Chapter 2
***
Saturday evening.
Park Youngman dragged his weary body home, feeling like he might collapse at any moment.
Normally, he would have been dragged off to a company dinner after work, but the boss, a doting family man, had ordered the fathers with children to go home and help with childcare, so he was allowed to leave.
When he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw his wife and son.
“I thought you had a company dinner. You're home early?”
“Things worked out that way.”
Youngman hugged his wife once, then walked toward the child who was wearing a sullen expression with a bright smile.
“Chanhyeok, Dad's home.”
His son, Chanhyeok, had been very different from other children since he was little.
He was so quiet that Youngman had once worried he might be sick.
This kid's going to grow up big.
Unlike other children, who cried at the drop of a hat, Chanhyeok felt like he only came looking for him when he truly needed something. It was to the point that Youngman didn't even feel childcare was difficult.
“It stings!”
Apparently, Dad's beard rubbing against his cheek had stung, because the boy started wildly hitting his own face with his hands. Chanhyeok's little hands were surprisingly strong, so Youngman quickly pulled his face back.
Then, with an awkward expression, he opened his mouth.
“Chanhyeok, want to watch soccer?”
It was the latest-model TV he had bought after making up his mind, worried that his son spent all day drawing bizarre pictures on paper and doing nothing else.
After buying the TV, he played cartoons that kids were supposed to like, but Chanhyeok showed no interest at all.
Only when he happened to turn on a soccer broadcast did Chanhyeok show interest in the TV.
He was a son who wore an expression that made everything in the world seem bothersome, but when he watched soccer, he was different. Whenever soccer was on, his eyes would sparkle.
It was already a rebroadcast he had watched several times, but the boy kept drawing pictures on paper while watching the match, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
“Maybe Chanhyeok wants to become a soccer player later on?”
Leaving his son, who had started to get absorbed in soccer, on the quilt, he quietly began talking with his wife. Discussing their child's future with her was one of the small joys he had in his hard life.
“But I heard arts and sports cost a lot of money....”
At his wife's words, Youngman smiled and said,
“I'll just have to work harder.”
It was a time when South Korea's economy was growing at a rapid pace.
People believed deep in their hearts that tomorrow would be better than yesterday.
“Honey....”
“Youngman.”
“Youngman.”
Meanwhile, at that moment.
“Ugh. Here we go again.”
Seeing his parents' lovey-dovey antics, Chanhyeok quietly clicked his tongue and started focusing on the soccer match.
***
A young child's daily life was monotonous.
Time passed slowly but steadily, and before I knew it, I had turned six.
[Civilian government inaugurated.]
I clicked my tongue lightly as I looked at the newspaper my father subscribed to.
It would have been nice if I'd known the profitable information of this era as well as I knew the stock market, but there was plenty to regret.
Like any ordinary kid my age, I wasn't all that interested in things like real estate or stocks.
Still, even if I knew all the details, convincing my parents would have been the first hurdle.
There was one investment opportunity that couldn't be replaced.
At this time, just saving money in a bank guaranteed an interest rate of no less than 8.5%.
If the me before I regressed had discovered this fact, would he have reacted like this?
“What? They guarantee 8.5% with no losses? Where the hell does something like that exist?”
I could picture my future self, who had dumped all his money into U.S. stocks, turning blue in the face when Earth GM Trump's 'normalization' kicked in.
“I should've listened to the investing god Buffett and sold when he warned me.”
I pushed my bitterness aside and sorted out my thoughts as I read the newspaper.
Anyway.
I had regressed, but I had no intention of becoming a soccer manager.
“Maybe in Europe, but not in Korea anymore.”
Since there was nothing to watch, I was scribbling tactical notes on paper.
Because I'd been hurt too many times in my previous life, I no longer wanted to do anything related to soccer in Korea.
My goal this time was to use future knowledge to get rich and live while taking care of my parents.
Given that a regressor becoming one of the few people to get rich was an "obvious fate," I'd even imagined becoming an EPL club owner someday.
“Still, not a manager.”
But the great being that had sent me back couldn't accept even that version of me, apparently.
[Mission: Lift the Big Ear as a manager.]
Failure: You will return to your pre-regression state.
One day, it threw out an absurd goal and called it a quest.
I couldn't hold back and spat out a curse.
However, the timing of that curse was a little too perfect.
“Jeong-hee.”
“Youngman.”
“What a load of crap.”
Of all times, I had blurted out a curse just as my parents started showing affection.
In an instant, silence fell, and my mother and father's cold gazes turned to me.
“That's what Dad said before!”
I escaped the crisis with the quick reflexes befitting someone in their second life.
“I told you not to swear in front of the kid!”
“No, I didn't swear at all....”
I sacrificed my father to summon the red-eyed Kim Jeong-hee.
