A Common Kind of Wish
Shin really, truly loved his owner.
―Arf!
"I know, I know. Quit fussing already."
No matter how much the big lunk of a dog rubbed himself against him, his owner would pull an annoyed face but never once shove him away.
When Shin pestered him while he slept, the boy would reach out half-consciously and stroke him without even waking.
My owner loves me!
He only grew more certain of it after talking with his friends who lived in other houses.
No one in the world would love him or look after him as well as his owner did.
And so Shin was profoundly happy.
But sometimes his owner wore an expression like something inside him had emptied out entirely.
Shin could never figure out why.
All he could do was swirl restlessly around the boy's side until no room was left for any other thought.
It was one of those nights when that limitation felt particularly suffocating.
"Is it just me, or is the moon extra bright tonight?"
―Arf!
Shin gazed up at the night sky beside Do Yooyoung and made a wish.
Please let Yooyoung be happy! Please make whatever's troubling him right now feel small and insignificant!
It was one of the most ordinary wishes in the world.
Everyone makes that kind of wish at least once in their life, don't they?
That night simply happened to be Shin's turn.
So no, this situation was not something Shin had wished for.
"…Am I dreaming?"
Shin, waking in a human body, mumbled dazedly.
Beside him, Do Yooyoung—awakened in a dog's body—wore the expression of a man taking an existential crisis square in the face.
Do Yooyoung had woken before Shin and was already moving, trying to take stock of the situation.
Walking on four legs apparently felt strange, because he wobbled a little at first, but the way he bounded onto the bed looked surprisingly natural.
His own body—Do Yooyoung's body—was sleeping soundly in the bed.
Do Yooyoung hesitated for a long while before nudging the human with his paw.
Why won't he wake up already.
He was only careful at first; the prodding grew steadily more forceful.
"Mmh… what…."
Only after he kicked hard enough to shake the whole body did he hear the human stirring back to consciousness.
Do Yooyoung opened his mouth, half to clear his own head.
―Arf!
And he froze at the bark that burst out of it.
While Do Yooyoung stared blankly into the void, Shin—awake in Do Yooyoung's body—was grappling with his own wave of unfamiliar sensations.
Fingers that flexed and obeyed, a field of vision far higher than usual, a brain that wouldn't stop whirring.
He murmured that maybe he was still dreaming, then slapped a hand over his mouth in shock at the words that came out.
Do Yooyoung watched the whole spectacle with a heart caught between exasperation and pity.
Shin looked down at the dog wearing his own face.
"Yo… Yooyoung? Is that you, Yooyoung?"
Do Yooyoung nodded twice in silence.
Shin, now inside his own body, still couldn't seem to believe any of it, blinking rapidly and tilting his head over and over.
"So we switched? Bodies? With each other?"
Do Yooyoung nodded again.
"Why? Wh-why?"
How am I supposed to know that?
At the sheer innocence of the question, Do Yooyoung could only stare at Shin with troubled eyes.
"Why… is this… what do I do? What am I supposed to do?"
Shin threw himself at his owner, his face crumpled with anxiety.
The desperation in that voice—tell me what to do—made Do Yooyoung forget, for a moment, the absurdity of everything, and he found himself stretching out a paw to pat the boy's head.
"Yooyoung. I'm scared."
I'm the one who's scared, you little—
With his heart in knots, Do Yooyoung rubbed his head against Shin.
He couldn't speak and he couldn't write, so this was all he had to offer for now.
Shin sniffled for a long time, and the warmth radiating from Do Yooyoung's body gradually helped him accept reality.
And so the two of them sat in quiet silence.
That was when it happened.
"Do Yooyoung! Did you forget we had plans today?"
A loud voice rang out from outside the door.
It was Yooyoung's friend.
Oh no.
Do Yooyoung and Shin flinched at the same moment and locked eyes.
"Wh-what do we do?"
Shin squirmed to hide behind Do Yooyoung, panic written across his face.
The problem was that, from the outside, it looked like a boy clinging to and trying to hide behind a dog half his size.
Do Yooyoung kicked and squirmed, desperate to peel Shin off his own body.
―Arf! Arf!
Get off me!
"Shin? You in there?"
Meanwhile, Yooyoung's friend cocked his head at the barking coming from inside the house.
Normally Shin would come barreling out, panting happily, the instant a visitor stepped into the yard.
