Something Strange Appeared

When Dagyeom woke, he stared dully at the semi-transparent window hanging in midair.

...What is this?

At first, he thought it might be a dream, but every sensation in his body felt vivid and real. Since the hologram-like thing showed no sign of fading even after several moments, Dagyeom decided to take a closer look.

Those words floated across the pale blue window.

A customization target... What was that supposed to mean?

"Son, come out here and eat!"

Just as Dagyeom was mulling over the meaning of the strange message, his mother's voice came from outside.

"Yeah, coming."

Answering the call, Dagyeom got out of bed.

As for the mysterious window—

If this keeps up, I'll have to go to the hospital.

Wondering whether he ought to see an eye doctor or a psychiatrist, he left the room.

It was a little after ten on a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sunday morning.

In a wrinkled T-shirt and shorts, her hair hastily tied back in a messy knot, the woman was preparing breakfast in the kitchen.

The woman slicing tofu on the cutting board was Gu Mihee, Dagyeom's mother.

"Come here and scoop the rice, and set out the spoons too."

"Okay."

Dagyeom did as she asked, serving rice into bowls and setting the utensils before sitting down at the table.

Before long, a steaming pot of stew and a plate with fried eggs were placed on the table.

The blue window was still hovering in the air, but Mihee, seated across from him, showed no sign of noticing it.

So it's definitely my problem.

He had suspected as much, but it seemed this bizarre, absurd thing was visible only to his eyes.

Dagyeom silently vowed to visit a hospital as soon as possible, then glanced at his mother's face.

...Has she been having a hard time lately too?

Her exhausted face, the thinness of her hair, the deep lines carved around her eyes, and the hollow dark circles beneath them made his chest ache.

In truth, Mihee wasn't Dagyeom's biological mother at all, but his stepmother—the woman his father had married more than a decade ago, when he was still a senior at the company and a divorced man.

Mihee had only been a high school graduate working accounting jobs at a young age, and when she saw an older coworker struggling to raise a child on his own, she felt pity for him. She began visiting his home now and then, making side dishes and helping look after Dagyeom, and that was how their bond started.

At the time of his father's remarriage, Dagyeom had simply been happy that a pretty older sister would be living with him. And since his birth mother had run out on the family years before, he naturally came to think of Mihee as his real mother and grew attached to her.

Those were good days....

In his memories, she was nothing like the shadowed woman sitting before him now. Back then she had been elegant and beautiful, and he could still remember how she had held his hand while they wandered through a department store together.

At the time, his father had started a private business after the remarriage, and it had gone so well that the family had grown quite comfortable. But then an overambitious expansion attempt ended in bankruptcy, and everything changed.

Burdened by unmanageable debt and reality itself, Dagyeom's father vanished, leaving behind his son in fourth grade and the wife he had only just taken.

Dagyeom had been abandoned by his biological mother once already, and now his biological father had done the same. But astonishingly, his stepmother Mihee did not abandon him.

"It's okay, son. You still have Mom."

She took her stepson's hand and immediately filed for disclaimer of inheritance, putting out the immediate fire, but part of the missing husband's debt had been guaranteed in Mihee's own name, so it remained as debt she had to bear.

The amount came to a staggering 200 million won. Worse, some of it was tied to high-interest private lenders, so she couldn't even file for bankruptcy out of fear of retaliation. From that point on, their life became hell.

She raised a grade-school stepson alone, working without rest, but after paying a little of the interest and principal, all that was left was barely enough for living expenses.

Ten years of relentless labor and stress stripped away her once lovely looks and her vitality in an instant.

If only Dad's business hadn't gone under....

Lost in the past and falling into pointless what-ifs, Dagyeom suddenly tilted his head.

In the blink of an eye, while he had looked away for just a moment, the text floating in the mysterious blue window had changed.

"...Huh?"

