The Golden-Haired Liar
Once, there was a girl. A girl who was a liar.
She was petite, not very tall for her age, with a face as tiny as her small frame. That tiny face was framed by long, cascading blonde hair, making it look even smaller, and the eyes sparkling within it were incredibly captivating. If she grew up just like this, she would undoubtedly become a stunning beauty.
But regardless of that, I was extremely displeased. Her blonde hair and exotic features were, by anyone's standards, far from those of a typical Korean. Everything about her, starting from her very appearance, was completely different from the image in my memory.
"Ha."
I let out a soft sigh of sheer disbelief. To me, all of this was nothing but an eyesore. As if reflecting my mood, the expression of the girl in the mirror shifted. Her eyebrows arched, her lips pouted, practically screaming I'm mad!—yet even with that face, she only looked adorable. The hands resting on her hips were incredibly dinky.
Her limbs, which could only be described as fragile, lacked even a shred of strength; they looked as though they would snap at the slightest nudge. That was the very reason I was so grumpy. Where on earth had the sturdy body I'd forged through blood and sweat gone? Where was my masculinity?!
I was highly adaptable and possessed a flexible mind. Thanks to those traits, I had survived numerous brushes with death. Looking at my current predicament, it pointed to a single, undeniable truth—a horrifying reality that was hard to even put into words. Hard as it was to believe, I had no intention of denying reality.
"Whew..."
A sigh escaped my lips of its own accord. Simultaneously, the girl in the mirror let out a sigh with dead, hollow eyes. Yes. For some unknown reason, I had become a beautiful, blonde-haired girl. The girl sighing back at me in the mirror was none other than me.
To understand how things ended up this way, I have to take you back a bit. It was about ten years ago, the year I turned twenty-three. It was my birthday. While we weren't the picture-perfect, lovey-dovey family, we got along well enough, and everyone had agreed to go out for dinner to celebrate. I even remember the menu. Right, galbi. We were going to have grilled ribs. My younger sister, who was in the middle of a growth spurt, had been begging for galbi for days on end.
But that day, let alone galbi, I couldn't even wet my throat with a single cup of water. There was an accident. A car crash. A heavily intoxicated truck driver rammed straight into my father's sedan. Everyone in my family, except for me, died on the spot. My mother, my father, and even my little sister... I was the only one who miraculously survived, though I wished I had died with them.
Somehow, my body recovered, but my mind was shattered. My brain felt completely numb, literally. I don't even remember how I survived after that. For months, I lived like a ghost. Starving myself, my only daily routine was locking myself in my room and sobbing my eyes out.
Then came that fateful day. I was so starving that I finally decided to crawl out to the convenience store to grab a cup of instant ramen. On my way there, I was suddenly transported. Transferred. Yes, it was the classic, cliché summoning to another world.
The rest is a predictable story. As it turned out, I had been summoned as a Hero, the kingdom was on the brink of ruin, the Demon King's army was doing this and that... To put it bluntly, being a Hero was a terrible job. Compared to risking your life on the daily, the pay and treatment were abysmal. The only consolation was the adoration of the public, but even that was fickle. If you messed up even slightly—meaning, if you failed to slay the monsters in time and a village suffered damage—you'd immediately be met with cold, resentful glares.
On the flip side, performing too well was also a problem. If you garnered too much support from the citizens and your influence grew to the point of threatening the throne, the king would gladly stab you in the back. It was a classic double-edged sword. But back then, I was out of my mind anyway. Without caring about any of those political schemes, I was merely living because I couldn't die. If anything, I was glad to have been summoned as a Hero, welcoming the chance to throw my life away on the battlefield.
Rolling through the dirt, never backing down from any death trap, and surviving countless life-or-death struggles... I finally succeeded in taking the Demon King's head. It was a monumental achievement that absolutely no one had expected me to pull off. Upon my return, the kingdom threw a massive triumphal parade, and victory banquets were held non-stop. It was pure madness. And then, the king subtly asked me:
"Do you have a wish, Hero? If you desire, we have the means to pray to the Goddess and return you to your original world."
