Creatures of Adaptation

Humans are creatures of adaptation.

"Ah, I'm sorry."

The woman who'd been asking for my number backed off at once. Is this what they call fighting fire with fire? The friendly-but-suspicious desk clerk had just driven a cultist straight out the door. She turned back to me.

"I'm so sorry, sir. Soliciting like that is prohibited at our gym. I believe she simply wasn't aware — she hasn't been a member ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for very long."

"Ah, right..."

"We should have informed you beforehand. I apologize."

Was there even a rule like that? Even if there was, it never seemed to get enforced when a woman was the one asking a man for his number. Or was she just protecting her prey from someone else trying to snatch it? I was grateful she'd rescued me from a cultist, but the clerk was still plenty suspicious herself.

"It's fine."

"Thank you for being so understanding. This is partly our fault, so we'll give you a complimentary month. Would you be able to stop by the front desk for a moment?"

Huh? They're going that far? A woman had tried to get a guy's number. That was it. This was a wildly excessive response, and it was starting to scare me. So I told her it was fine and fled to the locker room.

What the hell was going on? Ever since I'd walked into this gym, it had been one strange thing after another. The desk clerk hitting on me. A gym packed with nothing but women. Someone asking for my number. And now this over-the-top response. One event after another that sat well outside the bounds of any common sense I knew.

I pulled out my phone and opened KakaoTalk. I was going to dump this whole story in the group chat with my friends. They'd tell me to shut up with the bullshit and ask if I was on something. I could already see those reactions as clearly as if they'd already happened, but I wanted to see them anyway. I figured that would put me at ease. Imagining their replies, I opened the message window.

"Huh? What?"

The group chat wasn't there. I scrolled and scrolled. It never appeared. Everything in the list was just promotional spam. I switched to my friends list.

Gone. My friends didn't exist anywhere. The entire list fit on a single screen, and no matter how much I tried to scroll, it wouldn't go any further. I even checked my contacts. Every last one of them had vanished.

"What the hell?"

A wave of unease crashed over me. I changed in a hurry and headed out of the gym.

"Sir, could I speak with you for a moment...?"

"Sorry."

I walked right past the clerk who'd tried to stop me and left the building. It was a thirty-minute walk from the gym to my place. If I ran, I could make it in ten. I cinched my bag straps tight and took off.

"Whoa."

"Hey. Look at that."

"Holy shit."

Even after I left the gym, the strangeness didn't stop. Every person I passed either stared at me blankly or let out a gasp of admiration, and every last one of them was a woman. Some looked me up and down. Others just stood there with their mouths hanging open, gawking. I had no idea what to do with any of it. How many times had I run this exact route? This had never happened before. I felt like a monkey on exhibit in the middle of the street. Everyone was looking at me. One guy even clicked his tongue when he saw me. Why?

I ran even faster. It was a blatant overpace, a speed that blew right past what my stamina could handle, and by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the time I got home my heart was pounding like it was about to explode.

"Hah... hah... hah..."

I stumbled inside, gasping for air. A studio of about three hundred and fifty square feet — spacious for a one-room, which meant it hadn't come cheap. I dropped my bag, regulated my breathing, and tried to calm the heart slamming against my ribs.

It felt like I'd been set adrift, naked, in the open ocean. One incomprehensible thing after another had piled up until my brain simply overloaded. Fear. The fear that this might not be the world I knew. The terror of the unknown had closed in around me.

I went into the bathroom and took a cold shower, letting the icy water wash over me until the heat left my body. I felt a little calmer. I finished up, came out, and sat down at my desk.

Let's think this through from the beginning.

The desk clerk. The men working out at the gym. The place packed with female members. Those stares I'd run into on the way home. It had felt like I'd become a woman — like I was a woman surrounded by men.

A woman?

Something flickered through my mind. I immediately turned on my computer and started digging through the internet. A little while later, I muttered under my breath.

"You've got to be kidding me."

The world had been flipped upside down.

I don't know how many hours I spent digging through the internet, unable to believe what I was seeing. But reality didn't change. Hadn't I felt it on my skin from the very start? That feeling of being dropped into the open ocean hadn't been an illusion. This really was a different world from the one I knew, and I had felt that alienness with perfect clarity.

The people I knew were gone. No — more precisely, they still existed. But they were different on the inside. Guys who'd never touched any social ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠media besides KakaoTalk now had Instagram accounts and posted a ridiculous number of photos, just like women. I went through their posts one by one, but they were completely different people who just happened to have the same faces and the same names.

