The Body That Changed Hands
“No.”
When I answered in a flat tone, Han Seo-jun’s brow slowly drew together.
“Why?”
“What’s with that? This isn’t some child’s game. You want to stake your luck on a bet?”
It wasn’t even wordplay.
A bet with your luck on the line? What kind of delusional nonsense was that?
If he’d proposed a 100,000-won bet, I might have actually considered it for a second.
But luck?
Could you even stake something like that just because you wanted to?
As though he could read my thoughts, the corners of Han Seo-jun’s mouth, which had been stiff until then, began to lift.
“What I mean is, let’s gamble everything we have on one roll. If Do Hyun-woo-sunbae wins, you get all of mine. Literally all of me.”
“And if you win?”
At my question, the corners of his mouth curled higher still.
A shallow dimple appeared in his pale cheek.
“Then I’d get everything you have, sunbae.”
The easy smile on his face was so absurd that a laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
“How would you even know what I have?”
“That’s because...”
Still calm as ever, he went on.
“I’ll come to know all of it. Every last thing.”
“...!”
I found myself biting down on my lips inside the mask.
How ridiculous, how absurd was this situation?
And yet Han Seo-jun’s eyes were strangely serious.
The older man standing behind the counter also gave off the air of a witness watching a high-stakes duel unfold.
When Han Seo-jun kept staring at my silent face, he let out a quiet snort.
“Sunbae, you must be absolutely terrified on the inside. You’ve got too much in your hands to lose it all to me, after all.”
At his words, my gaze dropped without meaning to.
My open palm.
What was there in it?
Han Seo-jun, who acted as though he knew me well.
In truth, he didn’t know a damn thing about me.
I had too much in my hands, he said.
For a moment, a memory long buried stirred and raised its head.
Flames that had burst into my life in the dead of night.
My parents had died in that fire, and I was the only one who survived, saved by the firefighters who had rushed to the scene.
After that, my life collapsed in an instant.
I was told I had been dropped from the drama I was filming.
The burn scars that started around my mouth ran down my neck and spread across my chest, so there was no way I could have carried the role.
I hadn’t been exceptionally handsome, but even as a former idol, I’d clawed my way forward on the strength of my acting, and I was doing well.
At a year-end awards ceremony when I was still young, I even won the Excellence in Acting Award, and the veteran actor Ha Soon-jae had praised me in front of the press as a natural-born actor.
But misfortune didn’t end there.
Before I had even managed to recover from the shock and grief of losing my parents, debt collectors showed up with stacks of papers in their hands.
I was an actor who had been recognized for his skill and was on the rise, but I was still a rookie.
I’d only just started receiving proper pay, and the amount was nowhere near enough to cover what I owed.
The house I’d inherited by accident went under auction, and red tags were slapped onto the furniture.
Before I knew it, I’d been shoved out into the street, and I still had three hundred million won in debt hanging over me.
I didn’t even have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself.
Even in that state, I was still hungry, and every time I barely managed to collect myself, I could see the debt growing in real time.
I drifted from one construction site to another, taking on bare-handed labor, throwing myself into any work my body could handle.
Then, one day, Sigma Entertainment contacted me.
They said they wanted to borrow my voice.
More precisely, they wanted my vocals.
They wanted me to become the voice of Shin Yeon-ho, who had no talent but possessed a handsome face and dazzling star power.
I would record the songs and albums, while music broadcasts would be handled through lip-sync.
Their top-secret proposal was that for the rare live concerts, I would stand in a studio set up behind the stage and sing along to his lips while watching the monitor.
They knew too well just how cornered I was by the mountain of debt pressing down on me.
They silenced me with a decent sum of money and bound my hands and feet with a contract that might as well have been a slave document.
And so Shin Yeon-ho, fully aware that I was nothing but a perfect underling, treated me like a servant, despite the fact that I was old enough to be his elder.
So what exactly did Han Seo-jun think I was holding in my hands?
“Do Hyun-woo-sunbae, you really are a coward, aren’t you? Are you that scared?”
With a bright smile on his face, Han Seo-jun goaded me.
Me?
What reason did someone already dragged down to the bottom have to be afraid of?
Snorting softly, I met his eyes head-on.
“Fine. Let’s do it. Everything we have, all of it.”
“Yes!”
