An Out-of-Nowhere TS and the Rulebook
"Ugh... my head."
Hangover, probably — payback for all the alcohol I'd put away the night before. My head throbbed like it was trying to split open.
'Wait... was I sleeping on the ground?'
A cold chill pressed against my back, and I cautiously cracked my eyes open.
"Where... am I?"
A dirty alley. It should have been a perfectly ordinary back alley, and yet the layout looked strangely twisted, as if the geometry itself had gone wrong.
"Is this even South Korea...?"
There wasn't a single signboard of the kind you'd find in any back alley in Korea. It was gloomy and signless — and there wasn't even the faintest trace of human presence, the kind of noise and bustle you hear everywhere.
"What is wrong with my voice...?"
It came out strangely thin. And down below... a chest, wrapped in a swimsuit...?!
I grabbed frantically at my crotch. My precious, precious little guy was gone. Nothing there at all — nothing but the smooth, slick feel of swimsuit fabric.
'Wh... what the hell is this?'
A scream of horror tried to claw its way out of my throat, but I instinctively clamped a hand over my mouth. The gloomy alley had been unsettling from the very start, and now a crushing wave of dread was flooding through me.
The feeling of someone watching me from behind.
'What is going on? What the hell...?!'
Putting the evidence together, I had apparently been TS'd. Gender-swapped.
My voice was soft and delicate, my skin smooth, my chest full. I'd felt it when I touched between my legs, too — my hips were flawlessly sculpted, the very picture of a pelvis built for easy childbirth.
'Somebody... somebody please explain!'
But under that gaze at my back, I couldn't force out a single word.
A sticky, relentless stare. Wasn't there a saying that when you come face to face with a tiger in the wild, its gaze alone is enough to pin you down? I could feel it — the stare of an apex predator, tiger-like, raking over my back with horrifying persistence.
"Ugh... please... somebody... help..."
Strength was draining out of my body. Rationally, I knew that getting up and backing my way out of here offered the best chance of escape — but instinct had other plans, my limbs going slack, my body sliding into helplessness.
"...Status window...! Rulebook! Guidebook!"
It came back to me — the genre of the web novel I'd been reading before I passed out drunk. A survival story about making it through encounters with anomalies, and in stories like that, there were always rulebooks and status windows.
'Please... I've been thrown into this situation out of nowhere. If I don't get something like this, I'm going to die right here.'
Current Status:Chills, Fear
Reading the rulebook will release you from the Fear status.
Would you like to read the rulebook?
"Yes!"
By sheer, dumb luck, both of them had popped up. I had a mountain of questions — why I, who'd blacked out drunk the night before, was here at all, and why I was in this body — but this was no time to sort any of that out. Because something... something about that gaze at my back told me it was slowly beginning to move toward me.
1. Never, under any circumstances, look behind you.
└ 1-1. You must never see the anomaly's face. The instant you do, you become 'Bound' to that entity.
└ 1-2. A Bound human loses all right of refusal over anything the anomaly does.
2. Never reveal your real name. The moment it learns your name, it will begin appearing in front of you — not just behind.
3. If the entity touches you while you are not moving, never allow the contact to last 3 minutes or longer.
└ 3-1. If contact continues past 3 minutes, the entity will take it as 'consent' and move on to full-blown sexual activity.
└ 3-2. If you are moving, the duration of contact does not matter.
4. If the entity makes a 'request', you must consider favorably — or accept — everything except direct sexual acts.
└ 4-1. An anomaly is obligated to reward any human who accepts its request.
└ 4-2. Rewards usually grant a useful power, or aid in overcoming the ordeal at hand.
└ 4-3. 'Direct sexual acts' refers to penetration.
5. If you have put distance between yourself and the entity, you must stand in place and let yourself grow close to it again.
└ 5-1. If you get more than 10 meters away, it will appear at random somewhere within 10 meters of you.
└ 5-2. It usually appears beside or behind you, but with very low probability, directly in front.
6. If you reach a dead end, brace your hands against the wall and stick your hips out.
└ 6-1. Assuming this position will subject you to a 'Penalty' lasting 5 minutes.
└ 6-2. The 'Penalty' presents three choices, one of which you must select.
└ 6-3. When the Penalty ends, the wall will vanish.
7. This entity fully abides by the 3 Great Laws of Anomalies.
└ 7-1. The 3 Great Laws are: [Do not lie. Do not start before the rulebook is read. Do not exert violence not specified in the rules.]