Final Acceptance?
Yu Sihyun, twenty-three years old.
Those were the two words that defined me right now.
Honestly, the age part didn’t matter much. But the name… that was one of the pieces that marked the change that had come over me. I never really had a choice in it. I woke up reborn as some girl, and the people who were now my parents simply started calling me Sihyun. My father was a Yu, so the family name was locked in. And with what had vanished between my legs, the other kind of “sex” was locked in too…
Maybe that was why the name itself had this faintly androgynous feel to it. Still, it was fine enough. Back when I was a guy I hadn’t had all that much to lose anyway. I’d come out of an orphanage; I never even got the chance to feel a parent’s warmth. By that measure, this life was the happier one.
Unfortunately, this life hadn’t handed me any special talent for studying either. Just like when I left the orphanage, the second I became an adult I threw myself straight into the working world. I lasted about two years, maybe. Then some balding creep started leering at me, I freaked out, and I quit on the spot…
“…Right. Gotta make dinner.”
These days I was playing housekeeper at a friend’s place. The way it happened was pretty weird. I’d stormed out of the company in a half-rage, left the company dorm the next day, and suddenly the road ahead looked completely blank. So I called my friend for advice, and she hit me with:
“Then… want to live with me?”
Just like that.
“…Don’t you still live with your parents?”
“I’m on my own. They gave me a place.”
“…Oh. Well, in that case.”
And so our completely out-of-nowhere cohabitation life began. She gave me a stable roof over my head; I took care of every household chore for a friend who had zero life skills. I didn’t plan on freeloading forever, of course. Until I found the next job, though, this was home. Going back to my parents’ place like this would have been… a lot.
“Hwaaah…”
“…Hm? You’re out early.”
I was standing in the kitchen, replaying recent events while trying to decide on a menu, when the tightly shut bedroom door opened and someone crawled out.
“Sihyuuun…”
“Stream over?”
“Mm… just now…”
That someone was Baek Jia—the friend who had cheerfully offered me a room, and the actual owner of this place. And I mean actual owner. The whole building was under her name. When she said her parents had given her a place, I figured they’d gotten her a single apartment. Turns out they just tossed her an entire building. I’d hung out with her enough to know she was rich, but she was richer than I’d realized.
…Except.
“Sniff… haah…”
“Hey. I told you not to do that.”
“But it’s so addictive…”
…Was burying your face in someone’s chest just normal rich-girl behavior? I couldn’t exactly call her parents and ask. I was losing my mind.
“I’m so scared the application’s going to get rejected… I need this to cope.”
“Ugh, seriously.”
And if I tried to say anything to her face, she just raised her shields first. Unbelievable. This was someone who would still eat just fine even if her streams flopped—what was she so anxious about? Being earnest was great and all, but the trembling was a bit much. Still, having a dream was a good thing. Until she reached it, that dream would keep generating positive fuel for her.
“Whatever. What do you want to eat?”
“Mmm… anything?”
“I told you, one more time you say that and you’re getting plain rice.”
I… wouldn’t know. I’d never been like that.
Roughly three months later.
It had been a good while since Jia passed the first document screening and went in for her interview. I was in the middle of peeling her head off my chest like usual and putting dinner together when—
“WAAAAAH!!!”
“Ah, shit—you scared me!”
Jia, who had been lounging on her phone, suddenly screamed.
“Sihyun! Yu Sihyun!”
“I’m cooking—get off me! What’s the freak-out for?!”
“I got in! Sihyun! I got in!”
Practically having a seizure, she thrust her phone right in my face. And on the screen…
“…Accepted?”
For real?
“…Is this actually real?”
“It’s real, Sihyun! I did it! I actually did it!!!”
Having the thing she’d accomplished confirmed back to her by me, Jia seemed to overflow. She threw her arms around me—and promptly burst into loud, messy tears. My clothes got a little damp, sure… but it was more than worth it.
…And at the time, I had no idea.
That this text wasn’t just for Jia—that it would become a massive turning point in my own life as well.