Regressed to 2016 and Became a 150km Woman

Since I was young, I had more dreams than I could count. Baseball player, soccer player, Neotuber, boxer, pro gamer—I wanted to be all of them. The list of professions I longed for was endless, but the sad truth was that I had zero talent for any of them. Baseball, soccer, gaming; it didn’t matter. No matter what I tried, I never stood out in any meaningful way. So I turned to studying. At least with academics, hard work could carry you up to a certain point. The problem was that I had no talent there either. I copied the daily routine of the top student ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in school and studied every single day, yet a consistent third-grade average was the best I could manage. Still, I scraped my way into a university in Seoul. When that acceptance letter arrived, I was genuinely overjoyed. I told myself that now I could live like everyone else—get a normal job, earn a normal salary, and lead a normal life. That sense of pride carried me for a little while.

After finishing my military service, I began preparing for the job market. It should have been straightforward. My specifications were solid enough. My GPA was respectable, I had the necessary certifications, and I’d built up a decent amount of extracurricular experience. The real obstacle was confidence. Even when interviewing with small companies, the moment I stepped into the room my heart would hammer like it was trying to escape my chest. Making eye contact with the interviewers felt impossible. Every carefully prepared answer evaporated from my mind, and my voice would tremble uncontrollably. One rejection. Two. Ten. Eventually, receiving those polite “we regret to inform you” texts became routine. Sometimes I actually passed an interview. But it never lasted. Simply being around people drained me. More often than not, I’d be let go within days of starting.

“Ha… Life really is shit.”

I let out a long sigh and collapsed onto the bed. That was when a strange question floated into my head. Why was everyone else in my family so good-looking while I alone had drawn the short straw? My father had been so handsome in his youth that people would have believed he was an actor. My mother had been a beauty. My older brother was handsome, my older sister was pretty. Even my younger siblings had inherited those genes. I was the only exception. It was as if the universe had spun the genetic roulette wheel and landed on the worst possible outcome just for me.

Unable to let it go, I opened my phone and searched the internet. The results were clinical and cold.

One: Due to the law of regression to the mean, children born to exceptionally attractive parents tend to be closer to average human appearance. Two: Appearance is the result of countless random genetic combinations, so superior parental features are not directly copied. Three: Statistically, the probability of below-average looks appearing in the offspring of beautiful parents is roughly fifteen to twenty percent—one in five.

I stared at the screen in silence. Then a hollow laugh slipped out.

“So I won the twenty-percent lottery…”

I had never won the actual lottery. Stocks had crashed, cryptocurrency had crashed, and employment had been out of reach. Yet somehow I always hit the jackpot on the worst possible odds. One in five. It wasn’t even that high a probability. But of course it had to be me.

“No luck at all…”

I muttered and set the phone down. That was the exact moment it happened.

“What the hell is this…”

I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but the message remained unchanged. It was clearly bizarre. “Some new kind of virus?” I’d heard that advertisements these days used every trick imaginable. Thinking it might be a game ad, I examined it closely, but there was no company name, no close button—only the YES and NO options.

“What is this thing?”

I tried pressing the back button repeatedly. Nothing. I even held the power button. The window refused to disappear, as if the rest of the phone no longer existed. After a moment of hesitation I let out a small chuckle.

“There really is some weird stuff out there.”

It was obviously nonsense. Time travel? Such a thing couldn’t exist in reality. And even if it did, there was no reason it would choose me. Whatever. What does it matter?

I tapped YES without much thought. The part about randomizing appearance felt slightly unsettling, but my current situation was already rock bottom. If anything, the odds of improvement seemed higher than further decline.

“I’m exhausted.”

It had been another day of failed interviews. Both body and mind were completely drained. I tossed the phone onto the bedside table, pulled the blanket over my head, and quickly fell asleep.

……

……

……

Beep!

The sharp alarm jolted me awake. “Ah…”

Out of habit I reached for my phone, then froze. The ceiling was unfamiliar. So was the wallpaper, the desk, the wardrobe—everything felt both nostalgic and alien at the same time.

“What?”

The moment I sat up, my heart plummeted. This was my old room. The exact room I had lived in during my early twenties, right up until I graduated from university.

