Chapter 0: Prologue

My day is long and short.

I wake up to the usual alarm.

It’s time to go to work.

I pick up the clothes lying on the hanger and go outside, and it’s still dark in the early morning.

The cold wind blowing makes my already bad mood worse.

When I sit on the bus and look at the scenery outside, I see people moving toward their own destinations beyond the lushly planted street trees.

People dressed neatly like office workers, students who look free-spirited, middle-aged men and women going to work, etc.

I believe I’m one of those people… No, I have to believe that.

I arrive at my destination, fill out the attendance sheet, go through the security check, and start work according to the procedures.

There’s nothing complicated.

I just have to process the logistics according to the flow.

However, I don’t have time to think about anything else.

After loading and moving, I twist my body for a moment because my back feels like it’s going to fall off, and then lunchtime comes, and after eating, I repeat the same work.

I look at the conveyor belt for a moment.

The conveyor belt that keeps spitting out things.

Moving without stopping for a moment, but always in the same place.

Without diverging or converging, only circling a certain area.

Fate to stay in the same world at the same point forever unless an external force intervenes.

It felt like looking at my life, and I didn’t feel good.

***

I went out to the smoking area and lit a lighter, but it didn’t work well.

“Ah, shit”

I got angry and threw the lighter on the ground, and it was thrown away with a thud!

I didn’t care about the eyes staring at me, and I sat down on the bench.

Where on earth did my life go wrong, when I couldn’t even light a lighter properly?

Was it when my father ran away, leaving me and my mother behind?

Was it when my mother died in a car accident?

Was it when I gave up all my relationships because my life sucked?

Was it when I played mahjong that my father taught me, and then got addicted to the internet and ended up just eating and browsing?

… When I think about it, it seems like it wasn’t my fault.

Isn’t it?

How do I catch my father when he runs away?

How do I prevent my mother from getting into a car accident?

It’s only natural for a high school student to throw everything away and escape to the internet when life is ruined.

It was just something that couldn’t be helped.

My life was a series of inevitable events, and I just went along with it every day.

But was that really the case?

Wasn’t there a point where I could turn back?

Even if my father ran away and my mother passed away, couldn’t I have prevented myself from falling to this point?

I could have definitely prevented myself from becoming like this, at some point.

Why did I end up living like this?

I think I need a great reset….Negative thoughts are amplified.

There’s no use in continuing to think like this.

Thinking about things that have already happened is just a waste of emotion.

But I just thought about where all this went wrong.

Not to achieve anything, but just to let my emotions out.

I turned on my phone with a cigarette in my mouth and went to the gallery, and today, too, I saw guys who were more focused on fucking than talking about mahjong.

Today, my luck is bad for failure, huh; I got screwed by a failure; When will I be able to take a look at the heavens,

Pardan (39.7):

It’s not that you’re a loser, but it’s your skills that you don’t study and just swear at all while always swearing at the gallery.

Pardan, a high school graduate, unemployed, and 8th dan student who’s the only one to brag about in life, has entered the gallery.

Pardan (39.7):

No matter how much you do evil things, it won’t change the fact that you’re a piece of shit.

You’re a real pervert

What the heck, This kid’s acting up again.

Is there nothing left to do?? [Can I ask a question??]

What are you throwing away here?? – 5 sacks – Pardan (39.7):

Hey kid, is throwing away 5 sacks here really useless?

Do you not even know what a 5 block is?

Do you not even know what the 1/18 theory is??

Why are you arguing?

Pardan (39.7):

Is this a sack?

I’m teaching you something, you should be grateful

I relieve stress by picking on the sloppy mahjong players who live in the gallery.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing at the gallery for so long, but no matter how much I curse and mock him, he just says, “Here he comes again to cause trouble.”

There were also guys who teased me, saying, “A high school graduate and an unemployed person,” and it makes me angry because it’s a fact, but getting angry about something like this is the same as saying it’s true, so I shouldn’t get angry…

The only things I can say with confidence are my mahjong skills and the years I’ve played at the gallery.

And even then, my mahjong skills are stagnant.

Ppappappappappappappapp

I got on the bus on my way home from work and stared blankly ahead.

I had already passed my stop, but for some reason I didn’t feel like getting off.

Why?

I don’t know why.

I treated myself as if I was looking at someone else.

Was it because I could walk two stops?

Was it okay to walk a few more stops?

I didn’t really know my own feelings either, and I just went with the flow.

“I’m sorry. I’ll get off.”

While I was sitting there blankly, the person next to me said he was going to get off.

Because of that, I ended up getting off too.

Now I have to walk two stops to get home.

I wonder why I didn’t get off sooner…

It’s my personality to regret it later.

Why did I do that?

I should have gotten angry then, I should have fought then, I should have given in then.

I didn’t act like that when I was young, but as time goes by, I become more withdrawn and timid.

I’m a Yeopo on the internet, but in reality, I’m not even a Chosun…because Chosun is pretty.

I’m not a rookie or a janitor, just a first-day soldier.

When I entered the convenience store, the only thing I could hear was the doorbell.

I went through the structure that I could now close my eyes and took out a bottle of soju from the refrigerator.

The part-timer who received the card scanned the barcode without even looking at me.

