Chapter 1: The Star of the Magpie

I don’t have friends. Not a joke, not an exaggeration, not even a single relationship that could be considered friendship exists in my life. Envious of my classmates playing League of Legends duos, I sought companions to traverse Summoner’s Rift on DC Inside.

Although blame-shifting and trolling were rampant, even more so than in solo queue, it was still enjoyable in its own way. Memorizing nicknames and filling up my friends list was a novel sensation. Which made the emptiness even more pronounced.

Objectively, as a human being, I was the worst of the worst. Even I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like me. I’m unremarkable, always on edge, and incapable of backing down. A boring person. Not righteous or upright, just plain nasty.

Every day was a continuation of solitary loneliness. In my short life, I had not been loved by anyone, nor had I loved anyone. Even my parents and family were indifferent to me, and I was treated as if I didn’t exist.

That in itself wasn’t particularly painful. It was even comfortable. Burdened by inferiority, I shouldn’t have longed for those relationships where people communicate and are loved. It was a futile expectation. A wish unbefitting me. My daily routine consisted of sitting in the back of the classroom, reading “My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected,” and chanting “Normies, you bastards!” while immersing myself in a world of self-deception.

I no longer felt the desire to escape from life like I did when I was younger. My emotions had dulled, and I had naturally adapted and conformed to reality. Thus, a solitary life became the norm for me. My youth was ruined, after all. Damn it, all you normie sons of, I hope you all get TS Syndrome. Lose your self-esteem, lose yourselves, and die. Repent and atone. Suffer. …No, please, do it. Otherwise, I…

I had a nightmare, as usual. My head ached, my body burned, and my chest felt tight. I couldn’t breathe properly. What time is it…? Did I collapse? I didn’t feel any cold symptoms before I went to sleep. No, the intensity and feeling were different from a cold anyway. It was incredibly painful, without exaggeration. It was hard to even move a finger. Meanwhile, my whole body was drenched in sweat, making me feel sticky and uncomfortable.

My sense of time was unclear. It felt like I had been like this for days, or perhaps not even a day had passed. Damn it. Skipping school is fine, but there’s a guild raid tonight. It doesn’t really matter, but it was a rare event. I didn’t want to miss it. I’m dying of pain, and this is all I can think about?

Damn it, shouldn’t I call an ambulance? My family is busy and has no interest in me. If I don’t come out of my room in the morning, they’ll assume I’m skipping school to sleep and won’t care.

Usually, I’m grateful for their indifference, but right now, I couldn’t maintain such a positive mindset. Anxiety washed over me. What if something goes wrong, and I die neglected in my room? It would definitely be a miserable death, like a lonely old man.

Damn it. Dying is fine, but I don’t want to die if I’m not the one choosing it. No, wait. Honestly, to be frank… I was a little scared. My consciousness faded again. Oh, I probably won’t actually die… When I open my eyes, surely…

My consciousness returned. I heard rustling sounds and something like conversations in the distance. My body still felt numb and uncomfortable, but at least I didn’t feel like I was dying. Haha. Some kind of fever; I really thought I was going to die. I barely managed to open my eyelids.

“Ugh,… my head… Ugh…”

My vision flickered white. There was something resembling a human figure in front of me. The light hitting my retina was painful. I blinked slowly to get used to the light. Eventually, my vision recovered enough to make out the other person’s face. It wasn’t someone I was particularly happy to see. My younger sister. We hadn’t exchanged ten words this year. Even those were strictly out of necessity.

“You’re awake. Are you feeling any better?”

“…Why are you here?”

I asked accusingly.

“…What, what, do you think I want to be here? You collapsed for over three days because of some weird illness… They said you needed a guardian, so I had no choice.”

I glanced around. It was a hospital. An IV was attached to my arm. I wasn’t particularly weak, and thanks to being a hikikomori, I never broke any bones, so this was my first hospitalization.

“Three days? Whatever, where’s my phone?”

“Here.”

I slowly unlocked the phone with the pattern. My hand didn’t have much strength.

By the way, she’s being strangely kind. She even brought my phone? My little sister couldn’t be this cute. If I ever meet that malicious author, I’ll definitely punch him really hard,… Kuroneko-chan…. I can’t understand little sister fetishists. Little sisters are a trashy trope. They don’t treat their older brothers like humans, not tsundere, not gap moe, nothing. Just plain indifferent and ignoring, that’s the crappy reality of a little sister.