Which meant I was alone again.

I'd never really had parents. They'd died in an accident when I was little. I'd been a late child, raised by my grandparents, and they had passed away not long after I finished my military service. They hadn't been sick. They'd simply grown old and gone, the natural way. It had been sad, but I'd gotten back on my feet quickly. I'd been prepared for it, and my friends had been there to encourage me.

Those friends were gone.

I was lost. Why had this happened to me? Unable to accept reality, I stared at the monitor for a long, long time.

Humans are creatures of adaptation. We adapted quickly, and that is how we advanced, survived, and eventually became the rulers of the food chain. A day passed. Then two. And as time went on, I adapted to reality.

I'd adapted when my parents died. I'd adapted when my grandparents died. I'd found a way to keep living either way. Even if the world had changed and my friends were gone, I still had to live. The world had changed, but I was still the same. My body. My assets. My values. Nothing about me had changed. I supposed that was something to be grateful for.

I didn't have any particular talents, and I didn't have a job. All I had was the inheritance my parents and grandparents had left me. My parents had run a business — I remembered it doing fairly well — and when they died in the accident, it went to my grandparents and me. I was a child, and my grandparents weren't equipped to run a company, so we sold our shares. It was a lot of money, especially considering all we'd sold was a small factory with maybe twenty employees.

When my grandparents passed as well, that money came to me in full. No — even after taxes, it had actually grown. Turns out Grandpa had a real knack for investing. Grandma told me that before she passed. Thanks to him, I was living without any financial hardship despite having no skills and no job, and this apartment was mine, too. If it weren't for my parents and grandparents, I probably would have starved to death by now.

Once I accepted that I'd arrived in a reversed world, the first thing I did was visit the columbarium — to see if my parents and grandparents were still there. Fortunately, they were right where I remembered them. I was so, so relieved. Coming back from that visit, I felt a lot more settled. There was no one beside me, but I had found the strength to live again.

I packed my bag and left the house. I'd gotten back on my feet, so I might as well start with a workout. It was time to go to the gym. I'd skipped a whole four days — even counting rest days, that was two extra days off — and I could practically hear my muscles wasting away. I hurried toward the gym at a run. A moderate amount of cardio helps with muscle growth, and doing cardio before weight training warms up the body and cuts down on injuries.

I arrived at the building at a run and headed up the stairs. The automatic doors slid open with a whir, and the desk clerk I'd seen before lit up at the sight of me.

"Oh! You came in today, sir!"

"Ah, yeah."

I'd misunderstood her before, so the greeting came out awkward. Though it would have been awkward even without the misunderstanding.

"We were so worried you weren't coming back because of us."

"Ahaha..."

"Please, let me apologize again."

"Ah, sure."

She bowed her head, and I returned the gesture. I hadn't even been thinking about it that much, so receiving an apology for it was just uncomfortable. Can I just go work out already? I pulled out my card and tapped it on the terminal.

"Well, I'll just—"

"Ah! Just a moment!"

What now?

"As a gesture of apology, we've prepared a full year's membership! The one month we mentioned last time felt far too short. We'll load it onto your account right away — that's alright with you, isn't it?"

It was far too generous a compensation for me to say it wasn't. Even if I didn't have to worry about money, I wasn't the type to throw it around. The more you had, the better. The more you saved, the better.

"I'll gratefully accept."

"Wonderful! Please keep using our gym for a long time."

Her face lit up. Was it really something to be that happy about? Then I thought about it, and it actually made a fair amount of sense. This gym sat in a somewhat out-of-the-way location. The space was large, but the membership didn't look all that high, and in a place like that, my presence — a well-built guy — played a very important role. A precious one: bringing in other members.

Something like that had happened before. At the gym I used to go to — this same gym, in the previous world — an incredibly beautiful woman had signed up. She only showed up for a week and then vanished, but for a while the place was packed, all just to see her. People even changed their workout schedules to crowd in during the hours she appeared.

This was a reversed world. There were men working out at the gym, but almost none of them trained at a gym like this. Most of them went to clean places on the main streets with brand-new equipment. They didn't come to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a spot on the outskirts with gear that wasn't exactly top-of-the-line. In other words, the clerk was trying to keep me tied to this place so they could use me as bait for new members.

From what I'd seen last time, I seemed to be a pretty popular type in this world. And here, nobody seemed to think badly of my personality, either.

Now that I think about it... isn't this basically heaven?

Feeling the gazes gathering on me, I walked toward the locker room.