Beep. Beep. Beep.
"....."
August 2025. The ICU of a university hospital somewhere in Seoul.
Lee Ji-hoon, twenty-seven years old, lay in his hospital bed staring up at the ceiling.
*Is this the end?*
Born in Seoul, South Korea, 1999.
Father died, 2006.
Graduated high school, February 2018.
Hired as a janitor at One Top, a host bar in Gangnam's Nonhyeon-dong, August 2018.
Debuted as a host at One Top, January 2019.
Moved to Super Super, a host club in Shin-Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, December 2020.
Transferred to Style S, a host club in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, June 2021.
Achieved first monthly sales ranking at Style S, April 2022.
Six consecutive months at number one in monthly sales at Style S, December 2022. Annual sales ranking, number one for the year.
Caught up in an internal war within Akatsuki-gumi, Tokyo's largest yakuza organization, May 2023. Critically wounded by a blade wielded by a member who was tearing the club apart.
Large-scale yakuza crackdown by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, June 2023. Akatsuki-gumi dissolved; host bars and kyabakura throughout Kabukicho under their operation forcibly shut down. Lee Ji-hoon's bank accounts frozen and seized under the pretext of tracking and preventing yakuza money laundering.
Discovered that his work visa had been renewed through a shell company, July 2023. Forcibly deported.
"....."
Ji-hoon trembled as the memories washed over him.
The truth was, his weight had dropped so drastically relative to his 185-centimeter frame that he could barely summon the strength to move his body properly.
All of it had been hard — the pain of the blade, the humiliation of having his face sold online under the label of *Korean host deported from Japan*, the moment he collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by extreme stress.
But more than any of it, what had broken him most was the helplessness.
*Mom... Ji-hyeon...*
The shame of the nation. A whore who went to Japan to sell himself.
His mother and sister — good, kind people who had shielded him and spoken only gentle words even as he was publicly pilloried.
His mother, who had worked grueling jobs alone to feed him and his sister from the time he was in his second year of high school, had collapsed from severe back pain. After that, Ji-hoon had worked with a single-minded conviction that he would sell his soul if he had to — for her, for his sister. The money he'd sent back had been a small, modest reward for all those years.
But now death was drawing close. When the will to live is gone, how does one hold on?
*Maybe it's for the best.*
His sister Ji-hyeon — brilliant, beautiful Ji-hyeon.
Thanks to the money he'd kept sending, she had safely graduated from a prestigious university and was working at a major company. He hadn't noticed when it happened, but somewhere along the way she had grown into a remarkable beauty. And she was the kind of person who could smile warmly even at someone like him — she'd find a good husband. No, she had to.
Someone like him would be forgotten quickly enough once he was gone. When the time came for her to marry, she could simply tell her in-laws that she'd had a brother, but he'd passed away. That would be enough. If he somehow survived, he'd just be that vegetable who made the news once — a liability she'd have to carry.
"....."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound of the medical equipment rang in Ji-hoon's ears like the tolling of bells from hell. Or perhaps it was just that his senses had grown sharper.
*Why did this happen to me?*
A sudden surge of bitterness rose in him — the injustice of dying like this, right now.
Where had it all gone wrong?
He'd only wanted a little more, just a little more. He'd wanted to earn enough to come back to Korea as a property owner. He'd been the top host in Kabukicho. He hadn't even bought the designer watches and cars that everyone around him was splurging on.
He'd just wanted to see his sister married well, and then live out the rest of his days in Korea with some quiet enjoyment...
*Ah.*
Then it came to him.
He had deserved this.
He had hurt so many people. He had lied as easily as breathing.
The women who had ordered expensive champagne to boost his sales during his Kabukicho days.
Women who had run away from home for him, sold their bodies to other men, and then walked into his club to order champagne worth hundreds of thousands of won.
One woman — a student at a prestigious university, loved and well-provided for by her family — had fallen so deeply for him that she'd accumulated enormous debt and been cast out of her home. She never told him directly, but at some point it had become clear she was selling herself. He was certain of it.
