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# Chapter 2: An Unfamiliar Ceiling in 1988
“Uuugh!”
Me.
Am I okay?
Am I alive?
The moment the airplane crashed into the ocean, there was a tremendous roar. At the same time, I felt as though
something was piercing and crushing my body, and then I lost consciousness.
I thought I was definitely going to die right there, but…
“…Both arms are fine. My legs are fine too?”
Holy crap.
Was I rescued?
I frantically moved my hands around and checked my entire body.
Nothing hurt, and I couldn't even feel so much as a scratch.
I could see perfectly well, and my hearing was completely normal too.
Thank you, God, Allah, Buddha, Shiva!
I let out a sigh of relief and collapsed back onto the bed.
Feeling the softness of the cushions, I rested my head against the pillow. Only then did the unfamiliar ceiling in front
of me enter my field of vision.
The ceilings I knew were usually white, or white with little worm-like patterns carved into them.
Even the ceiling in my own house had been covered in white wallpaper, with fluorescent star-shaped stickers arranged in
the form of constellations.
But the ceiling above me was beige.
There were even fairly luxurious-looking decorative patterns running along its edges.
I stared at it in admiration for a moment.
Then I turned my head, and what came into view was a sofa with an old-fashioned design that nevertheless looked
incredibly luxurious, along with a small table in front of it.
“Huh?”
I was confused.
Where was this?
If I'd been rescued from a crashing airplane, shouldn't I obviously be in a hospital?
“Ah… Is that it?”
There wasn't a scratch on my body.
I wasn't injured anywhere, and my arms and legs, eyesight, and hearing were all perfectly fine.
Maybe I'd been rescued from the crashed airplane and remained unconscious for quite a long time.
Perhaps the airline, wanting to fulfill its responsibility toward its passengers until the very end, had sent me, the
sole survivor, to an extremely expensive and luxurious rehabilitation facility and was covering the costs until I
recovered.
Hmm.
Perfect deduction.
With this, I could understand the current situation—
“Wh-what is this…?”
I carefully looked around the room and spotted a mirror mounted on the wall on the other side.
Reflected in that mirror was the image of a little kid lying on the bed and staring at it.
I swallowed hard and waved my hand.
The little boy reflected in the mirror waved his hand too.
I climbed down from the bed and walked toward the mirror.
The little boy in the mirror also gradually came closer in response to my movements.
He had platinum-blond hair and incredibly pale skin, the kind of skin I could only assume belonged to a white person.
At a glance, he looked no more than seven or eight years old, a little snot-nosed kid staring at me from beyond the
mirror.
“Ha…”
A deep, deep sigh escaped me.
I slowly lowered my head and examined myself again.
My hands were far too small and youthful to belong to me, Choi Eun-ho.
There were no calluses on my fingers from holding pens and studying. The fingers of this body were pale, soft, moist,
and unbelievably smooth.
“Did I die? Me?”
Was that why I'd ended up inside someone else's body?
Back in high school.
When I was preparing for the college entrance exam, my only hobby had been reading web novels.
The beginnings of most of those novels were similar.
Either the protagonist died in a traffic accident after encountering the reincarnation truck, died from an incurable
disease, or returned to the past after finding themselves in some truly unavoidable, worst-case situation.
Perhaps because I'd read hundreds of stories like that, I could easily understand and accept the fact that I'd died in a
plane crash and awakened inside someone else's body.
The problem was figuring out exactly who I was now, and when and where I was.
“At least it seems like I landed in a fairly wealthy household, right?”
I walked toward the incredibly expensive-looking sofa I'd seen from the bed and tried to plop myself down on it.
I couldn't quite manage that, though.
Instead, I awkwardly climbed up and sat down.
This body's height was simply too short.
Apparently, this was part of the mansion where the owner of this body, this little boy, lived. I wondered if he might
belong to some kind of aristocratic family.
Even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there were families in Europe that had maintained their aristocratic
lineage.
If I was going to live as a member of a family like that, I probably didn't need to worry too much about my future.
With a house this large and chandeliers this luxurious, I should at least be able to live comfortably somehow.
The only problem was…
“I wonder if they're okay.”
I was worried about my parents.
To prepare for the possibility that information might leak, I'd secretly gone through the process of studying abroad
without even telling them I was leaving the country. Then I'd boarded the plane.
My parents probably didn't even know I'd gotten on an airplane. They must have thought I was quietly attending
university from our one-room apartment in Bongcheon-dong.
But what would they feel when they heard that their son had boarded a plane bound for America, gotten caught up in a
crash, and died?
I sat blankly on the sofa with a bitter feeling for a while.
Then I heard footsteps outside.
