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# Chapter 2: To 1980
I opened my eyes in the darkness.
"Huh?"
I tilted my head in confusion.
Something was strange. My eyes had opened much more easily than expected. Usually, getting out of bed felt like hell, but today, my mind had cleared almost instantly. I couldn't help but wonder what was going on.
"I definitely drank a ton of alcohol and fell asleep yesterday, didn't I?"
My eyes had opened so easily, and on top of that, my body felt as light as a feather. It was strange.
I reached around in the darkness.
My hand touched a wall. When I moved my body, something came tumbling down.
"Damn it."
What the hell was going on?
I had definitely fallen asleep on the basement sofa yesterday, so why had I woken up in such a cramped place? There were two main possibilities. Either I had crawled into this narrow space myself, or I had been kidnapped by a man who was an ardent fan of Dead Man's Heaven and harbored twisted sexual desires toward me.
If it was the latter, that would be horrifying.
I tried to shake off the lethargic feeling that had followed me since yesterday by repeating the worst joke I could imagine. But I didn't even manage to find that funny, so I raised my upper body.
Feeling something raining down from my body, I began pounding on the wall. It was thinner than I had expected. When I leaned against it and pushed it aside, light poured in.
"Ugh...?!"
A groan escaped me.
The light was so brilliant that it stung my eyes. Unable to regain my senses for a while, I felt around the floor with my arms and barely managed to crawl out of the cramped space.
When I finally stood up, my eyes adjusted to the light. The moment I looked around, they widened in shock.
"What the hell is this?"
A space buried deep within my oldest memories had unfolded before my eyes.
Furniture and flooring made of dark-colored solid wood. A checkered rug blending brown and red, along with a single bed. The bookshelf displayed along one side of the room was packed with books, and the CRT television beside it looked so old that it belonged in a museum.
I knew this place.
It was my room, where I had lived until entering college.
Could it be that my obsessive fan had actually recreated my room from the 1980s?
A chill ran through my entire body. I hurriedly opened the bedroom door and stepped outside.
When I went down the stairs visible before me, I reached the living room. It was exactly as I remembered, which made my skin crawl even more.
Mahogany furniture in predominantly beige tones, with floral patterns on the fabric and leather sections.
"Stay calm. Han Shin. Stay calm."
There were several possibilities.
The possibility that this was a television broadcast couldn't be ruled out, of course. I hadn't revealed my face to the public yet, but I had discussed with my publisher the possibility of revealing my identity alongside the airing of Dead Man's Heaven and beginning work as a full-fledged influencer-author.
Perhaps that process had already begun.
"That would be much better than having a psycho fan."
It was at that exact moment.
"Shin?"
I turned toward the voice and shouted in shock.
"Holy mother...!"
These bastards had even hired my deceased mother!!
I staggered backward about three steps. The hired(?) version of my mother appeared from behind me and frowned.
"Watch your language, Shin. Even I know that's a very bad word."
"W-Who the hell are you?"
"Has this boy not woken up properly yet? Hurry up and get ready for school!"
"Did someone ask you to do this? Is this some kind of show? Let's stop. It's not funny."
"...Good grief."
The woman in her mid-to-late thirties sighed at my serious response and approached me, raising her hand.
Smack!
"Gaaah?!"
A sharp pain rang through my back!
"What's with all this nonsense from someone starting high school today? Go wash up and come out quickly!!"
"O-Ouch, ouch, ouch! Wait! Just wait a second!"
The combination of smacking my back and grabbing my ear was one of my mother's signature moves.
As I was dragged away, half in tears from the intense pain, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
My childhood, which I had never told anyone about, was unfolding before me with every single detail perfectly recreated.
"Does a show like this exist? No, no. Is there actually a perverted serial killer like this?"
Still confused, I was dragged into the bathroom against my will.
"Ugh..."
After rubbing my aching earlobe, I raised my head and was even more shocked.
"What is this?"
Standing in the mirror was not the present-day me, but my younger self.
Smooth, firm skin without a single wrinkle. Black hair that had been grown to a moderate length.
My eyes met a pair of clear, shining eyes without any redness. I unconsciously raised my hand and realized that the chronic pain around my shoulders, caused by my forward head posture, was gone.
My body also moved smoothly, as if it had been freshly lubricated.
Fascinated by my own body, I jumped around for a while and twisted myself in different directions, enjoying my youthful physique.
Then I laughed in disbelief.
"Shit, television shows these days are really something."
Immediately afterward, the words slipped out of my mouth.
"...There's no way."
Could this be a dream?
No. My earlobe was still throbbing.
This was reality.
I tried to deduce my current situation through what my mother had said.
"Today is my first day of high school?"
September 8, 1980.
I was sixteen years old, just a little short of my seventeenth birthday, and had enrolled in a public high school called Central City Valley High School.
It had been just over a year since my father had passed away.
Had I really returned to that time?
I couldn't believe it. How could something like this possibly happen?
With trembling hands, I washed my face and brushed my teeth.
They were perfectly clean, healthy teeth without a single cavity. Feeling the cold water running over my skin, I gradually became more alert.
Then I remembered an old habit and returned to my room to change clothes.
As I faced the room where I had lived in the 1980s once again, fragments of those old memories slowly began to surface.
During middle and high school, I often hid inside the closet.
It was the perfect place to secretly read the genre novels my mother disliked.
As an exemplary student who only went between home and school, genre fiction was my escape after completing all my daily responsibilities. It offered me a brief retreat from the difficult and harsh reality of my life.
