"There's another school besides yours that makes kids wear uniforms like that...? I'm honestly shocked."
Baek Haewon clicked her tongue. She hadn't once considered the hypothesis that her brother and an idol might attend the same school.
Same for Baek Haein. At a glance, none of his friends struck him as the type to become an entertainer. So Baek Haein just grumbled.
"Does our country only manufacture fabric in spinach green?"
Right as Baek Haein turned his eyes away in annoyance, the face of the guy dancing in a uniform the color of well-fermented green-onion kimchi filled the screen.
"Huh?"
Baek Haein paused. Baek Haewon said,
"Why? Even to you he looks different from you starting from the complexion, right? Face is wings, wings."
Whether Baek Haewon was impressed or not, Baek Haein’s gaze couldn’t leave the TV screen.
After the guy in the green uniform got two or three more close-ups, Baek Haein muttered,
"Why is he coming out there...?"
Baek Haewon looked up at Baek Haein, asking what he was talking about. What came next was even more shocking.
"I know him. He’s from my school."
"What?"
"That’s our school uniform. That’s that guy, right? Kim Han."
"Ah, you scared me. No it isn’t. That’s Kim Iwol."
"Is that his legal name? Not a stage name?"
"They all use their real names."
Baek Haewon answered, sounding deflated. She’d been hoping for one of those situations like, "My idol turns out to be my brother’s cousin’s cousin’s aunt’s aunt’s son?" but the world was not so easy after all.
Despite Baek Haewon’s disappointed tone, Baek Haein didn’t back down.
"No. He really looks exactly like Kim Han."
"Hey, be serious—if someone like that was at your school, you think I wouldn’t know?"
"What do you know about me."
"Fair point."
Baek Haewon turned away, telling Baek Haein to stop lying already.
But the guy on the screen really did look exactly like Baek Haein’s classmate.
"Is his name really Kim Iwol? He never changed it?"
"Given I’ve never heard anything like that, probably not."
At Baek Haewon’s words, Baek Haein stroked his chin and nodded.
"Well, it’s not like he’d do idol stuff anyway."
"What’s that supposed to mean, are you looking down on idols?"
Baek Haewon bristled. Whether his little sister got mad or not, Baek Haein spoke placidly.
"Could you stop picking a fight? I had zero intent to be snide, okay? You’re so mean-spirited..."
"Ugh, if you’re going to keep yapping, get lost!"
When Baek Haewon hurled a cushion, Baek Haein dodged in a flash. The movement showed years of practice.
"No, I mean Kim Han did well in school, that’s why. I think he always crushed the practice tests. Would a kid like that be an idol now?"
"So you weren’t close. You’re a blockhead."
"Yeah, we only talked during soccer, you fXXker."
Sparks kept flying between the siblings.
Then images of Kim Iwol, who’d always seemed unusually crisp and put-together, flashed through Baek Haewon’s mind. Plus what she’d heard—that Kim Iwol started trainee life at twenty.
Baek Haewon said to Baek Haein,
"Hey, go get your yearbook."
"If you’re curious, you take it out and look. I’m such a blockhead I don’t even remember where my album is."
"Ugh, so annoying!"
Baek Haewon raked her hair irritably.
Even if she had to dig through the storage herself, with overflowing love she secured her mother’s son’s graduation album—her brother’s.
There, the youthful face of Kim Iwol and the two characters "Kim Han" were printed clearly.
≫ Is Iwol’s name his legal name?
The instant I saw that title, I doubted my eyes. So I rubbed them and read the post again.
But nothing changed. The sentence asking whether my name was my legal name stood out clear.
The time the post went up was about three hours ago.
A search turned up a few similar posts. Thankfully, the number was very small.
It felt like someone had said it once somewhere and rumors were milling around. Probably on some community board or a private account.
It’s true I changed my name. It is, but...
"I don’t want the old name getting out."
It was a headache. Because I hated my previous name to death.
People who didn’t know the circumstances would often say, when they learned I’d changed my name, "Still, it’s a precious name your parents gave you. Weren’t you reluctant to change it?"
