# Chapter 6.
The second first day of work arrived after tossing and turning every night from the pain of regression. Lee Hwan left home with his tie neatly fastened.
The first day was just introductions, getting measurements taken, and receiving uniforms. Afterward, he was indoctrinated with basic protocols while being trained by his supervisor. It was mostly nothing special, so he could approach it with a light heart.
There were four new recruits in his cohort. Mana resonators weren’t that common, so only a small number joined each quarter.
Having been through so much time, he couldn’t remember all the details. He was already fuzzy on what his cohort members looked like, and had long forgotten their preferences.
But he knew that among them, one junior, two peers, and one senior, along with one superior officer wouldn’t last a year before dying or getting injured from gate deformations and disappearing from the team.
‘It was strange back then too… After the selection process, and after the attack team had gone through detecting all the traps multiple times, why did the monster generation cycle suddenly change? Unless something had been tampered with.’
The C-17 gate disaster—an incident remembered by all Naru field staff. This was the first suspicious incident Lee Hwan had experienced seven years ago.
The combat environment in gates had steadily accumulated data, developed, and improved since the bloody early days. Humans are animals that learn from the past. Apart from the initial period of change, it was fair to say the days when people disappeared one by one every time they entered and exited gates were gone.
Even accidents in the support team would normally be limited to someone slipping and spraining a ligament at worst.
Originally, Lee Hwan hadn’t gone anywhere near C-17 as he was assigned to a different gate on a similar date. That’s how he had stayed safe, but it also meant he had no idea what had happened at that gate.
Unless the system removed strange incidents as a regression celebration gift, the same event would happen again this time.
So now that he had abilities this time around, Lee Hwan quietly thought about trying to join that team as he watched the back of his supervisor leading him and his cohort to the training room.
And so, from the first day onwards, the tedious training began.
Basic protocols that he could recite even in his sleep were being drilled in a monotone voice—it would be impressive not to doze off.
Lee Hwan just fixed his gaze blankly ahead while his mind wandered to various thoughts.
After work today, I’ll tell Kang Dongha to prepare a gate right away, and we’ll go through it on the weekend. First priority is to check how much of my past abilities I can demonstrate in my current physical state.
He needed to regain his familiar senses without putting too much strain on his body. Injuries would delay training, but being too comfortable would slow growth. He, as someone from the future, knew best what the optimal route for rapid growth was.
By the way, what happened to Kang Taesung who must have been pissed about the hole in his window? And that guy with sunglasses who seemed to be glaring at him…
“Joo Lee Hwan-ssi.”
“…”
“Joo Lee Hwan-ssi?”
“Ah, yes.”
His name was called before he realized he’d been thinking too deeply.
“What did I just say?”
It seemed his inattention had been noticed. Rather than getting on his supervisor’s bad side on the first day, Lee Hwan thought he’d better bluff his way through it and glanced at the whiteboard. It had words like “follow-up attack team,” “accompaniment,” “map,” “trap”… written on it.
For first day training with keywords like these? Ah, all the hints are there. Easy. I’ve trained new recruits myself.
Lee Hwan recited the protocols with a rather confident expression.
“When creating maps, we accompany the follow-up attack team during entry, and at that time, we must record in detail not only the paths but also the locations of already broken traps. If there appear to be objects or terrain features that look like unactivated traps, we must absolutely not touch them, alert the attack team, and retreat to a safe place. If those attack bastards… I mean, if the attack team tries to treat the support team like servants, firmly refuse, come back and report them for disciplinary action, so don’t worry and ignore them… is what you said.”
“I haven’t mentioned that last part yet.”
“I see.”
Shit. They’re so fucking slow too. In my time, we’d fire off basic training in 30 minutes and make everyone memorize it.
Lee Hwan grumbled internally without considering the hardships of the new recruits he had once supervised.
And so, from the first day, Lee Hwan became known as an ill-mannered new recruit who somehow knew protocols he hadn’t been taught yet, clearly having obtained some cheat sheet from somewhere. It wasn’t a big deal, but since company information shouldn’t be leaked, rumors spread that he must have connections.
“Come to think of it, was there a Joo in Team 2?”
“Don’t know.”
Lee Hwan pretended to be deaf, received his uniform, and walked straight ahead to leave work.
His mistakes didn’t stop at one. The same thing happened repeatedly afterward.
These were seniors and colleagues he had gotten along with well in the past. However, just like with Kang Taesung, they all scattered from Lee Hwan’s side after the first day.
They were clearly together and ate lunch together, but conversations didn’t flow smoothly like before.
