, I worked late.
When my in-laws demanded money, I found the money.
When my wife said she was exhausted, I worked harder.
All that time, no one had protected me.
I picked up the box.
My mother asked anxiously,
“Seongjun, tell us what’s going on.”
Seeing my mother alive made my throat tighten.
Before the joy of seeing her again, guilt washed over me.
In my previous life, I’d only pretended to be a good son to my parents too.
I’d never once told them I was struggling.
Even when my father needed money for surgery, I’d gone on a business trip first.
I’d thought the company couldn’t function without me.
Once I was gone, they’d cleared out my desk in a single day.
“I’m sorry.”
I set the ring box down on the table.
My father-in-law spoke stiffly.
“An apology won’t settle this. Do you realize what you’re doing? In front of your elders, no less. You can’t behave so disrespectfully.”
I knew.
For the first time, I understood exactly.
Hyejin wasn’t marrying me because she loved me.
Her family didn’t need a son-in-law. They needed a guarantor with good credit.
If I married her knowing that, I wouldn’t be able to blame anyone this time.
It would be the life I’d chosen.
I had no intention of being that much of an idiot again.
I stood up.
“Dad, Mom.”
I bowed my head to my parents.
Then I looked at Yun Hyejin.
The color drained from her face.
[He can’t seriously be thinking of calling it off now, can he? He can’t even bring himself to say anything unpleasant in front of other people.]
That had been true of the Kim Seongjun from my previous life.
But that man had fallen into a sewer and died today.
“This marriage...”
I pushed the engagement ring toward Hyejin.
“I’m not going through with it.”
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