Ah... Fuck... (2)
I stood motionless in place for a long while after shutting the bathroom door.
Every instinct screamed at me to throw it back open, march out, and grab Baek Joohyeok by the collar first. But after passing out cold the moment I finished drinking last night, my body felt grimy and wrong — that much was true. More than anything, I needed time to get my head straight.
My skull felt like it was about to split open, and there, hanging in the bathroom, was the maid outfit that lunatic had so thoughtfully prepared.
"...Ha."
I didn't even know where to start with the cursing. For now, I decided to wash up and work through the problems one at a time once I got out.
Actually washing up, though, turned out to be nothing like as easy as it sounded. My body felt different with every movement, and none of it was sinking in — but the real problem was the hair, spilling all the way down to my waist. Up until yesterday, I could give my head a quick scrub, towel it off, and be done. Now it seemed like sorting out the hair took longer than the entire shower itself.
"Aaaargh! Seriously, what the hell IS this!!"
The moment I finally screamed, Joohyeok's voice drifted in from outside the door.
"You still alive?"
"Alive! But you're about to die, so stay right there!"
"Why is it taking you this long to wash up?"
"Whose fault is it that I'm even in this state?!"
Even as I yelled, all that came back through the door was laughter. Apparently this bastard found the whole situation hilarious. Go ahead and laugh it up. The second I got out of here, that laugh would be the first thing to stop.
After roughly toweling the water out of my hair, one final problem remained. I glared at the maid outfit hanging in the corner of the bathroom. No matter how many times I looked at it, it was not an article of clothing I could see myself wearing.
"...You seriously want me to put this on?"
I searched for something else to wear, but of course there was nothing. And I couldn't exactly go out and pick a fight with Joohyeok wearing nothing but a towel, either. Muttering curses, I finally picked the thing up.
"And how do I even put this on?"
For someone whose entire morning routine was throwing on a t-shirt and pants, the very structure of the thing was baffling. I was still turning it over and over, trying to figure out what went on first, when a knock came at the bathroom door.
"Who is it?"
"The Young Master sent us. May we come in?"
"Sent by Baek Joohyeok?"
"Yes. He asked us to help you dress. We'll also take care of your hair for you."
"...He really has thought of everything, hasn't he."
Still, it beat wrestling with the outfit alone, so I got myself reasonably presentable and opened the door. Three women in maid uniforms stood side by side in the hallway.
"...You need three people for one outfit?"
"It seemed fastest if we were also doing your hair."
"My hair just needs a blow-dry, though..."
Before I could even finish, the three of them filed smoothly into the bathroom. One took the clothes from my hands and arranged them, another began inspecting my soaked hair, and the third started laying out the tools they'd need.
"Your hair is very long. It'll take a while to dry properly."
"Like I said, just dry it roughly and be done. I'm not going anywhere anyway..."
"That won't do. Leaving it wet will damage the strands."
"It can be damaged, honestly..."
"No."
She was firm about it. I had no idea why she cared more about my hair than I did. In the end, I was seated in a chair and quietly surrendered to their ministrations.
"Your hair is in such lovely condition. And the color is beautiful too."
"Is it?"
"Yes. Has it always been this pale silver?"
"...I only saw it for the first time today, so I couldn't tell you."
The hands in my hair stopped for a moment.
"...Just kidding."
"Oh..."
I figured that even if I explained this wasn't my hair until yesterday, I'd just get written off as a lunatic, so I let it go. After that I mostly left them to it — hair dried and styled, arms raised and lowered on command, turned this way and that, dressed head to toe — until I honestly couldn't tell whether I was a person or a mannequin.
"All finished."
The words were barely out of her mouth before I felt like I'd been given my life back. The maid who'd done my hair looked at me in the mirror and smiled brightly.
"It really suits you."
"Ah... thanks."
"The Young Master picked it out himself, so I was curious what kind of person would be wearing it. Honestly, it suits you even better than I imagined."
At that, I turned my head.
"Baek Joohyeok picked this out himself, you say?"
"Yes. I heard he put quite a lot of care into it."
"...I see."
The maids gave my clothes and hair one last check and filed out of the bathroom. When the door clicked shut, I stepped up to the mirror.
"...Wow."
The situation had gotten even worse than it had been that morning. Standing in the mirror was a woman fully decked out in a maid uniform. Earlier, with my hair a wild mess, I'd at least looked like someone in the middle of a breakdown — now I looked, to any observer, like a perfectly put-together young woman.
I stared at the mirror, then screwed my face up as hard as I could. And there it was — the first flicker of something familiar.
"...There. That expression, at least, looks like me."
It was absurd that such a thing counted as comfort.
