The Prepared Regressor
“Strange feeling.”
The long-imagined moment had finally arrived, yet the excitement dissolved like foam on water. In every fantasy he had spun, he pictured himself leaping for joy, shouting at the sky. Instead, his heart felt heavier than ever.
“Because the real work starts now?”
Yoo Jae-won found a reason that made sense. The endless rehearsals inside his head were over. From this point forward, every plan he had rehearsed had to be executed in reality. There would be no practice runs. The future unfolding before him was full of irreversible decisions; some mistakes would be fatal, and many could never be undone.
“Still, at least I don’t have to begin right away.”
Though his mind brimmed with grand designs, there was surprisingly little a twelve-year-old could actually do. A child’s words carried no legal weight, and his influence on the world around him was zero. Even if he offered advice based on future knowledge, no one was obligated to listen. The one advantage he could count on was that he remained his parents’ only child and the center of their hopes.
“First things first—my own tasks.”
Yoo Jae-won rose from the wooden floor and headed straight for the master bedroom.
“Well, look at you. Been a while.”
The family treasure sat proudly in the room: an Intel 80286 computer, specifically the high-end AT model. In 1988, most households still used 8-bit machines. The era of MSX-compatible systems like the SPC-1000 was only just fading, and even 8086 XT computers were only beginning to appear in schools and government offices. Those machines were expensive enough that schools rarely let students touch them; any hands-on practice was reserved for older students.
Yet here, in a rural home, stood a machine one generation ahead—an AT-class 286. This was entirely thanks to his mother, Kim Mal-sook, and her fierce commitment to education. When Yoo Jae-won entered fifth grade, she had promised that if he maintained an average of 85 or higher on both midterms and finals, she would grant him any wish. Having hovered around 70 throughout fourth grade, he miraculously delivered an 86. Without hesitation, he asked for the computer he had seen advertised on television.
His parents had been deeply reluctant at first, but after several days of deliberation they kept their word. The result was the top-of-the-line AT computer manufactured by Daeho Electronics, now occupying the best spot in the bedroom. It came equipped with a rare 20-megabyte hard drive, an EGA graphics card capable of displaying sixteen colors simultaneously, a color monitor, and an AdLib sound card with FM synthesis. A Korean-language card was also installed—essential in those days, when hardware support was required to render Hangul on screen. Few such machines existed even across the entire province.
His parents had clearly believed the computer would aid his studies.
“Unfortunately, I never lived up to that expectation.”
It had been like entrusting a fish market to a cat. The sudden jump of sixteen points in his average had been pure luck—questions happened to match the small amount he had studied, and his new desk partner was unusually bright. He had never developed any genuine interest in academics. Naturally, the expensive machine had instantly become an expensive game console.
Nothing stood between Yoo Jae-won and his games. His parents, busy repaying the computer’s installment plan, came home later than before.
“Tetris, Ultima, Tanuki… Oh, and Prince of Persia next year—can’t forget that one.”
Names of old favorites tumbled from his lips. The technician who had set up the computer had kindly installed every game he could think of as a bonus.
“Ha… I really used to lose track of time with these.”
Lost in memory, Yoo Jae-won reached for the computer cover. Most people would wonder why a home computer needed a dust cover, but the machine had been so expensive that a cover came standard. The case even had a key lock; when engaged, the power button did nothing. His parents had tried using the lock to separate him from games, but it proved useless—he could simply open the case and bypass the switch.
Today, however, he had no intention of playing. He never would again. The games of this era held no appeal for someone who had experienced millions of polygons per second, photorealistic graphics, augmented reality, and virtual reality. The crude visuals and simple mechanics of an AT machine offered nothing.
“Ugh… too short.”
The desk was high and the monitor sat atop the flat case, so the small boy had to stand on tiptoe to remove the cover.
“This life, I’m definitely clearing 180 centimeters.”
He voiced the old resentment while pulling the cover free. In his previous life he had refused anything that might help him grow—milk and anchovies tasted oddly fishy, and he rarely ate proper meals. The result was a final height of barely 170 centimeters. This time he intended to eat everything beneficial and try every method available.
Heart pounding, he pressed the power button. A heavy, mechanical whirring filled the room. The monitor flickered, the POST screen appeared for an instant, and then the system finished booting almost immediately. Computers of this era required no lengthy driver loads or graphical shells; simply reading the three MS-DOS system files was enough. A blinking cursor waited for commands.
Next to the desk lay a notebook filled with the necessary commands, written by the installer for the boy who had been completely computer-illiterate. Young Yoo Jae-won had pecked at the keys with two fingers, gradually growing familiar with the machine—only to spend every hour gaming.
None of that mattered now.
“Heh. Feels like handling a well-preserved antique.”
Yoo Jae-won’s fingers moved across the keyboard with practiced ease. Each keystroke produced a satisfying click and springy resistance. Though his smaller hands altered the sensation slightly, maintaining two hundred keystrokes per minute posed no difficulty. Command-line navigation came just as naturally. His thirty years of preparation had included far more than academic study; he had trained on emulators configured to match this exact environment until the interface felt second nature.
“Bojeokgeul.”
The program he launched was Bojeokgeul, the word processor released by Sambo Computer. Daeho Electronics had offered its own, but Bojeokgeul dominated the market, so the installer had included it personally. It was not a fully domestic product; it was a localized adaptation of a word-processing engine from T/Maker Research. A truly native Korean word processor, Hangul, would not appear until the following year.
Once the program was ready, Yoo Jae-won drew a deep breath and began to type.
—Cultivate the self, regulate the family, govern the state, bring peace to the world.
The famous passage from the Great Learning summed up, with perfect clarity and brevity, the thirty-three-year plan he had refined across his previous life. Yoo Jae-won’s regression was never meant to serve only himself or his family.
“If I only wanted personal success, I could have returned thirty years earlier.”
Winning the lottery would have sufficed for that. Instead, he had drawn a far larger design: maximize his physical and mental abilities until middle school, build his family’s foundation in the early nineties, steer the nation through the IMF crisis and subsequent foreign-exchange storms, and ultimately exert enough influence on humanity to replace the bleak future he remembered with one of prosperity and glory.
Thirty-three years of preparation had once seemed long. Now that the moment had come, he almost wished he had prepared even longer.
“I can do this.”
Yoo Jae-won renewed his resolve and began composing a document no one else would ever see. He would hide it deep within nested directories and protect it with a password, yet the file would contain not a single direct reference to the future. Every clue would be disguised in words only he could interpret—simple, ordinary terms like “mushroom,” “road,” or “typewriter.”