Chapter 1 - Chapter 1

Translator: Nox

The Top Student Hides Her Regression - Chapter 1The Top Student Hides Her RegressionChapter 1

Ten years ago. The morning I went to take the CSAT.

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

‘How dare you not give up your seat to an elder!’

‘Aargh!’

‘Oh dear, sir! I think the student just didn’t notice because she was studying!’

‘Help me! Somebody help me!’

I was a student who was practically guaranteed admission to Hankuk University, provided I didn’t mess up the CSAT.

Provided I didn’t mess up.

And now, ten years later.

I am standing on the rooftop.

Naturally, I’m not standing here to kill myself.

‘I’m standing here because life is so damn shitty…….’

My current age: twenty-nine.

Even my male college peers who went to the military have all landed full-time jobs by now.

The ones who got hired early are busy fretting over promotions or switching jobs. The restaurants for our quarterly college gatherings keep getting pricier and pricier.

Among all of them, I’m the only one who still hasn’t found her footing, stuck working a conversion-track internship.

The career assistant manager who’s eleven years older than me has been bullying me ever since I turned down his invitation to get drinks just the two of us after work, and my evaluation scores for regular employment are in the gutter.

A full-time offer is already out of the question, but I’m stubbornly holding on just to collect the intern paycheck.

……Enduring every urge to just storm out.

—Chime.

[Mom: I made stew at home. Eat it when you get off work.]

“…How am I supposed to look Mom in the eye if I fail again?”

It has already been four years of constantly stumbling at the resume stage, or sometimes at the interview stage.

After failing so many times in a row, Mom didn’t say it openly, but I could tell she was pinning enormous hopes on this one.

This suit I’m wearing right now—Mom bought it for me because I didn’t have a single proper thing to wear to work.

When I get home late at night, the sink is piled high with Mom’s prescription bags. With that aching body, she works on her feet for twelve hours a day to feed her fully grown twenty-nine-year-old daughter.

“What am I really going to do if I fail this time, too?”

Sighing, I looked up at the sky.

If someone had given me a spoiler of this future back in high school, saying, ‘This is how you’re going to live,’ I would have laughed in their face.

Where did it all go wrong?

“I don’t know.”

Letting out another sigh, I cast my gaze toward the building across the street.

A giant electronic billboard on the exterior of the high-rise was radiating light.

On the largest billboard along Gangnam-daero, the handsome face of a man wearing an American football jersey with black eye grease smeared beneath his eyes was plastered in enormous proportions.

The text written beneath it read:

[Happy 10th Debut Anniversary, Jung Eun-sung]

“Why do you have to chase me all the way here to torment me?”

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

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

I narrowed my eyes and glared. Perhaps it got erased during photo retouching, but the faint scar that should be on Jung Eun-sung’s left cheek wasn’t visible from here.

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

As long as you don’t cause any scandals, you’ll stay on a roll forever. A tiny scar on your cheek does nothing to diminish your charm.

Q. Why are you suddenly talking about some guy in the middle of lamenting your life? Who is he?

A. Actor Jung Eun-sung.

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

They gained explosive popularity right from their debut, becoming a boy band representing South Korea, but…….

In less than three years, the group leader went to prison for drugs.

The youngest member got caught in a premarital pregnancy scandal with an influencer girlfriend; the one who frequently appeared on variety shows got drunk at a club and assaulted a staff member; the eldest member went overseas for illegal gambling; another committed a hit-and-run under the influence; and the sole foreign member left the group and flew back to America.

Jung Eun-sung alone survived, served out his contract period, and transitioned into acting.

He was my high school classmate ten years ago, and we were even in the same homeroom for a time, but I hadn’t seen him once since graduation—until today.

Today.

I reunited with Jung Eun-sung after ten years when he came to our company for a photoshoot.

‘Kang Da-hye, I’ll make sure by any means necessary that you don’t get converted, you hear me?!’

It happened right when I was getting cursed out by the assistant manager.

Flustered by my boss screaming his head off at me in front of all the staff and executives, I was bowing and apologizing when my eyes met Jung Eun-sung’s just as he walked onto the set.

“…He recognized me, didn’t he?”

Of course he did.

Look at the expression on Jung Eun-sung’s face back then. There was no way that was the face of someone who didn’t recognize me.

Still, thank goodness Jung Eun-sung had the tact not to acknowledge me right then and there.

A small smirk parted my lips as white breath puffed out and scattered.

I turned back to Jung Eun-sung’s tenth anniversary advertisement once more.

“You haven’t changed a bit since high school.”

High school.

Looking back, that seemed to be the most hopeful period of my life.

It was tough, but it was a time when I had zero doubt that a brilliant future lay ahead of me.

Whereas the me of today.

“Is smoothly going to ruin.”

I don’t want to live like this, but I can’t see any way out.

