Adaptation
What is the hardest experience a person can have in this world?
Winning the lottery? Getting into Seoul National University? Landing a job at a major corporation?
In my book, nothing tops being a man who wakes up as a woman and then gets coached through the basics by the body's original owner.
—swish, swish—
My tail swayed lazily left and right as I sat sprawled on the floor, legs out like a tired old dad, while Yu Sia sketched diagrams in the empty air.
When you need to go, first roll your clothes up out of the way. If they get wet you have to wash them, and that feels awful.
Uh-huh.
And your panties must come all the way down! Even you should know that one. After you're done, dab yourself dry with toilet paper—if you don't, you'll get a bacterial infection, you know?
Uh-huh...
Then comes a shower. Yu Sia's body needs a wash at least once a day. Dirty is not allowed.
Uh-huuuh...
And another thing...
Honestly, I never dreamed this Yu Sia could talk this much. In Possessed in a Doomed World, she never said a single word—just hurled herself at everything like a madwoman. She was a completely different person now.
Where that emotionless villainess had shown nothing at all, the Yu Sia before me didn't merely express her feelings—she overflowed with them. And the more I watched, the more one question gnawed at me. What on earth could have happened to a girl this drenched in emotion to turn her into a psychopath without a single feeling left?
Yu Sia poked just her face into view and puffed up her cheeks.
Oppaa, stop having weird thoughts and hurry up and adapt already?
She twirled once in place, then used her Moon Power to sculpt a shape in three dimensions.
A moonlight replica of my current body, and Yu Sia floating in the air beside it. When the replica began fidgeting like its bladder was about to burst, wandered back and forth, and finally keeled over, Yu Sia keeled right along with it.
She snatched the thing up, crushed it into powder, and flicked her hand clean. With a soft —fwoosh—, the powder vanished before it could even reach the floor.
You have to adapt to Yu Sia's body if you want an easier life from now on, Oppa. And as long as you don't die, Yu Sia gets to live too.
She had a point. The trouble was only that actually putting it into practice was so damn hard.
Did I really need to learn how to answer the call of nature? Couldn't I just live on without knowing? Not knowing didn't seem like it would kill me.
At that, Yu Sia planted her hands on her hips and delivered several sharp kicks to the empty air.
Oppa, you didn't listen to a single word I said! Yu Sia worked so hard to explain!
...Honestly, not one word had landed. This was a world with psychic powers—surely powers could solve it.
Yu Sia drifted in close and seized both my cheeks in her hands. —squish—
Oppa, if you keep spouting nonsense, Yu Sia won't hold back anymore. Are you going to listen?
What was this feeling, like something terrible would happen if I didn't obey?
I nodded, and after studying me for a moment, Yu Sia let go of my cheeks.
Good. Then hurry up and do it.
My rear was starting to ache from all this sitting; the sooner this ended, the better.
First I grabbed the hem of my clothes and rolled them up out of harm's way. Then I took the sides of my panties and drew them down to my knees. And there I stalled, sneaking one furtive glance after another at Yu Sia.
The life drained out of her expression.
...Now Yu Sia is truly angry. This calls for punishment.
Moon Power poured from her hand and condensed into a tiny sphere of moonlight. The instant she pressed that sphere into my body, a shiver shot through me from head to toe—I felt as if I would burst that very second.
When water is poured in past the point of overflowing, what dam could hope to hold it? And so the water that spilled over...
—psssshhhh...
"Ah..."
I had gained the relief of release, but it felt like I had lost something in the exchange.
The wall was truly beautiful. How did the people who built it even manage such a thing?
The ceiling was awfully high, too. I'd heard there was empty space between floors up there—could that be true?
Ghosts don't exist, they say. Scientifically impossible, they say. And yet here I was, looking at one.
"Oppa...?"
Come to think of it, the voice I was hearing right now belonged to a ghost, too.
All those tales of spirits luring people away to somewhere far off—truth, or fiction?
I'm sorry, Oppa...
Hm? I won't do it anymore...
Yu Sia apologized from behind me, her voice choked with tears. When I stole a glance back, she really was crying.
Ha, time to stop. The teasing had gone on long enough.
What?! You were teasing me?! Yu Sia thought you were genuinely angry!
"Of course I was teasing. I don't get mad over a prank like that. Well—maybe I was a little mad."
At my words, Yu Sia pulled a face of pure shock and hung her head deep.
Waaah... so you were mad.. I'm sorry...
Watching her apologize over and over made it hard to even tease her. Her personality was a great deal more childish than I'd imagined.
Was this what it would feel like, if I'd ever had a little sister of my own?
"I'm not mad. So come on—dry it up. That's enough."
Yu Sia lifted her gaze upward until our eyes met.
...Really...? You're really not mad?
Ha, she was seriously cute..
"Yeah. I'm not mad."
Only then did Yu Sia break into a radiant smile, as if she had never been crying at all.
