The Day Everything Turned Backward
“Those bastards... It’s a three-run game, so why the hell would they rush that and drop it? Just disband already.”
Late at night, after work, that was me at forty-six, Kim Dohyun, drinking canned beer and watching baseball.
A perfectly ordinary life for a single man in his midforties anywhere in South Korea.
I worked for a decent mid-sized company, and the salary wasn’t bad, but there was no one to call on a Friday night and nowhere I wanted to go. Even the one hobby I had left was a baseball team that hadn’t won a championship in twenty years, so all I could do was sigh.
I couldn’t stand it anymore and changed the channel right away.
“Zero, keep changing the channel until I tell you to stop.”
「Yes, Master.」
A dry female voice sounded in my head. Zero, the AI implanted in my brain. It was a brain-side assistant that had become as indispensable to people as smartphones by the early 2030s.
Tick, tick, tick.
A home shopping channel was selling robot vacuums, an audition program had teenagers dancing, and on a melodrama, a daughter-in-law was splashing kimchi broth all over her mother-in-law. The world on TV moved too fast and too hard, and I felt like some slick film of oil drifting along behind it, unable to catch up.
It struck me all over again how sad it was that the only thing I could understand on TV was my eternally losing baseball team.
That was when I saw it.
["Male A" misses the class he was supposed to take with "Female C" because their schedules were off by a hair.]
Campus Life with Our Sweet-and-Bitter Twenties?!
My gaze drifted to the screen without meaning to. The channel, which had been flipping rapidly until then, stopped changing. The program kept playing. Zero had noticed that I’d taken interest and locked it in place.
Campus life, huh... I’m jealous. I miss it too.
My youth.
Maybe it was a story from too long ago, but my childhood hadn’t been bad. My parents were hardworking, and thanks to that, our family wasn’t what you’d call silver-spoon rich, but we had enough money to be considered comfortably middle class. I still remembered the weekends when we’d ride out into the suburbs in the car my father drove and grill meat together.
But that happiness collapsed like a sandcastle. It started when my grandfather took the land compensation money and plunged into an aggressive construction venture.
“Old man! Just trust me on this! This is going to blow up, I’m telling you! It’ll be redeveloped for sure, just like the land you farmed!”
My grandfather, who had farmed all his life, must have fallen for those con men’s words.
Seduced by their silver tongue, he poured in everything he had and then borrowed a huge sum on top of it. The result was devastating. To make matters worse, the shock gave him dementia, and the mess that followed landed squarely on my father’s shoulders. He was the eldest son, only in his thirties then.
That was when I was in middle school.
My father could have run. He could have renounced the inheritance, let my grandfather go bankrupt, cut ties, and disappeared. Maybe then our family would have survived.
But my father, stubbornly, perhaps foolishly, tried to take responsibility for the debt and the ailing old man to the very end. He worked at the office during the day and drove a private hire car at night. On weekends, he went to construction sites and carried bricks.
That still wasn’t enough. We sold the house, sold the car, and even sold my mother’s wedding jewelry. We scraped and ground ourselves down trying to pay off my grandfather’s debt, but all that came back to us was cold contempt.
I can never forget the things our relatives spat at my father and the rest of us at my grandfather’s funeral, where the smell of yukgaejang hung thick in the air.
“Brother, tell the truth! You really blew all the money from selling Dad’s land, didn’t you?! You didn’t sneak it away somewhere, did you?” “You were the eldest son, and you couldn’t even manage it? What is this? We thought there’d at least be a few scraps left for us, but you left us nothing but debt!” “Look at that girl, white-faced and pretty like some bar hostess, even wearing makeup. They’ve got money in that house, huh?” and the like.
My uncles and aunts, their faces flushed red from drink, jabbing their fingers in accusation. My father said nothing to them.
They were the same people who hadn’t contributed a single won toward my grandfather’s hospital bills, his debts, or his taxes. Even I had taken leave from college and worked part-time just to help pay it down.
In the end, my father couldn’t withstand that pressure. Not long after my grandfather died, he passed away in his sleep from stress-induced heart failure. In the cold dawn, standing before his body and shaking him again and again, I felt the world collapse.
All of that began when I was in middle school and lasted until I was about twenty.
...
Just thinking about it suddenly made it hard to breathe.
> Playing music that will calm your mind.
...Thanks.
Soft Chopin nocturnes flowed from the speaker.
After my father died, my life became simple. Our family also had debt under my mother’s name, so I dropped out of the college I had taken leave from and threw myself fully into construction labor.
I had worked part-time even in high school, but this was the first time I was really, seriously making money.
Every day started at four in the morning in the labor market. There were subway construction sites where cement dust felt like it was being driven deep into my lungs. Every time I hoisted heavy rebar onto my shoulder, my collarbone throbbed under the strain. In summer I got heat rash and my skin peeled; in winter I got frostbite and lost feeling in my toes.
My younger sister grew sick of the pathetic state of our household and ran off. Years later, when the police called to say she was working in an illegal nightlife district, I slapped her across the face and cried. And then she disappeared again.
That was more than twenty years ago now.
Even knowing it was a useless thought, I asked Zero anyway.
If I could go back then... could I change things?
「....」
Zero, could you do it?
「I could. I could do more than change things. I could raise Master into the top 0.0001 percent of the upper class. Naturally, I could also protect your family. And I could help you take revenge on the people you want revenge on, Master.」
Revenge? On who? I don’t exactly have anyone I want revenge on.
