01. Who the Hell Just Regressed?

Who's the bastard who just regressed?

One day when the sky was stretched high and blue, Kang Hajin thought:

"Ah. Life is fucking meaningless."

And boring, too.

With his large frame crammed onto the bed, he scrolled iTube's clickbait thumbnails, eyes unfocused. If something looked interesting, he'd click on it — but never actually watch the video.

Eventually he closed the app and rolled over the other way. And thought again.

"Seriously, this is fucking boring…"

Hajin figured this was probably the deepest downward curve his life had ever traced on a graph.

Twenty-nine years old. An unemployed man masquerading as a job seeker. The eldest son.

Hajin let his eyes drift around the room. What did he have left?

'…I thought I'd been trying my best, in my own way.'

Ever since he'd unexpectedly quit his job, he hadn't been able to work up motivation for anything. A friend who knew him well had advised him he probably needed some time to rest.

He'd taken that advice and rested straight through the past several months, but even with his body at ease, his mind wouldn't settle. It was as if time itself had stopped.

On days like this, he always ended up thinking about a life reset. With nothing else to do, he'd started reading web novels — and apparently a lot of people thought the way he did, because these days characters were reincarnating at every turn, regressing at the drop of a hat, and body-swapping whenever the plot demanded. Honestly, it was the most thrilling, desperate fantasy anyone could indulge in.

Now, what was the point of all that?

That it was imagination. IF. What if. Maybe. Perhaps?

Escapist fantasy that most people wanted but knew had a zero-point-zero-zero-zero percent chance of actually happening.

It was on that clear, blue day that Kang Hajin experienced his first regression.

---

When he first regressed, Kang Hajin thought he'd finally gotten the chance to change his life.

Of course, he was a little thrown when he opened his eyes and found some familiar gray test paper right in front of him.

"No cheating — you know cheating gets you a zero, right?"

One second he'd been lying in bed, and now he'd closed his eyes and opened them twelve years in the past — and as if that weren't enough, mid-terms, second period. If he ever got his hands on the bastard who'd set up this timeline, he'd want to smack them exactly once with an answer sheet and once with a marking pen.

'Sets? Fuck sets. I thought the last "assembly" I'd sit through in life was going to be the end of college hazing…'

A math test, of all things? Are you kidding me?

"It's all stuff you learned in class."

Problem is, teacher, I took that class twelve years ago.

Which also meant he was too far removed from those problems to glance at the test and go, 'Heh, I've already solved these,' and start rattling off answers.

In novels the characters memorized lottery numbers and stuff, but real life was another story. At twenty-nine, he really should have considered the possibility of regressing at least a little.

That was how his first regression sputtered to a start. A classic setup.

Back in the semi-basement apartment where they'd lived before his father found a new job, drawing tearful motivation from the sight of it, he clenched both fists and swore this life would be different — throwing himself into brutal, no-holds-barred studying.

Having to do the military… again was going to be hell, but he had a few years to figure out some kind of workaround. If it meant he could rebuild his life from the ground up, whatever.

'This is a chance!'

That was what he'd thought.

Right up until, midway through the third-period English listening test of the college entrance exam, he got hit with his second regression.

---

Was this for real?

He'd heard kids these days didn't use that expression anymore. But there was nothing else that fit.

Was this for real?

"Hajin. You think the army's a joke?"

You think regression's a joke?

'Timeline, seriously, who the fuck's running this.'

I was in the middle of picking the appropriate response to what Tom said last, thanks.

"Hajin, when your senior asks you a question, you answer."

"Private First Class Kang Hajin."

"What? {Kang-a-ji?}(#do7phl820tjp) You a fucking puppy? You a son of a bitch? From now on, drop 'Private' — you say 'woof.'"

"…Sorry, sir?"

You've got a piece-of-shit personality.

Grown-ass adult, and this was the best he could come up with — not even a real insult, just a joke about my name. Pathetic and childish.

I'd told this insane regression system I was scared of the military, and it had thrown me right back in as a soldier — I racked my brain for ways to give it the finger. Half-listening to my senior — who'd amount to nothing once he was back in the real world — I thought:

'I need to find the pattern.'

A whole two years. After the first regression, two full years had gone by without a hitch.

