Chapter 2: Chipping Away

Blinking rapidly, why am I lying here?

The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was the bottom of the shoe rack.
Did I drink?

No, if I’d gotten so drunk that I passed out in the corner of the entryway without even making it to my room, I wouldn’t feel this fine.

If that were the case, forget the smell of alcohol, my head should be pounding like it’s about to explode the moment I open my eyes.

But I feel fine.

Could I have fainted from pulling two all-nighters in a row?

That’s a real possibility, and it hits hard.

“For now, I need to get up… Ah?”

My voice sounds strangely high-pitched.

It’s too thin to chalk up to catching a cold from sleeping in a chilly place.

It sounds like a woman’s voice, not a man’s.

More than that, I don’t have a fever, and my throat doesn’t hurt.

No, if anything, my body feels better than usual.

Alright, let’s get up.

I don’t have a hobby of rolling around in a dusty pit.

The moment I stretched out my arm to push myself up from the floor, I flinched, my body trembling as my eyes locked onto the arm and hand in my field of vision.

“What… is this…?”

The hand pressing against the floor wasn’t mine.

The forearm was so slender it could be grasped in one hand, but not so thin that the bones were visible.

The hand was delicate, the kind that instantly brings to mind the phrase “slender jade fingers.”

And it was pale—completely pale.

Not the milky white skin people often talk about, but a color so drained it seemed devoid of any life.

A sharp pain—throb—shot through my head.

“Ugh…”

Haha… no way.

There’s no way I turned into a woman.

I bolted upright and brushed the dust off my clothes.

My sleep pants and underwear, now too big for my body, slid down with a rustle.

A chill wrapped around my legs, stealing my body heat, and I shivered reflexively.

A hollow laugh escaped me.

“This is a dream, right? A perfectly fine guy turning into a woman overnight? That’s nonsense. Don’t make me laugh.”

I muttered in denial.

A sweet, feminine voice lingered in my ears, but I refused to let it sink in.

Hah, hahaha.

Stumbling, I made my way from the entryway to my room.

The room was warm, filled with cozy heat—guess I forgot to turn off the heater.

Nothing in the room had changed.

It was exactly as I remembered.

A desk littered with empty Monster cans, an ashtray in the corner piled high with cigarette butts like a tower, a monitor too dim to see clearly now that it was daytime, and a messy, unmade bed.

Everything was the same as in my memory—my room, unchanged.

The only thing that’s changed is me.

No, no way.

I haven’t changed.

I’m perfectly sane.

Calm down and think back slowly.

What did I do yesterday, and where?

Let’s start by checking the date.

I shuffled over to my desk and looked at the monitor.

The brightness was set to the lowest, so the screen was barely visible.

Instead of the novel I was working on yesterday, the dark monitor reflected the face of an unknown woman who looked like a child but exuded a strange, alluring charm.

[Heh heh…]

The face in the reflection seemed to smile faintly, startling me.

I ducked my head.

No, I’m sane.

Keeping my head down, I reached out to fumble with the monitor.

The brightness button—it’s this one, right?

I adjusted the button on the bottom left, raising the brightness, and when it was bright enough, I looked up at the screen.

[To envy and hate someone is to diminish yourself by comparing yourself to others. Thus, those who diminish themselves with envy and jealousy—]

The text I’d stopped working on yesterday came into view.

But that wasn’t important right now.

I glanced at the bottom left of the monitor: October 17, 2020, 8:22 AM.

The date matched my memory.

Not even a day had passed—just four hours.

“There’s no way a person could change like this in just four hours, you crazy bstard!!”

Bang!

I slammed my fist on the desk.

This was maddening, infuriating.

Could a person really change this much in just a few hours?

Their gender, too?

No, it’s absolutely impossible.

If it were possible, why would people spend money and time on gender reassignment surgeries?

Scientifically, biologically, it’s utterly impossible.

Sure, some creatures in nature can change their sex, but those are animals, not humans.

And even those creatures don’t switch genders in a matter of hours—their reproductive systems aren’t that simple.

“What kind of crazy bstard rambles on like this…”

My head was so cluttered it felt like it might explode.

Random thoughts kept spiraling, tangling into incoherent nonsense.
I wanted to calm down, but I couldn’t.

Deep down, I knew instinctively that the moment I accepted this reality, the “me” I knew would completely collapse.

The long coat I was wearing felt stifling.

I unzipped it and, realizing it wasn’t my body—well, it was, but not really—tossed the oversized, baggy coat aside.

My eyes fell on a small but undeniably prominent chest.

Ignoring it, I got up and headed to the bathroom.

The bathroom was so dark that without the light on, nothing was visible.

Maybe it seemed even darker because it was bright outside.

Well, maybe that’s for the best, I thought as I stepped inside and closed the door.

The bathroom, unheated, was filled with a cool chill and pitch-black darkness.

I turned on the faucet at the sink and stared blankly at the water.
Something was off.

“Why can I see so well…?”

Even without turning on the light, I could see the bathroom’s interior vividly.

From the water flowing out of the faucet to the brand label on the body wash by the tub—everything was crystal clear.

It was like I could see through the darkness.

No, no way.

I kept denying it as I splashed cold water on my face.

The delicate, jade-like hands catching the water caught my eye, but I forced myself to ignore them and washed my face.

“Phew…”

I turned off the faucet and stared blankly at the water draining from the sink.

Drip, drip—the water falling from my face soaked my T-shirt.

The hands gripping the sink were still those beautiful, unfamiliar hands of a woman.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then slowly opened them and raised my head.

At a glance, my hair was a deep purple bob, so dark it could be mistaken for black.

My eyes were wide with shock, my face undeniably beautiful even at a fleeting glance.

The most striking feature was my faintly glowing, pale lavender eyes, radiating an eerie aura.

I’m not some spiritual guru who can read people’s energies, but anyone who saw these eyes would think the same thing I did.

‘These eyes… they pierce right through you…’

These weren’t normal human eyes—they held a strange, captivating power.

They had a magnetic pull, drawing people in.

Despite all the problems—my life potentially spiraling into ruin—just locking eyes with my reflection made all those worries vanish, my mind going blank.

Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, these eyes didn’t belong to a human.

A bewitching face, a bewitching voice—every grandiose description from TV felt meaningless in the face of the overwhelming power these eyes held.

And it wasn’t just the eyes.

They were the most noticeable, but as my awareness expanded from the eyes to the face and then to the entire body, an undeniable, almost sinister aura emanated from me.

It wasn’t something visible, but it was more than enough to feel overwhelming.

[Like my body?]

I could almost hear the woman in the mirror smiling and speaking to me.

Snapping out of it, I blinked rapidly, startled as the room suddenly seemed to darken.

The glowing eyes in the mirror—my eyes—had somehow stopped shining, looking like those of an ordinary person.

It sounded strange, but that’s how it was.

Fumbling along the wall, I left the bathroom and returned to my desk, staring blankly at the monitor.

I just sat there, staring, unaware of time passing.

When I came to, it was already late evening.

I only snapped out of it because my stomach growled, not because I’d regained any composure.

“Food… I need to eat…”

No matter how chaotic my mind was, I had to eat.

I slowly got up and went to the kitchen.

Without thinking, I opened the fridge door and was once again confronted with its pitiful state, which I’d briefly forgotten amidst everything else.

“I’ll order something…”

I’ll clean it later.

Yeah, I’m just not in the right headspace for it now.

It’s definitely not because I’m too lazy to throw things out and clean.

Definitely not.

For real.