Episode 1: The Day of Re-enlistment
Everyone has heard, at least once in their lives, the saying that fortune and misfortune are unpredictable. They say that not knowing what will happen as you live is simply part of life, but honestly, isn't this a bit much?
***
When I opened my eyes, an unfamiliar ceiling greeted me. I never dreamed that I would one day utter with my own mouth a line straight out of a Japanese isekai or a trashy web novel. It is incredibly cliché and cringeworthy, but what can you do? It's the truth.
Unless my eyes are deceiving me, what I'm looking at right now is not the ceiling of my house.
Staring blankly at the stain on the ceiling, it took me quite a while to realize that the place I was in wasn't my bedroom at home, but somewhere entirely different.
Where the hell is this?
Strange. I definitely fell asleep in my own bedroom last night.
I had been drinking, but not enough to black out. I didn't have the tolerance for that in the first place.
I was certain I wasn't one to get blackout drunk and forget everything. So what was going on?
Confused, I looked around.
The only things that stood out were several beds with white blankets and pillows neatly arranged, and a single vase by the window. The flowers in the vase looked to have long since withered into mummies.
"Did I get hospitalized or something...?"
If my guess was right, this place seemed to be a hospital.
There were several beds, but I was the only person in the ward.
Could something have happened while I was sleeping?
The thought suddenly crossed my mind that perhaps I had been in an accident, rescued by first responders, and admitted to a hospital.
What should I do now? Should I get up and leave the ward? Or should I just sit still and wait until someone came?
Unable to figure out how to act in this unprecedented situation, just then the ward door opened and a woman in a nurse's uniform came inside.
Peculiarly enough, the nurse was white.
Moreover, the clothes she was wearing looked somewhat strange. It was definitely a nurse's uniform, but it looked a little different from the ones you usually see.
How should I put it... rather than the 21st century, it looked more fitting for the early-to-mid 20th century—specifically, the World War II era.
"Ah! You're awake!"
And she's speaking English?
Well, it was more natural for a white person to speak English than Korean, but...
Why could I understand what she was saying?
How could I, someone who had been estranged from English since the fifth grade?
Leaving me bewildered, the nurse hurriedly ran off somewhere, and a few minutes later she returned to the ward with a gentleman in a white coat—a doctor.
The doctor was also white.
His head was half-bald (a moment of silence), and judging by the wrinkles filling his forehead, he looked to be over fifty, though I couldn't be sure. In the Korean military, weren't there officers going bald before they even hit forty practically everywhere you looked?
Perhaps the doctor in front of me was much younger than I thought.
...His appearance was far from youthful, though.
"So you're up. How is it? Coming to your senses?"
"Wh-what the hell is going on...?"
I was surprised by my own words. I had clearly spoken normally, but what came out of my mouth was not Korean, but English.
At that moment, my head throbbed as if I had downed a bowl of ice water, and my vision spun. It felt like the entire world was revolving around me.
Was I the one spinning?
Was I standing still while the world moved?
I didn't know. I didn't know anything.
***
If God truly exists, that bastard is definitely a lunatic with a serious personality disorder. Or maybe he just fucking hates me. There was no way something like this could happen otherwise.
No, does this even make sense in the first place?
That I, who had been living in 21st-century Republic of Korea, had suddenly been dropped into 20th-century Britain.
And to wake up in the body of some white bastard I'd never laid eyes on before.
There's no plausibility whatsoever!
Who would have known that something possible only in a fantasy novel would actually happen?
At first, I wondered if I was dreaming, so I pinched my flesh and banged my head against the wall. But doing so didn't wake me up.
Because it wasn't a dream—it was reality.
Instead, my head just hurt.
Not to mention the nurse looking at me like I was a madman.
Hey, miss. Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not crazy, I'm just extremely confused. If you were in my shoes, you'd understand perfectly.
The one small mercy was that the original owner's memories of the body I had possessed were still intact.
The original owner of this body was Arthur Gray.
His full name was Arthur William George Gray.
For convenience, I'll call him 'Arthur.'
He was eighteen years old, a soldier by profession, with the rank of second lieutenant—a rank more commonly called "a single grain of rice" or "ssogari" in the Korean military. (Damn it.)
