Nothing changed the next day.
I still woke up before the sun fully rose. I still heard the old radio from the kitchen, its sound drifting through the house as I washed my face with cold water and stood there a few seconds longer than usual. The difference was small, almost invisible.
I no longer ignored the little things.
The radio stayed on during breakfast. Not so I could understand it that was still far beyond me but so my ears could get used to the sound. Sometimes it was English. Sometimes Japanese. Sometimes the signal broke so badly that even the language itself became unclear.
I didn't try to memorize words. I only listened.
My father watched me from behind his newspaper.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his tone neutral but attentive.
"Listening to the radio," I answered simply.
He nodded and didn't say anything else. From that day on, he never turned the radio off in the morning.
At school, I didn't suddenly become a smart student.
I still hesitated to raise my hand.
I still answered wrong sometimes.
I still lagged behind in a few subjects.
But one habit had quietly taken shape.
I wrote down words I didn't understand.
Not only in language class. In every subject. I scribbled them in the corners of my notebook, small and uneven. Sometimes I spelled them wrong. Sometimes I guessed the meaning incorrectly.
During break, I no longer ran outside as often. I sat under the stairs with my thin notebook open on my knees.
My friend noticed and came closer.
"Are you studying now?" he asked, half-joking, half-curious.
"A little," I replied.
"Since when?"
I thought about it for a moment. "Since I realized I don't understand much."
He laughed softly. "That's a strange answer."
Maybe it was.
But it was honest.
The hardest part of the day was always the evening.
After school tired me out, after my body wanted nothing more than to lie down and forget everything, I sat at the small desk in my room. Not for long. Sometimes only fifteen minutes.
I opened used books bought from an old stall near the terminal. Old textbooks. Foreign magazines with torn pages. I read one paragraph, understood half of it, guessed the rest, and then stopped.
I didn't force myself.
I didn't chase results.
In my previous life, I remembered clearly why I had stopped.
Not because I was stupid.
But because I gave up too quickly.
That night, my mother entered my room without knocking.
"You're not sleeping yet?" she asked.
I shook my head. The book was still open in front of me.
She didn't scold me. She didn't praise me either. She only said quietly, "Don't push yourself too hard."
I nodded.
After she left, I closed the book. On the last page of my notebook, I wrote one short sentence.
Today, I didn't understand much.
But I repeated it.
I turned off the light.
Outside, the sound of the waves was the same as always. The radio in the kitchen had gone silent.
Nothing had changed dramatically.
But inside me, something had begun to form.
Not talent.
Not brilliance.
A habit.
And I knew that habit slowly, steadily would carry me farther than my first life ever dared to go.