Chapter 1: Who are you?

Who am I?

I was awake early in the morning, seriously contemplating life, more specifically, ‘myself.’

It might sound random, but I was being serious.

It’s not a strange thought, so please bear with me.

I wasn’t usually the type of person who seriously pondered about my existence like a philosopher, nor was I someone still searching for their identity, despite having long passed adolescence.

Let’s also rule out the option of being mentally unstable—I am in good mental health.

This isn’t some career exploration time, so what good would it do to find my true self?

I’m just an average 20-something-year-old man in South Korea, ordinary in every sense of the word—if I put it nicely, I’m unremarkable; if I put it bluntly, I lack any distinguishing traits.

So why am I grappling with these thoughts?

The reason was standing right in front of me.

It was a mirror.

When I say ‘mirror,’ don’t imagine one of those large mirrors you’d find in a clothing store.

You know the kind, right?

The long, full-length mirrors people keep at home to admire their distorted, elongated reflections with satisfied smiles.

People who take pictures of their stylish and beautiful selves, share them with others, and exchange compliments as grooming experts.

I didn’t possess such social skills.

Also, I wasn’t a narcissist who gazed at myself every day, immersed in my reflection.

A full-length mirror doesn’t suit me.

What I was looking at was a common mirror you’d find above a bathroom sink—one that only shows your upper body.

In that mirror, there was a woman.

I made eye contact with her.

It was a greeting, like making eye contact and saying “hello.”

Her black pupils blinked as she met my gaze.

Her double eyelids were deep, and her upward-slanting eyes gave off a somewhat cold impression.

She had a cold and haughty demeanor, making her seem difficult to approach.

Her pale, almost lifeless skin, contrasted sharply with her vividly red lips.

Her long, straight black hair flowed down her neck.

Her neck was slim, contrasting sharply with her jet-black hair, and was delicate enough to stir a protective instinct in any man.

And beneath that, there were curves on her chest.

Not grotesquely large, but two assertive mounds stood there, making their presence known.

She was the kind of woman whose looks would make someone turn their head on the street.

There was nothing wrong with this.

There shouldn’t be anything wrong with this…

Beautiful women, though rare, exist everywhere.

I should count myself lucky—it’s not every day you get the chance to encounter such a beautiful woman.

After all, fortune favors the bold when it comes to winning over beauty.

If I had been with my friends, we would have made silly jokes, like having the person who lost at rock-paper-scissors go confess.

Even so, I couldn’t help but sigh, because I could no longer deny the truth.

When I sighed, the woman in the mirror let out a small breath.

When I blinked, she blinked too.

The timing was perfect as if we were in sync without a single misstep.

Yes, there was one problem.

…I had become a woman.

And a very beautiful one at that.

“Who are you?”

I muttered a line you’d expect to hear in a movie, just for the sake of it.

At the same time, the woman in the mirror’s expressionless face mouthed the words.

There’s no way she’s going to answer me, no matter what I do.

It was like playing rock-paper-scissors with a mirror.

I had no intention of engaging in such self-torment.

Surprisingly, I calmed down rather quickly.

Or maybe I was just trying to convince myself that I had.

It’s like when someone who’s not okay keeps telling themselves they are.

You know, if someone keeps hearing that they’re okay, eventually they start believing it.

That’s a scientifically proven fact.

You’ve heard of the good words, and bad words in plant experiments, right?

It’s a famous experiment usually done with kids in school during science class.

One plant is told good things, while the other plant is told bad things.

Only the plant that hears good words grows well, while the one that hears bad words withers away.

It was an experiment that showed the importance of positive reinforcement from a young age.

Or maybe the conclusion was that you should always speak kindly.

Perhaps it was an early education about not falling victim to gaslighting.

I didn’t realize it when I was young, but looking back, it was quite a useful lesson.

Maybe my perspective has changed.

I let my thoughts wander, getting distracted in the process.

This wasn’t the time for such useless daydreaming.

Let’s think positively—if I’m able to daydream like this, it must mean my mind is recovering.

