The dinner I’d had after so many years couldn’t have been better.
So much so that I had run out of the house, unable to overcome the lingering warmth.
I’d wanted to raise a toast, but everything around me was alcohol.
I couldn’t exactly shove it all into the closet either.
I was afraid that if I stayed like this, I’d revert to I Jincheol, the drunken whale.
Now I had the clean lungs and liver of a twenty-year-old… though honestly, I couldn’t be sure about the liver.
Either way, I had become the young and healthy Gang Jimin.
Wasn’t it a waste to squander a body like this?
So let’s raise a toast with cola instead.
I went outside and turned into an alley on the other side of the downtown area.
Maybe because it was late, it had gotten quite chilly, but it was still bearable.
It seemed the shivering on the first day really had been because of the chills.
Fortunately, now I was cured as if washed clean.
As I keep saying, a young body is a wonderful thing.
I walked through the night alley toward the convenience store.
The same convenience store where I’d bought the lunch box.
The alley, which had few people even during the day, was completely empty—not an ant in sight.
Because it was such a secluded spot, the streetlights were sparse too.
The degraded light of the old streetlamp looked orange. Come to think of it, the atmosphere was nice.
Was it because I was in a good mood? Because the alley had its own charm?
Or because I still had a buzz going from that cocktail?
A hum slipped through my teeth.
“Over there~ in the secluded al…ley…?”
…Wait.
I’d thought Gang Jimin had a nice voice.
I’d thought she’d probably sing well too, but.
This. Wasn’t it a bit too good?
“…Fallen- we-.”
When I tried singing it again as a test, I was sure of it.
No, the timbre was seriously broken.
The song itself was mediocre because my technique was pathetic, but the tone color was simply a cheat code.
My voice was on the lower side for a woman, but when I actually hummed, the vocal range was quite wide too.
There was nothing that didn’t outperform I Jincheol.
Of course, the high notes were naturally higher on the woman’s side.
But the low notes were tasteful on this side too. It was almost unfair.
I recalled the section I’d never been able to nail properly no matter how many times I’d trained at the coin karaoke.
With this throat, even if I sang casually without putting in any effort, it sounded impressive.
Should I be happy about this, or sad?
Well, whatever. Good is good.
Thanks to that, when I sang with crude skill—that feeling of being shabby compared to the original playing in my head was gone.
I wasn’t amazingly good, but you could say it was charming in its own way.
Should I say that even roughly humming, it didn’t get stuck and flowed out smoothly?
It didn’t feel like it was simply a matter of timbre either.
Unlike the unfamiliarity I’d felt when holding a mouse, singing itself felt strangely familiar.
I’d heard that vocal cord muscles could be trained too.
Maybe Gang Jimin had trained her vocal cords.
…No, wait.
That wasn’t important right now.
Come to think of it… could this be…?
My forbidden karaoke dream song.
“Never Ending Story” has become possible?!
I couldn’t let this slide.
It was at that very moment, just as I was about to challenge the demonic section.
“A sad tal-e from a mov-ie-”
“Ah.”
A woman in a suit popped out from the side alley.
The timing was unbelievable.
“…”
“…”
I pulled my hat low and hurried my steps.
Pfft-.
A small laugh came from behind me.
Ah.
Aaaah.
‘…Kuaaaack!!!’
A scream swirled inside my head.
No, seriously, this is so fucking embarrassing..!!
***
If there was one comforting factor, it was that Gang Jimin had a baby face.
To be exact, it wasn’t a baby face—she was genuinely young—but anyway.
Right. That’s right.
I was twenty years old.
Twenty. A college freshman. A newbie in society.
Anyway, it meant that until last year, I was still a student on the meal plan.
Thinking like that made me feel a bit better.
Doesn’t everyone have one or two embarrassing dark histories from their school days?
…Though I hadn’t expected to update my dark history the moment I got a new body.
I’d had one or two foolish memories with my friends too.
I didn’t know what had become of that body now, but it was as if I had buried my past along with it.
I’d never imagined I’d immediately start filling up a new stock of memories right after painstakingly leaving them behind.
If I imagined going through this hardship in my late twenties, would I have been able to endure it?
I didn’t have that confidence. Let’s not think such terrible thoughts.
“Checkout please.”
I placed the cola and beer—my original goal—on the counter.
…No. I just grabbed beer too because it was so embarrassing.
Going through something like this made me crave alcohol.
My face was still burning.
I closed my eyes to suppress the embarrassment, but heard no sound at all.
I opened my eyes because it was strange and locked eyes with the part-timer.
“…Checkout please.”
“Ah. Yes.”
The part-timer flinched and averted his eyes.
