Chapter 2: Restart is not strong.

I was engrossed in the pristine white ceiling.

Along with fluorescent lights, there were built-in speakers, seemingly for internal broadcasts, and fire detectors installed.

Looking at the hospital room’s ceiling, which was a concentration of extreme functionality, a profound respect for the advancement of human technology welled up within me.

It was so beautiful that I wished I could stare at it until I grew tired, if only I were allowed.

“Soan? Could you look here?”

I shook my head with all my might.

Shake, shake.

“Applying the medicine will help it heal faster and prevent scars.”

Shake, shake, shake.

“Are you going to keep being stubborn?”

I tensed my neck and braced myself.

It was an expression of my will not to turn my head under any circumstances.

“Oh, this kid?”

Mother held my chin on my forehead and forcibly turned my head.

My head was mercilessly turned against my will.

“Look at this mess on a girl’s face.”

Mother squeezed the ointment she held in one hand onto my cheek.

As soon as the ointment touched my deeply bruised cheek, a sharp, pressing pain shot through my nerves.

“Ugh-aah!”

It was a pain I would have calmly shrugged off before, but somehow this body was experiencing it more intensely.

At first, I was staring blankly, but then the sudden onset of pain made me thrash about.

In that humiliation, I tried to endure this time, but the strength of this body was too insignificant to do so.

Only after the ointment was spread across my entire cheek by Mother’s hand could my head be freed.

My gaze suddenly fell upon a small mirror placed on the table.

A cute girl with a large bruise on one cheek was looking back at me.

She was a girl so young it seemed she had just entered elementary school.

Her dark black hair lightly covered her shoulders, and her contrastingly pale skin made the girl appear delicate.

The child’s characteristic round eyes and softly curved outer corners softened the girl’s impression.

Her well-formed nose and mouth, complementing her eyes, created delicate and cute features.

From any angle, she did not look like an adult male.

Organizing the situation and applying logical deduction, the very rational conclusion was that the girl was me.

No matter how many times I repeated the same process after opening my eyes, the result did not change.

It wasn’t my cheek, but my head that began to throb.

At that moment, an advertisement played on the hospital room’s television.

It was an old commercial, long forgotten in a corner of my memory.

My parents’ younger faces, me, younger and with my gender changed, and an old advertisement playing on the television.

There was no need to search for a calendar.

With my gender changed, what else could I not accept?

I had returned to the past with my gender changed.

‘Damn it.’

With Mother beside me, I swallowed the curse I couldn’t utter aloud.

Once I truly acknowledged that my gender had changed, the differences naturally became apparent.

In fact, I didn’t feel much difference in stamina or physical strength, as I was still young.

Those aspects could be accepted as simply being younger, but there was an area that could not be accepted differently in any way.

The restroom.

The first time I entered the restroom and tried to relieve myself out of habit, I ended up screaming.

And in that moment, the embarrassing thing I had been trying to hold back flowed out.

I remained frozen in that state until Mother opened the restroom door and came in.

Futility, emptiness, shame, and above all, a sense of loss.

These evoked complex and subtle emotions that could not be expressed in a single word.

‘No, why on earth? How did this happen?’

Even as I desperately tried to recall my memories, a certain point remained stubbornly blank.

‘What happened? What sin did I commit to deserve this?’

No matter how much I thought, I couldn’t find an answer.

“Soan, Hyojung came to apologize, didn’t she?”

At Mother’s call, I raised my head, and the slightly ajar hospital room door swung open, allowing familiar faces to enter.

It was the president of a corporate subcontracting company and his wife, who used to bow and scrape before my parents without a peep.

And between them was a girl, her head bowed low.

Her face was hidden by her brownish bob, and only her hunched body was visible.

“Oh, Madam, I am truly sorry.

Our child made a big mistake.”

“Oh no, children grow up getting a little hurt, don’t they?

They said there’s nothing seriously wrong, so it’s fine.

Is Hyojung alright?”

Mother chuckled, covering her mouth with her hand.

It was hard to believe she was the same person who had so forcefully turned my head just moments ago.

“Yes, Hyojung is fine.

She’s quite sturdy, you see.

Hahaha.”

The girl with her head bowed tightly gripped the president’s clothes and never once lifted her face.

I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it seemed she had been scolded quite severely.

“Hyojung, you should apologize to Soan quickly.”

The president’s wife, who had been laughing along and agreeing with the president, pushed the girl towards me.

The girl named Hyojung released the president’s clothes and approached me with small steps.

“Um, I-I’m sorry.

I fell.

My head hit your cheek.”

Her speech was slow due to her pauses, but I understood what she meant.

It seemed my cheek had been throbbing ever since I woke up because of this child.

Then Hyojung slightly raised her head, and her face became visible.

Suddenly, the pain in my cheek flared up as if it were being revived.

‘Now you tell me you love me?

Have you ever truly looked at me, even once?’

I recalled a young woman swinging her palm towards me.

That woman was Hyojung.

Yoo Hyojung.

A childhood friend who had attended the same school since we were young.

We met often due to our parents’ fervor, and eventually even became engaged around the time we graduated from university.

‘But why?’

Hyojung, standing by the bed, directed her eyes toward me.

That gaze was not one looking at a friend.

It was a gaze filled with fear.

It was like looking at a predator that she couldn’t do anything about.

Ah, right.

I had been broken off from the engagement.

She slapped me across the cheek as I stood before her.

