Getting Used to It
Bee-ree-ring~
Bee-ree-ring~
I flailed a hand toward the sound, groping for my smartphone. I forced my heavy eyelids up just long enough to silence the alarm, but they kept sinking shut again, as if someone were pressing them down.
"Nngh~"
I stretched against my will, pried my eyes open, and stared at the ceiling. If I let myself drift off now, I would sleep straight through until evening. That much was obvious.
It was ten in the morning. Exactly the time I had set the night before.
"I... should get going."
On any other day I would have left the alarm unset and stolen a little more sleep, but I had already decided I was going out today. I hauled my body up as if it weighed a thousand pounds and dragged myself toward the bathroom.
A woman looked back at me from the other side of the mirror.
"...What a mess."
I hadn't done a thing to take care of it, and the black hair was a disaster. It was oily and matted from not being washed properly, and every last strand—bangs included—had grown far too long. The hair at the back was one breath short of brushing my knees.
When I pushed the bangs off my eyes, a pair of wide, catlike slits appeared. The upturned corners did nothing to make them look friendly.
The one mercy was that several days of nothing but sleep had faded the dark circles that had once been visible from across a room. They were still there, but you would miss them if you weren't looking.
"...What am I even doing."
Was I supposed to be shocked that this was me? Or shocked that I was taking the fact that I had become a woman so calmly? Neither of it felt real.
People say a person doesn't change without a shock big enough to upend a life. Flip that around, and a shock of that size can remake someone completely.
...What exactly did I spend those eight years doing?
I stripped, let the hot water hit me, and turned the past over in my mind. I had become a mercenary against my will, and I had fought to stay alive. Somewhere along the way, though, survival had stopped being the point. The border between living and dying. The sensation of crossing it. The moments you feel that you are alive are not the kind you forget.
I toweled the water from my skin and hair, then ran a dryer through it, and only then did the next problem settle in: what to wear. There was a wardrobe in the room, but it would be packed with the clothes Lee Harin used to wear. That was what I was afraid of.
What if I opened it and found it stuffed with frothy, frilly women's clothes?
This body might be a woman's, but I wanted to hold on to at least my identity as a man.
For a second I considered just walking out in what I already had on. They say a face finishes an outfit, and with a face like this, anything would look fine. There were people who strolled the streets in sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt, after all.
After a long stretch of indecision, I planted myself in front of the wardrobe. If I opened it and hated what I found, I simply wouldn't wear it. There was nothing to be tense about.
Creeeak—
The doors were old, and they opened with an ugly groan. The moment I saw the inside, a sigh of relief slipped out of me on its own.
The frothy girly clothes I had been dreading were, thankfully, nowhere in sight. In their place hung easy sweatpants and shorts, and a pair of jeans and a cardigan folded separately for going out.
"Better than women's clothes, at least..."
They were still women's clothes, of course, but I could hardly insist on men's wear at this point. The sizes wouldn't have fit anyway.
I picked up a pair of utterly ordinary jeans and a plain black T-shirt and stood in front of the mirror. They were cheap pieces I had clearly bought online, and yet on me they looked like they had come off a designer rack.
So that was why people made such a fuss about faces.
With the preparations done, there was nothing left to put off. It was time to kick the door open on an unknown world. This would be my first time stepping outside since I had entered this body, and I would have been lying if I said I wasn't nervous.
Then again, people lived more or less the same everywhere. As long as I opened the door and a squad of armed soldiers didn't greet me with a hail of bullets, there was nothing to worry about.
I drew one long breath and pressed down the handle of the front door. The lock released with a little chime.
Click.
"...The weather's disgustingly nice."
The door swung open and a blast of sunlight punched me in the eyes. I blinked until they adjusted, then looked around. A familiar Seoul waited to greet me. No unfortunate incident involving armed soldiers ringing me in materialized.
A little farther down, the street came into view. This being Seoul, the crowds were considerable. People filled the sidewalks, and the shops across the way were packed just as tight.
I looked at a scene that was at once familiar and strange, and I set my first foot off the threshold as carefully as if I were Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon.
It was the same Seoul I remembered. Not that I remembered every brick and alley in detail. The buildings were tall and the people swarmed—that was what matched. There were no flying cars, no robots striking up conversations with pedestrians. That alone was enough to settle my nerves.
I had figured it out while getting ready: the apartment sat right on the edge of a busy district. I wouldn't need a subway or a taxi just to find somewhere to kill time. A check of my phone said the café I had picked was about a ten-minute walk. For a first outing, that distance wasn't bad at all.
That was what I thought. I had been outside for less than five minutes before I regretted it.
My pace picked up without my noticing. The café the phone was guiding me toward was only about five minutes away now.
"Whoa."
"Ahem."
Every person I passed turned their head for a look. Students, adults—it didn't matter. All of them stared. I found myself thinking that even the animals on display at a zoo probably felt less embarrassed than I did right now.
The ones who tried to be subtle about their glances were irritating enough. Worse were the clusters of three or four men whose muttering reached me with painful clarity as they walked by.
"Holy shit, she's gorgeous. Should I try talking to her?"
"Look at your own face first. She'd shut you down instantly."
"You'd be surprised how many girls like that are actually into guys. You just gotta try. If it works, you win. If it doesn't, you haven't lost anything."
"I can't even walk with you, this is embarrassing. Just shut up and follow me."
At least one of them had a functioning brain, but I still didn't enjoy suddenly being recast as some man-crazy woman.
No—I'm a man in the first place. Why would I be after men?
I let out a long breath inside and started walking again. If I was going to live in this world, it seemed I still... needed more time.
I don't know how much farther I walked after that. I only know I arrived at the café I had marked as my destination.
Ding.
A little bell rang as the door opened, and air far cooler than the weather outside met me with a chill. The difference was sharp enough that I rubbed my arms without thinking.
"Welcome."
I dipped my head toward the young man who looked like a part-timer and went looking for a seat near the window.
The biggest reason I had come out at all was to force myself to register that this was real. A secondary reason was people-watching. I ordered an Americano from the barista and headed for the window seat I had already picked out.
What did the actual people of this world look like, compared to the one I had lived in? That was the point. I settled in to kill time at the café and watch the street go by.
About an hour must have passed. By the time I could no longer tell whether I was watching the people outside or the people inside the café were watching me, I had reached a conclusion.
Maybe that old line really was true: people live more or less the same everywhere.
The information I had found online had painted a picture of stark differences, but the people beyond the glass didn't look all that different. They were just people living through a busy modern world.
Or maybe I simply couldn't feel the difference because I was sitting inside a café. The thought crossed my mind, and it was a little ridiculous—how was I supposed to notice anything when all I was doing was watching people walk past a window?
There was only so much you could learn from observing passersby. I needed to get out and walk around myself. Real information was the kind you saw and heard with your own eyes and ears. You couldn't hang a verdict on a single remark from someone else, and especially not on the internet, which was full of lies.
And who knew? Some new wonder I had never even imagined might be waiting for me out there.
At any rate, that was how my first neighborhood exploration began.