Damn shit-taking part-timer. Because the bastard had gone to the bathroom, I had to stand in front of the convenience store, stamping my feet as I waited.
It was too far to go to another convenience store, and if I tried to satisfy my appetite somewhere else, the only place where ten thousand won could actually do that was a convenience store.
So I waited for thirty minutes. How could anyone take a dump for that long? I was starting to worry about the physical condition of a convenience store clerk whose face I had never even seen.
“Hah... hah... Were you waiting...?”
“Yes. A lot.”
“Hoo... Sorry ’bout that....”
The part-timer hurriedly opened the door, panting harshly. I frowned and glared sharply at him, and he flinched before quietly returning to the counter.
...Look at him getting scared. If he shrank back like that in front of a woman half his height, it was obvious that guy was going to spend his entire life being pushed around by other people. If he was a man, he should at least square his shoulders with some confidence.
Of course, I never went outside in the first place. Let alone women, I didn’t even meet friends of the same sex. I didn’t square my shoulders, either. My job was to hunch over in front of a monitor, shoulders curled inward, tapping away at a keyboard, so if anything, I had even fewer chances to straighten them.
But humans originally become far more nitpicky when criticizing others and giving unsolicited advice. I proudly held up a straight and proper yardstick that had never once been aimed at myself and mocked him with it. Then I started thinking about what to eat.
【Hooh... There are many fascinating things here!】
Since Harse was from another world, modern convenience stores and the things sold in them seemed quite fascinating to him. Judging from what he had said earlier, it seemed he could look into my memories, and perhaps thanks to that, he appeared to have grasped modern times fairly quickly.
...But it was a little absurd. I couldn’t look into Harse’s memories, so why could Harse look into mine? Wasn’t that a little unfair?
If I dug a little deeper, Harse’s very existence was questionable to begin with. Me possessing my own body and ending up living as a woman? It made no sense, but fine, I’d at least try to accept it.
But what the hell was this self-proclaimed king from another world suddenly chattering away inside my head? This was a fresh move I had never seen or heard of before.
For now, I understood that he was another me from another world, and that he was something like a senior of mine who had gone through a situation similar to mine first. Even so, that didn’t mean I could accept his existence. No matter how hard I tried, the question of “why?” wouldn’t disappear.
It felt like an ally much stronger than the protagonist suddenly appearing in a munchkin novel I had been enjoying... Since that was just how it was, I let it slide somehow, but when I thought about it, it was something far too alien.
For now, he was helping me, and he had offered comfort when I was struggling. He wasn’t a bad guy, and judging by the way he grinned like an idiot, he didn’t seem capable of scheming.
However, I couldn’t know why that thing was talking inside my head, or how he had been dragged over to this world. We had only met today, so there wasn’t much I knew, and I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of person he was.
That gave me the same unpleasant feeling as a fishbone caught in my mouth while eating fish, and planted within me a suspicion that was hard to drive away.
“Should we eat Raccoon Ramen?”
【Have you eaten it before? If so, what does it taste like?】
“It tastes delicious.”
【...That explanation is lacking in loyalty. In my kingdom, you would be executed on the spot.】
“Do you kill people that easily?”
【A kingdom is, by nature, a dictatorship. Furthermore, merely holding one’s head upright before the king constitutes the crime of disrespect.】
“If you kill people that easily, even the Northern Grand Duke up there would get cursed at. Though he gets cursed at a ton even without that.”
【I am a king! I am far greater than some Northern Grand Duke and hold far more power, so it is fine!】
“No, the Northern Grand Duke just a little ways up has way more power. He even fires nukes.”
【Nukes? Hmm... They certainly sound like impressive weapons... But could they defeat me, a Sword Master? Umhahat!】
“Even a Sword Master probably couldn’t block one... You’re treating nukes like they’re nothing.”
【You are the one who must not look down on Sword Masters! A Sword Master is one who contains the stars of the heavens within his sword and assimilates his own soul with the world—】
“Do you want to eat that?”
【...Do not interrupt me.】
“So are you going to eat it?”
【.... I want to eat it.】
...But either way, there was no conclusion in the end. All I could do was worry by myself, feel the sense of wrongness by myself, and suspect him by myself.
All that remained was an unstable process overflowing only with emotion, without any firm conclusion, and that was trash that wouldn’t help me at all even if I kept it. It was trash I had no need to carry around.
So I decided to throw it away boldly. Even if I was too lazy to throw out the trash overflowing in my room, emotional garbage piling up in my heart needed to be thrown away on time whenever I decided it was unnecessary.
