Chapter 93
Chapter 93
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 93
Chapter Title: Reunion (2)
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After calming the guy down a bit, I headed to a quiet café nearby with him.
He seemed drained of energy now, with no intention of running away anymore.
I sat in a secluded corner and placed a white mug filled with steaming cocoa in front of him.
He was still trembling. From the look in his eyes, he clearly found this situation extremely uncomfortable.
*But same here.*
Fuck, I still couldn't wrap my head around what the hell was going on.
Of course not. It had never even crossed my mind that something like this could happen in my lifetime.
Who the hell would ever imagine running into the original "me"—the me existing as someone else's identity—while living in someone else's body?
Something straight out of a novel had become reality....
And even though I'd already been through countless novel-like events, I still couldn't hide my shock every time a new one popped up.
I steadied my pounding heart as best I could and sipped my coffee calmly while staring at his face.
*No matter how I look at it, it's really me.*
Seeing my own appearance through someone else's eyes felt incredibly strange.
*So this is what I look like.*
I'd checked my face in the mirror every day, but viewing it from another perspective made it feel totally different.
Objectively speaking, I came across as much colder than I'd thought.
Maybe that's why not many people approached me first.
And yet, here he was, trembling with fear in eyes swallowed by terror—on *my* face.
*Guess he's pretty timid.*
That might explain why he'd faded away so quietly.
Out of everyone at EverPlanet, he was the only one who'd left without causing any drama, vanishing silently when his contract ended.
Even within EverPlanet, he'd had such a low presence that despite this face and voice, he never really caught the public's attention.
That's why I hadn't recognized him right away when I first woke up in Ha Jae's body.
"Stop shaking. I'm not gonna eat you. Look at me."
"....Y-Yeah."
At my words, he flinched like a scared hamster, tensed up, then cautiously met my eyes.
....Watching my own body do that felt so damn awkward.
"Ah, my head's a mess too. I don't even know where to start."
I rubbed the back of my neck and stared at him silently for a moment. Then I asked,
"So, you're 'Ha Jae,' right?"
The guy wearing my face rolled his eyes around before nodding.
Ha. His firm confirmation drove a wedge in, and a sigh slipped out before I knew it.
I'd thought nothing could shock me anymore after becoming "Ha Jae," no matter how absurd things got from here on out....
That was a huge miscalculation.
Witnessing the "me" who'd become someone else was a shock beyond shocks.
My head was spinning. I clutched my throbbing temples and muttered,
"What the hell is this situation...."
"Th-Then you're the real 'Seo Il-hyun'?"
So that's what my voice sounded like to others.
It felt a bit lower than what I heard myself, and I nodded inwardly surprised.
"Drop the formal speech. We're the same age anyway."
You've already seen my ID, right? Our birthdates match. As I added that, he cautiously nodded.
His two hands gripped the steaming mug, trembling like aspen leaves.
I closed my eyes, gathered my thoughts for a second, then continued calmly.
"First, let's sort this out together. When did you start living as 'Seo Il-hyun'?"
"A-April 1st. The date was so unique that... I remembered it."
"April 1st—that's the same as me."
I recalled waking up in the hospital room as "Ha Jae" on April 1st too.
"Then when did you return to this timeline? How old were you originally, and exactly when did you come back here? Do you remember?"
"I-I was... twenty-five. It was April back then too...."
"That's the same as me."
That meant some kind of force had pulled us both across time and space at the same moment, waking us up in each other's bodies.
....So how do we switch back? I pondered seriously, then suddenly remembered something from a book.
In some story, two people whose souls had swapped due to an incident headbutted and returned to normal. Sure, it was fiction, but our situation was novel-like anyway, so why not.
"What if we headbutt each other? Like in dramas—maybe we'll switch back."
"....Y-You mean like that?"
"....Think it'll work?"
Probably not. I shrugged casually and took a sip of my café latte.
He rolled his eyes anxiously, then hesitantly spoke up.
"I-Il-hyun, if that's what you want, we could try it...."
