Save Me
Save Me
All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
That is especially true when unhappiness drives someone to an extreme choice like suicide.
Some people, born into affluent homes, choose suicide over nothing more than being abandoned by friends or lovers. Others, orphaned young and drifting jobless from place to place, throw themselves into a river only when what remains of their hope has faded to the flickering of a dying candle.
How acutely people feel unhappiness varies from person to person, and criticizing an individual’s choice merely because someone else has it worse is wrong...
However, when a lunatic commits suicide without feeling any unhappiness at all, the story changes.
“Gkk... gak, gkk!”
If I said I opened my eyes to find myself hanging from the ceiling of a strange room, would anyone understand? No one would. I don’t understand it myself.
While others chose suicide because they were unhappy, I had become someone who chose suicide first and only grew miserable afterward.
Like a chandelier swinging wildly in the heart of a typhoon, I thrashed about, then hit the floor like a marionette dropped by its puppeteer.
Maybe the knot was weak, or maybe I struggled too fiercely. Whatever the reason, I had survived, and that was a relief.
“Keuhuk... ngh... urgh...”
Deeply grateful for the breath I had reclaimed, I kept dry-heaving.
The moment the heaving stopped, all my strength drained away. I sprawled across the floor, unable to rise.
The first thing I saw was an unfamiliar ceiling. If the ceiling had to be unfamiliar, it could at least have transported me to another world.
But this place had a thoroughly familiar, modern interior. A little run-down, though.
A mold-stained ceiling and yellowed wallpaper. Even the electrical outlets on the wall were discolored. The decor suggested this wasn’t a room anyone actually lived in—most likely some old motel room.
“What the hell... what is this...”
Once I had calmed down a little, I slowly pushed myself up. After nearly dying out of nowhere—an experience few living people could claim—I was completely dumbfounded.
Maybe that was why. I only now realized my voice sounded different from usual.
And it wasn’t just my voice. My hands were different, too. Hands I’d often been told were delicate and pretty were now rough and coarse.
“Seriously, what is this.”
I ran those hands over various parts of my body. Though I hadn’t exercised much, it had the firmness typical of a man’s body—but it wasn’t a muscular one.
I hastily found a mirror and checked my reflection.
My hair was shaggy and long, as if it hadn’t been maintained. As I’d anticipated, my body was that of a man with broad bones and a solid build. My face had strong features—more than enough to be called handsome.
If you saw me on the street, you’d click your tongue over wasted looks or think, He’ll still pull women anyway, the lucky bastard.
The problem was, this was not my face.
“What the hell.”
Maybe the aftereffects of the suicide hadn’t worn off yet. It didn’t feel real. My head couldn’t keep up with what was happening and had gone blank.
No matter how hard I scrutinized the mirror, the face didn’t change. Which meant this wasn’t temporary confusion.
That vaguely familiar man’s face brought back the suffocating sensation I’d felt moments ago.
Clutching my throbbing head, I looked around. On the desk lay a white envelope that I assumed was a suicide note, along with a wallet.
Gulp. I swallowed and picked up the white envelope first.
As I read the letter, what jumped out first was a string of self-recriminations: orphaned, only a high-school graduate, a failed civil-service examinee—with no hope left, he had chosen to die. I had lost my parents in an accident myself and lived most of my life as an orphan, so his life story felt deeply relatable.
As I avidly read on, I came across one word I could not overlook.
‘To the magical girl Blue Sirius...’
Magical girl?
The rest of the letter was filled with long-winded assurances that his death was not her fault and had been his choice alone.
Blue Sirius. I had heard that name somewhere before. No, “heard somewhere” isn’t quite right.
She was one of the characters from the webtoon I’d once obsessed over: Magical Girl Golden Age.
Wiping away a cold sweat born of anxiety, I picked up the wallet sitting beside the letter.
Thirty thousand won in cash and a debit card with some unknown balance—that was all the money I had on me. I could worry about money later. Right now, that wasn’t important.
I found his ID and examined the name.
The photo was younger than what I’d seen in the mirror, but unmistakably the same face I now wore.
That name...
Han Jae-jung.
The name stirred a faint, inexplicable longing in the haze of my memories.
‘As I thought.’
When the name Blue Sirius appeared, I’d had my suspicions, and they were right.
Han Jae-jung was Blue Sirius’s ex-boyfriend—the one who, while they were dating, endured terrible cyberbullying until they broke up and, in the end, committed suicide.
He was a character created to inflict trauma, and his death helped trigger the first major tragedy in Magical Girl Golden Age.
And now, at the very starting point of that tragedy, I had possessed him.
...Shit.
I take back what I said about sending me to another world.
I’m already here. Where else would I go?
Evidently, I had come to another world.
**
I went to a PC bang and started surfing the internet. The major portals and sites were similar, but the trending figures and incidents were clearly different from the place where I’d lived.
- Magical Girl Red Vega Defeats Monster: Expectations Sky-High Following Debut of Superb Rookie...
- Girl Who Dreamed of Singing, Pink Deneb, Finally Releases Album.
- Now Even Dramas in the Palm of Your Hand... Actress Lee Hye-joo and Magical Girl Black Sadr, a Promising Combination.
Comedians, idols, and singers still existed, but the ones commanding the most attention were unmistakably the magical girls.
The society pages buzzed with news of magical girls defeating monsters. The entertainment pages buzzed with media featuring magical girls.
It truly was the golden age of magical girls.
Seeing this, my feeble doubts finally vanished. The hope I’d stubbornly clung to—that this might be some elaborate hidden-camera prank—burned out completely and died.