If I let this pile up without throwing it away, I’d end up mentally ill. So I had to wave my hand and say bye-bye to it, telling it to get lost quickly.
“...Something just occurred to me. If I eat, do you get full too?”
【For now, we are sharing a body! The initiative belongs to you, but... the senses themselves are shared!】
“Come to think of it, you said it hurt when I slammed my head into the wall.”
【Indeed! It hurts, so do not do such a th— Aah!! What are you doing!! That hurts!!!】
“No, I was just curious if you really felt pain.”
Right. What was the point of thinking so complicatedly? All I needed to think about right now was filling my stomach.
“...Should I put Harse into the novel too?”
【What are you suddenly talking about now..?】
“There’s still a long way to go, but when the plot catches up to the present, how about adding you as a new character?”
...And, additionally, I thought a little about the novel.
Personally, the character called Harse was quite tempting. Another me inside the protagonist’s head. The character trait of another personality was good for piquing readers’ interest.
If you looked at Ha Seoyun’s story, it wouldn’t be strange no matter when she developed a mental illness, and if I added a character like Harse to that kind of story, I felt like it would function as a positive element rather than a negative one.
For starters, out of my novels, the one with the best performance was I Became the Narrow-Eyed Swindler of the Academy... or Akasilgi, as the readers shortened it, and the most popular character there had been exactly that sort of dual-personality character, so I was fairly confident.
An author is bound to be unable to forget their own success and later commit self-plagiarism by copying themselves.
[Spidamang: Author... I really like your writing, but... honestly, I think you use dual-personality characters too much... Their character traits aren’t even different... It’s basically just their names that are different... I’m not even sure whether this character really needs to exist.... (nervous Bel-chan emote)]
Thanks to that, I had even been criticized by a reader who followed not only that novel, but every novel I wrote, leaving supportive comments each time.
If you asked whether I was really going to use another dual-personality character after even being criticized for it... Yeah, I wanted to. Honestly, I wanted to. What was I supposed to do when the reactions were good every time I used one? Besides, I had never written here before, so it counted as my first time.
Past me was whispering in my ear, telling me to wield the sword named dual personality, and even though I knew that sword was a demonic sword, I simply couldn’t suppress the desire to grab it.
On top of that, I had an extremely good sample this time. There really was another me existing right beside me, so I was supposed to resist this? Really resist it? If I just polished up the things he blabbered beside me a little, it would become delicious writing.
【Is that not a little questionable..? The novel you are writing is, at any rate, Ha Seoyun’s story, is it not?】
“That’s... true. You’re right. Definitely... I did attach the TS tag and write it thoroughly from my perspective, but... Inmangsal isn’t my story, it’s the story of another me. Someone else’s story... Yes.”
【Ah..! That was not what I meant to say...】
“...Why are you making such a fuss? I’m not going to grab my head and start knocking it against things again over something like this.”
I decided to hold back. If the person herself told me not to write it and I wrote it anyway, that would be an infringement of portrait rights.
Furthermore, the story I was writing was indeed Ha Seoyun’s story. I had already attached the TS tag and narrated it from the perspective of myself, who had once been a man, but this was unmistakably the story of the woman Ha Seoyun.
I didn’t want to mix any more of my personal thoughts or creative desires into her story and turn it into something that wasn’t hers.
The desire whispering that this would work, that this could let me climb even higher, tightened around my ankles as if to hinder my decision, but that much, at least, I wanted to make clear.
It was her story, posted without permission. She had become me, and I had become her, but... for the sake of the her from before we became mixed together, I would declare this.
At the very least, this story... Because You Have to Live Even if Your Life Is Ruined, I would leave entirely as hers.
【A fine resolution...!】
“...Don’t read my thoughts without permission.”
【Even if I do not try to read them, strong thoughts come through on their own! That means your will was just that firm, so you may be proud!】
“Shut up.”
【Hehe, you feel good because I praised you, don’t you~】
“....”
After that, I bought a large cup of Raccoon Ramen and one tuna mayo triangle kimbap from the convenience store and left.
It tasted like normal ramen and tuna mayo.
***
“Huh...”
Name, Kim Sangjeon. Age, twenty-two. A perfectly ordinary young man who, after being discharged from the military, had nothing to do and was temporarily working part-time at a convenience store, experienced something curious today.
Curious about just how effective it would be, he had drunk some blue juice, and as a result, a Hi-Pass expressway had instantly opened up in his intestines. After a long battle in the bathroom, he returned to the convenience store, only to find an incredibly cute girl crouched in front of the door, waiting for it to open.
