Receiving a Confession from Myself
Seeing Baek Gangho’s utterly dazed expression, it seemed Lee Jihyun’s brutal training had actually worked. Yet the taste of victory lasted only a second before an undignified growl exploded from my stomach.
Gurgle—
The silence at the main gate made the sound painfully loud. Crap. I suddenly remembered what Lee Jihyun had said yesterday when she plucked this pale-pink dress from my closet.
I had been stupid enough to follow that insane advice. From five o’clock yesterday afternoon until now—nearly eighteen hours without food. A twenty-year-old college girl’s body was more honest than I expected, and it had zero interest in the stiff pride it had inherited from its owner.
This bizarre situation no one had ever experienced—or ever could. The surreal feeling of my own stomach clock going off right in front of “me” left me unable to decide whether I felt shame or pity.
I condensed the complicated emotions swirling through my head into the simplest possible words and let them fall from my lips.
“……God, this is embarrassing.”
The honest murmur that slipped out between my lowered lips shattered Baek Gangho’s frozen face in an instant. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly, then let out a small, deflating chuckle.
“……Did you seriously fast since yesterday?”
“There were circumstances.”
Baek Gangho hesitated at my answer, then seemed to notice the curious eyes watching us from every direction. He carefully reached out.
“Sorry. There are too many people. Let’s get out of here first. You need to eat something.”
He added in a low voice that he would hold on a little, then gently took my wrist. For someone as clueless as “me,” it was a surprisingly brave move, but the heat radiating from his palm was almost scalding. It was the typical clumsy touch of an awkward young man—yet that very clumsiness gave me, trapped inside this unfamiliar female body, a strange sense of security.
I let him lead me through the crowd. In the corner of my vision, a blue number blinked quietly.
Remaining Time: D-12
Lee Jihyun’s hellish fasting advice had been infuriating, but following it had been my choice. Thanks to that, I had earned the gentle current now drifting across Baek Gangho’s face. Telling myself it was at least half a success, I followed quietly behind him.
We slipped into a modest but cozy tonkatsu restaurant near the gate. The air inside was thick with the smell of freshly fried cutlets. After eighteen hours of fasting, the scent was enough to short-circuit my brain.
The hand that had been holding my wrist while we pushed through the crowd dropped the moment we sat at the table. Baek Gangho wiped his palm on his pants with an embarrassed look, then quickly shoved the menu toward me.
The moment the food arrived, I picked up the knife. A strange sensation ran through my fingertips. My own mind wanted to hack off a huge piece of meat, drown it in sauce, and shove it into my mouth, but Cha Seolah’s body moved with refined precision before that instinct could take over. My fingers danced elegantly, slicing the cutlet into perfect bite-sized pieces.
It was a graceful, practiced motion that had nothing to do with my will.
“You…… eat really neatly,” Baek Gangho said, staring at me while his own food remained untouched. I could feel his gaze darting between my fingers and my lips.
“Do I? I’ve always been like this.”
A lie. If it had been the old me, I would have sliced everything at once, then stabbed the pieces with my fork at lightning speed and wolfed them down. Every time I lifted my water glass or picked up a napkin to dab my mouth, his eyes would freeze and follow the motion.
What was he thinking?
He sat there in a daze until our eyes met. Then he hurriedly looked down and finally started moving his own fork.
“There are so many people today. Everyone must have gone crazy because it’s spring.”
I glanced out the window at the crowds and muttered the thought aloud. It was nothing more than a realistic observation from my point of view, but Baek Gangho seemed to find it amusing. A small laugh escaped him.
“Not crazy. The weather’s nice, so they all came out hoping to see someone as pretty as you.”
The sudden straight pitch made my fork stop mid-air. I had assumed “I” was the only hopeless clutz, but every once in a while he would slip in an unexpected blow like that. It was strangely effective.
After we left the restaurant, we headed for the roller coaster—the flower of any amusement park. I had considered using Lee Jihyun’s strongly recommended “pretend to be scared and cling to him” strategy, but my own ego refused to allow it. Instead, as I lowered the safety bar once we were seated, I tossed out a challenge.
