I’m Back in the First Grade of Elementary School, so I’m Going to Live Well

Chapter 1

Itosaki Sho is a 28-year-old freelancer.

His motto is “Don’t dream.”

Dreaming is something we all do.

But it’s not always a good thing.

And there is nothing more empty than the dreams of ordinary people.

Only those who have both talent and effort can make their dreams come true. Dreams are not so cheap that they can be fulfilled by people who have no talent but are all about hard work.

On the contrary, if you dream, you will end up paying the price.

I spent my youth in vain, I threw away my friendships, and I neglected my studies.

As a result, I’m currently living alone in a small 1K room without a wife, girlfriend, or even friends.

Now that I’m an adult, the bill is coming due.

Moreover, the interest rate is increasing day by day, and it is impossible to pay it off.

And it’s all because of the past me.

In the past, I never doubted that pursuing my dreams was what I should do.

Even if I skipped school, even if I had no friends, even if I got red marks on all my tests, I thought I was doing the right thing by chasing my dream.

It was ridiculous.

It would have been funny if it had come true, but I failed to even get to the starting line.

I invested all of my youth, and the result was a failure.

Effort does not betray. I heard that there was a person who said such joking words.

I wondered if he could say the same thing when he saw my current situation when he saw me betrayed by my efforts.

The present me is suffering because the past me was swept away by my dream.

The pitiful end of a dream chaser.

That’s what I’m doing now.

If I could, I would punch my past self in the face and make him see the reality.

That’s why you shouldn’t dream.

If you can’t make a dream come true, it’s better not to dream at all.

If you see it, you will long for it, you will crave for it, you will chase after it to become it, so it is better not to see it.

Therefore, “Don’t dream.”

That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my 28 years of life.

I’ve lived for almost 30 years and all I’ve gotten out of it is this literal dreamlessness, what a flimsy life I’ve led.

If I could start my life over again, I would like to live a steady life this time.

I’d like to be on my feet, have as many friends as anyone else, get a decent job, and have a normal family.

This is just a dream, right?

I stopped thinking about it, because if I saw it, I would chase after it.

“… Sleep.”

I muttered to myself in my small room.

I’ve got a part-time job tomorrow.

If I miss even one day, I might not even have a house to live in next month.

Sandwiched between a flimsy mattress and a blanket, I slowly drift off to sleep.

I woke up.

I rubbed the corners of my eyes, feeling the glare of the morning sun coming through the curtains.

… Isn’t my hand too small?

And it’s kind of hard to move my body.

It’s like it’s not my body at all.

No, it can’t be.

I’m sure I’m not feeling well.

This is supposed to be my body.

There’s no way that I’m going to wake up in the morning and find that I’ve been replaced by someone else, just like in a famous movie.

The proof is that I’m in the same small 1K room as usual. A room in a rundown rental apartment.

Yes, the familiar sight of… is… and…

But when I looked around, I saw a different scene from my room.

I was sleeping on a soft bed instead of a flimsy mattress, there were no gaps in the room where a breeze could enter, and everything that had been in my room was gone, including the clothes I had washed and thrown on the ground and the trash from the cup noodles I had scattered around.

I can’t believe I’ve been replaced by someone else…

――No, but it’s strange.

I’ve seen this interior before.

It’s not déjà vu, where you think you’ve seen a scene you’ve never seen before.

I have a definite feeling of déjà vu in this room.

And more than anything, I feel nostalgic.

Anyway, let’s get up and figure out what’s going on.

Maybe I’ve been kidnapped while I was sleeping.

No, but I don’t think it’s worth kidnapping a poor guy like me.

While speculating, I got out of bed and immediately noticed something strange.

My eyes are low.

At the point when my hands felt small and I had difficulty moving my body, I thought it was part of the symptoms of being sick because I had a slight cold, but I’m not so insensitive that I wouldn’t notice any change in this.

No way… I’ve shrunk!

No, that’s not possible…

I looked down at my body from my chest to my toes.

It is obviously small.

It’s not just one part of the body, such as the legs or the torso, but the entire body is smaller.

I pinched my cheek to see if it was a dream, but my sense of pain was working normally.

It wasn’t a dream…

When you wake up one morning and find that your body has shrunk, how should you react?

Do you scream, do you faint from shock, or do you forget everything and go back to sleep?

As I experienced it, I couldn’t do anything but cry out.

I still couldn’t comprehend the situation.

I don’t know why this is happening to me.

I don’t remember witnessing the dealings of the black-clad men, I don’t remember noticing the figures approaching from behind, and I don’t remember being forced to take any suspicious drugs.

I’m not smart enough to understand this situation in an instant.

But I’m also not so panicked that I can’t think.

Let’s take a moment to calm down. Nothing will happen if we panic here.

First, let’s sort out the situation.

I went to bed at midnight as usual.

When I wake up in the morning, I find myself in a strange place and my body has shrunk.

… I don’t know why.

It’s impossible to make sense of these bizarre events when you’ve sorted them out.

It’s not like God is going to give you a detailed explanation of what’s going on, unlike reincarnation in another world.

I have to make sense of this situation by myself.

So, let’s get out of this room first.

