Prologue
The world changes fast.
Drifting along with that ever-changing current, I had tried, with all the patience I could muster, to be the one thing that refused to change. I had been born a man, and I wanted to die as one.
The friends who used to bicker and drink with me had, before I knew it, become settled fathers and mothers. One friend who went on and on about his dream had actually gone and made it real. And the few who had endured the same pain I did left this world behind, as if to refuse the fate that had been assigned to them.
Afraid of the world's pointing fingers, unwilling to be seen struggling not to change in a world that would not stop changing—I hid myself away as much as I could.
Still, a person has to eat. Woman or man, for whatever reason... I had to live. No—I wanted to live.
Looking at the people I met through the patient support group, I was one of the lucky ones for having chosen programming as my path. It meant I could always find some way out.
I took freelance work on the single non-negotiable condition that it be 100% remote, and built all manner of things. Apps commissioned by clients, corporate homepages, internal company portals. The children I had made—gathering words, sentences, and paragraphs, stacking file upon file until they could stand on their own and be released into the world—were still out there, busily roaming the internet. As if, because I never went out into the world myself, they were circling it in my place.
Those children became my livelihood, and they held up a man who had nothing else to show for himself—a man who refused to change. Hiding behind the things I had built, I never once stepped into the light.
A hollow life. The only thing I still wished for was a life that had already been broken.
That was when I met web novels.
Watching all those worlds unfold inside the stories, I felt as though I were traveling to places I could never reach, and it made me happy. And so, quite naturally, I began to write as well—to unfold a world of my own. Over those few short years, I laid out world after world on the page.
And then, now...
I came to be here.
Fwip.
At the sound of paper fluttering, I stopped and raised my head. The man seated across from me had produced several sheets and laid them out in a neat stack on the desk, and now he smiled and spoke.
"The contract terms will be as follows."
The employee was so young—so boyish—that it caught me off guard. Wondering if this was some kind of prank, I looked at the business card he held out, and sure enough, it really was the person who had sent me that email.
I'd had offers from plenty of management companies over the years. I had turned down every last one of them, and yet this place, for some reason, caught my eye. I meant to delete the message the moment I finished reading it, but a few things kept snagging at me, though I couldn't have said why. A familiar feeling. The sense of having seen this somewhere before. Drawn along by that vague something—less a thought than a hunch—I decided to come.
And so I sent my reply saying I would attend, and when I visited, I was greeted by this man with his bright, guileless smile.
What on earth gave me the nerve to come all this way? And wait—wasn't Mirae Co., Ltd. a pharmaceutical company? Did they launch a management agency or something?
For someone like me, Mirae Co., Ltd. was a name I could hardly not know. It was the only pharmaceutical company that made drugs to ease the symptoms and the changes of Acute Sex Change Syndrome.
I had been skimming through the documents, and I remarked in passing:
"Aren't you curious, Mr. Suho? About who I am—about the kind of things I've written?"
"That's... something we can get to know in time. I was deeply moved by this work of yours. Though it seems you've switched it to a draft again..."
I sipped the tea he slid across the desk and kept reading.
Hmm... the contract itself seems fine... so why does it feel so off...
Something about it made me uneasy. If anything, the terms were too good, and that was exactly why I found myself reading them all the more closely. As I thought—I should just run. Like I always had. Change the pen name again, change the handwriting again. The story I'd been writing was already set to draft anyway, so it wouldn't matter...
Huh? How does Mr. Suho know I only just switched my writing to a draft...?
The moment the thought finished forming, I tried to ask him about it—but I couldn't open my mouth.
A blinding headache. This wasn't the first time. I had been through it before, unmistakably. I had definitely taken my medicine, so why... Why...
"Huaaagh...!!"
I clutched at my chest against the searing pain, as if something inside me were burning to ash—but clutching it did nothing to lessen it.
Don't come out yet. I don't want this. I don't want to hear that thin voice coming out of my mouth. Please...
"Ah. What a pretty voice. It seems the medicine took hold later than I expected."
"Nngh... who... who are you...!"
"Ah~ I've finally caught you. Why did you keep running away? This took far too long."
"What? You... don't tell me—"
Yes. Ever since I first started writing, there had been exactly one reader who tracked me down at every one of the four pen names I'd changed to, cheering me on without fail.
Otherwise, I'll make it one myself.
The comment sitting at the very bottom of the post I had made private as a draft just days ago. And the ID attached to that comment.
The pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place, one by one—and there was nothing I could do.
Because, even as I felt my body changing, I collapsed—crumpling down as though sinking into the sofa——.