IBMBKC Ch 3

#003

Yua stepped inside the kindergarten after being seen off by Jeonghye and wiggled out of his shoes to put them away. As he was doing so, a woman wearing a pink apron appeared from somewhere and greeted him.

“Yua-ya, I heard you were sick! Are you all better now?”

“Yes. Hello, Seonsaeng-nim^[1].”

“…?”

When Yua bowed and greeted her back, the woman made a puzzled face. It was an expression he had already seen to the point of exhaustion over the past week, so it was not hard to read. It seemed that Yua’s suddenly refined behavior felt strange to her.

Not that he could explain anything to ease her confusion, so Yua simply ignored it. He placed his shoes in the cubby and took out his indoor slippers. They were white slippers with a puppy face printed on them, the kind that covered his whole foot.

Yua shoved his feet half-heartedly into the slippers. It did not take long for the woman to come over from behind, saying it was dangerous to wear them like that, and properly put them on him.

I can put them on by myself…

In other words, he could wear them correctly but just chose not to.

Yua wiggled his toes, already feeling stifled. The fluffy slippers made it feel like his feet would start sweating any moment. It was an unwise choice, considering how children ran around whenever they had the chance.

Not that he intended to run around. But regardless, having the soles of his feet get sweaty was not a pleasant sensation. It also did not seem very hygienic.

Of course, it was not Yua’s fault. This was Jeonghye’s preference.

…That was how things ended up.

“I won’t… get athlete’s foot, right?”

“Hm?”

His small mutter brought a questioning voice from behind. Yua shook his head, saying it was nothing. He simply thought he should suggest to Jeonghye that they change his indoor slippers before summer came.

“Mm. Then, shall we go to class with Seonsaeng-nim now?”

Yua nodded. After climbing the stairs and opening the door labeled “Sun Class,” a crowd of children rushed toward him.

“Yua-ya! You’re not sick anymore?”

“Yua, white bloo… leakmeeya^[2]? I heard you got leakmeeya!”

“Dummy, it’s not leakmeeya, it’s cancer! That’s what it was!”

“Gasp, Yua, then are you bald? My mom’s TV said people with cancer have no hair!”

“People with leakmeeya also don’t have hair! Don’t you die if you get that?!”

“Hiiik. Yua, are you dead? Are you dead? Then are you a ghost?”

Ma’am, just what kind of drama have you been watching?

They said even cold water should not be drunk carelessly in front of children^[3]. Yua clucked his tongue with pity.

Besides, while it is true that people undergoing cancer treatment lose their hair because of strong medication, their heads do not disappear. He wished they would make it clearer what subject they were talking about^[4], because if someone really had no head, they would indeed die.   

Just how did the story get this distorted? He was only hospitalized for two days, and suddenly it was leukemia. Then cancer. Then he was a ghost.

Bombarded with wild rumors, Yua felt dizzy.

Since they were children who hadn’t even entered elementary school yet, they were unbelievably restless. And with something interesting to talk about appearing, the usual noisy atmosphere reached its peak.

Yua looked at a child tugging on his bangs to see if he had really shaved his head, another child shaking his sleeve begging to borrow his cardigan because it was pretty, and another who tried to take his temperature by pressing her forehead to his, but got shoved by others and ended up headbutting him. He let out a dry laugh.

Until a week ago, I was the most serious case among them?

Impossible… This had to be a dream.

Suddenly, Yua felt sorry for the teacher. Very, very sorry. Because he had just remembered what had happened about a week ago, something too recent to even call “the past.”

No matter how curious and energetic children were, does it make sense for a bunch of kids to swarm over like this just because one ordinary classmate, not even a teacher, missed kindergarten for a few days, as if they had been waiting for him?

Well, of course, it could happen. But even so, isn’t this a bit too much?

Then why were these kids clinging to Yua and refusing to let go? Yua wondered this as he removed the hands clinging to him one by one.

“Who wants to go to the playground with me!”

“Yua-ya. It’s story time right now, so you can’t go out. How about we go after lunch, just a little later?”

“But Yua wants to play now! Storybooks are boring. Seonsaeng-nim, come with us and push the swing!”

“The swing? I want to go too!”

“Me too!”

“I want to go on the slide!”

“Me too! Me too!”

“Kids. I said you can’t go out, kids!”

The answer was simple. Yua had been the ringleader of the kindergarten.

“That kid… He looks so quiet, so how… how on earth….”

Yua remembered the teacher’s face as she was dragged outside to the playground, unable to even finish her sentence while rubbing her face in despair.

Truly unfortunate.

The sharp increase in the teacher’s job difficulty had a very, very large share attributed to Yua.

Although this would now become a thing of the past.

Calling him a ringleader sounded nice, but in truth, he was basically the kid who always rushed ahead and caused trouble first.

Like taking a toy away from a friend because he got bored while playing, or running away because lunch didn’t taste good, or sneaking out to the playground during nap time to play. Things like that.

And children are easy to incite.

Of course, now that he realized the reason he had been able to lead the kids so easily was not simply because he caused trouble, but because he had an unusually pretty face among his peers, he felt nothing about it anymore. It is said that children do not avoid unfamiliar faces, but rather avoid faces they find unpleasant.   

