Round eyes, a pert little nose, and a smile that curled at the corners in the most charming way.
And that wasn't even the half of it.
Fingers more nimble than any other kid her age. A sharpness that let her follow adult conversation without missing a beat.
The way she occasionally mimicked grown-up mannerisms? Clearly the mark of a genius.
*Is there any creature in this world as lovable as my daughter?*
Lee Jeong-hwan believed this with his whole heart.
Not because he was a hopeless girl-dad. Objectively. Seriously.
Knock knock—
"Princess! Time to wake up."
It was a little sad that a six-year-old was already demanding he knock first.
But what could he do. Kids grew up fast these days.
Creak—
The bedroom door inched open.
A small shadow shuffled out, hair a mess, one hand raised to rub at her eyes.
"Did our little princess wake up?"
The room had been decorated with love — soft pink wallpaper, coral curtains, and a fluffy cotton-candy cloud mobile drifting above the headboard.
A princess's room ought to look exactly like this.
He'd put it all together before she was even born, and it was still just as pink as ever.
"……"
His daughter, Lee Chae-won, didn't answer. She just stuck out her lower lip.
She stared up at her father with an expression that said something was deeply, thoroughly wrong.
Even that look came across less as a complaint and more as a pout.
Was it even legal to be this adorable while sulking?
Just as Jeong-hwan was sinking deeper into his hopeless girl-dad reverie, his daughter cut through it with a voice that was tiny but perfectly clear.
"I'm not a princess…."
Dangling from her other hand was the little bear plushie she'd apparently hugged all night long.
He smiled warmly at his daughter's completely unconvincing protest.
*If you like it, you could just say so.*
Honest as ever — which is to say, not at all.
"Okay, okay. Shall we go eat? Should we bring the bear too?"
"Wh— why is this even in my hand…!"
Her expression crumpled further, but even that was nothing short of adorable.
***
When I first opened my eyes, my mind was thick with fog.
Unfamiliar faces crowded my vision, and not a single finger would move the way I wanted.
*Let go! Let go of me!*
As I flailed around, two things gradually came into focus.
One: for some reason, I was a newborn baby.
Two: the man and woman grinning dopily in front of me were, in all likelihood, my parents.
*Huh…?*
But why did I already know all of this?
Even as I wriggled my tiny, squishy little body, I couldn't shake how strange that felt.
I concentrated hard, trying to make sense of it.
And there, scattered through my mind like shards of broken glass, I found them — fragments of a past life.
A cramped goshiwon room.
A monitor glowing in the dead of night.
A game I'd been glued to at all hours… or more precisely, the business I'd been running inside that game.
A massive in-game event had sent prices through the roof, and I'd been so thrilled I'd burned through several nights straight without sleeping.
*And then I just… keeled over. Dying in my twenties. What a way to go.*
I could barely even remember my own name.
Part of me thought I must have lost my mind. But there was information rattling around inside a newborn's head that had absolutely no business being there — and that made it pretty hard to deny I'd been reincarnated.
*These people are my parents?*
"Peek-a-boo— gotcha!"
I stared at the man beaming as he shoved his face into mine.
Having grown up in an orphanage, I honestly had no idea what it felt like to have parents.
And on top of that, I was a kid dragging around memories like these.
*What on earth am I supposed to do with this.*
My parents looked impossibly bright and cheerful compared to the gutter I'd crawled out of in my last life.
Still….
As I quietly studied that warm smile, something in my chest gave a little flutter.
If this was a second chance at a life I'd spent so miserably the first time around —
maybe this time, I could live it differently.
*Right. As a good son, I'll do this life properly.*
I was steeling myself with a resolve that was frankly too dignified for a newborn, when —
"Oh, our baby girl! Who does she take after, being this pretty?"
"Who else, me."
……Wait.
*Girl?*
"She's not crying at all — is she okay?"
"Of course. She cried when she first came out, didn't she? She's perfectly fine."
"Phew, I guess our daughter is just very composed."
No, hold on, I'm a son—
"Daddy decorated your room so beautifully. Our little princess, you worked so hard."
Was it the shock of the new environment, or the unsettling emptiness below the waist?
*……I'm a girl?*
"Oh my?"
I tried everything to hold back the tears welling up inside me.
"Waaaaaaah!"
"My, what a healthy baby girl you have!"
"Ha ha, don't cry, shh, shh—"
Whether it was the weakness of this tiny body, my tear ducts simply refused to cooperate.
This is a disaster….
.
.
.
……Looking back on those early worries, the next six years went remarkably well.
If I had to name one problem, it was that my past-life memories were fading a little more with each passing day.
I pressed the remote control buttons with fingers that had grown quite capable.
*Heh heh. Clueless Dad.*
How dare he put on some kids' show and then leave the room.
Adults really were so careless.
I wasn't a helpless little baby anymore. Operating electronics was child's play for me — literally.
"Oh, hm."
I flipped through the channels and got briefly snagged on an anime I'd never seen before —
Shake shake.
— then snapped my head away and switched to something else in a hurry.
*Phew……. Kids' cartoons. The addictive pull is just too strong.*
To think that I, a person with the mind of a proper adult, couldn't even hold out against one measly cartoon.
Honestly, wasn't this worse than cigarettes or alcohol?
*Exposing children to something this dangerously addictive… adults really are just obsessed with money…!*
I had uncovered one of the world's cruel secrets.
I'd never had any exposure to this stuff in my past life, so I'd had no idea.
The sneaky thing was, whenever Mom and Dad got busy, they'd flip on a cartoon and disappear.
I'd think, *what's this?* and start watching, and then — *oh no* — I'd snap back to reality and find that time had simply evaporated.
What was even so entertaining about tiny little creatures running around?!
