The top student in the whole school hid the regression

Chapter 1

Ten years ago. The morning I was on my way to take the CSAT.

An old man on the subway grabbed me by the hair.

‘How dare you not give up your seat for an adult!’

‘Aah!’

‘Goodness, sir! I think the student didn’t notice because she was reading a book!’

‘Help me! Someone help me!’

I was the kind of student who was practically guaranteed to get into Hanguk University as long as I didn’t screw up the CSAT.

As long as I didn’t screw up the CSAT.

And now, ten years later.

I was standing on a rooftop.

Of course, I wasn’t standing there because I wanted to die.

‘I’m just standing here because everything fucking sucks…….’

All the guys from my university who had gone through military service had already found jobs.

The ones who got jobs early were busy talking about getting promoted, changing companies, and whatever else. Even the price range of the restaurants where my university friends and I gathered once every quarter kept getting higher.

And in the middle of all that, I was the only one who still hadn’t found my place, working as an internship employee with a chance at permanent employment.

The career-long assistant manager, who was eleven years older than me, had started bullying me after I turned down his offer to have drinks alone after work, and my evaluation score for permanent employment was rock bottom.

My chances of being hired permanently were already dead, but I stubbornly hung on just to at least collect my intern salary.

……While holding back the urge to run away.

—Ddirong.

[Mom: I made jjigae. Eat it when you get home from work.]

It had already been four years since I’d been repeatedly rejected, sometimes on applications and sometimes in interviews.

I’d been rejected so many times that Mom never said it outright, but I could tell she was really, really hoping this time would work out.

The suit I was wearing right now?

Mom had bought it for me because I didn’t have a single proper outfit to wear to work.

When I came home late at night, there would be piles of medicine packets that Mom took sitting on top of the kitchen sink.

Despite her condition, she worked on her feet for twelve hours a day just to support even her perfectly healthy twenty-nine-year-old daughter.

“What am I supposed to do if I fail again this time?”

I sighed and looked up at the sky.

If someone had told me back in high school, ‘This is how you’re going to live in the future,’ and spoiled the future I was living now, I would’ve laughed in their face.

Where had everything gone wrong?

“I don’t know.”

I sighed again and turned my gaze toward the building across from me.

I could see a giant electronic billboard blazing brightly on the exterior of a high-rise building.

The biggest billboard on Gangnam-daero had the enormous face of a handsome man wearing an American football uniform, with black paint beneath his eyes.

The words written underneath were:

[Congratulations on Jung Eun-seong’s 10th Debut Anniversary]

“Why are you following me all the way here just to torment me?”

I grumbled as I looked at the handsome man smiling like the sun.

“I’m hiding up here because I don’t want to see you right now, you know?”

I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.

Maybe it had been erased during photo retouching, but the faint scar that should have been on the left side of Jung Eun-seong’s cheek wasn’t visible from here.

“Still, congratulations, Jung Eun-seong. You achieved your dream.”

As long as you don’t get into trouble, you’ll keep rising forever. A scar on your cheek won’t put even the slightest dent in your charm.

Q. Why are you suddenly talking about a man instead of continuing your pity party? Who even is he?

A. Actor Jung Eun-seong.

He debuted at nineteen as the main vocalist of a boy idol group under a major entertainment agency.

The group exploded in popularity immediately after their debut and became one of South Korea’s representative boy groups, but……

Before even three years had passed, the group’s leader was arrested for drugs and sent to prison.

The youngest member had a premarital pregnancy scandal with his influencer girlfriend, the member who frequently appeared on variety shows got drunk at a club and assaulted an employee, the eldest member was caught gambling overseas, another member was involved in a drunk-driving hit-and-run, and the group’s only foreign member left the group and moved to the United States.

Jung Eun-seong was the only one who survived it all, completing his contract before switching to acting.

He had been my high school classmate ten years ago, and we’d even been in the same class at one point, but after graduating high school, we’d never met again until—Today.

Jung Eun-seong came to my company for a photo shoot, and I reunited with him after ten years.

‘Kang Da-hye, I’ll make sure you don’t get hired permanently no matter what it takes, understand?!’

Of all times, it happened while I was getting absolutely chewed out by my assistant manager.

My boss was screaming at me in front of everyone involved, and I was so flustered that I kept apologizing and begging for forgiveness.

That was when I happened to lock eyes with Jung Eun-seong, who was just entering the scene.

“…He recognized me, right?”

Of course he did.

Just look at the expression on Jung Eun-seong’s face back then. Did that look like the face of someone who hadn’t recognized me?

Still, at least he had enough tact not to pretend he knew me there.

A small laugh escaped my lips, and white breath scattered into the cold air.

I looked back at Jung Eun-seong’s 10th-debut-anniversary advertisement.

“You really haven’t changed since high school.”

High school.

Looking back, I think that was the most hopeful period of my life.

It was a time when things were hard, but I had no doubt that a brilliant future was waiting for me.

“I’m going downhill quite smoothly.”

I didn’t want to live like this, but I couldn’t see any way out.

