Adaptation After Returning (7)
Fuck.
Fuuuuck.
What a disaster.
God fucking damn it.
Ha. What a load of shit.
What absolute fucking shit,
...this is humiliating.
What the hell kind of state was this?
I was drunk, sure, but I hadn’t been blackout drunk.
Hell, I couldn’t even get that wasted to begin with.
Even if I took drugs, I’d only feel pleasure; it wasn’t enough to interfere with fighting.
So what if I got a little impulsive? So what if I got a little emotional?
Did that mean I had to jump Ha Yujeong, strip her naked, and grope her tits?
Choi Eunho would never lay a hand on a woman who said no. That was a matter of pride. He only touched the women who spread their legs on their own.
And yet there I’d gone... there I’d gone...!
“Uuuuuuggh...!”
I shoved my face into the pillow and let out a muffled groan.
I couldn’t yell too loudly because Ha Yujeong was asleep beside me.
Right. It had been shocking.
Even after seeing Ha Yujeong’s body, I hadn’t felt a single spark of desire.
Her body was exactly the sort of body Choi Eunho liked.
If I saw her naked, I should have wanted to bury myself in her the instant I laid eyes on her.
But my body hadn’t reacted at all.
My head tried to think, This is a pretty horny situation, but when my body refused to respond, my mind collapsed into a hollow, stupid emptiness almost immediately.
When I touched Ha Yujeong’s chest, all I could think was: what the hell am I doing right now?
Even post-nut clarity after jerking off to some pathetic fantasy would’ve been better than this.
But hadn’t I already known?
This body wanted men. Chae Eunha was that kind of woman.
A being meant to submit to a man and receive his seed.
It shouldn’t have been hard to predict that this body wouldn’t react to a woman.
So why had I been so shocked that I’d even cried?
And on top of that, I’d clung to Ha Yujeong and cried into her, then slept with her?
W-what the hell.
Ha Yujeong! You’re insane too.
Since when were you such a damn humanitarian?
If a crazy bitch had attacked you, then stopped and started crying, you should’ve left her there and run.
And then called the police. Of course, the association would probably try to bury it, because arresting an S-class hunter like me would be a problem for them too.
At the very least, you should not have hugged me and gone to sleep with me!!
Honestly, this was the worst.
Had Chae Eunha seeped all the way into my bones, Choi Eunho?
Get a grip.
After a long sigh, I sat up carefully, making sure not to wake Ha Yujeong.
Still in just my underwear, I headed for the mirror outside the shower room.
I replayed what had happened yesterday.
The moment I got home and grabbed a pair of scissors, ready to cut my own hair.
Fuck it. I’m shaving it all off.
I’d been impulsive.
Swallowed by rage, I’d decided to turn myself into a full-on skinhead.
But the scissors hadn’t budged against my hair. No matter how much force I tried to put into it, my right hand wouldn’t move an inch.
My instincts had rejected it.
Those instincts refused to let even a sliver of this body’s femininity be carved away. Naturally, if they had their way, they’d prefer long hair over a sporty cut.
It was the instinct to make myself attractive to the opposite sex.
I’d drowned myself in liquor because I was furious at the thought of being controlled by it again, but now that I’d calmed down, I could also remember the opposite side of the equation.
Those instincts didn’t usually surface. If their control were really that absolute, they could just seize my body outright and go hunt down a man themselves.
Sure, they grew stronger when the body’s desires piled up, but that still didn’t mean I disappeared completely.
In other words, there was no real hierarchy between us. Most of the time I was the one using the body, so when it surfaced now and then, its power felt stronger because it had been conserved.
As long as I satisfied the urges, I was stronger.
I can’t hold out, Choi Eunho will disappear.
If I was going to quit with some weak, pathetic whining like that, I might as well just die.
I already knew how not to lose control.
Just... let the urges out a little. Even if it felt so good it drove me completely insane.
As long as Choi Eunho didn’t get erased, that was enough.
In the end, once I got my original body back, wouldn’t this all be solved anyway?
At this point, I had to steel myself.
Yeah. I admitted it. Relying on Shin Jaecheol’s help, on real-world magic, to get my original body back—that had been too much of a loophole.
It was too easy a story.
That thing, my mother, the Blessing.
Something that powerful had changed my body.
I should’ve expected it wouldn’t be solved so easily.
I’d been given this Blessing, this invulnerability, this force beyond any living creature. If I’d gained something that outrageous, then I should’ve expected a trial to go with it.
Even if Chae Eunha whined and cried, Choi Eunho had to pull himself together.
There was only one way.
To face that thing directly.
To go straight to the one who wanted a daughter so badly, and settle it face-to-face.
As its contract-holder, I had the right to “talk” to my Sponsor, at least.
The Great Rift.
The first gate.
The gate created at the North Pole, the size of an island.
The core otherworld of all dimensional rifts, where every alien world that had invaded Earth was tangled together.
The source of every foreign incursion, the reason gates appeared all over the world in the first place.