"Sure."
Nothing to lose.
I nodded, and he steeled himself with a determined expression, whispering to me.
"Okay, on three, we smash our heads hard."
"Got it."
"One, two...."
Three! The moment he shouted it, our heads collided with a loud *thunk!*
In that instant, along with a sharp, throbbing pain....
"Ow ow ow...."
"Fuck, that hurts."
Amazingly, nothing happened.
I was still "Ha Jae," and Ha Jae was still "Seo Il-hyun."
We stared at each other blankly, each rubbing our sore foreheads.
Of course this wouldn't work. If it did, it would've happened ages ago.
Then, the real Ha Jae whispered to me in a small voice, looking subtly relieved.
"U-Um, Il-hyun."
"....What?"
"The part-timer's staring."
"....Ignore 'em. Put on a poker face."
In times like these, a stone-cold face is key.
....I was glad I'd picked a seat with my back to the counter right then.
Anyway, both of us ending up like this on the same day, same time, due to some force....
Did that mean this guy had gotten help from the same existence as me?
That thought led me to ask,
"So, do you have a system too?"
"Huh?"
"Do you have a system?"
"S-System?"
What's that...? He tilted his head, asking back like he'd never heard of it.
....This is kinda embarrassing. A wave of shame hit me, my face heating up. I must've sounded like a weirdo just now.
So, we're both the same—traveling back in time and waking up in someone else's body—but only I can use the system?
*Why can only I use the system?*
Our conditions seem identical. He should be able to use it too, right?
Then, gauging my reaction, he hesitantly spoke up.
"I-I'm not sure what a system is, but... do you mean some kind of special ability?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Actually, after waking up in your body, I've been seeing 'guidelines'...."
"Guidelines? What's that?"
Tell me more. As I pressed him, he took a sip of his hot chocolate and continued.
"Sometimes, weird options pop up in front of my eyes. Blue options... and I can pick one to act on. One of them is always guaranteed to give the best outcome in that situation...."
"Who said that?"
"I don't really know. It was just there the first time I woke up in your body—a blue window-like message."
A blue window-like message? That's the system.
That confirmed one thing: the system was behind both of us ending up like this.
I still had no answers to the big questions—like why the system chose us, what it wanted, or what it even was.
I sipped my latte thoughtfully, then something occurred to me, and I asked,
"But why didn't you pick up when I called? You knew it was my number."
When "Ha Jae's" phone stopped working and I got a new one, I'd called my mom's number—and mine a few times too.
But it never connected, so I'd quietly assumed there was no "Seo Il-hyun" in this world at all.
If he'd answered even once, or contacted me some other way, we could've talked way sooner.
I couldn't understand why he'd known about me but never reached out.
At my question, he hesitated again before finally confessing like he was in a confessional.
"....I was scared."
"Scared of what?"
"That I'd wake up from this dream."
His unexpected words left me stunned for a moment.
Of course, thanks to those memory fragments I'd glimpsed when chasing off Manager Hong, I already knew he'd lost his grandma, struggled alone, and barely debuted.
But to think like that upon waking in someone else's body meant something must've happened in his original life.
First things first—I needed to find out what it was. That'd make things easier.
"Jae."
"....Yeah."
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"...."
"If it's too much, I'll go first. You need to know anyway, at this point."
The fastest way to get someone's secret is to share yours first.
That's human psychology. When someone opens up to you, you can't help but want to reciprocate.
I calmly told him my story, from my trainee days at TL to why I'd quit to become a PE student, and how I'd tried to save a cat, gotten hit by a truck, and woken up as "Ha Jae."
I held nothing back.
The real Jae listened silently the whole time, his lips twitching like he was debating whether to speak.
"Jae."
"Yeah."
"Look, we're in the same boat now. For the time being, I have to live as you, and you as me. To do that properly, I need to know how you've been living."
"...."
"So be honest with me."
Even if it's something you don't want to say, I probably need to hear it. As I added that in a serious tone, the real Jae finally nodded. Then he slowly began his story.