The Regressor's Return
As dusk settled over the peaceful rural village of Naeo, Yoo Bong-man, father of Yoo Jae-won, was making his way home after finishing his shift at the factory. He walked his bicycle rather than riding it, for it was an old rice-shop model without gears. The house stood at the top of the steepest hill in the village, which made the descent pleasant but the climb far more exhausting than walking.
“That boy Jae-won is probably glued to that computer game again.”
More than the weight of the bicycle on the uphill road, his only son weighed on Yoo Bong-man’s mind. Knowing the boy’s nature all too well, he could already picture him lost in games all day. The thought of the computer itself made his chest tighten. It had cost a staggering 3.5 million won—an enormous sum. When they bought this hillside house, the down payment had been only one million. A modern apartment in Seoul went for 29 million, and a mid-size Stella car for 5.3 million. The computer was outrageously expensive. Without his wife’s relentless urging and Daeho Electronics’ aggressive zero-interest 36-month installment plan, he would never have agreed to buy it. Now the boy was using such a costly machine not for study but for games, and the thought filled him with anger. If the same thing happened today, he intended to give the boy a proper scolding.
“Father!”
Yoo Bong-man had just set the bicycle down in the yard when the door to the inner room burst open and his son came rushing out. The sight caught him off guard. This was not how things usually went. Normally the boy would be so absorbed in his game that he wouldn’t even notice his father’s return. Even when called for dinner, he would remain deaf to the world. Yet here he was, greeting him the moment he heard the bicycle, and not with a simple hello—he threw his arms around him. Ever since the boy had grown older, physical affection had become rare. Today felt different.
“Where’s your mother?”
Though secretly pleased, Yoo Bong-man’s gruff nature made him change the subject.
“She’s not back yet.”
Yoo Jae-won looked at his father—half a century younger than the man he had last seen before regressing—and felt the warm scent of sweat that clung to him. Tears threatened to spill, but he forced them back with everything he had. If he cried now, the atmosphere would become unbearably strange. Fortunately, the tears did not fall. Countless simulations from his previous life helped him keep his composure.
“Did you finish your vacation homework?”
“Yes!”
At his father’s next question, Yoo Jae-won nodded vigorously and held up the scattered pages of Exploration Life and notebooks that had been lying on the floor. It was 1988. Not elementary school—national school. There were no supplementary classes, no children attending academies. The long vacation could be enjoyed freely, except for one persistent obstacle: vacation homework. Exploration Life, diaries, workbooks, specimen collection—the list went on. To the young Yoo Jae-won, these had been nothing but tedious chores. He had always put them off until three days before school resumed, then rushed through them sloppily. He had never once received praise for his vacation homework. The best he could hope for was avoiding the switch for not doing it at all. The switch was real; this was the year of double-eights, and corporal punishment was still commonplace. Bribery of teachers was an open secret as well.
Still, solving a fifth-grade workbook filled with arithmetic and multiple-choice questions was child’s play for the regressor Yoo Jae-won. Exploration Life was no different. Though the assignments were meant to be completed while listening to educational radio broadcasts, a few hours of effort were enough to finish them all.
“Well done.”
After flipping through the workbook and Exploration Life, Yoo Bong-man could only offer a short remark. At the same time, he found the sudden change in his son’s demeanor strangely unfamiliar. Yet because the change seemed to be for the better, he simply nodded in quiet approval.
“Goodness, our son has grown up. How admirable.”
Kim Mal-sook’s reaction when she returned from work that evening was far more dramatic than her husband’s. She, too, had known her son was neglecting his homework in favor of the computer. She had allowed it because she believed learning to handle this new technology was more valuable. Yet somehow the boy had finished every bit of his vacation homework neatly. The atmosphere around him felt subtly different as well. Having given birth to him in pain, she could sense the change clearly. He had always been scatterbrained and lacking focus; when speaking to adults, his voice had carried no confidence. Today, however, Yoo Jae-won seemed calmer, his voice steadier. He even stayed at the dinner table until the meal was finished. Normally he would have picked at his food and bolted straight back to the computer. Taken together, these small shifts made him seem more mature. No matter how hard she thought, she could find no obvious reason for the transformation. Perhaps this new behavior would last only a day or two. That worry, however, proved unfounded.
The next day, Yoo Jae-won rose early and saw his parents off to work. He had not forced his sleepy eyes open; he had woken naturally, shared a clear-headed breakfast with them, and walked them to the gate. His parents’ eyes widened in surprise. They had never seen this side of their son before. They had already sensed something different about him since yesterday, though they could not pinpoint the cause. Still, it was not a bad change. Their steps toward work felt lighter than usual.
“Ah, it’s even better than I imagined.”
