My Bank Balance: 120,000 Won
"Ugh!"
My head felt like it was splitting open. It was as if someone had reached into my skull and started stirring my brains around at will.
Things that were not my memories—alien, foreign things—had shoved their way into my head and settled in, clumsy and half-formed.
My breath came in ragged gasps. My mind flickered out and snapped back in. The world spun in dizzy circles.
"Haa, haa... son of a bitch..."
I clutched my head and staggered to my feet, then stumbled over to the water dispenser and filled a cup. I needed something—anything—to pull myself together.
Ice-cold water streamed into the clear plastic cup. I swallowed it down in greedy gulps. The freezing liquid cascaded down my throat like a waterfall, and it was enough to bring me back, just a little.
By then, those alien memories had already taken up residence in my head.
"...Bullshit."
They were the memories of me. Of Lee Se-won.
"This is actually real?"
I'd thought it was nonsense even as I ran through it in my own head—and the world was telling me it was true. Those foreign memories themselves were the proof. That sensation of something rummaging through my skull.
Even if the entire world had staged The Truman Show just for my benefit, it still couldn't have cracked open my brain and poured a set of memories inside. A phenomenon no theory could touch. And that inexplicable experience was what made sense of this grotesque situation.
Which left me more than a little unsettled.
"Come on..."
A little warning would've been nice. You just yank me over here without so much as a heads-up? What about the family I left behind? What about my friends?
I spent a solid hour just groaning about it. When something this sudden hits you, adaptation isn't an option. You simply don't. I was no exception. Anxiety had wrapped itself around me like a second skin.
And then, as time passed...
I decided to accept it.
"...Hah."
Fine. I'd already landed. Brooding on my own wasn't going to spit out any answers, and there was nothing I could do about a phenomenon like this anyway. If there was no way back... I'd just have to adapt.
Come to think of it, I hadn't had any friends to begin with.
Instead of wallowing, I decided to pick through the memories of this world's Lee Se-won. Fortunately, the memories themselves hadn't swallowed me whole. I was still the one holding the reins.
How to put it? It felt as if Lee Se-won's memories had been put on display in a corner of a reading room, separate from my own. I could take them down and use them whenever I needed. A remarkably convenient filing system.
I closed my eyes and quietly examined his memories.
Age twenty-two. Lee Se-won. Male.
Height 176 centimeters, weight seventy kilograms. Same build, at least. His past didn't look all that different from mine, either. The same brush with talent. The same despair. And in the end, the same failure. Twice. The overall framework of this guy's life looked identical to mine.
The differences, such as they were, were things like this. And those differences were pretty significant.
...This bastard actually got confessed to?
The original me—the loner Lee Se-won from my world—had never received a confession in his life. Fine, high school had been all-boys, so that was a lost cause. But middle school had been co-ed, and I still hadn't gotten a single one.
A little sad, honestly.
But this world's Lee Se-won was different. Twice in middle school. Once in high school. Three confessions over the course of his life, from the look of it. He'd turned them all down, for whatever reason. But the fact that he'd received them at all was what mattered. It meant someone had genuinely been into him, right?
Are all the guys on this side like that?
Getting confessed to a few times over the course of a lifetime, I mean. A question formed in my head.
I got up and headed straight for the bathroom. I wanted to check my face in the mirror. There might be some kind of difference.
I'd never been called ugly, even in my original world. Honestly, the base model was decent enough. Back in high school I'd even overheard things like, That guy's looks are fine, so why's his personality such garbage? Anyway, I had a reasonable amount of confidence in my appearance. Objectively speaking, I was at least average.
The question was what else was different enough to produce a result like "confessions"...
And then I looked in the mirror, and I couldn't help but be surprised.
"...Oh."
It was me. Definitely me—but an upgraded version of me. My skin was clear as glass, not a single blemish on it. My nose sat a little higher. My jawline had taken on a sharper cut. The hard edge in my eyes and the dark circles beneath them were the same as always... but I looked genuinely good. Handsome, even. Even without the mirror buff.
"Did this bastard actually take care of himself?"
I admired my unexpectedly polished face for a moment, then dug through Lee Se-won's memories. This world's Lee Se-won seemed to care more about his appearance than I ever had. There were memories of him doing face massages at night, of researching toners and cleansing foams to find what actually worked for him.
People always said you'd change if you took care of yourself. Apparently even that modest amount of effort had been enough for the base model to actually shine.
