Chapter 10: In front of the mirror

I got out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

I groped around the dark room and turned on the bathroom light.

Wait

Should I take off my clothes in front of the mirror, or should I go to the bathroom with my clothes off?

I stood blankly next to the light button of the lit bathroom, wondering.

Would it be less shocking to check my own body right away, or would it be less shocking to slowly take off my clothes after preparing myself?

After thinking for a while, I went into the bathroom with my clothes on.

As soon as I entered the bathroom, I saw my reflection in the vanity mirror.

White hair and golden eyes.

Hmm.

First of all, it was a difficult look to call a native Korean.

How do I explain this to the viewers?

Actually, I’m an albino, so my hair is white, and my eyes just happen to be gold, which is rare for Asians?

Should I say something like that?

How very persuasive.

“What do I do with this, really.”

I put my hands together in front of my face as if praying and closed my eyes.

Whether it was the influence of the church I no longer attended, my mind became strangely calm.

But regardless of my mind being calm, no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t find an answer.

“I don’t know.”

So

“I’ll just say I dyed it because I’m a hipster.”

I decided to go with it.

What are they going to do if they don’t believe me?

Thinking about it again, it seemed much more difficult to explain if I said this was my natural hair color.

I’ll just insist that my eyes are naturally gold, and if I say my hair is dyed, I should be able to get away with it, right?

It’s not a legal issue anyway, and as long as we can understand each other, there’s no need to prepare such detailed reasons.

Considering that the viewers didn’t care much about it in yesterday’s broadcast, it didn’t seem like it would be a big problem.

“Okay, now… Is it the main event?”

In any case, I have to take off my clothes to check what state my body is in now.

I’ve done my share of netkama stuff, so I’ve seen quite a few TS novels and manga, so there were a lot of scenes that came to mind.

The protagonist groping around their unfamiliar body.

The protagonist being embarrassed to see their reflection in the mirror but unable to take their eyes off it.

Isn’t the episode of examining their body that has become a woman for the first time a long-standing tradition of TS works?

To think that I would actually face a situation that only exists in those fantasies.

Then

How will I react?

…

I had no idea.

Me being embarrassed to see my own body?

I don’t think so?

I’ve been a netkama for over a year, you know.

There’s no way I’d be embarrassed about myself as a woman now.

That’s right, that’s right.

The voice in my head lingered in my dry mouth.

I crossed my arms and grabbed the hem of my hoodie.

Then I raised my arms and casually threw off my clothes.

Now, my reflection in the vanity mirror wasn’t wearing a single thread.

Flawless, jade-like skin and a body without a single ounce of fat.

High mountain peaks drawn into the beautiful lines that follow the neck to the shoulders.

Peaks that are only high are worse than empty, but the rounded shape is truly

“No no no”

I barely came to my senses.

No, but, it’s the first time I’ve seen it properly, and that’s really.

“Haha, ahaha…”

That’s really, what should I say.

It could be like that.

Haha.

Anyway

The breasts given to me, who had become a woman, were quite undeserved.

Considering what was taken from me in exchange for giving me these, I was worried that I had violated the law of equivalent exchange.

…It’s not that I meant my thing was small!

Just

Just… my breasts are too big now.

It was almost cheating.

I held one breast in each hand.

Was it simply because my breasts were big, or did my hands also shrink when I became a woman?

The feeling of breasts filling my hands

Meanwhile, the small and slender, but elongated sensation of the fingertips coming from the breasts.

Neither of them were familiar

In the chilling sensation, the skin that touched didn’t want to come apart even while trembling from the cold.

I imitated a woman, but I didn’t know women.

In the process of getting to know, I forget myself and become fingertips.

The faint throbbing of the heart, the hot blood flow, the leaking sweat.

All of those things are unknown.

But they are the things that I have become now.

In the filling knowledge, the mind gradually accepts the body.

It’s not that different from now, is it?

It’s just that the lie has become the truth.

Then, if I live faithfully to the truth from now on

“Wake up you idiot wake up you idiot wake up you idiot wake up you idiot”

I slapped my cheeks with both hands that were lifting my breasts.

My head was ringing, but that was better.

Rather than suddenly getting excited for no reason and trying to fall into the pleasure of being a woman, I’d rather do that.

