This story is based on many of my real-life experiences.

  I never imagined my life would feel like this at thirty-one. I am far from poor, yet nowhere near the luxurious freedom I dreamed of. Each day, I watch the markets, sip my coffee, and feel both satisfaction and frustration, success in my grasp, yet always just short of the number that would let me truly breathe. My name is Zack, and this year is 2026. I work as an accountant, but my corporate life taught me more about human cruelty than I ever wanted to know. I have met colleagues so toxic and manipulative that they pushed me to the edge. Those experiences planted a single, unwavering desire in me to succeed on my own terms, so I would never have to deal with people like that again. At some point, I discovered a term for the life I wanted, FIRE, financial independence and retire early, and I realized that this was the life I wanted for myself.

  I began my career at a prestigious audit firm. They said that you either make it or you do not. Despite having faith in my own abilities, I ended up not making it in that environment, constantly reminded that success was determined by factors beyond merit. Around that time, I discovered crypto. The idea of a market that could multiply from almost nothing to astronomical heights fascinated me. I studied it carefully, weighing risks, researching blue-chip-quality projects that seemed undervalued, and concluded that XRP was the best choice for my goals. I ignored Bitcoin at the time because I assumed it was already too expensive, its growth limited, and not worth the effort. Every month I poured a large portion of my salary into XRP, even taking a personal loan to accelerate my accumulation.

  Years passed. I eventually paid off the personal loan, but XRP only went up a little while Bitcoin continued to climb relentlessly. Time and time again, I waited for XRP to make new highs, only to see the crypto market drop into a bear cycle before it could. I missed the peaks in 2017, 2021, and 2025 repeatedly, each cycle frustrating me more than the last. That cursed XRP never delivered what I had hoped. Finally, I decided to leave the crypto scene with what I had, a decent gain, not enough to retire on, but enough to give me confidence. I brought all of that capital over to my index trading strategy, the one I had developed after countless hours of testing and refining. For novelty, I left a tiny portion in XRP, a whisper of hope that I was right all along, though I knew better than to rely on it.

  The index strategy worked, with consistent profits and tightly controlled risk. I doubled my capital over a year and finally felt confident enough to quit my corporate job. I even secured an angel investor who saw the value in my trading ability, giving me a much larger capital base to accelerate my path toward financial independence.

  By most standards, I am far ahead of my peers. Many envy me, seeing the results of my trading and the lifestyle I now enjoy. I manage my trades in just five to thirty minutes a day, while the rest of the day is completely my own. Comfortably, I live life on my terms. Yet deep down, I know this is nowhere near enough. I am still in the accumulation stage, building capital steadily. Ever since I started pursuing FIRE, I have never progressed past that stage. Until I hit a certain number, a threshold that would let me stop worrying about finances entirely, I will never feel free. That number is huge, though attainable, but the thought of how many years it will take and the time already lost in crypto weighs heavily on me. Each day of waiting and building feels like a mixture of comfort and frustration, a reminder of both what I have and what I lack.

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  My apartment is quiet most days, the hum of the air conditioner and the occasional sounds of distant traffic outside my window my only companions. I sip my morning coffee while glancing at trading screens, watching numbers flicker with a calm familiarity. The routine is simple, almost soothing, but it also reminds me that I am advancing, just not at the pace I had envisioned. My mind often drifts to what more could be, what I could have achieved if I had acted differently in the past, if I had made better choices in crypto, school, and love.

  At night, lying alone in my apartment, I replay all the missed opportunities. I imagine the moments I could have acted braver, loved harder, or invested smarter. The regrets are never-ending. I wished for a second chance to live life with the knowledge I have now, to be smarter, bolder, and more prepared. Recently, I became absorbed in a novel called The Regressed Mercenary. Its story of returning to the past to seize opportunity and rewrite destiny only amplified my longing to relive my own life and prepare for key moments I had missed.

  A festival for visiting deceased loved ones was approaching, and as usual, my mother dragged me along to the temple. We went to my father’s spirit tablet, placing food he liked, burning paper money and objects in the sacred grounds. My mother prayed, as she always did, with sincerity. The aroma of incense and the smell of burning paper filled the temple, mingling with the faint scent of flowers placed on the altar. Normally, I never paid much attention, but that day I closed my eyes and joined her sincerely. I let my emotions stir, focused on the longing I had carried for so long. For the first time, I truly wished for a chance to go back and do things differently.

  The next morning, nothing had changed. My body was still thirty-one, my life exactly as it had been. I sighed and told myself that temples and gods were just tools humans use to cope with loss and regret.

  Later that day, an old box caught my attention near my bed. I opened it and found a GameBoy with the Pokémon Ruby cartridge my father had gifted me when I was a child. The memory hit me hard. How I had begged for it, and how he, like a kind Santa, had gotten it for me just a few days later. I remembered how he hid his illness from me, how I had played blissfully, unaware of his final days, and how I had angrily hung up during his last call with him, never knowing it would be his final voice. Tears fell onto the game cartridge as I whispered my longing to see him again and told him silently all the words I never got the chance to say.

  I remember the afternoons I spent alone in my room, sunlight streaming through the curtains, the soft click of buttons as I played games, blissfully unaware of the adult realities that awaited me. That innocence, that feeling of being cared for and protected, hit me with a bittersweet ache. Every memory reminded me of what was lost and what could never be regained.

  I lay down for a short nap to cool my mind, letting the quiet of my apartment cradle me. When I opened my eyes the next time, everything felt different. The room was different, the world around me seemed smaller, and my hands looked tiny. A shock ran through me as I realized that I was in my kindergarten body, memories of my adult life fully intact.