At my answer, a triumphant smile spread across his face.
“That’s the spirit.”
“What game are we playing?”
“Spinning roulette.”
Han Seo-jun lifted a hand and pointed at one wall.
“......!”
A round roulette wheel, at least fifty centimeters across.
Red and black were divided into alternating segments,
and the red arrow hanging upside down at the top gleamed with an intense light.
“Now then, let’s start with a toast.”
The cocktail glass in his hand.
Inside it, a liquid darker than black itself rippled quietly.
When I took off my mask, the cold air brushed past my mouth.
I lifted my own glass as well.
Clink!
The moment the glasses met, a red-and-black aura flashed and coiled around them.
“...Kah!”
Han Seo-jun downed his shot in one go.
Behind his satisfied smile and bright eyes, a strange shadow of sorrow lingered.
I drank the blood-red cocktail in one swallow too.
In an instant, my stomach felt as though it had been set alight.
“Pretty intense, right?”
Watching my face, Han Seo-jun lifted the corner of his mouth.
“If the wheel stops on black after you spin it, I win. If it lands on red, you get everything I have, sunbae.”
“......!”
“Just in case you start talking about cheating or something, it’d be better if you spun it yourself, wouldn’t it?”
He gestured toward the roulette wheel.
As the fire in my stomach gradually died down, a vague heat and a strange headache began to rise through my body instead.
It had only been one drink—was I already getting drunk?
“Hurry up, sunbae.”
He urged me on.
“I really don’t have much time left.”
It was nearly one in the morning, and the night was utterly still.
What urgent matter could he possibly have to pressure me like that?
He caught my arm and pushed me forward.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
I stepped up in front of the roulette wheel.
When I reached out and gripped the rim, the cold, heavy feel of metal pressed into my palm.
I spun it with all the strength I had.
Chrrrrrrrr...!
The roulette wheel spun like mad, gradually slowing, and at last it came to a stop for a single suspended instant.
At some point, Han Seo-jun had come up beside me. He had kept his gaze fixed on the wheel, but now he turned to look at me.
A faint smile rested on his lips.
“...Looks like you won, sunbae.”
“......!”
“Well, then, there’s nothing to be done. From now on, you become me, sunbae. Understood?”
“...What?”
There he goes spouting nonsense again.
Just as I turned to check the color pointed to by the arrow, I saw a bright light begin to spill from Han Seo-jun’s face.
“Sunbae. I’ve really admired you all this time.”
“......!”
“I wanted to become someone like you... Ha, but that was too hard for me.”
The light that had been radiating from his face now spread across his whole body.
His hair lifted into the air and swayed in the glow.
“Hey, you—what are you...”
Just as I reached out in confusion,
“You shouldn’t touch me right now.”
At his firm voice, I quickly pulled my hand back.
Those eyes were aching, distant, almost mournful.
And with a smile so faint it seemed to have no weight at all, he looked at me.
“Sunbae, from now on... please take good care of me.”
Those were his last words.
In the blink of an eye, his figure transformed into a blinding spray of light and vanished.
Not only that, but the bar owner and the entire interior of the place shattered into fragments of light and dispersed as well.
“......!”
All that remained in my field of vision was the circular roulette wheel.
But now, the wheel before my eyes had no black on it at all.
It was covered entirely in red, twisted into an oval shape as it trembled and writhed.
There was no mistake.
Blood in Hell.
So the rumor had been true—the drug with that name had been mixed into the cocktail I’d drunk.
I have to clear my head somehow, right now.
I drew in a deep breath.
Covering my face with both hands, I rubbed hard at my eyes.
But then—
“Haah...!!”
Blinding light burst out in front of me, and I squeezed my eyes shut before I could help it.
And soon after, my throat tightened as if I were suffocating.
The air settled over me like lead.
In that moment, my consciousness slowly drifted away as though sinking beneath the surface.
♪♬♩♪♩♩♬
The shrill ring of a mobile phone stabbed into my ears, and my awareness was slowly hauled back toward the surface.
“Hah...!”
I sucked in a ragged breath.
My stopped heart started beating again, and it felt as if the blocked passage in my chest had been ripped open all at once.
When I opened my eyes, an unfamiliar ceiling pattern filled my vision.
The touch of the bedsheets against my skin and the scent lingering at the tip of my nose were equally foreign.
