Save a Failed Idol’s Life

‘Ah…’

When I regained consciousness, I was in a strange space where I could see nothing but darkness.

Unless I was kidnapped from my lodging…

‘It must be a dream or another weird system space.’

First of all, I wanted to know where I was and what my condition was. I tried to move my hand… Huh?

‘…?’

I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t feel anything in my body. It was as if only my consciousness existed somewhere.

Is this how it feels to be a brain in a jar? I couldn’t even laugh at this unprecedented situation. I felt a surge of fear.

‘What is this place? What happened to me?’

I still had no idea what was going on. I hastily called the system.

‘System.’

Then, as if rebooting an ancient computer, a message window appeared with a humming sound.

[Recovering data from critical system damage.]

[Searching for available body data.]

What is body data? I asked the system to explain.

‘What the hell is going on?’

It was obvious that I had no vocal cords to make a sound since I had no body. Only my consciousness existed. And even that was flickering like a weak signal.

[Current system control authority has been suspended due to external intrusion attempt.]

‘External intrusion?’

As I asked in bewilderment, a huge amount of text flowed into the stream of consciousness in the dark.

Some of it was familiar to me, and some of it was new. Why didn’t I remember? I was utterly confused.

“Why can you do it and I can’t?”

[System recovery successful]

[‘Lim Hyun-seong’s system connection has been successfully restored.]

[The unauthorized program that was trying to access ‘Lim Hyun-seong’ has been stopped.]

[Penalty for mission failure: ‘Eternal #$*life(@#^in a *&%wast[email protected]%$#’]

[Is this fun?]

[Recovering user data from serious system damage.]

[%^%^&^454#[email protected]@external intrusion attempts have been blocked.]

[Blocking access from unauthorized program.]

[7,326,437,268,341 external attack attempts detected. 4 chip-in defenses and recovery measures completed.]

[How do you feel about stealing someone else’s life?]

And on top of that, the recent growling and whining of Pposili whenever he saw me.

‘It was really Cheon Ise.’

Something that I guessed was ‘Cheon Ise’ had been roaming around me and trying to take my body.

‘I had been suspicious of the unauthorized program all along, and it turned out to be Cheon Ise.’

Of course, I had doubts, but I thought he was already dead and crossed the Jordan River peacefully.

When I was transported to a non-real space due to a quest error, I thought what I encountered was just a ‘trace’ left by Cheon Ise. I was naive.

‘Even if I knew, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.’

I decided to check the current situation first and asked the system.

‘Can you recover the control authority that was taken away?’

As soon as I asked, the system covered the entire space with incomprehensible codes as if to tell me.

[Currently in the 832,321,489,215th recovery attempt.]

[We are doing our best to recover, but there are difficulties in responding due to the intrusion of an unfamiliar program. Please understand.]

What do you want me to understand? I’m in a ghost state without a brain or a body.

All this time, I treated Cheon Ise as a dead person and pretended to be a living person, but now I was a ghost myself.

‘Not just a ghost, but a cyber ghost.’

It was a strange feeling to have no flesh. I felt nauseous.

‘So how long do you think it will take to recover?’

I calmed down for a moment and asked, and the system gave me an unexpected answer.

[Estimation impossible]

[Recovery attempt in progress]

What, are you being curt now? I was momentarily enraged. The system had never been so useless before.

It didn’t look so hopeless, so I suddenly had a scary thought.

‘You don’t mean it won’t recover, do you?’

Then, like a non-answer, the same answer came back.

[Recovery attempt in progress]

‘…!!??’

Is this really possible to fail? I was stunned by the situation that felt like the sky was falling and asked in a low voice.

“Answer me properly! Is it possible that we can’t recover like this?”

Then the system was silent for a long time and scrolled down as if it was about to lose its job.

[We are currently doing our best to respond, but the unauthorized program has a core code that matches the body information, so the priority of body possession in the storage is with the unauthorized program.]

What are you talking about? I didn’t understand at once the nonsense of code, body information, storage, etc.

“Wait a minute. So you’re saying that Cheon Ise really took over my body?”

To summarize, it was the unauthorized program. Cheon Ise really took over my body, and I, who was not the original owner, was pushed back in priority.

Well, of course it’s his body? I mean, I don’t understand why he wants to go back.

“…”

My eyes went dark. Then what about me? For a little less than a year, I opened the way for them to show their skills, crying and laughing with the members.

