Only Me
I could barely remember what had happened.
Only as I drifted up from sleep did the sensations of my body slowly return—and with them came overwhelming pain and heat. I let out a scream before I could stop myself, and only then managed to get my body under control.
Control was all I had. Nothing else about me was intact. A foreign presence lingered between my legs, and my pelvis felt twisted, creaking with every shift. Heat crawled up my lower back and drew a moan from my throat. My stiff waist cracked and popped at the slightest movement. I had never been flexible, but I never imagined my body could feel this bad. Tears welled up.
What kind of pain was this?
It was a sensation my mind simply could not process. I forced my hazy eyes open wide. The room that swam into view felt familiar and strange at once. When I jerked my head around in surprise, I realized I was in my own room.
“Ugh…?”
I should have been in Song Hamin’s room. Instead I was here. When I blankly looked down, the sight of my large breasts and the tight grip of a bra around them pulled a pained sound from me without permission.
We were back to normal.
It was what I had wanted at the start—but after everything we had done, coming back only filled me with dread. After what I had done to Song Hamin, I could not expect to live comfortably at home. I might not have used my fists, but what I had done with my lower half was still a kind of violence. If he decided he wanted revenge, I would have no way to resist.
I told myself it was karma, but the fear still settled in. Of course it did. The one who had clearly done the fucking was now the one who had been fucked, and I was feeling every bit of that pain. If I had at least felt a woman’s pleasure mixed in for a moment, maybe it would have been different. Instead the raw, stinging sensation left my whole body feeling wrong.
I pressed my thighs together and ground my creaking pelvis, trying to ease it. If that had been enough to make it better, it would have gotten better long ago.
More importantly—where was Song Hamin?
I gathered myself and sat up. Curiosity about how he would react outweighed everything else. My stinging ass still bothered me, but once I was moving, the only real problem was my clumsy, shambling gait. I lurched forward. My unsteady body pitched ahead under its own weight, and when I opened the door the momentum made it feel like I had nearly slammed into it. Mildly embarrassed, I leaned against the frame and stared.
Now that I was standing there, I had no idea what to say.
He was gaming, of all things. He had not touched it in ages; I had thought he had lost interest. He was on a call with his friends, laughing, having a great time. Of course he was—he would only be doing it if it was fun.
I was sweating too much. Was it because my head felt strange? Because I was using every bit of strength just to endure this sensation? Either way, my mind really did feel like it was coming apart. That was probably why my heart was hammering.
“…Sleep well?”
He took off his headset and greeted me as if nothing had happened. Why was he so unfazed? After nearly a month of everything we had gone through, looking at him felt like looking at the face from a month ago.
I must have been the one who had changed.
The confusion left me with nothing coherent to say. I stammered out something ridiculous.
“W-we’re back?”
“Woke up and it was just like this.”
“Why? How?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. I still did not know the cause. I still could not understand why any of it had happened. Just when the discomfort had started turning into something familiar, we had snapped back to normal, and my head felt scrambled. So why did he seem completely fine?
I stared at Song Hamin with wide eyes. I still could not believe I had lived with that face. It felt like a dream I had only just woken from. As if to prove the dream was over, a throbbing ache shot through my crotch. I sucked in a breath and scratched hard at my thighs. I did not actually believe that would make the pain go away.
“At least the worrying’s over, right? Rest a bit more, then finish whatever proposal you were working on.”
His casual tone felt awkward. It had felt similar when our bodies first swapped, but now it was as if Song Hamin no longer looked like Song Hamin. Looking at him in my body had somehow been more comfortable. What was that feeling called?
I was too lost to sort any of it out. After a few more exchanges, Song Hamin shut down the computer, threw on some clothes, and left to meet his friends.
Alone in the house, I was left to wrestle with the lingering, subtle pain. In the end it was a fight against myself, so there could be no winner. I could not simply stop enduring it, so I scratched and pounded at myself, trying to redirect the sensation somewhere else.
I lay on the bed and sniffed the air. Of course there was no foreign scent. I had come back to my own room in my own body. I burrowed into the blankets and curled up tight, turning over the same questions again and again: why had our bodies returned, and why had they swapped in the first place?