……

I stared blankly around before my trembling hand reached for the calendar. March 2016.

“What?”

A stupid sound escaped my lips. I snatched up the smartphone. The date on the screen was identical. 2016. Ten years ago. The very year I had turned twenty.

“No way…”

The notification from last night flashed through my mind.

“It was real?”

With shaking legs I rushed to the mirror. The moment I saw the face reflected there, my breath caught in my throat.

The person in the mirror was impossibly beautiful. Flawless skin without a single blemish, large luminous eyes, a sharp nose, and delicate lips. There wasn’t a single imperfection. If someone claimed this was the most beautiful face in human history, no one could argue. “Wow…”

An involuntary sigh of admiration escaped me. Having never once admired my own reflection in my entire life, the shock hit that much harder. Yet after staring for several seconds, a strange unease began to creep in.

“Huh?”

Something was off. She was undeniably an incredible ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beauty. That much was certain. But—

“Wait a second.”

My trembling fingers touched my face. The skin was far too soft. My neck was slender. My shoulders narrow. A terrible premonition swept over me. I looked down at my body.

And froze completely.

……

My mind went blank. I told myself it was a mistake and checked again. The result remained the same. There were breasts. And what should have been there… wasn’t.

“What the…”

My voice shook.

“What is this?”

Staggering backward, I looked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into the mirror once more. A beautiful young woman stood there. No matter how you looked at her, she was clearly female.

……

After standing there in stunned silence for several seconds, I pinched my cheek with trembling fingers. It hurt. This wasn’t a dream.

“…!”

A scream finally tore out of me.

“No! It said it would randomize my appearance! It never said anything about randomizing my gender…!”

Of course there was no reply. Only then did the exact wording of the notification come back to me. It had only mentioned randomizing appearance. There had been no guarantee that I would remain male, no reassurance that my sex would stay the same.

“This is a scam…”

The resentment ran so deep that I couldn’t even curse properly. I had hoped to become handsome. I had never, not once, hoped—or even imagined—becoming a woman.

At that exact moment, a semi-transparent window appeared before my eyes.

I accepted the situation surprisingly quickly. Returning ten years into the past was already absurd enough; waking up in a woman’s body on top of that made a status window seem almost ordinary. What caught my attention more than anything was the question itself.

“What talent should I add…?”

After a brief moment of thought, the first thing that came to mind left my lips.

“Baseball.”

It was the very first dream I had ever held. The moment the word left my mouth, the window updated.

My heart began to race. Raise it all the way to EX.

The rank climbed at blinding speed. E. D. C. B. Then it stopped.

“Ah.”

Of course. Eleven points had never been enough to climb all the way to EX. According to the requirements, reaching EX would have needed a staggering total of 221 points. Still, reaching B-rank was significant. B should be pretty decent.

Without hesitation I bolted out of the house. I needed to see exactly what B-rank baseball talent could do. I grabbed an old baseball and a speed gun from the storage room and headed to the empty lot nearby.

Along the way I noticed something strange. Even though I was sprinting at full speed, I wasn’t breathing hard at all. My body felt impossibly light, like that of an athlete who had trained for years. This is insane…

When I reached the empty lot, I picked up the baseball. An unfamiliar yet completely natural sensation flooded through me—how to grip it, the proper wrist angle, where to apply force. No one had ever taught me, yet the knowledge rose instinctively, as if I had spent decades playing the sport.

I took a full wind-up and threw with everything I had.

BANG!

The ball vanished from sight with a sound like the air itself had exploded. When I checked the speed gun a moment later, my entire body went rigid.

150 km/h.

I checked again, thinking I had seen wrong. It still read 150 km/h. Worried the device might be broken, I threw several more times. Every single reading was identical. My fingertips began to tremble.

150 km/h. That velocity was more than enough to turn professional in the KBO. In 2016 the KBO league average sat at 140.4 km/h, while the major leagues averaged 148.6.

“Ha…”

A helpless laugh escaped me. In my previous life, no matter how desperately I trained, 140 km/h had been my absolute limit. But now everything was different.

I looked down at the baseball in my hand and smiled.

“I can really become a baseball player.”

Because now, I could dream again.