Regression? Well, Fine.
Regression? Whew. Fine. If I have to, I have to.
Come to think of it, there had been three great misfortunes in my life.
The first was losing my parents to a car accident when I was young. The second was throwing a punch at that smug senior who kept mocking me as an orphan, which cost me my shot at going pro. And the third… was right now.
“That was a far better performance than I expected. I'll have to discuss it with the others, but personally, I'm impressed. Excellent work.”
There were three other judges on the panel, but when the screenwriter herself delivered the verdict — Lim Soo-jin, the woman who wrote the script — there was nothing more to consider.
All I'd wanted was to get through this one audition, and now a star screenwriter was saying that. I felt like I could fly.
To celebrate, I picked up fried chicken and beer for the first time in ages and headed for my one-room apartment.
If this works out, I can finally climb up to the supporting-actor tier.
It felt like the end of the long, dark tunnel called obscurity was finally in sight. My footsteps couldn't have been lighter.
The light turned blue and I stepped onto the crosswalk — and a sedan came tearing toward us at a terrifying speed. I was far enough away to dodge it easily, but the girl walking ahead of me froze solid the instant she saw the headlights bearing down on her.
The moment I saw her like that, my body threw itself forward before I could think. I managed to shove her out of the way, but there simply wasn't enough time to clear the distance myself.
A colossal impact — and my body went flying into the air.
In reality it would have lasted only an instant, but for me it stretched long enough for my whole life to flash before my eyes. It was more than enough time.
“Tell me what I did wrong! Tell me! Go on, say it!”
A film set?
There I was, screaming at a veteran actor.
Watching my scene partner wear a face completely devoured by my performance — I felt a jolt of catharsis.
That's the kind of acting I always wanted to do.
But what did it matter? I was about to die anyway.
Wait, what kind of near-death replay is this?
That line was from the beginning of the very drama I'd just auditioned for today. Wasn't a life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing supposed to be your past scrolling by? Why was I being shown a future that would never come?
The war-zone of a film set grew hazy, and a warm light enveloped me.
Guess this is it, then.
A few lines would go up in a corner of the portal news page tomorrow morning. Unknown actor Byun Ha-jin tragically dies in traffic accident.
Haah… life, honestly.
Out of nowhere, I had regressed.
As a six-year-old kindergarten kid, no less.
— One week earlier —
Darkness gave way to light, and I figured I'd arrived in heaven. I couldn't recall doing anything particularly wicked, so I was fairly sure it wasn't hell.
But when I opened my eyes, a face both familiar and utterly strange was looking down at me.
“If Ha-jin doesn't get up soon, he'll be late for kindergarten.”
It was Mom.
My mother — who had died in a car accident alongside Dad when I was little.
Twenty years had made the face unfamiliar, but it was one I could never, ever forget.
“What's gotten into my son this morning? Did you have a scary dream?”
The moment I heard that voice, the tears burst out.
It was what she always used to say back when I was little, groggy and half-asleep in the mornings.
“H-Ha-jin! What's wrong? Are you sick somewhere?”
I ended up burning with a fever and missing kindergarten that day altogether.
“Status window!”
I'd taken some fever medicine and was lying there staring at the ceiling when it suddenly occurred to me, and I shouted it out loud. Whenever a protagonist regressed in a web novel, that was the first thing they did — so I figured I'd try it too.
“………”
Nothing happened.
Figures, I muttered, rolling over to go back to sleep.
But what I'd received was something far better than a status window.
“Teacher, I want to sit next to Ha-jin.”
“No way. I'm sitting there today.”
“Waaah, no! You sat next to him yesterday!”
“Now, now, kids. No fighting…”
When I got to kindergarten the next day, the kids — especially the girls — were in an uproar over who would sit beside me.
Children are the most honest creatures on earth. They see something tasty, they want to eat it; they see something nice, they want it; they see someone pretty, they want to be next to them.
And I had become the prettiest person in the dandelion class — no, in the entire kindergarten.
“Haah, have you ever seen a six-year-old that good-looking? I can't even imagine what he'll look like grown up.”
Tell me about it. No wonder the girls are all fighting to sit next to him.
I had gotten handsome. Seriously handsome.
Unlike my past life, where my looks had always fallen short of my acting, this one feature of mine had been upgraded a hundredfold — no, a thousandfold.
The first day after regressing, I'd gone to the bathroom, looked at my face, and nearly jumped out of my skin. Thick lashes, eyes like someone had studded them with stars, a bridge of the nose with unmistakable presence, an elegant facial line topped off by a beautifully finished jaw — whoever had sent me back to childhood had clearly gone all-out on the renovation.
The moment I saw that sculpted face, a wave of vertigo hit me — and then it simply layered itself over the face in my memory, as if this had been the face I was born with all along.
So that's why Mom didn't notice anything had changed about me.
I was studying the face in the mirror when acting suddenly came to mind. If this face were combined with my acting ability from my past life, the obscure years wouldn't have dragged on nearly so long.
Come to think of it — what happened to my acting talent, anyway?
That question was answered before long.
“I'm going to start dinner, so watch TV for a bit.”
I switched the TV on, and just in time, Wagle Wagle Kindergarten was starting.
Wow, haven't seen this in ages.
The long-running flagship program of KBC 3TV — no Korean child could possibly not know it. I'd loved it as a kid too; I used to come sprinting home from playing outside just to catch it.
