"Hey, did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"You know that fifth-grade girl who stomped Jang Jin-sol? Apparently her family's connected to the mob."
"No way, seriously? I mean… she did seem scary strong."
"That can't be right! A girl who smiles that purely? No way!"
"No, no, my friend in Class 3 saw it herself. She was at a PC bang gaming with the gang members. That place is basically her turf."
Carried along by the wild imaginations and loose lips of Eunha Elementary School's students, rumors about that fifth-grade girl began to slowly spread.
Among the sixth-graders, Lee Chae-won was already known as the fifth-grader who'd taken down the notorious Jang Jin-sol — so the naive elementary schoolers were quick to believe the gossip.
Before long, the stories crept past the sixth-graders and started trickling down to the fifth grade as well.
The only problem was that among the fifth-graders, Lee Chae-won was far better known as the pretty top student of the school, which caused considerable confusion all around.
Eventually, the rumor found its way to the ears of Kim Si-yeon — Chae-won's closest friend, at least as far as the outside world was concerned.
And when Si-yeon relayed the question to Lee Chae-won, all Chae-won could do was stare blankly with her mouth hanging open.
***
'Wait — are my parents actually involved in the criminal underworld?!'
She started to say no, then stopped herself.
Why? Because she genuinely had no idea what they did.
She'd never really asked, and they'd never really told her.
She'd just sort of assumed — oh, they work at a company or something.
She'd had no connection to office workers in her past life either, so she knew nothing about it, and besides, she'd been busy enough with her own day-to-day.
Trying to convey that honestly felt somehow like being a terrible daughter, so the words got stuck in her throat for a moment.
"H-huh? Why the silence. That's unsettling."
"Wha — no! I mean, I don't think so?"
"…You're flustered. Now it actually seems real."
The more she tried to talk around it, the more suspicious she looked, so she just came clean.
"I just… don't actually know what my mom and dad do for a living. But I'm sure they're not doing anything bad…."
Dad, definitely not.
That guy with his easygoing laugh all the time — there's no way he's a gangster.
'Mom, though…. Hmm.'
She is kind of scary.
Sharp features, striking looks, the kind of presence that fills a room.
But why was this even coming up now?
Mom and Dad are good people!
"No, I just happened to overhear a rumor earlier. Something about how the top dog of Eunha Elementary is a mob boss's daughter."
"…Top dog?"
"Yeah."
"Don't tell me — you mean me?"
"That's right."
"Oh, please. That's so childish. 'Top dog,' ugh."
She'd figured it was just nonsense.
But then — murmur, murmur.
During lunch.
Murmur, murmur.
During PE.
Murmur, murmur.
On the way home.
"What is going on…?"
What she'd expected to fizzle out as a silly rumor was clearly growing.
According to what Si-yeon had pieced together:
Chae-won loved gaming so much that she'd set up camp at a PC bang with her gang members.
She was waiting for a guy who could beat her at games.
But actually, she didn't discriminate by age or gender — she was ready to stomp anyone.
The reason no one had beaten her yet was that the moment someone won, her underlings would make them disappear.
"What kind of absolute nonsense is that. What kind of fanfiction are people writing."
"Everyone must be bored."
She told the kids she was close with that none of it was true, but stopping it from spreading to people she didn't know was another matter entirely.
And honestly, if she was being real about it —
"Oh, that's her."
"Eek! Let's go around!"
"Si-yeon! Over here, over here!"
"…You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
She'd just come to the library to do homework. And people were parting ways for her.
That wasn't all, either.
She stood out enough with her looks that she was easy to spot.
"Hey, move, move."
"What, why? Oh!"
Even waiting in line at the convenience store off school grounds, she came out ahead.
"Hehehe."
"Goodness… you're way too pleased with yourself."
It wasn't like she was threatening anyone or causing harm.
Sure, hearing people whisper behind her back wasn't great — but wasn't a few perks like this fair enough?
As long as the people around her knew the truth, that was enough. She didn't put much effort into correcting anyone else.
Maybe it was because she was stuck in an elementary schooler's body, but she'd gotten a little childish herself.
Even petty power tasted sweet.
Was this, too, a form of profit grinding?
She let the rumors run wild like that, going back and forth between the PC bang and school for another two months.
And before long, she came to regret every one of those choices.
.
.
.
She tore open an ice cream bar from the freezer and took a bite.
Her mom had gone out to a parent meeting and would be back soon, which meant no cool PC bang to escape to — so ice cream was the only way to survive the summer heat.
"Ughhh. It's so hot."
She was sprawled in front of the fan when her mom came back, sooner than expected.
"Welcome home."
She figured the meeting must have ended early because of the heat — but then:
"Chae-won, come sit here."
Her mom walked in without even changing her clothes and patted the sofa cushion.
Chae-won glanced at her sideways and sat down beside her.
What's this about?
"Chae-won, so I went to the parent meeting today, and — you know those moms who used to be so friendly? They were acting all weird and cautious around me."
"Oh. Yeah."
"I think our Chae-won probably knows why. Don't you?"
"Huh?"
Could this be — the mob family theory?
Wow. So this ridiculous story had actually made it to the parents.