There had once been a time when hunter associations from every country had gathered to dismantle the Great Rift and put an end to the gate crisis around the globe.
In the end, the attempt failed with the deaths of numerous S-class hunters, and by now the policy had been reduced to keeping only the gates in each region under control—to maintaining the status quo, more or less.
These days, if there weren’t any particular gates to suppress, hunters entered the Great Rift to farm the lower-depth zones, hunted monsters there, and sold the byproducts they brought back. In other words, it had become nothing more than a gate for making money.
No one was talking about dismantling the Great Rift anymore, naturally.
What mattered about the Great Rift was that it was connected to every alien world.
And among those worlds, the Void was definitely there. The prison, the forgotten tomb of an ancient god.
Whatever else could be said, the goodwill it had shown me was real.
It really had been a mother. It had loved me.
The reason it had given me this body wasn’t to screw me over, but because it truly wanted a daughter.
So the chances of talking this through... they were there.
If it could listen, if it could change me back to how I was before.
Yes. I could forget every grievance and call it “Mother” again. I could even become its son—and its servant.
I’d give it the bloodline it wanted, too. Of course, I couldn’t agree to some insane demand like turning the entire world into its bloodline, but still.
“Yeah. That’s enough.”
Get a grip.
Wasn’t I going to give up?
I hadn’t fought this hard just to vanish.
Chae Eunha. Chae Eunha. I spoke to the girl in the mirror.
I’m going to kill you.
The one who’ll die isn’t me. It’s you.
I thought it was a good idea to choose a pseudonym.
Choi Eunho and Chae Eunha were beginning to separate. Sharper now. Clearer.
Yeah. I’d go back to being Choi Eunho. What did I care what happened to Chae Eunha?
I’d kill Chae Eunha and return to Choi Eunho.
The sense of humiliation and disgrace slowly ebbed away.
This wasn’t Choi Eunho.
This body would pass eventually; it had nothing to do with me.
Besides, with the Blessing, I couldn’t die, couldn’t be wounded, couldn’t even feel pain.
I just had to separate Choi Eunho from Chae Eunha, and make sure no one else ever found out.
As long as Ha Yujeong and Shin Jaecheol kept their mouths shut, no one would know.
Then there would be no problem at all.
We could just pretend none of it had happened.
“Ah... it’s already night, Ms. Eunha?”
“Yeah. You’re awake. Get dressed first. It’s annoying.”
“...Hah.”
Ha Yujeong, who had only just woken up, addressed me as I stood in front of the mirror.
She’d come over in the afternoon, fallen asleep with me, and spent nearly half a day here. Since she’d woken up at night, it had to feel strange.
And since she was half naked, there was nowhere good to look. I waved her to hurry up and put on clothes, and she let out a helpless laugh.
Come to think of it, I was half naked too.
“Looks like you’ve recovered. Earlier, you were really...”
“...Th-that. Uh. Yeah.”
As she set about gathering the bra that had fallen to the floor and rested a hand on her head, I went silent for a moment.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I had wronged her, and I owed her too.
She wasn’t in a position to sue me. The association couldn’t afford to lose me.
But that didn’t make her actions any less meaningful.
“I’m sorry. And... uh. Thanks. I didn’t really get it, but it helped more than I expected.”
“...I never thought I’d live to hear Ms. Eunha apologize and thank me.”
As much as I hated to admit it, falling asleep in her arms had done a tremendous job of restoring my mental state.
It was... maternal. Fuck. I could never say that to her face.
Apparently I was weak to motherliness. And I got tossed around by it pretty easily. No, “tossed around” wasn’t quite right. It had the effect of making me come to my senses.
Anyway, fuck... ha.
And after what I’d done to Ha Yujeong? I couldn’t even deny it anymore.
“...Wait. Ms. Eunha?”
“Yes? What?”
“No, never mind.”
Had Ha Yujeong ever called me without the surname before?
Ah, screw it. I didn’t want to think about it.
“I’ve sorted out my thoughts. For now, it looks like I’ll have to live in this body. Until I find a way.”
“Then should we announce that Choi Eunho has become a woman...?”
“No, not that. Just say Choi Eunho was caught in a gate incident and is missing. Say we recruited a new hunter named Chae Eunha.”
“Yes. I think that would be best, too. It’s better to treat Choi Eunho and Chae Eunha as different people. Then we can say Choi Eunho was caught in a dimensional distortion.”
Ha Yujeong simply nodded in silence. It was a refreshing answer.
Actually, if Choi Eunho had vanished that pointlessly, the fallout would be huge for her too.
Even if Chae Eunha ended up affiliated with the Hunter Association, that wouldn’t make her Choi Eunho, and she wouldn’t be recognized as an S-class hunter right away.
Even if they scouted Chae Eunha and Ha Yujeong became her manager, she’d still have to start climbing the ladder all over again.
Or would she? Maybe she’d just cut ties with me completely and go manage some other S-class hunter instead.
If that happened... strange. I should’ve felt relieved, but because of what had just happened, a part of me felt a little disappointed.
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