I was an orphan.
I was someone who had lived in an orphanage since I was a newborn. In some ways, it wouldn't be wrong to call me a pure-blooded orphan. Newborn orphans were a rare breed, after all.
What kind of era is it now?
It is an era where even a single marriage comes with conditions and calculations tacked on. Education, career, family background, assets. People marry and bear children only after weighing all of those factors. In such a society, newborns sent straight to an orphanage without any guardian were exceedingly rare. If anything, couples fought in court over who would take the child; sending them to an orphanage was practically unheard of.
In modern society, as long as orphans could endure the social gazes of others, life was quite bearable.
In the past, orphans had to farm or beg to earn a living, but modern society held no such necessity.
There were state-supported funds and donations from organizations. It wasn't abundant by any means, but neither was it so destitute that I had to worry about my next meal.
Anyway, while living such a bland life, I developed a hobby.
It was reading books.
Books contained the lives of countless people. They were artistic works that combined various elements: the thoughts, values, and personalities of their authors.
No matter how crude a book was, there was joy in reading it.
Moreover, I had a special talent.
It was a perfect memory—eidetic memory—where I wouldn't forget anything I had seen once.
After reading a novel, I enjoyed closing my eyes before bed at night and slowly recalling the contents of what I had read that day. Using the noise of the chattering children around me as a lullaby, doing so made the fatigue accumulated throughout the day feel like it was melting away.
Of course, only my memory was good; my creativity, reasoning ability, and intelligence were at an average person's level. Perhaps that was why I scored well in memorization subjects where I only had to remember things, but poorly in subjects requiring reasoning and creativity.
I hadn't even thought about going to a good university from the start.
Having safely graduated from the orphanage, I didn't go to college but rented a monthly room and started working. I learned for the first time that the state gave a substantial sum of money upon graduating from an orphanage. It was called a settlement support fund.
The work I did was just manual labor. I received a daily wage and worked at a construction site.
And returning home, lying in bed, and reading books was my life and my hobby.
The hobby of reading didn't cost much money. And it held tremendous convenience in that I could do it anywhere.
In the case of web novels, it took five minutes to read one episode. I could read twelve episodes in an hour. At one hundred won per episode, it only cost 1,200 won to enjoy an hour. Compared to PC rooms, billiards, bowling, and various other hobbies, the cost didn't even amount to a quarter.
Moreover, for web novels, the platforms held many discounts, events, and various benefits. Events like giving an extra 1,000 won when charging 10,000 won, or sometimes giving away 10,000 won for free.
Taking that into account, it could be called a hobby overflowing with cost-effectiveness that didn't even cost 1,000 won an hour. A hobby this cost-effective would be hard to find. After all, this was modern society, where simply drinking with friends cost hundreds of thousands of won.
Anyway, on workdays, I tended to read for five to six hours after returning home, and on weekends when I didn't work, I would read web novels on my phone all day long. Perhaps because I kept staring at that tiny screen, my eyesight deteriorated to the point where I wore glasses. But I had no regrets. As long as there was no inconvenience in reading novels, that was enough.
Whether they were well-written web novels or poorly written ones, to me they were all entertaining books. Even truly bizarre matchstick novels possessed a unique charm of their own.
And it wasn't just web novels.
I also read those novels called pure literature.
And in the case of this pure literature, unlike web novels, it was free.
Ah! By free, I didn't mean downloading it illegally from the internet or anything like that. I hated that sort of thing.
For these literary novels that weren't web novels, there was a way to read them for free legally.
It was none other than borrowing books from libraries built across the nation.
Using citizens' taxes, books were lent out for free at libraries for educational purposes and for cultural enrichment.
Also, unlike web novels, libraries often had recently published books available.
People joke that the reason pure literature authors survive is thanks to the existence of libraries that buy their books.
Pure literature books that weren't web novels didn't sell well. While web novel authors generated hundreds of millions in revenue, pure literature authors were left sucking their thumbs. Perhaps that was why relations between web novel authors and pure literature authors weren't good.
But pure literature novels were quite entertaining too. Because to me, books were the reason for living.
I had lived that way, doing nothing but reading, for who knew how many decades.
Just when I felt like I had read all the novels in Korea, I ended up dying.
The cause of death was none other than materials that had fallen at the construction site.
It wasn't some tiny bolt or anything, but a massive H-beam.
Still, since I died without feeling pain, couldn't that be considered a fortunate death?
It was merely a shame that I couldn't read more books.
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'Ugh... Uwaaaah...'
I couldn't help but scream in immense agony. It felt like something was gripping my head tightly and crushing it. I opened my mouth to scream, but no voice came out.
Fucking hurts!
After enduring such pain for tens of minutes, I felt my body slip out.
When I came out, I heard people's voices. I had clearly died...?
Given that I felt such immense pain, I might have survived by some lucky chance. I opened my mouth and produced a sound to speak.
"Ugh... Wah!"
But only a baby's cry came from my mouth. I opened my eyes. Everything was blurry and hard to see. It was like looking ahead without wearing glasses.
People looked enormous. And the sound of a baby's cry coming from my throat.
From the standpoint of someone with decades of web novel experience, I could immediately recognize this situation.
Should I call it the result of prior learning?
That's right. I had reincarnated. And a life starting from infancy, at that.
"You worked so hard! It's a very pretty baby!"
"Good job!"
Listening to the doctors and nurses, I realized I had been born as someone's baby. But that thought didn't last long. Because I was incredibly tired. I closed my eyes. I couldn't support my drowsy body right now. After all, a newborn baby couldn't support its own body.
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"Sora!"
"Oh my~ our cute little daughter!"
Reborn, I was given the name I Sora.
As you can tell from the name, I had been reborn as a girl. Feeling the emptiness between my legs, how flustered I was! I still can't forget that emotion. Though I was someone who never forgot memories in the first place.
And the amazing thing was that I had returned to the past.
I was surprised, but I soon regained my composure. Such settings were extremely common in novels. A protagonist reincarnating and going to the past or the future was one of the common tropes.
I felt like I had mastered novels. Perhaps that was why I could maintain my composure even in a situation that would leave ordinary people bewildered.
"Sora, Mommy's sorry..."
But the family I was born into was terribly, heartbreakingly poor.
It was a tiny studio apartment without even a private room, and perhaps because it was winter, cold air flowed in steadily through the gaps in the walls. I shivered from the cold. To be honest, the home environment was so poor that it made me think the orphanage I had lived in was heaven. At least at the orphanage, the heating was excellent, so I had never shivered from the cold.
And skipping meals was common. Eating three meals a day was a luxury. I only ate one or two meals a day.
But I didn't entirely hate this.
Because even while living this poor life, I had a mother and father.
I could feel the warmth of a family that I had never experienced before. To me, who had lived as an orphan since birth, it was an awkward thing.
And they didn't fight constantly just because they were poor. The couple's harmony was so good that they even put on affectionate displays in front of me, a kindergartener. I suppose you could say they had strong positive mindsets.
"Now, Sora, let's sleep~"
And so I closed my eyes between Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad held me from either side. Because of our circumstances, we couldn't even run the boiler properly, so we had to sleep huddled together like this.
I suppose the one fortunate thing was that the blanket was thick.
I could fall asleep in the embrace of my mother and father.
Because I was in the warm embrace of my mother and father, even when cold wind blew into the room, I could somehow endure it.