"Sir? Are you all right?"
A young employee brought me a fresh pair of chopsticks to replace the ones that had slipped from my hand.
He looked at me with concern.
"...I'm sorry. I'm fine."
I gave him an awkward smile and looked at my phone again.
I hadn't imagined it.
Dozens of red diary entries filled the screen.
With a trembling finger, I tapped the entry at the very top.
[Tuesday, June 30. The owner of the Balsan branch has given up on everything.
The landlord has started interfering with his evening business as well as his lunchtime service.
The owner says he wants to close the restaurant. He doesn't even care about receiving compensation for the business's goodwill or getting his security deposit back.
Until just a few days ago, he was someone who always smiled in front of his customers.
Now his face has turned ashen.
And it's all because I acted too hastily.]
It was an entry dated exactly one week from now.
The man who had smiled while guiding me as I reversed my car, despite the terrible situation he was in, would give up on everything just one week later.
And his face would be filled with despair.
The further I read, the more serious the entries became.
[Friday, July 3. Darkness has descended upon the Gaon Charcoal Grill Balsan branch.
An emergency safety inspection by the district office.
The inspectors claim that the building's aging electrical wiring poses a fire hazard and that extensive construction work is necessary.
All the food in the refrigerators has become worthless overnight.
The landlord says he'll compensate the owner for everything and tells him not to worry, but the owner's spirit has been completely shattered.
And just like that, Gaon Charcoal Grill has closed its doors.]
Something wasn't right.
Would the district office really take such extreme measures?
And over something like old electrical wiring, a problem that could be found in practically any building if an inspector looked hard enough?
But there was something even stranger.
Even after the entry describing Gaon Charcoal Grill's closure, the red diary entries continued piling up.
[XX/XX. Mr. Han Myeongjin's printing shop has closed.
It's my fault.
The day after he handed over his documents to me, a special audit team from the city government raided his business.
I made a mistake.
It seems I've provoked people I never should have crossed.]
A diary entry without a date.
That meant it was something that would happen in the distant future.
And this time, I didn't even recognize the name.
Apparently, someone called Han Myeongjin would suffer after giving me some documents.
But I had never heard of him before.
Tilting my head in confusion, I opened the next entry.
[XX/XX. My opponent wasn't just an ordinary landlord.
He wielded absolute power, enough to use the district and city governments as though they were his own hands and feet.
Behind the old man stood an influential politician from this area.
And a particularly cunning one at that.]
My breath caught in my throat.
I had thought I was dealing with a single landlord.
But there was an influential politician behind him?
Once I considered that possibility, I could understand why the district office would move so quickly to cut off the restaurant's electricity.
The same probably applied to the future in which a special audit team raided Han Myeongjin's printing shop.
Everything was connected.
The moment I decided to save this restaurant, I would end up confronting people who were far beyond what I could handle.
And that wasn't the end of it.
Dozens more red entries below were drawing my attention.
For some reason, these entries seemed to be written in an even darker shade of red.
I steadied my trembling fingers and slowly scrolled down.
I didn't want to read them.
But my eyes kept picking out the words on their own.
An investigation into corruption surrounding the Creative Village project.
The construction of the Daeyeong Precision building postponed indefinitely.
And even the suspension of Halbaekase's business operations...
My fingers, which I had struggled so hard to steady, began trembling again.
[XX/XX. Halbaekase has received a notice revoking its change-of-use approval.
The opening has been postponed indefinitely.
My father didn't say a word.
That made it hurt even more.]
Why... Why Halbaekase?
Frowning deeply, I frantically scrolled through the entries.
It was gone!
The blue diary entry and photograph that had appeared for Halbaekase's opening day had disappeared.
The very moment that was supposed to mark the beginning of my family's happiness.
I grabbed the glass of water on the table and emptied it in one gulp.
Even as the ice-cold water ran down my throat, cold sweat covered my entire body.
I couldn't read any more.
I turned off the screen, placed my phone facedown on the table, and tried to calm my ragged breathing.
This was ridiculous.
All I had done was decide to help a single struggling restaurant.