There was a soft bed, a study desk with pens and materials, a toy box with hero belts, and a school bag in the corner of the room.

It looked like an elementary schooler room.

What I could tell from this was that this was not the room of the rundown apartment I lived in.

I also feel some nostalgia.

There may be some information I can get from this place, but that can wait.

What I need to know is, “Have I changed?” or “Has the world itself changed?”

If it’s the latter, I need to find out what kind of world I’m in.

If I opened the door to a different world or went outside to find zombies everywhere, it would be more important than my body shrinking.

I carefully opened the door to my room, listening to the pounding of my heart and anxiety.

There was a… quite normal corridor.

It seems that once you open the door, you are not in another world.

But I was a little bit excited.

I’m a boy, and I’ve always wanted to be reincarnated in another world.

But there is still the possibility of zombies and other possibilities, so let’s proceed with caution.

… Nevertheless, the place still looks familiar.

As I tiptoe down the hallway, I feel a sense of déjà vu, just like in the room I woke up in.

I can’t remember. But I certainly have this scene imprinted in my memory.

Agonizingly, I descend the stairs and reach the first floor.

There is no one there. Is the house vacant?

But the furniture and appliances are all in place, and the entire house has been cleaned. There seem to be signs of human habitation.

There must be someone living in the house right now, and that someone, the resident, is currently out of town.

If that’s the case, let’s find out what’s going on before the residents come back.

The residents might be kidnappers, black organizations, or other dangerous people.

The first place we went was the entrance.

I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t in a zombie world, which is the thing I should be most afraid of.

I opened the front door a little bit and looked outside the house as if I were peeking in.

There, I saw the scenery of an ordinary residential area.

A woman was walking her dog on the sidewalk in front of the house, and when she looked at me through the front door, she smiled gently and said, “Good morning.”

I returned the greeting with a light voice and quietly closed the front door.

If it was full of zombies, they wouldn’t be walking their dogs in such a peaceful way, and I can’t imagine that the lady is a zombie.

I don’t think it’s a zombie world.

Next, I checked the refrigerator.

If there’s food in there, I’ll fill my stomach a little.

Even if you are in a strange place with a shrunken body, you will still get hungry.

Although I was a little reluctant to open someone’s refrigerator, I stretched to open the upper refrigerator.

Because of my shrinking body, I had to stand on my tiptoes to open the refrigerator. There’s nothing good about shrinking.

While lamenting the inconvenience, I reach for the chicken that was closest to my hand.

The ingredients are in place…?

When I looked at the label on the food, I saw that the expiration date was July 29, 2006.

No way… they left the chicken out for 22 years?

I can’t eat this.

I gently put the chicken back in the fridge and closed the fridge door.

It didn’t smell rotten, even though it had been left there for more than 20 years. I’ve never left meat unattended for more than 20 years, so I’m not sure.

This time I decided to turn on the TV.

The news on TV should give me a good idea of what’s going on in the world.

Using the remote control on the living room table, I turned on the TV.

『 Yoo-hoo! It’s your brother Igarashi! I’m going to do my morning exercises with everyone again today! 』

Wow, this brings back memories.

The first thing that came on when I pressed the power button was a children’s program that was on in the morning.

I believe the name of the program was『 With My Brother 』.

I used to watch this program a lot when I was a kid.

It was a show for toddlers, aimed at kindergarten students, but I liked the humorous remarks of the older brother Igarashi, so I watched it until I was in the third grade.

But I’m pretty sure the show was canceled when I graduated from elementary school.

Igarashi’s brother got into trouble with many women, a scandal that could not be explained to a child, so Igarashi was dropped from the show.

With the departure of Igarashi, who had been the face of the show, the ratings continued to decline and the show was canceled.

I thought that『 With My Brother 』had been buried from TV, but I didn’t think that it would be a rebroadcast.

But is it okay to show a scandalous celebrity in a rerun?

I found today’s newspaper on the table along with the remote control, so I looked at the program section.

Channel 1 at 8:30 did indeed have a column for『 With My Brother 』.

But there were no words that said “rebroadcast.”

I wondered if it was a printing error, so I looked through the other programs.

Strangely enough, all of the programs had been canceled in the past or were the first reruns of long-running programs, and even the hero programs had characters from long before now.

What the hell is going on? Did a show from the past suddenly become popular?

No, I thought, it can’t be, so I checked the date in the newspaper.

“… 2006… July 25th…”

In other words, 22 years ago.

T-That’s… mean… no way…

I can’t believe I came here 22 years ago and I’m in a strange house――!

No! I’m not a stranger in a stranger house!

That’s right, how could I have forgotten?

This is my house…!

My house 22 years ago, to be exact.

As I recall, we moved in when I started elementary school and moved out when I was in the fourth grade, so my memory of our house had been fading for a short period of about three years.

Even so, how could I forget my own house?

I was disgusted by my lack of memory.

“…? That means…!”

I rushed to the bathroom where there was a mirror.

22 years ago.

My house.

And a shrunken body.

How could I not have found the answer after getting so many hints?

In fact, I’m an idiot for not noticing it until now.

I should have realized this when my body was shrinking.

My body hadn’t “shrunk” at all.

When I get to the bathroom, I stand in front of the mirror, out of breath.