He had a family, and surprisingly, he was born under a father who held the hereditary title of baron. In other words, this body was born with a silver spoon in its mouth.
"So what? Aside from that, everything else is a problem."
I can live with being from a noble family. Of course, it was a bit iffy that my status was a soldier, but at least I wasn't an enlisted man.
The problem was how this Arthur ended up here.
It seemed the original Arthur hadn't been much of a good son. Looking back on his memories, the reason he had enlisted was that every time he went outside, he caused trouble, so his family had semi-forced him into the army.
It was tradition for British nobles to enlist, but because Arthur was such a troublemaker, his family had him enlist earlier than most.
Thanks to that, he had earned the rank of second lieutenant at the age of eighteen.
Anyway, it had only been two years since his discharge, and he had never dreamed he would be re-enlisting in the British Army during World War II.
No, why me of all people? Why?
If I at least knew the reason, I might feel less wronged. What the hell is the reason?
Besides, it's now 1940.
The time when the greatest and worst war in human history—World War II—is ongoing.
Britain was 'relatively' less damaged, but even so, by the time the war ended, the death toll alone was 495,000, and far more people were injured. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered permanent, irreparable bodily injuries.
It was truly a tumultuous period of hardship on a global scale.
A sigh was the only thing that came out of my mouth.
Ha, fuck.
I already thought the world was fucked up, and now I've fallen into an even more fucked-up world.
["Today, our brave British Army achieved a small but valuable victory in Norway. Caught by our forces' surprise attack, the German Army suffered dozens of fatalities and retreated, while our own losses were limited to two men lightly wounded. News of the victory was immediately relayed to the homeland, bringing the people hope of victory..."]
As if to remind me of my shitty mood, the announcer's monotone voice drifted out from the radio, echoing through the ward. The radio was quite noisy due to its age, but not to the point of being grating.
I was still the only one in the ward. It wasn't what you'd call spacious, but it wasn't narrow either. Being the only one here somehow made me feel like I had rented the whole room.
Today was May 6, 1940. It was the third day since I, "I Gyutae," a former Sergeant of the Republic of Korea Army, had become Second Lieutenant "Arthur Gray" of the British Army.
Though I was still utterly confused. They say time is the best medicine, and compared to when I first opened my eyes, I could say I had calmed down 'just a little.'
Honestly, I had seriously considered suicide at first. If I could just return to my room in 21st-century Korea, I was prepared to do anything. And considering what the future held, it might be a much better choice to die quickly now and get it over with.
Four days from now, Germany would invade France. Six weeks later, France would surrender and fall to become a puppet state. At a disadvantage, Britain would win the Battle of Britain and halt the German invasion of the mainland, but would continue to suffer until Berlin fell to the Soviet Army.
For a full five years.
Should I count myself lucky that I hadn't fallen into a place like Poland, the Soviet Union, or China, which suffered unimaginable damage from the war, with their homelands turned into scorched earth and the majority of their people killed? The comparison might be harsh, but Britain suffered less damage than those countries.
But even taking that into account, my future looked nothing but bleak.
Until the war ended, the British Army would fight on almost every front: North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany. Come to think of it, India, Burma, and China too.
What were the odds that I would survive all that?
Even Michael Wittmann, Germany's legendary tank ace, died during the war. There was no need to even mention a mere second lieutenant like me.
And while Britain suffered less than the countries I mentioned earlier, looking at the situation after World War II, there were even opinions that Britain had lost more than Germany, the instigator. Because of the war, Britain descended from its position as "the empire on which the sun never sets," and collapsed, losing many interests here and there to the United States, that ungrateful child. Naturally, it was inevitable that the lives of British citizens would become harder.
And that was the future I, having become a Briton, would face as well.
"Maybe I'd be better off dead..."
But the moment I resolved to commit suicide, I became afraid of what came after. Even if I died here, there was no guarantee I would return to my original world. What if I died and didn't wake up in my house, and it was just 'the end'? What would I do then?
In the end, from the very beginning, I had only one choice left.
To simply survive in silence.
That was the only thing I could do.
...Fuck.
I think I'm completely fucked.