Apparently, regressing to six had turned my sense of fun back to six as well — my heart was doing little flips over a mere children's program.
Unfortunately, that excitement shattered spectacularly within a few minutes.
Why is this such a mess?
It was off from the very start, but the corner called Curious Tiger Teacher was bad enough to make me wince. It was the most popular segment on Wagle Wagle Kindergarten — costumed animal characters, and whenever the kids got curious about something, Tiger Teacher appeared to solve it. It was famous for building its stories from questions sent in directly by children.
I remembered begging my mom to send a letter to the broadcasting station when I was little.
Kids who couldn't hide their awkward expressions and missed their cues one beat after another. The child actors playing alongside the animals were full of holes, too.
When gaps open up between lines and movements, the audience feels the awkwardness. Beginners and trainees can't fill those holes properly, and it wrecks their performance. A seasoned actor, though, can patch them up with a well-timed reaction or a bit of ad-lib.
And then there are the rare actors who never create the holes at all — the ones who instinctively eliminate the moments where things might turn awkward. Only actors like that ever get their craft truly recognized.
That was the lesson drilled into me, over and over, in my past life's acting classes.
Of course, you can't expect hole-free, seamless acting from child performers. Even so, if you feel a gap coming, the basic move is not to fumble — push quickly into the next line or motion, and the awkwardness shrinks. That is Acting 101, the very first thing any academy or agency teaches. However young you are, if you're appearing on a program like this, you're still an actor, plain and simple.
And these kids didn't even have that.
Look at me, over here doubting whether I was ever an actor, sitting there critiquing a kids' show.
Whatever had happened to my acting skill, at least my actor's mindset hadn't gone anywhere.
When the segment moved on to the children's choreography, the holes only got bigger. The kids copying along in the back were beyond hopeless, and even the featured child actors' movements kept creaking out of sync. Watching the screen, I couldn't help sighing.
If I were out there — if I were standing among those broken robots — if I stepped in instead of these listless hand-waves and half-hearted steps, how different would the stage look?
The thought struck me out of nowhere.
Then everything in front of my eyes went white — a blinding light appeared and swallowed me in an instant.
Wh-wh-wh-what the—!
Everything around me was pure white. I couldn't tell whether it was a vast plaza or a tiny room. Hoping to find something — anything — I walked slowly toward the far end.
After walking for a while, I spotted what looked like a stage in the distance. There were shadows of people, too, and with a surge of relief I broke into a run toward them.
Wait — that's Wagle Wagle Kindergarten!
It was the Wagle Wagle Kindergarten set I'd just been watching on TV. I stood there at the back, shuffling awkwardly, unsure what I was supposed to do — and then someone came sprinting up, breathless.
“There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you. Hurry up and get in the back line.”
“Uh, um, okay…”
He steered me up onto the stage. The spot I'd been placed in sat just off-center, outside the main spotlight.
“Ahahaha! If that's the problem, then Tiger Teacher can solve any of them!”
Having received the children's question, Tiger Teacher thumped his chest and let out a hearty laugh.
A… a real tiger?
It wasn't a mascot costume. An actual tiger was standing on two legs and talking.
And it wasn't just the tiger. Giraffe, rabbit, lion, hippo — animals resized to a child's scale were playing all over the stage.
Among them, I clapped and followed the choreography along with the other kids. Rhythms I'd never heard, movements I'd never learned — they sank into my head effortlessly, one after another. I could see, like a blueprint laid flat, which way the camera outside the stage would swing and whom it would frame next. My body moved on its own at exactly the moments when I needed to shout, to shift position. I was following the entire corner through the eyes of a camera director, through a PD's gaze.
What is this? Why am I absorbing this entire show from beginning to end?
The sense of immersion was beyond anything I'd imagined. Running across the stage with real animals, it was impossible not to be swept up in it. The acting of the child performers went without saying — and even the kids in the back clapping and following along moved with uncanny naturalness. It made me wonder what all that stiffness on the TV screen had even been.
“Alright then, friends — see you next time!”
The moment Tiger Teacher delivered his closing line, the stage vanished before my eyes — and I was back on the sofa in my living room, watching TV.
Whoa. This is… this is unreal.
Flawless acting. Flawless choreography. A flawless stage. Compared to that, everything on the other side of the screen looked pitifully cheap.
Without thinking, I rose from the sofa and began to run through the lines and movements myself — breathing into every expression, into the very tips of my fingers, a naturalness the broadcast had never once managed. Tiger Teacher's calls and dialogue poured out of my mouth, complete with the bursts of cheering and every little interjection thrown in between.
Melodies I'd never heard, steps I'd never been taught, snapping onto my body like they'd always lived there. I couldn't even begin to guess how many years of practice this was supposed to represent.
Twist the body here — and stretch the arm out long, like so.
The choreography ended on a swell of applause, and my improvised performance ended with it. I had just recreated, all by myself, that perfect stage I'd witnessed inside the light.
I can actually do this.
Phew. I was still catching my breath when I noticed something odd — the house was dead silent.
In the kitchen, Mom stood frozen, vegetables still in hand, her gaping mouth refusing to close.
“Ha-jin, you… why are you so good at that?”
Looking at her expression, it hit me for certain: just like my face, my acting had gotten a massive power-up too.
Astonishing someone with an improvised performance is never, ever an easy thing to do.
