Chapter 2: The Part-Time Job Aftermath

“Please Take Care of My Son,” commonly nicknamed “PTCMS,” is a raising-simulation game with an utterly ridiculous premise in which a pair of insane parents leave their ten-year-old child alone and disappear overseas on an extended business trip, and the gullible pushover next door ends up taking the kid in and raising him for a full ten years.

The player becomes that gullible young neighbor and raises the boy next door, and on the day the child turns twenty, the kid’s future—its ending—is determined based on the player’s choices.

This game, known as the male-protagonist, modern version of the classic princess-raising title and jokingly called “Fake Prince,” spread through light word of mouth.

And for a one-million-won part-time job, I had been playing “PTCMS” every single day for the past few days.

The job was simple: reach the game’s final ending.

Out of the thirty-five possible future endings available for someone else’s child, the very last one—the conglomerate chairman succession ending—was the most difficult of them all, requiring the strictest playstyle and the most tasks.

If I got tired of the game’s repetitive daily routines and accidentally tapped the skip button, I had to restart everything from the beginning.

And the stat ranges required were so absurdly precise that more than once, right before reaching the ending, some random variable shifted and ruined the entire run.

After every failed attempt, I would claw at my hair, practically ready to rip it all out from boiling rage.

But finally, yesterday evening at 19:14:52, after a cumulative 217 in-game years, I cleared the final ending at last.

Setting aside the brief wave of triumph, I sent the account owner a screenshot along with a message confirming I had reached the ending.

Barely a few minutes passed before messenger notifications exploded.

[Oh my god, finallyㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ Thank you so muchㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]

[I’ll send the 500,000 won right now!!ㅠㅠㅠㅠ]

[Sender: PTCMS]
[Account: Korea (***1234)]

[Send the payment directly through Go-talk without a certificate or security card!]

[Only good things will happen to you from now on!!]

For a moment, I just stared blankly at the nonstop stream of messages arriving at a crazy speed, and as I finally came back to my senses and tried to send a thank-you reply, the other person left the chatroom.

“…What the?”

Their sudden disappearance threw me off, but since I’d earned a whole million won for something so easy, I figured I should still thank them properly.
So I opened the second-hand trading app and tried to find their profile.

But the post looking for part-time help had already been deleted, and their ID and nickname didn’t show up at all—as if they had withdrawn from the app entirely in that short time.

I blinked in disbelief, momentarily stunned, then forced myself to think positively.

They probably didn’t want to leave behind a conversation with a stranger.
Maybe they were worried their personal information might get leaked.
Sure, that must be it.

Even so, an uneasy feeling began to bubble up in my chest, and I tried to push it down as I stared at the message showing the deposit of 500,000 won.

I did the job they asked for, and I received the money they promised.
Nothing bad is going to happen just because they didn’t say goodbye.
Right now, all I need to do is enjoy the pure bliss of having a full one million won.

With that thought, I set my phone down on the desk.

They said only good things would happen to me from now on…
But the very next day, getting struck in the back like this—back then, I couldn’t have imagined it in my wildest dreams.

***

The tingling in my fingers and the numb sting in my cheek insisted that the situation I was in was not a dream, yet my rational mind absolutely refused to accept it.
I forced my stiff neck to creak as I looked around the room.
The color of the wallpaper, the furniture, even the pattern of the book spines lined up on the desk—all of it was exactly the same as the ones inside the game.

If this isn’t a dream… then what on earth is it?

Then I suddenly realized something.
None of the surrounding walls had a window or a door.
A chill crept up from the tips of my toes.
I was trapped inside a rectangular box with no possible way out.

This is a dream.
No, it’s not.
I’m trapped here.
No, I’m not.

All kinds of horrifying thoughts thrashed around my head until I could do nothing but stand there with my mouth hanging open.
Then, out of nowhere, a notification sound burst from the laptop.

[Set your schedule before starting]

A message window floated above the game screen.
Calm down, I told myself.
I took a deep breath and moved my trembling hand toward the mouse.
Doing as the message instructed, I clicked the schedule button in the bottom right corner.
A blank timetable appeared, along with a list of activities that could be assigned.
Only two options existed: “Indoor Rest” and “Outdoor Activity.”

When I shifted my gaze to the top right corner, I saw the in-game date and day of the week displayed there.

Year 0, January 1 (Sunday)

***

On weekdays, I study or work, and on weekends, I rest.

In that sense, it seemed similar to My Idol.
Since the game had started on a weekend, the fact that I had no other schedule and could just rest and organize my thoughts, was fortunate—if anything about this situation could be called fortunate.