My chest always felt tight, and whenever I thought about the future, it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Every night, whenever I lay down to sleep, I thought:

‘What if I hadn’t taken that subway on the morning of the CSAT?’

I knew it was ridiculous to still blame the CSAT ten years after taking it.

I knew that failing the CSAT didn’t mean your life was over.

But I wanted to say that my life had gone off the rails starting that day.

I’d been preparing to retake the college entrance exam on my own when I got into a car accident, which ruined my chance to take the following year’s CSAT too.

And after that, everything I tried kept going wrong.

A few years ago, even Mom’s shop went under because of the fallout from COVID-19.

Nothing ever worked out.

It was as if someone had twisted my fate out of shape.

For ten years straight.

That was more than enough time to turn a teenage girl burning with ambition into a depressed, hopeless unemployed woman in her twenties.

“Phew.”

I rubbed my stinging eyes with my palm.

Don’t cry.

If I cried here, I’d really look pathetic.

“I don’t want to live.”

More precisely, I didn’t want to live like this.

I took my hand away from my eyes, dusted myself off, and stood up.

That was when I turned around and locked eyes with someone who had just opened the rooftop door and walked in.

It was Jung Eun-seong.

Maybe he’d heard me talking to myself, because Jung Eun-seong’s expression had gone completely serious.

The moment I stumbled back in surprise—

“…huh?”

My body, which had been suffering without even eating since 7:30 that morning, suddenly swayed.

“Kang Da-hye?”

“Uh…? Uhuh…? Uhuh!”

“Kang Da-hye!!!!!!!”

I fell from the rooftop.

And then I regressed.

—

Period 1. Share Your Luck

“…Fucking hell.”

Me. Kang Da-hye.

Age before regression: 29. An unemployed young woman with no dreams and no hope.

Current age: 18. A second-year high school student.

Current point in time: March, about three days after the start of the new school year.

= I’d traveled back in time.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

I shot upright and spun around once in place.

My body felt so light.

I hadn’t even finished growing yet.

It was the body of a teenager who hadn’t been worn down by the hardships of life.

The calendar on my desk, the clock on my smartphone, and even the main page of the portal site I’d logged into and checked all told me the same thing:

It was eleven years ago!

Holy crap.

“Could that bleak life really have all been a dream?”

It had been far too vivid for that.

Whatever.

It didn’t matter.

“I fucking did it.”

I wasn’t even curious about how or why this had happened.

Please, don’t take this away from me.

I’ll really live hard and be a good person from now on.

“I fucking did ittttt!”

I’d never been so happy to smell the musty air of the semi-basement apartment where Mom and I had lived alone.

I hugged the school uniform I’d lazily hung over the doorknob because we didn’t even have a proper wardrobe and spun around in circles.

“I’d be grateful even if I’d gone back to the morning of the CSAT, but I’m in my second year of high school…….”

And it’s March……!

I squeezed my arms so tightly around the uniform that it wrinkled.

“This time, I’m going to do it right.”

I’ll take the bus to the CSAT exam center.

I’ll get a perfect score on the CSAT.

I’ll get into Hanguk University.

The moment I turn twenty, I’ll make money tutoring, then buy stocks and Vitamin Coin.

I’ll become one of the first-generation YouTubers with Study With Me YouTube.

I’ll succeed.

I’ll become rich.

If I don’t want to end up humiliating myself in front of a classmate at twenty-nine, I’d better stay sharp!

Bang!

“Mooooom!”

I threw my arms around Mom as she came through the door.

“What the heck? Mom, you’re so young too……!”

“Oh my! What happened? Why are you crying?”

“It’s okay. They’re tears of joy…!”

Mom, I’ve really had such a hard time all this time…….

—

On my way to school for the first time in nearly ten years.

I marveled at the sight of myself in my school uniform reflected in the convenience store’s glass wall.

I marveled at the clothing store that would close down in a few years but was still perfectly fine.

“Hehe!”

I even marveled at my incredible eyesight, which let me see everything so clearly.

‘Right. This is what I was like.’

A girl who laughed whenever the wind blew.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so much that my cheeks hurt.

‘I really have to live well this time.’

I made the resolution as I walked, then stopped in front of a crosswalk.

I quickly opened the memo app on my smartphone and reviewed my plans for the future.

There was only one thing I needed to do to live differently this time.

☆STUDY☆

An era when studying wouldn’t be everything was coming soon, but for someone like me, who had neither any particular talent nor wealth, studying was the easiest and fastest path to success.

So I was going to study. No matter what.

And obviously, this went without saying, but under no circumstances was I ever—

NE!

VER!

Going to date anyone.

‘Not that I actually dated anyone in high school before my regression.’

But from now on, I should be even more proactive about avoiding it.

Except.

“Da-hye, let’s seriously not do this. We’re just friends.”

“I don’t want to say anything harsh to you. Let’s not make things awkward between us, okay?”

“…Huh?”

I tilted my head as I looked at the boy standing in front of me with a frown on his face.