The Prepared Regressor
*Notice* This work is fiction. All personal names, company names, place names, and other proper nouns appearing in the text are entirely fictional and bear no relation to reality.
#1 ○ The Prepared Regressor
The midday sun of a sweltering summer cast a languid spell over everything. Roadside trees, weeds sprouting in every crack, the freshly laid asphalt of the new road, even the orange traffic cones marking the construction zone—all of them sagged like overcooked vegetables under the oppressive heat.
The same held true for the old house set far back from the road. In a small rural village, a modest home stood halfway up the mountain slope. Its slate roof, mottled with patches of green moss, spoke plainly of its age. Yet it was a house that had everything it needed: two rooms connected by a single wall and a spacious wooden porch in front of the larger room.
A small child lay sprawled across that porch. His name was Yoo Jae-won, the most notorious little troublemaker in the village. He had drifted off to sleep beneath the breeze from an old Geumseongsa electric fan brought out from the master bedroom, mingled with the cool mountain wind drifting down from the hills.
It was unusual for a child to be napping alone on the porch, but the family circumstances left no choice. As the only son of working parents, and with summer vacation in full swing, he was often left to himself.
Minutes passed. The boy twitched in his sleep as though caught in a nightmare, muttering incomprehensible words. Then his entire body jerked violently, as if struck by an electric shock. His eyes flew open.
For a moment he sat there, dazed. Soon clarity returned to his gaze. Without warning, he began to act in a manner most unlike a child. He stared intently at his own hands, then leapt to his feet and rushed into the master bedroom to examine his reflection in the large mirror.
Checking his appearance the instant he woke from a nap might have looked like the behavior of a vain little prince. But it was nothing of the sort.
“I’m back.”
Before falling asleep, Yoo Jae-won had been a twelve-year-old boy. The person who now opened his eyes was no longer that child. Inside the boy’s body resided the sixty-three-year-old Yoo Jae-won who had lived for decades before turning back the wheel of time.
Reversing the great wheel of time—regression. The elderly Yoo Jae-won had obtained the greatest fortune that money could never buy, and today was the day that fortune had become reality.
After confirming the state of his body, he looked around. Most people, confronted with something unbelievable, would grow wildly excited, refuse to accept it, and make a spectacle of themselves. Yoo Jae-won was different. He calmly surveyed his surroundings.
“Ah.”
The warm breeze carried the scent of the countryside. The sight of the old house, preserved only in memory, had grown hazy to the man who had lived into his sixties. Now, seeing it with his own eyes and touching it with his hands, the memory returned in vivid color. A black-and-white photograph crumbling with the passage of years had been restored, clean and new, as though time itself had reversed, and natural hues had been painted back onto it.
It was not merely memories that revived. The memories of young Yoo Jae-won that had remained in his body merged with those of the regressor inside his mind. Faint, nearly forgotten fragments of his childhood surfaced like a lantern show, suddenly bright and alive.
“August 1988?”
Reading the date from a calendar bearing the clear Nonghyup logo, Yoo Jae-won’s voice carried more excitement than before. At the same time, absorbing the child’s memories made his once-awkward movements feel more natural. The biological rhythm that had grown accustomed to an aged body now felt strangely mismatched with this young, boyish frame.
To help himself adjust to his rejuvenated body, Yoo Jae-won decided to explore the old house that had existed only in memory. He slipped on his sneakers at the edge of the porch and stepped down into the yard.
In the vegetable garden his parents tended, peppers and eggplants grew beneath the fierce sunlight. It was no modern landscaped garden, yet the care invested in it made the scene feel far more intimate. Along one side of the yard stood a small stone platform holding a cluster of earthenware jars.
Memories rose naturally.
“In sixth grade, while playing baseball, I broke several of those jars and got scolded all day.”
If they had used a tennis ball instead of a baseball, the jars would never have shattered. Back then there were no rubber balls either. Rolling stones served as baseballs, and sticks became bats. Even so, they had tried to be careful, positioning the batter on the opposite side of the jar platform. After dozens of missed swings, Yoo Jae-won finally connected. The stone struck by the stick flew far faster than the one his friend had thrown and smashed straight into the earthenware jars.
“That sort of thing won’t happen again.”
No one could know how long Yoo Jae-won had waited for this regression. Thirty-three years had passed since he made the deal that promised him regression in exchange for something precious. The transaction had been struck to change everything—from trivial mistakes like breaking the jars to the great black marks that had scarred his entire life.
He could have returned much earlier. The most critical condition for activating the regression ability had been his own death. Even the timing of that death had been left to his discretion.