After repeatedly filling the timetable with the indoor-rest button and pressing execute, a rectangular window popped up on the screen.

Using a miniature illustration of the room I was currently in—meaning the game character’s room—as its background, a small character was sitting on the bed reading a book.

That animation played inside the window.

The moment I uneasily thought that the tiny character somehow looked like me, a white shimmer briefly rose and disappeared from one corner of the room, and a door and a window appeared in its place.
I forced myself to calm down and cautiously reached for the doorknob. The moment I turned it—tring—a notification sound rang, and a new in-game message window appeared.

[Would you like to change the Indoor Rest schedule to Outdoor Activity? Yes / No]

Instead of opening the door, I opened the window and looked outside.

It wasn’t the neighborhood I originally lived in, but the scenery looked similar enough.

The faintly familiar outline of a large building I could see at a glance made it clear: this really was the neighborhood where the protagonist of My Idol lived.
The clean, crisp air that filled my lungs—so different from the fine-dust haze back home—felt refreshing, yet that freshness was so vivid that it only made my mood sink heavier.

Trying to ease the tightness in my chest, I left the window open and returned to the desk with my laptop. With a hand that felt weighted like a pendulum, I moved the mouse and clicked No.

I didn’t know whether I was trapped in a dream, trapped in a game, or whether my mind had finally snapped, but it was getting hard to keep denying what was unfolding in front of me.

If so, gathering whatever information I could had to come first.

And to do that, the first thing I needed to examine was, of course, the game.

The game’s title was “Please Take Care of My Idol.”

The name had changed slightly, but the system and controls didn’t seem too different.

As for the differences…

“It looks like I have to set the schedule every single day.”

In My Idol, schedules were planned one month at a time, but in this game it seemed I had to configure them daily, without fail.

And judging from how it had asked whether I wanted to change Indoor Rest to Outdoor Activity when I tried to open the door earlier, it looked like at least weekend schedules could be freely modified mid-way.

I kept clicking various buttons in the game, and soon stood up to find something to take notes with.

After rummaging through the bookshelf and drawers, I grabbed a notebook and a single pen, then began writing down the things I had figured out.

The character’s name was Sim Jaeseo.

My exact name, written the same way.

I’d thought I had already exhausted my capacity for being surprised, yet seeing my own name appear so suddenly sent fresh chills down my spine.

Age: Twenty.

Seven years younger than my real age.

Should I even consider it a relief that at least the age was different…?

The character’s birthday and blood type were also identical to mine.

At this point, there was no denying that the in-game character was me.

“Hold on.”

A faint memory flickered up, and the hand that had been writing abruptly stopped.

The messages I’d skimmed earlier, when I still thought I was dreaming.

Something about adult verification, something about automatic synchronization when the game started…

“Ah, f*ck…”

The moment I recalled the vague text clearly, my eyes squeezed shut on their own.

[Automatically synchronizing Player’s first save slot of “Please Take Care of My Son”]

And my first slot was…

“…It really is me?”

To be exact, it was the “me” created in the game Please Take Care of My Son. When I first started Please Take Care of My Son, I’d typed my own name into the protagonist field just to test things out—same with my birthday and blood type.

The ending for my first save slot, which I’d played without any guides and purely according to my own personality, was practically identical to my real life.

After studying hard for ten years and getting into college, I ended up as a broke college student constantly struggling with living expenses.

Later, I found out that players basically considered that ending a bad end.

Still, just in case, I tapped the status window—only to see that no miracle had occurred.

Because I’d spent the entire playthrough working part-time jobs for money and using that money to attend classes, only my Stamina and Intelligence stats were abnormally high.

If there was any small relief, it was that some stats that used to be stuck at the bottom—like Faith and Grace—were gone. Of course, in exchange, new stats like Vocal, Dance, Rap, and Acting had appeared, making the whole thing a plus-minus zero anyway.

After checking my stats and sinking deeper into depression, I closed the window—only for my eyes to land on the amount of money I had, which made me even more miserable.

Back when I was playing, I’d emptied the balance down to nearly zero, thinking, I’m right before the ending anyway, I won’t be able to use this money anymore.

Ding—

[New Welcome Reward 500,000 won (1) has been added]

Ding—

[New Welcome Reward 500,000 won (2) has been added]

The moment the notification sound rang, I lifted my head, and two message windows popped up over the game screen.

Soon after, my balance increased to 1,000,030 won.

I stared at it blankly before letting out a small, hollow sigh.

The 1,000,000 won I had believed—without a shred of doubt—to be the greatest stroke of luck in my entire life… had turned into game currency in less than a day.

So absurdly, so emptily….