The Commercial
A few months after the day of the ad shoot.
The day of the smartphone launch had finally arrived.
“Ughhh!”
“Agh, here we go again.”
“When is my smartphone getting here?!”
“Just be patient. It's only been three days since they said shipping started. What's the big rush? It's supposed to arrive today anyway.”
“Mom doesn't understand my pain….”
For me, someone still marinated in the overwhelming speed that ultra-fast civilization used to provide, any delivery taking more than three days was grounds for a refund — unless a public holiday got in the way.
‘I mean, why isn't it handed over on the spot the day of the ad shoot anyway?’
Okay, fine, I actually knew the reason.
The ad shoot itself took place well before the smartphone launch, so they'd said they'd send it to coincide with the release date.
‘Still! Couldn't they have given it out early?!’
Worse, even once it arrived, I couldn't just start using it — I'd have to get the phone activated separately on top of that.
“Why does shipping take so looong!”
With all the steps I still had to get through and the delivery delayed on top of it, I was about to lose my mind.
“I did say our daughter seemed a little different after the shoot… but nope, still the same, huh?”
“Mom, what do you mean 'different.' Like I told you back then, it was acting — something I do every day anyway.”
“…That's something to be proud of.”
On the way home that day, Mom had asked me a certain question.
‘Minah, honey, you've never actually practiced acting or anything, right? How are you so good at it?’
From Mom's perspective, she may have thought it was talent. But rather than talent, there was a very clear, very specific reason I was good at it.
‘Huh? Isn't making mistakes and lying to your mom also a form of acting?’
‘…Huh. I guess it is?’
When I put it that way, Mom actually accepted it.
‘So I've been both your biggest victim and your biggest collaborator all along….’
‘Isn't that a win-win, though?’
Mom, muttering to herself like she'd achieved enlightenment, looked a little pitiful at that moment.
Anyway.
‘That's part of it, sure, but the regression is probably the biggest factor.’
Because of the regression, I'd been playing the part of a helpless baby from the moment I was born, for years on end. And since I hadn't exactly quit even now, my acting career had spanned a full ten years.
‘The thing Director Juhwan praised me for most was how natural I was, after all.’
That part went without saying for me. It was an environment where nothing else was possible.
‘Not that I can claim I have zero talent, though.’
After the ad shoot wrapped, I'd run a little experiment to see just how far I could take my acting. First result: crying on cue, success.
Turns out recalling the sting of the whooping Mom gave me made the tears come easily.
‘Plus, I can pull off whatever expression I want, more or less on demand.’
That one was less a product of the regression and more an acquired skill from years of lying without getting caught.
But what good did any of that do me now? All of it was useless to present-day me.
“Hrgghhh! When is my smartphone getting here!”
Ding-dong!
“Huh?!”
The instant the doorbell rang in my ears, I stopped thrashing on the sofa and bolted for the front door.
Clunk!
“You can just hand me the package! Thank you! Have a good one!”
I snatched the small box out of the delivery man's hands and headed back inside.
Slam!
“It's finally here!”
After confirming the shipping label said the contents were a smartphone, I let out a victory cheer and was about to head into my room when —
Ding-dong!
“Eh?”
The doorbell rang again, and wondering what was up, I opened the front door once more.
“Is something wrong?”
The delivery man — from whom I'd swiftly made off with the smartphone — was still standing there with an incredibly awkward expression on his face.
“Um… I still need to collect the delivery fee. Are your parents home by any chance?”
‘…So it was cash on delivery.’
…How embarrassing.
A few hours later.
“Heh heh heh.”
Activation complete. I finally held a smartphone that was fully, one hundred percent mine.
“Minah. That laughter of yours. It has to go.”
“Can't help it! It's just too good!”
“You're really going to keep the promise you made with Mom, right?”
“Yep! Of course!”
‘On the surface, anyway.’
I'd told Mom the same thing, and naturally, I'd keep it — on the surface.
