The Stranger in the Mirror
The agony that had been butchering my entire body for what felt like an eternity finally vanished. In its place came a sharp, needle-like pain stabbing at the insides of my eyes.
I tried to open them, but my eyelids refused to budge, as if someone had glued them shut.
“Finally awake? It’ll take a little time to adjust. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold it for a few seconds, then slowly let it out.”
A languid yet calm voice.
I did as the voice instructed. The moment I drew in a breath, my head miraculously began to clear.
After rolling my eyeballs and twitching my eyelids several times, I finally managed to pry them open. Through the blurry haze, a faint human face swam into view.
The person peering down at me with half-lidded eyes right in front of my nose was none other than Yoon-ha, the same woman who’d been clowning around right up until my last memory.
“How is it? Can you see okay? Don’t push yourself—just lie there a bit longer.”
The moment she slid her glasses up her nose, two round, dumpling-like shadows entered my field of vision from above. Just from the silhouette alone, the overwhelming volume and soft, squishy appearance nearly made me poke them with a finger without thinking.
...Wait.
This angle. This soft sensation against the back of my head. Don’t tell me—a lap pillow?
But I didn’t even get a chance to savor the realization of a man’s ultimate fantasy.
“What do you mean, don’t push yourself and keep lying there, Unnie? It’s obvious that pervert is thrilled to be resting his head on your lap.”
At the icy voice that flew in from the side, I sprang up almost vertically, like a spring uncoiling.
And in that instant, I felt something was wrong.
My body… was far too light.
Feeling a sense of dissonance, I turned my head and saw Ha-rin sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed.
The moment her ice-cold gaze hit me, my heart started pounding madly—then Yoon-ha stood up and began kneading my arms.
“It’ll take some time to adapt to the new body. Can you try clenching your hand once?”
New body? Adapt?
I had no idea what was going on, but I clenched and unclenched my fist as told.
It felt like I could hear creaking sounds from every finger joint, like an unlubricated machine, sending chills down my spine.
How long had I been unconscious?
Out of habit, I brought my hand up to wipe sweat from my face.
“Huh…? Huh?”
But the cheek that met my fingertips had a texture incomparably smoother and softer than usual.
And what was this hair cascading down the side of my face?
I gave a light tug on the strands tickling my cheek, and my scalp stung. So it was real hair, not a wig.
I followed the hair that continued down past my neck with my eyes.
And then I found them.
Two round, bulging masses of flesh that had absolutely no business existing on my chest.
Unconsciously, I raised a hand and gave them a light touch.
An impossible elasticity and softness shot straight from my palm into my brain cells.
Crazy… How can a sensation like this even exist?
Soft, squishy, warm…
And because it was my body, the pleasure was doubled…
"……?"
…My body…?
Wait, don’t tell me…?
Forgetting even that the two women were watching, my terror-stricken hand reached for my lower body.
It was gone.
My precious thing—the lifelong comrade that had shared joys and sorrows with me for twenty years, the one that was supposed to carry on our family line—vanished without a trace…
“M-Mirror! Where’s a mirror!”
“Over there in the corner.”
When I shouted in a voice that felt like the world was collapsing, Yoon-ha pointed with her chin to a corner of the room.
I dashed to the mirror and stopped breathing, as if I’d forgotten how.
In the mirror, a woman I’d never seen before stared back at me with a face that had lost everything.
Flawless white skin, large deer-like eyes. And beneath the pure face, a heavy sense of volume that completely contradicted it.
Aside from the expression that looked like the protagonist of Munch’s The Scream, she was a perfect beauty.
When I raised my right hand, the woman in the mirror raised hers too.
Hoping it was a dream, I pinched my cheek—and the woman in the mirror pinched hers as well.
Even the tears welling up just like mine right now made it unmistakably me.
"…What is this…?"
Please no… Tell me it’s not true!
But reality was cruel.
The self-loathing that came from realizing the smooth white arms and legs sticking out of the clothes were mine made me cover my face with both hands.
Moreover, though I hadn’t noticed until now, my clothes had been changed.
My original T-shirt and jeans were gone; instead, I was wearing a slightly tight-across-the-chest but overall loose hoodie and short shorts.
The clothes even carried a subtle, cozy fragrance.
Is this the scent of apricots?
“…Instead of sniffling around like a pervert, how about focusing on adapting to that body?”
Yikes!
Ha-rin was glaring at me with her arms crossed, her cheeks somehow faintly flushed.
It was a gaze as cold as when a major professor scans the attendance sheet and issues a warning.
“What the hell is going on! Who is this woman?! Where did my precious go?! What is this!!”
