'Where am I?'
The thought floated through darkness. I was still alive—miraculously, impossibly alive. No pain from the truck. No ringing in my ears from the impact. But most of all… I couldn't hear Noona's voice. That absence felt wrong, like missing a scar that had defined me for years. Her voice had been both peace and nightmare, the only thing that still connected me to the sister I failed.
Time had no meaning in the black.
Then a pinpoint of light appeared, growing steadily brighter until it burned. I tried to cover my eyes, but the light poured through anyway, flooding every sense.
Suddenly I could feel my hands again—lighter, smaller, wrong.
I opened my eyes slowly.
The room that greeted me was a small, somewhat dilapidated apartment, but it was clean. Faded wallpaper, simple furniture, a faint scent of dried flowers. 'This wasn't my place. This wasn't any place I knew.'
My hand moved instinctively to push myself up, and that was when I felt it.
A heavy, soft weight on my chest. Two large, full breasts that blocked my view of my own feet completely.
'What the—'
A startled shriek escaped my throat. Except it wasn't my voice. It was soft, melodic, like morning dew on white petals—pure, gentle, impossibly clear. The kind of voice that could quiet a noisy room without effort, easing tension from shoulders and stilling restless thoughts. If peace itself could speak, it would sound like this.
'Did that… come from me?'
I brought my hands up to my face. They were delicate and petite, smooth and soft, with no calluses, no scars. The ugly mark I'd earned punching that higher-up was gone. My arms were slender now, lacking the burly tone built from military drills and rage.
I stood up unsteadily. My line of sight felt lower, the world slightly smaller. "Eh?" The word slipped out again in that same serene, dew-like voice.
'Mirror. I need a mirror. Now.'
I spotted a door and half-ran, half-stumbled towards it, my new body moving with an unfamiliar lightness. It opened into a small bathroom. I closed my eyes, walked to the sink, and only then forced them open.
The woman staring back at me looked like she had stepped out of a quiet dream.
Smooth, harmonious features. Skin clear and luminous, glowing with a soft inner light. Gentle black eyes framed by long, silky black hair with neat bangs that softened her face even more. Every line of her—my—face was rounded by gentleness. Nothing harsh, nothing intimidating.
She looked serene, like untouched snow under morning light—pure, peaceful, the kind of beauty that made people instinctively lower their voices around her.
She looked like she had walked straight out of an anime. And unmistakably, this was now my body.
I placed my hands on my cheeks. The reflection copied the motion exactly.
Instead of disgust or panic at the change in sex, a wave of profound relief washed over me. Deep, bone-deep relief.
I was no longer a man.
No longer trapped in the body that could so easily become what I had seen in the military—the higher-ups who molested female lieutenants, who preyed on the weak, who sometimes even turned that same hunger on other men who couldn't fight back.
I had seen and heard it all: the rumors, the hushed stories of male conscripts cornered in showers or storage rooms, the same power games played regardless of the victim's gender. The hardware for that kind of predation had been installed in me, and the fear that I might one day use it had sickened me to my core.
Now that hardware is gone. I was safe from being a monster. And the world was safe from me being one.
But the relief curdled almost instantly.
"What use does having a new life bring?" I whispered. The soft, melodious voice turned heavy with loathing and guilt. "It won't bring Noona back. It won't erase what I did. Or what I failed to do."
If anyone deserved a second chance, it was the victims—the women and the men who had been abused, touched, broken by those with power. Especially Noona, who had smiled at me in that old photo like I was her little hero.
I didn't deserve this. I was trash. The one who had averted his eyes when it mattered most.
My hands gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles whitened. My vision wavered. Nausea surged. In the mirror, for a split second, I hallucinated Noona smiling gently at me—the same smile from our childhood.
I doubled over and threw up into the sink, stomach heaving violently. Tears streamed down my new, soft cheeks. Minutes passed in retching and sobs until nothing was left.
Exhausted, I slumped to the floor, covering my ears as the familiar ringing started again. The voices threatened to return. I forced myself up, shuffled back to the bed in the main room, and crawled under the blanket, pulling it tight over my head like a child hiding from monsters.
My breathing grew heavy and ragged. 'Fuck. Another attack.' The panic rose fast—chest tightening, heart hammering, the familiar spiral.
'It's fine,' I thought bitterly. 'Dying here is alright. I deserve it.'
But just as the wave crested, it… vanished.
The anxiety, the tightening in my chest, the ringing in my ears—all of it evaporated like morning mist. My mind felt suddenly, impossibly clear. Calm. Serene.
'What happened?'
I sat up, throwing the blanket off.
"Hello there, child," a gentle voice said from somewhere in the room—calm, serene, and carrying the same peaceful quality as my new voice.