What a relief! Yu Sia really thought you were angry! Then we can move on to the next step!
"...Next?"
A prickle of foreboding.
You need a bath, Oppa!
Ah, damn it.
That sense of foreboding was never, ever wrong.
"Don't tell me..."
Don't tell me what?
The life drained from Yu Sia's face again.
Ah, no chance.
One look at her expression told me that refusing again would earn me something far worse.
"Fine... but! Let me at least drape a towel over myself. You'll allow that much, right?"
Hmm...
Yu Sia cupped her chin and considered for a while. She looked at my face, then at my body, then back at my face. And then she nodded.
Okay. Yu Sia will let that much slide.
What a relief. A moment longer and I'd have been one call to 911 away from handcuffs.
Which left only one problem: taking the clothes off..
Well—no point agonizing over it at this stage. She had given her blessing, after all.
I'd worn the Gothic Lolita dress plenty of times back in my male days, so it came off without trouble. Why had I worn it before, you ask? ...Mostly as penalty games with friends. Why men get a kick out of watching other men crossdress, I will never understand.
Even staring at my—Yu Sia's—bare body reflected in the mirror, I was less fazed than I'd expected. Which made sense, considering how tiny it was. Meaning the growth spurt hadn't even arrived yet.
But Oppa, you like Yu Sia's body, don't you?
...That was when I was a kid.
Liar. Even your recent browser history says, 'My beloved little sister...'
"I'm sorry."
She knew all of my memories and could read my innermost heart. There was no winning against her.
I wrapped a towel around myself and stepped back into the bathroom.
My first shower in a girl's body. I turned the knob and let the water loose.
—shaaaaah
Warm water poured from the showerhead, running down from my head and over every inch of me.
Maybe it was the cat ears and tail, but the water on my skin made me flinch and shiver.
Every instinct screamed at me to bolt that very second. My ears and tail drooped, soaked through and heavy.
The warm water felt oddly prickly, almost painful. Was this what cats always felt—the reason they all refused baths?
If this was the feeling, then a lifetime of refusing made perfect sense. It was like being jabbed all over with needles.
But as I let the water keep falling, I adapted bit by bit, until the prickling turned strangely pleasant—soothing, even.
I squeezed shampoo into my palm and gave my hair a rough wash, then spread body wash over my skin.
The slickness of the body wash and the pillowy softness under my palm—every time my hands passed over my body, it felt... something. Something strange. Like I wanted to keep touching. A ticklish, fizzing feeling. What was this?
Ignoring all of it, I found only the front remained—chest, stomach, that side of things. Didn't want to, but it had to be done...
My lathered palm came to rest on my stomach.
—pat.
I rubbed my belly with the soft palm. So this was what a child's stomach felt like. The texture was strangely fascinating. Almost addictive.
Stomach thoroughly covered, one region remained: the chest. I set my hand on it—plop. And felt absolutely nothing.
Weren't all the TS victims out there supposed to feel something when they touched their chest? Why was I completely unmoved?
And then a single conclusion came to me. The difference between those TS victims and me. Everyone else woke up with enormous breasts—while mine was barely any different in size from when I'd been a man. That had to be it.
So I worked body wash carefully over every inch of me and rinsed it all away.
I shut off the water, toweled myself dry, stepped out, and got back into the Gothic Lolita dress.
Wow, Oppa, you're really good at that. I guess a seasoned professional really is on another level.
"Quiet, you. So—does this mean I can finally move around as I please?"
Yep. You kept your promise so well that Yu Sia is satisfied.
So it was finally over. I'd burned through so much energy that I was getting peckish. Time to put some food in me.
I headed for the refrigerator and swung the door open. Nothing. Bare shelves.
"...Do you live on dew alone or something?"
Yu Sia was going to buy groceries today. But then Oppa went and took over Yu Sia's body, so she couldn't.
"So that makes it my fault, then."
Yep. It's Oppa's fault.
Put that way, I had no comeback..
Nothing for it, then. People have to eat to live, and that left exactly one option: go out and buy food.
The heat was sweltering—so sweltering that not even the cicadas bothered to sing. People wilted under it, worn down and weary.
—swish, swish—
Eyes turned, all on their own, toward the Gothic Lolita girl strolling down the street, her tail swaying side to side as if the weather were nothing at all.
A Gothic Lolita girl with cat ears and a tail, hugging an Asiatic black bear plushie to her chest as she walked.
Whether on a grocery errand for her parents or something else entirely, the girl slipped inside the local supermarket.
And though more than one person thought, what on earth is that chimera of a child?, the girl's air was so mysterious that nobody actually pressed the question.
"Did you see that kid? Adorable."
"Gothic Lolita with cat ears—in Korea? Is she doing a cosplay thing?"
They were just about to move along, thinking nothing more of it.
—KABOOM!!—
A thunderous blast ripped through the supermarket, and an enormous column of fire surged into the sky.