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2 ### Prologue: Regression
“Arrrgh!”
His head hurt. He had never experienced a headache like this before. Could you feel pain after dying? No. Then how was he able to think, “It hurts”?
“Je-cheol. What’s wrong?”
He heard his parents’ startled voices as they hurriedly opened the door and entered.
What on earth is this?
When his parents entered Je-cheol’s room and turned on the light, the room brightened. This was the room Je-cheol had used when he was young. An old desk. Books packed tightly across the wall. LP records and cassette tapes. And instead of a bed, a thick quilt laid out on the floor.
He abruptly got up and looked in the mirror.
A little kid with a pitch-black buzz cut was staring back at him.
This is me when I was in middle school?
His mother watched in concern as he repeatedly touched his closely shaved hair and face.
“Je-cheol. What’s wrong? Are you hurting somewhere? Did you have a nightmare?”
What was he supposed to say?
Should he tell his mother, who was younger than he remembered her, that her son who had committed suicide had returned?
No. When he first saw his mother come through the door, he thought he was in the afterlife. Did everyone in the afterlife retain the appearance they had when they were young?
After seeing his younger self in the mirror, Je-cheol could only guess that this was not the afterlife, but the past.
“Mother….”
He never thought he would see his mother again, the mother who had died three years before his father.
He had to fight back the tears that were about to spill.
“Oh my! What’s with calling me ‘Mother’? That’s creepy. I’m your mom. Mom!”
“Okay, okay, enough. Let’s go back to sleep. Honey, you’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood. It’s already past two in the morning. I guess he had a nightmare because he’s growing taller. Je-cheol, you go back to sleep too.”
His father pushed his mother gently by the back and led her out of Je-cheol’s room.
The calendar hanging on the closed door showed April 1980.
Was he in his first year of middle school?
Je-cheol, born in 1967, calculated the year in his head.
He looked around every corner of the room.
His middle school textbooks, reference books, and workbooks were arranged on the desk. His black Chinese-collar school uniform and cap were hanging nearby.
Under the desk was a bag identical to the one Jang Dong-gun carried in the movie Friend, and a photograph of a brightly smiling Brooke Shields was laminated and stuck to the wall.
He never imagined he would see again the things that had existed only in his memories.
About thirty minutes later, his father knocked on the door again.
“Are you asleep?”
“Ah… No, sir.”
His father carefully opened the door and entered, giving him an awkward smile.
“Did you have a dream? Or are you really sick somewhere?”
“No. I’m fine, Father.”
His father silently looked at Je-cheol.
Only an awkward silence passed between them.
“Je-cheol.”
“Father.”
The two of them broke the silence by calling each other at the exact same time.
Another brief silence followed.
“Je-cheol. Did you perhaps experience something really strange?”
His father cautiously spoke again.
“Yes?”
“Ah… Never mind. Go back to sleep.”
“Father. Wait a moment.”
Je-cheol stopped his father as he was about to leave.
“Yeah. If you have something to say, tell me. Be honest about anything.”
“Well… The thing is…”
How was he supposed to explain this strange situation?
How could he tell his father about the story that sounded like something out of a novel, the story his father had told him shortly before his death?
Je-cheol had no idea what he should do, and he could not stop the tears from falling.
“Did you perhaps… commit suicide?”
His father spoke first, his face filled with sorrow.
“Yes. Today…”
Without saying anything, his father approached Je-cheol and pulled him tightly into his arms.
His tightly shut lips finally parted, and a sob like a wail burst out.
It was something Je-cheol had never done even in his previous life.
For the first time, Je-cheol buried himself in his father’s arms and cried his heart out.