Even though I was wearing someone else’s body. I changed the climax, established the composition, started the salad business, persuaded the Floss members, and succeeded in Offbeat.

“It was me.”

But that didn’t give me the right to take Cheon Ise’s body away from the original owner.

I was just a user who was destined to die both empty, but luckily I was assigned to the ‘surviving side’.

If Cheon Ise was the surviving side…

“Cheon Ise might have had to take revenge on his family with my body to open the quest for success as an idol.”

I wondered if I had any right to go back to reality.

The will to scream at the system to send me back right away began to crack.

“…”

But still. I was resentful, but logically I had no right to chase Cheon Ise away.

Even if I had a lot to do and had to solve the problems I had started…

“How can I win over the original owner of the body?”

It was impossible. I couldn’t say anything and fell silent for a moment. Then what happens to me now…?

“What happens to me if I fail to recover like this?”

I regained my composure and asked, and the system didn’t respond for a while and then popped up a message window.

[Data without storage will start to disappear over time.]

“…”

It meant that I would disappear.

“What about the quest?”

I thought maybe I wouldn’t disappear if I was tied to the quest, but the result was cold.

[It is impossible to perform the quest alone without storage.]

Then I had another question. How did Cheon Ise survive until now, who I thought had disappeared? I asked the system right away.

“Then how did Cheon Ise survive until now?”

[If the data is transferred to a special space where no loss occurs, it can be maintained for a certain period of time without loss, but it is transformed, so it is correct to understand that it is not the same data as the original.]

The system showed me some virus infection-like diagrams to help me understand.

So, Cheon Ise now, was not a complete existence of the original, but a transformed one, like a zombie, who survived to avoid loss.

I wonder if I would become like that if I didn’t disappear. I got goosebumps and my eyes went dark.

“Is there any other way than succeeding in restoring control?”

My body had been cremated and buried in the columbarium for a long time. I couldn’t take over someone else’s body either. It was impossible to finish what I had done as Cheon Ise by getting a third party’s body.

[If the unauthorized program voluntarily stops its activity, the control will be automatically restored.]

If he did that, this wouldn’t have happened. I was out of breath at the impending disaster.

Cheon Ise was a really ordinary twenty-five-year-old who had never done business. He would be busy dealing with the schedule that came rushing in as a popular idol, let alone handling the business as the representative of the composition.

And the salad business was about to ship the funding products soon.

Once the product went into the hands of customers, everything from praise to criticism would flood in, and he wouldn’t be able to handle various issues.

In the worst case, his image could completely collapse as a scammer with a business disease.

“I’m going crazy…”

Now Cheon Ise’s shoulders were not just his pride.

The livelihoods of many people depended on the representative Cheon Ise.

And what bothered me was not that I couldn’t get revenge, but that I was worried about the lives and careers of the people I brought in as Cheon Ise.

I was originally that kind of person. I moved with a sense of responsibility rather than my own satisfaction.

But I had no complaints about that life. It might seem useless to say after death. But the memorial procession that filled the funeral hall proved that I had lived without shame.

The ugly duckling who had to grow up alone without being loved by anyone, became a nationally mourned entrepreneur.

Thanks to me, many people got opportunities and made the world a little better.

“Sigh…”

I felt gloomy for a moment.

What is the Human Happiness Foundation? This way, we’re just two unhappy humans who died unhappily.

I had nothing more to say.

Now I just had to suck my finger and wait for my disappearance. Despair was only temporary.

Then what about the body I used when I participated in the virtual idol stage?

I suddenly remembered what happened to the 19-year-old Lim Hyun-seong, who was neither Cheon Yi-se nor entirely Lim Hyun-seong.

‘My body when I participated in the idol? What happened to it?’

Then the system went silent for a while, as if it was looking for something, and then popped up a message window.

[It is currently pending deletion and cannot be fully restored.]

If it cannot be fully restored, does that mean it can be partially restored? I clung to it as if I had caught a straw.

‘Can I use it to go back to reality?’

[We are temporarily evaluating the possibility.]

And then there was silence again for a long time without any update.

‘I guess it’s not possible.’

It was impossible to insert a being that did not exist in that world in the first place, so there was no way around it.

At that moment of despair, when I had to wait for my annihilation, a quest window popped up like the first time the system appeared to me.

[You can now start the ‘Special Quest-HAPPY ENDING’.]

[Do you accept the special quest?]

[Yes/No]