For the following month until Chanyeol’s birthday, Kyungsoo attempted to get used to reliving his student life and return to studying and completing his thesis at a “human rate”; to make it seem like he really was doing this for the first time and not as an overqualified P.h.D holder.

Kyungsoo had about two years or roughly four semesters to finish his thesis, which he could probably achieve in a few months now. He was tempted to research on a different topic and make his thesis different than it was but Kyungsoo had to remind himself that he wasn’t here to change the past, he was here to relive it and made sure the future stayed the exact same way it was supposed to be.

Even though Kyungsoo didn’t exactly remember all over 50,000 words of his thesis word by word, he remembered what the contents were, what his general references were and overall how the final product was supposed to look.

Now, Kyungsoo was even given the chance to make improvements on his master’s thesis which he wished he had done differently. He also knew how to better properly manage his time between his job, research and social duties; having learned from the mistakes of his past.

Therefore, he had a major head-start, which eased his transition back into his younger life. Even if it was merely a consolation to losing his family and the love of his life.

For once, Kyungsoo was grateful that he wasn’t blasted back into the past of his undergraduate days because he didn’t know if he was able to be taking five to six subjects per semester.

He no longer had lectures or quizzes and the likes to keep up with. He only had small seminar classes about three times a week between other students such as him, where they were to present and discuss their findings with their peers and professors.

It was strange at first for Kyungsoo to be walking into class and sitting at the student desk instead of the professor’s desk upfront. He was glad he didn’t make that mistake on the first day of his return to the past because that would have been embarrassing.

It felt a bit awkward for him too when his classmates whose name he couldn’t quite remember came up to him calling him “Kyungsoo” because he was so used to being addressed as “Dr. Do” in the future.

In the future, Kyungsoo became a co-worker to his former professors and started addressing them as “sunbaenim”. While here, he had to constantly mentally remind himself to not slip up and make sure he appropriately address them as his teacher.

Kyungsoo did almost made a mistake one afternoon after class. His feet had routinely brought him to the staff lounge where he would usually spend his time in-between classes, drinking coffee, eating snacks and catching up with his fellow faculty members.

In front of the staff lounge, Kyungsoo then suddenly remembered he wasn’t a professor anymore and students like him were supposed to be hanging out at the crowded resource center attached to the library instead.

Luckily no one was around to see him at the time and before he could be embarrassed, Kyungsoo walked away as if nothing had happened.

Kyungsoo found an empty table that could sit around four people in the resource center and placed his bag pack down on the empty seat before texting Baekhyun where he was. Since they had agreed to meet up and study together. He then went hunting the bookshelves for the materials he needed.

After retrieving a few books, Kyungsoo returned to his seat to find Baekhyun already sitting there at the table, with his bulky gaming laptop out and clicking away at it. Knowing Baekhyun, he was probably already playing games instead of working on his projects.

“Yo!” Baekhyun greeted, nibbling on the strings of the black hoodie jacket he was wearing. Baekhyun was also wearing a pair of black jeans and white sneakers.

Seeing Baekhyun, Kyungsoo looked down to his own attire and realized that he too was wearing the exact same outfit combination except with black sneakers. Kyungsoo sighed innately at the fashion choices of his college-going 23-year-old self but this was all he had in his wardrobe at this time.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo greeted back, placing the books down on the desk and taking his seat opposite from Baekhyun.

As Kyungsoo was taking out his own laptop from his bag, Baekhyun spoke.

“Oh, I ran into Chanyeol at the elevator this morning on my way to class,” Baekhyun looked up from his laptop screen to tell Kyungsoo that.

“Okay…and?” Kyungsoo expected Baekhyun to tell him something more.

“Nothing else. I don’t even think he saw me there but I just wanted to let you know because you seem pretty interested in him lately. Last week when I was driving you to class and we ran into him at the parking lots, you had a smile on your face for almost half the day,” Baekhyun clarified, diverting his attention back to his laptop

“Did I?” Kyungsoo questioned, directed more towards himself than anyone else.

“Hmm…yeah,” Baekhyun answered, leaning back on his chair and then noticing the books Kyungsoo had picked up from the shelves, “Whoa, are you seriously reading a book in hanja? I thought you said you were still at an elementary school level in reading that.”

Kyungsoo froze, afraid his cover had been blown. It completely slipped his mind that his 23-year-old self was not supposed to be fluent in reading hanja or at understanding Mandarin at that point. It was a skill he only started to take seriously in graduate school and finally somewhat mastered while pursuing his P.h.D

“It’s for practice,” Kyungsoo stammered, coming up with a white lie, “I can’t get better at it if I don’t train myself to read harder books in hanja. You know how my field is based a lot on Chinese history too. It will also help me when I eventually move to learn Japanese too since they share almost the same writing system.”

“That’s smart. You’re smart,” Baekhyun praised, nodding his head in affirmation, “Maybe I should learn Chinese or Japanese too. You could even teach me because I heard that teaching others is a good method of learning too.”

“Of course,” Kyungsoo snickered, wondering now how he was going to pretend to not fully understand the books he was going to attempt reading and taking notes from.

**

In the following weeks of November leading up to Chanyeol’s birthday, Kyungsoo was lucky enough to be busy to be distracted from the reality of being stuck in the past. He was beginning to see the benefit of being a more stable, older man than his arguably volatile early twenties self.

On top of studies and his part-time job, he was also busy scheduling meetings and consultations with acclaimed researchers to reestablish connections with them, which he would need in the future in a field where peer accreditation was the bane of one’s existence.

At least now, Kyungsoo knew which specific resear