Stories of the Past (1)
"I'm sure… I was…"
My memories were tangled. My last clear recollection was definitely of that place, that moment — and then I'd woken up at home. It was like someone had torn the middle pages out of a comic. I remembered the beginning and the end, but nothing of what came between.
"Alcohol…?"
That was the most likely culprit. The menu had been full of drinks and cocktails. If I'd kept going until I was completely blackout drunk, this state of affairs would make perfect sense.
Well… alcohol tolerance was a matter of physical response. Even if mine was low, that wasn't particularly strange. Alcohol wasn't some essential, healthful beverage to begin with.
The only problem was…
I have no memory of drinking at all.
That was the part that felt off. I didn't remember taking a single sip. At the very least, I should have remembered the moments before I got drunk — before the alcohol hit.
"And barely any hangover, either…"
I wasn't even sure I should call it a hangover. It might just have been an ordinary headache. Granted, blacking out usually came with a hangover, but hangover severity varied wildly from person to person.
More importantly, this body was an Awakened one, so direct comparisons were useless. For all I knew, someone had already treated me with magic or something similar.
Best just to ask directly.
I picked up my phone and messaged Han Yaeseo.
Han Yaeseo must have been holding her phone already — the reply came instantly.
And then… came the ominous follow-up.
Hmm. So it really had been the alcohol.
A video?
I asked her to send it.
And immediately regretted it.
Baek_Sowol_Doing_Aegyo_and_Clinging_to_Everyone.mp4
The moment I saw myself on that screen, my face twisted on its own. My body started trembling. Cold sweat seemed to bead somewhere along my spine.
Ah… ah…
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!"
I clutched my head and rolled back and forth across the bed. A scream tore out of me on pure, automatic shame.
I was insane.
I'd lost my mind.
There was no other way to look at it. That couldn't have been me in my right mind.
No matter how drunk a person got, there were things they simply would not do — things they genuinely loathed. Even with lowered inhibitions, the body still rejected what it truly hated and despised.
Sure, everyone had heard stories of a man and a woman with no real feelings for each other still ending up in bed because they were drunk.
But had you ever heard of a drunk man sleeping with another man, or a drunk woman with another woman, out of nowhere? Of course not. Most people were attracted to the opposite sex. That kind of thing didn't even enter the equation.
That was exactly why drunk driving and claims of diminished capacity drew so much scorn.
Which meant… no matter how much you factored in "I was drunk" as a mitigating circumstance, the fact that I had behaved like that implied—
That on some unconscious level, I might have decided that kind of behavior was… acceptable?
Ah… ah…
For once, I resented the mage-like thinking that had always served me so well. Unlike a non-mage, my mind endlessly cycled through rational analysis and spit out conclusions — and the conclusion it had reached was singular.
My subconscious had, in effect, judged that kind of behavior as not the absolute worst thing in the world.
"…Son of a bitch."
The curse slipped out, but nothing changed. I tried swearing my way into dragging up whatever testosterone had vanished into the ether.
But swearing in Baek Sowol's naturally high-pitched voice only made it sound cute.
I had already decided to live as a woman. Becoming Baek Sowol had made that a non-negotiable fact of life. But not every woman on earth did aegyo and acted adorable.
There were rough-around-the-edges types, and countless people who fell somewhere in between. Setting aside the fact that Baek Sowol's looks suited that kind of behavior perfectly—
Plenty of people looked nothing like their personalities. I'd figured it wouldn't matter much if I didn't act that way…!
It's not like anyone finds it weird, so it shouldn't matter… but I still feel awful.
Fine. It wasn't drunk driving or murder. And sure, a lot of people would find Baek Sowol acting like that adorable…!
That didn't make my self-loathing go away. A mage could think as logically and rationally as she wanted — she was still a living creature. Emotions didn't simply disappear.
And the fact that I had acted that way was deeply uncomfortable and deeply humiliating.
"Uuuggghhh…"
I really had become a woman's body, hadn't I. Back when I was Heo Donghyun, I had never once done aegyo or acted coquettish like that.
Getting drunk wouldn't have changed who I used to be, so I must have been adapting — bit by bit. Or maybe the Baek Sowol who had lived in this body before wouldn't have minded doing those things, and some residual influence still lingered.
Either way, one fact remained unchanged: somewhere in a corner of my heart, a psychological line I had sworn never to cross had crumbled.
Hah… I need to redirect my thoughts. Think about something else. Clear my head.
I needed a mental reset. I had to smother that horror somehow before it kept looping. If I tried to do any hunter work in this state, I might seriously injure myself by accident.
And then there were the bodyguards… that was a problem too.
So I decided to quietly air out my brain on the internet. I opened a community site and pulled up the Hunter-Mage Gallery.
▸ New Gate Info Compilation.list
▸ The Usual Suspects
▸ LIVE) Official word just dropped — new unconquered S-rank gate is 80% cleared
· · · · · ·
▸ Am I the only one who finds Han Yaeseo annoying?
I was scrolling through the list when one post caught my eye. I clicked in immediately.
Okay, being real here. Yeah, it was a tragic situation, I'll give you that. But separate from that — how does she not do actual prison time and just get a slap-on-the-wrist guild suspension? lmao
Sure, the government made her skill info public as an official punishment. And that almost got her killed? Honestly, isn't that a disaster she brought on herself by wandering around alone while she was supposed to be suspended? lmaoooo
In principle, shouldn't she have been looking at years behind bars, or even a villain designation?
The country supports Awakened people, and in exchange it holds them to a stricter standard. She broke that, right? But oh no, she's got a sad backstory, so everyone loses their minds. lmao
By that logic every criminal out there can go "my home life was rough" lmaooo
Oh-ho? Extremely strong wording.
And the punishment she got wasn't light. Public skill disclosure is fatal for a hunter. She literally almost died because of it.
If those circumstances hadn't happened, she could've lived a normal life — so they reduce the sentence somewhat. Han Yaeseo never would've done any of that if it weren't for that bullshit witch hunt either.
"Her skills got fully exposed and she almost died"? That's just funny. If she'd actually taken Binghwa's support none of that happens. She was on suspension and forced her way out there because she's S-rank lmao. If she'd just kept where she was going secret it never happens
Oh-ho? So this was the kind of firestorm going on.
Ordinarily, I would have cut my interest short right there. Whatever wrong Han Yaeseo had committed, she'd never done anything to me. And the mere fact that she was still retained by her guild meant that what she'd done had been mitigated to some degree.
Who in this world didn't have dirt if you shook them hard enough?
But right now, I couldn't afford to look away. I needed to escape the thoughts holding my body hostage by any means necessary. Looking up the related articles was the obvious next step.
I opened a new tab and searched for the relevant information.
And I found it.
What Han Yaeseo had done — and why she had received that particular punishment.
Han Yaeseo had a record.
She had beaten a civilian nearly to death.