Was She a Mad Dog, Bom? (1)
It had felt good while he was touching them. Just the right size. Soft to the touch.
So this is why people go on and on about boobs! he thought, delighted—until a warning chime rang out from the computer.
He looked over to see what it was, and found that the Memory Erosion value had gone up.
【 Inactive 】
Current Memory Erosion Rate: “Jin Gyeo-wool, 0.10%”
"What?"
Bae Do-hyun rewound everything he had just done, hunting for a mistake, but nothing stood out as a problem.
Don't tell me…
The culprit was the thought itself—the sense that he wasn't touching someone else's body but his own, and the quiet judgment that followed: It's my body, so it's kind of whatever.
So if I start recognizing Jin Gyeo-wool as me, the memories erode that much faster?
Apparently, stealing and using the original Gyeo-wool's soul-borne athletic ability wasn't the only condition that triggered Soul Erosion.
Do-hyun could already guess there were more hidden side-effect conditions for Memory Erosion buried inside Soul Assimilation.
Gonna have to be careful…
He was certain of one thing: if he ever used this body for anything only an adult should be doing, a catastrophic spike in Soul Erosion would come right after.
Do-hyun started running other little experiments as well.
"Guess it only works with this mirror."
"Seems that way."
"Nothing we can do about it, then."
The only place the spirit Gyeo-wool—Hon Gyeo-wool—could be seen was the mirror in Gyeo-wool's room.
She had wandered every room in the house, holding herself up to every reflective surface she could find, but only the full-length mirror in her own bedroom showed Hon Gyeo-wool at all.
Something occurred to Jin Gyeo-wool, and she asked Hon Gyeo-wool,
"Hey. What kind of kid were you?"
If he was going to live as Gyeo-wool from now on, he needed at least a baseline on her style. People around her already knew her. If he showed up one hundred percent different from before, they'd write him off as a total lunatic.
"Uh……"
The second the subject came up, Hon Gyeo-wool's expression darkened fast.
"I mean……"
Introducing yourself was embarrassing enough on its own, but Hon Gyeo-wool was looking far too reluctant for that to be all.
There was definitely something there.
The real Gyeo-wool chewed on her nails for a long time before forcing the words out.
"So…. If you end up going to school later, just… don't freak out."
"…?"
Meaning she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud.
"What, were you getting bullied in class or something?"
"No."
"Okay, not bullied—just invisible? No presence?"
"No."
"Then what? You a delinquent?"
"No… not that either."
Then what? What else was even left?
Jin Gyeo-wool fixed Hon Gyeo-wool with a dissatisfied stare.
"You'll… know when you get there. Ahaha."
No getting it out of her, then.
"Fine. Then let's at least settle on a new name for you. If I go around calling you 'Gyeo-wool-ah' and someone overhears, they'll think I've lost my mind."
"Yeah, probably."
"So what works? Did you have a nickname or anything?"
"A nickname…."
Hon Gyeo-wool went quiet again. What was with her? Did she not have any friends?
Don't tell me the only friend she had was that dead girl Bom? Seriously?
Hon Gyeo-wool let her gaze drift for a long time, then finally redirected the whole conversation.
"Just call me Wool-i."
"Wool-i?"
"Yeah. Take the last syllable of Jin Gyeo-wool. Wool-i."
"Got it."
Wool-i. Cute naming sense. Leave it to a teenage girl to think differently. Bae Do-hyun snorted to himself, certain that if he'd been the one naming her he would have just gone with something lazy like Jin Mirror.
"One more question."
But when it was time to get serious, he got serious. That was Bae Do-hyun.
"Going forward—do you care if I stick my hands into your life however I want? This is a pretty important question."
However you sliced it, this was a stolen body—or more precisely, a borrowed one. And the original owner didn't seem especially determined to take it back. On top of that, the dream of the rock that had rolled in matched her own dream, so she was stepping off the front lines entirely, as if she meant to hand everything over.