Pure white skin and even whiter hair. Strange blue eyes that seemed to draw people in, delicate features, a petite height that made him wonder if she would even reach his chest, and so on. Fundamentally, the girl looked as if the very definition of cuteness had become a person.
At the same time, perhaps because her face had a foxlike look, when she frowned, she appeared quite sharp. But sharp or not, Kim Sangjeon was in a state where his heart had gone soft and he didn’t know what to do, as if a cute red panda was threatening him.
However, that state of his did not last long, and the reason was her conversation.
“Should we eat Raccoon Ramen? It tastes delicious. Do you kill people that easily? If you kill people that easily, even the Northern Grand Duke up there would get cursed at. Though he gets cursed at a ton even without that. No, the Northern Grand Duke just a little ways up has way more power. He even fires nukes. Even a Sword Master probably couldn’t block one... You’re treating nukes like they’re nothing. Do you want to eat that? So are you going to eat it?”
In truth, it could not be called a conversation. She was alone, with no one to talk to.
He wondered if she was talking to herself, but it was strange to call it a monologue. Her muttering was clearly in the form of conversing with someone, and even when he listened closely, it sounded like she was exchanging words with another person.
Wondering if she might be on a call, he looked closely at her ears, but there wasn’t even a trace of wireless earphones in them. And if asked whether she was holding a phone to her ear, that wasn’t the case either. Other than her voice, he could hear no sound whatsoever.
‘She’s crazy..! Holy shit...! This is my first time seeing a crazy woman....!’
Kim Sangjeon, twenty-two years old, an age where there were still many things to be fascinated by. For the first time in his life, he had encountered a real mentally ill person, the kind he hadn’t even seen in the army.
A crazy woman holding a conversation alone was not something one could easily see anywhere, so he immediately entered the community he often frequented, the Novel Reader Gallery, commonly called Dokgal, and began writing a post.
He even recorded her as evidence that the story he was telling wasn’t a lie.
“...Should I put Harse into the novel too? There’s still a long way to go, but when the plot catches up to the present, how about adding you as a new character? That’s... true. You’re right. Definitely... I did attach the TS tag and write it thoroughly from my perspective, but... Inmangsal isn’t my story, it’s the story of another me. Someone else’s story... Yes.”
And just then, words that no Dokgal reader could possibly ignore reached Kim Sangjeon’s ears...
[All those author bastards seem mentally ill]
[Writer: Your Majesty Sangjeon]
(Recording of someone muttering while having a conversation alone)
Dokbbi, I’m so scared... There’s a suspected author who’s super cute and pretty and mentally ill doing this in the convenience store... Uuugh...
(Mikku emote lying on the ground crying)
[Recommend 2] [Dislike 0]
-
[ㅇㅇ: Not even lying, she sounds seriously dangerous]
[ㅇㅇ: Her voice sounds nice]
[ㅇㅇ: What’s with that voice...]
[PassingKim: That’s a ninja who came to kill Dokbbi]
[Consallery: Try confessing to her, she’ll be cured of her mental illness right away ㅇㅇ]
Dreaming of making it to the hot posts, he uploaded the recorded one-person conversation along with his post.
★[Isn’t this what that convenience store mentally ill author was talking about?]
[Writer: ㅇㅇ]
(Screenshot of Because You Have to Live Even if Your Life Is Ruined)
The abbreviation is Inmangsal and the tag is TS too
[Recommend 22] [Dislike 1]
-
[ㅇㅇ: Huh]
[ㅇㅇ: (trembling Mikku emote)]
[Treehugger: This can be identified?]
[ㅇㅇ: (Huh... Mikku emote)]
And someone else got the hot post.
[I read the mentally ill author’s novel ㅇㅇ] [3]
★[For the guys looking for the recording] [13]
[No wonder it felt so realistic] [2]
[TS misery = the author’s memoir was actually real?] [5]
★[But then does that mean the author of Inmangsal is a beautiful girl?] [9]
★[Inmangsal? From today onward, you are Mentalsal] [22]
[Dokbung who wrote the first post, hurry up and upload the author’s photo. This is urgent] [4]
[Women actually write TS too?] [33]
The topic rolled along splendidly, and countless hot posts that were not his were born.
“My hot post.... Why am I not the hot post...? No hot post...?”
Kim Sangjeon had to feel a chill seep all the way into his bones at the fact that the hot post, which should originally have been his, was not in his arms.
It was winter.