The First Swap
It took me almost two and a half hours to complete the legal procedures and finally leave the hospital. Since the hospital was only about two miles from the apartment where my family lived, I decided to walk instead of taking a cab. There was no reason to waste credits just because I had them.
The sun had already disappeared behind the horizon of tall buildings and skyscrapers surrounding me. The cold, almost lifeless streets might have appeared dangerous, but this was a relatively prosperous part of the city, and even if something did happen, I was a man and strong enough to protect myself.
Halfway home, I heard screams coming from a side path that led directly toward a railway underpass. The me of yesterday might have called the police and waited for them to arrive, but the current me had something I had never possessed before.
An ability!
It was the perfect chance—and excuse—for me to use it. Even if I somehow failed, I was confident enough in my own body to handle a straight confrontation.
Or to run away.
I did my best to approach the underpass quietly, since giving up the element of surprise was never a good idea. The screams became clearer as I got closer, enough for me to recognize that they belonged to a woman who seemed to be in the process of being robbed by two thugs.
When I reached the corner of the underpass, I cautiously leaned out far enough to observe the scene ahead of me. Two rough-looking men were pressing a young woman against the wall.
My enhanced senses allowed me to see considerably better in the darkness, especially with the fading light from the lamps beneath the underpass. It was enough for me to notice that the young woman had platinum-blonde hair and was dressed far too elegantly for a place like this. She wore a dark-blue dress that glittered as though it had been sprinkled with diamond dust, while a delicate necklace and matching earrings caught what little light remained. Her luxurious high heels looked equally out of place in an environment like this.
Even the small handbag hanging from her shoulder looked expensive.
I didn't know enough about women's fashion to put a price on any of it, but everything about her gave off the unmistakable air of someone who had grown up with money.
I also noticed a rather dangerous-looking knife in the hand of the man standing slightly farther away from her. It seemed that one of them was threatening to hurt her while the other tried to pull the handbag from her hands.
The situation looked more serious than I had imagined. Getting rid of the man's knife was my first priority; after that, I could rush in and knock them out.
I focused on the strange connection I could feel with the space around me and imagined the knife in the man's hand being transported into mine.
Instead, I suddenly felt as though I were being sucked into space itself.
Since this was my first time activating my ability, I assumed that was simply how it worked and allowed the sensation to pull me in.
Blink.
For a moment, I felt as though I were floating in nothingness. Then, in the next instant, I found myself standing in front of the two thugs I had been planning to knock out only moments earlier.
There was another problem, however.
The men somehow seemed to have grown taller after my teleportation.
Or could becoming shorter be a side effect of my ability?
“What the fuck...” I murmured slowly.
My voice sounded much higher-pitched than before, yet it was clear and strangely soothing, with a soft, almost musical quality that felt completely foreign coming from my mouth.
Then the sensations from my body began arriving one after another.
The first was the chill. For some reason, I could feel the cold night air much more strongly than I had only moments earlier, even though I was an Awakened and had dressed warmly.
Next came my sense of balance. My feet felt as though they were being tilted forward, with something lifting my heels from the ground and making it considerably harder to stand normally. At the same time, I became aware of something being pulled from my hands.
The man in front of me was staring at me with a stupefied expression while holding the young woman's luxurious handbag, as though wondering why I had suddenly let go after fighting so hard to keep it away from him.
Then a thought struck me as I looked down.
The ground was barely visible past the strange and monumental weight hanging from my chest, an unfamiliar heaviness I had never experienced before. As I lowered my gaze farther, strands of platinum-blonde hair—which I most certainly hadn't possessed a moment ago—slid over my shoulders and tickled my neck and the exposed skin of my back above the glamorous dress that had somehow appeared on my body.
It was then that I finally understood.
My ability hadn't transported the knife out of the man's hand, nor had it swapped my position with the young woman.
For some reason, it had swapped our bodies.
The man with the knife yelled at his stunned companion.
“What the hell are you waiting for? That necklace looks like it could buy us a proper house in the residential district!”
His companion snapped out of his daze at the shout and reached toward the young lady's necklace. The brief pause, however, had also given me enough time to recover slightly from my astonishment—at least enough to function in such a bizarre situation.
I tried to grab the approaching thug's wrist and twist it, but quickly realized that the thin arms I now possessed couldn't generate nearly enough force.
I was ashamed of having been reduced to such a helpless state, and for the first time in my life, I experienced a kind of fear I had never felt before.
Being weak enough that I couldn't even protect myself.
I could only watch as the man's hand crept closer and closer while my own soft and dainty hands could do little more than slow its descent.
Just before his fingers could close around the necklace, someone—a dark silhouette—appeared behind the man holding the knife and kicked him viciously between the legs.
The impact was hard enough that I could almost imagine something cracking, causing me to feel a momentary flicker of pity for the man despite his criminal background.
The same silhouette immediately moved toward the other thug and landed a quick chop against the side of his neck before walking past the two collapsed men and approaching me.