“Ugh! Shut up!”
When I yelled out of sheer absurdity, Ha-rin grabbed something next to the sofa and flung it at me.
That was the moment.
The world slowed down.
A black object spinning through the air.
A remote control.
Revolutions per second, trajectory of fall, time of arrival—straight at my face.
The answer arrived before the thought.
As if someone had engraved the entire solution process into my eyes.
Thwack!
When I came to, my left hand was holding the remote right in front of my face.
Without even looking.
“Huh?”
Ha-rin and I, the one who’d snatched it, both froze at the same time.
In the awkward silence, the plastic of the remote crunched and shattered miserably. Like I’d failed to control my grip strength.
Ha-rin’s cat-like pupils trembled slightly.
“I-I wasn’t throwing it for you to catch it, okay? Why grab it and smash it like that?”
“It was flying perfectly at my face…?”
As Ha-rin puffed her cheeks a little and averted her gaze, Yoon-ha dragged a chair over as if she’d been waiting.
The corners of her half-lidded eyes curved finely, whether from curiosity or something else.
“Sang-hae. Did you catch that just now by looking?”
“…I don’t know. My hand just moved first.”
“Even with a synchronization rate of 12%, catching a thrown object outside your field of vision without looking, on a body you’re moving for the first time?”
Yoon-ha picked up the shattered remote remnants and muttered quietly.
"If this is what 12% can do, I wonder what the result would have been if it had been installed normally…"
“Forget results—my body! Explain what happened to me!”
When I shouted like I was throwing a tantrum, Ha-rin frowned.
“Shut it. Do you even know how much that body costs? Honestly, just being alive should make you grateful enough. Should I have just left you to die?”
“…Didn’t you say something back then in the alley about not getting civilians involved? That you’d definitely keep them alive?”
“That’s… because if the old geezers of Asgard or Olympus found out a civilian got mixed up, it’d be troublesome, so yeah I kept you alive, but… no, either way, the result is that I saved you, right?”
Ha-rin grumbled while subtly avoiding my gaze.
“Even if I concede a hundred times that I’m grateful you saved me, why the hell this form!”
“Ugh, I’ve been saying ‘new body’ this whole time. Official name is Valkyrie. More precisely, a cloned version of those battle maniacs.”
When Ha-rin snapped irritably, Yoon-ha beside her looked at the smashed remote remnants with a languid smile.
“Valkyries are goddesses who guide the souls of heroes who die on the battlefield to Valhalla, the heavenly realm. The body Sang-hae entered is a bio-android replica modeled after them.”
“I don’t understand a single word of that! I’m asking why I’m in a woman’s body, so why do you keep giving me these weird explanations?”
“Valkyries were originally goddesses. The base is female, so of course the replicas are female-form too, right?”
No, so what the hell are you people saying!
“Actually, even if you bypass this unit’s security protocols, the number of souls that can be installed is extremely limited. But Sang-hae’s soul just happened to fit perfectly…”
Yoon-ha stopped mid-sentence, then smiled sweetly and brought her index finger to her lips. A chilly coldness brushed past her half-lidded eyes.
“No, better not say. Knowing too much might get you hurt, you know?”
At the terrifying warning hidden behind that smile, it felt like a huge bell rang ding in my head.
"Male or female, what does it matter? As long as you’re alive, right?"
Ha-rin clicked her tongue, frowning deeply as if she didn’t like my expression.
“That body was something we were saving for a high-ranking hero who could become our ally if things went according to plan. We’re doing you a huge favor right now.”
"You did me a favor by turning me into a woman?!"
"Then you wanna just die?"
What kind of death-or-this binary choice is that…
At Ha-rin’s words, I clutched my head and sank down.
I was sure I was making an expression like the world had collapsed right now.
Don’t tell me I have to live like this for the rest of my life?
With this body, I can’t even go to school, let alone date.
And when my noona who went on a business trip comes back and sees me like this, she’ll treat me like a lunatic and kick me out instead of just smacking me on the back.
No, wait—since it’s a woman’s body, would it be treating me like a crazy bitch?
“Alright, so roughly that’s the situation, so let’s move on for now. Our Sang-hae? Shall we try manifesting your ‘Authority’ a bit? This unnie is dying of curiosity to know the identity of the Incarnation who’s joined our side after so long.”
Authority? What’s that?
When I just blinked at her, Yoon-ha tilted her head.
“Authority, I said. If your soul is suitable for a Valkyrie, you must have been a god or hero in the past. When the soul transfers, you automatically awaken the memories and power from back then, right?”