“Hey, want to make a bet? Whoever screams first before we get off loses.”
“For real? You won’t regret it?”
Baek Gangho narrowed his eyes with a confident grin. It was essentially “me” versus “me.” The bet ignited our competitive spirits, and a peculiar tension wrapped around us.
The train clacked its way up to the peak. The moment it plunged straight down—
“Whoaaaa—!”
“Kyaaaaa—!”
Our simultaneous screams made us look at each other and burst into laughter. The bet ended in a draw the instant it began, but the awkward air between us completely vanished while we laughed at each other’s windblown faces.
When we stepped off the ride, I didn’t need a mirror to know what I looked like.
“Pfft……!”
Baek Gangho took one look at me and finally lost the battle against his laughter. My hair was sticking out in every direction like a bird’s nest.
“Seolah-ya, what are you going to do about your hair?”
He pointed at me, still chuckling. I panicked and tried to smooth it down with my hands, but he told me to stay still and reached out first. His large fingers gently combed through my strands, untangling the knots.
His breath so close, his serious eyes. My mind screamed that this was the perfect chance, but my body had frozen under that warmth and couldn’t react at all. I simply held my breath and waited until he finished fixing my hair.
On the way to the next attraction we spotted the haunted house Lee Jihyun had recommended. But the snake-like line and the cheap sound effects leaking from the entrance made us both shake our heads at the same time.
“Let’s…… just skip that. We’d be standing in line until sunset.”
“Agreed. No need to pay to be scared.”
Our tastes were identical. Without a shred of regret we turned around and headed for the zoo.
After walking for a while we stopped in front of the massive elephant enclosure. A zookeeper was passionately lecturing about the muscles in an elephant’s trunk when an old man watching with his wife and grandchild let out a booming laugh and dropped a crude comment.
“Wow, that’s one thick trunk! Hey, young man over there—is yours as thick as that elephant’s?”
Sudden silence. The grandmother shouted, “This old fool’s gone senile!” and smacked her husband’s arm so hard it cracked loudly, but Baek Gangho’s face had already turned volcanic red.
He didn’t know where to look and could only stare holes through the innocent elephant. A dirty old man’s joke flashed through my mind, but I tilted my head with an innocent expression.
“Gangho-ya, what did Grandpa just say?”
“N-no! It’s nothing! He just means…… the elephant looks really healthy!”
He stammered, avoiding my eyes.
While we were looking at the other animals, a little boy suddenly came running, sobbing, and latched onto my leg.
“Waaah! Mommy!”
He looked about five years old. Being called “mom” on top of already being a female college student made the back of my neck stiffen.
“I’m not your mom.”
Even my cold reply didn’t make him let go of my skirt; it must have been pure survival instinct. It was awkward, but if I let him keep wailing like this the entire date would be ruined.
I swallowed a sigh, crouched down, and met his eyes.
“Stop. If you cry, you won’t be able to hear Mommy’s voice. Let’s go find her together with Noona, okay?”
I pulled him into my arms and patted his back. The moment I gently rubbed his soft little spine, the boy buried his face deep in my chest and stopped sniffling.
My only thought was to hand him over to the lost-child center as quickly as possible so I could reclaim our private time, but Baek Gangho’s reaction while watching from the side was a little strange. He pretended to stand guard beside me, yet his gaze was fixed on the back of the boy’s head. His brows were slightly furrowed, as if something displeased him.
“Gangho-ya, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing…… He’s been clinging to you way too obviously. Kid’s already big.”
Baek Gangho pouted and glared at the five-year-old. I couldn’t help but laugh at how childish he looked, sending jealous warnings to a toddler.
But after I safely handed the child to the staff and turned back, the look in Baek Gangho’s eyes had changed completely. They were much softer, almost sticky. He stared at me in silence for a long time. Only when I started to feel embarrassed did he clear his throat and look away.
Before we knew it the sun was beginning to set. The March sunset was short but intense. Standing against the orange-tinted amusement park, Gangho looked far more handsome than the person I remembered.
But the pain in my toes was too severe to let me indulge in sentiment. The high heels that even Cha Seolah rarely wore had become instruments of torture.
