Idol of the Heavenly One - Chapter 3.1
“Lost him.”
Luckily the scammer couldn’t keep up with the nineteen-year-old’s sprint. I ran like a maniac, eyes forward, and when I finally glanced back, there was no one chasing me — only dead leaves whipping in the wind.
Relieved that I had shaken him off, I slowed to catch my breath and then started walking back to the study hall.
…What was my name again?
But no matter how long I walked and tried to recall it, I simply couldn’t remember the name from my previous life. How could this be? I’d lived fifty years under that name—had I really forgotten it in just nineteen years? Or did my body get younger while my brain kept aging? So is my brain age sixty-nine now? Yet my head felt sharp along with my younger body; the studying I was doing now posed no problem at all.
“Oh.”
There was a quick way to check my name. I pulled my phone from my pocket, searched for the Office of Education where I used to work, and opened its website. If you click the organizational chart, it lists everyone currently on staff. Since DIAI debuted around the time Ji-eun was working there, that meant she should still be listed, and if she was, my name might be listed too.
Chief of Staff Lee Ji-eun
— there she was. Which meant my name should be there as well.
Kim Ye-ji, Im Seon-ah, Seong Ji-won, Kim Hye-min, Park Ji-gwan, Gwak Du-pal… Wait? I don’t see my name. And Park Ji-gwan and Gwak Du-pal weren’t people who existed in my previous life. Did others replace me because I disappeared?
…Did I disappear from my previous life?
If the old me had vanished, then by the butterfly effect the situations I knew could have changed bit by bit.
“No way…”
I tapped my phone quickly and searched again.
Final members of DIAI: Oh Jung-hwan, Choi Seon-woo, Park Jae-yoon, Seong Chan-young, Kim Ji-hyung, Choi Yoon-seop, Lee Myung-jun, Kim Tae—
They weren’t there. The “our Hyun-joon” that Lee Ji-eun used to squeal over before she switched fandoms… he’s gone. Just me missing, and my single flutter of wings had changed a lot. DIAI still debuted, but the lineup had changed. The big events remained, yet the details inside them could shift. How big could one little butterfly’s flap be? Still—the butterfly effect is a real thing.
“No, no, no.”
Me disappearing from my previous life? That wouldn’t matter much. I’d been reborn, I had parents, and I had another shot at life as a human—this life was already wonderful. But…
“My lotto numbers…”
Even the lotto numbers might have changed. Damn it. I had thought this life would be a healing, easy one where I just avoided the bad things like a Nostradamus predicting only the good, and yet now there were variables like this. I’d even planned to buy the apartment in the neighborhood that had shot up in value in my previous life, thinking the lotto win was certain.
“Hey, Myeong-hyeon, why the long face?”
By the time I was nearly at the study hall, my best friend at school and study-hall buddy, Shim Kyu-jin, slung an arm over my shoulder and called out.
“Yeah, something’s up…”
“There he goes again. That grandpa face like he’s lived a whole life.”
Harsh to call me a grandpa. I shot Kyu-jin a sidelong look.
“Hey, did you hear? Someone from CZ Entertainment came to school today.”
“That was a scammer.”
So the scammer had approached other kids too. I worried someone might have fallen for it. Maybe I should’ve reported him to the police.
“No, really. They said someone came to school looking for someone.”
“Looking for a mark to scam, probably.”
“No, really. Wait — I’ll ask Jong-seok.”
Jong-seok was our source for all school gossip. If you wanted to know anything going on in school or the neighborhood, you asked Jong-seok.
“Huh? What? Is this name even at our school?”
“Why?”
“Ji Cheonmyeong? Apparently there’s a student named Ji Cheonmyeong.”
“You mean the name ‘Ji Cheonmyeong’ like ‘fifty years old’?”
“What’s ‘fifty years old’?”
“Never mind.”
We all laughed. Ji Cheonmyeong—how could that possibly be a modern kid’s name?
“Ji Cheonmyeong? Ji? Ji clan? Hey, could that be you?”
“Why, are earthworms my relatives now?”
“No, I mean! Ji Myeong-hyeon, Ji Cheonmyeong—aren’t they kind of similar?”
“I’ll tell my dad on you.”
“Aah! Not on my dad, please!”
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