A Perfect Plan
Let's make a perfect plan. I'd gone back ten years and become a girl. That was my situation in a single sentence, but it took me quite some time to truly grasp it.
The orphanage auditorium. Many children swayed and bounced to the cheerful music, letting their bodies move with the rhythm. The director stood at the front, diligently filming with a cheap camcorder, while a teacher beside him demonstrated the choreography with exaggerated movements for the kids to follow. On stage, the girls danced along—some watching the teacher, others relying on memory—enjoying themselves. The elementary school performance was only half happy.
“Why do we have to do this….”
“This is so… embarrassing….”
“Ugh…!”
The younger kids simply found the fun choreography enjoyable, but the older ones felt humiliated moving their bodies to such childish music. I, caught between the two groups, felt the same. I was already exhausted just trying to keep up with the dance teacher's movements.
Why am I doing this?
The thought kept repeating, but when fists speak louder than reason, a twelve-year-old's logic holds no weight with sixth graders. I simply let go of my pride and surrendered my body to the upbeat music. My mind went blank. Thoughts scattered wildly. Why was I doing this? Because refusing would earn me a beating from the dorm leader—a high schooler. Our shameful video was part of the director's scheme to please important people and secure donations. Since it was one of the orphanage's most critical matters, participation was mandatory.
Had I possessed someone else's body? As far as I remembered, there had never been a child named Seo Sua at the orphanage. I didn't recall her appearance either. Nor had there been any boy who looked like me with the name Seo Joyeon. My existence had appeared, and my existence had vanished. Was all of this an illusion? I couldn't dismiss what I was doing right now as a dream. Did that mean the twenty-two years I'd lived as Seo Joyeon had all been a delusion? Or was my life being manipulated by someone's will, like a brain in a vat? Questions piled upon questions, thoughts chasing their own tails. I shook my head. Further self-interrogation was pointless. Probing supernatural phenomena only leads to pain.
First, I need to get out of this insane place.
Clearing my hazy mind, I immediately began planning my escape from this dreadful location.
“Sua~ Smile a little more~!”
“This is so stupid, why do we have to…?”
“Once it's over, we can just….”
Grin! Damn it! I have to get out of here!! Before my brain completely shuts down!
The orphanage was a kind of wilderness. Of course, every place has its own version of this, but the younger the members of the group, the more clearly the shape reveals itself. A place filled with children who prioritize strength over logic and emotion over reason is truly a safari of survival of the fittest. Anyone who's worked with large groups of children wouldn't doubt Xunzi's claim that humans are inherently evil. In ordinary circumstances, education and supervision can maintain some control, but the orphanage was no ordinary circumstance. Still, even here, there was one way to exert control.
“Because of you, I got scolded by the teacher, you little bitch.”
It was the time-honored tradition of passing down abuse.
“I'm sorry.”
“Do it right next time?”
“Yes.”
From the teacher to the dorm leader, from the dorm leader to her underlings, from the underlings to the sixth graders, and from the sixth graders to me. The scolding that flowed down from above had been diluted to mere verbal warnings by the time it reached me—only to be converted into three punches. After taking hits to my stomach, back, and forearm, I was finally released from the pressure once I meekly bowed my head to the delinquents.
There were three other girls in our four-person room besides me. But they only watched cautiously, saying nothing and keeping their distance. Even twelve-year-old children understood that getting involved could bring trouble their way.
“Hiss, that hurts….”
No matter how you looked at it, I was currently a twelve-year-old girl—an upper elementary school girl, at that. Compared to my peers, my body hadn't developed much. In other words, I was very small. Meanwhile, the sixth-grade group seemed to have grown well; some of them were over 170 centimeters tall. Nearly two heads taller than me. A punch from a kid like that was bound to hurt.
Kids this age don't know how to control their strength….
With great magnanimity, I sighed and crawled onto my bed. Even though the bed was designed low for children, it was still a bit high for me, so I had to jump slightly to climb up.
Should I start making a plan?
This was the orphanage I'd lived in, but it was hard to call it a good place. The teachers, worn down by life, mostly managed the children half-heartedly, and even that responsibility was often pushed onto the high school residents. The director, at least, genuinely tried to do things for the children's sake, but he was usually away trying to secure donations from various places, so we rarely saw his face. The result was a children's Serengeti. A lawless wild where the strong ruled and the weak were crushed.