And now, suddenly? On the day of the college entrance exam, no less?

I'd read every kind of fantasy novel there was except romance-fantasy (okay, some romance-fantasy too), and I could tell — there was definitely some kind of algorithm behind this.

"Hey, Kang Hajin."

"Private First Class Kang Hajin."

"Wow, so you're just gonna blow off what I just said? I told you, 'Woof' instead of 'Private.'"

"……"

Maybe I should just phone it in and give him a 'woof.'

I was trying to think here, but this senior wouldn't stop running his mouth. Back when I was a clueless twenty-year-old, this might have scared me — but I'd been a top-of-the-food-chain Korean college entrance examinee up until literally moments ago. Bring it on, world.

For better or worse, when I didn't react much, the senior lost interest — said it was time for the music show and headed back to his spot. Next to me, some fellow recruit playing lackey started reciting the schedule, saying today was some girl group's comeback stage. Right — around that time, I figured. I blinked slowly, trying to work out what the hell this situation even was, when an uneasy premonition prickled at the back of my neck.

'What if I regress again on discharge day?'

"Oh, fuck!"

And it became reality.

The third regression happened two weeks after my discharge. Meaning it happened before my buzz cut had even had a chance to grow out. And this time I was twenty-four — not just past the buzz-cut phase but well into the era when I'd been growing my bangs out to my eyes to make up for the years I couldn't. The timeline was going completely off the rails.

"What the hell is this, seriously!"

At this point, wasn't this basically… hell? Was I really just insane? Or maybe I'd already checked out back in my first life and was drifting in a coma right now? All the theories I'd been kicking around since the first regression started creeping back up.

"There has to be something, something —"

—and in the middle of saying that, I got hit with my fourth regression, and a theory that flashed into my head at that instant hit me like a slap to the back of the head.

I'm not the one driving this regression!

---

The fourth regression was the winter I was nineteen.

"Whoever it is, I'm definitely getting dragged into someone else's timeline."

Luckily it was the weekend, so I could sit at home and sort through my thoughts in peace. We hadn't moved out of the semi-basement yet — a little disorienting, but since I'd lived there since childhood, I got used to it quickly.

Just be a good son for about four years, and Mother — newly bitten by the finance bug — would ride the wave of Father's new job into some investing of her own, and the whole family would move into their first apartment.

From four regressions or so, I'd gathered this: some futures were always fixed, unchanging.

"Hyung, I need to use the computer."

"Use it."

"Hyung, I can't use it unless you move."

My kid brother, one year younger, was cocky as hell but cute enough that I always let it slide — he waved his hand at me to move, so I got up obediently. If I was going to sort out this shitty regression system, I needed somewhere quiet to think anyway.

I made a beeline for a quiet café near the house, took out a notebook and pen I'd grabbed at home, and laid out my timeline so far, jotting down every clue I had.

〈[Original]

Was in bed watching iTube. Job hunting. Depression.

[Regression 1]

17–19. Right in the middle of the English section, college entrance exam day. Fucking singularity?? What grade did I even end up getting.

[Regression 2]

Motherfucker. 21–22. Military… fuck, military… again? Do I have to go again? Please, exemption.

[Regression 3]

One week.

[Regression 4] — now

Winter. December, college entrance exam just ended. Apparently retake year confirmed. Are you fucking kidding me?

There are fixed events that always happen.

Regression timing doesn't seem to follow any set pattern.〉

The thought that I might have to do the military three separate times killed my appetite and sent my violent urges shooting through the roof — whoever was behind this, if I met them, I wanted to hit them exactly once.

Gritting my teeth to get my anger under control, I slowly reread everything I'd listed, then at the very bottom wrote what was probably my most solid hypothesis.

〈I'm not the one driving the regression. I seem to be getting swept up in someone else's.〉

"Right, and usually regression/possession/reincarnation stories come with the standard-issue tutorial-guide package."

If I wasn't the regressor, then it made sense I had zero information right now. Systems and stuff usually only showed up for the main character, right? Setting aside the fact that I wasn't the main character, the sheer hopelessness of it hit me first. Out of seven billion people on Earth, how the hell was I supposed to figure out who the main character was?

"God, please. I can't live like this."