This was definitely the world of Magical Girl Golden Age.
“Insane...”
Aren’t I glad I fell into a webtoon I used to obsess over? Not a chance.
If you knew this world’s survival rate and its ending, you would never say that.
Civilians who can’t use magic have to live in fear every day, never knowing when or where a monster might attack them.
And the magical girls who protect those civilians? It’s a godawful webtoon where every last one of them dies in the end.
Why do you think I said I ‘used to’ obsess over it?
Magical Girl Golden Age was a work that sprinted toward a rushed ending because the author claimed it wasn’t making money, discarding all its plot threads and narrative logic to produce the worst possible conclusion.
And despite that sort of ending, I’d been a fan who set it down carrying nothing but a heavy heart, without leaving a single malicious comment...
Of all the countless hate-commenters on the final chapter, why did I have to be the one who got possessed?
Fiction is enjoyable because it’s fiction. When you become the protagonist, enjoyment and everything else go out the window.
This was a world where a monster could suddenly appear and tear everyone here limb from limb without seeming out of place.
It’s terrifying. Even while web surfing like this, I can’t stop watching my surroundings. To anyone watching, I probably looked like some lunatic searching for things you shouldn’t look up in a PC bang.
Ah, my head hurts.
Another problem erupted.
My head hurt—and it wasn’t just the hopelessness of the situation.
“Urgh, bluurgh...”
Beneath the dizziness, nausea surged up from deep in my throat. I bolted to the bathroom and threw up everything inside me. I hadn’t eaten anything, so I just kept bringing up stomach acid.
I’d thought I could manage web surfing fine. Apparently not.
Han Jae-jung had been bullied so viciously online that his body still carried severe trauma around any exposure to media, even passive consumption.
My mind might be my own, but this body unquestionably belongs to Han Jae-jung.
I’d figured if I just avoided the comments section, I would be all right... but the body’s defense mechanisms were far stronger than I’d imagined.
No wonder he didn’t even own something as basic as a smartphone.
With trauma this severe, on top of shattered confidence from repeated failures, I could understand why he’d resolved to commit suicide.
‘I hope he’s gone to a better place...’
I offered a short, silent bow to the Han Jae-jung in the mirror, then stepped out of the PC bang.
The city air was acrid, as expected, but stepping outside still made me feel a little better.
Anyway, the situation was even worse than I’d thought.
This world is fated for a bad ending.
All the magical girls die, and human society is destroyed by the monsters.
Blue Sirius, unable to overcome overwhelming stress, is killed by a monster, and that is where the tragedy begins.
The death of Han Jae-jung—arguably the first cause of it all—had been averted when I possessed him. But numerous dangers still lay ahead for the other magical girls.
What do I do from here...?
At a total loss, I muttered the first thing that came to mind.
“Status window.”
Isn’t this the universal rule when you possess someone? I said it out loud just in case.
Nothing happened.
“S-Status! Tutorial! Skill window! Shop!”
It was lucky no one was around; the sheer madness of it was grounds to get me hauled off as a mental case. With surging despair, I shouted again, letting out even more of my pent-up frustration.
“Status window! Status window! Status windoooow!!”
“Grruk.”
“Huh?”
A voice utterly unsuited to a status window answered me, and I turned around.
From a dark, deserted back alley, a bipedal creature ambled out—something impossible to mistake for a human.
It was a monster.
“Come on, this isn’t fair.”
No matter how much real life lacks foreshadowing, a sudden encounter like this is too much. I had no smartphone to report it with, and there wasn’t a single pedestrian on the street.
That PC bang was too far to run back to now. I wasn’t even sure I could run away properly in the first place.
In my panic, I hadn’t checked what hour it was.
Walking around at night hadn’t been especially dangerous before.
But here, it was.
“Ah, shit.”
Judging by its size, it was at least a C-rank or B-rank. And the fact that it wasn’t using any language meant its intelligence was limited.
If a magical girl showed up, they’d clean this thing up in under three minutes. But to me, it was a monster I could never handle.
“Insane.”
Thwump!
A powerful impact slammed into my abdomen. The monster hadn’t given me any time to collect myself; it had already launched its attack.
Earlier I’d nearly been strangled to death, and now I was about to be beaten to death? I really was blessed with a death-prone life.
I tumbled across the empty road and vomited stomach acid again. The impact was so bad I couldn’t even breathe properly. The monster snorted out a coarse breath.
“Ughk... gak...”
I was so blessed with death that now I could die of sheer indignation too.
If I had to come to the world I’d once obsessed over, and if I was going to die anyway, the least it could do was let me see a magical girl in the flesh. I’d been here less than a day, had already run into a monster, and now I was going to die? Could there be a more unfair and meaningless death?
If I’d died in that suicide show earlier, at least I wouldn’t have known enough to feel this cheated.
A chance to fix the ending of a world I’d liked had finally come, and I was going to die this pointlessly.
As I lay there rolling, my blurred vision caught the monster advancing toward me.
“Couldn’t even see a magical girl... you bastard...”
That moment.
Out of nowhere, iron spheres flew through the air and began pummeling the monster that had been approaching me.
“...?”
Had a magical girl already arrived? But I’d never seen an ability like that in the original, either.
No. Don’t jump to conclusions.
Still, who knows? A magical girl who never appeared in the original might have come to help.
First, I’ll beg.
“S-save—“
One of the iron spheres rushed up to my face and spoke.
[Transform.]
...What?