Guess I Was Wrong (1)
It had definitely been an ordinary shower.
Just yesterday, it had been.
"Wool-ah. I'm gonna—gonna wash up, okay?"
Asking permission from Hon Gyeo-wool, who wasn't even there in the mirror, Jin Gyeo-wool slowly gathered the hem of the dress she was wearing and lifted it up.
The dress flipped inside out and came off, revealing a beautiful body of pale white skin and lovely curves.
He tried somehow not to look at his own body, but the dream he'd had that morning kept unraveling his resolve.
"Ugggggggh."
What a bewitching girl. Why did she have to be this pretty? Jin Gyeo-wool squeezed her eyes shut and kept muttering under her breath at no one in particular.
"This is my body. It's my body."
But it was a no-win situation. The moment he tried to project himself as Jin Gyeo-wool, a warning tone rang out.
It was unmistakably the same warning that sounded whenever the Memory Erosion Rate climbed.
"Ah, shit, what the hell am I supposed to do?!"
Just what kind of dream had he had, that in a single day Jin Gyeo-wool had become this uncomfortable looking at her own body? It was because the imagination of Bae Do-hyun—an ordinary guy with zero experience with women—had exploded that night.
He'd showered like it was nothing, spent the day like it was nothing, gamed like it was nothing, and gone to sleep like it was nothing.
And once he was asleep, in the dream Jin Gyeo-wool became Bae Do-hyun and took Jin Gyeo-wool into his arms.
An overwhelming rush of sensation. Completely different from when he fumbled around his own body with his own hands—it wrapped around Bae Do-hyun's hands and his entire body.
Had this body always been so soft? Had it always been this sensual?
Damn it… why did I have to dream something like that…
Even dumping hot water over his head did nothing to cool the excitement.
So what happened in the dream, you ask? What do you think happened. Nothing, that's what.
At his core, Bae Do-hyun was a total softie. On top of that, he carried a considerable amount of guilt over taking over Jin Gyeo-wool's body.
And he was supposed to lust after Jin Gyeo-wool in a dream? A minor, no less? Not a chance.
But for the self of Bae Do-hyun who had already seen Jin Gyeo-wool naked once in the shower, it was intensely stimulating. Which meant the moment he tried to undress for another shower, his body flared hot all over again.
………….
Think of himself as Jin Gyeo-wool and his memories got eroded. Insist he was Bae Do-hyun and the Jin Gyeo-wool from the dream was far too much.
Would that dream stay a one-night thing? No way. After showering like this today, it was bound to show up again tonight.
Is adapting really the only option…?
But how was he supposed to adapt that easily?
Jin Gyeo-wool was beautiful enough to appear in dreams. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say she'd been sculpted from dew distilled from every blessing the world had to offer.
That he of all people had ended up in a girl like that was Bae Do-hyun's eternal regret.
Even if I'd come back in a different body, it's not like I could've done anything with her anyway.
If he had tried, Bae Do-hyun's skull would have been the first thing to get smashed in. Or he'd have ended up bald.
They'd been thrown into the same boat, and Hon Gyeo-wool had no real options either—so she only seemed relatively tame. Before becoming Hon Gyeo-wool, Jin Gyeo-wool had been a raging bull, a mad dog, a total psycho so unhinged it defied accurate description.
Bae Do-hyun was under a misconception.
What Hon Gyeo-wool had shown him was not the whole picture!
"Right… Wool-i's legally incompetent right now, so I'm just washing her in her place. Yeah. Yeah."
Jin Gyeo-wool snapped her eyes open. Thankfully, she'd cranked the hot water so high that steam had completely fogged over the mirror.
"That's a little better, at least."
But so what? The second he looked down, everything was right there in plain view.
"Woooaaaargh!!"
Bae Do-hyun, buddy. Don't forget that Jin Ju-yeong is standing right outside the bathroom listening to your entire meltdown. Jin Ju-yeong was thoroughly terrified.
Status:INACTIVE
Current Memory Erosion Rate:"Jin Gyeo-wool, 0.34%"
He hadn't even played a game, and a single shower had jacked the Memory Erosion Rate sky-high.