“……Achoo!”
The temperature had dropped suddenly, and a sneeze burst out before I could stop it.
“Cold? Let’s go inside somewhere. You’ll catch a cold.”
Baek Gangho took off his outer jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The familiar scent of soap rose from the fabric still warm with his body heat.
“Gangho-ya, there are too many people and I’m getting tired. My feet hurt, too……”
I staggered slightly and grabbed his arm. No matter how stubbornly I tried to endure, the pain crushing the soles of my feet had already passed its limit.
Baek Gangho seemed to come to a decision. He tightened his grip on my arm and spoke.
“Seolah-ya. We’re close, right?”
“……Close?”
If we were talking about inner intimacy, it would be hard to get any closer. It used to be my body, after all, and I knew his life better than anyone. Yet something about his demeanor was strange. The usual gentle expression was gone, replaced by eyes rigid with tension.
Don’t tell me this guy is about to—
“Seolah-ya. While I was with you today…… I became certain. I really, really like you. Not as a friend. I want to be your boyfriend.”
His direct confession. In the corner of my retina the blue numbers blinked mercilessly.
D-12
Whether because of the System’s threat or the strange exhilaration of receiving a confession from myself, my chest tightened. I endured the pain in my toes and nodded without hesitation.
“……Okay. Let’s date.”
The moment my answer left my lips, Baek Gangho froze solid. A second later his face lit up like a light bulb had switched on inside him. It was a dazzling expression that couldn’t be explained by dopamine or serotonin—only a twenty-one-year-old boy who had just won his first love could wear it.
The fact that the object of that radiance was “me,” and that I was the one looking at “myself,” created a strange sense of alienation. At the same time, a mysterious relief washed over my entire body.
“Achoo!”
But the afterglow of emotion was short, while the body’s complaints were long. Another sneeze burst out as the temperature continued to drop.
“Ah, right. You said you were cold. Sorry, I was too distracted. Should we go somewhere?”
Baek Gangho fidgeted, scanning the nearby cafés, but the area around the amusement park on a weekend evening was pure chaos. Every café had a line, and the movie theater would obviously be a war zone for tickets.
This was…… the perfect opportunity. I would simply move the original plan forward a little. I fiddled with his sleeve, wrapping the pain-twisted expression on my face in delicate fragility.
“Gangho-ya, why don’t we just take a taxi to my place? It’s close from here…… and my parents happen to be away, so it’ll be quiet. We can watch a movie there.”
“Huh…? Huh? Your house?”
Baek Gangho’s pupils shook violently as if an earthquake had struck. Inside his head, the pure excitement and possible fantasies triggered by the words “girlfriend’s house” were probably colliding at explosive levels.
“……Is that really okay? Wouldn’t it be rude?”
“Rude? You’re my boyfriend now.”
I drove the point home by lightly resting my head against his arm. Baek Gangho swallowed hard, nodded, and hurriedly flagged down a taxi on the main road.
Thud. The taxi door closed, cutting off the noise of the park. In the narrow, enclosed backseat, the distance between Baek Gangho and me was barely a handspan. For two people who had just exchanged confessions, the air inside the car felt far too heavy and hot.
Baek Gangho stared out the window, but the fist resting on his knee was clenched tight. The same soap scent rose from the jacket on my shoulders and from his own body. In the cramped space, the sound of our breathing felt as loud as thunder.
As we drew closer to the apartment complex, we grew quieter and quieter. When we got out of the taxi and headed for the lobby, the sharp click of my high heels against the marble floor shattered the quiet night air.
While the elevator rose silently toward the top floor, the two of us reflected in the mirror looked strangely alien to each other. Beep, beep-beep-beep— The sound of the door lock code being entered felt unusually long.
Finally the heavy front door opened, and a softly lit, cool living room welcomed us.
“Come in.”
Baek Gangho stepped inside hesitantly. The moment the door closed behind us, our own private time—completely cut off from the outside world—began.
The numbers floating above my retina now sparkled quietly, as if certain of victory.
D-12: Relationship Establishment Successful. Proceed to the next stage.
The plan I had moved forward today was only just beginning.