In that way, my initial shock faded more quickly than expected, as if my mental defense mechanisms had kicked in.

Now, the main question was what I should do next.

Who is this woman?

At least from my memory, there was no woman this beautiful.

Come to think of it, I might not have had much contact with women in general.

Or maybe none at all.

But does that even count as a contact?

Mostly, all I remember are the times women cried in front of me…

Let’s bury those painful memories.

Right now, I didn’t even know the name of the beautiful woman whose body I was controlling.

I decided that the first step was to gather information about her, so I looked around.

The house she was living in was a small studio apartment.

Though the space was small, it was cutely decorated, so it didn’t feel entirely barren despite being a single-person home.

A small studio where the living room and kitchen were connected.

I checked the refrigerator, which occupied one corner of the kitchen.

Colorful sticky notes were attached to the fridge.

– 1. Finely chop the green onions.
– 2. Sauté the soy sauce until it caramelizes.
– 3. Add rice.

The sticky note mentioned a recipe by “Chef Baek.”

The colorful sticky notes were covered in small, tidy handwriting.

Various recipes and the necessary ingredients were listed.

I naturally deduced that the woman probably enjoyed cooking.

But surprisingly, there were no ingredients in the fridge suitable for cooking.

It seemed she hadn’t cooked in a while.

Scattered delivery pamphlets caught my eye, proving that fact.

Are there still people who order food using pamphlets?

Maybe she’s not good with electronic devices.

This might be a pretty big clue… possibly?

I’ll make a mental note of it for now.

I moved around the room like a detective in a novel, and given the size of the room, it didn’t take long to find a second clue.

– Lee Ji-eun 00xxxx-4xxxxxx

It was an ID card. The photo showed her awkwardly smiling back at me.

Born in 2000, 23 years old.

It looked like she recently got the ID reissued, as the issue date was from this year.

I found it inside a worn-out wallet that also had a few crumpled bills in it.

In addition, an old phone model was sitting on the desk. She didn’t seem to be financially well-off.

I dialed a few numbers that I could still remember.

My phone number and those of a few friends.

“Hello, is this Park Jung-tae?”

“You’ve got the wrong number.”

Even when I tried entering the number of a former coworker that came to mind, the results were the same.

I wasn’t particularly emotional about it. It felt more like confirming a fact I had already prepared myself for.

Other than that, the realization that I had come to a different world finally hit me.

Even though I didn’t have many acquaintances, it was impossible for all of them to have changed their phone numbers at once.

It was safe to assume that they had vanished.

Or maybe, in this case, I was the one who had disappeared.

I had come to a big realization, but I felt calm.

Was this composure coming from the original “me” or from “Ji-eun,” the owner of this body?

I couldn’t tell.

All of my former relationships and my narrow social circle had now become distant memories.

It seemed that Ji-eun’s relationships weren’t much different from mine.

Saved contacts (3):

Mom

Dad

Younger sibling

It was a short list of contacts, consisting only of her parents and younger sibling.

It seemed she lived alone, apart from her family.

Looking at the texts and KakaoTalk messages, she seemed to have kept in touch with them from time to time, though the messages were from a few months ago.

She hadn’t been in touch with her family or friends recently either. The last remaining KakaoTalk message was from her younger sibling, but even that hadn’t been read by Ji-Eun.

It looked like there had been some issues.

Family conflicts are pretty common.

Maybe things had even reached the point of estrangement.

I didn’t know the exact situation, but it seemed Ji-eun’s life hadn’t been much easier than mine.

Just as I was about to continue my investigation, still full of questions about Ji-eun, I felt a strange sensation in my body.

An unfamiliar feeling mostly came from my stomach.

I was flustered by the unfamiliar sensation, but soon I realized what it was.

It was hunger.

The hunger I felt in this new body was an oddly foreign sensation. My already weak body, which felt like it was struggling for energy, seemed to weaken further. It felt like my starving body was declaring a strike.

…Should I eat something first?