My chest always feels suffocated, and thinking about the future chokes me up.

Whenever night comes and I lie down to sleep, the thought I always have is:

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

I know it’s ridiculous to still blame the CSAT ten years after taking it.

I also know that messing up the CSAT doesn’t mean your life is ruined.

It’s just that, starting from that day, my life got completely twisted.

While preparing to retake the exam on my own, I got into a car accident, ruining the next year’s CSAT too, and everything I attempted after that went sideways every single time.

A few years ago, Mom’s shop even went under in the aftermath of COVID-19.

Nothing worked out.

As if someone had deliberately warped my destiny.

Continuously for ten years.

It was more than enough time to transform an ambitious teenage girl into a depressed, unemployed twenty-something with neither dreams nor hope.

“Phew.”

I wiped my stinging eyes with my palm.

Don’t cry.

If I cry here, I’ll truly be pathetic.

“I don’t want to live.”

To be precise, I don’t want to live like this.

Just as I took my hands off my eyes, dusted myself off, stood up, and turned around—

My eyes met those of someone who had just opened the rooftop door and stepped out.

It was Jung Eun-sung.

Having apparently heard my muttering, Jung Eun-sung’s expression was severely stiffened.

The moment I took a flustered step backward—

“…Huh?”

My body, having starved and suffered since 7:30 a.m., wobbled.

“Kang Da-hye?”

“Uh…? Uh-oh…? Ahh!”

“Kang Da-hye!!!!!!!”

I plummeted from the rooftop.

And then, I regressed.

The Number One Student Hides Her Regression

Period 1. Share Your Luck

“…Crazy.”

Me. Kang Da-hye.

Pre-regression age: twenty-nine. An unemployed youth with neither dreams nor hope.

Current age: eighteen. A high school sophomore.

Current time: March, about three days into the new school year.

= I have traveled back in time.

“Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

I sprang up as if bouncing and spun around on the spot.

My body felt so light. I hadn’t even finished growing into my full height yet.

A teenage body not yet weathered by the harsh world.

The calendar on the desk, the clock on the smartphone, and the main page of the portal site I checked on the screen—every single one was telling me that right now was eleven years ago!

Unbelievable.

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

It was far too vivid for that.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

“Jackpot.”

I didn’t even care by what miraculous trick this had happened.

Please don’t cancel this.

I promise I’ll live an earnest, truly good life from now on.

“Hell yeeeeeesss!”

The musty smell of the semi-basement apartment where I lived alone with Mom had never felt so welcoming.

Having no proper wardrobe, I hugged my school uniform hanging loosely from the doorknob and twirled around.

“I would’ve been grateful just to return to the morning of the CSAT, but a sophomore in high school…….”

And in March……!

I squeezed my arms tightly around the uniform, almost crumpling it.

“In this life, without fail.”

I’m taking the bus to the CSAT testing site.

I’m getting a perfect score on the CSAT.

I’m going to Hankuk University.

As soon as I turn twenty, I’ll earn money through tutoring to buy stocks and Vitamin Coin. I’ll become a first-generation Nutuber with Study With Me streams.

I will succeed.

I will get rich.

To avoid ending up thoroughly humiliated in front of a classmate at age twenty-nine, I have to keep my wits sharp!

Rattle!

“Kang Da-hye, aren’t you going to sch—what’s wrong?!”

“Waaaah! Mom!”

I threw my arms around Mom as she opened the door and walked in.

“Whoa, Mom, you look so young too……!”

“Oh my goodness! Honey, why are you crying?!”

“It’s okay, they’re tears of joy…!”

Mom, things were so hard for me all this time…….

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

I marveled at my reflection in the convenience store window wearing my school uniform, and marveled at the clothing boutique still standing whole, which was slated to shut down in a few years.

“Hehe!”

I even marveled at my crystal-clear eyesight, which let me see everything so sharply.

‘Yeah, this was the real me.’

A girl who laughed at the slightest breeze.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had smiled until my cheeks ached like this.

‘I’m really going to live well in this life.’

Making that resolve, I walked until I stopped in front of the crosswalk.

I quickly opened the notepad on my smartphone to review my plans for the future.

To live differently in this life, there was only one thing I needed to do.

☆STUDY☆

Though an era where studying isn’t everything would soon arrive, for someone like me with neither remarkable talent nor wealth, studying was the easiest and fastest route to success.

So, I will study no matter what.

And naturally, by no means, absolutely!

Ab!

So!

Lute!

Ly!

Will I ever date.

‘Not that I really dated in high school before regressing, either.’

It just meant I would actively avoid it even more from now on.

And yet.

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

“…….”

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

“…Huh?”

Looking at the boy frowning in front of me, I tilted my head.

Why am I getting dumped the second I regress?

To reflect the historical background, all ages appearing in this work follow the Korean age reckoning system.