Is Alcohol the Problem?
What the hell is going on?
I froze solid without even realizing it, trapped in a situation I couldn’t begin to grasp. I racked my brain desperately for some kind of understanding, but the thoughts that had started to tangle refused to spit out any answers.
In the end I clutched my head and decided to start over from the very beginning.
A naked body. Clothes and underwear were scattered beside me. They still felt faintly damp, as if soaked through with sweat, and a slight stickiness clung to my skin.
The real problem was that it wasn’t just me—Song Haneul, lying right next to me, was in the exact same state.
Having that solid, heavy frame occupying the space beside me was enough to make anyone jump out of their skin.
We’d agreed to stay in our own rooms with our own bodies, and only a few days had passed. Were we already breaking that? Why on earth would the two of us even share a bed in the first place?
My creaking joints felt wrong somehow. My lower half was numb to the point of tingling, and my pelvis already seemed out of alignment, complaining with every tiny shift.
My trembling hands finally seized the blanket. Even as I tried to brace myself, to dull the shock before I looked, I could feel only an anxious answer waiting underneath.
It feels like I’m not even wearing pants…
Why can I feel the texture of the blanket like this?
“Please.”
It can’t actually be that. No matter what, this can’t be it.
Every wild possibility raced through my mind. But the moment I threw the blanket aside, even that desperate hope felt completely crushed underfoot.
My bare lower body, left out in the open. I’d only ever seen it when I went to the bathroom; I’d never faced it like this before.
It wasn’t as if I’d stared for long—just fleeting glimpses while changing clothes. Thinking of it as Song Haneul’s body had been enough to kill any desire to look closer.
But now I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Fluid that had spilled out thickly between my legs had soaked a dark, circular stain into the blanket.
When my shaking fingers finally reached my crotch, they met a sticky, squelching sensation.
“Huh?”
Is this real? Is it a dream?
With all the bizarre things that had been happening lately, the line between dream and reality had started to blur.
I let out a dazed sound and lifted my hand. I stared blankly at the mucus stretching between my fingers, thinning out until it finally snapped.
This is semen.
“Hey. Hey!”
My trembling hand finally shook the sleeping Song Haneul beside me.
There was no way I’d just produced this on my own, and the second the realization hit, my stomach burned hot and felt ready to kill me with pain. I couldn’t think calmly anymore.
“Wake up. Aren’t you going to wake up?”
I snapped, veins standing out on my neck.
Even so, I wanted to demand whether this situation made any kind of sense at all.
“Ah, why… I’m tired.”
“It’s not time to sleep right now. You—you… what the hell did you do to me? Hurry up and talk.”
“…You said it was okay. You did too.”
“What…?”
Whether he was just mumbling half-asleep excuses or not, the answer that came back was unbelievable.
I barely remembered last night. Whenever I drank even a little, the film would cut out before long and I’d wake up with no memory of anything. There was no way I’d remember that.
If that was how it went, I should have just slept normally and woken up normally.
“I said it was okay?”
That can’t be right. If I’d actually said something like that, I shouldn’t be this full of revulsion right now, should I?
If I’m panicking this hard after the fact, it means I hadn’t even been thinking about it—which is exactly how it should be.
Did he take some random answer I gave while drunk as me saying it was fine?
Or does alcohol just make me say completely different things?
“Really…?”
Even so—does it make any sense for siblings to do this?
We’re twins, so we call each other casually every day, but this is clearly crossing a line.
I know full well that doing something like this with family is the kind of act that gets condemned the moment you step out into society. Just imagining doing it with someone you’ve lived with can only be explained as having some twisted thoughts in the first place.
My head spun. Every time my lower body throbbed, my eyes squeezed shut.
I let out a low moan at a reality that refused to be accepted.
“It can’t really be…”
Yesterday’s events came back in fragments.
Maybe I should have refused firmly while I still remembered. Or maybe the second I started drinking, this outcome had been unavoidable. Every possible thought crowded in, but the situation had already happened.
Was it really just something that exploded out of nowhere in a fit of heat?
I still couldn’t accept reality.
Looking at Song Haneul calmly continuing to sleep as if he were simply tired, I even started to wonder whether I was the only one taking this seriously.
“What is this…?”
My mind was a mess. It was strange how the memories refused to surface.
I blinked stupidly and pushed myself up from the bed. My pelvis throbbed like it had been wrenched out of place, and my crotch hurt so badly it felt ready to split open; every step forced me into a hobbling, awkward gait.