「You do.」
...
「Your relatives. In truth, they were the ones who made your father die, weren’t they? Your grandfather incurred the debt, and your father foolishly tried to solve it, but the people who made Master’s family suffer the most were your relatives.」
...Zero really was something else. It understood me better than I understood myself.
「And also.」
Zero added one more thing.
「If we could go back then, and if I could help you, I think I could make it possible for Master to enjoy what you’ve been longing for all this time: your youth.」
Youth...
「Yes. Of course, turning back time is impossible even for me.」
Youth was a word that sent me deep into thought. On the TV, that show I’d seen earlier, Campus Life?!, was still playing.
I thought making money was the priority back then, but now that I think about it... I regret it.
When I was in my twenties, when I was still a college student, I thought the important thing was to make money right away because our family was poor.
But back then I didn’t know that the thing called “memories” was more valuable than the ten-thousand or hundred-thousand won I could make immediately doing labor.
And I didn’t know that for my father, seeing me enjoying college and dreaming about the future would have meant more than me handing him money earned from construction work.
And...
Going to college normally, stupidly getting drunk and wandering the streets at night, doing homework until dawn, acting like an idiot with friends on campus, roaming around festivals, going to MT trips, trying romance too.
Memories like that are the kind of thing money can’t buy later.
I hadn’t known that in my twenties. I was far too young to know.
Come to think of it, maybe I was just like my father when he stubbornly tried to shoulder my grandfather’s debt.
「....」
That vicious cycle was broken because my father died... no, because of it.
Still, I hadn’t lost everything. Because I’d worked hard on construction sites from a young age, I’d gotten a job and established myself faster than other people my age.
So now, in my midforties, I have some room to breathe.
But what good is money sitting in my bank account?
I don’t have memories. I don’t have a life.
...I should at least be grateful I’ve got money in the bank, I guess.
If I had neither memories nor money, that would’ve been a real disaster.
Crack.
For no real reason, I crushed the beer can in my hand.
「When you’re in your sixties, you’ll probably think even your forties are youth.」
Was that advice, comfort, or just something she was saying?
I didn’t know.
Maybe it was time to sleep.
I headed to the bedroom.
Thud.
I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
When I’m in my sixties, even my forties will feel like youth...
It was a loaded thing to say. And since Zero said it, it was probably one hundred percent true.
Even so, what I missed, what I envied, was the youth of my twenties.
At this point, I even felt sorry for the version of me in my twenties.
I made you suffer like a fool and gave you nothing to enjoy.
And in exchange, I, in my forties, got to live a life that was only a little easier.
...Did I trade the memories of youth for the bland stability of the present?
If that was the deal, I couldn’t help thinking it was a terrible bargain.
If I’d exchanged my youth’s memories for this money... I should at least have been a man with hundreds of billions in assets.
Thinking that, I fell asleep...
— Son, fighting! Don’t get nervous!
— Daughter! Don’t worry too much! Stay calm and only solve the ones you can!
— Upperclassmen from Daehun High! Hang in there! Fire the chant: “Every guess is right!”
— Aaaaaaaaah! “Daehun High, fighting!!! Every guess is right!!!”
— Jinil High can’t lose either! Shouts and chants, fire!
— Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! “Jinil High perfect score on the CSAT, let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!!”
— Those Jinil High bastards...! Daehun High, fire the shout again!!
— Kyaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!
— You punks! Are you going to lose to Daehun High?! Shout louder!
— Taaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
...
There was no doubt that I had fallen asleep.
Yes, that was certain.
But... where am I?
The question was wrong.
I knew where I was.
This was the CSAT test site. The first and last CSAT test site of my life.
— Shout louder!
— Yaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!
— Louder than that! You brats, are you going to lose to Jinil High?!
— Kiiiiyaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
Students in uniforms were shouting around me... though “cheering” didn’t really fit the noise. It was more like howling. What the hell were they doing?
But that didn’t concern me in the slightest.
...Why am I here?
As I asked the question in a daze, a familiar voice answered inside my head.
「Master, I have finished analyzing the situation. You have regressed to November 13, 2008, the day of the CSAT.」
...What?
...Regressed?
「Yes.」
So... you mean going back to the past, that kind of regression?
「Yes.」
What kind of impossible...
「After 51,356 reviews, that is the only explanation. I hacked the surrounding network, accessed the internet, and checked every piece of information available for verification.」
I really went back to the past...? Are you sure? And hacking? You had that kind of function?
「I am certain. Also, I am a lifestyle AI, so my hacking abilities are far inferior to those of a specialized security AI. However, at this point in time, I can easily break through any security available in 2008.」
Zero was incredible. It could hack too... no, wait.
Why am I here... no, how am I here?
「I do not know either. There are things on Earth that cannot be explained by science, and it appears you are experiencing one of them, Master.」
...
「First, may I recommend your next action, Master?」
My next action.
Right. For now, it was probably best to do whatever Zero told me.
What should I do?
Zero answered immediately.
「Master has been given a chance to live youth again. A chance to change everything, a chance at the most brilliant youth in all of South Korea.」
...!
「First, I will give you the correct answers to all subjects on this year’s CSAT. Let’s begin with that.」
The AI that had regressed with me said it would help me live my life.
Because it was the day of the CSAT, it was cold, but my heart had already begun to pound hot.
---