Back in her room, staring blankly at the monitor with a pitiful expression, Jin Gyeo-wool sighed with nowhere to vent.
"At this rate I'm gonna get swallowed by Jin Gyeo-wool in no time."
But just because he was being eroded didn't mean he'd be completely consumed, right? True to form, Bae Do-hyun decided to look on the bright side.
He walked over to the full-length mirror and called for Hon Gyeo-wool.
"Wool-ah?"
No answer. It had already been two days.
Since their last conversation in front of the mirror yesterday, Hon Gyeo-wool had gone silent—as if she'd left on some trip—and hadn't spoken to Jin Gyeo-wool again.
Whether something had happened, or she simply didn't want to talk to Jin Gyeo-wool…
Afraid that Hon Gyeo-wool might vanish for good like this, Jin Gyeo-wool called out to her again and again.
"Wool-ah. Whenever's fine. Just talk to me when you're ready."
I'll wait. So come back.
I'm only occupying this body. You're the original owner.
He sent those unreachable echoes toward the girl in the mirror over and over.
Then he sat back down at the computer. For both of their dreams. To produce results that would make Hon Gyeo-wool happy when she returned.
After posting the new announcement on the YouTube channel, Jin Ju-yeong quietly checked in on his little sister's room.
As if possessed, she'd been playing nothing but top lane for days now.
Maybe she just misses the empty space Bom left behind…
No matter how much of a psycho she was, she was still a person. She was someone who knew how to feel grief.
Jin Gyeo-wool was terrifying, sure—but watching her lock herself in her room for two straight weeks after losing Lee Bom, skipping school and doing nothing but cry, had torn Jin Ju-yeong's heart apart.
What would it be like if a friend of his had died in a similar accident? He kept thinking about that, doing everything he could to look after his sister.
Scrolling down a little, he spotted the notice he'd written a few months earlier.
Jin Ju-yeong himself barely remembered what he'd been thinking when he wrote that notice.
The moment he heard the news, he'd rushed straight to the funeral home and spent the whole time trying to comfort a wailing Jin Gyeo-wool. Sometime in the early morning he'd found a brief window and typed up the announcement on his phone. Yeah—he'd definitely not been in his right mind.
Strangely enough, that was the first time his endlessly weeping little sister had ever looked like a real human being.
The monstrous girl who had always lived driven by pure spite, who never showed emotion to anyone except Lee Bom—
paradoxically, only at that funeral home had she worn a human face.
What was the true identity of the girl now carrying top lane with the same intelligent playstyle as Lee Bom?
A warrior who'd lost the only emotions she'd ever allowed herself—reserved solely for Lee Bom? Or a monster who had absorbed even Lee Bom into herself?
Or if neither of those… simply a person mourning the friend she'd lost a few months ago, pouring out through League of Concealment all the rage she hadn't been able to fully vent at the time?
"…I'm not exactly normal either, thinking stuff like this while planning to edit videos."
What could you do? It ran in the family blood.
Their father was a writer who churned out crime thrillers so twisted they left ordinary people with a chill down the spine, and their mother was a high-flying CFO at a famous foreign firm.
Their father was at least full of feeling and looked after Jin Gyeo-wool and Jin Ju-yeong more than their mother did—but both of them were people whose reason ran ahead of their emotions.
Jin Ju-yeong was the same. So was Jin Gyeo-wool.
"Gyeo-wool's still young, that's all."
"She'll figure it out as she gets older. How to put the heat of that furnace always boiling inside her heart to good use."
"She'll realize soon enough that just lashing out with violence won't solve anything. And that the world doesn't turn the way she wants it to."
"So just… leave her be, within reason. I know you're worried, Ju-yeong, but that's just how she is."
That was what Min Cheong-ha, the siblings' mother, had said. That every behavior Jin Gyeo-wool displayed simply came from taking after her.
She'd gone through a similar childhood herself, so Gyeo-wool would learn to adapt to society on her own given time.
"So that's why she's back to playing Recon…"
The fire built into her body. A powder keg that could blow at any moment. A ticking time bomb.
But looked at another way, all that gunpowder could also become the propellant that drove her relentlessly toward a goal.
