Chapter 1
[Although we regret that we couldn’t begin a promising relationship with you, applicant Park Ji-seung, on this occasion, please understand that this decision was in no way due to any lack of ability on your part, but was unavoidable after careful consideration amid limited opportunities.]
“Aaaagh!!! Rejected again!!”
The moment I looked at my phone screen, I slammed my forehead onto the table.
I’d at least earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Hankyung University, a name people in Korea had heard of. Since undergrad, I’d practically lived in the lab, and during my master’s program I’d even collaborated with a defense contractor. I’d done everything from calculating the fatigue life of firearm components to analyzing operating mechanisms under different gas pressures, and some of my work had even made it into actual military equipment.
Honestly, I thought any company would be eager to snap me up.
Reality said otherwise.
In South Korea, facing the worst job market since Dangun founded the nation, a master’s degree didn’t seem like an employment guarantee so much as a prop for interviewers to ask, “But you don’t have any work experience, do you?”
Of course, if I lowered my standards just a little, I could find a job. The problem was that lowering them wasn’t easy for me.
I thought it would be a national loss for someone with a master’s in engineering and experience on defense projects like me to work at some research center for a small company whose name I’d never even heard of, or in quality control—a department that didn’t even do research.
According to my friends, I was just an unemployed guy with standards that were too high.
“Hey, Park Ji-seung. Why don’t you come work with us? Welding research is great. We’re short-staffed, and you’d be our ace from day one.”
To think he was recommending welding research, which wasn’t the least bit interesting, when I had the chance to serve my country. I poured soju into my beer glass to punish this traitor who had betrayed the motherland.
“You traitor to the motherland! Die!”
“Hey! You lunatic, that’s not somaek—it’s just soju! And what do you mean, traitor?”
The cowardly traitor fled to the bathroom in a panic. If giving up defense work wasn’t treason, then what was?
“This, too, is a victory for great Korea......!”
Seeing me like that, another friend sitting beside me shook his head.
“He used to be a nice guy, but he must’ve lost his mind running simulations in the lab.”
“No, no. It wasn’t the simulations; it was the professor who ruined him.”
I ignored the others and chugged the soju I’d poured earlier. My throat burned, but tonight, the liquor felt like medicine.
“Hey, am I really that bad?”
“What are you talking about? Every place you applied to is the best in the industry. It’s obvious why you didn’t get in.”
“Exactly! A talent like me should be going there!”
“If you’d used even half that confidence in your interviews, you’d probably have gotten hired.”
“Huh? I was confident during the interview, too!”
“So you argued with the interviewers that their product was a piece of shit?”
“Ahem, I wasn’t arguing. I was offering suggestions for improvement.”
“I’m sure they’d love it when an applicant who hasn’t even joined the company says he’ll overhaul the research institute’s product.”
I was at a loss for words and fell silent.
At my last interview, when they asked if I had anything to add, I said, “I don’t see any reason why your product needs to be structured this way.” Two of the interviewers chuckled and looked intrigued, but the research director sitting in the middle went stone-faced.
Still, I hadn’t said anything wrong.
‘I told the truth, and they rejected me? Then I was the one who rejected them first. Mm-hmm.’
It was the last shred of pride an unemployed man had.
Then I picked up the soju bottle left on the table and poured myself another glass.
“Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Good work, everyone.”
“Hey, stop drinking. You’ll wreck your stomach.”
“Can a man of Korea not handle this much!”
My friends whispered about who was going to take me home, but I ignored them and sprang to my feet as if I were still perfectly fine.
And the world spun around.
“Huh?”
My vision turned yellow, then narrowed until it was like looking through a pinhole.
“Hey! Park Ji-seung!”
I tried to answer, but my mouth wouldn’t move, and the floor shot up toward my face. No, had my face fallen onto the floor?
The last thing I heard was my friends shoving chairs aside and rushing over. Someone shouted for an ambulance; someone else slapped my cheek until another friend stopped him.
‘Damn, that slap really hurts.’
With that, my consciousness went dark.
…….
When I opened my eyes, a pure white ceiling greeted me.
‘Am I in a hospital?’
Apparently, I’d passed out at the restaurant and been taken to the hospital. Strangely, I didn’t have a headache. My stomach felt fine, too. Maybe it had happened two days ago, and I’d slept soundly in the meantime.
First, I needed to sit up and find someone.
‘…….?’
But my body wouldn’t move.
At first, I wondered if I was still drunk. I tried again, harder. I tried moving my fingers first, then lifting my arms, then tensing my stomach to roll over.
All of it failed.
I couldn’t even hold my head up properly.
