Regression
It was one of those days where the breeze was cool, the sunlight was gentle, and the weather practically begged you to play outside.
"Ryu Minah!"
The moment I stepped through the front door after school, my mother welcomed me with incandescent rage.
"Huh? What is it, Mom?"
"I heard you broke a window playing soccer at school today!"
"Wait, what? Me?"
"Yes, you!"
I arched an eyebrow in total innocence, feigning complete ignorance.
"Wasn't me, though?"
"...Really?"
"Really, really."
I beamed a look of pure, unadulterated honesty straight into her eyes. Mom hesitated, thrown off by my sheer conviction.
"...You wait right there."
The second she pulled out her smartphone and began dialing, I eased one foot backward.
...Is this really the right call?
My survival instincts had kicked in the moment she ambushed me, but getting caught was only a matter of time. Rationally speaking—and especially for the future well-being of my spine—confessing right here and now was the correct path.
However.
This gives way more dopamine!
I clenched my fists behind my back, steeling my resolve. Keeping one eye on Mom, I waited for the exact right second.
"Yes, hello? Teacher? This is Minah's mother—"
The very moment the call connected and the first sentence left her lips—
Now!
I yanked the front door open and bolted.
"Sorry, Mrs. Park!"
"Hey! Ryu Minah!"
My mother's furious roar echoing down the corridor only added fuel to my sprint.
Three hours later.
"Tsk! Ryu Minah! Keep those arms straight!"
I had been caught.
Fool that I was, falling for that classic scam: 'If you come back right now, I won't be mad and will let it slide'....
Still, I couldn't run forever, so all things considered, the timing hadn't been terrible.
"If you'd just come clean from the start, I wouldn't even be this mad! But you lied straight to my face and ran away!"
"I'm sorry..."
"If you knew you did wrong, why pull a stunt like that?!"
"I'm sorry..."
"...Promise me you'll never lie to me again. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am..."
Mom debated for a moment before letting out an exasperated, softened sigh.
"Good grief... Put your arms down and come here, sweetie."
I dropped my numb, aching arms without missing a beat and dove into her embrace.
"You really can't pull that nonsense anymore, okay?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
As she gently rubbed my back, her hand grazed the exact spot where she had slapped me earlier. A sharp sting flared up, but hey, it was karma for my own sins. I just had to grin and bear it.
I bet that handprint looks super vivid right now.
Nursing that thought, I looked up at her.
"Mom."
"What?"
"Wanna hear the epic story of how the window actually got broken—"
SMACK!
"Aaargh!"
"You! You really just can't help begging for a beating, can you?!"
I was now one hundred percent certain there were two distinct handprints stamped on my back.
Roughly ten years ago, I experienced a Regression.
Waaah!
Right back to the very moment of my birth.
A regression...! My life is totally made!
At first, drunk on the sheer thrill of turning back the clock, I rejoiced, daydreaming of an easy life paved with flowers.
"It's a beautiful baby girl!"
It didn't take long to realize my new life wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows.
Wait... excuse me...?
First and foremost, my gender had swapped.
Was it a blessing in disguise? Luckily, I'd always possessed a resilient mindset, and since I had just undergone something as mind-boggling as regression itself, losing my previous physical equipment was something I could swallow, even if a lingering sense of loss remained.
The real torment of regression, however, was only just beginning.
Waaah!
"Oh, goodness~ smell that! Our Minah had a wonderful, healthy poop today, didn't she?"
Multiple times a day, a damp, squishy sensation engulfed my backside while a foul odor rose, and I was utterly powerless to do anything about it. The sheer helplessness, the hollow despair that made me want to give up on existence—just remembering it felt like watching my human dignity stripped away in real time.
Slurp, slurp.
"Aww~ look at her drink! Is the formula that delicious~?"
No, it tastes like crap.
To be fair, it wasn't strictly disgusting. It might be bland water to an adult palate, but for a newborn, it was acceptable sustenance. Drinking it at least five times a day, every single day, was enough to make anyone gag.
Ugh... I really don't want to drink this today....
"Huh? Why isn't she eating well today? No appetite? Did I mix the formula wrong?"
Still, breast milk and baby formula were the only items on the menu at that stage of life. I endured it through sheer grit, telling myself that the more I chugged, the faster I'd grow up to devour real, delicious food.
Screw it...! Down the hatch...!
"Aww~ did your appetite come back?"
Perhaps as a lingering side effect of that trauma, once I finally graduated to regular food, I ended up loving eating far more than I had before my regression, developing a fierce craving for rich, intensely seasoned dishes. Well, that was just nature taking its course.
"Mama!"
"Yes~ what is it, my sweet girl?"
Learning to speak again nearly drove me insane.
"Gimme miwk!"
"Huh...? What do you want?"
"Miwk!"
"Miwk...?"
"M! Lk!"
"Ah, milk!"
"Yeah! Miwk!"
After countless bloody battles against my own tongue, I learned an inconvenient truth: pronunciation isn't determined by willpower or effort, but by physical oral anatomy.
Bro, I'm sorry....
Those months were spent in deep, silent repentance toward a buddy from my past life whom I used to relentlessly roast for mumbling.
Man... I'm so bored....
A little more time passed, and I reached the ripe age of six.
I miss modern civilization so damn much....
Compared to the glorious, dopamine-drenched future I had once known, the dawn of the twenty-first century was a painfully dull, low-tech wasteland.
How is there literally nothing entertaining on TV?
Worse, the comedic sensibilities of this era clashed horribly with mine. Variety shows fell utterly flat unless someone was pulling off sheer, unadulterated physical slapstick.
Even the anime graphics look so crude....