“…What memories?”
When I asked back because I genuinely knew nothing, Yoon-ha and Ha-rin looked at each other’s faces at the same time.
“Sang-hae? This unnie is being very serious right now. Stop joking and just tell me.”
“…What joke…?”
“You really don’t remember anything?”
A look of bewilderment flashed through Yoon-ha’s usually languid half-lidded eyes. Ha-rin leaned back on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling with a somewhat dejected expression.
“Unnie. I think that kid really doesn’t remember anything. Did you mess something up while bypassing security with your Authority?”
“No… I definitely bypassed it normally. This shouldn’t be happening…”
Yoon-ha kept muttering to herself while pushing up her glasses, then subtly dragged Ha-rin to a corner and put their heads together to whisper about something. It looked very ominously like villains plotting a conspiracy.
“Ha-rin. In times like this, that’s the most intuitive and effective. Giving a mental shock to force an awakening.”
“Isn’t that a bit much? We barely succeeded in putting a soul into that defective product—what if the shock makes it fall out?”
Defective product? A word that shouldn’t have slipped out just passed by?
“Then are you saying we should just let that precious unit rot as a powerless clothes hanger with no Authority? Just close your eyes and try it once like I said?”
The standoff between the two sisters continued for a while, but it didn’t seem like they were reaching a conclusion.
“Awakening or whatever, that one’s a total dud. Look at those vacant eyes.”
“True, doesn’t look particularly bright, but still strange. There was zero rejection reaction, at the level of a soul born to become a Valkyrie…”
“Yeah. The fact that even after entering a Valkyrie, there’s no awakening at all to this degree is definitely weird.”
“That’s exactly my point. The soul installation completed perfectly as if blessed by the Valkyries themselves, so why no Authority manifestation?”
Yoon-ha muttered in a languid yet full-of-questions voice while fiddling with her cheek.
Then she shuffled over to me in her slippers and bent at the waist. An dizzying view of whether or not she was wearing underwear under her white T-shirt made me turn my head away without thinking.
Yoon-ha stared at me for a long time with the eyes of a used electronics dealer on a secondhand marketplace pondering how to dispose of a broken product, then spoke to Ha-rin.
"The face and figure came out spectacularly, so maybe we could sell it expensively to high-ranking Incarnations with unique tastes and lots of money? Put it up at the Sanctuary auction house or something?”
“Your jokes are seriously vicious.”
Ha-rin shook her head firmly.
“That kid was a creepy one who suddenly attacked with handwritten confession letters, but once inside a Valkyrie, she’s my subordinate! That’s mine now. Sell? Sell what?"
I couldn’t tell whether to be happy about the “that’s mine now” words I’d wanted to hear until just a little while ago, or to shed tears of blood over the verbal violence that defined my pure first love’s confession as “a creepy kid.”
If there were language police, wouldn’t they take my side?
“Just kidding~ Would I really do that?”
Yoon-ha brushed it off coyly in a cute way that didn’t match her age, but I clearly saw it. The cruel curiosity that had flashed under those thin half-lidded eyes just now. That remark just now was definitely mixed with at least half sincerity.
“Shock therapy is best for awakening… Sang-hae? How about a deep kiss with this unnie once? Who knows, maybe you’ll snap awake and awaken?”
At Yoon-ha’s tempting—no, terrifying—proposal, I shook my head vigorously in horror, and right then—
Thud thud thud thud, bang!
From somewhere, the sound of a door opening as if it would break, accompanied by cheerful footsteps that filled the damp basement. Who else was in this secret laboratory-like gloomy place?
“Noona! Ha-rin noona! I’m back from my walk!”
With a childish voice that filled the basement, a little kid who looked about kindergarten or early elementary school age came running in.
At a glance, an extreme extrovert who would grow thorns all over if left still—the kind with about a hundred E’s in their MBTI.
The child ran full speed to Ha-rin the moment they entered and buried themselves in her arms. A soft smile briefly spread across Ha-rin’s previously cold face as she stroked the child’s head.
“Yeah, Nir’s here? Was the walk fun?”
“Yeah! When I went outside, there were so many flowers blooming! They were so pretty I picked this many for Ha-rin noona!”
The child twisted their body and fiddled with the pink child safety necklace around their neck while pouring out words nonstop.
“But noona, this necklace is too stuffy. Can I take it off? I promise I won’t lie and I’ll really stay quiet starting today, okay? Okay?”
It seemed they hated the feel of the safety necklace against their neck, looking exactly like a neighborhood elementary schooler throwing a tantrum.
But is this kid a child actor model or something? How can a boy look so angelically cute?