He remembered the moment her parents had stormed into the club, screaming that they would kill him. Later, the yakuza he'd come to resent had been the ones to drive them away.
"....."
Every time guilt tried to stop him, he had rationalized. *This is for my mother and sister. Life is survival of the fittest. Did anyone force them to come to our club? I had an obligation to generate sales as a host. So I played the role of a wonderful man, a good man. Everyone around me did the same. Women who set foot in a host club — could they really be in their right minds? Someone would have taken advantage of them anyway.*
But all of it had been real. The ruined lives of those women were real. The guilt he felt so vividly — that was real too, without a single lie in it.
*I see.*
He had deserved this.
What goes around comes around. Justice finds its way. Good and evil reap their due.
A man like him, dreaming of warm family evenings — even a dog would laugh.
Ji-hoon was filled with regret.
What if he had taken even a slightly different path? What if he had earned money honestly, without destroying women's lives? Looking back now, it hadn't taken nearly as much money as he'd thought to make his mother and sister happy. All of it had been rationalization.
"....."
*It hurts.*
He felt as though countless needles were being driven into him.
There was no point in repenting now. Nothing would change. All that remained was death.
***
"....."
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Ji-hoon, come eat."
"....."
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Ji-hoon!"
"Huh—!"
Whoosh.
Ji-hoon cried out and threw the blanket off himself.
"Ji-hoon! What's wrong?"
"....."
Cold sweat.
The sound of cicadas drifting in from outside.
They hit Ji-hoon's senses all at once.
"Mom?"
"Yeah?"
Ji-hoon looked at his mother, Kim Mi-jeong.
She looked impossibly young. But it was unmistakably her.
"Did you have a nightmare or something? Out of nowhere."
"....."
Ji-hoon turned his head slowly from side to side.
Thud.
"Why are you sleeping under a blanket in this heat — come eat, quickly. Even if it's summer break, isn't this a bit too late to be sleeping in?"
"Summer break? What do you mean?"
"What is wrong with you."
"....."
Ji-hoon had no idea what was going on.
"Mom, what's today's date?"
"July fourteenth."
"No, I mean the year."
"Hmm? July fourteenth, 2015. What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
"What?"
His mother's bewildered expression — one he had almost never seen in his life. Ji-hoon's eyes went wide.
***
Slide.
Ji-hoon stepped into his room after finishing lunch.
*What on earth is happening.*
It was 2015. Ten years in the past.
His first year of high school. Summer break.
"Hmm."
He poked at the fat around his stomach.
Then he held up his phone and looked at his face in the camera.
"Looks right, I suppose."
Not quite obese, but noticeably soft. Hair that had never seen a moment of care.
"Ugh."
A face he had long forgotten stared back at him.
And those glasses — why had he ever gone around wearing something so dated?
He really hadn't known the first thing about taking care of himself back then.
"....."
Ji-hoon's expression grew quietly serious.
He wasn't an idiot. He could tell this wasn't a dream, and it wasn't the afterlife.
*I've come back.*
Ten years back.
His first year of high school, summer break, to be precise.
Not Gangnam in Seoul, not Shinjuku in Tokyo — Gangseo-gu, Seoul.
*I don't know why I've been sent back.*
He turned the inexplicable situation over in his mind, but there was no one short of a god who could answer that question.
Which meant there was only one thing to do.
He swallowed.
*Live properly this time.*
He had to carve that bone-deep regret into his chest and keep it there.
So he would never make the same mistakes again.
Ji-hoon sat with a resolute expression, laying down principles for himself in his heart.
He would still work hard to earn a great deal of money in this life. The desire to give his mother and sister a comfortable life hadn't changed — if anything, seeing how they had been during his hospitalization had only made that feeling stronger.
What was different this time was that he would not prey on others. He would not live in the shadows. He would have a job he could name out loud without flinching, one he could describe to anyone who asked.
"Hmm."
A slow grin spread across his face.