Not knowing when I'd get reset again, every day was a string of anxiety and paralysis. Even if I memorized lottery numbers, Saturday still had to roll around for the drawing, and Monday still had to roll around before I could actually claim the winnings! This couldn't go on. Even if I had to grab every one of Korea's seventy million — no, all eight billion humans on Earth — and meet them one by one, I had to stop this regression.

[Really?]

And in that instant, 'someone' answered me.

[Do you really think you can stop that kid?]

"…I'm not actually going insane, am I."

Even without looking, I could feel it in my bones — all of space-time had stopped except for me. 'It' wasn't a sound, wasn't a sight — if anything, closer to a resonance, a kind of vibration. In other web novels this stuff showed up as a merchandise-friendly fairy or a webtoon-ready system window, but my life couldn't even manage that level of detail.

But who cared about that right now? Whatever this voice was, someone who'd already lost his mind over redoing college entrance exams, redoing the military, and getting his life reset had nothing left to fear.

[I asked if you could stop that kid.]

"Kid or whatever, there's nothing I can't do right now, except go back into the military."

[Hah. Interesting.]

Was it laughing? Now, of all times? The unmistakable sound of hearty laughter pulled my brows together despite myself. The voice fell silent for a moment, then resonated again.

[Alright. Then let me place a little bet of my own.]

"What are you saying? Speak plainly."

[I'll give you a chance, too. One to set everything right.]

"What?"

With a brief 'A method familiar to you would probably be better,' a blue light flared to life in front of my eyes.

label: Kang Hajin (Fixed Regressor) Modifiers: Access denied (insufficient permissions) Trait: Access denied (insufficient permissions) Special: 'Wandering and Drifting' mode ON Mental Care System temporarily active to prevent confusion from regression.

"Ah. Please, finally —!"

Was this the fabled system window I'd only ever heard about? I threw a punch straight into the empty air. Naturally, since it was a virtual window only I could see, there was no physical impact — but psychological satisfaction was a thing.

[From now on, that will help you. There'll be a lot of restrictions, but… I'm looking forward to it.]

With those words, the resonance vanished, and space-time returned to normal. Exhaling a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, I carefully read and reread the system window still floating in front of me.

"Mental Care, huh…"

I'd already been a little weirded out by how coolly I was accepting the whole regression-and-system business, and apparently this Mental Care System was the reason. Right, that would explain it. The fact that I was still alive after redoing college entrance exams, redoing the military, and enduring endless regressions lent it more credibility.

To calm myself down, I ran up to the counter, returned my empty iced tea cup, and ordered an iced chocolate on top of that. Nothing beat something sweet when your head was a mess.

"Um, sir."

"Yes?"

"The owner said to give you this on the house… and asked if you'd be interested in a part-time job."

"Ah, I'm actually doing a retake year. I'll reach out if I ever need it."

I'd taken my drink and was about to head back to my seat when the part-timer shyly stopped me, offering a cookie and a business card. I turned it down quickly and returned to the table. Standing at a crossroads that might shape my whole life — literally, my whole life — a part-time job was, frankly, none of my business.

I opened a workbook I'd brought as a cover and stared hard at the system window. Most of it was question marks, but one phrase stood out immediately.

Access denied (insufficient permissions)

Insufficient permissions. So this was a help menu, but I wasn't qualified to view it. Judging by my fantasy-novel veteran instincts, the 'permissions' probably belonged to 'that kid' who was doing this insane regression on loop.

What the hell — I couldn't see a single thing after all?

"If you're going to give me hints, give me more… Hey. Weren't you supposed to help me? Nothing else? That's it?"

The more heated I got, the more complaints came spilling out of my mouth. These bastards — they'd yanked the wrong person into a regression, they damn well ought to take responsibility.

And in that instant, as if to announce the loading was finished, the screen flashed and new notifications drifted up into the air.

'Life of a Fixed Regressor' — Reading complete! You have been designated as the Mentor of a Selected Regressor. Basic Quest: 'Find the Regressor!' has been registered. (New!) Single Quest: 'In Search of a Lost Dream' has been registered. (New!) Do you wish to accept the quests?

What was there to think about? Without hesitation, I hammered 'Accept All.'