…No!
A full-body chill ran through me and I shook my head hard.
Crazy! What was I just thinking? Don’t tell me the hormones of this damn new Valkyrie body are polluting my pure soul? Feeling that a boy is cute!
“Huh? Who’s this noona?”
While I was half in a panic, the chattering little kid named Nir suddenly turned their head and stared straight at me.
“This noona is really pretty! …Huh? Is it noona? Why does the smell seem like hyung? Noona, are you noona? Hyung? No, but you’re wearing noona clothes, weird? Or not? The smell isn’t even human? What is it? Ha-rin noona. Who’s this noona?”
The child fired off questions like a machine gun, then without waiting for answers, nimbly climbed up to me and shoved their face right up close. Then, like a puppy, they buried their nose near my nape and started sniffing. The childish breath touching me through the loose hoodie made my whole body go rigid.
…Huh? But ears? Why are there four ears?
A strange form was protruding above the child’s flowing hair.
Thinking it odd and looking closely, there were ears in the normal ear positions, and separate twitching ears on top of the head as well.
Thinking it might be a cosplay headband, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity and firmly grabbed and pulled the ears sticking up from the child’s head.
“Ow ow ow! It hurts! It hurts!”
The texture of the leather was perfectly real, and the reaction was 100% genuine. The child shook off my hand with eyes that looked ready to drop tears any second.
Even as my mental state was exploding, Yoon-ha was resting her chin on her hand and muttering something with a serious expression.
“Is it because I lowered the synchronization rate after all… No. Touching the system any further is dangerous."
Nodding or shaking her head alone repeatedly, Yoon-ha met my eyes and smiled sweetly. The eye smile that curved so smoothly it looked drawn like in a manga made me uneasy instead.
“This won’t do, Sang-hae. Let’s just try one experiment. This unnie won’t be able to sleep tonight from curiosity otherwise.”
“…What are you planning to do?”
An ominous premonition made cold sweat run down my spine. When I edged my body into a corner, Yoon-ha gestured toward Nir.
“Nir, can you ask that noona once? Don’t bite too hard, just enough that they won’t die.”
“Huh? No!”
Without even looking, Nir refused, and Yoon-ha’s fist came down with a thump on their head.
“Ow! It hurts! Why are you knuckling me! You muscle monster!”
Nir yelled while rubbing the top of their head with tears welling in their eyes.
Then Yoon-ha threatened.
“Call me a monster one more time and I’ll put a leash on you and make you sleep outside!”
“…No. If I bite people carelessly, Ha-rin noona will scold me. I absolutely won’t bite!”
Nir stubbornly refused with their whole body. Somehow, even though Yoon-ha seemed the oldest, everyone was watching Ha-rin’s mood.
Ha-rin had been avoiding her gaze with a flushed face ever since her earlier backtalk about me had been exposed through Nir’s mouth. Then when our eyes met, she frowned hard as if very displeased and slowly turned her head to look at Nir.
“Nir.”
Ha-rin called Nir in a low voice.
At that single short call, the little kid who’d been talking back boldly to Yoon-ha until just now whipped their head around as if under a spell.
Nir’s shoulders were visibly trembling like a hunting dog waiting for orders.
Ha-rin’s dark brown eyes held interest or curiosity.
“Shall we see the skills of our newly recruited subordinate? Nir, be careful not to hurt them…”
Ha-rin raised her hand, pointed at me with her index finger, and nodded toward Nir.
"Bite."
Not a metaphor—an absolute command like a master ordering a hunting dog flowed from Ha-rin’s mouth.
At the same time, Nir’s small shoulders seemed to heave, then began emitting the aura of a wild wolf with prey right in front of it.
When I instinctively took a step back, Yoon-ha grinned as if she’d been waiting and ruthlessly tore off the safety necklace hanging around Nir’s neck.
That moment.
Nir’s small body began expanding explosively to an unbelievable degree.
In the blink of an eye, a gray silhouette growing huge enough to nearly touch the basement ceiling. The thick killing intent of a predator began raging like a storm in all directions.
Until now, when Ha-rin and Yoon-ha were going on about Valkyries and Authorities and whatnot, honestly I’d briefly thought I’d gotten mixed up with some weird people with middle-school syndrome. It was a fantasy my common sense couldn’t accept at all.
But right before my eyes, the little kid turned into a wolf. And not just an ordinary wolf you’d see at a zoo. It was that monster wolf that had bitten off one hand of the madman who’d cut me in half in that miserable alley where I’d been murdered.
Crazy… So all that talk about goddesses and Valkyries was real?
