Assistant Manager Kim Hates Idols – Chapter 545 – Noona (2)

Author: LyraDhani

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ I was aware that there are many individuals among humans, especially in certain countries, who do not wish to survive, but who could’ve imagined things would line up in such a disastrous way? I couldn’t intervene in that area, so I left it alone, and now I’m stuck cleaning up the mess too… Ah, what a life I’ve got.

The system grumbled. Then it resumed explaining the situation.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ Anyway, since this was an unprecedented case, I checked several things to seek a solution. Kim Wonjoo’s demands were very firm, so it was easy to establish a baseline, but…

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ You know, don’t you, Kim Iwol? That there were many problems with you. Honestly, if you want to give someone help, that person has to be in a state to receive it. So, taking various circumstances into consideration, I performed some major surgery.

I felt like I understood well enough what the system meant by ‘major surgery’.

Me, opening my eyes to find myself at Spark’s dorm. My family, who had already grown distant from me, and my sister, who hadn’t even been part of that family anymore.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ I treated everything that happened after Kim Wonjoo was born as if it never happened and started over from the beginning.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ You can think of it as me tweaking the settings to make the table setup go smoothly. I didn’t do anything particularly drastic. I just changed some of the choices that could have happened. It was a hassle, though. Really.

In the past, our parents, who had hesitated over whether to abandon my sister, ended up bringing her home. But this time, they followed through on that hesitation. Everything changed from that point.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ After that, I just moved the time to the point where Assistant Manager Kim opened his eyes… what was young people these days called it again, regression or something? It’s like clicking a spot on a MeTube playback bar to start a video from the middle. Same principle. The story before it wasn’t cut out and deleted. It’s just ‘starting from there.’

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ Fortunately, since it hadn’t been long since Assistant Manager Kim died, you hadn’t even heard the explanations regarding ‘Settlement’ or ‘Opportunities’ yet. All I had to do was pull your consciousness and shove it into the body in the video! We got lucky.

The System talked about bringing back someone who was right on the verge of seeing their life flash before their eyes as if it were nothing.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ The point is, this whole situation happened because I was trying to accommodate Ms. Kim Wonjoo’s request as much as possible. So I’d appreciate it if you apologized for all the times you’ve been cursing me as some damn system and whatnot, okay?

‘For something that supposedly tried to accommodate her as much as possible, didn’t you actually fail to perform anything?’

I didn’t know what wish my sister had made, but I could understand that the system had gone to all this trouble in order to lay the groundwork for it.

I also understood why it tested me to see if I’d jump off a bridge again and constantly induced me to change my way of thinking. The system must have judged that the person I had been originally was in no condition to fulfill my sister’s wish.

So, under the pretext of meeting its KPI, it kept pushing me to continue living. Because if I died in the middle, it wouldn’t be able to clean up the error.

There was no reason for a system that operated solely according to a fixed objective to behave in a human way. This was why it had shown such aggressive patterns despite supposedly trying to lead a person in a positive direction.

I understood everything up to this point. But the most important thing remained a mystery. Had the system actually conveyed my sister’s final words to me properly after going through all this trouble to obtain them?

What was the meaning behind making me choose between my sister and the members? Was that also part of making me ready to hear her request? How on earth was I supposed to connect all these absurd events so that they became ‘reasonable measures’?

I was so irritated I couldn’t stand it. Whether it was because my body was exhausted or my mental strength was depleted, I wanted to kill the system that was using my sister as an excuse. Everything was too much.

Maybe I should have just stayed lying down. I should have screamed at it to forget all that nonsense about its company’s founding principles and just give up on everything.

But I also knew I wouldn’t have been able to do that. If there was any way for me to learn what my sister had felt, I could never turn away from it. From the very beginning, this had been a fight I was destined to lose.

The system spoke to me.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ You do know that you’ve still got some of the support request form Kim Wonjoo left behind that you haven’t finished reading, right?

I immediately snapped my head up. After my sister vanished, I had forgotten because I was absorbed in the conversation with the system… but when the data viewing ended, I was supposed to wake up from the dream as usual.

Yet I was still inside the illusion. My sister’s records were still continuing.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ This case was extremely unusual, so I took the time to read Ms. Kim Wonjoo’s documents particularly carefully. It’s different from previous cases where achieving the goal was enough.

The system popped up an additional small window filled with text. As I moved to read it, the system added a few words.

[SYSTEM] A work instruction from the ‘Superior’ has arrived.

▶ Kim Wonjoo was truly modest. At the same time, she wished for something incredibly big.

Skimming over the system’s words, I approached the new window. The document was titled ‘Transcript’. There was also a note saying it was an attachment to the Support Request.

What was unusual was that the document didn’t record voice, but rather ‘thoughts’. The author was ‘Friend’.

Why does this kid never smile?

That was unmistakably my sister’s way of speaking. It really seemed to have transcribed her thoughts exactly as they were. My sister had a lot of questions. And, proportionally, she had just as many complaints and worries.

Hasn’t it been long since I died?

Is that why he’s so down?

I don’t know how much time has passed. This is frustrating.

(Friend: About a year has passed while you were resting and thinking, Wonjoo.)

A whole year?

What did he do to waste a year like that?

