An Important Problem
I'd loved games for as long as I could remember.
It all started with those little arcade machines lined up outside the neighborhood stationery store.
I'd been so hooked I wanted to play every single day, but money was tight at home, so I never got as much machine time as the other kids.
Unlike the ones who figured they could just try again next time, I poured everything I had into every single round — and in the end, the hours I'd logged on those machines came out about even.
I'd felt a kind of fun I'd never experience twice in my life, and that experience quickly turned into a real passion.
Naturally enough, I even dreamed of becoming a pro gamer.
But talent that made you a big deal around the neighborhood — talent that was only a little above ordinary — was nowhere near enough for the pro stage.
The dream had to stay a dream.
Everyone has wild childhood ambitions — president, athlete, doctor. I was just the kind of person who never quite let go of mine, still carrying it around in my heart.
And the reason I was suddenly dredging up my childhood was…
"…Who are you?"
Because a mysterious beautiful girl was staring back at me from the other side of the mirror.
Han A-yeon.
Third grade elementary. Ten years old.
Resident of Pure Orphanage.
Notable feature: extremely cute.
Squeeze.
Her cheeks were soft and springy, too.
The problem was that the thing living inside her was me.
Reincarnated as a little girl… no, wait. In this case, is it possession?
The last thing I remembered before opening my eyes in this body was collapsing after slamming too much caffeine during another day of soul-crushing routine — the kind that spun like a hamster wheel.
A racing heart. Pain radiating from my chest through my whole body. Arms and legs locked stiff. Nausea rising from deep in my gut, dizziness clawing through my skull.
If I had to name a cause of death, myocardial infarction would about cover it.
"Ugh."
Just recalling that moment of agony sent a chill crawling up the back of my neck.
Shhk, shhkk.
Look at that — goosebumps.
I did wonder where the death benefit from my life insurance had gone, but there was nobody left to collect it anyway. My parents had died young, and the few relatives on my mother's side might as well have not existed for all the contact we kept.
So I didn't have any real complaints about the situation I was in.
This is insane.
I was just rattled and struggling to believe that I'd suddenly become a girl.
"A-yeon. Time to wash up."
"…Ah, yes."
I answered Yun Hyeon-mi — the orphanage caregiver — with a halfhearted tone and got to my feet.
Day one of waking up in the middle of the night, scrambling to get my bearings, and starting to play the part of Han A-yeon so I could survive life at the orphanage.
I still couldn't get used to any of this.
How was I even supposed to explain a situation like this?
Had "I" refused to accept death and forced my way into Han A-yeon's body, hijacking control of her self? Or had Han A-yeon died as well, and I'd simply slipped into the empty space she left behind?
…No matter how hard I tried to put a comfortable spin on it, I couldn't picture a perfectly healthy kid dropping dead of natural causes inside a safe twenty-first-century Korean orphanage.
Wanting to go back to the past. Wanting to be young again. Wanting one more shot at a new chance. People daydream about that sort of thing all the time — but I never wanted it to happen like this.
The way things stood, it almost felt like… I'd stolen someone's body.
The longer I let my thoughts wander, the darker the turn they took.
One of my worse habits.
"Haa…"
Willingly or not, it had already happened, and I had no idea how to reverse it.
Which meant the first rule was not to look away from the crisis right in front of me.
Whatever was on the inside, outwardly I was a perfect little girl.
…Right.
I still couldn't believe it, but some things you just had to accept.
I was ten years old.
And not a boy — a girl.
"A-yeon?"
Standing in front of the shower room, I snapped out of my thoughts at Yun Hyeon-mi's call.
"What are you doing there?"
She smiled kindly and reached out a hand — and before her chest entered my field of view, I quietly closed both eyes.
Most people would see nothing wrong with a group of kids sharing a shower room with an adult of the same gender. Not unless religion or culture had given them a different view of things.
Bullshit…
Even so, this was a little much!
Normally, around adolescence — middle school, about fourteen — kids start feeling self-conscious about each other's naked bodies. Pure Orphanage's approach was to have same-gender kids who weren't yet self-conscious shower together, then gradually set up private shower times for the ones who started getting uncomfortable.
In other words, walking into the shower room right now wouldn't have been a problem at all.
If anything, if a kid who usually got along fine suddenly said she didn't want to shower with everyone… they'd just figure she was throwing a tantrum.
But the self living inside me wasn't the fresh little ten-year-old Han A-yeon. It was an adult man who'd knocked around somewhere and died.
