The World Is Reversed
The voice kept calling out, soft and hesitant at first.
"U-um... O-oppa... O-oppa, wake up..."
My head felt foggy, like I'd spent the previous night absolutely hammering alcohol into my system. Through that thick haze, a woman's voice drifted in faintly. Heh, guess I'd been too deep into dating sims lately. I'm an only child with no relatives, so there's zero reason for me to be hearing someone call me "oppa." Must be some kind of auditory hallucination...
"Seulgi oppa, wake up!"
"Whoa?!"
The voice wasn't a hallucination. It was a woman's scream so vividly real it felt like something you'd only experience in a 4D theater. I bolted upright in shock.
I had no idea when I'd even fallen asleep in this bed, but the moment I sat up, the soft blanket slid down my body. My eyes met those of a woman who had just gotten an unintended eyeful of a thirty-year-old hikikomori uncle's naked upper body.
"M-m-m...!"
Her eyes were wide with shock, her face flushed bright red. Her mouth hung open as if she was about to scream in horror at the sight of my supposedly grotesque, overweight torso that might as well have been neighbors with Zhu Bajie.
'Wait, what? Am I about to get fucked here?!'
I had no clue what was going on, but when I woke up, there was a stunning woman who looked like she'd just become an adult in her early twenties standing in my room. In my thirty years of life, I'd conquered countless heroines in dating sims, but I'd never had a real girlfriend. Which meant the girl in front of me was a complete stranger.
'Is this illegal trespassing? Burglary? In this situation, won't I be the one labeled a pervert?!'
This was an era where women's rights were so elevated that the phrase "a woman's tears are evidence" was practically law. In a studio apartment with zero soundproofing, if that girl screamed—
'Oh shit!'
I could already picture the cops grinning as they slapped handcuffs on me and said, "Let's head to the detention center~"
"W-wait, just a second...!"
But if I tried to cover her mouth, that would be straight-up sexual harassment or worse—some serious crime with two specific letters in its name. I couldn't move forward or back, so I quickly grabbed the fallen blanket and covered my upper body.
"I'm sorry, oppa! I didn't mean to look, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to see your beautiful body... Wait, that's not what I meant?! Anyway, I'm sorry! I didn't know you weren't wearing clothes!"
She bolted out—slam!
"...?"
?
??
???
????
?????
"What... the hell is this situation?"
I'd expected the words after "m-m-m" to be "crazy!" or a scream, but "I'm sorry"?!
"If anyone saw this, they'd think I was the woman and she was the man. And this feels exactly like a scene from a dating sim..."
It was like a romantic comedy where the gender roles were completely flipped. Exactly like one of those dating sims I was obsessed with.
"Like a 'reversed world' where men's and women's concepts of chastity are completely swapped... Wait. Dating sim? Reversed world?"
Suddenly, the memories from before I fell asleep began piecing themselves together like scattered puzzle fragments.
'Clear reward: 10 billion won. A dating sim just for me. All heroines are yanderes. A reversed world where gender roles and physical abilities are inverted. Gender ratio imbalance where two women exist for every one man.'
"No way... No way... This can't be...?"
Even as I thought that, the girl's natural behavior—casually entering the room of a lonely old bachelor like me and calling me "oppa"—and the way she'd reacted to seeing a man's naked torso by immediately taking the blame herself, as if it was obviously her fault and not mine, told me this was exactly what I feared.
And the moment I became aware of this bizarre phenomenon—
> Player Kim Seulgi synchronization complete!
> First romanceable heroine confirmed: Encounter with Kim Arin, the cousin who grew up with you since childhood!
> (※Caution. Even if not a romanceable heroine, they may still affect gameplay.)
> Chapter 0. Let's Get to Know Me.
A mechanical voice hammered directly into my brain rather than my ears, accompanied by holographic text that filled my vision. At least the text appeared around the edges rather than in the center, so it didn't obstruct my view...
"Is this for real...?"
It looked like I'd...
"Become the protagonist of a dating sim?!"
I seemed to have entered the world of a dating sim...
------------
"This is... me?"
I muttered in a dazed voice while staring at the reflection of a young man in the full-length mirror (I had no idea why such a thing would be in a manly guy's room).
My mother, who sometimes came over with side dishes because she was worried about how her grown son was living, would always yell, "Mom's a person too! Stop clinging to the computer with all that dating sim nonsense and go outside!"