I fumbled for the phone that kept ringing and picked it up.
Through my foggy vision, the words Manager Hwang Dong-jun glowed dimly on the screen.
“H-hello...”
A rough, scraped voice leaked from my throat.
-Han Seo-jun! What in the world were you doing that you’re only answering now?
“...!”
-You said you’d make it to set before the dawn shoot, so do you have any idea what time it is now?
The cold reprimand struck my ears hard.
At that instant, a bone-chilling sense of reality rushed into my blurry head.
“Ah, it’s just that... right now I...”
The voice spilling from my lips sounded strange.
My own voice did not seem like my own at all, and the tone made the hairs on my neck stand on end.
-Did you get drunk again and pass out? Ha... seriously, you’re hopeless.
Then another voice cut in over the phone.
-What else would it be?
The tone was laced with mockery.
-Anyway, filming’s been temporarily halted. Cha Seo-young is still holed up in her trailer after clashing with the director over a line issue. The set’s a mess, so you can’t be any later than you already are. I’ll come pick you up, so get ready now.
Between his flat stream of words, a woman’s sharp shout cut through from somewhere nearby.
And right after that, another voice followed, sounding resigned, as though saying, Here we go again...
Before I could even answer, the call ended.
I barely managed to get myself upright.
Dawn light seeped into the room through the gap in the blackout curtains.
Staggering toward the window, I pulled the heavy curtain aside.
At once, the city spread out below the high-rise in the gray hush of dawn, still asleep.
Far off on the horizon, the faint edge of daybreak was just beginning to rise.
Only when the darkness in the room lifted did my mind start to clear.
Last night in the bar, facing Han Seo-jun; the moment we’d made that ridiculous bet and spun the roulette wheel.
But... had I really become Han Seo-jun?
“Haah....”
The grotesque feeling turned to fear, and a chill ran down my spine.
When I turned my head, a cluttered room came into view.
On the bedside table lay a small plastic pill bottle that had toppled over,
and beside it, a single note folded in half.
On instinct, I picked up the note and unfolded it.
It was a single page, scrawled so drunkenly that the ink had blurred everywhere. It was packed with despair over a painful reality.
“Huh...!”
I crumpled it in my fist on reflex and swept the scattered pills back into the bottle.
Then I shoved it into the bottom drawer.
I didn’t have time to think things through right now.
I didn’t even know where the set was, and I had no idea when the manager would show up.
For now, I needed to tidy up this disaster of a situation first.
When I opened the door and stepped out, a space far different from what I’d expected stretched before me.
A living room as wide as the sea.
A sofa on one side and a large TV opposite it.
On the table, a film magazine caught my eye.
FilmMaze
A man’s face, smiling brightly while holding a trophy, was printed large on the cover.
It was me, photographed after winning Best Actor at the MBS year-end awards.
Beside it, an interview article about my acceptance speech had been neatly clipped and stacked on top.
“...Ha...”
I let out a low breath and looked away.
An island counter and a spotless kitchen came into view.
I opened the door on the left wall.
“Here it is.”
I threw off my sleepwear and turned on the shower.
Shhhhhhh—!!
Cold water came crashing down over my head.
When I rubbed my face with both hands and shook off the water, an unfamiliar face in the mirror was staring straight back at me.
That face from last night, the one that had smiled at me with a faint curve of its lips.
Han Seo-jun.
“Haah....”
So this was what he meant when he said we should gamble everything we had?
Still, I needed to hurry.
I squeezed shampoo into my palm, worked it into a lather, and massaged it into my hair.
Soon white suds began to spill across the floor of the shower stall.
I had just come out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, when—
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The intercom rang.
And then—
Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang!
The sound of someone pounding on the front door without the slightest patience rang out loudly.
“Hey, Han Seo-jun! Open the door already!”
It was the manager’s voice from the earlier call.
He’d arrived in only a few minutes since hanging up?
Then the set must not be all that far from here.
“Han Seo-jun! Are you asleep?!”
And if he was urging me so frantically, then the situation must really be urgent.
“...I’m coming.”
The voice I threw toward the front door was still rough and broken.
Exactly the kind of voice that came from a brutal hangover.
I cinched the towel tight around my waist and slowly walked toward the entryway.
Water dripped in a steady line down from my thighs to my calves.