Only after I finally made it to the bathroom did I start heaving deep, shaky sighs.
It can’t be. Even while I thought that, I knew nothing about what had actually happened, so certainty itself was impossible.
I also knew that pushing too hard without evidence would leave me with no way to handle the fallout.
I turned on the shower. Standing under the pouring water like rain, I hung my head blankly.
Because of this body, cold water was almost impossible to endure. Hot water hitting my head made everything go fuzzy.
Water ran down my shoulders and between my breasts, then flowed toward my crotch. While I slowly rubbed at the sticky residue dried onto my thighs, I bit down hard on my lip.
Looking closer, there were quite a few bloodstains too.
“What the hell is this…”
A situation with no explanation. Understanding takes time, but I’d been handed nothing but the bare fact of what had happened, without a single clue.
Even the legs that had folded under me were still trembling.
Squatting there, I slowly slipped a hand between my legs.
To the place I usually tried not to touch except when washing or using the bathroom, I reached in a way that was completely different from anything I’d intended.
A squelching sensation unlike anything before.
The texture of sticky fluid that had worked its way into every fold.
Even the unpleasant dryness of what had hardened and clung to the skin.
It was disgusting. Thinking of it as mine made it even stranger. I couldn’t stop the goosebumps or the chill racing down my spine.
The corner of my mouth twisted.
The sound of the shower poured over my head.
What was it? What had it been?
Why had something like this happened?
Plenty of thoughts rose up, but none of them were easy to pull free. I had no sense of what attitude yesterday’s me had taken for things to end up like this.
I sat on the sofa in front of the TV and dryly worked the controller. I restarted over and over without caring how many times I died. Death no longer held any particular interest.
Because the game wasn’t what mattered right now.
Song Haneul was spending the day as if nothing had happened, calm and ordinary, while only I felt this alien wrongness. That gap still made no sense.
If he showed no guilt at all, it meant there had been some kind of agreement. But even if I hadn’t been in my right mind, I still wondered whether I would ever have given that kind of permission.
Had I been living with those kinds of thoughts normally?
Even if I’d been curious about a woman’s body, I didn’t think I would have said something like that to Song Haneul.
I’m not the weird one here, right?
I don’t know. Right now it feels like I shouldn’t be making any careless judgments.
“Playing games?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Don’t scare me like that.
“You must be tired, but you’re pretty diligent.”
Song Haneul yawned once, then ambled off toward the bathroom.
I went back to the room, changed clothes, then gathered the clothes that had been scattered across the bed and floor and dumped them into the washing machine.
I even dragged all the blankets off the bed and carried them across the living room.
After stuffing them into the machine, I gave an awkward little laugh.
“We’ve been washing the blankets a lot lately.”
Ah… so it really isn’t that?
“Uh, yeah…”
“Not feeling well?”
“Huh? Ah, no… it’s nothing.”
“Ah, you didn’t put a bra on. I’ll grab you a new one. Wait.”
He rummaged through a drawer in his room, pulled out one of the ones we’d bought before, and held it out to me.
I’d been about to just keep playing, but I quietly took it. Song Haneul hooked the clasp for me, and the familiar discomfort settled back in, locking my upper body into place.
Looking at his reaction, it really does seem like we did it with mutual consent… right?
But that doesn’t feel right. Does it make any sense for family to do something like that with “consent”?
At least from where my thoughts are right now, that shouldn’t be possible.
My head was still just as scrambled.
There was still the possibility that he’d taken advantage of a mind that couldn’t control its own body because of the alcohol, so I couldn’t drop the suspicion completely.
If he really used that, he’s a genuine bastard—but there’s no solid evidence.
“I’m starving the second I wake up. Should we eat something… want some ramen?”
“I’m good.”
“Alright then.”
He rustled a package by himself, quickly boiled a single pack of ramen, and started eating it with obvious enjoyment.
My lower abdomen felt heavy and bloated, so nothing was going in there anytime soon; even the smell didn’t tempt me.
Ugh. My stomach feels weird.
An alien sensation still lingered.
Even twisting my waist a little made it hit me hard.
The discomforts that came with a woman’s body were too many to put into words.
Why do I have to be the one feeling them?
It was absurd that something which never would have happened if we hadn’t switched bodies in the first place had happened at all.
I couldn’t concentrate on the game.
It just felt like I’d gone stupid. I no longer had the mental space left to care about something like that.
The small white hands that filled my vision were trembling slightly.
“It hurts.”
Is alcohol the problem? Is my mind the problem?
Whatever it is, something is definitely wrong.