Chapter 1 · 10 min
Chapter 1
Regression
A day when the breeze was cool and the sunlight just right, perfect for playing outside.
“Ryu Mina!”
As soon as I got home after school.
My furious mom warmly greeted me.
“Hm? What is it, Mom?”
“I heard you broke a window while playing soccer at school today!”
“Huh? Me?”
“Yes!”
I replied to Mom with one eyebrow raised, as if I were hearing about it for the first time.
“It wasn’t me.”
“...Really?”
“Really.”
I gave her a trustworthy look that said I hadn’t told even the tiniest lie.
Mom hesitated for a moment after seeing my eyes.
“...Wait here for a second.”
Then, as I watched Mom take out her smartphone and call someone, I subtly took a step backward.
‘...Is this really the right choice?’
She asked me the moment I got home, so I instinctively played dumb.
But getting caught was only a matter of time.
In that case, confessing now would be the right choice, rationally speaking.
And considering the future condition of my back, too.
But.
‘This gives me way more dopamine!’
I clenched the hand hidden behind my back, steeling my resolve.
Then I carefully watched Mom for the right timing.
“Yes~ Teacher~ This is Mina’s mom.”
The moment the call connected to my teacher and Mom spoke her first sentence.
‘Now!’
I quickly opened the front door and ran away.
“Mrs. Park! Sorry!”
“Hey! Ryu Mina!”
Mom’s shout from behind gave me the strength to run even faster.
__________
3 hours later.
“Tsk! Ryu Mina! Are you not keeping your arms up properly?!”
In the end, I got caught.
‘I’m the idiot for believing her when she said she wouldn’t get mad if I let myself get caught now...’
Still, I couldn’t keep running forever, so I figured this was actually not a bad time to get caught.
“Mom wouldn’t have gotten mad if you’d just told the truth! But you lied and ran away!”
“I’m sorry...”
“If you knew it was wrong, why did you do it!”
“I’m sorry...”
“...Seriously, next time, just don’t lie. Got it?”
“Yes...”
Then, after thinking for a moment, Mom spoke in a voice that had finally calmed down.
“Geez... Put your arms down and come here. My Mina.”
I quickly lowered my numb arms and hugged Mom.
“You really can’t do that again~ Got it?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
Every time Mom’s hand stroked my back and brushed against the spot she had hit earlier.
The pain stung a little, but it was karma for what I’d done, so what could I do?
I just had to endure it.
‘The mark must be really obvious, right?’
Thinking that, I looked up at Mom.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“Want me to tell you the story of how I broke the window—”
Smack!
“Gyaah!”
“You! You really do find a way to earn yourself another beating every single time!”
I was certain there were now exactly two palm prints on my back.
______________
It was 10 years ago.
I regressed.
‘Waaah!’
To the moment I had just been born.
-Regressing...! My life is totally made now?!
At first, when I realized that I had regressed.
I was simply thrilled by the fact that I had gone back in time, imagining nothing but smooth sailing ahead.
‘What a beautiful daughter!’
It didn’t take long for me to realize that things weren’t going to be as wonderful as I had imagined.
-Excuse me...? What...?
First of all, my sex had changed when I regressed.
Still, I suppose I was lucky?
I had always been mentally resilient.
And since I had already experienced something as utterly absurd as regression.
Even though changing sex gave me a slight sense of loss, I could endure that much.
But the suffering regression had in store for me was only just beginning.
‘Waaaah!’
‘Oh my~ What a smell~ Our Mina had another healthy poop today, huh?’
The helplessness of feeling something wet against my butt several times a day, smelling it, yet being unable to do anything about it myself.
Just thinking about that hollow feeling that made me lose all motivation made it feel as though my human dignity was being stripped away in real time.
‘Suck, suck.’
‘Aww~ You’re eating so well~ Is the formula that delicious~?’
-No, it tastes bad.
To be precise, it wasn’t exactly bad.
It might have tasted bland to an adult, but it was fine for the palate of a newborn baby.
But even so, if you eat it at least five times a day, you’re bound to get sick of it.
-Ah... I really don’t want to eat today...
‘Hm? Why aren’t you eating well today? No appetite? Or did I make the formula wrong?’
Still, at this point, the only things I could eat were breast milk and formula.
So I endured it somehow by thinking I should just eat a lot, grow up quickly, and then eat tons of delicious food.
-I don’t know anymore...! Just eat it...!
‘Aww~ Did your appetite come back?’
Maybe because of that, once I was later able to eat normal food.
I came to enjoy eating more than I had before regressing, and I developed a stronger preference for heavily flavored foods.
Well, I think that couldn’t be helped.
‘Momma!’
‘What is it~ my daughter?’
I also thought I was going to lose my mind when I started learning to speak.
‘Gimme mook!’
‘Hm...? Give you what?’
‘Mook!’
‘Mook...?’
‘M! Milk!’
‘Ah, milk!’
‘Yeah! Mook!’
After countless attempts accompanied by my blood, sweat, and tears.
I realized that pronunciation depended not on my will or effort, but overwhelmingly on the structure of my mouth.
‘Sowwy...’
Those were days when I reflected on myself for mocking my friend’s crappy pronunciation before I regressed.
‘Ah... I’m so bored...’
A little more time passed, and around the time I turned six.
-I miss civilization so much...
Compared to modern civilization, overflowing with every kind of dopamine imaginable.
The environment of the newly arrived twenty-first century was an unbearably boring low-tech era for me.
‘How is there nothing fun on TV?’
Even worse, the sense of humor in this era was different from mine.
So even when I watched variety shows, they weren’t entertaining unless they were funny through sheer comedic force.