After that, everything I had done, and even things I hadn’t done, to win her back were exposed as gossip, ultimately leading to the revocation of my inheritance rights to the family business group.

While wandering the streets drunk, I was hit by a car in a traffic accident.

I had died once.

As I accepted that, memories that had been blocked began to surface one by one.

“Soan?”

When Mother called, I raised my head, and something streamed from the corners of my eyes.

“Are you hurting somewhere?”

I hastily wiped away my tears.

“Oh, no.”

Hyojung, flustered by my appearance, was instead glancing at her own parents.

It was only then, seeing her like that, that I finally understood everything.

****

The hospital lights were turned off early.

Beyond the hospital room window, the vibrant lights of the city still streamed in.

Mother was asleep on the caregiver’s bed in the private hospital room.

It was the first time I had been alone since waking up.

Even though my mind was that of an adult male, perhaps because my body was still young, I was already feeling sleepy despite it not being very late.

It was likely that my weakened state due to pain and my involuntary crying were also related to my physical age.

“Damn it.”

The harsh curse coming out in a clear girl’s voice was incredibly awkward.

Through the television and Mother’s words, I was able to gather various pieces of information.

First, my current age was 8.

My birth date and place were unchanged; I had simply returned to the past with my gender altered.

Father and Mother were also exactly as they were in the past.

Mother, who was still affectionate when I was young, and Father, busy serving as both chairman and CEO of the family business, Jungwi Group.

My younger brother, who was still just a child.

The only thing that had changed was me.

I wanted to curse freely and throw a tantrum right then and there.

But this messed-up situation was reality.

I had no idea how this happened, but my senses, pain, and everything else told me this wasn’t a dream.

Unless some other absurd event occurred, I would have to live in this body.

It was obvious that no one would believe me if I told them the truth.

It was a hopeless situation.

I curled my body into a ball under the blanket.

A sense of relief washed over me.

This was a habit I had always had.

Whenever I was tired, distressed, and couldn’t sleep, I would often assume this position.

Then, before I knew it, I would fall asleep.

Looking back, I didn’t have any particular lingering attachments to my previous life.

To meet my parents’ strict standards, I had no memory of properly enjoying myself until I graduated from university.

After graduation, with the words that I was finally “useful,” I was immediately placed as a manager in a department with a murderous workload, combining business studies and practical experience.

During that time, Hyojung, my childhood friend and fiancée, fell for another man.

Realizing this, I tried everything to change her mind.

But as a result, I was blamed for everything, both what I did and didn’t do, becoming the villain in a beautiful love story.

‘Now that I think about it, it’s really unfair.’

‘What on earth did I do wrong?

No matter how much I think about it, I didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Is being foolish a mistake?

Or is it a mistake that I only have one body when I should have two?’

‘As for Yoo Hyojung, that b*tch, I would have let her go amicably if it weren’t for ‘that incident,’ I wouldn’t have even tried to hold onto her.’

‘Could this perhaps be an opportunity?’

The thought suddenly occurred to me.

Having my gender changed sucks, but perhaps there’s something I can do precisely because of this gender.

‘Yes, let’s get revenge.’

‘It’s foolish for only me to get screwed over.’

‘If someone asks if I haven’t been screwed over in this life yet, I’d have no answer, but I remember.’

‘Whether others know it or not is none of my business.’

‘If they made me a villain, then I’ll become a true villain, resolve all my grievances, and laugh in their faces as if to say, “Look at me now!”’

“Pfft.”

Somehow, I felt cheerful.

Laughing caused my cheek to move, making a tear well up due to the pain, but I was cheerful nonetheless.

****

I was discharged from the hospital quickly.

From the start, I had only been hospitalized because of my strange behavior; it wasn’t an injury that warranted hospitalization.

I underwent several tests to see if my head had been affected when I hit it, but fortunately, all the test results came back normal.

The swelling in my cheek also subsided quickly.

Perhaps because I was in a young body, my recovery seemed fast.

However, there were still uncomfortable aspects.

Regardless of my current body, my mind was still that of a man in his mid-20s.

Since my body was still young, there weren’t many physiological differences that bothered me significantly.

There were some awkward moments when using the restroom, but I got used to that in a day or two.

However, even doing everyday things, I somehow felt like I was committing a sin.

I knew it was my body, but whenever I looked in the mirror, I always flinched.

The sensation of having lived 27 years as a male couldn’t possibly change so easily.

Then again, I didn’t particularly intend to live as a woman, so maybe it wouldn’t be a big problem.

It would be far healthier for my mental state to grow old alone for the rest of my life rather than marry a man as a woman.

“It’s about time to prepare for elementary school enrollment.”

While I was internally coming to terms with various things, Mother picked me up and said that.

“Elementary school?”

“Yes, you even attended the pre-enrollment gathering before you were hospitalized, didn’t you?”

‘Damn it, elementary school.’

I thought I had sorted everything out myself, but elementary school?

Upon reflection, it was obvious.

At 8 years old at the beginning of the year, it was time to enter elementary school.

Moreover, regardless of my mind, my body was 8 years old, so compulsory education naturally had to be completed.

‘Yes, it was obvious.

It was obvious, but still.’

‘Me, an elementary school student?

Me, who graduated from university as the top student at 27 and held a manager position at a corporation, an elementary school student?’

‘Me, a reservist sergeant who completed his military service, becoming a female elementary school student?

What on earth does this even mean?’

‘Should I just jump out the window right now?’