Things did not just flip back and forth for no reason, without any warning. Even the scripts I used to write when I was bragging about getting into a broadcasting company had a clear beginning, middle, and end. For something to happen, there had to be a cause that came before it. Body swaps were not supposed to be possible at all.
“Ah, fuck.”
As I dug through my memory, yesterday’s words surfaced. I had said them half in surrender, when there had been no sign we would ever go back—and then we had returned in a single day, and my head went blank.
I already knew how hard it was to hold back a man’s lust; I had lived it. Just when it seemed like I was getting used to it, the pressure would build until I felt like a volcano about to erupt. There was no guarantee Song Hamin would be any different, and that left me uneasy. I had done it in a man’s body, but never in a woman’s, so the worry came first. Then again, considering how many times I had violated my own body, maybe I did not need to worry that much.
What did Song Hamin think of me now? We had never been that kind of pair before. Would he just treat everything as if it had never happened?
I had no idea.
The silent house felt familiar and lonely at the same time. Before he came back from the military, this had been normal. After a month of living pressed so close together, the emptiness beside me felt hollow in a way I had not expected. It was not that I envied him going out with friends. Friends only made me uncomfortable anyway. Between girls you always had to stay a little on guard, and if a rumor went wrong, I was the only one who suffered for it.
I sat on the sofa and squeezed my eyes shut.
You knew I liked him. How could you do that?
No matter how pretty you were, no matter how hard you tried to get along with everyone, the moment you heard those words it was over. That was not something you said without real venom behind it. From that instant it was practically a declaration of war. Rumors would spread, and you would become trash among the other girls. Accepting a confession was a problem; rejecting one was a problem. Trapped with nowhere to go, you still got slowly cornered just for saying no. Sometimes people even asked why I was being so stuck-up, and I could only stare in disbelief. I had never even flirted.
“Ah, this is driving me crazy.”
Why was that memory surfacing now, making my head throb all over again? It was because Song Hamin had mentioned getting someone’s number. Men were all animals. Even the confessions were just so they could try to sleep with you once. If there had been some real connection at university, maybe I could have believed they actually liked me—but numbers were pure surface, people lunging at looks alone. I had seen enough of that to be thoroughly sick of it.
The problem was that now I understood why.
“How was I supposed to just sit still when my body was reacting like that?”
Ugh. The sensation of getting hard looking at my own body was still burned into me. Other men must have wanted to try it for similar reasons. Now that I understood, I could almost shrug it off. That did not mean I wanted to go back to school. I had no confidence left for squeezing into that little political arena and grinding through group projects. I had barely scraped into a major I felt nothing for; there was no affection there to begin with.
I sat blankly on the living-room sofa and let time pass—until the sun went down and the night turned black. Then Song Hamin came home from the drinking plans he had mentioned. He walked into his room without a word. I blinked. Did he have nothing to say? He did not even greet me.
Had he gotten sick of me? I supposed that was possible. Just as I had learned a man’s heart, Song Hamin might have learned a woman’s. I still could not tell what kind of gaze he was turning on me now. I could not even find my footing.
I asked how meeting his friends had been. He answered casually, exactly like the Song Hamin I had always known. It felt like I was the only one who had changed. It felt unfair, too—wanting things not to change, and then wondering if I had left no mark on him at all. The contradictory feelings twisted me into something strange. I felt like an idiot. Maybe I really was one.
“You weren’t waiting up watching TV because of that, were you?”
“N-no. I was resting and time just… slipped by.”
Staring at the TV without sleeping had left my eyes dry and gritty.
“Then go finish watching. I’m gonna shower.”
The slight chill in his tone made me feel a little hurt.
“You’re showering?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…”
I did not know what reaction I was supposed to give. I stammered, at a loss, and Song Hamin let out a short laugh, set a hand on my shoulder as he passed, and said:
“You don’t have to wash my back. I’m not gonna jump you like someone I know, so relax.”
With that he disappeared into the bathroom. I was the one who would have had no right to complain if he had stripped me by force. The rush of water poured down behind the closed door. I stood there staring at it.