"A-yeon…"
"I don't want to."
"…Huh?"
"I'm sorry."
In an orphanage this cramped, the only place you could hope to find a moment alone was the bathroom.
"Fuck."
I muttered it low, staring at the tiles mottled with mold and the wear of years.
It was a curse far too thick to believe had come out of a ten-year-old's mouth.
I felt bad for the original owner of this body, Han A-yeon — but right now, I couldn't hold it in.
At least I hadn't curled my itchy index and middle fingers into a smoking gesture. That was something.
People have limits. A kind of upper bound on their conscience.
Couldn't I just keep my mouth shut and not think stupid thoughts?
……No. Absolutely not.
By my own ethics, this was not right.
Whether I had dirty thoughts or not was beside the point. Once I knew the truth, just imagining how uncomfortable the other kids and the teachers would feel if they ever found out — I couldn't ignore that and move on.
Was I being too uptight?
I genuinely wanted to hear from other people out there in the world who'd also woken up as ten-year-old girls.
Seriously.
In the end, I didn't solve it by throwing a ten-year-old-style tantrum.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I'd barricaded myself in the bathroom — and it was Yun Hyeon-mi's consideration that finally drew me out and let me shower alone.
"Is something bothering you? You can tell Teacher anything. It's okay."
"…I'm really sorry."
Even in the counseling session that followed, I just hoped the whole thing would quietly blow over.
Born and raised as a man, I found it anything but easy to act and talk like a ten-year-old girl. Rather than half-ass the performance, all I could do was lean hard into endless apologies.
The result: I got to wash by myself at a young age.
The trade-off was absorbing every sideways glance from the other kids and every worried look from the orphanage staff — but honestly, it barely registered. I figured I'd done the right thing, and after everything the military and the working world had put me through, this level of attention wasn't enough to dent my mental state.
And so.
Am I getting ostracized?
I'd already felt as awkward as someone stuck in the wrong clothes, and as time passed I was gradually getting shut out of every group.
Well — I'd suddenly flipped out and said I didn't want to shower with them. Of course.
On top of that, holding a normal conversation with kids whose mental age was genuinely ten was hard enough. Among little kids who couldn't hide their feelings, someone like me who kept quiet and dodged conflict was bound to end up on the outside.
…Still, I'd solved the important problem, so I had to look on the bright side.
I'd worried about Han A-yeon's social circle shrinking, but kids kept coming up to talk to me anyway — so making friends here was apparently pretty easy.
Outsiders who couldn't fit into any particular group usually got a teacher assigned to stick with them.
One month into orphanage life.
"A-yeon, want to hold Teacher's hand and walk together?"
"…Yes."
I was the only outsider at Pure Orphanage this severe.
I walked through the Seoul History Children's Museum, looking around.
Eye-catching cute characters. Clean interior design. Simple hands-on programs you could try yourself.
It's better put together than I expected.
There was a Seoul History Children's Museum here, so this was an ordinary Earth. Just a parallel world — different in some of its history and place names from the one I knew.
Famous celebrities I'd never heard of. Songs topping the Billboard charts that I'd never listened to.
Small differences like that.
I'd been surprised at first, but I barely cared anymore.
The one thing that still held my interest was—
Computers. Keyboards. Mice…
Games.
I wanted to play the fresh titles I'd never gotten to experience.
Of course this world had PC bangs too.
I was dying to run straight over and play right that second — but I was short on cash.
The allowance they handed out was a mere twenty thousand won a month.
I'd already received this month's before we left for the museum that morning, so the second free time hit after we got back to the orphanage, I was buzzing with plans to hit a PC bang.
For the record, you needed permission to go out — and I'd already gotten it.
……For a second I wondered if it was really okay to act like an actual kid and rush off to game the moment allowance money appeared. But human beings need a reward system. Call it compensation for all the work I'd put into staying sharp and adapting to this situation.
"A-yeon."
"…Yes?"
Lost in thought, I answered a beat late and met Yun Hyeon-mi's eyes.
"Is walking around with Teacher like this boring for you, by any chance?"
A gentle voice.
She'd clearly noticed I was excited and was hoping for something like It's fun! or I love it!
"No, it's fun!"
I held the smile in place, barely keeping my facial muscles from twitching.
Unlike the orphanage kids, who could write off a suddenly weird friend as just being weird, Yun Hyeon-mi was an adult who genuinely worried about me.
The guilt I felt now — so different from the pure confusion of those first days — made this kind of performance not a choice, but a necessity.