And now, so many disasters were going to unfold?
Should I run away?
I can't sacrifice my entire life just to save one franchise store, can I?
An overwhelming fear swept over me, bringing thoughts so unlike my usual self that I hardly recognized them.
I gently closed my eyes and slowly steadied my breathing.
Calm down.
This is only a future that hasn't happened yet.
Right.
Nothing had happened yet.
And the future could always be changed.
The diary app didn't show me an ending that was set in stone.
Until now, I had managed to turn every misfortune into an opportunity.
Why should this time be any different?
A disaster that hadn't occurred yet wasn't a disaster.
The ability of the diary app was comparable to regression itself.
There were so many entries that they had left my thoughts in complete disarray.
But looked at another way, they were also a collection of keys that could lead me to an escape.
The Gaon Charcoal Grill Balsan branch.
The influential local landlord and the powerful politician.
The documents belonging to a man named Han Myeongjin and his printing shop.
If I understood both the present and the future, I could fight ten thousand battles without losing a single one.
I slowly opened my eyes and turned my head.
The two elderly men who had entered a moment earlier.
The restaurant owner was bowing and scraping before them, his face filled with fear.
I didn't even need to ask.
One was probably the landlord, while the other was the politician connected to him.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me.
Perhaps these misfortunes hadn't appeared simply because I had decided to get involved.
Maybe they had appeared because this was my first encounter with those two men.
Fine.
Then this is revenge.
You two don't even know who I am, but I don't think I'll be satisfied until I've made you pay for the suffering my future self would have endured.
After drinking an entire jug of cold water, I slowly rose from my seat.
That was enough for today.
I would postpone my conversation with the restaurant owner and head straight to the counter.
The moment those men became aware of my existence, they would begin attacking me.
And they would know exactly where to strike to cause the most pain.
What if they discovered I worked for Seongun?
They would only move faster.
And stopping the red diary entries from becoming reality would become much more difficult.
A direct confrontation would end in disaster.
Simply preparing as thoroughly as possible wouldn't be enough.
After all, the version of me who had written those diary entries must have done his absolute best too.
This battle had to be fought entirely from the shadows.
I couldn't allow myself to become their target, not even for a moment.
I would conceal my identity and quietly tighten the noose around their necks.
I had no intention of finding someone else to fight in my place.
Nobody else could be allowed to end up in danger.
This was a conflict on an entirely different scale from anything I had faced before.
But I wasn't worried.
An influential local figure and a politician who had worked together for many years.
Their greatest enemy would be their own past.
"You don't have to cover my parking fee. The short rib soup was so delicious that I don't mind paying for it."
"What? But you should at least accept this..."
I declined the parking voucher the owner offered me and glanced toward the table where the two elderly men were sitting.
"By the way, who's the gentleman in the suit over there? I feel like I've seen him somewhere before."
I didn't bother asking about the man in hiking clothes.
It was easy enough to guess that he was the landlord.
"Ah! If you live around here, you've probably seen him a few times. He's quite famous in this area. That's Councilman Bae Dongcheol."
"Is he a member of the National Assembly?"
"No. He's a Seoul city councilman representing Gangseo-gu. I think he's serving his fifth term."
A five-term city councilman.
That meant he had spent approximately twenty years in office.
Even though he wasn't a member of the National Assembly, I could now understand why the diary had described him as an influential politician.
Bae Dongcheol. Bae Dongcheol.
I committed his name to memory.
For twenty years, he must have wielded considerable influence over budget reviews and development approvals in the same electoral district.
With his name firmly engraved in my mind, I left the restaurant.
There was no time to waste.
This was no longer a matter of saving a single franchise branch.
I retrieved my laptop from the car and entered a nearby café.
[Seoul City Councilman Bae Dongcheol]
When I searched his name on a web portal, an enormous amount of information appeared.
[Five-Term Councilman Bae Dongcheol, a Gangseo-gu Native, Creates a Success Story in Magok-dong.]
[Seoul City Councilman Bae Dongcheol Elected Chair of the Urban Planning Committee. Secures 300 Billion Won in Infrastructure Funding for Magok.]
