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"Ugh…."

I, Yasushi Sashima, collapsed to my knees as an intense pain surged through my body. It was as if I was hit in the back of the head with a metal bat.

I don't know if it was a stroke or a blood clot, but I knew it was life-threatening pain.

"Am I… Call an ambulance."

I need to call it! I tried to move my hand to my right pocket where my phone was, but my body is not letting me move even an inch.

'Oh, am I going to die?'

◇

"Haa!!!"

I jolted awake from a terrifying dream about something.

Wearing a black suit and a dead expression, the zombie-like man goes to work with the first train and returns home after the last train.

He is working for a so-called black company. He spends his days repeating the horribly simple task of just typing text into a computer.

Thinking about it, he is not good at analyzing-related jobs, and is more suited to doing simple and repetitive work—alone in silence.

In junior high school, he was a member of the track and field team. He ran endlessly and silently by himself. In high school, he worked part-time as a cabbage cutter, a flower arranger, and a dishwasher.

It was a cycle of unchanging days.

The man, who was as cold and uninteresting as a computer, died of exhaustion after 18 hours of unreasonable work a day.

Even now, I still feel fear and pain, as if my heart is being clenched.

The person I've been calling "he" in a stranger's manner since a while ago is probably me.

The dream I was having was plain, uninteresting, and painful. And yet, it was strangely real. There was too much information that I don't know if I could dismiss it as a mere dream.

Cold sweat was pouring down my face.

With mixed emotions of anxiety and fear, I opened my eyes and saw that it was pitch black.

Is it night already?

The light from the street lamps outside dimly illuminated the inside of the house.

The curtains that were illuminated have a very familiar pattern to them. However, it is a very unnatural thing to be there.

"Why are these curtains here? These were supposed to have been thrown away."

I stood up.

Underneath the futon is a tatami mat, and above my head is a Japanese Fusuma.

I live alone in a house with wooden flooring. I'm lying on a bed as I wonder where I am.. It's too dark to clearly see the surroundings, but I can make out the structure.

I have a strange instinct that this is my house.

"What's wrong, Yasu-kun? Toilet?"

"Mo- mother?!"

"Why do you call me "mother" so strangely?" (He said Ofukuro, instead of mama, okaa-san or the likes)

The sound of her voice was oddly youthful. At least, she doesn't look like a mother who will be over fifty this year, and I'm pretty sure she should not be at my house today.

She is twice as big as me as she stood up, rubbing her drowsy eyes.

No, no. Am I small?

"Oof… Mom(Okaa-san)!What day is it today?"

"What day is it? Uhm… It's the fifteenth day of the twelfth month and it's past twelve, so it must be the sixteenth already."

The date is right.

The last time I checked the date before coming home from work, thinking it was changing, it was the 16th.

"What year is it?"

"What else should it be beside the year 2000, right?"

The year 2000?

This is the year 2020, so it should be the 2020!

No, I think I'm aware of what is happening somehow.

That's why I called that event— the 26 years of my life— a dream, and why I even bothered to ask my impossibly young-looking mother what year it was.

Yes. No doubt about it. I'm back to where I was twenty years ago, when I was six years old!

At the same time, I'm thoroughly convinced that what I'm seeing, as my heart tightens in pain, must be some kind of dream or a flashback .

Because it has to be.

As I stared at my palm, I saw texts.

Name: Yasushi Sashima

Level: 1

Occupation: None

Skill: Appraisal Lv1

Unique Skill: Repeated Attempt

It is like a status window in a game.

It's not real that something like this comes up.

My brain must have finally gone crazy from typing the same text day in and day out.

I heaved a sigh.

"How many times have I wished I could start my life over? I must be really sick to be dreaming like this."

But if this were a dream, I guess I'd slept and would somehow wake up.

I have to work tomorrow, and with only three hours of sleep a day, every second is extremely precious. I don't want to waste even a second of it.

"Let's go to bed. Good night."

"Eh? Ehh?"

Awakened by me, my mother, who had been standing, looked puzzled as we crawled back under the covers and started to sleep.