He was still reeling at how the unidentified window had somehow known his stepmother's name when—

Whatever it was, something had started moving on its own, entirely without Dagyeom's consent.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Dagyeom stared vacantly at the empty air, chopsticks still in hand.

There was his mother's face, floating above nothing, and beside it rows of incomprehensible information.

It looked just like a game character status screen.

What the hell is this...?

"Ghk—?"

Dagyeom almost choked.

Because the lunatic thing had suddenly thrown his stepmother's naked body up in front of his eyes!

A lean, soft-fat body neglected by an irregular routine, breasts and hips that had lost some firmness and begun to sag with age, and a thick tangle of pubic hair at her groin...

For something his imagination had supposedly created, it looked far too real.

What kind of insane thing is this...?

The naked body of the mother he had only ever glimpsed by accident in the early grades of elementary school.

He was already twenty-one this year, but with no experience with women yet, it was so mortifyingly unfamiliar that his face burned bright red.

The self-proclaimed "system" selected Skin from the countless options, and the detailed subcategories unfolded.

Dagyeom could only stare blankly at the messages scrolling before him.

Whatever this thing was, it kept clanging away all by itself like some demented one-man band.

"...Mm?"

Then Mihee, who had been eating across from him, tilted her head and touched the corner of her mouth.

"Mom, what's wrong?"

Dagyeom asked in alarm.

Coincidentally, the area the system had mentioned and the area her hand was touching were the same.

Already unsettled by the fact that something was happening without his consent, he was nearly sick with anxiety...

"No, it just got a little itchy all of a sudden."

"Does it hurt?"

"Hurt? Not at all. My skin just feels a little dry. It's nothing, so don't worry."

Even after she said it was fine, Dagyeom swallowed hard and kept staring at his mother's face.

He didn't realize it himself, but there was more than just anxiety in his eyes now; a strange, inexplicable anticipation had begun to surface as well.

"Yep, it's fine now."

A moment later, Mihee took her hand away from her face as though it truly had been nothing.

...No way!!

But Dagyeom, seated across from her, was reeling inwardly.

Because the deep lines of her nasolabial folds had noticeably softened in the time it took her hand to move!

Mihee herself had not noticed yet, but Dagyeom, who prided himself on having a fairly sharp eye, could not possibly have imagined it.

It wasn't a huge change, but if you looked closely, it was definitely there!

"Son, Mom's fine now. Don't worry and just eat."

"...Okay."

Dagyeom slowly nodded at Mihee's words, but by then all of his attention and nerves were already fixed entirely on the blue window.

For a hallucination caused by a brain disorder, the change that had happened to his stepmother was far too physical.

A normal mental illness didn't erase another person's wrinkles, did it?

After finishing his meal and returning to his room, Dagyeom gave the blue window the name the custom window and began ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to study it in earnest.

Operation was simpler than he had expected.

Is it reacting in real time to my thoughts?

Maybe because the tutorial was over, he could now freely turn the window on and off whenever he wanted.

The next step was to confirm properly that this thing was not some mere hallucination.

If it really could edit a person's appearance, then the right thing to do was prove it and put it to use as quickly as possible.

It said customization was possible by spending CP, right?

Remaining Points: 0 CP, 100 FCP

Unfortunately, the system had burned through all of his CP on its own during the earlier tutorial, leaving him with nothing.

According to the explanation, CP was given as 5 points a day for each target registered to a slot, unused points did not carry over, and the points could only be used on that target.

FCP, however, had no such restrictions.

"Then I can test it with this."

He shouldn't throw away what had been given as a reward, but this was for verification, so it wasn't really wasteful.

Dagyeom opened Slot 1, where his stepmother's information had been registered. If he'd had his way, he would have preferred to register himself or someone else and test it on them, but for now he only had one slot.

There was also a function to unregister a target already in a slot, but the explanation made him reluctant to use it.

Even setting aside the fact that he wouldn't be able to use the slot for a month, the warning that a target once removed could never be registered again made him hesitate.