He had stared so intently, but when I actually met his gaze, he immediately lowered his eyes.
The male part-timer was only looking at the register.
Meanwhile, I could scrutinize the part-timer’s face from top to bottom.
Funny. Even if I looked openly, he couldn’t look at me openly.
Is this what they call a selfish trade?
But the fact that the checkout was taking forever wasn’t fun.
It seemed intentional, or was I imagining it?
It wasn’t, right?
“Excuse me. We’re running a Mirae Card partnership discount even-”
“I don’t have one.”
“Ah. Then would you like your receipt by any cha-”
“I don’t need it.”
“Th-then would you perhaps-”
“I don’t need a bag either.”
“Ah. Yes.”
When I cut him off sharply, the checkout finally finished.
Yeah. Let’s stop there.
If you act up too, I don’t have the mental leeway to deal with it.
Looking closely, he was young too. If anything, too young.
His skin was fair, as if he hadn’t even been to the military yet.
His face was… well, not bad.
He seemed full of confidence, as if he’d been popular.
“Excuse me. If it’s alright-”
“You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“Yes.”
I wondered if I was being too cold, but it couldn’t be helped.
You’ve got the wrong target.
“Thank you for your patronage…”
I left the convenience store and laid out my drinking snack on the plastic table.
Though by drinking snack, I meant a single seasoned egg.
It was an egg that I Jincheol would have polished off in two bites, but Gang Jimin had a small mouth.
I chewed in small bites and cracked open the beer.
“Khhh…”
The sensation of beer going down my throat was vivid.
My heated face finally seemed to cool.
“Kaha… Hmm. This voice is a con artist.”
Even things that would have sounded like a pathetic old man if I’d said them came out strangely sexy with these vocal cords.
What can’t this voice do?
I felt like even if I did voice phishing, I’d achieve legendary results.
I tilted the can again as I pleased.
I poured it clattering down into my stomach and stuffed in the last piece of egg.
Hmm. My mouth really is small. It’s hard to chew too.
“Heh.”
A laugh leaked out.
I put on that whole pathetic act to save money, yet here I was drinking beer outside when there was so much alcohol at home.
I had immersed myself in the game without a plan, but no problems had been solved yet.
Then I sang and made a total fool of myself. Ugh, my body is still twisting in embarrassment.
When a guy who looked about my age was trying to work up the nerve to ask for my number, I’d felt pretty shitty too.
I’d gone through too many things in such a short time.
It still didn’t feel real.
But I wasn’t in a bad mood.
Anyway, Odinson can do it, right? Then that’s all that matters, right?
I just had that kind of thought.
Anyway, I really am quite something.
-A simple guy like you is bad because of that, and good because of that.
-Shut up, old man.
-It’s a compliment. Few people can devote themselves like that. Ragazzo fortunato.
-Seeing your mother tongue come out means you’re drunk again.
-I’ve told you time and again, since my body is half, the alcohol required to get me drunk is half…
-Ah, seriously, stop it with Tallulah!!
That old man was a truly strange person.
When he was young he lived as a musician, became a technician when he got older, and after losing his legs in an industrial accident, he got addicted to games and hit world rank one.
When the user base shrank, he crossed over to the Korean server, and before long he was speaking fluent Korean at a native level.
He really was something else.
An unrivaled talent freak among the people I knew.
-No, how are you offsetting with this kind of ping!!
-Ha. Ha.
-You damn monster freak!!!
-In the village of the one-eyed, it’s the two-eyed who get persecuted.
…Anyway, he was a really insufferable human.
But he was also the benefactor who had saved me when I was floundering on the ground, on the verge of my last breath.
I wondered where that gentleman was and what he was doing now…
I was confident I wouldn’t be surprised even if the timeline had twisted and he was working as a politician.
“The two-eyed one in the village of the one-eyed…”
I remembered the ten-match set from earlier.
For a moment, I felt as if I had my opponent in the palm of my hand.
A strange feeling, as if vaguely recalled possible moves were gradually becoming clearer.
The thrill when my intuition clicked and manifested right before my eyes.
And the sense of accomplishment when my fingers didn’t lag behind but reacted and followed.
Had that old man always lived like this? Geez, how selfish.
I threw the beer can into the recycling bin and shuffled my feet.
Yeah. I should go home for now. Because that place was my home now.
-Beep beep beep beep
-Beep-bo-ring
I turned back down the path I’d trudged and returned home.
And I opened the door lock and went inside… went inside?
“…Wait a minute?”
What did I just do?
The door lock.
I think I opened it.
Not with a card.
With my hand?
“…How on earth?”
I definitely pressed the password, didn’t I?
I stared at my fingers and muttered blankly.
How did I do that.