-Even animation graphics are just...
Even when I tried watching things I’d heard were classic masterpieces before regressing.
It wasn’t easy for someone whose standards had already been raised by flashy graphics.
‘I said I’ll send you to kindergarten.’
‘Mom, my mental age doesn’t match little kids, so I can’t play with them.’
‘...Ah, I see.’
That was what I said, but I was also extremely bored.
And more than anything, because my parents were worried that I still didn’t have a single friend even at six years old, I ended up going to kindergarten.
‘Mina! That kid said this playground is their territory and told us to leave!’
‘What? That kid? Hey, what kindergarten is that kid from?’
‘I heard Sky Kindergarten?’
‘Sky Kindergarten? Okay.’
Still, contrary to my worries, I had a lot of fun playing with the kids.
‘From now on, I shall stand above the sky.’
‘Waaaaah!’
The only slightly regrettable part was that Mom somehow caught me while I was playing like that.
‘Mina! You can’t fight with your friends!’
‘Mom, the playground is a public place.’
‘That’s true...?’
‘They were the ones who said the playground belonged to them and told us to leave. So they were preventing us from using a public place, which means wouldn’t this count as self-defense? Besides, I didn’t throw the first punch. They hit me first.’
‘Mina...?’
I guarantee I’ll never forget the expression Mom made that day until I develop dementia.
‘Ma’am, have you seriously considered sending Mina to a gifted education center? In my fifteen years as a kindergarten teacher, I’ve never seen a child as intelligent as Mina!’
Ah, somehow, there was also a time when people treated me like a genius.
‘Waaaaah! No! I hate gifted education centers! No, no, no!’
Thanks to passionately asserting my opinion, I managed not to go.
Still, the gifted education center incident taught me an excellent lesson.
If I relaxed too much.
My life might get twisted in a direction I didn’t want.
‘Mina, you’re about to enter elementary school. How do you feel?’
‘Hmm... I suppose I’m about to truly enter the shackles of private education?’
‘...It was my mistake for asking you.’
Anyway.
After spending my days like that, time flew by until the present finally arrived.
“Sigh... Where did I go wrong raising you...? You weren’t like this before...”
That part couldn’t be helped.
If a two- or three-year-old who couldn’t even pronounce things properly went around swearing and using economic terminology, it would have been weird.
“You suddenly got strange starting when you were six.”
“Maybe TV is the problem?”
‘That’s because I worked hard to pretend I was a normal, quiet kid until I was five.’
While outwardly giving her a plausible reason.
Internally, I told Mom the real reason she would never be able to figure out.
“Then I’ll stop letting you watch TV, okay? If you stop watching it now, you won’t get any weirder, right?”
“Huh...?”
‘...What did I just say?’
Realizing the mistake I had made, a chill ran down my spine, and I urgently shouted.
“W-Wait...! A-Anything but that...!”
No matter how badly the humor matched mine and how old-fashioned most programs were, TV was still TV.
‘If I lose even that idiot box...!’
I quickly racked my brain and changed the subject.
“Mom! Mina! Doesn’t know about any of that! I want sausages for dinner tonight!”
“Sigh... Seriously, if it weren’t for that face of yours...”
‘Thank goodness I was at least born with a cute face...’
After regressing, I ended up with a face that could objectively be called pretty and cute.
And if someone like me deliberately turned on the charm, Mom’s reaction was obvious.
“Fine, fine. I’ll cook you sausages tonight.”
“Yes!”
Combining the satisfaction of having protected the TV with the joy of getting sausages for dinner, I let out a cheer and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead with my hand.
‘Phew...! That was close.’
Anyway, I had somehow adapted and was living quite well like this.
But there were still plenty of things I was unhappy about.
And the thing I was most dissatisfied with was.
“I need to mine coins...”
The fact that I wasn’t taking advantage of being a regressor at all where it really mattered.
“Honestly, mining is impossible, so I’d at least like to buy some stocks...”
‘But I have no way to buy them...’
Even if the prices were cheap, I currently had no means of purchasing them.
I didn’t even have a bank account in my own name, which said it all.
“Forget all that... I just want a smartphone...”
Before I regressed, an elementary school student without a smartphone would be treated like the weird one.
But this was the romantic era when kids with smartphones were still rare enough to be envied.
“When are they going to buy me one...”
Before I regressed, they didn’t buy me one until I entered middle school.
So I only had to wait about three more years from now.
“Three years... Three years, huh...”
‘That’s way too long.’
“Do I really have no choice but to use Mom’s phone to trade stocks?”
But this method was far too risky.
After all, I already had a record of secretly buying stocks on Mom’s phone and getting caught, nearly resulting in me being kicked out of the house.
“Still... what if I tried?”
After running a brief simulation in my head.
I concluded that if I got caught again this time, I would definitely end up in very rough shape.
“Tsk... Even if it’s disappointing, waiting is probably the best option...”
‘Still, I really want a smartphone...’
Because with a smartphone, I could solve not only my money problem but my boredom problem too.
“Argh! Forget it!”
Haven’t people always said not to even look at a tree you can’t climb?
‘Those are sour grapes... sour grapes...’
Rather than cling to pointless hope, I decided to give up quickly.
_____________
And that evening.
“Ah, right. I forgot about this.”
While the whole family was eating dinner together, Dad brought something up and looked at me.
‘...What is it? What could it be that he’s staring at me that hard?’
Wondering whether Dad was also planning to scold me for breaking the school window.
I lifted my butt off the chair and assumed an escape-ready stance so I could bolt at any moment.
“Mina, don’t you want a smartphone?”
“Huh?”
Out of nowhere?