However, the memories of the 1980s felt entirely different when I encountered them again as an adult.
"That's right."
I smiled bitterly.
I casually stepped over the magazines scattered across the floor, took a checkered shirt and cotton pants out of the closet, and put them on.
Then I went downstairs and stood absentmindedly, looking at my mother's back in the kitchen.
"This is real, isn't it?"
If I had truly returned to the past, then the mother standing before me was also...
"Han Shin. You stayed up all night reading those strange magazines again, didn't you?"
"Ah."
My mother scolded me while placing the food she had prepared on the table. For a moment, I had no idea how to respond.
Someone who had passed away long ago in my memories had appeared before me in her younger form. An indescribable emotion lingered in my chest.
But my mother had no idea what I was going through and continued speaking.
"Are you going to break the promise you made to your mother?"
"......"
What promise had I made to her at this time?
"You said you wouldn't read those magazines after midnight, remember?"
"...Oh, that."
"Even though the pastor called them books of the devil, I made a compromise because you liked them so much, didn't I?"
"I'm sorry. They were just so interesting that I lost track of time."
"I want you to be more careful from now on. Come eat your breakfast."
The food was laid out on the table.
Bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and butter. It was a simple meal.
Not long after my father passed away, we had switched to American-style meals. In 1980s America, Korean food was almost a luxury, and we had become too poor to afford it.
Our family's financial situation had deteriorated severely after my father's death. Eventually, we adapted to that lifestyle, and even after our circumstances improved, we still couldn't properly return to eating Korean food.
Even so, this meal was special to me.
Because it had been prepared by my mother.
"Thank you for the meal."
"Don't leave anything behind."
Following my mother's gesture, I sat down and slowly began eating.
This wasn't a television show, and it wasn't a psycho fan.
It was perfect reality.
Otherwise, there was no way to explain the situation I was in.
The taste of bacon with its edges slightly crisped.
The conversations that only my real mother could have known.
"Yes. This was how things were back then."
In the 1980s, genre fiction was treated much like television in the 1990s, video games in the 2000s, and smartphones in the 2010s.
It was something adults didn't understand, but children were passionate about.
From schools to places like churches, genre fiction was treated almost like something created by Satan.
My mother was the same.
As a devout believer, she firmly trusted what the pastor at the Korean church said and tried to stop me from reading genre fiction magazines.
However, even as an obedient and exemplary son, I resisted her discipline. In the end, we established rules that allowed me to continue reading genre fiction.
"So I really did love novels that much back then."
Well, it wasn't difficult to understand.
I had always found reality suffocating.
Back then, nothing had set me free more than novels.
That was why, when I reread the novels from that period as an adult, I couldn't help but feel disappointed.
They were filled with all kinds of prejudices against Asians, the very prejudices I had experienced in reality.
---
After finishing breakfast, I took the bus from in front of my house to school.
I had probably ridden that bus hundreds of times before getting my driver's license at seventeen.
The scenery passed before my eyes like a panorama.
A bridge made of interwoven steel beams. Smoke rose from factory chimneys in the distance.
On the streets, people spent their time playing music through large cassette players, dancing, or riding skateboards.
Having spent my school years in 1980, I remembered the period from then through the 1990s as one of the most significant eras of content development in American history.
At that time, America's president was Michael Jackson, and Michael Jordan.
Oh, and there were also Steven Spielberg, John Carmack, and finally, Bill Gates.
A cool breeze blew in through the open window.
As I watched the people on the streets, I thought.
"Looking at it with my own eyes, it really does look outdated."
Neon-colored T-shirts. High-waisted denim pants.
The men kept their sides closely trimmed while growing out the hair at the back. The women made their hair as voluminous as possible.
This was the era when I had lived as a boy.
There were no smartphones, not even mobile phones. Children from relatively well-off families used walkie-talkies instead.
Everyone believed the stories shown on television as if they were real. They cheered while watching movies filled with cheap special effects.
And when the weekend came, we gathered in our friends' basements to play D&D.
It was a fantastic era.
Society stood on the verge of change, just before the birth of a new age.
I continued searching through my memories, digging deeper into the past.
I arrived at school.
Central City Valley High School had good surrounding security, a high standard of education, and a reasonably diverse student population.
I remembered my mother jumping for joy when she heard that I had been accepted.
It had been the first time my mother had truly smiled after my father passed away.
Since it was the first day of school, the students formed groups based on their races.
The tendency for people of the same race to gather together hadn't changed much even in the future, but I was surprised by how much more cautious the students seemed to be around one another than I had expected.
There was no separate opening ceremony.
Instead, after completing a school tour led by a senior student, I immediately returned home.
If I had been my former self, I would have gone to the Korean store my mother had taken over after my father's death and helped her work.
But today, I wanted to organize my thoughts properly.
"All right."
After entering my room, I began organizing the magazines scattered all over the floor.
One, two... When I gathered them together, there were around thirty.
Should I put them on the bookshelf? Or should I throw them away?
While I was considering what to do, I unconsciously picked up the one on top and flipped through a random page.
"Oh, this one again."
After briefly checking it, I recognized it as Ronan the Barbarian.
The Ronan the Barbarian series was one of the most popular sword-and-sorcery novel series of the 1980s.
My eyes wandered across the page, and I began reading a passage.
The following excerpt contains graphic violence and sexualized content, so it has been omitted.
"......Holy mother."
After finishing the novel, I was momentarily speechless. All I could do was blink blankly.
What the hell had the 1980s been like?