MDAGA 01

Chapter 1

Prologue

I think life can be divided into two kinds.

Success and failure.

Of course, even these can be divided into smaller categories, such as small successes, small failures, and so on.

Among them, I had always hoped that my life would become a huge success.

Success.

There probably isn’t another word that can make my heart beat as strongly as this one.

But sometimes, greed can ruin everything.

My life was a perfect example of that.

A dark room with all the lights turned off.

The only light came from the TV, shining on my tired and worn-out face.

An interview with an actress on an entertainment news channel caught all of my attention.

Actress Yoon Doye.

She was a fairly well-known actress in South Korea.

And at the same time, she was my second daughter.

—Doye, you started your career as an actress rather late, didn’t you?

—Not just a little late. I started very late.

—Why? If you had debuted at a younger age, you would have had many more activities than you do now.

At the host’s question, Doye couldn’t answer for a moment.

Doye had made her debut in her late twenties.

If she had debuted while she was still a student, as she had wanted, she might have gained much more acting experience by now.

She might even have become much more successful than she was now.

I was certain of it.

Because Doye had talent.

After swallowing a small sigh, Doye forced herself to speak.

—My father was against it.

—Your father… You mean PD Yoon Seongjun?

—Yes.

PD Yoon Seongjun.

That was the name of the producer who directed the mega-hit drama Age of Lawlessness.

But after that one work, the name Yoon Seongjun slowly disappeared from the public and the broadcasting industry.

That Yoon Seongjun was…

Me.

—If my father had listened to me a little earlier, I would have become a much bigger actress.

The resentment and anger in her words.

Yes. I knew it well.

The problem was that I had realized my daughter’s feelings only now.

The truth was, I had thought Doye had no talent for acting.

Unfortunately, my judgment had been spectacularly wrong.

Doye had begun walking down a smooth road as an actress, proving me wrong.

Meanwhile, I had slowly begun walking down the road to ruin.

I divorced my wife and was eventually forced to cut ties with my two daughters.

All I had left were the brief glories of my past and my sick body.

I had no savings.

No memories worth holding on to.

Now, all I could do was sit here and listen to the resentment of my successful daughter.

I was a failure in life.

“Damn it…”

Among the empty soju bottles, I found one that I hadn’t opened yet.

Click, click.

The moment I opened it, I poured the soju straight into my mouth as if it were water.

I didn’t know why the soju, which normally tasted so sweet, felt so bitter today.

If only I could turn back time.

Even if I couldn’t fix my own life, I wanted to become a father who protected his daughter’s dream.

That was my last remaining wish.

When had I lost consciousness?

I barely opened my eyes in an endless space where it was difficult to tell up from down.

Everything I could see was white.

White, and more white.

“Where the hell is this…?”

Was I dreaming?

Just as I was about to pinch my cheek to make sure, someone stopped me.

“You’ll only hurt yourself by doing that, so stop. Haven’t you already hurt yourself enough?”

“You are…”

An old man with long white hair and a white beard stood before me.

Naturally, I had never seen his face before.

The old man pointed at the TV in front of him.

In an age when 16K and Hyper Ultra HD were popular, there was a CRT television here.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen such an ancient relic.

“You know, televisions are quite interesting.”

I tilted my head at the old man’s words.

“What do you find interesting about them?”

“They show us the world in a compressed form. Isn’t that interesting?”

“I suppose.”

Ever since I had practically been kicked out of the broadcasting station, television had become something I both loved and hated.

Despite my strange reaction, the old man’s eyes remained fixed on the TV.

The channels continued changing.

Then, a very familiar video appeared.

“Age of Lawlessness…”

The words slipped out of my mouth without me realizing it.

It was the very drama I had directed.

The old man turned his head and looked at me.

“It was very interesting. I watched the whole thing without realizing how much time had passed.”

“…Thank you.”

I was grateful for his words, but I no longer needed the glory of my past.

As if he could see into my heart, the old man asked me a question.

“Don’t you want to make works like you used to?”

“…”

I kept my mouth shut and thought about it.

To be honest…

“I don’t hate the idea.”

There were still scripts and synopses in my room that had never seen the light of day.

I still had a desire to return as a drama producer or a movie director someday.

But the public no longer looked for me.

So I had decided to hide.

Somewhere where nobody knew me.

“Being rigid and strong isn’t always a good thing. Because the stronger and more rigid something is, the easier it is to break.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m telling you to live a little more flexibly next time.”

The old man reached his hand toward me.

He had been about three meters away from me.

Yet, somehow, I suddenly found myself standing right in front of him.

“I want to see your next work.”

The old man’s hand touched my forehead.

“I hope you make a work that satisfies me once again. With that in mind, I’ll give you one more chance.”

Before I could ask what he meant, I suddenly felt the entire space shake.

A dizziness stronger than anything I had ever felt while completely drunk swept over me.

Just before I lost consciousness, the old man’s final words echoed in my ears.