The moment I nearly lost my mind from shock passed quickly, as the monster wolf straight out of mythology bared its sharp teeth and charged at me.
The gaping maw that looked ready to chew and swallow my head in one bite filled my vision.
My body trembled with fear and my heart felt like it would burst, but independent of my will, my body’s reflexes were one step faster.
My slender legs kicked off the basement’s cement floor, and my vision was shoved backward as if teleporting.
KWAANG!
The wolf’s massive jaws seemed to smash into the floor where I’d just been standing, and a thunderous roar of teeth clashing shook the basement.
I spun three or four more times in the air, then planted against the wall and landed.
Every joint in my body screamed, but amazingly, my mind was clear.
Even I thought it was ridiculous—the superhuman super-senses and dynamic vision that lit up my field of view so clearly.
“Wow. No Authority wavelength at all, yet dodging Hróðvitnir’s surprise attack with pure reflexes alone? Sang-hae seems better at handling the Valkyrie unit than I thought?”
Ha-rin, who’d given the order to Nir, was also staring at me with wide round eyes.
Though my legs were trembling under the overwhelming presence of the beast-like wolf, at least this time I could stare straight ahead without fainting.
"Wow! Noona was an Incarnation too? Your movements are amazing!"
The wolf that had been Nir spoke in a rumbling voice that filled the basement while snorting roughly.
"Then let’s play more fun! I’m going for real now?"
…Play? I was in a life-or-death survival struggle, and it’s play?
As I leaned against the wall to support myself so they wouldn’t notice my trembling legs, Yoon-ha clapped once with a smack.
“That’s enough~ Sang-hae is still too weak to play with you for long.”
"Hiiing… I want to play more."
With a grumbling sound, Yoon-ha brought the safety necklace to the wolf. Then the giant wolf’s form rapidly shrank and in an instant returned to the original little kid, Nir.
Nir scurried over and hugged her, and Ha-rin stroked their head familiarly.
“Ha-rin noona! That was so fun just now! I like that noona!”
…Unbelievable. Likes me?
After charging like they were going to smash my head just a moment ago, now smiling brightly and saying that?
Seems monster affection expressions require staking your life.
Whatever the reason, with the threat of the little monster wolf’s teeth gone, the tension drained away.
I dragged my shaky legs and collapsed onto a hard, cheap sofa with zero cushioning in one corner.
But the air in the room was strange.
Yoon-ha was looking at me without a word. More precisely, with eyes that seemed to be dissecting me.
“Wh-why are you looking at me like that?”
“Sang-hae, what’s your identity?"
Yoon-ha pushed up her glasses.
“Authority wavelength zero. Past-life memories zero. No movement at 12% synchronization rate. Yet dodged Nir’s surprise attack with pure reflexes alone.”
"So what about that?"
I tried to snap back, but the voice that came from my throat was so pure and clear that even I got chills.
“It can’t be explained by standard Valkyrie specs. Even at 12% synchronization, on the day you wake up, walking stiffly would be normal."
Light seemed to shine from the pupils barely visible through Yoon-ha’s half-lidded eyes. Like a scholar’s inquisitiveness facing an unknown existence? Or madness?
"The remote earlier too—it’s as if the soul side already knew how to handle the body…”
No, I didn’t do anything though…? My body just moved…
I wanted to pour out the injustice that had risen to my throat, but sadly, my face in the mirror was radiating a calm and mysterious atmosphere instead.
That was when.
Beeeeeep!
> Outermost defense zone: BREACHED
> Estimated time to internal arrival: 4 MINUTES
> Reaction pattern analysis: ASGARD?
The entire basement was dyed bright red. Not just the warning lights randomly attached to the walls, but the monitors on the desks all began to be plastered with warning windows.
Nir hid behind Ha-rin, and Yoon-ha kicked her chair and threw herself in front of the keyboard.
“Ha-rin.”
The languidly smiling voice from just before had the laughter completely gone for the first time.
“Outermost defense zone, breached.”
“Remaining time?”
“Four minutes until internal arrival. Reaction pattern is… Asgard?"
“…What? Don’t tell me Freyr?"
Ha-rin’s face hardened. Yoon-ha glared at the monitor while breaking into a cold sweat.
Freyr.
The moment I heard that name too, a single scene vividly revived from the foggy memories.
In the dark alley, my body, splitting in half.
My fingertips began to tremble.
“Hey, Subordinate Number One.”
Ha-rin opened a diary and spoke without even looking at me.
“Be careful. You don’t want to know what dying feels like a second time, right?”
The one who killed me is coming…?