Lately I'd even caught myself playing with the cartoon character plushie Dad had bought, and the shock of it nearly gave me a heart attack.
*Dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Cartoons are evil spirits.*
If someone at my level was struggling this much, what hope did actual children have…… Terrifying.
I steeled myself and switched the channel to the news.
It wasn't exactly fun, but it was necessary work.
[And now for our next story. Girl group Luminous has taken the nation by storm, topping the music charts for five consecutive weeks——]
The date in the corner of the screen.
The anchor's words.
The scrolling ticker.
All of it was from the past.
Not only had I been given a new life —
I'd been sent back in time as well.
I'd been living without thinking much about it, and then I'd found out the year and nearly fallen over from the shock.
Ever since, I'd been secretly reading newspapers and watching the news whenever I could, gathering information.
*Ugh, I really should've paid more attention to investments when I had the chance!*
What good was coming from the future if I hadn't been paying attention?
I'd had no interest in anything outside my own little world — not stocks, not real estate, nothing.
I supposed I should be grateful I at least knew which messaging apps and search engines had survived into the future.
*Crypto? I feel like that was a big thing at some point.*
Once I started elementary school, I'd have to ask for a stock account.
I could just buy in from there, right?
"Haah."
A sigh slipped out on its own.
My memories had more holes in them every day.
And even if I'd wanted to write things down, I'd spent my entire past life making money through games — so nothing particularly useful came to mind.
*Ugh!*
If only I'd watched the news once in a while!!
I was sitting there clutching my head in frustration when Dad reappeared, hiding something behind his back.
"Chae-won— ta-da!"
Today was Christmas.
Up until last year, my parents had waited for me to fall asleep before sneaking a present onto my pillow and insisting it was from Santa.
— *Santa doesn't exist. Are you dumb, Dad?*
I'd done them the favor of telling them the truth so they wouldn't have to stay up waiting for me.
So this year, I was receiving my gift face-to-face.
But now that it was actually happening, it felt a little anticlimactic…
*The element of surprise is completely gone.*
Too late to realize that now. Our family's Santa had been killed by my own hand.
I stared blankly at the wrapped box until Dad undid the ribbon.
Inside was a bead accessory craft kit.
The kind where you thread colorful beads onto thin string to make bracelets and necklaces.
"What do you think, Princess? Do you like it?"
"…No."
Of course I didn't like it.
"Come on, don't be like that. Want to make something together with Daddy?"
It was always like this in this household.
*Ugh, what do they take me for. This kind of thing is for girls who——*
It was an upgrade from last Christmas's doll dress-up set, but still.
*I should just move out!*
……That said, someone had gone to the trouble of buying it for me, so I'd give it a try.
I wasn't actually a six-year-old brat.
I couldn't treat my parents like that.
I sat down with a show of reluctance and started fidgeting with my fingers.
*Oh…… these little beads actually look kind of like jewels.*
I began picking them up one by one and threading them onto the string.
I should go with black, like a proper tough guy.
Hmm, actually. That's a bit drab, isn't it?
Maybe purple as a compromise.
Not bad.
Oh. Wait, this pink is really bright.
That would actually look great.
As I worked through them one by one, I found myself getting genuinely into it.
*Is this why adults are so obsessed with Lego?*
Dad… might actually have decent taste….
I was deep in concentration when Dad quietly slid into the seat beside me.
"Princess."
"……"
"My goodness, she really loves it."
I didn't want to admit it, but I gave a slow nod.
Being an ungrateful child was wrong.
"Whyyy."
"Chae-won, listen while you work, okay?"
"Yeah, I'm listenin."
"How old is Chae-won?"
"Sicks."
Why was he asking my age?
"Right, and normally kids your age are all in kindergarten by now."
"Only dummies."
"What! Where did you learn to say something like that!"
"From you, Dad."
"Huh? Oh, oh! Oh! Honey, it wasn't me. It's a misunderstanding! Don't hit me— oof!"
I'd neatly disposed of the interruption and was trying to get back to my bead bracelet.
But.
"Lee Chae-won."
"……"
"Look at Mom."
Being called by my full name was a bad sign.
I could brush off Dad, but resisting Mom was a different matter.
Why? I had no idea. Pure instinct.
Mom stood there with her arms crossed and spoke.
"You need to go to kindergarten so you can make friends before elementary school."
"…I don't need friends."
"You can't play with Mom and Dad forever. And Mom has to go back to work now, so we can't leave Chae-won home alone in the mornings."
"I play fine by myself. Besides, I was the one entertaining you two."
I was pushing back on the small stuff when Mom's gaze sharpened, and I dropped my eyes.
"And that's not all. All the kids your age have been friends since kindergarten. Mom's worried about whether you'll be able to adjust when you get to elementary school."
"……"
Oh. So that was it.
She was worried her perfectly fine daughter might end up with poor social skills. That was fair enough.
Six years of experience had taught me that if I threw a tantrum here, I could probably wriggle out of it again.
But.
*If I want to move around freely from here on out, I need to show them there's nothing wrong with me…!*
A chance to be a good daughter and build some trust at the same time.
"Fine, I'll go…."
The moment I gave in with a docile nod, both their faces lit up noticeably.
"That's right, good thinking."
"See? If you just talk to our princess calmly, she understands everything. Oh, I wonder who she takes after, being so sensible."
"Doesn't seem like she takes after you."
It wasn't even a big deal.
But my shoulders lifted just a little on their own.
I shouldn't be happy about something like this….
I could feel my mental age retreating a little more with each passing day.
*Anyway. Kindergarten.*
"Haah, I guess I'll go entertain the little kids…."
A sigh escaped before I could stop it.
"……You're a little kid too, you know?"
Mom's quiet remark was, naturally, ignored.