The Realization
Startled by her mother Yura's shout, Yurin scrambled away from Seon-a's side.
"Park Yurin, what on earth do you think you're doing? Is it alright to torment a friend who clearly doesn't want it?"
Whether she understood her own wrongdoing or simply dreaded the punishment, Yurin hung her head with a look of pure fright.
"I'm sorry, Mother. I won't do it again."
"I heard from the daycare director last time. Your friends are not your toys. Clearly the last scolding wasn't nearly enough?"
Yura spoke as though this were far from the first time such a thing had happened.
In truth, Yurin's habit of treating other children at daycare like playthings was nothing new. As an only child, she had barely ever mixed with kids her own age, and the detached house they lived in had no neighbors nearby. Had there been a child of similar age in a neighboring home she could visit, she might have learned at least something about how to treat a friend.
Yura had watched her husband try to discipline their daughter at home, but a man's characteristically soft, gentle voice was never going to get through to a stubborn child like Yurin. Looking at the whole picture — and considering a young child's capacity to understand — what she needed more than lectures was real interaction with peers her own age.
That was why they had started sending her to daycare. But even there, the teachers found it nearly impossible to rein her in when she did as she pleased. Yurin's mother, Yura, held a social position high enough to make the news, and the daycare staff treated her daughter with extreme caution. If they found fault with even the smallest thing, and if that somehow provoked Yura's anger, people as socially vulnerable as themselves would never be able to weather the consequences. For that reason, they never scolded Yurin directly when she misbehaved. Instead, they would text or call Yura and her husband, carefully describing what had happened and indirectly asking the parents to handle the discipline themselves — terrified of what might befall them if the wrong spark caught fire.
Yura, who had always used the busyness of her work as an excuse, felt the weight of her own responsibility for failing to educate her daughter properly. This situation, she believed, was largely her own fault.
"I should have raised a girl with the rod after all."
It was no longer an era when children were disciplined with corporal punishment, but Yura herself had grown up in a time when the rod was part of child-rearing. A woman going out into the world faced a far rougher, harder life than a man, and she needed to grow up strong. Determined not to become like her own mother, Yura had resolved never to raise a hand against her child — but witnessing this scene forced her to abandon that resolve.
She went into another room, found something suitable for corporal punishment, and returned with it in hand. Faced for the first time with the prospect of being struck, Yurin began to cry, tears streaming down her face as she begged with her hands worn raw from pleading.
"Mother, I was wrong! Please, I won't do it! Please, please!"
Then a voice cut through the ugly atmosphere.
"Um… Executive Director? Would it be alright if I called you that, the way Mother does?"
It was Seon-a's voice.
"You can just call me Auntie, dear."
Yura spoke gently, her expression apologetic, trying to put Seon-a at ease as well.
"Alright. Auntie… it wasn't what you think."
He spoke with a composure so steady it was hard to believe this was the same child who had been pinned down and forcibly kissed, tears welling in his eyes only moments before.
"Seon-a, I am so terribly sorry. I've clearly failed to raise my child properly. But this is how a parent educates a child. You're still young, so you may not understand — but if I leave something like this alone, Yurin will keep doing these awful things, not only to you but to her other friends as well. That's why I need to correct it right now. I hope you can understand."
Ordinarily, given Yura's nature, the proper thing would have been to send Seon-a out of the room and handle the discipline between mother and daughter alone. But there was also the calculation that if Seon-a told his parents what had been done to him, knowing that Yurin had been thoroughly punished would keep Mina and Hyuntae from growing too angry.
"Yurin and I were playing house, and we just got too into the acting. Look at me — I'm fine. We were just playing like something out of a drama."
Yurin stared at Seon-a in shock. She clearly hadn't expected the boy she had just forced herself on to come to her defense.
Thinking it over, Yura realized that while Yurin had bullied other children at daycare, she had never done anything sexual. It was entirely possible this really had been play. The urge to use the rod faded — but the two children who had done something wrong still needed to be taught a lesson.
"A girl suddenly kissing a boy is something that should never be done. And Seon-a, allowing it is something you shouldn't do either. You're both still too young to understand, but once you're older, that's something you only permit with someone you truly like."
After that, Yura delivered a somewhat old-fashioned lecture on proper conduct, then brought the two of them out to the back of the garden. She believed Seon-a's story, more or less — but leaving the two of them alone in that room again was a risk she wasn't willing to take.