Whenever I tried to revisit what my previous self had remembered as legendary classic masterpieces, my eyes—spoiled by high-budget modern animation—simply couldn't accept what they were seeing.
"I told you, I'm enrolling you in kindergarten!"
"Mom, my mental age doesn't align with toddlers. I can't hang out with them."
"...Right, sure."
Despite my complaints, I was dying of boredom, and my parents were growing genuinely worried about a six-year-old with zero friends, so off to kindergarten I went.
"Minah! That kid said this playground is their turf and told us to beat it!"
"What? That punk? Hey, what kindergarten is he from?"
"They said Haneul Kindergarten!"
"Haneul Kindergarten? All right."
Contrary to my fears, I ended up playing with the other kids remarkably well.
"From now on, I will stand atop the heavens."
"Waaaaah!"
The only downside was that Mom happened to witness my reign of playground terror firsthand.
"Minah! You shouldn't fight with your friends!"
"Mom, a playground is a public facility."
"It is...?"
"They tried to claim public property as their exclusive private territory and told us to leave. They illegally obstructed our right to use a public facility, so wasn't my action justifiable self-defense? Besides, I didn't even throw the first punch—they did."
"Minah...?"
I would stake my life that until Alzheimer's claims me, I will never forget the expression on my mother's face that afternoon.
"Mother, have you seriously considered enrolling Minah in the Gifted Education Center? In my fifteen years as a preschool teacher, I have never seen a child as brilliant as Minah!"
Oh, and thanks to that stunt, I briefly got branded as a prodigy.
"Waaaah! No! I hate the Gifted Center! No, no, nooo!"
Thanks to a frantic, all-out tantrum, I managed to dodge that bullet, but the whole incident served as a stark reminder: let your guard down for a single second, and your life will veer off in wild, unintended directions.
"Minah, you're starting elementary school soon. How do you feel?"
"Hmm... Guess I'm officially stepping into the vicious cycle of private cram schooling?"
"...It was my mistake asking you."
One way or another, weathering those chaotic years, the days flew by in a blur until I arrived at the present.
"Goodness... Where did I go wrong raising you...? You were never like this when you were little..."
It wasn't my fault; a two- or three-year-old child slinging macroeconomic terminology while cussing would have horrified anyone.
"You suddenly got so weird when you turned six."
"Maybe the TV is to blame?"
That's because I busted my tail pretending to be a normal, quiet angel until I turned five.
I offered a convenient, plausible excuse out loud while keeping the real truth—which Mom could never fathom—safely buried inside.
"If that's the case, no more TV for you. If you quit watching right now, maybe you won't turn out any weirder."
"Uh... what?"
...What did I just say?
Realizing my catastrophic blunder, an icy chill shot straight down my spine. I shouted in a frantic panic.
"W-Wait...! A-Anything but that...!"
No matter how outdated the humor was or how stale the programming felt, TV was still TV.
If I lose the idiot box too, I'll die!
My brain scrambled at full throttle, instantly steering the conversation elsewhere.
"Mom! Minah doesn't know about any of that! Minah just wants grilled sausages for dinner tonight!"
"Whew... If you didn't have that cute face of yours..."
Thank goodness I was born with a face this adorable....
Following my regression, I had grown into a girl who was, by any objective standard, exceptionally pretty and cute. When a girl with looks like mine laid on the aegyo with pinpoint precision, my mother's surrender was practically guaranteed.
"All right, all right. I'll grill up some sausages for you today."
"Yay!"
Combining the sweet triumph of protecting my TV privileges with the sheer bliss of sausages for dinner, I let out a cheer and wiped the cold sweat pooling on my brow.
Phew...! That was way too close.
Either way, while I had adapted well enough to survive daily life, a laundry list of grievances remained.
Chief among them was this:
"I should be mining crypto right now..."
I was completely failing to exploit my regressor advantages where it mattered most.
"Honestly, mining is impossible right now, but I at least want to scoop up some blue-chip stocks..."
There's just no way for me to buy them....
Even if prices were dirt cheap, I had zero means of purchasing them. I didn't even possess a bank account in my own name, which brought the whole conversation to a screeching halt.
"Forget everything else... I just want a smartphone...."
Before my regression, an elementary schooler without a smartphone was practically treated as an anomaly. But in this era, smartphones were still rare enough among kids that owning one made you the envy of the entire schoolyard.
"When will they finally buy me one...?"
Going by the timeline of my previous life, my parents hadn't bought me one until I entered middle school, meaning I had roughly three years left to wait.
"Three years... Three whole years, huh...."
Way too long.
"Should I just use Mom's phone to trade stocks after all?"
The risk was astronomical. Not too long ago, I had secretly used Mom's phone to purchase stocks without permission, got caught red-handed, and came dangerously close to being kicked out of the house in my socks.
"Still... what if I pull it off?"
Running a quick mental simulation, I concluded that if I got caught a second time, my physical form would not remain intact.
"Tsk... Sucks, but waiting is the only sane choice...."
Still, I want a smartphone so damn bad....
With a smartphone in hand, I could tackle both my financial dreams and my crushing boredom in one fell swoop.
"Ugh, whatever!"
They always say not to look up at a tree you can't climb.
Sour grapes... they're just sour grapes....
I decided to cut my losses and abandon any lingering attachment.
That evening.
"Ah, right. I almost forgot about this."
In the middle of our family dinner, Dad suddenly broached the subject and locked eyes with me.
...What is it? Why is he staring at me so intently?
Paranoid that Dad was about to lecture me about the shattered school window, I eased my butt off the dining chair, ready to spring into a tactical retreat at the first sign of danger.
"Minah, wouldn't you like to have a smartphone?"
"Huh?"
Wait, out of nowhere?