He didn’t say anything like, “Should I put it in a bag?”

I wish he’d tell me how much it would cost, but he didn’t even pretend to.

This happens all the time, so I don’t even expect it.

What does it matter whether the part-timer tells me the price or whether he asks me to put it in a bag?

In a corner of my mind, I’m wondering why the fucker is ignoring me, does he think I’m a dick?

But I can’t say anything.

That’s not really important.

I opened my eyes to an unpleasant melody ringing in my room.

The basic fucking Samsung alarm.

Fucking work.

Fucking life.

Another fucking day.

I had an uncomfortable dream, but I don’t know what it was, but it was just a fucking dream.

I thought for a moment, leaving the loud alarm next to my pillow.

No, but isn’t today a day I don’t go to work?

I didn’t tell them I was going to go.

I decided to take three days off to celebrate the week of logistics I had been working for, but I didn’t think to turn off the alarm last night because I was drinking.

Am I forgetting this now?

How much did I drink last night…

My body feels like shit, but I don’t have a headache, so I don’t think it’s a hangover.

Is it coronavirus?

I reached into my pillow and picked up my loudly ringing phone.

I don’t know, I’ll turn off the alarm, take a deep breath, and think about it.

And when I picked up the phone and brought it in front of me, I was faced with something more serious than an alarm.

What’s wrong with my hand?

I squinted my eyes and looked at my hand again.

My hand is still strange, unchanging.

Something is strange.

This isn’t my hand.

It’s more like a woman’s hand…

No, first, let’s turn off the alarm.

I turned off the ringing alarm on my phone, put it down, and looked at my hand again.

Under the white back of my hand, where the veins were slightly protruding, were thin fingers and well-groomed nails.

Even if I closed my eyes three times and opened them, they weren’t my hands.

My hands were just ordinary men’s hands.

They were average in size, and my skin was tanned because I worked outside.

But now, unlike those rough hands, these hands were definitely women’s hands.

What’s going on?

I absentmindedly took my eyes off my hands, lowered my head, and looked down at my chest.

And what was there was not a flat man’s chest, but an undeniably large living organ.

I got up as if I was bouncing and ran to the bathroom.

The thumping sound echoed throughout the house, and my feet twisted a couple of times and my knees buckled slightly in the few steps I took.

And even in the midst of all that, the thought, “Oh, this looks like it’s coming up from the downstairs,” came and went in my head.

I touched the sink that had gotten cold last night.

I looked down with a swaying feeling, and my chest was shaking uncontrollably.

This…

Because of the weight hanging from my chest, it was hard to keep my balance whenever I moved.

Anyway, when I looked in the mirror, well…

It definitely didn’t look like me.

Upturned eye corners, thick, dense eyelashes contrasting with slightly thin eyebrows.

Teardrops running down from under my thin, black slit glasses.

A nose of moderate height.

Plump pink lips, flawless cheeks, and slightly curly blue-black long hair that was parted along the parting and half-covered my ears and fell down to my chest.

I took my hands off the sink and straightened my back.

Looking up past the middle of the mirror, I saw that she was definitely tall and built for a woman.

Her height was similar to my previous height.

And her breasts were large.

Her waist was thin, and her hips were developed.

Her face was a bit cat-like overall.

She twirled her cheeks here and there. She stuck her tongue out.

She grabbed her hair and tugged at it. She played with her breasts.

She pinched her thighs. She kneaded her butt.

But all of those actions only made her feel a slight pain.

On the contrary, the pain made her feel a little more clear-headed.

What on earth was going on? I returned to my room and threw myself on the bed… and immediately regretted it.

“Ouch!”

Thanks to the fat on my chest that wasn’t there until yesterday, I was experiencing pain I’d never experienced before.

It felt like… someone was grabbing my hair and forcibly tugging at it.

I didn’t even know how to explain it, so I just wrapped my arms around my chest and groaned in pain.

As the pain subsided, I released the arms I had wrapped around me and lay back down on the bed.

Last night, I was an ordinary man, but now, my body was that of a fierce woman in her early 20s… a beauty of the highest class in the city.

And this was the ordinary 2000-room studio near Seoul where I came and slept yesterday.

The cell phone, the bed, the computer, everything was still mine.

Nothing had changed. The only thing that had changed was my body.

I wondered if this was really me, so I scanned my cell phone for fingerprint recognition, and it passed without a problem.

Are even the fingerprints the same? Is this possible? If the fingerprints are the same, then the body is mine…?

No, that can’t be.

Uh… My head felt confused.

What state am I in right now?

Let me think about it. If this isn’t a dream but reality, and if this is the TS I’ve only heard about, what state am I in right now?

What is my current social status?

I don’t know about anything else, but I know the worst thing. I’m still a man.

I got up in a hurry, searched through my desk… and found an old wallet that I bought a long time ago and have been using ever since.

Inside is my ID card that I got a few years ago.

The rest of my life will depend on what is written on this ID card.

I don’t have the courage to open it… but as I live my life, there are bound to be foods I have to eat even if I don’t like them.

I made up my mind and opened my wallet slightly.

On the front of the opened wallet, I could see my ID card through the transparent plastic.

Kim Hyunjin 980316-19xxxxx.

My life is ruined.