A Joyful Self-Introduction
When he opened his eyes, Taehyun found himself lying on a bed.
He was certain he had blacked out in front of his monitor after reading that email. Who had laid him down, he had no idea.
"Ugh…"
The moment he pushed himself upright, clutching his throbbing head, he sensed that something was wrong.
"Huh?"
This was not Taehyun's snug little studio—his cozy nest of a room.
No dim lighting. No gaming PC. No oversized illustrations taped to the walls, no figures scattered across every surface.
There was only a clean white bed hemmed in by white curtains, for all the world like a hospital room. It looked exactly like a hospital bed.
"W-what on earth is going on…?"
The words slipped out before he could stop them—and Taehyun jolted in shock.
What had just left his mouth was the voice of a little girl. He cleared his throat again and again. It stayed the same.
"E-eek!"
Panicking, Taehyun patted himself down all over. His hair was long now. His hands were small. His legs were thin. And his chest… was roughly the same, only a little softer.
"Oh my god!"
He shot up from the bed in pure terror, shoved the curtains aside, and stumbled out. A desk held a futuristic monitor; a cabinet was lined with medicine bottles—but none of that mattered right now.
Mirror… I need a mirror!
Taehyun scanned the room and bolted for the full-length mirror standing in the corner.
In the glass stood a little girl wearing an expression of absolute horror.
Shoulder-length black hair and a pretty face. Children's-size pants and a pink vest over a shirt. And a white doctor's coat so oversized the sleeves had been rolled up several times.
She looked like a cute girl of maybe fifteen—but the name tag pinned near the coat's chest read as follows.
School Nurse Han Lua
"Ah… uh… what even…"
Taehyun—no, Lua—staggered backward in a daze.
She knew this person. This character. In the open-world RPG Hunter Hunting Academy, she was the NPC who cast recovery skills whenever you stopped by the nurse's office.
Useful enough early on, sure—but once you stopped being a total beginner, you never had reason to see her again. Why trek all the way to the nurse's office buried deep in the academy when you could just learn a recovery skill yourself?
I've been transmigrated. Into Han Lua.
Lua swallowed hard. Web novels with setups like this were everywhere—but she had never imagined she would become the subject of one.
"Huh? Wait. Then…?"
An ominous thought flashed through her mind. Lua shoved a hand down the front of her pants.
—Nothing.
"Ah—aaaah…"
It felt like the sky was falling. The junior she had spent her whole life with was simply gone. She had never taken him into actual combat, sure, but he had always been a little friend who brought her small joys.
Of all things, why a female NPC…
Whoever had done this to her, and for whatever reason, they were clearly a monster.
If they had meant to reward her, they would have dropped her into some handsome, popular protagonist. Getting stuck as a school nurse nobody cared about was closer to a punishment than anything else.
"……"
Lua thought it over for a moment, then shook her head.
No. Actually, this might be a blessing.
The protagonist of Hunter Hunting Academy was constantly meeting new students, fighting alongside comrades, forging friendships and romances.
—There was no way Lua could do any of that.
Her social skills were basically zero. No—they were zero.
Around strangers she could not even hold a conversation, could not even look them in the face. Even asking the convenience-store clerk—the person she saw most often—to ring her up left her breathless, heart hammering.
After nearly ten years shut away in her room, that was only natural.
So becoming an extra school nurse was genuinely fortunate.
…Wait. No it isn't.
The moment she realized she had been reassuring herself, Lua shook her head again.
Just being at a school is already a disaster!
Ever since that failed confession in elementary school, campus life had been nothing but trauma. A place where she had sat from morning to afternoon with not a single friend, staring only at textbooks.
She had finally earned her parole—graduation—and reached the paradise of her own studio apartment… so why had she ended up back at school?
"S-send me baaack…"
Lua clawed at her hair and thrashed on the floor. Nothing changed except her clothes getting rumpled and her hair turning into a bird's nest.
And then—
—Ding-dong-ding-dong.
A clear chime rang from the ceiling speakers, announcing a campus broadcast.
"This is an announcement from the Felix Academy broadcast room. The entrance ceremony will begin shortly. All new students and faculty currently on campus, please gather in the gymnasium. Repeating this announcement…"
"I-I can't go."
An entrance ceremony? Impossible. For Lua, who hated crowds and open spaces, it would be pure hell.
She scrambled up at once and crawled under the teacher's desk. There was just enough room inside to sit with both knees drawn up—dark, cramped, and wonderfully calming.
"Whew. There's no way they'd call the school nurse to an entrance ceremony, but…"
She had hidden just in case someone came looking.
…About ten minutes passed like that.
"This is an announcement from the Felix Academy broadcast room. School Nurse Han Lua, please come to the gymnasium immediately."
"Urgh."
Direct hit.
Lua finally crawled out from under the desk and opened the nurse's office door.
It's exactly like the game.
The academy corridors she had walked thousands—tens of thousands—of times in-game were identical. Only now they were real, at a resolution beyond any comparison.