It was 2015.
The cryptocurrency boom hadn't hit yet. The crypto frenzy was still years away, and after that, real estate and the broader asset markets would catch fire too.
He didn't remember the precise details, but he knew well enough that the crypto market would explode at a certain point.
"So then."
What mattered was earning enough money to be positioned for that moment — something anyone who'd lived through it would know to prepare for.
If he played it right, by 2017 — his third year of high school — he could potentially earn enough for his mother and sister to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, all before he even turned twenty.
But right now, as a first-year in high school, how exactly was he supposed to make money?
"....."
Ji-hoon thought back over his previous life.
What becomes just as important as a surging asset market when it comes to making money? Building yourself into a brand.
*What was I actually good at?*
He began taking stock of himself. He'd been at it so long that the sun was starting to set.
"Damn it."
Why did every line of reasoning keep looping back to exploiting women?
"No. No, that's not it."
He'd studied intensely in Korea, and then in Japan his language skills had been properly honed to completion.
His singing — the female customers had practically begged him to debut as a singer.
A face and a tall frame that, with some effort, had been good enough to work as a host.
He had to figure out how to turn what he had into money.
"....."
Ji-hoon glanced down at himself.
"First things first."
He needed to lose the weight.
A twinge of guilt hit him about the ice cream he'd eaten from the freezer earlier, just because it was sitting there.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Hm?"
Someone was knocking on his door?
Ji-hoon was momentarily annoyed by the sound, then reminded himself it was almost certainly his mother, and opened the door.
"What is it — oh?"
It wasn't his mother.
A slight, slender girl.
"Ji-hyeon?"
"....."
The person most precious to him, alongside his mother.
His younger sister, Lee Ji-hyeon, was standing there.
*Hah.*
The face from his memory — young, just like his mother's.
His mom had mentioned earlier that Ji-hyeon had gone out to see friends since it was the weekend. He'd been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn't even noticed her come home.
Ji-hoon felt so pathetic he could almost cry—
"Where's the Wolz Cone that was in the fridge?"
"...What?"
And yet, after this long-awaited reunion with his sister, those were the first words out of her mouth?
"Oh, that? I ate it."
Ji-hoon confessed to the crime. It hadn't been intentional — he'd just eaten it because it was there.
"Are you serious?! That was mine! I was saving it for when I got home!"
"Wha — hey?"
The pouty face. The whining voice.
This, too, was a version of his sister he remembered clearly. A version he'd had no occasion to recall for a long time.
"Ugh, seriously!"
"....."
Ji-hyeon let out a wail.
"Why are you yelling?"
Their mother came rushing over.
"Oppa ate my ice cream!"
"Oh come on, your brother can have a little."
"No! It was mine! Ugh, seriously!"
"....."
"I'll go buy you another one."
"Don't bother!"
Now she was on the verge of tears. Their mother hurried over and began patting her on the back, steering her away.
*What in the world.*
Ji-hoon couldn't wrap his head around his sister tearing up over a single ice cream. They weren't a wealthy family, but they weren't so poor they couldn't afford one ice cream bar.
"Hah."
He closed the door.
It wasn't intentional, but fine — she'd come home looking forward to it, and it was gone. Getting upset made sense.
"God, though."
His eyes fell shut on their own and a sigh escaped him. He'd been sighing a lot today.
What kind of girl carried on like that over ice cream.
The same girl who had come to his hospital room every single day after he'd lost everything and come home to the pointing fingers of the whole country — who had comforted him and said only kind things.
That person was going to grow up from this half-formed creature shrieking in the hallway?
He'd found out later that she'd never touched a single won of the allowance he'd occasionally sent from Japan. She'd said she couldn't spend it — that it was money her brother had worked hard to earn overseas.
"No, no."
Honestly, Ji-hoon thought he preferred this version. The childish, easily-wounded sister who hadn't grown up yet, over the composed, mature one. Growing up meant building calluses over your heart, after all.
***
Beep beep beep beeeeep.
