Suzuka Wake up quickly You will be late
In my doze, I heard a loud voice and my consciousness awakened.
What a nostalgic feeling. To have a dream where I am woken up by my mom. That is how cornered I must have been.
My parents are still alive, and I do go back to my parents house for Obon and New Years, but I am never woken up by my mother. Once you reach your late twenties, it is hard to keep sleeping late, and even on holidays I wake up by 8 at the latest. How many years has it been since I was woken by my mother s loud voice. Realizing that I woke up remembering something so far in the past, I once again understood how mentally drained I must have been.
So, what time is it? I hope it is not evening. If I sleep too late, I will not be able to sleep tonight.
Thinking that, I slowly opened my eyes.
Huh
That lackluster voice was not because it was evening, as it was already dark around me. It was because the scene I saw when I woke up was completely different from the scene I saw before sleeping.
Huh, what does this mean? This is scary
The bed I was lying in was not the bed I had collapsed onto to fall asleep. It was no longer my small 1LDK room that I had started living in after becoming a working adult.
It was not that I woke up to a scene I had never seen before. The opposite. It was a familiar scene. This was my old room in my parents house where I used to live. Probably.
I say probably because I think it is my room, but it has changed a lot from how it is now. Nostalgic Yes, nostalgic. My study desk is still in the room, but there should not have been anything on top of it. When I sat up, I wondered if the bed was also the one I used as a child.
As I stared blankly at the messy room, I heard someone coming up the stairs.
Suzuka Oh, you are awake Then wash your face and get ready quickly It is already 7 30
The person who opened the door and showed her face was my mom.
Hmm Is she wearing makeup in the morning She looks younger
I tried to say something to her, but she seemed busy and quickly went back downstairs.
Uh, what is this Am I still dreaming
I pinched my cheek, but I could feel the touch and the pain. In my thirty years of life, I have never had a dream this realistic.
My head is full of confusion, but for now I will go wash my face like my mom said.
Thinking that, I got out of bed and could see the whole room. Then the sense of wrongness I had been feeling turned into certainty.
A room that felt lived in, as if it was used regularly like my student days. Textbooks were sticking out of a school bag that I should have thrown away in the past. On my study desk, a Shonen Jump magazine with a series that should have already ended on the cover.
While feeling certain about what was happening, I was confused and rushed to the bathroom.
Haha I look young, damn
My face reflected in the mirror was not the face of a thirty year old man, not the face drained of energy after losing all my fortune on FX, not a face covered in stubble from not shaving. It was my teenage self, my youthful, vibrant younger self.
◇
Ha ha ha ha
I won I won I have completely won
Not knowing what I had won, Suzuka walked along laughing loudly.
Today was the final day of first semester finals. He was on his way home after finishing junior high school which ended in the morning.
I do not understand what is happening, I do not know how things turned out this way But I have time leaped. That one fact is everything
Yes. When Suzuka woke up, he had time leaped. It was not a continuation of when he lost all his fortune on FX at age thirty. He had returned to his past self. June 2009. Age fifteen, a third year middle school student.
At first I thought it was a dream. Of course. Who wants a time traveling middle aged man.
But when I pinched my cheek, it hurt normally. I finished my test quickly and spent the rest of the time sleeping, but when I woke up I was still in the classroom. I cannot accept it, but I understood that I had time leaped.
That means I can do it over. My life. I can start a New Game Plus. And starting from as young as middle school.
I do not have any regrets strong enough that I desperately wished to go back to the past and do things over. Well, I do regret losing all my fortune on FX.
My friendships, the school I went to, my place of work, I think I would be fine walking the same path again in my new life. Of course, I do wish I had enjoyed my youth a little more, but that is about it. There are many small regrets, but none that I would still be hung up on at age thirty.
But precisely because I became an adult, no, precisely because I lost all my fortune on FX, I was deeply grateful for this time leap from the bottom of my heart.
Are you asking if I am grateful because I can cancel out the money I lost?
That is not it. No matter how many times I repeated my life, I would just say next time will be fine and lose it again. Having gone through it so many times, I know that starting over would be meaningless.
So what am I grateful for It is that I can obtain a huge amount of money.
I do not remember the winning numbers for the lottery. I did not care about horse racing, so I do not know which horse won.
However, I do remember the points over these fifteen years where stock prices moved significantly. Especially cryptocurrency.
The peak year of cryptocurrency. I also vaguely remember how the market shifted afterwards. Cryptocurrency is volatile, so even just that could probably earn me a few hundred million yen. Because it is a future that will definitely come. Even if I take on the market with considerable leverage, a guaranteed victory awaits.
That is not all. I also vaguely remember the timing of major movements in the Nikkei average. The formation of a new cabinet, the decision for the Tokyo Olympics, the winners of US presidential elections, and the ultimate one, the panic caused by the coronavirus and the movement of the Nikkei average due to yen depreciation and appreciation. With just this information, I am secure. I can become a billionaire without working.
The ultimate is the USD JPY exchange rate. In this era when the dollar was below 100 yen, would anyone have imagined it would exceed 160 yen I remember the most recent market movements vividly. If I write them down before I forget, at worst I can be free from labor by the time I turn thirty.
All future financial anxiety is gone; rather, a life is guaranteed where I can use money like water. And now I am at the prime of my youth, age fifteen.
I am not the same middle school third year monkey driven by lust who wanted a girlfriend and wanted to do naughty things. Now I have the composure of an adult. I cannot say I have had a lot of romantic experience, but I will not be desperate around girls, and if I act like a gentleman, I should be able to get a girlfriend Then dating in school uniforms should not be impossible
I won. Yes, I have won at life.
With a smirk on my face, I took out my house key from my bag and went home.
I m ho me
As if my demeanor had reverted to that of a middle schooler, I said I m home in English while taking off my shoes. No one was home. My older brother by three years was at high school, my father was at work, and my mother was at her part time job. As a latchkey kid, I was used to saying I m home even when no one was there.
While looking at the note my mother left about lunch, I took yakisoba out of the refrigerator and heated it up. Wondering what was on daytime TV in this era, I turned on the television and the lunchtime news came on.
Next, this news. The top ranked explorer guild Tiger Crouching Grass operating in the Osaka Dungeon has succeeded in defeating the area boss of the 1st district of the 7th floor.
I was about to wait in front of the microwave for the yakisoba to heat up, so I turned on the TV and put down the remote, but the unfamiliar news content made me stop and stare at the screen, unable to move.
The area boss that Tiger Crouching Grass succeeded in defeating is
It was not a mishearing, nor was it a story from an anime or a movie. What was shown on TV was a scene of people fighting a monster like a giant kaiju. A sight like a live action version of a game where you hunt monsters. But the monster carried a real sense of power that CGI could not produce.
In the following scene, members of the guild Tiger Crouching Grass were shown being interviewed surrounded by fans and reporters, wearing armor that looked like game equipment.
Huh Is this for real What does this mean
My ears, my head more confused than in the morning, could not take in the script read by the newscaster because the content was unfamiliar, and instead I heard the sound of the microwave beeping to announce the end of heating.