Who Is This "Me"?

​

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Wow… that was the best video of my entire life…"

A new function had appeared in the status window. Bad Ending.

It showed something — the moment I'd almost been conquered just minutes ago — and before I even realized what I was doing, I'd clicked it.

Legs spread, I'd worked my fingers into the dolphin shorts I was still wearing and fingered my pussy with a slick, squelching rhythm until I came.

Once when she taunted me and took me, once when she took me again and again, once at the moment of final surrender.

Only after getting myself off three full times did I finally regain my senses enough to analyze what I'd seen.

'That scene shouldn't have existed…?'

The scene of me kneeling in my swimsuit, licking the stalker's balls — that hadn't been in the video. I'd never experienced it in real life, either.

'So this is where it came from?'

The Bad Ending alone had left me unsatisfied. I couldn't understand why that counted as a bad ending at all, or what that final scene had even been.

'If I watch the epilogue, I'll find out, right?'

Honestly, the desire to watch more dirty stuff was the bigger motivator… but I decided to watch it for my original goal: gathering information. The status window had never done anything bad to me so far, so I chose to trust that it wouldn't now, either.

'Wh… what the hell?'

The status window had grown into something the size of a big TV screen. And what was displayed there was a video of staggering length, played at ten times speed.

"Oh, right. She said the time multiplier here is ten times."

I remembered what the stalker had told me. Time flowed ten times faster inside this space.

Which meant the epilogue was showing me ten years' worth of outside time — roughly a hundred years' worth of inside time.

'The function…'

I touched it to pause, then poked and prodded at it. At ten times speed, nothing was distinguishable.

"When are they ever going to stop…?"

After mashing buttons in growing irritation, I finally just dragged the scrollbar down in one long skip — but thirty days in, the scene was still on the bed.

'Ah, found it.'

Poking around opened a settings menu, and at last the playback speed and skip options appeared.

Playback speed down to 0.1x… brightness up a touch, set the double-tap to a five-second skip, like the video player I usually used… and for the scrollbar — who knew how long this would go on? No, I was genuinely curious how anyone could survive in that space, so for the sake of information gathering I set the click-skip to one day per press.

'Let's see how long this goes.'

Day 30 — still being ravished on the bed.

Day 40 — still being ravished on the bed.

Day 50 — when I said I wanted to get out of here, we had outdoor sex.

Day 60 — back on the bed again, begging for my life and being ignored, more sex.

'It's nothing but nonstop sex…'

Day 90 — taken from behind; even after I blacked out, she kept going.

'Finally, something different.'

Day 91 — and at last, something resembling actual information.

The stalker, saying she would keep her promise, took me out with her. And the place we went was Outside — a scene shaped exactly like the real world: Earth, the 21st century.

'Is it some kind of filter?'

Two beautiful women walked down the street ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sexually harassing passersby on one side, and yet, bizarrely, none of the pedestrians paid us the slightest attention. When the harassment continued, a man in a business suit actually shook his head and turned away — like watching a couple openly fool around in public and deciding it was none of his business to look.

"There's a filter that makes us look ordinary. Not invisibility — something closer to cognition manipulation."

And after walking the streets and wandering around a bit, the two of us in the video returned.

And kept having sex.

"So this is where the extractable information ends, huh."

After day 100, the audio dropped out of the video entirely. With 3,550 days still to go, I dragged the bar all the way down and dug through the 2,000-day and 1,000-day marks, but there was still no sound, so I tapped the X in the upper corner and closed it.

This wasn't the urgent thing right now. I decided I'd comb through that pornographic whatever-it-was slowly, when I had time later.

"To be… to be honest, it was kind of hot, though."

I ignored the slight dampness between my legs and wrote down everything I'd just learned on a memo pad.

Tap, tap, tap.

I drummed my pen against a sheet of A4 paper, wondering if there was anything else, but that really did seem to be the end of the useful information.

'Well, then…'

My gaze shifted.

In this worldline — the one where I won — the black invitation the stalker had handed me in acknowledgment of my victory.

"This is something like an ID card. A business card of sorts, announcing just how remarkable a being you are."

"Show this to anyone, and no one will dare look down on you."

"Ask the owl that delivers your mail out there for the details."