[Gangseo-gu Small Business Association Presents Councilman Bae Dongcheol With an Appreciation Plaque.]
Perhaps it was because he had spent twenty years maintaining his position in the same area.
Articles about him were remarkably easy to find.
And every single one seemed to be positive.
Frowning, I narrowed the search to recent articles.
[Special Meeting on Urban Regeneration Held in Gangseo-gu. Councilman Bae Dongcheol Promises Swift Administrative Support.]
[Speculation Grows Over Bae Dongcheol's Possible Candidacy for Gangseo-gu Mayor. Councilman Says His Current Term Remains His Priority.]
[Bae Dongcheol Emphasizes the Importance of Finishing Strong, Pledges Full Commitment During His Remaining Ten Months in Office. Rumors of a Possible Seoul Mayoral Bid Also Circulate.]
The news articles alone were beginning to paint a clearer picture.
Ten months remained in his term.
Less than a year.
A small, sharp spark flared inside my chest, which had felt cold until now.
I had thought the situation was strange from the beginning.
The landlord insisted that he wanted nothing, yet he was subtly interfering with his tenant's business.
Even a moment ago, he had been upsetting the restaurant owner while pretending to support him by buying a meal.
According to the diary, he would soon begin interfering with the evening business as well.
And before long, the restaurant's electricity would be cut off.
Now I understood.
They were the ones running out of time.
They needed money.
An enormous amount of money to enter a bigger political arena, whether that meant becoming a district mayor or pursuing an even higher office.
Even for people who wielded such overwhelming power, the countdown on their time bomb was steadily approaching zero.
A secluded alley on the outskirts of Balsan-dong.
An unpleasant mechanical noise echoed from the basement of an old commercial building.
Creak, creak, clunk, clunk.
The rollers of a printing press, coated with years of accumulated grease, rotated as they printed supermarket flyers.
Myeongjin Printing Shop.
There had been a time when these machines had even received government subsidies to help share the voices of local residents.
Now they had only enough work to keep their owner alive.
"...Cough, cough."
The cramped basement was filled with the sharp smell of ink mixed with the musty odor of mold.
A man sitting on an old sofa in the corner was eating instant noodles from a paper cup when he broke into a dry cough.
His beard had grown thick and unkempt, and his cloudy eyes had lost their focus.
Han Myeongjin looked little different from a homeless man on the street.
Eight years.
That was how long he had spent being treated as less than human, shutting himself away inside this cramped, dark printing shop.
Eight years ago, Myeongjin had been a completely different person.
He had been an upright journalist who always maintained a neat appearance and fought against injustice.
A man who stood up to powerful authorities and brought the voices of ordinary citizens to the world's attention.
And that pitiful sense of justice had cost him everything.
Jo Gapsu, the influential landowner who controlled much of the money flowing through Gangseo-gu.
And Seoul City Councilman Bae Dongcheol, the powerful politician standing behind him.
The consequences of provoking those two men had been devastating.
Everything had happened practically overnight.
Myeongjin had been branded as a shameless journalist who obstructed local development projects to extort money.
The walls of his printing shop were covered in red paint.
Supporters of Councilman Bae Dongcheol visited almost every day, throwing filth and garbage at the building.
And the harassment hadn't stopped with Myeongjin.
It had reached the residents who supported him, as well as his wife and children.
That was why he had hidden himself inside the dark printing shop.
He no longer had the courage to face the outside world.
He could conceal his face behind a mask and sunglasses, but the world he saw through his own eyes had become a place of pure terror.
"Haa..."
Han Myeongjin finished the cold broth from his instant noodles and rose from his seat.
Is it going to rain?
The knee those people had injured eight years earlier was aching again.
Dragging his bad leg, Myeongjin limped toward a metal filing cabinet and leaned against it.
Then he ground his teeth.
There was a reason he couldn't allow himself to die, even when he wanted to.
Inside that cabinet were all the documents he had gathered eight years ago, evidence he had never even had the chance to use.