In short, they took an interest because of his pretty face, and since he caused trouble, the frequency at which they got swept along simply increased.

The day he was discharged from the hospital, Yua had looked at the mirror in the entrance and realized it. The Bae Yua of this life shared only the name with his previous one, but was an entirely different person.

It was natural, since he had been reincarnated. His large and defined eyes, thin and richly colored lips, and smooth, glossy, thick black-blue hair were quite pretty even in his own opinion. He was still young, so it was hard to be certain, but rather than handsome, the word pretty suited him more.

On top of that, he smiled often, ran around well, and clearly looked like a child who had grown up receiving lots of love… Maybe the adults who raised him had a hard time, but for the other children, he must have been very fun to play with. Yua shook his head as his past life flashed through his mind. All of that belonged to the past, and there was no need to dwell on it now.  

Yua rubbed his forehead, which was still throbbing from the headbutt. He also patted the shoulder of the kid who had been shoved and ended up headbutting him together.

This time, Yua was definitely a victim as well, but now that his mental age was that of an adult, he had no intention of crying over a little headbutt… and honestly, he felt guilty pushing things onto the teacher first thing in the morning, considering his history.

This is a good opportunity to change my image and become a gifted kid.

When an opportunity comes, of course, you seize it. At least, that was what Yua believed. Since he had the memory of an adult now, if he steadily built up the image of a model student, things would be easier later.

If his image was good, the teacher would like him, and if a student like that had good grades, his record would look good. If his record and internal grades were good, he could get into a good university. It was not guaranteed, but if the university was good, getting a job would be easier, and then his salary would be higher.

Although Yua had not been able to attend the university he had yearned for in his past life, his grades had not been bad thanks to his stubborn diligence. As long as he did not show his full potential and simply lived as a well-behaved, good-tempered kid who was known for being smart in the neighborhood, his life would have been smooth sailing.

In this life, I’m going to be a small building owner.

Having practically boiled an ocean’s worth of kimchi broth and chugged it down^[5] in one go, Yua gave a gentle smile.

“Are you okay? Does it hurt a lot?”

“Uu…!”

“Do you want to do something fun with me? I learned something from my mom yesterday!”

Of course, it was a blatant lie.

Yua took the arm of the sniffling child and pulled her along. He did not consider the kid’s wishes at all, but since the tears hovering in the child’s eyes dried up immediately, it could be called a success.

Yua dragged over a toy box filled to the brim with blocks in front of the child whose name he did not know. At some point, other children had gathered around, peeking curiously.

“What is that?”

“Jenga. You pull out a block one by one without making the tower fall, and put it on top. The person who knocks it over loses.”

“Oh! I know that! I played it with my mommy and daddy!”

After Yua stacked a tower with the blocks, a child who found the perfect moment to interrupt stepped forward and acted like he knew everything. When he expressed his intention to play too, the children who had been watching from the sidelines started inching closer as well.

“What is it? Is it fun?”

“I had fun. Daddy lost, so I went out to play with Mommy that day!”  

“Then what did your dad do?”

“Washed dishes! Did laundry! Cleaned!”

“And you?”

“Kids café!”

…Is this the average preschooler these days? Or are these kids just unusual?

Yua was seven years old too, but because of the psychological distance, he simply could not see the world through the innocent eyes of a kindergartener. Even if all of this had happened within a week, it felt incredibly distant to him.

Like the teacher watching from afar with a strange expression, Yua continued speaking with an equally odd look.

“Anyone want to join? Anyone?”

“I want to!”

“Can I just watch?”

“Sure. But you can’t get in the way.”

“Okay! I’ll be really quiet!”

“I want to play too!”

In an instant, the area was buzzing with kids. Yua scanned the group with his eyes.

One, two, three… eight, nine.

…Way too many.

At this rate, the tower would collapse before they even got through one round. Knowing the average Jenga skill of kindergarteners, Yua shook his head.

“Guys. There are too many people, so how about we split into groups?”

“What’s split into?”

“Um… There are nine of us right now. But if we all play together, the tower is going to fall too fast… So let’s divide into two groups of four and five people.”

“Okay!”

“Then I’m playing with Yua!”

“I want to play with Geumja!”

“Yua-ya!”

“Play with me! Me!”

So her name is Geumja. …That’s unique.

Yua learned the name of the child he had been comforting earlier. The Sun Class turning into a marketplace in an instant, and the teacher’s eyes going blank were just bonuses.

Yua barely managed to separate the children into groups and build towers for them. He did not have to build them himself, but when he left it to the kids, they could not even stack five layers before knocking it over, so he simply did it himself. He was definitely conscious of the teacher watching from afar.

“Ah! Go away!”

Just as Yua finished building the tower and was about to decide the order with rock-paper-scissors, a loud voice erupted right beside him. Pausing mid-game, Yua turned his head along with the other children to see what was happening.

“Suyeok-ah!”

“Uu, uwaaang!”

Fluffy, soft golden hair that looked like it would sink in the moment someone touched it.