Just like the basement-dwelling wreck I was, I'd avoided all exercise and survived solely on delivery food for years. So where had my old body gone—the one even orcs would tell "Dude, you need to lose some weight;;" while showing off their own voluptuous figures?
In its place stood a beautiful, slender body with defined muscles that even elf ladies might approach with, "Oh! You're one of us?" and throw an arm around my shoulders.
"With a face like this, even celebrities would turn the fish market into a seafood party, wouldn't they?"
My naturally black Korean hair—whatever had been done to it—shone brilliantly, as if someone had ground jade beads and sprinkled them over it instead of the expected bedhead. On a face the size of a fist were large, sparkling eyes like those of a shoujo manga prince, paired with beautiful phoenix-like eyelashes.
My nose bridge and jawline were so sharp they'd make you yelp "Ouch, that stings!" just by brushing against them, and my cherry-like lips glistened seductively like a newlywed on her first night...
"Seductive is one thing, but did I drool in my sleep? Why are they so glossy?"
It looked exactly like someone had performed mouth-to-mouth on me while I slept.
The only flaw, if I had to pick one, was that my bangs were so long they covered half my face like a curtain.
"Well. According to the settings written in the Diary, the original owner of this body developed social anxiety and a fear of women after a bullying incident, so I guess that makes sense. And that girl from earlier is my 'cousin who grew up with me since childhood,' huh?"
As an added bonus, this house wasn't the studio apartment I'd originally lived in, but a spacious thirty-pyeong apartment. It belonged to my mother's younger sister—my aunt—who had raised me in place of my parents, who had passed away in an accident during my childhood.
"Heh... These are such common tropes in dating sims that there's nothing new about them, but to think this is actually inside a game...?"
The times had improved and technologies like VR—what people commonly called augmented reality—had advanced, but even so.
Setting aside the completely changed body, the different eye level, and how my previously panting body now felt light even after just a few steps, the soft texture I felt at my fingertips when touching the blanket and the air that reached all the way into my lungs with every breath...
"Everything feels exactly like reality. Can I really just dismiss this as being inside a game?"
Besides, I hadn't been wearing any VR device before I lost consciousness.
Everything was far removed from reality, yet it felt completely real. If you asked if I was scared, well, it was frightening, but...
Thump thump...
My heart had been racing since earlier.
It was the same pounding excitement I'd felt when I first discovered dating sims as a teenager—the feeling that had gradually faded after playing nothing but dating sims from my teens all the way past thirty.
That first-love-like feeling from back then was hitting me as excitement rather than fear.
"That's right. It doesn't matter if this is a dream or some unrealistic event straight out of a novel."
If there was one thing I could claim supremacy in, it was dating sims.
"Whether it's real or fake, I'll clear it all!"
I clenched both fists tightly, burning with determination.
"...That said, the fear of women makes sense in a reversed world setting, but why was this face bullied?"
Was it because he was too handsome? In the original world, extremely pretty girls sometimes got ostracized by other female students. Could it be the opposite here—
"Since genders are reversed, maybe it's 'male-to-male' bullying and he got picked on by other guys?"
The so-called Diary only contained light explanations like a tutorial section of the game.
"And even that—on the last, most recent page of the diary, there was only some weird text that couldn't even be called an explanation?"
The diary had been written in an explanatory tone, neither too long nor too short, exactly like a tutorial section. But on the final page it said:
Don't answer. Don't smile. Don't stay in the room too long. Don't look at other women. behind something
"...That's what it says. I can't even understand the normal characters, and the latter part looks like it's bugged. What is this?"
No matter how many times I read it, they were cryptic phrases that couldn't possibly be called a diary.
"Well, I'll put those minor(?) matters aside. The real start begins once I leave this room, right?"
The holographic text that had cluttered my vision when I first realized the anomaly had disappeared. The only text left at the bottom of my field of view was:
As a dating sim veteran, I was curious about what a "forced event" might be, but since this situation had become reality instead of a monitor screen, I wasn't sure if I could even reset. It seemed best to follow the warning and leave the room normally to start.
And at that moment, I should have paid much closer attention to the meaning hidden in the final page of the Diary.
By the time I finally understood what the last page of the diary truly meant, it was already far too late...