Then why had he waited thirty-three years instead of returning immediately? The decisive reason was simple: he had not been certain the deal was real. There had been no written contract, only a verbal agreement made inside a dream. If it had all been nothing more than a fleeting dream, he would have thrown away his one and only life for nothing.
Yet the dream had been far too vivid to dismiss. So Yoo Jae-won made his decision: he would delay the regression as long as possible while preparing for the life that would follow. The advantages were immense. The greatest weapon any regressor possessed was knowledge of the future. While enduring, he had carefully gathered every important piece of information and prepared for the life after regression. He endlessly simulated scenarios, imagined the abilities he would need, and worked tirelessly to acquire the corresponding skills.
“Truly, I tried everything I could.”
The only way to dispel anxiety was thorough preparation. He studied middle- and high-school internet lectures centered on the textbooks from his own childhood, took the college entrance exam multiple times, learned to play many musical instruments, and studied foreign languages with obsessive intensity. Among all his efforts, the most dedicated was mastering computer-related technologies. He learned numerous programming languages and mastered both 2D and 3D graphic tools—not merely learned them, but mastered them.
Interestingly, once his life’s direction changed, even the socially maladjusted Yoo Jae-won began to change. The greatest turning point came with his acceptance into Seoul National University. Apparently he had the aptitude; after years of focused study, he passed the entrance exam for the business administration department at Korea’s top university. The people he met were completely different. He felt with his entire being why so many Koreans fixated on Seoul National University. Even as a late entrant, the alumni network of Seoul National University—one of the most powerful in the country—remained intact.
The abilities he had cultivated while preparing for regression, combined with a belatedly awakened potential and sheer luck, allowed him to soar. After the regression, the business he started to gain experience took off as though riding a favorable wind. The connections he had formed—calling one another “hyung” and “dongsaeng”—rose to become mayors and assemblymen, ushering in a golden age. He flew high. Carried by an unexpected updraft, he even stood on the verge of tremendous success.
As the past tense “stood” implied, Yoo Jae-won ultimately failed. While his academic connections helped with modest successes, Korea’s established powers were far larger and more entrenched, centered around the chaebols. The business he and his colleagues pursued could have completely overturned the industrial landscape if successful. Just as the iPhone had descended from the sky and dominated an era flooded with cellular phones, they had been on the brink of completing a game changer that would rewrite the rules entirely.
That meant directly threatening the interests of the chaebols who controlled existing industries—an act that provoked fierce resistance. Though no guns or swords were involved, it was a war in which people were destroyed. In the end, Yoo Jae-won lost. The politicians he had called brothers fled first. Trusted colleagues drove knives into his back. The man who had soared so high was hurled to the ground in an instant. The higher one flew, the more painful the fall.
In the blink of an eye, the media transformed the hero who had been building a business that would define Korea for the next century into a fraud who had embezzled ordinary citizens’ investments. He lost everything—money, people, all of it.
Most people would have died of rage or taken their own lives at that point. Yoo Jae-won did not. Although circumstances had led him here, his original plan had always been preparation for regression. From that perspective, going to war with the entrenched powers and losing had been an invaluable experience that money could never buy. Of course, even after becoming a loser, he had never been entirely certain the regression would occur. Yet that slender hope had been the only foothold that allowed the socially buried Yoo Jae-won to endure.
While enduring, he continued to accumulate future knowledge in his mind—not merely reading it, but striving to understand it at the level of academic papers and make it his own. Living with the thought that he only needed to hold on a little longer, a few more years slipped by unnoticed. Eventually he met a lonely death, with no one to care for him.
In truth, he could have prolonged his life as long as he wished. When he closed his eyes, he had been only sixty-three, and the ailments he carried were not incurable. But he no longer wanted to watch the people who had buried him continue to thrive. He had seen all the latest technology there was to see. Technology never stopped advancing, so even greater things would emerge, yet his mind had grown rigid and understanding them had become difficult.
Still, a tremor of anxiety remained. What if the deal made in the dream had been false? The fear had been enormous, and his belief that he would turn back time had been nothing more than a single thread. Yet a miracle had occurred.
“I really did come back.”
Yoo Jae-won’s eyes burned. Though his fall had happened nearly ten years ago, his fury toward them remained undiminished. He wanted to show them hell, to strip away everything they possessed and cast them into the lowest depths. A miraculous event had brought him back through time, yet the task ahead was still daunting. Their foundations remained solid, while he had to start from nothing.
“I can do it.”
Time was on his side. Moreover, the powerful knowledge of the future he had stored in his mind while clinging to a wretched life was his greatest weapon. With this overwhelming power granted by regression, he would crush them all.