A moment later, the door opened, and a woman dressed in a maid's uniform that looked like something straight out of an
old drama or movie appeared.
She looked to be in her forties. She was a white woman with a somewhat cold appearance and neatly tied-back hair.
Seeing me, she gave me a small, polite smile and said,
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. I slept well, but… huh?”
Am I speaking English right now?
That woman seemed to have spoken in English too. It didn't sound like a British accent.
Could this actually be America rather than Europe?
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no. It's nothing.”
The woman quietly studied my expression before continuing.
“How is your head? Does it feel all right?”
“My head? It seems fine.”
“Ah. Then what about your memory? Has any of it returned?”
“…My memory?”
“Yes. I was told you have amnesia. Do you still not remember anything at all?”
Had this little kid lost his memory because he'd suffered a head injury?
For me, this wasn't necessarily a bad situation.
I nodded.
The woman nodded as though she understood and cautiously continued.
“You don't remember even your name?”
“Not that either…”
“Hmm. I told you again yesterday, but if you don't remember that either… I'll have to inform your attending physician
and continue monitoring the situation. Very well.”
“Wait. Can you tell me what my name is?”
This was my chance to find out whose body I'd entered and when and where I was.
Thinking that, I asked her.
The woman answered in a dry tone.
“Young Master Lloyd Stout. That is all.”
“Wait, wait a moment.”
“Is there something else you wish to know?”
What was with her?
This woman seemed slightly annoyed by my questions.
Come to think of it, after telling me the name of this body, she had seemed ready to leave the room immediately.
“Young Master?”
She couldn't even wait the few seconds I spent thinking before questioning why I'd stopped her.
“I want to know today's date.”
“February 7, 1988.”
As though she had no intention of answering any more questions, she said that, gave me a slight nod, turned around, and
walked out of the room.
I watched her back disappear and couldn't help letting out a hollow laugh.
1988?
That was before I was even born.
This was completely… incredibly old.
Cell phones were as large and heavy as walkie-talkies, the internet was practically at the intranet level, and computers
were so primitive that they couldn't even be compared to the ones I'd used.
“Wow… It's like I've been transported back to the Joseon Dynasty.”
It was absurd.
I'd died in 2023, but when I opened my eyes, I'd somehow returned a staggering thirty-five years into the past.
Then what happened to the fact that I'd died?
Would this be something like a parallel universe?
Or, since I'd returned to the past, did everything that happened after this moment, everything I remembered as the past
but which was actually the future of my life as Choi Eun-ho, simply become events that had yet to happen?
I'd never studied anything related to spacetime, so I had absolutely no idea.
I would feel much more at ease if the events after today simply hadn't happened at all.
“Come to think of it, my name is Lloyd Stout… Stout?”
It sounded familiar.
Where had I heard that before?
It was a relatively common surname, but there was also a Stout family among the major forces that controlled America.
Ian D. Stout, the titan who had established an oil company that dominated the United States in the nineteenth century
and amassed an enormous fortune.
And the Stout family that followed him, maintaining the influence of their predecessors and becoming a frequent subject
of conspiracy theories claiming that they controlled America, and even the world.
“No way. It can't be.”
The house was certainly flashy and luxurious.
People called me Young Master, and there were even employees like the woman taking care of me walking around.
But America had a population of nearly 300 million, so there must have been millions of wealthy people.
I had probably been reincarnated into another member of a different Stout family who happened to share the same name and
lived a fairly wealthy and comfortable life.
Thinking that, I climbed down from the sofa and began walking around the room.
Although I'd returned to a distant past that felt almost like the Joseon Dynasty, I still had all the knowledge I'd
accumulated during my twenty-three years of life.
I hadn't studied it in preparation for going back in time, but regardless, it was more than enough to make use of in
this particular period.
So if I used that knowledge to buy some promising stocks and invest in land ahead of time, wouldn't I be able to live a
wealthy and comfortable life this time around?
If I just thought about ways to earn money from the time I was a kid and build up some starting capital…
“Huh?”
After walking around the room by myself for a while, I found myself standing by the window.
When I looked outside, a sight that I hadn't been able to see from the sofa or bed came into view.
Vast.
The garden spread out before me was so enormous that the word vast was the only one that came to mind.
Beautifully landscaped trees that looked like something straight out of a movie lined a small road, and beyond them was
a huge pond.
Around the pond were rows of colorful flowers in yellow, pink, red, and all sorts of other shades.
“Wow…”
It was truly enormous.
Throughout the enormous garden, gardeners wearing wide-brimmed hats were busily tending to the flowers and trees.
“Could it be… that this really is the Stout family?”