Fun? PE Class
And so the game began.
High school soccer, if you could even call it that, wasn't all that different from the middle school version — not unless you were actually on a real team. A little more physical, a little more experience under the belt. That was about it.
The point being: a handful of good players could carry the whole game by themselves.
As if to prove it, Jisu — playing striker for the other side — started linking short passes and one-twos with the winger beside her, cutting up the field with vicious pace.
"Hey! Mark the one next to her — I'll take Jisu!"
Seori charged in boldly and pressed her, but Jisu took the return pass on her first touch, flicked it just enough to change direction, and slipped it clean between Seori's legs. A textbook nutmeg.
Right after that, she drilled a long ball out to the winger already bursting down the flank, then cut back into the middle herself looking for the return. Watching it play out, the gap between Jisu and everyone else was pretty stark. It wasn't that the other kids were bad. Jisu was just that good.
Even so, I was feeling pretty confident.
Maru, grinning like an idiot from the back as he watched Jisu tear it up, already knew — but I had always been pretty sure of my own athleticism. Especially soccer. Back in middle school I'd mixed it up on the field with actual club kids more than once. I could hold my own.
While I was still covering across, the winger turned out to be no slouch either. Our entire flank was already in ruins. She beat one defender on pure change of direction, then without a second of hesitation slipped a low killer ball into the center — trusting her striker to be there.
"Ah, no! Block it! Get on her!"
Jisu collected it perfectly, settled the ball right onto her foot, and wound up to shoot — and that was the moment I went in from behind, timing the tackle to take only the ball.
"Wha—?! What the hell?"
"W-whoooa! That was filthy! What was that?!"
Both teams — the ones who'd already been celebrating a goal and the ones on my side — stared like they couldn't believe their own eyes.
So this is what a hidden boss feels like…?
Their stunned reactions sent a fresh hit of adrenaline surging through me. Riding that high, I didn't stop at the tackle. I scrambled up and started dribbling from the edge of our own penalty box.
The other team had pushed their whole line high pressing into our box. Situations like this, you counter before they can reset.
Seori knew it too. The second our eyes met, whatever awe she'd been wearing vanished and she was already making the run into the open space ahead. I nudged the ball along in little touches, feinting like I was about to release the pass, then punched it into the gap between two defenders and sprinted.
"Holy shit, what the hell?! She's fast as hell!"
"No way, what kind of guy…"
Sometimes two defenders are actually easier to beat than one. Kids who never trained as a unit leave gaps all over the place just by getting in each other's way.
Up ahead, Seori smartly dragged wide and pulled one of them with her. Three left in front of me, and none of them had the first clue about covering for each other. I stripped the two who came at me together with a simple push-and-run, then took the last one — the one lunging a leg straight at me — with a Marseille turn.
"You little shit! What even was that?!"
"Ah, fuck. No…"
All that was left was the keeper, fretting alone in a one-on-one with no defenders in sight. Keepers like that were almost always the ones who'd been forced into the gloves against their will — and in a situation like this, a hundred times out of a hundred, they panic, listen to whatever their teammates are screaming, and rush out to close the angle with zero conviction of their own.
"Keeper, come out! Stop her!"
Sure enough, at Jisu's frantic shout, the keeper came charging out in a fluster. I gave the ball a light little chip, lofted it clean over her head, and watched it settle softly into the back of the net.
First goal of the game. Three minutes in.
I couldn't contain myself. I took off toward the halfway line where my teammates were, leaping high in celebration.
"Hell yeah~! Fuck, THIS is sex!"
"…Uh, y-yeah. Nice…"
"Y-you were incredible. For real. Like, actually…"
The voices beside me snapped me back. My teammates had been coming in for high-fives, heard what I said, and frozen solid — now forcing out congratulations with stiff little smiles.
Ah. Mistake. That was way too much.
Just because a never-dated midfielder dropped an early goal didn't mean the game turned into a complete one-sided stomping. We weren't losing, either, though.
With five minutes of class left, the score sat at 4–2. Including that opener, I was sitting on two goals and two assists. For the final one, I drove up the wing and whipped in an early cross to the center; Yi timed the run and buried it with a header. That made it two goals and three assists total.
