Chapter 2. A Second Chance at Life
"Hey, Vice! Why'd you stop halfway through making the bomb shots?"
No matter how many times Harok closed and opened his eyes, the scene before him remained the same.
Am I dreaming?
The person sitting in front of him was none other than Kim Seongjun, his former senior and the police beat chief back when Harok worked on the crime reporting team.
Is this some kind of hidden-camera prank?
But Kim Seongjun looks exactly the way he did ten years ago.
The other members of the crime reporting team were seated around him, looking just as young and unfashionable as they had back then.
Sure, you could gather everyone together for a prank, but how would you make them ten years younger?
Harok handed Kim Seongjun the bomb shot and began listening to the conversations around him.
"Seriously, though, our country's in big trouble."
"Tell me about it. A university vice president taking drugs? Tsk, tsk."
"Actually, university professors might be more vulnerable to drugs than ordinary people."
"Why?"
"Because they all get their degrees in the United States. I heard that at American university parties, they practically hand out ecstasy like candy."
"Come on. Surely not..."
They were talking about the drug scandal involving the vice president of F University.
That incident had happened roughly ten years ago.
And if Kim Seongjun was calling him Vice...
Harok hurriedly turned on his phone and checked the screen.
It was a model from exactly ten years ago, and the date also showed that it was ten years in the past.
"...?!"
Does that mean...?
Harok was still working at Daehan Daily!
"Ha... Hahaha!"
He was no longer Baek Harok, the department head of the third-rate tabloid Yellow Times.
He was Baek Harok, the vice-chief of the social affairs department's crime reporting team at Daehan Daily.
Thank you, God! Thank you, Buddha!
"Vice, you must be pretty drunk. Why the hell are you sitting there grinning to yourself?"
Kim Seongjun, the team chief, had always been in the habit of swearing at his juniors.
It's strangely comforting to hear him curse at me again after all this time.
This was probably the crime reporting team's regular Friday dinner.
Kim Seongjun raised his index finger and waved it in front of Harok's face.
"Hey, are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"N-No, I'm fine, Chief."
Only then did Kim Seongjun stop looking at him as though he were an idiot and sit up straight.
"All right, let's keep the drinks going. I'll make this round."
Kim Seongjun picked up a glass of liquor, gave it a vigorous swirl, and handed it to Harok.
It was the classic Korean tornado bomb shot.
Several more rounds of drinks followed.
Harok sat quietly, looking at each of his colleagues in turn.
Everyone looks so young.
But what exactly happened ten years ago?
In truth, it was an incredibly easy question.
This was the year of the garbage dumpling scandal.
The incident that would send Harok's life into a downward spiral.
After leaving the company, he would wander aimlessly for a while before finally taking a job at an online news company and becoming a trash journalist.
It was the turning point when the difficulty of his life suddenly jumped to the highest possible level.
Just then, an advertisement for processed dumplings appeared on the large, wall-mounted television.
[Whether you prefer fried dumplings or steamed dumplings, choose whatever suits your taste. Mirae Food, putting our hearts into every product...]
The sight of the Mirae Food logo brought back a flood of painful memories.
Harok's involvement in the garbage dumpling scandal had begun with a small coincidence.
He had accidentally heard about the investigation from a police officer he knew well.
The officer, apparently realizing that he had made a mistake, desperately begged Harok to respect an embargo and delay reporting the story.
Making dumplings for human consumption out of garbage?
If I don't report something like this, what the hell am I supposed to report?
It was the biggest scoop Harok had obtained in his six years as a journalist.
But there was a problem.
The garbage dumpling scandal was actually based on false information.
There had never been any dumplings made from garbage in the first place.
It was widely reported that the manufacturers had used discarded pickled radish.
In reality, they had merely finely chopped the parts of pickled radishes that were less commonly used and added them to the dumpling filling.
If Harok had investigated the matter more thoroughly, he might have discovered the truth.
But blinded by his desire for a major scoop, he had deliberately ignored the warning signs.
[Police Keep Quiet About Garbage Dumpling Investigation... Ignoring Public Health]
That was the headline of his article.