"I get that things were rough because of your friend. But this is still your life. I barged in, sure, but originally it was yours. I can't promise I'll play you perfectly. There are going to be moments when I make choices you wouldn't want."
Jin Gyeo-wool rattled through the explanation at insurance-policy speed, as if she had been waiting for exactly this moment. Watching him, Hon Gyeo-wool murmured,
"Do whatever you want. A life without Bom doesn't matter that much."
Becoming a pro gamer was fine. Borrowing her strength along the way was fine.
Just don't bother her. She was barely holding on as it was because of the friend who had left first. Letting him touch her chest had been an extension of that same thinking.
Having roughly grasped Hon Gyeo-wool's will, Jin Gyeo-wool said,
"…. Okay. I understand."
No matter how hard Hon Gyeo-wool tried to forget, she would never completely erase Bom, who had left the world first. Like a bullet lodged in her skull, the girl would keep tormenting her at regular intervals.
If Lee Bom came back to life and thawed Hon Gyeo-wool's heart, maybe she could get past it—but Jin Gyeo-wool decided not to hope for that much.
She had already lived through too many miracles. The idea that miracles like this would stack two, three times in a row was absurd.
"But don't forget. Becoming a pro gamer is both of our dream. I'll be the one making it real in your body, but don't forget that it's only possible because of you."
We're stronger because there are two of us. Because there are two of us, we can do things neither of us could alone.
Jin Gyeo-wool said it and thrust a thumbs-up at the mirror.
"You listening? I'm going to make your dream happen no matter what. So look forward to it!"
Hon Gyeo-wool had already vanished—hiding, maybe. Nowhere to be seen.
What an unsociable girl. Jin Gyeo-wool let out a short sigh and flopped backward onto the bed.
……. Of all things, I have to live in a girl's body…
He had the distinct, gut-level feeling that an endless parade of awkward disasters was marching his way.
Can I even act like a high school girl in the first place?
Even a quick think-through said no. He had done his military service. Twenty-six years of living as a man. Speech, mannerisms, the way he thought—everything was calibrated male.
And now, overnight, he was supposed to be a high school girl. Becoming Jin Gyeo-wool was already ridiculous enough. Bae Do-hyun's future of having to live as Jin Gyeo-wool was even more ridiculous.
"……."
First things first, though—he needed to tear up that suicide note. No. Burn it. Get rid of it. Jin Gyeo-wool, you fragile-willed little girl. You were not allowed to die this easily.
Hell, I stuck it out for six years knowing it was never going to happen.
Bae Do-hyun had always been sharp. So he had known from the start. No matter how hard he worked, there was a ceiling—and someone else would always climb faster than he could.
Esports was a scene where the player pool got shredded and replaced every year. Nobody had a reason to want a high-risk prospect like Bae Do-hyun.
But a dream was the one thing you couldn't just quit, even when you knew better. If you were a man, once you set your mind on something, you saw it through to the end. That single thought had driven him—running, rolling, falling.
And that was how he had ended up here. He had beaten up a junior. Then he had stepped into a crosswalk and died screaming.
"……."
If he had simply stayed dead—could there have been a more pathetic death than that? No. Bae Do-hyun was certain there could not.
"So fucking embarrassing…"
Whether the real Bae Do-hyun was dead or not, it would have been a worthless death that not a single person in the world would remember. The thought dragged misery over him in a wave.
Jin Gyeo-wool covered her face with both hands, but she couldn't stop the warm tears soaking the corners of her eyes and her cheeks.
"Idiot. I'm such a fucking idiot. I…"
A few hours later, Jin Ju-yeong came home and confirmed that the tray their dad had told him to leave outside Gyeo-wool's door that morning was gone.
He gave the doorknob a careful push. The door that had been locked for weeks was open.
"Hey. Jin Gyeo-wool."
The second he opened the door, a foul stench rolled off the big trash bag sitting beside it and hit him full in the face. He pinched his nose shut with his left hand and squinted.
"Ugh. Clean up a little, you maniac."
