Kim Min-jae, thirty-five, was a ghost in a Seoul office, 2032. Fluorescent lights buzzed like vultures over his desk, buried in spreadsheets. His eyes burned, his tie choked, and the clock sneered: 2:34 AM. Fifteen years as a corporate slave—endless deadlines, empty promises, a bank account that mocked his dreams. His hand trembled, spilling coffee across papers. A sharp pain ripped through his chest. I'm done. The world blurred, his body crumpled. On August 12, 2032, Min-jae's heart gave out.
He woke to chIldren's laughter. Sunlight streamed through a cracked window, warming a tiny bed in a cramped Busan apartment. His hands were small, soft, unscarred—a child's hands. Heart pounding, he thought, Is this… transmigration? Like those novels? Am I the protagonist now? He clenched his fists, whispering, "System! System!" No glowing interface. No robotic voice. If not transmigration… reincarnation? His thirty-five-year-old mind reeled. Sorry, So-yeon noona, Ji-won noona. I couldn't be the brother you deserved. A memory flickered: a small penguin, waddling after two penguins with ribbons in their "girl hairs." They turned, pecking him with sharp beaks, squawking playfully. Another flash—his small self giggling as his sisters dressed him in frilly girls' clothes, their laughter filling the room. He shook his head hard, snapping back. Mother… Father… your unfilial son failed you. I couldn't even bring you a daughter-in-law. He cursed himself, fists trembling, for a life unfulfilled. He stumbled to a mirror, a four-year-old's wide eyes staring back. A calendar read "March 2001." Not transmigration. Not reincarnation. I've regressed. The truth hit like a tidal wave.
One week later, Min-jae walking through the park, glaring at the world. Why not 1999? If he'd regressed two years earlier, he'd be a multimillionaire by age four. Serome Technology, an IT startup, launched in August 1999, its shares soaring from 2000¥ to 300000¥ in six months. I could've owned it all. He snorted, imagining his two-year-old self, barely able to waddle, tugging at his father's pant leg with chubby hands. "Buy Serome stock, Appa! It's gonna moon!" His parents would've stared, jaws dropped, thinking their toddler was possessed. Or maybe he'd scribble stock charts on his sippy cup, babbling about "bull markets" between naps. Yeah, right. They'd have called an exorcist. A boy his age ran up, grinning. "Hey, Min-jae, come play soccer with us!" Min-jae scoffed, mind spinning with Bitcoin's rise, tech stocks, hit movies like Squid Game, and songs yet to be written. Who'd waste time kicking a ball when I can make millions? He waved the kid off and headed home.
The alley was quiet. Too quiet. Rough hands grabbed him, a chemical-soaked cloth smothering his screams. Darkness swallowed him. In his first life, a neighborhood kid vanished after soccer, snatched by men from a van while Min-jae stayed home with a cold. The other kids told police they saw a friend's mouth covered, dragged away. This time, Min-jae hadn't caught a cold. He'd refused to play, walking home alone. It's me now. He woke in a humid, rust-stinking warehouse, wrists bound, surrounded by terrified children from worlds apart. Human traffickers. His adult mind raged in a child's body, powerless.
Min-jae cursed fate. A second chance for this hell? The traffickers barked in a language he couldn't understand. Hunger clawed, but he spat at their stale bread. Fifteen years as a corporate slave was enough. I'd rather die than be a real slave for life. He glared at a captor. "I'll curse seventeen generations of your ancestors before I follow you!" His defiance earned beatings, boots bruising his small frame. They locked him in a cage with four other kids, their faces etched with fear and fire. The first one a blonde, clutching a torn doll, stared blankly, perhaps European. The second one a white-haired kid, pale as frost, sat silent, unyielding. Another a black-haired one, East Asian, muttered prayers. Lastly a pink-haired kid, likely Asian, glared at their captors, fists clenched. No words passed between them, but their eyes met—shared pain, a flicker of defiance. What's with this hair combo? Are these bastards opening a salon or something? Min-jae chuckled to himself.
No words passed between them, but their eyes met—shared pain, a flicker of defiance. The captors tossed small bread scraps into the cage. Stubborn, Min-jae gave his share to his cagemates. Cagemates, huh? Sounds like cellmates, but with worse interior decorating. Two days without food left his vision fading. This is it.
Suddenly, gunfire erupted, rattling the rusted warehouse walls like a thunderclap. Shouts in rapid Spanish pierced the air, boots stomped with relentless force, and flashlight beams carved jagged paths through the suffocating darkness. "¡Policía!" a voice roared, cutting through the chaos. Starved for two days, his stomach a hollow drum, Min-jae teetered on the edge of unconsciousness when the gunfire erupted—salvation or slaughter, he couldn't tell. The local police stormed in, tipped off by an anonymous call, swiftly cuffing the traffickers in a blur of shouted orders. The children around him, small and broken, stared blankly, their minds shattered by trauma, unable to recall country or city. A woman's voice, calm yet firm, cut through in English, "Can anyone identify their country or city?" Barely clinging to life, he croaked in broken English, "IMe Korea!"—his voice a frail thread, but his body, ravaged by days without food, betrayed him, and darkness swallowed him whole.
He awoke to the unfamiliar creak of a strange bed, a plain ceiling stretching above like a blank canvas. Blinking, he registered the faces of his four cagemates hovering close, scrubbed clean, their faded clothes hanging loosely on small frames. As his senses sharpened, he realized they were all girls—each with a flicker of recognition in their eyes. "Aren't you the ones locked with me?" he rasped in Korean, his throat dry as sand. "Where's this… an orphanage?" Their silence hit harder than the gunfire, their blank stares a wall of language barriers, lost in a world that didn't speak their tongues. It dawned on him then—he'd been hauled to this orphanage alongside these kids, their identities as erased as his hopes, likely slated for return to vague "respective countries" if anyone could figure out where they belonged. Far from the glittering billionaire fantasy he'd dreamed of, Min-jae's second life unfurled as a cruel, cosmic jest, and he was its unwilling punchline
"To be continued..."
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