‘As long as I don't get caught, that counts, doesn't it?’
Perfect is the enemy of good — no wait, the real saying goes: complete is better than perfect. It was one of the few genuinely useful truths about the world I'd learned back in the army, before all this.
‘Still, I should play it safe for now.’
Given my track record and reputation, Mom would definitely be watching me like a hawk at first, gritting her teeth. So for the next few months, I'd follow the manual to the letter, and then, once Mom started to relax —
‘That's when I'll be free…!’
“Heh heh heh.”
“I said stop laughing like that.”
“Yes ma'am.”
Finished with my conversation with Mom, I went into my room and started poking at the smartphone from every angle.
“Ahh! Nothing beats the taste of civilization!”
Sure, there wasn't nearly as much I could do compared to the future. But the basics all worked, and that satisfied a decent chunk of my thirst.
‘I'd kill for a Shorts or Reels feed, though….’
Well, what could I do? It wasn't like I could accelerate technological progress myself.
I'd just have to wait.
“Time to get to work, then.”
Having topped up my dopamine sufficiently, I opened a stock website in pursuit of my dream of becoming a unemployed-but-rich layabout.
“Whoa… these prices are no joke.”
Looking at stocks that were destined to double, quintuple, tenfold, even twentyfold in the future, I was reminded all over again of just how broken being a regressor really was.
“Alright then, shall we make a plan?”
Squeezing out every drop of economic knowledge I had, I mapped out a route that would extract maximum efficiency from minimum capital.
After wrestling with it for a good long while, though, one question suddenly flitted through my head.
“…Wait, this whole plan still requires seed money, doesn't it?”
As of this moment, my entire seed money consisted of exactly one thing: the appearance fee from that ad I shot.
That was it.
“…Should I just grow it slowly through stocks?”
It would take forever, but I could design it so I only ever made gains and never took losses.
“But seed money is really the most important thing here, isn't it….”
‘Could I cover the seed money with my allowance?’
“Yeah. Absolutely not.”
I got a measly 2,000 won a week — about a dollar and a half. What exactly was I supposed to do with that?
“Tsk… nothing for it, then.”
I'd just have to redraw the whole plan around my pathetic seed money—
Clunk!
“Minah! Your ad is on! Come quick! Let's watch it together!”
Mom's excited voice called me out urgently, but there was something extremely important on my plate right now, so I declined.
“Mom, I'll watch it later.”
I was in the middle of planning the single most important scheme of my life. A video I could rewatch anytime I wanted could wait—
“…Ryu Minah.”
Jolt!
“J-Just give me three seconds!”
The sound of Mom calling my full name kicked my survival instincts into a gear I had never experienced before. I flung the smartphone onto my bed and sprinted to the living room.
“Oh! It's just starting!”
By perfect timing, the ad kicked off in earnest right as I planted myself on the sofa.
“Alright, V sign!”
The commercial opened with a group of high school girls all taking a selfie together.
Click!
Anywhere, anytime — joyfully.
The high school girls playfully squabbled, huddled together, snapped the photo — and then the scene cut to an office worker on the subway, using the smartphone to blast through her work at top speed.
Me: (work document file)
Me: Sending over the work document now!
Manager: Already?
Manager: That was fast.
Manager: (thumbs-up sticker)
Anywhere, anytime — instantly.
And then the scene changed again, and there I was.
Well, technically, my hand and the smartphone.
Riing riing~
‘Right, in the end they decided not to show me for the first part — just focus on the screen of someone placing a video call on the smartphone.’
After a whole series of takes, that had come out as the strongest option.
‘The director said something about it adding more impact that way?’
Honestly, I had no idea what he meant, but I just went with it. He was the director — surely he had a professional's eye for things I couldn't see.
“Hello?”
Only after the call connected did my face appear on screen.
“Mom!”
‘Whoa, so my face takes up the WHOLE screen like that?’
I'd been told the shot would focus mainly on my face, but I hadn't expected it to be this tightly framed.