The rumor had been going around for months and seemed to have died down, so she'd figured it wasn't worth worrying about — her melting ice cream was a more pressing concern.
"That's nothing, really. Nom nom. Someone spread a rumor that Mom and Dad are gangsters."
It really wasn't a big deal. It was just a misunderstanding.
Who cared what other people said?
Chomp chomp. She kept eating her ice cream as she spoke.
"Did my ears just break? Gangsters? As in people who use their fists?"
"Yeah."
Sadly, she didn't get to finish the ice cream.
"What on earth happened that turned a perfectly normal mother into a mob wife, and why is our Chae-won sitting here so shamelessly calm about it."
"Oww — Mom — ow, ow, my cheeks, you're squishing my cheeks—"
Whether it was the lack of sincerity in her answer or something else, her mom's hands descended on her cheeks without mercy.
"I'm being nice about this. Are you going to explain yourself properly? I come home exhausted from work and I'm being called a gangster's wife. You — you—"
"Aaah — I'm sorryyyy — people are just like that, they bark at whatever they want—"
"Start talking! What have you been doing out there?!"
Ugh. She was the victim here.
She was the one being wronged!
……Well, if someone pointed out that she'd been enjoying it instead of clearing things up, she couldn't exactly argue with that.
She hadn't done anything wrong — so why should she have to go around correcting rumors? That had been her thinking.
But now that her mom knew, there was no getting around it.
Other people's nonsense she could tune out, but her mom's fists were always within reach.
'Okay, but how do I even explain this.'
She decided to lay it out as calmly as possible — leaving out the part about practically living at the PC bang.
"So, um. I went to a PC bang. Occasionally?"
"Mm. A PC bang? What's that?"
"It's, you know. A place where you play games."
"Okay, sure. And?"
"And I sort of… made friends with some of the guys there, so I'd hang out sometimes, get snacks, play games together. And I think some kids saw that and got the wrong idea?"
She thought that was a pretty clean explanation.
She'd even minimized the gaming.
But.
"…What?"
Her mom's reaction was not good.
Her eyes were trembling — not in an impressive way, more like a deeply disturbed way.
"You made friends with… men? You hung out with them? At a… PC bang…?"
She muttered to herself, then pulled out her phone and started searching frantically.
"Oh—!"
She clapped a hand over her mouth, and her hand began to shake.
"H-hey. Mom. What's wrong…."
That was when Chae-won realized things had gone very wrong.
Her mom's phone slipped from her hand.
It landed right in front of Chae-won, and she could see the photo clearly.
'What is this.'
A dim, dingy space lined with battered old computers, with rough-looking men puffing away on cigarettes — it looked like a proper den of lowlifes.
So that's what her mom thought she'd been hanging around in.
'Wow. Where do I even start with this.'
Her mom had gone silent from the shock.
Chae-won gently grabbed the hem of her pants and gave it a little tug.
"Mom, the place I went to wasn't like that…. Not all PC bangs are like this…."
Her words must have gotten through somehow, because her mom pressed her lips together and picked up her phone again, continuing to search.
But unfortunately.
"Hnngh—"
Nero PC Bang, touched by Chae-won's influence, was an absurdly ahead-of-its-time establishment that didn't fit this era at all.
Every other place that came up in the search looked more or less the same.
There were a few that looked brighter here and there, but without exception, every single one had men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.
"H-hey. Why are you crying. I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
Past-me who just sat back and enjoyed all of this — drop dead.
She'd never seen her mom cry before, and it startled her completely.
She didn't know why, but seeing her mom cry made her own tears start falling too.
The two of them ended up clinging to each other like that, and her dad, coming home late, rushed over in a panic.
After wiping their noses and calming down, they agreed to go see the PC bang she'd been going to.
Thankfully, Nero PC Bang — smoke-free, bright, and spotlessly clean — was enough to clear up the misunderstanding.
But.
"Still, Mom would rather Chae-won didn't go to PC bangs."
"……"
No matter how well-managed it was, it couldn't look like a good environment to a parent.
Profanity flew freely, and the general perception of gaming in this day and age was rock-bottom.
Maybe it was the shock of seeing her mom's tears.
In a very un-Chae-won move, she nodded right away.
On the way out of Nero PC Bang, she turned back and looked at the sign.
'My profit-grinding hideout…….'
She'd had completely free access, and she'd been planning to gold farm there once her games launched….
It hurt to have her plans fall apart like this, but she took her mom's hand firmly and walked home.
And one week later.
"Whaaat?? This is mine?!"
"Yep, happy birthday."
She'd been making do with her dad's laggy laptop again.
"A computer?!"
"Use it at home. At home. Got it? Mom and Dad are buying this because our daughter works so hard at her studies."
"Oh oh oh oh! Thank you. Mom, Dad, you're the best!!"
Hideout or no hideout, she immediately did a somersault.
.
.
.
Humanity claims it has yet to invent a time machine. But that's simply not true.
The light pouring from that monitor is the very essence of time and space itself.
The moment you click login, you can leap into the future.
That's right — the magical device that makes three or four hours vanish the instant you put on a headset and take it off again was right in front of her.
"Come on, you've gotta go all in right here—"
Two years had passed with her beloved treasure of a computer by her side.
She had become a middle schooler.