Alone after his parents left, Yoo Jae-won rolled across the floor and murmured to himself. Waking early had been necessary, but breakfast shared with his parents had tasted wonderful. The table had been simple—miso soup without even tofu, seasoned soybean sprouts, and kimchi. Objectively, the food had been coarse. Yet the warmth of sitting together around the small table, chatting quietly, had made everything delicious. He had only ever imagined such moments; experiencing them in reality exceeded every expectation. The night before, as he lay down to sleep, he had prayed that this moment would not turn out to be a fleeting dream. When he opened his eyes that morning and saw the ceiling of the old countryside house instead of a modern apartment, the relief had been indescribable.
What lifted his spirits even more was the dream he had the previous night.
—The contract has been fulfilled.
The mysterious entity had appeared in his dream once more after a long absence. The brief dream had simply confirmed that the transaction was complete. At the same time, the anxiety that had been lodged in a corner of his heart melted away. Though he had never voiced it, part of him had wondered whether the parents and the countryside house he had reunited with were merely a deathbed hallucination. Now that fear was gone.
“Thank you, Divine One.”
To Yoo Jae-won, the mysterious entity was no different from a god. That being had first contacted him in his previous life, just after he turned thirty. It had not manifested in reality. Instead, it had appeared in his dreams and offered a deal.
—I will buy your dream. Name your price.
That was how it had begun. Yoo Jae-won had not pawned his soul or anything of the sort in exchange for regression. He had sold his dream. Buying and selling dreams was something even the ancestors had done long ago. Kim Chun-chu’s wife of Silla had purchased a strange dream from her younger sister and risen to become queen. Yoo Jae-won’s case was similar. The dream he sold to the divine being, however, was no ordinary pig dream or dragon dream.
“I was uncertain when I sold the dream I had cherished for fifteen years.”
There was a slight inaccuracy in his words. Dreams were like drawings on a sandy shore, washed away by the tide of forgetfulness. Most people could barely recall even the dream they had the night before. There was no such thing as cherishing a dream for fifteen years. But Yoo Jae-won was different. It was an ability no one would believe if he spoke of it. That was why he had kept his mouth firmly shut in his previous life. Yet he possessed a special gift: the ability to continue dreaming. At first he had assumed everyone dreamed the way he did. Only when he grew older and learned from friends and books that he was unusual did he realize the truth. Until he encountered the singularity, the ability had seemed trivial. Once he learned about lucid dreaming, however, the synergy became tremendous. He could shape any scene or environment he desired and do whatever he wished within it. He could even create NPCs and assign them roles. His dream had become a realistic version of Minecraft—a private world he could access for eight hours a day. He had spent fifteen years building and tending that vast space. He had cherished it so deeply that he had given it the grand name Infinity Dream. Within that world he had adventured, waged war, and fallen in love. Yet a dream remained only a dream. The more splendid Infinity Dream became, the greater the gap between it and reality grew. When that sense of futility reached its peak, the mysterious entity appeared. Looking back, it had been a divine being, and it had offered him the transaction in his dream.
“Can you turn back time? For example, send me back to when I was young while keeping my current memories.”
—Even for a single existence, reversing the great wheel of time is no easy feat. Yet with your fair price, the law of causality has been satisfied. The moment your life and death intersect and the boundary between dimensions thins, the pact will activate.
“Really? Then I accept!”
—We will purchase your dream, Infinity Dream, and in return we will turn back the wheel of time to the past you desire, preserving all your memories. Is this correct?
“Yes!”
—Then the transaction shall be made.
“Deal! No take-backs!”
Though it had happened decades ago, the memory of that day when he had shouted “deal” without hesitation remained vivid. At first he thought it had been nothing but a wild dream. Doubt crept in the next day. For the first time, the man who had always dreamed found himself unable to dream at all. He closed his eyes late at night and opened them to morning. There was no memory of anything in between. The mysterious entity—truly a divine being—had taken his dream, or more precisely, Infinity Dream. In exchange, he had slept so deeply that he awoke feeling utterly refreshed. Several days after the transaction was completed, Yoo Jae-won realized several crucial facts. First, Infinity Dream was truly gone, and in its place an enormous empty space had opened in his mind. It was as though he had deleted a program so large it had nearly filled his hard drive and made multitasking impossible. Vast storage capacity had been freed, and his thinking speed had multiplied. Like someone with savant syndrome, he could glance at a picture or book he had never seen before and memorize it instantly. On a whim he had read through a thick civil law textbook; astonishingly, he could still recite it word for word days later. He could not measure how large his new memory capacity truly was. Even until the day he died, his mind had never felt full.
The second realization was an unexpected benefit—a loophole in the deal with the divine being. The trigger for the regression ability was the moment of his own death. Yet there had been no stipulation about when or how he must die. He could choose the timing of his death freely. After several days of deliberation, he had decided to use his newly acquired vast memory to prepare thoroughly for regression and enjoy his next life to the fullest. In hindsight the suspicion had been unnecessary, but the moment of death itself had been nerve-wracking. Especially after he had carelessly looked away and fallen to his death in a gruesome manner, he had lived in constant dread, bordering on a nervous breakdown.
“Whew. Now I really have to do this right.”
All of that was in the past now. The secret diary of Yoo Jae-won’s new life would be filled with entirely different stories.