Fortunately, everyone in the school had gone to the entrance ceremony, so the halls were completely empty.
"Repeating this announcement. Teacher Han Lua…"
"I-I'm goiiing…!"
Lua snapped timidly at the empty air and hurried toward the gymnasium. Wind through an open corridor window set her white coat and long hair streaming behind her.
Felix Academy.
According to the lore of Hunter Hunting Academy, this was a school that trained hunters to fight the monsters inside the gates. Located in South Korea and held in worldwide esteem, it was packed with exceptional students.
The campus was enormous to match—an entire artificial island larger than most university grounds.
And the biggest building on that campus was the gymnasium. Ordinarily the students' main training hall, it boasted a vast interior spacious enough to practice even large-scale offensive techniques without restraint.
"Ugh, uuugh, this is awful."
To Lua, of course, that only made it worse. Wide-open spaces were her absolute nightmare.
And right now, the crowd was huge. By Lua's recollection there were roughly a hundred new students and about fifty teachers—plus visiting parents and education officials for the ceremony. She did not even want to try counting.
"Ah, Teacher—you'll want to head up that way."
A student wearing a "Helper" armband must have recognized Lua hovering near the entrance; they approached and pointed toward the stage.
The teachers of Felix Academy sat in a single row up on the platform. Below them, the students watched with curious eyes, studying the people who would be teaching them.
Lua wanted to cry. This was not a zoo.
"C-can't I just stay down here?"
The helper student looked thoroughly flustered, clearly never expecting a teacher to cling to a student like this.
"I'm afraid not. We're about to start."
The student shook their head. Lacking even the courage to plead further, Lua finally climbed onto the stage and sat in an empty chair. Every student gaze locked onto her at once, of course.
"What? That kid's a teacher too?"
"Shh, careful. You know you can't judge a strong person by looks."
"Still, she's cute."
"Right? Look, her feet don't even reach the floor."
The students' laughter-tinged whispers reached Lua perfectly well.
Hearing that last remark, she tried her hardest to press her feet to the ground—but with her pitiful height, it was hopeless.
Pleaseendpleaseendpleaseendpleaseendpleaseend…
All she could do was pray.
Fortunately, the students' focus on her eventually faded.
The emcee's voice rolled through the entire gymnasium, and the hall fell quiet.
After a few solemn minor rites, an elderly man stepped up to the central podium.
Of course Lua knew him. He appeared in the game, after all.
In his youth, Pyo Yeonghan had been known by the epithet "Snow Leopard" and risen all the way to S-class hunter; now he devoted himself to training the next generation.
Seeing him with my own eyes is something else.
Looking around, she spotted other major characters from the game scattered among the students as well. After knowing them only as game graphics, meeting them in person was fresh and fascinating—but now that she was a person rather than a player character, her social anxiety responded magnificently.
"…I believe there will be heroes among you. That is all."
While Lua's mind wandered, the speech ended. Pyo Yeonghan withdrew amid thunderous applause.
Seems like they've covered everything an entrance ceremony needs. Shouldn't they dismiss us soon?
But the world, as always, refused to go according to plan.
Applause poured from the students, and the teacher at the far left stood.
Then he accepted a microphone from a waiting helper student.
…Huh?
"Hello, I'm Park Sihyeok. A pleasure to meet you all. Basic swordsmanship is an essential subject every hunter must master…"
Huhhh?
Nobody had said anything about self-introductions.
In front of this many students, under every single gaze, holding a microphone and talking?
"Hiiiek…"
The mic passed from hand to hand, one person at a time. As her turn drew closer, Lua's mind went blank white, her stomach churned, and the blood drained from her hands and feet.
She couldn't do it.
Absolutely could not do it.
She got flustered and tongue-tied just talking to a convenience-store clerk—and they wanted her to introduce herself in front of over a hundred students?
"Good to meet you! I'll be in charge of you lot's physical training—"
While Lua sank into full panic, the microphone had already reached the person beside her.
Something… I need to think of something…!
Applause rose as the teacher next to her sat down, and at last Lua stood, clutching her roiling stomach.
"……"
Students, parents, fellow teachers, and Chairman Pyo Yeonghan himself—every one of them was looking at Lua.
She steeled herself.
Right. Just take one step forward.
She was living a new life in a new world. Time to leave the shut-in of her previous life behind. No more fearing people. She would live with her head held high!
"Ah…"
At last, Lua parted her trembling lips and began to speak.
The instant everyone focused on the voice that broke the silence—
"H-hello, I'm the school nurse, blaaargh."
—what came out was not a greeting, but a magnificent rainbow.
"Kyaaaah!"
"W-what the—!"
"Ugh, gross…"
Fellow teachers moved at once, and the situation was quickly brought under control—but a faint restlessness lingered in the gymnasium until the ceremony finally ended.
Among the new students, the whispers never stopped: about the school nurse who had suddenly thrown up, fainted, and been carried out on a stretcher.