I let out a dry chuckle and shook my head. I had no reason to go back. Even if I returned, only a cold, empty room would welcome me. A room devoid of warmth, a lonely existence with no family and no friends... I was much better off staying in this world and living in comfort. Having survived death so many times, my sanity had returned to some degree, and I had grown attached to the people I'd spent the last ten years with.
"Is there nothing else you desire? I shall grant anything within my power." As the king spoke, I caught a faint trace of anxiety in his eyes. He was terrified of me, and I was a burden. He had summoned me to drive away the Demon King, but in doing so, my power and influence had grown far too immense. The citizens, who had suffered through endless war, practically worshipped the ground I walked on for decapitating the Demon King. I wouldn't be surprised if they supported me even if I staged a coup.
"I wish to retire." But I was someone with no such ambitions. Even when the king's close aides secretly approached me, trying to coax me with sweet whispers, I felt no temptation. What was the point of power? I couldn't have the one thing I truly wanted anyway. Money, women—it was all meaningless to me now. I told the king I wanted to move to a quiet countryside estate under the pretext of recuperation. In truth, I did need to heal. My overworked body had been utterly ruined during the final battle with the Demon King. Left with semi-permanent disabilities, I figured I had twenty years left to live at best.
The king accepted my proposal, and I was able to lead a peaceful, leisurely life in a quiet rural fief. Living off the fortune I'd amassed, doing absolutely nothing until my final breath—it was the perfect ending for me. But life never goes according to plan. Who could have foreseen that my family would die on my twenty-third birthday, or that I would suddenly be summoned to another world? Some might say that this unpredictability is what makes life interesting, but that sentiment never resonated with me.
Slash! A silver line flashed through the air, and the heads of the monsters occupying the space rolled to the ground. Even a ruined masterpiece is still a masterpiece; even with a worn-out body, I could still manage this level of swordsmanship. It was a sudden monster wave that had descended upon our quiet village. Drenched in monster blood, I scanned the area. If I wasn't careful, the casualties would skyrocket. Being a remote countryside village, there wasn't even a local militia. I was the militia, the captain, and the sole combatant.
"H-Hero!" As I was surveying the village after clearing the monsters, a village woman ran up to me, her face pale with terror, babbling incoherently. Once I managed to piece her words together, I realized a massive monster had kidnapped her daughter.
"Which way did it go?"
"T-That way..."
A petite girl with bright blonde hair. After getting a rough description of her daughter, I dashed in the direction the monster had fled. Tearing through the wind to close the distance, I eventually spotted the massive beast the woman had described. Damn it, why is it so huge? It was a colossal monster, the kind I'd only seen a handful of times even in the Abyss, the land of death. I had no idea why such a creature had appeared in this remote countryside, but at that moment, I felt a premonition of defeat.
I had already fought too many enemies alone to get here. I had pushed my broken, uncooperative body far past its limits. Facing an opponent that would be difficult to defeat even at peak condition, in this state, meant certain death.
"Put the kid down and scram." Even so, I couldn't back down. I was a Hero, but more importantly, I was an adult. Though she was a child I'd never met, protecting her life was my duty. In a battle where defeat was practically guaranteed, I aimed for a double suicide. At the very least, I had to ensure the child escaped safely.
Screeech! My gamble paid off. The monster collapsed, dead, with my sword buried deep in its skull. Immediately after, my exhausted body gave out and hit the ground. I forced my head up to look ahead. In the distance, the little girl was running away as fast as her legs could carry her, her brilliant blonde hair fluttering in the wind... Yes, that was enough. Satisfied, I closed my eyes.
"...So, Jeong-ah, let me get this straight. You're saying you're actually a twenty-three-year-old man who was summoned to another world, lived as a Hero for ten years, died fighting to protect a little girl, and somehow woke up in that very girl's body? Did I understand you correctly?"
"Exactly... I'm actually a grown man, and definitely not some fourteen-year-old kid—"
Thwack! The teacher's sharp flick came flying at me. With the reflexes of a former Hero, I lightly dodged—
"Ow...!"
...Or not. My new body was simply too weak and too slow.
"How dare you try to pull one over on your teacher? Stop talking nonsense and get ready for school."
As expected, it was a story no one would ever believe.