[TL Note: Kuroneko-chan refers to Ruri Gokou from the anime Oreimo (My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute). She’s a fan-favorite known for her gothic style and critique of otaku culture. The speaker is mocking the unrealistic “little sister” trope often seen in anime, contrasting it with real-life siblings who are usually indifferent, not cute or affectionate like in fiction.]

She usually doesn’t speak so politely. Is she at least treating me like a patient? How very kind of her.

By the way, she seems hesitant about something. Usually, she just blurts out whatever she wants (I don’t know how she treats others, but at least she does with me), so this was an awkward sight. I started to wonder what was going on. Wait, do I have some kind of genetic disease? Or cancer? Leukemia? What is it? What’s going on? Is that why I collapsed?

“Huh?”

Huh? Why is it so hard to hold my phone with one hand? It’s hard to unlock the pattern. Come to think of it, were my hands always this pretty? Am I seeing things?

Wait, I was unconscious for about three days, my whole body aches like I have a fever, my joints ache and feel like they’re being stabbed… these symptoms sounded familiar. I flinched and pressed the power button again to turn off the phone screen. Something strange was reflected in the LCD.

I saw my little sister walking toward me with a hand mirror.

Huh? No—don’t! Damn it.

A wave of nausea hit me. My head spun. I felt dizzy.

Step by step, she came closer.

To me, she looked less like my sister and more like the Grim Reaper, approaching to deliver my final sentence.

“Put the mirror away! Get away! Hey! I said don’t come any closer!”

I gasped. I forced myself to yell. A clear, perfectly feminine voice rang through the hospital room.
 

I can’t even pretend otherwise. If there is a god, they must really hate me. Is this punishment? Is posting nonsense on the gallery about wanting to become a beautiful girl that wrong? Is pretending to be a middle school girl such a grave sin that I have to suffer like this? It’s a prank everyone does. Like a military-veteran high school girl.

I don’t know, I really don’t know, huh, I can’t even speak. Even the thought is suppressed by a powerful instinct to escape. Ah, ah, right. Humanely, the country should allow euthanasia. Screw the human rights issues of TS Syndrome patients; the answer is <euthanasia>. The country should guarantee freedom of choice. Ha Jinhyuk, the man, died the moment the syndrome manifested. I’m becoming a completely different person. A handful of self-love, bordering on obsession, churned violently within me.

As expected, life is a series of hardships. Because I know and am familiar with TS as a genre, I understood all the more what it meant. Damn it… A hundred or so people out of 50 million. The probability is a little over 1 in 500,000. I, the one who fails even 99% enhancements, won this ridiculous lottery. Damn it.

With a feeling of resignation, I looked at the reflection in the mirror. At first glance, only the shape of the eyes resembled mine… but it was a beautiful girl, so pretty that it felt wrong to say she looked like me. Her face was blank, as if her soul had left her body.

“…Ah, haha… haha… Ah , this is just ridiculous.”

Even my laughter was high-pitched, which annoyed me even more. My sister looked away. She probably didn’t know what to say. Calm down. At least a little. If I think about it carefully, this is less frustrating than when I lost my promotion series to Silver in League after going LLWWL.

[TL Note: LLWWL stands for Loss, Loss, Win, Win, Loss — a near-miss in a best-of-five ranked promotion series in League of Legends.]

I have the strongest mentality of this era. It doesn’t matter what happens to my body now. It’s not like I’ve turned into a fat, ugly pig and can’t even bear to look in the mirror. Whether I become a woman, a cat, or a water flea, my life won’t change. My heightened emotions quickly subsided.

“Well… it might not be so bad. It’s not that hard to live as a woman, surprisingly. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You can start a new life, Oppa. Someone from the TS Syndrome department visited yesterday…”

It was the first time I’d heard her call me “Oppa” since she was in late elementary school. Ironically, I only got to hear it after becoming a girl. It was absurdly funny. My clenched wrist trembled. I didn’t know if it was trembling from exhaustion or from the suppressed hypocrisy that disgusted me. We’ve been treating each other like we don’t exist all this time, so I wish she wouldn’t pretend to be close now.

It’s disgusting. Unpleasant. Other people’s kindness, regardless of the context, is just annoying. That’s the kind of person I am, so,

“Just get out. And don’t ever say anything like that again. It’s disgusting.”