I checked my senses first. I could feel things touching my hands and feet, and I could tell hot from cold. If I had sensation but couldn’t move, it wasn’t quite the same as a complete spinal cord injury.
‘Could I be drugged?’
Maybe I hadn’t fully come out of anesthesia. But I couldn’t hear any machines nearby, and there was no smell of antiseptic. Instead, I faintly caught the scents of fabric, perfume, and wood.
The more I analyzed the situation, the stranger it became.
‘Could I be paralyzed?’
Had I hurt my neck when I fell?
At first, I wondered if this could be reincarnation...? But, thinking logically, a cervical spine injury was a far more realistic possibility than reincarnation.
‘No, that isn’t exactly a positive conclusion, either.’
I’d gotten drunk because I couldn’t find a job, fallen over, and become paralyzed. It was an insult to the thirty years of my life so far.
What was so important about getting a job, anyway?
As I felt my life crumbling in real time, I somehow found myself at peace. Maybe this was what Buddhists meant by enlightenment.
As I continued entertaining pointless thoughts, I got hungry.
‘I need to call someone.’
I thought I could move my mouth and throat. I tried to speak as calmly as I could.
“Ah…….”
But despite my best efforts, all that came from my throat was a faint, airy sound.
‘A little louder?’
It didn’t seem like I was completely unable to make a sound, so I tensed my whole body, as if gathering strength in my lower abdomen, and tried to shout.
“Aaaaaaaaa!”
At last, I had a voice. The problem was that it sounded as loud as a fighter jet engine roaring right beside me, enough to make my ears feel like they were going to burst. My voice was too loud... no, because I’d screamed, my throat stung, and my ears rang as my head spun. I startled myself with my own scream, screamed again, and got caught in a vicious cycle.
‘Aah! Help me!’
At that moment, the pure white ceiling split open to either side. Ceilings didn’t open, so what I’d thought was a ceiling probably wasn’t a ceiling at all.
As something ceiling-like was pulled back, a huge face suddenly appeared.
With my vision blurry and no glasses, it looked less like a human face and more like a monster from a horror movie.
‘Whoa, shit. What the hell is that!’
My screams grew even louder.
Soon a hand as big as the face came down and grabbed me. Like a doll caught in a claw machine, I was lifted into the air.
What I had thought was a ceiling was the canopy over a cradle.
Beyond the canopy stretched an incredibly lavish room. Gold ornaments, red fabric, and intricately carved furniture glimmered even through my blurry vision.
‘This isn’t a hospital.’
The woman who’d lifted me murmured in a language I didn’t recognize, patted me, and expertly cradled me in her arms.
Only then did all the strange facts come together.
Limbs that wouldn’t move, a body that couldn’t hold its head up, people of abnormal size, and a cradle.
‘……A baby?’
No matter how much I tried to deny it, there was only one answer. Apparently, I’d become a baby.
It was shocking, but once I’d recovered my composure and thought it over, this situation didn’t seem so bad.
My old body was probably dead anyway, I’d had no luck finding work, and my life was already a mess. Rather than go back to my old body, starting a new life didn’t seem so bad.
Judging by that glittering room, I was definitely not of ordinary status.
‘Even chaebols don’t live in rooms like that. At least a fantasy noble...!’
After sitting in the unfamiliar woman’s arms for a while, still lost in pointless thoughts, I saw another woman come in pushing a cart with a small bottle on it.
The end of the bottle had a soft rubber nipple, and when it went into my mouth, a warm, sweet liquid flowed out.
Instinctively, I sucked on it.
‘Mmm, that’s good.’
It was a shocking sight: a grown man drinking formula, but I couldn’t help being hungry. It tasted much richer than the formula I’d secretly tried when my nephew was a baby.
‘Formula from a noble household really is something else.’
Once my stomach was full, the woman turned me over, held me against her shoulder, and patted my back.
‘This is a little embarrassing.’
A man over thirty was being held by a woman I didn’t know and patted on the back. No matter that I had a baby’s body, mentally it was humiliating.
Just then, it felt like something enormous inside me was rising up my esophagus.
“Burp.”
The room fell silent. The woman holding me and the woman with the bottle both stared down at me intently.
‘…….’
‘It only took thirty seconds?’
When my brother-in-law burped my nephew, I think he patted his back for about thirty minutes. I guess aristocratic nannies are quick at burping babies, too.
‘She’s a nanny, right?’
I still didn’t understand the situation properly, but I was certain of one thing: this wasn’t an ordinary household.
‘All right.’
‘Being born with a silver spoon in my mouth in my second life isn’t so bad.’
Until then, I had no idea what family I had been born into.