The timid me from before had never fully adapted and was eventually cast out into society like unwanted baggage. Just when I'd barely managed to chase after the dream I'd found while living alone… a terminal diagnosis. Life really was something else.
…Let's think positively. My body changed, so maybe my terminal fate changed too.
I opened my notebook and scribbled with a pencil, organizing my future plans.
1. Leave the orphanage.
How? There were three main ways to leave the orphanage. The most common was to leave after becoming an adult. Once a child reached adulthood, the orphanage could no longer care for them, so they had no choice but to pack up and go. It was the standard method, but for someone who wanted to leave as soon as possible, it wasn't appealing.
The second option was to simply walk out and never return. The orphanage had no legal obligation to stop residents who left of their own accord. That was why quite a few middle and high school kids left on their own. Of course, without a guardian, they couldn't work legally, so most ended up in runaway groups doing illegal work. I didn't want that.
Then the only option left is adoption….
I drew circles and underlines around the word "adoption," agonizing over it. Becoming someone's child was something I'd never experienced. That had been true in the past too. Or should I say, in my previous life? Aside from infants or children who hadn't yet reached the age of reason, adoption rates dropped sharply as children got older. So leaving the orphanage after becoming an adult was the norm. Especially for boys.
In the past, there had been a preference for sons, but by the time I came of age, the social atmosphere had shifted toward preferring daughters over sons. Because of that, the male residents at the orphanage didn't even consider adoption—they worried about what they'd do after becoming adults. I had been the same.
But now I'm in the body of a girl.
Of course, the chances were still low, but relatively speaking, adoption was more likely. However, I didn't want to be adopted just for the sake of it. There was no guarantee that someone willing to adopt a pitiful orphan was a saint. There were countless cases of people adopting only to abandon the child later after having their own biological baby. To safely grow into an adult, I needed to create something beneficial for both me and the adoptive parent. Only then would I avoid being returned.
“Something I can appeal with to a potential adopter….”
I twirled the pencil between my fingers as I thought. My unfamiliar body kept dropping the pencil. By the time the twelfth pencil mark appeared on the notebook, I stopped the falling pencil with my palm.
…This might work?
The plan was beginning to take shape.
The man responsible for the orphanage, Director Seo Gangcheol, was sitting in his office handling paperwork for the first time in a long while. Though he had many external appointments, today he'd borrowed an old camcorder to film the children and spent time with them. As he transferred the footage from the camcorder to his computer, he smiled contentedly.
The kids are so cute. With this, we might be able to attract more sponsors.
Nothing caught adults' attention quite like cute children doing cute things. Most of the sponsors were around his age or older, so they wouldn't dislike watching children who could be their granddaughters showing off. These days, uploading promotional videos to YouTube instead of a website was the trend, so he opened a free video editing program. He had no particular skill in editing, but he could at least cut long footage into something presentable. He could outsource it, but the cost was considerable, so he was satisfied with this level of quality.
Just then—
Knock, knock—
Someone knocked on the office door.
“Come in.”
As soon as he spoke, the door opened. But no one entered.
Huh? Kids playing a prank?
Occasionally, there were children who pulled this kind of joke. He stood up from his desk and looked toward the open door. Contrary to his expectation that it was a prank, a girl appeared from behind the bookshelf that had been blocking the view. A small child wearing yellow clothes. He knew her. She was the child the teachers had recently reported being a bit worried about. Her name was… right, Seo Sua.
“Sua, do you have something to say to the director?”
He asked with a kind smile. The way he bent his knees to match her eye level showed how much he cared for the children. Sua hesitated for a moment, fidgeting with her hands. Seo Gangcheol waited without rushing her. Children her age were still shy about asking teachers for things. After a brief pause, Sua opened her mouth.
“Um… Can I go to a PC bang?”
The usually timid child had mustered the courage to make her first request. Seo Gangcheol was the type of person who was generous and giving to children—so much so that other teachers often told him not to grant their requests so easily. He smiled warmly and said,
“No.”
Thud—
Sua looked as if she'd been struck by lightning. For some reason, her expression suggested that some grand plan had just come crashing down.