For the record, not reluctant at all. Considering they named me "Hyoil" in the name of putting filial piety first and then proceeded to neglect their kid, the anger made it impossible not to change it.
What’s sadder is I had it better than my older sister.
I heard my sister’s name was slapped together by shortening the name of the local community center where the birth was registered. In other words, they just used whatever their eyes landed on.
My sister didn’t go as far as changing hers, but I forced mine through. The moment ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) I was of age, I filed the application and changed it.
Since the name change went through in this life too, I wanted to live as if the old name never existed.
If my legal name got revealed before I left Spark, then once I returned to civilian life I’d obviously be hearing, "Assistant Manager Kim, I heard your legal name used to be ‘Hyoil’? Any reason you changed it?"
But it didn’t look like things would go the way I wanted.
What are idol fans? They’re cyber archaeologists with search skills so good they dig up past stories even the person involved forgot.
No matter how much I wanted to hide those three syllables of my name, if someone cracked open a yearbook once, it would all be over.
I hid that name doggedly even at Hanpyeong Industries, but it can’t be helped. At the very least I’d have to tell the members that my name used to be Kim Hyoil, and that I nearly lived as a Confucian boy who put filial piety first.
I heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the earth and stood up.
And to prove my words, I went to issue a detailed record...
"Huh?"
Something was off.
The field for "name after change" correctly said "Kim Iwol," but the "name before change" wasn’t "Kim Hyoil."
What was written there was "Kim Han," the name on my school uniform tag.
Same school as before, only the name tag and the name had changed.
Back then, I’d been accepted to university but hadn’t been able to attend, too.
Analyzing what I’d gone through so far, the current phenomenon could be summarized as...
...Those two.
Does this make any sense?
It’s already inexplicable that a person went back nine years, so what’s the point of this shX—fudging my personal details just to make me an idol?
My pre-change name has absolutely nothing to do with becoming an idol.
The fact it even fiddled with this part meant the system had areas besides KPIs where it wanted to control me.
Why. What does that even mean?
What changes because the name "Kim Hyoil" becomes "Kim Han."
Judging from how those people who treated their kids like vermin disappeared on me, their feelings toward us don’t seem to have changed much, so why bother with this hassle?
Right now I sincerely wanted to fight the system. If not for my sister, I would have jumped out the window right now and made all this carefully engineered shX the system set up meaningless.
But anger changes nothing. I knew that perfectly well.
Instead, I worked my head. If I couldn’t remember the past, I had to at least predict the future. Forcing myself to think that way, I retraced the current situation.
Whether my parents’ expectations for me had been shattered, or they were even more sick of me than last life and cast me off early.
The family’s shape had already changed a lot from what I knew.
And my memories related to family were incomplete.
Combining those two produced a hypothesis I didn’t want to imagine.
If my sister, like me, had been separated from the family home, and because of that it was flat-out impossible to make contact with her until I either fully recovered my memories or cleared all my KPIs.
So whatever situation my sister was in, if the structure forced me—who lacked information—to be unilaterally dragged around by the system...
A mind spinning like crazy stopped in an instant.
"FXXk!"
I slammed both hands on the kitchen table. I tried hard to hold back the rage exploding out.
My head felt like it would burst at the thought I might have been played by the system this whole time.
I covered my face with both hands and took a deep breath. Then, out of nowhere, the system I’d seen last time popped into my head.
▶ Assistant Manager Kim, do you really need that to do your job? Have you thought enough about whether there’s a better way?
[SYSTEM] Instructions have arrived from the "Supervisor."
▶ I’ll give you a supply list, so pick within this. Assistant Manager Kim really needs to learn there’s no company that takes care of you this much, tch.
Instead of issuing tasks like it normally did, it talked to me and reacted to my thoughts, offering alternatives.
The moment I formed the hypothesis that interaction with the system was possible, I called the system out.
It didn’t come out right away. So I stoked my anger so my emotions would transmit to it vividly.
"You fXXXer, get out here."
Before the filthy curse could fill my head, the system appeared.
▶ Assistant Manager Kim, do you know what time it is right now? Is the client side a joke to you? Am I someone you can contact any old time like this?
I glared at the system and asked.
"Is my sister actually alive right now?"