If Jin Gyeo-wool had awakened after losing Lee Bom, then right now she was working toward a clearer objective than ever before. All the energy she'd always spent for Lee Bom, she was now pouring entirely into her own dream.
Her personality seemed even more unhinged than before—but if their mother Min Cheong-ha was right, that unhinged edge would gradually settle too. Trusting his mother's words, Jin Ju-yeong decided to push past his fear and solidly support his sister's return.
A few days later, Jin Gyeo-wool came face-to-face with her father for the first time in a very long while.
Even though they lived under the same roof and had plenty of chances to run into each other, their father stayed buried in his study and Jin Gyeo-wool stayed buried in her room, each absorbed in their own work, so a meeting never quite happened.
Then, a full eight days after Bae Do-hyun had entered Jin Gyeo-wool's body, the miraculous reunion of Jin Man-ho and Jin Gyeo-wool finally took place.
"……."
"Dad?"
Hearing his daughter say "Dad"—a word he hadn't heard since she was eight—Jin Man-ho started trembling like someone under a death threat.
On top of that, Jin Gyeo-wool was smiling as she said it.
It was an ordinary smile, but to a famous crime thriller novelist it felt like a psychopath's smile. The kind of ploy meant to lower someone's guard right before burying them.
Ah… no. What am I thinking about my own daughter…
Sensing even he had gone too far, Jin Man-ho cleared his throat repeatedly and carefully asked Jin Gyeo-wool,
"Right. Uh… are you feeling a bit better?"
Nothing on the scale of the disasters she'd caused at school, but plenty of big and small incidents had happened at home too. The keyboards Jin Gyeo-wool had destroyed while playing League of Concealment alone already numbered over ten.
Whether it was Jin Ju-yeong or Jin Man-ho, they'd be sitting peacefully at home when a sudden explosion-like crash would go off somewhere—and it was always Jin Gyeo-wool's room.
"Huh? Uh… yeah. I'm fine? Why?"
A perfectly natural reaction from Bae Do-hyun's perspective. But that little "Why?" he tacked on at the end closed around Jin Man-ho's throat like a noose.
One wrong word here and the dining table would flip. The deliciously prepared soybean paste stew, the fluffy rice, the kimchi—all of it would do three aerial spins and stick the landing in all the wrong places.
This was a tasty meal he was eating after finally finishing his revisions and stepping out of his study in a light mood. He couldn't let it turn into a disaster zone.
"W-why… well, because our daughter hasn't been eating properly lately… so I was worried. Is there anything you'd like to eat? Should Dad buy it for you? Are you short on allowance?"
Jin Man-ho did everything he could to soothe her so Jin Gyeo-wool wouldn't fly into a rage. But that last part was a mistake he shouldn't have made.
Crap. My wife told me not to raise their allowance.
Jin Gyeo-wool and Jin Ju-yeong's allowances were already far too much for students. Two million won a month was excessive for high schoolers.
Every time something went wrong, Jin Man-ho had bumped up the allowance until it reached this point—and yet Hon Gyeo-wool barely spent any of it and just saved it all up.
The only things she ever spent money on were shopping trips or meals out with Lee Bom. And now Lee Bom was gone. Why would she spend anything? In reality, for three whole months she'd only bought a few things to eat at convenience stores.
And the Jin Gyeo-wool he was dealing with right now wasn't Jin Gyeo-wool—it was Bae Do-hyun. There was no way someone like that had extravagant spending habits.
"No? I'm fine. Don't worry about it."
You know how it is.
When someone who doesn't normally act that way keeps smiling and brushing things off like nothing's wrong—that's when it gets scarier.
Jin Gyeo-wool told him not to worry, but in the end Jin Man-ho promised to treat her to an imperial course meal at a high-end Korean restaurant nearby that very evening.
Hearing that, Jin Gyeo-wool lit up with anticipation toward Jin Man-ho.
"Really? Thank you!"
All he'd wanted was some good food—but he had no idea his smile only amplified the terror in his family members.
Hon Gyeo-wool never smiled at her family. She'd never acted politely just because her parents were around, either.
In the situation just now, the normal response would have been a blunt "Go eat by yourself, then."