"Ahem."
Ji-hoon opened the front door in the early morning.
"Ji-hoon? Where have you been?"
"The spring."
"The spring?"
"Here."
He was holding a water jug.
"Why are you going to a spring all of a sudden — you can just boil water."
"I wanted to exercise."
"Exercise?"
"Yeah."
Ji-hoon's clothes were soaked through with sweat.
He'd hiked up the mountain closest to their home.
"Feels great after a mountain hike."
"....."
Ji-hoon rolled his shoulders with a show of vitality, while his mother Kim Mi-jeong tilted her head at this son she didn't recognize.
Her son, who should have been sitting in front of a game, had gone up a mountain at the crack of dawn to fetch spring water?
They say people who change suddenly are about to die — but surely not. He'd go back to being the son she knew. That was what Kim Mi-jeong told herself.
Of course, the concept of a three-day resolution meant nothing to Ji-hoon.
He did cardio every day and cut his food intake to less than half. He didn't touch a single snack his mother occasionally brought home.
And a few days before the new semester began—
"Mom, I'm out front."
Nearly a full month had passed since he'd come back.
Ji-hoon was waiting outside the building where his mother Kim Mi-jeong worked.
"Mom."
"Hm?"
At the base of the office building.
Ji-hoon called out to her.
"...Oh — Ji-hoon?"
Kim Mi-jeong nearly did the unthinkable — nearly failed to recognize her own son.
"Oh my goodness? Is that your son?"
"Hello."
Ji-hoon greeted the middle-aged woman standing beside his mother with polite courtesy. He'd never met her before, but it was obvious enough — she was leaving work with his mom.
"Mi-jeong, your son is really handsome."
"Ha ha....."
Kim Mi-jeong laughed, visibly flustered.
"My goodness, coming to pick up his mother and everything — what a grown-up young man."
"Thank you."
"Let's go — see you tomorrow, unni."
Unable to bear the embarrassment, Kim Mi-jeong quickly hustled her son along.
"Did you switch to contacts just now?"
"Yeah."
"And those clothes?"
"Bought them when I went for the interview."
"Ah....."
Her son's sheer initiative left her at a loss for words.
The things that had happened in roughly one month alone were staggering.
He'd suddenly decided to diet, and in that short span of time he'd lost fourteen kilograms.
He'd pestered her relentlessly about wanting to try working a part-time job.
He'd said he needed money for something, and she'd wondered what for — turns out he'd gotten new glasses, bought contact lenses, and picked up some new clothes.
Today they were going together to a uniform shop, because his old school uniform no longer fit.
"How did it look?"
"Not bad, I think."
"Really think it over — and isn't Hongdae too far?"
"It's thirty minutes by bus. What's the problem?"
Ji-hoon had no intention of backing down.
"But honestly, looking at you like this, I almost didn't recognize you."
"I barely did anything."
Ji-hoon's style was simple.
A shirt and shorts suited to the summer heat, bought from an affordable select shop in Hongdae.
*It's been a lot of work.*
The brutal self-discipline from his host days — he'd channeled that same ferocity into losing weight as fast as possible, and the change in his body had been so dramatic that he'd had to replace his entire wardrobe.
"Did you get your hair done at a salon? It looks nice."
"Yeah."
He'd kept it to a simple trim to save money, and done the blow-dry himself to keep the part in place. It was a skill he'd picked up from his first girlfriend back in his Nonhyeon-dong days — an older woman who worked as a hairdresser.
Clothes that fit his frame properly. A clean, neat hairstyle. A weight that had dropped from 185/91 to 185/77. Contacts instead of glasses.
And in place of his old slouch, a broad, confident posture. Eyes that were clear and brimming with self-assurance. In a short time, Ji-hoon had transformed into a remarkably good-looking young man.
"Hm?"
Ji-hoon checked a text message.
[Hongdae Cheese Party: Ji-hoon! Are you available to start this Saturday?]
"....."
A slow smile.
[Me: Yes! I'm available!]
