Reincarnated Like a Dog
So, how exactly did things end up like this?
Not long ago I was still enjoying a peaceful evening.
Sure, I was buried under a mountain of work as usual, but compared to any other day it was downright tranquil.
No North Korean goons shouting, ‘Heh heh, you stupid South Korean bastards. I’ll keep things interesting by cracking the NIS’s ultra-top-secret intel for you!’ while launching every creative hacking scheme they could invent.
No staying up all night cleaning up the administrative mess dumped from above either—the kind that went, ‘Wow, this workload’s a bit heavy. Let’s push it down to the juniors… Oh! This one’s light! Juniors again… Huh? What’s with that face? Don’t want to? No, no, I’m just asking. Why so scared?’
As long as I finished the work already on my plate on time, I could fall asleep before 4 a.m. For me, that alone counted as an enormous stroke of luck.
Too harsh, you say?
But what was I supposed to do?
If I went to my boss to complain, all I’d get was something like, ‘Who held a knife to your throat and forced you to join the NIS?’
“Thinking about it now… yeah. Why the hell did I even try so hard to get into the National Intelligence Service?”
My grades were more than good enough for a top university. Maybe some misplaced sense of mission had gotten into me.
Honestly, the biggest cause was probably a delayed bout of adolescence.
Secret identity, NIS agent, hacker developing cyber-warfare and security programs.
Back then those titles looked so cool that I skipped every decent medical and engineering school and applied straight to the Cyber Defense Department.
The university itself was fine.
Better than fine, actually.
The government poured in funding, and the facilities left nothing to be desired.
I should have realized then that there’s no such thing as free kindness.
The moment I graduated, an enlistment notice dropped right in front of me.
Not the ordinary year-and-a-half notice everyone else got—a seven-year one.
Seven years!
I couldn’t tell whether I was in the North or the South.
I’d thought I was prepared, but when it actually hit me the world spun.
After basic military training I was assigned to the NIS, and today marked my third year with the agency.
I was grinding through the remaining overtime when the office doorbell rang.
“Huh? No one’s supposed to contact me right now. What’s going on…?”
A wave of unease hit me and I shot up from my seat.
Whenever this happened, something bad always followed.
With the sharp instincts honed over decades I checked the hallway CCTV. Three men and women I’d never seen before were waiting outside the door.
People I don’t know inside the NIS? From another department?
I couldn’t just sit there, so I straightened my clothes a little and walked to the door.
The moment it opened and I got a proper look at them, I tilted my head again.
“Uh? Wh-who are you?”
They were definitely strangers to me.
But they clearly weren’t strangers to my face.
“Did I find the right place?”
“Seems so, comrade.”
They exchanged a few words in North Korean dialect, then looked me over and asked,
“You’re the one who developed that program called Laplace, right?”
“I… I don’t know who you are, but if it’s Laplace, yes, I was involved in the development…”
“Then we found the right person.”
A sudden spike of dread made me reach for the emergency call button installed in the dorm—careful not to let them notice—when a warm sensation bloomed in my right thigh.
“Ghk…?!”
A gun?
The lead bullet tore through soft flesh; strength drained from my leg and I collapsed to the floor.
The three of them drew the pistols they’d hidden and pressed the muzzles against my head.
“Spies…?”
“I received orders from the great Leader Kim X-un to eliminate you. Don’t feel too wronged. The damage our Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has suffered because of that ridiculously thorough security system of yours is no small matter.”
Rage shot straight to the top of my skull.
How the hell do North Korean spies just walk into an NIS branch?!
I knew national defense was a mess, but this was a whole new level.
Were we just handing out visitor passes to North Korean agents now? Was this a joke?
Had the entire security detail been roofied or something?
…
Wait a second.
Something’s off.
Maybe the shock of being shot had made me overlook the obvious—the kind of question any normal person should ask.
“You people… are you really spies?”
“Wh-what?”
I could feel them flinch.
I organized my thoughts and laid them out.
“I mean, come on—cough!—does it make any sense that the North Korean leadership would send three armed spies and go through all this trouble just to take out one programmer?”
“Th-that’s…!”
The woman disguised as a North Korean agent tried to regain her composure, but she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice.
“O-of course it does! If we’re not spies, then what the hell are we…?!”
“C-comrade. Your voice is shaking.”
“Hup—! W-wait. W-we came because of that Laplace program or whatever. Our hackers couldn’t do anything against it, so we were trying to fix that…”
“Oh for fuck’s sake! I told you we should just run him over with a truck!”
“Th-that’s too cliché! I wanted to send him off in a special way!”
“What kind of bullshit is this…”
“Just shut up for a second! We’re having an important conversation! You want a bullet hole in your head?”
“…”
It was chaos.
The pain of the bullet in my thigh was crystal clear, yet the whole situation felt so unreal it might as well have been a dream.
“Ugh… Well, now that it’s come to this, no choice.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“What else? Just send him off.”
“S-send me off? What do you mean…”
I stared at her in pure confusion. The woman holding the pistol smiled sweetly and looked me straight in the eyes.
“Hey… friend… have you ever heard of isekai reincarnation?”
Isekai reincarnation?
That tired cliché from Japanese light novels and web novels?
“Wh-what?”
“Doesn’t matter if you don’t know. You’ll find out soon enough.”
A chill ran down my spine.
Something was going very wrong.
“No, w-wait a second…! What about my military service?! I did three years and was just starting to get a real salary!”
I poured out every ounce of injustice I could muster. All that came back was a voice colder than ice.
“Mmm~ Too bad. That’s your problem, isn’t it?”
“You fucking—!”
“Nothing more to say. Fighting!”
As if she had no more time to waste, she flicked her finger and drove a 9 mm lump of lead straight into my skull.
At the same time, my vision went black.
…
Fuck.
Anyway, that was how it happened.
“Phew, just simple exhaustion. What a relief.”
“From now on, when you restrain people, use rope unless they’re strong. Chains are heavy, and a lot of people have metal allergies—not great for their health.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. If something like this happens again my head’s on the chopping block, so of course.”
Thankfully they hadn’t noticed that a few of the chains binding me had come loose.
The moment they found me collapsed they practically sprinted me to the infirmary, so missing it wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
Passing out from exhaustion while picking the lock… yeah, let’s take that secret to the grave.
It was far too humiliating to ever admit.
Once I’d recovered enough to stand, a man waiting nearby brought over a length of rope and tied my hands.
He must have been rattled by my fainting; the rope was so loose it barely counted as a restraint. Anyone who’d received proper NIS training could have slipped free in under ten seconds.
“There. All tied.”
“Are we leaving now?”
“Yes. The auction’s right around the corner.”
“Anyway… make sure the guests don’t find out this kid fainted.”
“That’s fine. I bought this one for exactly that purpose from the start.”
“Excuse me? What do you mean…”
“You know the type—deliberately designed to trigger protective instincts.”
“Ah.”
The doctor nodded in understanding.
“Then I’ll be going. Always appreciate your help.”
I followed the man down a corridor carved from marble.
Normally I would have been looking down at him, but from this angle he felt like a giant.
I kept staring so long that he noticed and tilted his head.
“What is it?”
“I… was just wondering where we’re going…”
He frowned for a second, then—perhaps still feeling guilty about earlier—answered readily.
“To the auction house.”
“The auction house?”
“A place where people from great houses and the wealthy gather.”
“That’s not what I meant… Wh-what do they sell there?”
“You.”
“Wha…?”
No matter how I looked at it, my life was completely fucked.