“This time, don’t have any regrets.”

“Ugh…”

The first thing that greeted me when I opened my eyes was a splitting headache.

It felt as if someone was continuously hitting my head with a hammer.

When I barely managed to sit up, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“What the…?”

This wasn’t the small studio apartment where I had been just a moment ago.

And yet, this room felt incredibly familiar.

There was only one reason for that.

Because this place was…

“Dad!”

My second daughter suddenly opened the door and entered my room.

Yoon Doye.

The moment I saw my daughter, I couldn’t speak.

My daughter, wearing her high school uniform, looked exactly as she had 25 years ago.

“You said you had a meeting this evening. How long are you going to sleep?”

At the word meeting, I looked for the small desk calendar on the table.

Whenever I had a schedule, I always marked it on the calendar.

Of course, recording things in a smartphone app was much more convenient, but this was a habit I had kept since I was young.

After checking the calendar…

My suspicion was correct.

August 9, 2015.

I had returned to the past.

Twenty-five years into the past.

Doye looked at me strangely.

“Dad. What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“Doye…!”

I stretched out both arms and suddenly pulled my second daughter into a tight hug.

Doye became extremely flustered.

“Why are you suddenly doing this?! Ugh, let me go!”

“My daughter, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry!”

“What are you sorry for?! Unni! Dad is acting weird! Come here and stop him!”

And so, I spent a long time apologizing for things my second daughter didn’t even know I had done wrong.

The old man had definitely said this to me.

He would give me a chance.

And this time, I shouldn’t have any regrets.

Maybe one of the people who watched my dramas was actually a god. I never imagined something like this.

I still couldn’t believe what was happening.

For a moment, I wondered if I was simply drunk and having a sweet dream.

But this didn’t seem like a dream.

It was far too real.

Perhaps my relentless apologies had been too much.

Because now, I felt like the distance between me and my second daughter was much greater than before.

My first daughter, Dobin, looked back and forth between Doye and me before asking,

“Dad. What exactly did you do to Doye?”

“I just… confessed my sins.”

“Confessed your sins?”

It was natural that my words sounded strange.

Before this confrontation could happen, I first focused on figuring out exactly when I had returned to and what the situation was at this point in time.

Dobin and Doye were in their second and first years of high school.

They were eighteen and seventeen years old.

This was also around the time when Doye had first told me that she wanted to become an actress.

I think she told me around August.

Judging from the situation, it seemed she hadn’t told me yet.

Although I was already divorced, this was still a time when I had not yet become distant from my daughters.

In my previous life, after getting divorced, I worked even harder for my daughters.

I thought that if I became successful, my daughters would naturally live comfortably and become happy.

Because of that, I gradually found it difficult even to see my daughters’ faces in the morning.

In the end, I became a bad father who put work before his family.

By the time I realized it, it was already far too late.

In the end, the connection between my daughters and me was completely broken.

For someone who had lived alone for so long, simply being in the same house with my daughters again was enough to make me happy.

I was really busy during this period of my life.

Among all this happiness, I tried to remember more details about this particular time.

After Age of Lawlessness ended, I prepared two more works, but neither of them achieved the results I had hoped for.

In other words, this was the period when my decline was about to begin.

Success and failure depended on the choices one made.

Before directing Age of Lawlessness, I had continued making choices that were close to the right answers.

After that, however, I had chosen nothing but answers that were practically wrong.

Of course, that won’t happen from now on.

From now on, I planned to make full use of the wrong-answer notebook inside my head.

And to do that…

There was one problem I needed to solve first.

“My second daughter.”

“Wh-why?”

Perhaps because of what had happened earlier.

Doye flinched and trembled when I called her.

“Come over here for a moment.”

“You’re not going to suddenly hug me again like before, are you?”

“Don’t worry. Dad had just woken up earlier and wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m fine now, so you can relax.”

“…”

Even so, Doye couldn’t hide the worried look in her eyes.

My second daughter carefully sat down on the sofa across from me.

Perhaps because she took after her mother, she was extremely beautiful.

Even with just a little basic makeup, she was pretty enough to make people on the street turn their heads.

I wasn’t saying that just because she was my daughter.

Even objectively, she was attractive.

And it was truly painful to think that the person who had blocked this daughter’s future was none other than her own father.

But things would be different from now on.

“Doye. Isn’t there something you want to tell Dad?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

If Doye hadn’t yet told me that she wanted to debut as an actress…

Then this time, I would be the one to guide my daughter first.

Doye briefly exchanged glances with Dobin.

When Dobin nodded, Doye finally made up her mind.

“Actually… there is something. I was going to tell Dad about it anyway.”

Doye hesitated for a moment before gathering all her courage.

“I’ll be honest. I… I want to become an actr—”

“I know. Go ahead.”

“…Huh?”

Before my second daughter could even finish speaking, I immediately gave her permission.

Hmm. Did I give my permission too quickly?

Maybe I should have made her wait a little.