I guess time passes quickly around here.

And Kim Iwol has just been like that this whole time?

When is he going to snap out of it?

He used to say the family was falling apart because the breadwinner of a one-person household couldn’t go home because of overtime.

He should return to his daily life quickly.

My sister was someone who, if possible, didn’t let emotions fester. She didn’t try to keep things bottled up inside. She used to say that was how a person stayed mentally healthy, and whenever she got angry, she’d go to a batting center that very evening and hit a few balls to blow off steam. Her mental strength was incomparable to mine—I simply erased painful memories from my mind because I couldn’t bear to deal with them.

Is it because there’s no one by his side?

For noona, who was that kind of person, it took a year to organize her feelings. And the fact that all of it was guilt toward me was complicated and bitter. It was hard to describe further in words.

I told him he should meet his friends more often.

Commuting to work and back. Even working on weekends.

Well, f*ck, with that much work, when is he supposed to see his friends or even use his vacation days?

That manager is a total son of a b*tch.

Seeing her bold spirit ready to explode—this was undoubtedly my sister. Seeing the traces of her consistent self, I couldn’t help but smile. Her inner thoughts became increasingly vivid. Her emotions fluctuated as if she had become angry alongside me while watching me.

What kind of fucking nonsense are they making him do? F*ck.

Shouldn’t you, at least, have the decency to put up your own cherry tomato support stakes?

And Kim Iwol actually does it because he was told to. Good grief.

Yeah, what power does an ordinary employee have to refuse orders from above?

Still, what kind of tom f*cking foolery is that manager making him do?

Is the HR team just for decoration?

Oh right, this is the HR team.

Look at this sh*tstain of a company, looking fine on the outside but having nothing right on the inside.

I’m the one at fault for not telling him to look into the company more carefully before applying…

I should probably add buying Kim Iwol that tracksuit advertised by that group as one of the things I regret.

Is it too late because the ‘settlement’ or whatever is already over?

Reading her unrestrained comments strangely made me feel relieved. Just knowing that someone understood what I was going through was comforting.

Still, if I’d just had my sister, I probably could’ve lived a much better life.

But she wasn’t there, was she? Thinking about that made me sad.

My sister’s records were entirely about me. It didn’t seem like she had gone to see the rest of the family. Even though she must have missed her friends, her gaze was fixed solely on me.

She watched everything, including me acting as Spark’s unofficial fan. She fumed over me being tied up in work unrelated to the company and being unable to go home, then checked the screen to see what I was working on so hard. I cackled at the part where she was appalled by the pink subway ads.

Just how many subway stations are there…?

So when they say there’s always an idol advertisement up, the fans are the ones who make and put them up themselves.

I thought the companies did it.

Idols must have it nice.

Fans open cafes and hang ads to celebrate their birthdays.

I wonder if Kim Iwol got a birthday celebration this year?

Is he skipping his own birthday and only taking care of someone else’s?

Maybe I should’ve finished sorting out my thoughts a little earlier.

I could’ve at least sent him a Bluetooth birthday celebration.

Didn’t you want to celebrate because you were afraid I’d be lonely on my birthday? Then isn’t a ‘Bluetooth celebration’—done where the person can’t see it—unsuited for the original purpose?

I grumbled to myself without realizing it. I was just reading past memories, but it felt like I was talking to her for the first time in ages.

I wished she had seen me and felt that way too. I should have shown her me living well so she could think, ‘Kim Iwol acted like he was the only person in the world having a hard time, but look at him now’.

Still, at least my sister didn’t seem depressed. That was a comfort.

My sister was greatly shocked by the TMI that an idol’s casual shirt cost 1.08 million won. Everything was foreign to her—the live broadcasts with custom-ordered cakes for birthdays, the bouquets and gifts sent to ambassadors by advertising companies, and even the surprise events fans held at concerts.

What does it feel like to be loved while working?

Is job satisfaction higher in that kind of work?

Or does the stress that comes with it balance things out in the end?

Oh, it’s Spark.

Looks like they did another group photoshoot.

But aren’t photoshoots supposed to be edited before they’re released?

Why is Kim Iwol editing this again?

I don’t get it…

They said the oldest member there is the same age as Kim Iwol.

The others are probably around the same age too, right?

If a group is made up of people the same age, they’d probably all feel like friends.

Working with friends is nice.

You can get along, rely on each other, and it’s easier to open up when you have worries.

Having even one coworker you really click with makes such a huge difference.

If they’re all together, wouldn’t that give you much more strength than being alone?

And idols have fans too.

I’m just an ordinary person, so how much could I understand what a celebrity feels when looking at their fans? But with that much support, I can’t imagine not feeling empowered.

Apparently, the sight of Spark gathered together in front of a camera taking photos, and me editing those photos afterward, seemed quite strange to my sister. Especially in contrast to me, who rarely smiled after she died.

My sister gradually became quieter. Reaching the part where I just lay and stared at the ceiling after coming home from work, the gaps between sentences were filled with ellipses.

What I had actually been curious about was what she was thinking then.

As I swallowed my lingering disappointment, a short sentence caught my eye.

Has this kid ever been happy in his life?

The ellipses continued endlessly. There were no words on the next page, nor the page after that.