Good. This was good news. A pleasant face has never been a liability, not since the dawn of time. If anything, there was no better cheat for putting life on easy mode.
"The house looks about the same as where I used to live, too..."
I spent a long time after that combing through Lee Se-won's memories. To adapt to a changed world, you need the existing information. And in that regard, his memories were useful. The common sense he carried—similar to mine, yet different in places—gave me a clear picture of what kind of world this was.
Starting from the age of one, I spun through Lee Se-won's memories until I was looking at the beginning of his twenty-first year. The stretch when I'd given up on art school and started hunting for another path.
Back then... meaning the original me... I'd chosen to become an NSFW artist. It let me put everything I'd built up to use, and it paid reasonably well. It sat in a slightly illegal gray zone in Korea, but at the time, nothing else came close. The sheer number of people who loved my drawings had even helped me put my self-worth back together.
So I'd figured this Lee Se-won would have walked a similar road. He'd have had the same unfinished business with drawing, after all.
"Huh?"
...He hadn't. From that point on, he'd veered onto a completely different track. He'd enrolled in some random university out of nowhere and started living a college life with his brain switched off. Cafeteria food. New friends. Studying. The ordinary daily grind of any other student.
...No. Scratch that.
Let me revise. Lee Se-won hadn't even managed that. Just when it looked like he might actually attend, the rot set in. Skipping lectures because he didn't feel like sitting through them. Skipping because he was tired. And eventually, he stopped setting foot on campus at all.
The original me had expectations for college too. Drinking together. Making new friends. Maybe even trying out the whole campus-couple thing. He'd probably walked through those gates expecting the same, and when the real thing didn't match the fantasy, he'd just boarded himself up in his room.
I couldn't help the groan that rose in my chest at the sight of it.
"Aigoo, you useless bastard..."
Still, you clean up what you can before you move on. Take a leave of absence or something—you don't just go full ghost. All that did was deny reality and shove the problem down the road. Give up fast, or cling on until your knuckles go white. This guy had picked the worst option available.
Which left me worrying about the tuition and the rent he'd have to cover. The money going out of this place couldn't have been a joke.
...Wait. Hold on. Rent?
Come to think of it, how is this guy even living on his own?
In my case I made money drawing, but he didn't, did he?
The moment that thought landed, a chill ran through my entire body. I immediately unlocked my phone and opened the banking app I always used. I'd never felt my chest tighten like this.
"No fucking way. Fuck. Fuck, it can't be."
There should have been a balance somewhere around ten million won sitting there. Money I'd worked myself to the bone for an entire year to save. There was no way that was gone. I checked the balance, praying it would still be there.
But...
Reality was brutal.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"
I screamed for real. My brain, which had been working so hard to adapt, felt like it was about to burn to a crisp.
And then Lee Se-won's memories poured gasoline on the fire. Over six million won in student loans to pay back. And even the rent on this place had been borrowed from his parents. More than once.
"AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
"No! This isn't real! This can't be reeeal!!!"
The sheer horror of it nearly made me black out. So I was a complete bum, and I was sitting on over six million in debt? The dedicated following I'd built up on Paxiv had never existed in the first place?
"Lee Se-won, you son of a bitch!!!! How could you do this to me!!!!"
I was speechless. Terror seeped into every inch of my body. It felt like Nyarlathotep himself was standing right in front of me. Nyarlathotep... whose true identity was none other than six million won of debt. It was more terrifying than anything else.
"Hoo... calm down. Calm down."
After a long stretch of losing my mind, I finally managed to settle. Right. Throwing a fit wasn't going to change anything, so I just had to accept it. It was a truly fucked-up fact. Or wait—now that the world's been flipped, maybe I should call it a cunted-up fact.
With that stupid thought rattling around, I dug through his head again. I was hoping to find something useful.
Fortunately, Lee Se-won had a part-time job he'd been working. A cafe gig. It was his only source of income.
"...Oh."
Except he'd quit. Just recently.
"Heh. Fuck."
At this point, it was less anger and more laughter. Lee Se-won, you useless piece of shit. I gave up expecting anything from him. Fine. I'd handle it all myself.
There was a lot to think about—money and everything else—but the most urgent thing right now was this. A dry, official text sitting on my phone.
An academic warning text. Basically: you're about to be removed from the student body, so get over here. It didn't look like I'd been expelled yet, but I was right on the doorstep.
There was only one way to deal with this.
"Hoo... guess I'm going."
To campus. I was going.