Still, at the same time, I now understood exactly what the director had meant about impact.
Wham!
‘Guess it hit Mom that hard too.’
“Kyaaah! Minah! Our Minah looks SO pretty on screen~!”
Mom scooped me up in a hug, delighted. It was a little overwhelming, but I figured refusing would only make things more annoying later, so I decided to bear it. And then —
Squeezeee—
“Why are you so pretty?! My daughter?!”
“Ngh! M-Mom! Air! Air!”
Excited Mom had forgotten about restraint and was hugging me so hard I couldn't breathe.
“Ah, sorry! My daughter's just too pretty!”
“Why are you making such a fuss over something so obvious?”
Truth be told, my mother was, at her core, a shameless doting machine.
‘First time in ages she's gone full mode.’
These past few years, I'd been running around doing this and that so much that I honestly hadn't seen Mom in this state in quite a while.
“Aigo~ our daughter, I wonder who she takes after, being this pretty~!”
“You, obviously.”
“You think so~?”
While I was busy soaking up Mom's syrupy gushing, the ad quietly ended. Not that the rest mattered much — there was nothing after my part worth watching anyway.
And the next day.
“Hey, isn't that the girl from the smartphone ad?”
“Whoa! I think it is!”
I was walking to school like always when a few people on the street recognized me.
“Hm.”
‘Not bad, not bad.’
My personality was not exactly free of attention-seeking tendencies, so having strangers take notice of me on the street didn't feel bad at all.
‘So the ad's reach really is something else….’
This was still an era when TV viewership was high, and with a major corporation's ad behind it, the synergy must have kicked in.
“Minah! I saw your ad! What's going on?!”
“Me too!”
And the moment I got to school, a few of my close friends came straight up to me.
“The opportunity just kind of fell into my lap.”
“Minah! Your acting is seriously good!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah! I honestly thought you were a completely different person!”
“Me too, me too!”
“Hm, is that so?”
The kids' pure, unfiltered compliments made my shoulders rise just a little.
“And you looked SO pretty on screen?!”
“Hey, that's not right! Minah's even prettier in person!”
“Right, right! Real life Minah is way prettier!”
“Heh heh, calm down, everyone.”
The endless stream of compliments felt great, but I couldn't let this go on forever, so I got the girls to settle down.
“Hey! Ryu Minah! You were on TV!”
“Seriously! I saw it too!”
“…Oh, did you?”
But I soon realized that had been a colossal mistake.
The moment I got the close friends to quiet down, even the kids who weren't usually all that close with me swarmed over en masse and started unloading their reviews of the commercial.
“You laugh like that all the time anyway.”
“Right! Minah, you never laugh like that normally!”
“W-well, it was pretty when you smiled, I guess….”
“Huh?! Hey! Do you like Ryu Minah?!”
“Wh-what?! N-no I don't!”
‘…No, seriously, why are you having this conversation directly in front of MY desk?’
One of the hardest things since regressing was exactly this: the sheer voltage kids put out when they get worked up.
I simply could not keep up with that trademark unhinged high-tension energy.
‘If it were a topic I could get into myself, I'd just ride the wave along with them.’
“How is anyone supposed to vibe to THIS….”
My head was about to short-circuit, but class was starting soon anyway, so I decided to just wait until things naturally died down.
Ding-ding-ding-ding~ Ding-ding-ding-ding~ Ding-ding-ding-ding!
“Hey, class is starting. Back to your seats.”
Thankfully, the bell rang, the kids obediently returned to their desks, and the teacher walked into the classroom.
“Alright, everyone~ good morning~”
““Good morning!””
“Today~ I have some happy news~ so before we start class, I thought we'd watch a little video~”
At those words, a terrible scenario began unspooling in my head.
‘No way. Surely not….’
I tried my best to deny the thought. But isn't there an old saying that gut feelings of doom are always right?
“Alright, V sign!”
‘No….’
This was a public execution of the highest order…!