"Yooyoung, everything okay in there?"
After a moment's hesitation, the friend toed off his shoes and stepped up onto the wooden porch.
At the voice sounding so clear through the door, Do Yooyoung barked for him to stay back.
―Arf! Arf!
"Yooyoung, quit barking already…."
Shin whimpered, his face pale with fear.
Caught between the intensifying barking and a faint human voice buried beneath it, the friend knocked.
"Hey, I'm coming in?"
No! Don't come in!
―ARF!!!
The friend, unable to parse Do Yooyoung's frantic protest, flung the door open.
"Huh. You're already up. Why didn't you answer me?"
"…."
Shin didn't answer, watching Do Yooyoung's face for cues.
All the same, the sight of someone so familiar brought an unexpected wash of relief.
Shin wriggled where he sat, as if wagging a tail that wasn't there anymore.
"You sick or something? What's with you, sitting there like a dog left out in the rain."
"H-Haesoo. Um. So…."
Shin hesitated—and then called his friend by name.
The friend, who had never once in his life been called just "Haesoo" without his family name, recoiled in horror.
"Wh-what the—why are you calling me like that?"
"Please help us, Haesoo…."
"No, seriously, what is with the way you're talking?!"
Do Yooyoung's friend, Ji Haesoo, staggered backward in shock.
His skin crawled from head to toe.
This was not the friend he knew—the one who met everything with a deadpan stare and answered in a flat, bone-dry voice.
The face was identical, sure, but there was no way that Do Yooyoung could produce a voice dripping with that much aegyo.
And he would never, ever whimper like a frightened child.
"Are you dying? What disease did you catch?"
"No he's not! Yooyoung is not dying! Don't say stuff like that!"
At the slur against his owner, Shin cried out with a wounded, anguished face.
And Ji Haesoo, watching his friend refer to himself in the third person, murmured:
"…Is this guy insane or what?"
With that dead-serious declaration, silence finally settled over the room.
Haesoo stared at his friend with eyes that understood nothing, then—strangely—turned his gaze toward the dog that had been oddly quiet this whole time.
Huh?
Something wasn't right.
In the empty black eyes of the golden retriever, he saw his friend.
The dog was wearing a troubled, complicated expression—the kind a person would make.
"…."
Haesoo looked back and forth between his friend and the dog without a word.
His expression slowly warped into something very strange indeed.
"Okay, I know I'm crazy for even thinking this, but… could it be—"
The moment Ji Haesoo opened his mouth with that odd look on his face, Shin shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Yes! We swapped bodies!"
Shin shot to his feet, circled Haesoo, and began hovering around him in frantic loops.
"What do we do? What are we supposed to do? Yooyoung can't talk! What do we do?! Haesoo! Help us!"
"…."
"Yooyoung has school, and—oh no! Right! He has school! What do we do?! We can't just leave Yooyoung like that! What do we do!"
Shin panicked at his own words, spiraling further and further out of control.
Haesoo stared blankly at his friend, who circled the room restlessly like someone whose entire vocabulary had been reduced to what do we do.
Then, pupils trembling, Haesoo shifted his gaze to the dog.
The black eyes that met his head-on carried a strange note of resignation—and a familiar air about them.
―….
The dog stared at Haesoo for a long moment, then nodded once or twice.
As if to say, Yep. That's pretty much how it happened.
"I'm hungry! What should I eat? What can I eat? Oh—Yooyoung has to eat too! What do we do?! Can I just have whatever I was eating? What do we do, Haesoo! Help us!"
"Okay, just—let me think, shut up for one second."
"Don't say mean things! Yooyoung can hear you!"
Haesoo grabbed his aching head.
While he struggled to wrap his dizzying brain around this insane situation, Shin dropped flat to the floor in front of Do Yooyoung.
"Yooyoung, are you hungry? Should I feed you? Is there anything you can eat?"
Shin kept licking his lips, looking desperate for food—or desperate for something, at least.
Do Yooyoung stretched out a paw toward the anxious boy and clumsily patted his forehead.
"Sniff… Yooyoung."
―Huff, huff.
"I'm scared. What do we do."
The dog offered the sobbing boy a gentle paw-pat of reassurance, as if to say it would be all right.
Watching this unfold, Ji Haesoo squeezed his eyes shut.