When I came out of the bathroom, Joohyeok — who'd said he'd be waiting — was nowhere in sight. Instead, a small note sat on the bedroom table.
Done washing up? Come down to the living room.
"He could come up here himself."
He turns me into this, and he's perfectly comfortable. I crumpled the note and left the room.
I'd been to Joohyeok's house a handful of times, but I'd rarely wandered around inside it like this. I'd always thought it was big; actually walking through it made the sheer scale feel almost comical.
Then, as I made my way down the corridor, something odd caught my attention. The servants I passed didn't seem the least bit surprised to see me. A woman they'd never met, wandering the estate first thing in the morning in a maid uniform — and not one of them asked who I was. They simply greeted me, naturally, as if I belonged.
I bowed back a few times, dazed, before my feet stopped moving.
"...Hold on."
Did they know who I was? That vague unease I'd been carrying since earlier grew a size heavier.
"Baek Joohyeok, you bastard... What the hell did you do?"
When I reached the living room, the culprit himself was lounging on the sofa, sipping tea with complete peace of mind. As I approached, he looked me over for a few seconds and smiled.
"Knew it would suit you. Worth the trouble of picking it out."
"Shut it. I didn't come down here to hear that, so start explaining."
I sat down across from him. Normally I'd have flopped carelessly onto someone else's sofa, but the outfit I was wearing made me far too conscious to slouch. Even that irritated me.
"Start from the beginning. Why am I like this? When I went to the bathroom last night, you drugged my drink, didn't you?"
"I did put something in it."
He admitted it so easily that my words caught in my throat for a second.
"...Wow. You absolute lunatic."
"You're the one who asked for an explanation."
"Do you realize you just openly admitted to slipping something into your friend's drink?"
"I do. And I understand why you're angry."
"Then why does the face of the guy who 'understands' look so damn calm?"
I let out a long breath. Screaming at him wasn't going to get me any real answers.
"Fine. A hundred times over, I'll postpone beating the shit out of you over that for later — answer the most important question first. Can I go back to normal?"
This time, Joohyeok didn't answer right away. The same guy who'd been talking so breezily a moment ago went silent, and the silence made something in my stomach drop.
"Why aren't you saying anything."
"Not right away. There's no way to reverse it immediately — that much is certain."
I stared at him. It wasn't a flat 'no, you can't go back.' But it wasn't a 'yes, you can' either.
"Then when can I? A day? A week? A month? Or did you just do it with no way to undo it and deal with the consequences later?"
"I'll explain all of that properly another time. Right now, there's something you need to deal with first."
"My entire life got flipped upside down overnight — what could possibly matter more than that?"
"Figuring out how you're going to live, for one. You can't just keep going around as Han Siwoo looking like this. School, part-time work — your ID alone is going to be a problem."
Joohyeok slid a small wallet across the table toward me. Annoyingly, he wasn't wrong. If I walked into the café today and said, 'Hi, I'm Han Siwoo, and I turned into a woman last night,' they wouldn't believe a word of it — they'd be calling the police before I finished the sentence.
"So what's this? Don't tell me the plan is 'here's money, go hide out here for the foreseeable future.'"
"You'd refuse if I just handed you cash. So I prepared something else."
Joohyeok pointed at the wallet.
"Open it. You'll need it to get by for a while."
Something about it felt ominous again. I picked up the wallet. Inside was a single ID card.
"...Han Sia?"
I thought I'd misread it and looked again, but no — there it was. Same surname, and a name eerily close to mine.
"What is this?"
"The identity you'll be using for the time being."
"No, I mean — why is the name Han Sia? Who told you to go around changing my name?"
"It's better than something completely different from Han Siwoo, isn't it? Easier to answer to, too."
"Wow, thank you so very much for your consideration. Except that's not the problem here."
At first it was the name that threw me. But as I looked back down at the ID, I noticed something far stranger.
"...Wait a second."
The photo on the card was my face — the face I had right now.
I looked back and forth between the ID and Joohyeok.
"Hey. When did you make this?"
Joohyeok said nothing. That one silence took every doubt I'd been nursing since this morning and hardened it into something close to certainty.
"Think about it — none of this adds up. I only turned into this this morning, but the clothes were already prepared. Same with the maids earlier. Everyone in this house acted like they already knew I was going to be here."
I set the ID down on the table.
"And now, on top of everything else, an ID card shows up — with my current face already on it?"
Joohyeok just listened, saying nothing. On any normal day I'd have let that slide, but right now it grated on me in a way I couldn't ignore.
"Baek Joohyeok. You didn't just pull this off yesterday, did you?"
He didn't answer.
"How long have you been preparing this?"
Again — nothing.