The second the net bulged, the teacher blew the whistle like she'd been waiting for exactly that moment. Game over. Our win.
"Yes! Nice~!"
"Chan! That pass was insane! That was actually disgusting! I've never seen a guy play soccer like that!"
"Ah, for fuck's sake. How do you not stop even one of those."
All kinds of reactions were flying around when Maru — who'd been hanging a little on the outside of it all — came over to me.
"Whoa, no, Chan! You're really good at soccer! I think you might even be better than Jisu? Did you see all the girls freaking out earlier?!"
"Ah, hehehe. Come on, it's not that big a deal."
I'd always taken a quiet pride in my soccer, so praise like that felt good no matter how many times I heard it.
"Hey! Then you guys buy the drinks! I want Pocari!"
"I want Two Pro!"
"Ah, shit! Just drink whatever!"
What? The losing team buys the drinks?
Good thing we didn't lose. Drinks money was enough for ramen plus a triangle kimbap — if we'd lost, that would've been my entire dinner budget gone. The terrifying thought that I might've gone hungry tonight sent a little shiver through me, and that was when Jisu and Seori walked over together.
"Whoa, Chan. I had no idea you were that good at soccer. Why haven't you been playing?"
"Huh? What are you talking about. I play all the time — but how come none of the other guys ever play and it's only you all? Did you decide to take turns or something?"
"…What are you even saying. Why would the guys play soccer. And even if you do play with them, it's not fun, you have to be careful the whole time, and it's just exhausting."
"…Huh?"
I was still blinking at how completely backward that all sounded when Seori, standing next to her, held a hand out toward me.
"Chan, today was really fun! Let's be on the same team next time! I'll get you the assists then."
"Ah, yeah. You scored some nice ones too. Looking forward to it."
"…What are you two doing. Being that formal with someone in the same class? Especially you, Seori — I've been friends with you since we were eight and I have never once heard you talk like that."
"W-what?! I-I always talk like this, okay? No, Chan, don't get the wrong idea. She just likes messing with people…"
"Ah, haha. Yeah, of course I know."
"Hehe, ah, then we'll head out first. Today was honestly so much fun thanks to you. Let's play again next time!"
"Yeah. See you."
I watched Jisu and Seori walk off, and going back to what I'd been turning over earlier — something about this world felt wrong. Like the genders had been flipped, or something like that…
"Chan! Come on, we should go too! We need to change."
"H-hold on!"
Please. Just let me think for a second…
Please.
I only managed to get free after telling Maru that Jisu would be sulking about today's loss and that her boyfriend should go cheer her up.
Anyway, on the walk back from the locker room to the classroom, something came back to me. I was pretty sure that when I was little — or sometime around then — I'd seen a manga or a novel with a situation a lot like mine. The memory was too old to pin down, though, so I just searched it online.
What do you call works about a world where men and women are swapped?
As always, the internet had everything.
Gender reversal.
Seeing that keyword, it all clicked into place.
This was a gender-reversed world. And since the world itself was flipped, even the usual term — male-female reversal — had become female-male reversal. Probably.
Thinking about it that way, everything from this morning suddenly made sense.
Maru complaining his legs were getting thicker.
The girls staring at me with hungry eyes when we changed in class.
The girls clustering up to play soccer during PE free time, while the guys sat in the stands chatting.
"So that's what that was…"
"Hm, what was?"
"Whoa, when did you get here? Nothing. Just spacing out a little."
This kid could stand to make a little more noise when he walked around.
Anyway, though — did any of this actually have much to do with me?
I mean, it wasn't like I had a girlfriend. It wasn't like I was living out some high school youth fantasy either. Work hard for a few years, pay off the debt, and then maybe… but for now, it probably wouldn't change much.
I probably would've been exempt from the military anyway. Even in our country, they weren't about to drag an orphan off to serve.
Hmm… something about that…
Something about having been exempt, only to end up in a world where I didn't have to go in the first place — it wasn't actually a loss, but it still felt a little like I'd been shortchanged.