This can't be real….
Somebody please tell me this is a hidden-camera prank.
He wanted, more than anything, to go back ten minutes—to the moment right before he'd opened this door.
"Cut! Ah, that was wonderful~!"
At the director's call, Seong Ijun's scrunched-up face instantly relaxed.
"Mmm, Ijun, your acting was fantastic? Even better than at the read-through."
"Thank you…!"
Seong Ijun, playing Ji Haesoo, went a little bashful.
"We're going to review the footage for a bit, so everyone take five. Oh, and somebody give Happy some water! The poor guy must be parched."
"Yes, sir~!"
Happy's handler came running over.
"There's a good boy, Happy. You're the best. You did so well!"
―Arf!
Veteran that he was, Happy had clearly earned his filming experience, dutifully nailing everything asked of him.
Seong Ijun watched Happy lap up his water, then shifted his gaze to the boy standing nearby.
Where, seconds ago, there had been a boy swirling helplessly around him, there was now the unreadable, expressionless Lee Yeonjae.
"Yeonjae, your acting was amazing…!"
"Thank you."
Yeonjae replied, matter-of-fact.
"The little stumble you slipped in mid-scene was so natural and nice. You worked hard on that part ever since the read-through, didn't you?"
"That's right! I practiced it a lot…!"
"It showed. It was great, so don't worry about it."
Seong Ijun smiled shyly, gratitude written all over his face.
He really does notice everything.
Most actors were too busy obsessing over their own lines.
But Yeonjae carefully tracked his partner's performance, remembered the details, and even made a point of praising them afterward—it felt genuinely warm.
Perhaps because the expression Yeonjae wore was so bland and blank by contrast, that kindness stood out all the more.
He's such a good kid.
It was something Ijun felt more and more deeply every time they acted together.
Even while immersed in his character, Yeonjae was unconsciously considerate of the person across from him.
Thanks to that, Ijun had been able to act with total ease of mind.
Just then, the director bellowed out.
"Okay~! Moving straight on to the next scene!"
The crew cheered.
As everyone bustled about moving equipment, Lee Yeonjae let out a quiet sigh.
"Yeonjae, what's wrong?"
"I'm a little nervous about the next scene."
"…? You're nervous?"
Why on earth would you be nervous?
Seong Ijun found it absurd, but true to his gentle nature, he couldn't quite call the boy on it and let the question trail off.
You did all that amazing acting as a person possessed by a dog, and now you're nervous?
Yeonjae's performance had exceeded every expectation.
The screenwriter had actually teared up watching him at the script reading—needless to say, the whole set was floored.
Do Yooyoung's usual expressions, his voice, his speech patterns, his mannerisms—all of them had changed the moment Shin possessed his body.
It felt like watching an entirely different person, and the entire staff had been stunned.
Even Seong Ijun, who knew exactly how talented the boy was, had been blown away.
The instant Yeonjae's take ended, everyone came running to shower him in endless praise.
Yeonjae thanked them all with the expression of a man thinking, so this is what people call a serious commitment to office politics.
But since he brushed off every compliment as empty pleonasty, the crew all trudged away looking deflated.
So why would someone like that be nervous?
Reading the question on Ijun's face, Yeonjae answered.
"The next scene is an eating scene, right? Shin's supposed to eat with real, joyful abandon, and I'm not sure I can pull that off convincingly."
"Ah, I see."
Unlike the picky-eater Do Yooyoung, Shin adored food.
He would shovel down the fried rice Haesoo cooked, shouting "This is SO good!" over and over.
From then on, Haesoo grudgingly took responsibility for feeding Shin every single meal.
Haesoo, who dreamed of becoming a chef, had real skills, and he cooked Shin all kinds of dishes.
Spicy hand-cut noodle soup, tender braised eggs in soy sauce, curry piled high with potatoes, rich homemade brownies.
With the cooking process itself interwoven with shots of Shin happily devouring every dish, the film would become a warm, gentle healing movie.
Since this scene would set the tone for the entire film, how blissfully Shin ate mattered enormously.
Which was exactly why Lee Yeonjae—a boy who rarely even snacked—was worrying himself over it this much.
"I'm not even hungry right now, though…."
Seong Ijun swallowed a laugh at the boy's muttering.
So that's what a genius actor worries about, huh, he thought, to no one but himself.