[Hongdae Cheese Party: Great, make sure to bring the documents we talked about ㅎㅎ See you Saturday!]
[Me: Yes, thank you! I'll be there!]
*That one's sorted.*
The manager — a woman in her late twenties — had taken a clear liking to him, and sure enough, the acceptance text had come the same day.
All that effort losing weight quickly and putting together a decent outfit had paid off.
At seventeen, Ji-hoon had already secured a weekend part-time job.
The place was busy enough to need a high schooler, and the hourly wage of 7,000 won was well above the 2015 minimum wage of 5,580 won — both details that suited him just fine.
The summer of 2015 in Korea's food industry was, in a word, the age of cheese.
Cheese pork cutlet, cheese ramen, cheese gimbap, cheese gopchang, cheese sweet and sour pork, cheese pizza, cheese chicken, cheese samgyeopsal, cheese spicy stir-fried squid — the list went on.
The place Ji-hoon had signed up to work seven hours on weekends was a cheese pork ribs restaurant in Hongdae.
Simply attending school felt far too dull for someone who had done nothing but work for years. And even if it wasn't big money yet, he needed some income to tide him over until a larger opportunity came along.
He hadn't told his mother he was borrowing money from her, but in his own mind, the large sum she'd given him was a debt he intended to repay.
"What university is that?"
"Hm?"
His mother spoke up out of nowhere.
"....."
She was pointing at a slender young woman.
The tote bag she was carrying—
"That's Sinchon University."
The bag had the university's logo printed on it.
"That's so impressive."
"Is it?"
"Of course it is — I'd love for Ji-hoon and Ji-hyeon to go to a university like that."
"....."
*Ji-hyeon probably will.*
Not Sinchon University, but its rival Anam University — in his previous life, Lee Ji-hyeon had been a student at a prestigious school.
*But.*
Ji-hoon himself, on the other hand, hadn't been a particularly strong student even before their mother's health had suddenly deteriorated. Not bad enough to give up, but not good enough to stand out — somewhere in the middle.
"....."
"Ji-hoon?"
Kim Mi-jeong looked up at her son.
His expression had darkened.
*Idiot.*
It had suddenly reminded him of how he'd treated people from prestigious universities in his previous life.
No one had really looked down on him for being a high school graduate working as a host.
But it had been a kind of defense mechanism, perhaps — *I make far more money than anyone from Hanguk, Sinchon, or Anam. Even women from Japan's top universities spend their money just to see me. The women you'll work your whole lives to be with — their best years were either free to me or a source of income.*
Looking back now, it was a pathetic way to think. He'd been living in the shadows, cut off from anything socially respectable, and he'd needed to rationalize his existence. The people around him had all been the same way, after all.
"Ha ha ha, I'm not asking for that much."
"Hm?"
By the time Ji-hoon came back to himself, Kim Mi-jeong had already sensed she'd put pressure on him and was walking it back.
"Just somewhere in Seoul — or even Gyeonggi-do, as long as he can commute from home."
"....."
*My expectations are this low.*
Even so, wanting her children to go to university was every mother's wish. And yet here she was, saying this to a son who was still in his first year of high school. Then again — if he'd had grades like Ji-hyeon's, would she have fought so hard against him getting a part-time job?
"You should work hard at your job and study hard too. You've been coasting until now."
"Hm?"
Ji-hoon said it without looking at her, as if stating a simple fact.
*Right.*
The desire to earn a great deal of money was strong.
But this life would be different.
He would study hard and get into a good university. He would earn money honestly, without taking advantage of anyone.
Thinking about the future, a prestigious university would open a great many doors.
Even in fields that had nothing to do with academics, the image of being a strong student earned you better treatment — that was simply the reality.
*I can do it.*
He couldn't guarantee the outcome, but he could give everything he had — to studying, to earning money.
The ferocity of a host who had told himself he would sell his soul to the devil for his mother and sister. The regret born from wanting to die and from having experienced death itself. He would carry all of it forward.