He hurried past the trash bag at the doorway, and to the right he could see the bed. On top of it, his little sister lay sprawled out in a chick-print onesie sleep set, limbs flung wide.
She must have scratched her stomach in her sleep—the hem of the skirt had ridden straight up, leaving her underwear and pale belly completely exposed.
Jin Ju-yeong's face twisted at the raw, unfiltered sight of his sister. There were things siblings could see and things they absolutely should not. This was horrifying.
Apparently deciding he couldn't take another second of it, he grabbed the blanket bunched around Gyeo-wool's legs, shook it out, and threw it over her until she was completely covered.
"She looks completely fine. I freaking knew it."
Their father had been fretting about what if Gyeo-wool killed herself, while their mother had put her foot down and sworn it would never happen.
Mother's total victory. With today's loss, Father was looking at another full month of monopolizing every chore in the house.
"Toast is gone too, cleaned the plate… What's this?"
Ju-yeong glanced around the room and saw the computer was on. The monitor was dark in sleep mode, but multicolored LEDs twinkled on the tower.
Without thinking, he nudged the mouse and woke it from sleep. A string of recent League of Consil matches unspooled across the LoC client—games she had been playing until just a little while ago.
"She's totally fine. She's even gaming."
Aside from today's record, the only other matches were from months ago, but that didn't matter to Jin Ju-yeong. What mattered was that his sister was alive and functional, and that she had started playing LoC again—the game she had been ready to quit after her friend's death.
But there was something Jin Gyeo-wool had told Jin Ju-yeong more than once, for a long time now. Her dream was to go pro. Her position was mid laner—the best in the world.
So why, today, had Jin Gyeo-wool been playing top lane instead of mid?
"……."
Top was not Jin Gyeo-wool's lane. It was the lane of her other half, the soul duo she had sworn to stay with forever—Lee Bom.
"Has she actually… lost it?"
Even the champions she had played were similar to Bom's to a spine-crawling degree. Super carries every single game, and every one of them a champion Lee Bom had been good at while she was alive.
Jin Ju-yeong was relieved his sister seemed a little more okay—and at the same time, it bothered him that her fixation on her dead friend seemed worse than before.
In a few days she would walk out of this room on her own two feet and the cold war with their mother would end, but her own private war didn't look finished at all.
Whatever the reason, though, Jin Gyeo-wool had to get back up. She couldn't just stop dead in the middle of a marathon she had been running for months.
A small NewTube channel with two thousand subscribers. A niche little operation that had scraped together a modest following by alternating uploads—fiery high school girl Jin Gyeo-wool's physical mid-lane plays, and gentle, composed high school girl Lee Bom's brainy top-lane plays.
It was registered under Jin Ju-yeong's name, but without Jin Gyeo-wool the channel didn't turn. And they couldn't just dump raw Gyeo-wool footage either; there were already far too many LoC channels out there.
So the siblings who had spent more than a decade as natural enemies had struck a kind of contract: game player and video editor. Stay out of each other's territory, split the revenue exactly down the middle.
But the channel that had been growing slowly, steadily, had gone completely dark a few months ago.
Because Jin Gyeo-wool had stopped moving, and Lee Bom had gone somewhere far away.
I should keep an eye on her for now…
But if—just if—Jin Gyeo-wool had finally started to fill the empty space her friend had left, and if she was showing that by pulling out the champions Bom used to play and piloting them herself… then the channel that had gone still could come back to life.
Jin Ju-yeong—brother, nemesis, who could say—had no reason to leave a golden goose asleep forever. Not when it was pocket money for now, and maybe a real job later.
I should get out of here for now.
But no matter how important the money was, his little sister was a bomb you did not touch. The person who knew Jin Gyeo-wool's temper better than anyone was Jin Ju-yeong, and the person who had been coughing blood and enduring that temper for over a decade was also Jin Ju-yeong.
Hoping she would never find out he had snuck in, Jin Ju-yeong slipped quietly back out of the room.