Plus, their interests were different. He was foggy about what had been popular seven years ago.
If he tried saying something he thought might be relevant to seven years ago, it would turn out to be at least nine years old and considered outdated, and sometimes he would talk about things no one else knew, receiving strange looks.
He had to keep up with news and newspapers daily just to join in ordinary small talk.
Lee Hwan was filled with frustration. He’d thought that with regression, all matters would roll smoothly within his grasp thanks to future information. But human memory has limits, and experiencing the same things again actually made them flow worse than in the past when he’d been on high alert.
The most infuriating part was that important matters wouldn’t properly come to mind, yet useless details were all he could remember.
“Oh… Naru’s food is definitely LA galbi.”
“When did Lee Hwan-ssi ever eat galbi here?”
During lunch, Lee Hwan paused as he was about to pile galbi onto his tray in the cafeteria.
“…Even if I haven’t tried it, galbi is always right, you know…?”
He had been repeating similar mistakes several times over the past few days. At first, he managed to gloss over them, but after doing this more than three times, he looked suspicious to anyone.
As if it wasn’t enough that he strangely knew all the training content, he kept almost accidentally mentioning internal information and then stopping himself. Team 3 members definitely thought Lee Hwan had connections.
Or that he was some kind of undercover whatever.
‘Damn, if I’m going to remember things, I should at least remember stocks…’
He could remember stories about which stocks had crashed and how the Han River had warmed up with the body heat of those who jumped in, but for the life of him, Lee Hwan couldn’t remember which ones had skyrocketed. In other words, his memory was completely useless for living a more comfortable life.
Still, being part of a workplace gave him a sense of stability that made everything from the past feel like a dream.
He had woken up screaming on Friday morning. In his dream, Lee Hwan had been fighting off endless waves of monsters when he lost track of the fallen Kang Taesung. Taesung kept disappearing into the gaps between the monsters that surged like waves.
He woke up after having his solar plexus pierced by a long horn, just in time for work. In short, it was a fucking awful way to wake up.
But when he arrived at work and sat down… Lee Hwan felt like all of this was just a dream. That he had never regressed. That he had never almost died fighting monsters fiercely, never made a deal with Kang Dongha, never been burned by Kang Taesung.
If he thought of it as just a seven-year dream, he felt much more at ease, like he was just an ordinary office worker living day to day.
* EX Broken Clockwork (0 uses)
* B Spatial Control (☆)
If only the two skills mocking him from his skill window weren’t there.
‘If it has 0 uses, it should disappear. Why is it still there, so annoying…’
Lee Hwan threw a meaningless punch into the air.
The weekend approached quickly. Kang Dongha looked thoroughly irritated from suddenly having to find a gate spot.
“I said I’d give you a few slots I was skimming off, not that I’d dish them out whenever you want.”
“Think about the information I gave you and let’s talk nicely.”
Kang Dongha had already received a small piece of information related to gates. Lee Hwan knew better than anyone that he wouldn’t support him without something in return.
That’s why Lee Hwan had no intention of giving away good information all at once. He planned to save it and hand it out one by one, like rewards whenever Dongha helped him. Until that guy realized he was useful for more than just information.
“It’s because of Kang Taesung, right? Around this time, he would have been pissed about the Team 3 leader issue.”
Dongha’s eyebrow twitched at Lee Hwan’s casual remark as he was stretching. His unusual sensitivity probably had something to do with Taesung.
Even though they were the Naru family, there was a reason he could skim off a gate slot or two. Dongha had placed his brother’s man in Team 3 while Taesung was busy. It was an attempt to extend his influence into the field teams.
Of course Taesung knew about this, and from then on, their relationship had soured considerably, according to what Lee Hwan had heard.
Despite being higher in the family hierarchy and famous compared to others his age, Taesung was still young and didn’t participate in corporate management, so he couldn’t exert unlimited influence even within his own field team at that time.
Lee Hwan knew even these minute details of the past. Taesung had suddenly confided in Lee Hwan alone one day about how upsetting it had been.
Seeing him look bitter when he was usually so composed, Lee Hwan had canceled an urgent blind date and spent the weekend with him.
“Looking at future possibilities, wouldn’t it be better to just weigh the interests and side with him?”
“You’re saying this because you don’t know that bastard’s personality…”
Though Lee Hwan thought it was a reasonable suggestion, Dongha showed no interest in even considering it. Having probed just in case, Lee Hwan clicked his tongue and turned away.
Even if he tried to distance himself, they were still relatives. That guy didn’t understand how desperate it was to be in a relationship where you had to meet someone whether you liked it or not.