[Police have been investigating dumpling manufacturers suspected of using substandard filling for several months... While the police quietly continue their investigation, consumers are being forced to keep eating these substandard dumplings... Questions are being raised about whether the police are disregarding consumer health.]
This was the very article that had plunged South Korea into a storm of public distrust.
Since the case involved food consumed by ordinary citizens, public interest exploded.
Television stations broadcast reports about the garbage dumpling scandal around the clock.
Making dumplings with discarded pickled radish!
The sensational phrase garbage dumplings pushed public anger to its absolute limit.
The police had also contributed to the situation, either through negligence or tacit approval.
They distributed deliberately edited, sensational footage to television stations and other media outlets, presenting it as reference material.
The video showed supposedly discarded pickled radishes, then immediately cut to footage of dumplings being manufactured in a factory.
The editing made it incredibly easy for viewers to draw the wrong conclusion.
A nationwide boycott of dumplings followed.
And the result was...
[Breaking news. The garbage dumpling scandal has ultimately led to the suicide of a person involved in the case.]
[Mr. Jeong, the fifty-five-year-old president of a dumpling manufacturing company, jumped from Banpo Bridge. His death comes just three days after the Korea Food and Drug Administration ordered a complete recall of the dumplings manufactured by his company on the tenth...]
The president of one of the companies that had been subjected to relentless media attacks eventually took his own life.
He was the president of Mirae Food.
The very company whose commercial was now playing on television.
After the team dinner ended, Harok headed home.
He was briefly confused about where he lived, but it didn't take him long to find the room he had rented ten years earlier.
Lying on his bed, he began thinking carefully about his situation.
He had been fiddling with the wristwatch that represented both his greatest achievement and his greatest disgrace when he suddenly regressed to this moment.
Back to the time when his life had been dragged into the gutter.
Back to the period when he had been forced to live with the guilt of contributing to another person's death.
Sending me back to this exact moment makes your intentions pretty obvious, doesn't it?
You want me to report the incident that ruined my life properly this time.
And by doing that, you want me to become the journalist I always dreamed of being, someone who pursues justice and uncovers the truth.
God, Buddha... Am I right?
Before the dumpling scandal, Harok had been an outstanding journalist who won journalism awards and prizes for exclusive reporting almost every year.
But then came the garbage dumpling scandal.
He had been so desperate for a scoop that he pushed too far and completely ruined his life.
After being dismissed from Daehan Daily, he had fallen so far that he ended up moving from one tabloid to another.
The police had conducted an excessively aggressive investigation in their pursuit of results.
The media had accepted the police's claims without questioning them.
And the public had become outraged without examining the facts.
The dumpling scandal was a perfect combination of those three factors.
Eventually, all the dumpling manufacturers involved in the case were acquitted, and Harok was sued.
The lawsuit itself wasn't a particularly serious problem.
The courts generally allowed considerable freedom when it came to media reporting.
The real problem was the suicide of the dumpling company president.
That incident had continued to haunt Harok's conscience.
Combined with the criticism he received from his colleagues, it eventually became impossible for him to remain at the company.
Anyway...
I can't repeat the same mistakes.
Among journalists, there was a term called bankai, which meant making up for a scoop you had missed.
And now Harok had been given a chance at the ultimate bankai.
A chance to make up for the mistakes of his entire life.
He carefully reviewed the garbage dumpling scandal in his mind.
Even if Harok never published his original article, the police would soon announce the results of their investigation.
In other words, the garbage dumpling scandal was going to happen regardless.
First, I need to save the company president who committed suicide.
The entire disaster had begun when the police revealed the company's name in their press release.
For now, preventing that was his most urgent priority.
Afterward, he would thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding the beginning of the scandal.
And he would hold those who had deliberately made the incident worse accountable.
"..."
As Harok continued working through his complicated plans, he eventually began snoring.
The second day after his regression.
Harok immediately visited the National Police Agency's Investigation Planning Division, which was responsible for investigating the garbage dumpling case.
One of the advantages of being a journalist was that he could meet police officers whenever he wanted.
He didn't even need to make an appointment.
An officer from the investigation division kindly guided Harok to the division chief's office.
Knock, knock.
"Come in."
Harok pushed the office door open and stepped inside.