“Don’t think like that, you idiot. You may have to accept it someday, but that’s not now, you crazy bastard. How long has it been since you became a real woman, and you’re acting like this? Wake up, you crazy bastard!”

That can’t be.

There’s no way I thought of it myself.

Yeah.

That crazy old man must have been up to something.

That’s for sure.

“That damn crazy old man is screwing me over even after disappearing, really!”

『Bang bang!!』

“Ugh, I’m sorry!!”

Whether it was because I shouted in the bathroom, the neighbor knocked on the wall.

Whether they heard my reflexive apology, I didn’t hear any more protests.

I had to be careful outside the soundproof booth.

“Haa…”

Still, I felt like I had regained my reason thanks to the neighbor’s protest.

“…It’s heavy, heavier than I thought.”

I, who had regained my reason, held my breasts in my hands again.

A heavy feeling.

It was heavier than I imagined.

I’m going to have to carry these around from now on?

I had the thought that my breasts might fall off if I jumped even once.

“Let’s take a shower…”

I kept talking to myself.

But if I didn’t, I felt like I would go crazy.

I thought I’d be okay.

I entered the shower booth and adjusted the water temperature.

As hot as possible without getting burned.

So that my Random thoughts  would be disinfected.

With a whoosh, dizzyingly hot water droplets poured down.

The truth that had become flushed with embarrassment was heated up more than that and covered up, and the reality that I couldn’t face was hidden in the thick steam.

I covered my eyes and deceived my senses, and peace began to return.

I felt dizzy, but it was just the right amount of lightheadedness, because I didn’t want to think too deeply.

I spent time entrusting myself to the senses that were numbing my reason.

What brought me back to my senses was when my phone, which was on schedule, started ringing the alarm.

It seemed that the time I had been showering while losing my mind was quite long.

I opened the shower booth door while taking a shower.

And I groped the shelf on the outside wall of the shower booth with my hand.

“Huh?”

There was no shelf in the place where the shelf should have been, and I only felt the texture of the marble tiles.

That can’t be?

I turned off the shower for a moment and went outside the shower booth.

When I came out of the shower booth, the shelf was in the same place as always.

I reached out for the phone that I had placed on the shelf.

“Ah.”

Only then could I understand what was wrong.

My hand, which usually faced down, was now facing up.

I’ve gotten shorter.

I felt it anew.

The fact that my body was no longer Go Su-yeong’s body, but had turned into something else’s body.

I may have killed myself.

Under the guise of living.

In fact, Go Su-yeong had already died once even before becoming a woman.

For the reason that there was no way to make a living

Go Su-yeong’s life, relationships, and emotions were all killed

And sent to the back of life.

I killed Go Su-yeong’s heart.

Even so, what allowed Go Su-yeong to remain as Go Su-yeong was that

Even if the life that had been lived so far was overwritten with a life made up,

Even if all the relationships that had been built up so far were cut off and only the relationships as Hiro remained in life,

Even if the way of life that had been accumulated so far was replaced with the virtual way of life called Hiro,

This one body was still the same as when I was Go Su-yeong.

Because my reflection in the mirror proves that I am me.

Therefore

Go Su-yeong was able to maintain the heart of Go Su-yeong.

But

Now, the humble body that Go Su-yeong used to confirm himself with

For the price of obtaining an incomparably beautiful and flawless female body

It disappeared from the world.

Then, can I really say that I am Go Su-yeong now?

If this moment of thinking right now

Is nothing more than a residual consciousness existing in the consciousness of Hiro who has obtained a woman’s body

If it’s just a dream butterfly that mistakes itself for witnessing its own sleeping self

Without the need to attach such grandiose poetic rhetoric

Being soaked and melted by all kinds of chemicals secreted by the woman’s body to perform the role of a woman

If that is the very soul of Go Su-yeong

“I am.”

“I am Go Su-yeong…”

“I am Go Su-yeong.”

I endlessly chant my own name.

A drop of water from the turned-off shower fell on my instep.

It was quite warm.

“Let’s finish washing.”

I erase my thoughts.

Being eaten by depression is truly the act of losing oneself.

I walked back into the shower booth and washed every corner of my body thoroughly.

It was quite neurotic.