I still remembered it vividly — the bead of blood passing through, and the stalker smiling with what looked like genuine delight after I won. Just before I opened the door that had appeared and stepped through, she'd grabbed me in a hurry, pressed this carefully wrapped invitation into my hands, and told me that with it, I could return here as a guest anytime.

Leaving me with the words that the invitation was unlimited — I could use it as often as I liked.

Tap, tap, tap.

After a little deliberation, I added a note in pen.

There was no telling when a situation might come up where I'd need it, so I decided to store it in the newly added Inventory function for safekeeping.

I pulled the invitation back out of the inventory, confirmed it was undamaged, and put it away again. Then I lowered my head to the A4 sheet I'd examined earlier — the dossier on this body's original owner.

'I guess that about covers it.'

After escaping the stalker, I'd searched the house and pieced together the picture: a woman of wealth, strikingly beautiful, but with a personality that didn't much care for leaving home.

The money, too, seemed to split at a single branch point — whether or not she'd successfully grown the 1 million won her parents had given her to try investing.

Female: Success → Success → earned her parents' trust and a 50-million-won seed fund → Success → Success → a 2-billion-won investor.

Male: Failure → office worker → Success → Success → a comfortable life.

'So that's the difference…'

Two lives divided by how large that initial investment had been, thanks to parental trust. But I wasn't envious. My original self had lived comfortably enough.

Friendships, though… those weren't great.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It wasn't a matter of personal charm — the people who flocked around her simply weren't good people.

Unlike when I was a man, when I'd clearly told someone "I don't think this is working out," this version of me had kept bad-quality friends on life support, clinging to threadbare contact rather than cutting them off.

"Cause of death is…"

Sudden death from Sleep Deprivation Syndrome.

Sleep Deprivation Syndrome. Simply put, the inability to fall into deep sleep.

When I'd had it as a man, the investment wins kept my brain in a constant state of excitement, and I'd dragged myself into the office for days on end like that.

After four days of it, I'd felt headaches, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, my vision wavering — so with the help of a doctor and GPT, I learned meditation techniques for closing my eyes and calming down, and finally got proper rest.

But… what if I'd brushed that off as nothing and gone out drinking?

A cardiovascular system given no rest would have taken a sudden, crushing load from the alcohol it wasn't used to.

And after drinking — the single most dangerous thing — I'd lain down after a shower and dropped into sleep like I'd been knocked out. I wouldn't even have noticed my blood pressure shifting.

'There was no AI, either.'

The AI that would have flagged her condition — I'd only just signed up for it myself.

With nothing nearby to help her, there'd be no way for a healthy twentysomething to realize she might drop dead out of nowhere.

Worse, even her friends were the binge-drinking, binge-eating type…

'First order of business: cutting off these absolute bitches.'

I deleted every name I recognized from my contacts and blocked them.

Parasites that drained money, girls who laced even their casual speech with condescension.

If I left things alone, laziness would stop me from deleting them later — so before it could become a hassle, I powered on the phone and wiped them out.

Tap, tap, tap.

I brought my pen to the "filial devotion" section and drummed it against a blank spot, thinking.

Filial devotion. That was the decisive factor that made me accept this body as a parallel-world version of myself.

A calling pattern of at least once every three to seven days.

Call lengths over five minutes, but never pushing past thirty.

The massage chair bought for her parents on Coupang.

The flat mop and vacuum she'd gifted them after trying to buy them a robot vacuum and being told that cleaning by hand was more thorough, and they preferred it.

The other delivery orders were different — but every single order placed out of filial devotion was exactly identical.

Same reasoning as mine, same orders as mine, sent at nearly the same times as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mine.

Doubting any further was impossible.

Baek Harin, this body's original owner, really was me from a parallel world.

'Still, I feel guilty about it.'

Even if it was a dead woman's body, I'd suddenly become a body-snatcher.

Dying and having a memorial rite held at your funeral — versus having your flesh stolen by a hijacker.

Her parents would grieve either way, but looking at it from any angle, the former had to be better for the person themselves.

And so, still agonizing over whether I was an impurity in this life or not, I opened the one space I hadn't yet searched — the very bottom of the desk drawer.

"You absolute bitch."

The drawer was packed full of cigarettes. The curse slipped out of me on its own even as I realized the original owner had been a smoker.