And I coldly ignored my father's desperate eyes, silently begging for help.
Well.
This would be a family memory in its own way, too.
***
After panicking for a while upon receiving the mission window, I quickly pulled myself together and started looking for my ability.
Since it had suddenly handed me a mission, I figured there had to be some other special ability.
“Now.”
When my mother was preparing dinner, I shouted with a serious expression.
“Status window!”
But there was no response at all.
Come to think of it, the mission wasn't to lift the Big Ear as a player, but to lift it as a manager.
“Scouter...?”
At that moment.
A semi-transparent hologram began appearing in my field of vision.
I steadied my pounding heart and looked at it.
What if I actually had talent that could devour the world?
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
[Name: Park Chanhyeok.]
- Growth not yet complete, so an accurate evaluation is impossible.
- Evaluation conducted based on the previous life.
- One-line verdict: I recommend finding another career.
The evaluation was harsher than I expected.
***
I started training in earnest.
After all, footwork drills were best started at a young age.
“I never thought I'd be playing soccer again.”
Even though my goal was to lift the Big Ear as a manager, there were two reasons I was training so hard.
First, Asia is soccer's backwater.
If I played here, no matter how hard I tried, I still wouldn't be able to become a manager in Europe.
To manage in Europe, I at least needed to be a player who had already played there. Only then would the players there not look down on me.
Even Korean players looked down on anyone who wasn't a selected athlete; Europe would only be worse, not better.
The easiest way to play soccer in Europe was to go there to study soccer. It was an option my poor family couldn't afford.
Still, by the time I was in high school, the Korean Football Association would start an overseas study program for promising players.
If I got selected for that overseas study program, I'd be given the chance to study abroad on the association's dime.
I planned to earn my coaching license in Europe with top marks while going through the overseas study program.
“If only I'd had money! Then I wouldn't have had to do this crap!”
Second, to make good use of the ability given to me, Scouter, I needed plenty of data.
One thing I'd learned through Scouter was that there were quite a lot of people in Korea with soccer talent.
However, most of them either hadn't found their talent and were studying all night, or their growth potential was being shaved away by outdated training methods.
It was regrettable in many ways, but it wasn't a situation where I could start lecturing them.
No adult would take a child's words seriously.
“From now on, we're doing duck walks!”
I left for home, doing my best to ignore the sight of soccer prospects' potential being worn down in real time.
- You'll wreck your knees doing that....
In fact, the last time I tried to give advice, some coach suddenly tried to slap a child across the face, and I was shocked.
“Indeed, the barbaric 90s....”
After that day, I stopped rashly giving out advice.
My own body was far more precious than someone else's.
“I'm home.”
Anyway, when I stepped inside, the atmosphere was different from usual.
“Chanhyeok, Santa Claus said he gave our Chanhyeok a present because he listened to Mom and Dad and behaved well.”
News came that my mother was pregnant with a younger sibling, something that hadn't existed in my first life.
I definitely wasn't having the unfilial thought of, Why is this my Christmas present?
Well, to be honest, it was something I'd already expected.
They were doing that every day, after all; it'd be weird if I didn't get a sibling.
I'm sure they tried to be as quiet as possible, but was that really easy in a one-room shack?
“It's surprising that both of you are younger than I was in my previous life.”
All I did was, as the mentally older one, be considerate enough to let them make love comfortably.
“Ah. That's not how you do it....”
Having thoroughly absorbed the advanced culture of the land of erotic enlightenment, I'll just say I wanted to give my father some advice.
Anyway, unlike in the original timeline, my parents kept making love, ended up conceiving a sibling, and today they revealed that fact while watching my reaction.
They must have heard somewhere that when attention goes to the younger sibling, the firstborn gets jealous.
Well, as someone on their second life, I just wanted my parents' attention to disappear.
That way, I'd have a little more room to act freely.
“Are you happy you have a sibling?”
At my mother's words, I nodded in agreement.
“Yeah.”
I was looking forward to having a 'tool' I could boss around with just one finger.
Since I'd been an only child in my previous life, there were times when I wished I had a sibling to run errands for me.
“Do you want a little sister or a little brother?”
“A little brother!”
Objectively, a little brother would be more useful as a tool, so I hoped for a younger brother.
***
Time passed quickly, and my sibling was born.
Unfortunately, it was a little sister.
“Jeong-a is so well-behaved; she's just like Chanhyeok when he was little.”
“Yeah.”
The little sister, swaddled in cloth, somehow looked extraordinary.
At that moment, my instincts as a regressor twitched.
Just in case, I whispered into my sibling's ear.
“Heil Hitler, peace in our time, make again great America, you must respect me. siuuuuuu─!”
Twitch.
“What the...?”
That reaction just now seemed strangely off.