Yura had originally wanted to socialize with Mina's family through the evening, but the domestic problem she had neglected for so long, now grown so large, weighed heavily on her mind. Afraid that abruptly ending the gathering might cause misunderstandings, she explained that something urgent had come up and she would need to step out shortly, apologized for keeping Mina's family so long, pressed several gift sets into their hands, and expressed her regret that they couldn't stay through dinner — then saw them out.
Mina, privately relieved that the uncomfortable visit was over so quickly, headed home with her family.
Defending Yurin had been nothing more than a calculated move — creating a debt he could call on later, knowing that his mother's connection to Executive Director Park Yura meant they would keep running into each other. Causing a rift between himself and the Executive Director or her family would only make things difficult. But there was also the simple fact that he found Yurin rather cute.
Looking at Executive Director Park Yura's top-celebrity-level beauty, he figured that if Yurin grew up anything like her mother, she would become a beauty no one could ignore. The desire to stay close to her was strong.
More than that, though — the physical strength difference was bigger than I expected.
When she had seized his wrist and smashed her lips against his, what he felt wasn't arousal so much as a hollow laugh and a visceral, undeniable confirmation that males were physically weaker than females. He had assumed that at this young an age, boys and girls would have roughly comparable strength. He had been wrong.
On another level, the memory of Yurin's expression as she kept mashing her lips against his — not even a real kiss, just a series of lip-collisions — was almost funny. But Yura's gaze, looking at him as a victim, drove home just how thoroughly the sexual values of this world had been inverted.
He still carried the values and memories of a previous life lived into his late twenties. But if he continued to be raised like a woman of his past life, both his body and his mind would inevitably change. Seon-a wanted no part of that. The mere thought of himself simpering and cooing like a girl sent a chill down his spine.
On top of that, the women of this world — no matter how many times he looked — never once struck him as alluring. Even the ones with beautiful faces would sit with their legs spread wide, talk like middle-aged men, belch after meals while lighting a cigarette, or wipe their faces with wet towels. Watching them behave exactly like men had been a profound shock. Even for someone who considered himself a total incel, this crossed a line. At this rate, dating a woman was going to be genuinely difficult.
If he thought about it from the opposite perspective, of course, it all made a kind of sense.
The opposite perspective…?
A promising idea took shape in Seon-a's mind.
Raise a girl to match his own tastes. In other words — treat another little girl the way women were treated in his past life.
No matter how reversed this world was, there was no reason he had to reshape himself to fit it. He recalled something he'd once heard: treat a man like a woman long enough, and he starts acting like one. By that logic, "correcting" someone's behavior might work just as well.
If I treat her like a woman from my past life, my own past-life masculinity should hold steady too.
And as a bonus, he'd end up with a girl molded to his preferences — two birds with one stone.
To choose a target, Seon-a ran through a mental checklist of conditions. A girl his own age. Someone with the potential to grow into a beauty. Someone who could be useful to his life in some way. Someone who already wanted to be close to him.
Yurin fits perfectly, doesn't she?
The advantages were overwhelming. Getting closer to her mother Yura — his mother's workplace superior — would clearly benefit Mina as well. And he could shape Yurin, a girl he already found appealing, into exactly the kind of woman he liked. The thought that if they eventually married as adults, this life might pass without any major worries, only hardened his resolve about what he needed to do.
Considering how well his looks seemed to work on the women of this world, the straightforward approach of starting as childhood friends looked like the best path.
Seon-a organized his thoughts and began considering how to become Yurin's childhood friend.
Distance the body, and the heart grows distant. Draw the body close, and the heart draws close as well.
That was the single greatest truth about human relationships he had learned in his previous life.
Two years of mandatory daycare, six years of elementary school, three of middle school, three of high school — fourteen years total spent together. Get to know someone that long, and it was impossible not to grow close. In a romantic context, spending that many years as friends might actually get in the way of dating…
But he intended to share physical affection with Yurin frequently. He needed to make her want him so badly she couldn't hold back. And once she reached that breaking point, a little skinship combined with mental conditioning to reshape her into his ideal — that was the most elegant method.
To put it into practice, he needed to run into Yurin often, in the same places, so they could grow close.
First step: switch daycares.
From conversations he'd already had with Yurin, he'd learned the name of her daycare and looked into its location. It was only a ten-minute drive from the one he currently attended — practically next door. It wasn't that he disliked the teachers or friends at his current daycare. But those connections were fleeting. What mattered more, he decided, was a "friend" he would see for the long haul and rely on often.
So he told his parents he wanted to attend the same daycare as Yurin.