"Hwi, are you feeling any better today?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm fine."
"Do you think you can come to school tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
I answered the boy who was looking at me with worried eyes, even if my face came out awkward. At that, the boy looked at least a little satisfied.
"Okay. Get some rest, then."
"We're off to school."
"Don't cry from being bored by yourself!"
"Exams are coming up, so don't forget to study!"
The other kids behind the boy each threw in a line for me before disappearing.
Only then did the room go quiet.
'......Ah, I really can't get used to this.'
For the record, the place I was in right now was not the hospital where I had been made to spend most of my life. It was not the house I had only been to a handful of times either, nor the school I had wanted to attend but never got to attend in the end.
'So possession...... really is something that happens.'
I had not only become 〈Ya-hwi〉, a supporting character in 《Codename: Baby》, I was in the orphanage where he spent his childhood.
The orphanage that the comic handled in a mere few panels, so that you could not even tell exactly who had been there or how he had lived.
"Ugh......."
It was yesterday that I woke up in 〈Ya-hwi〉's body.
And an uproar broke out among the people around 〈Ya-hwi〉, whose contents had switched overnight. To anyone else it must have felt like his memories had evaporated wholesale, so it was a fair reaction.
'Thank goodness there was a suitable excuse for why I had lost my memory.'
Should I call this fortunate or unfortunate?
Right before I woke up in this body, 〈Ya-hwi〉 had apparently taken a bad tumble down a staircase. And not through any fault of Ya-hwi's own, but through a mistake by one of the orphanage's administrators.
So the orphanage director, faced with me and my (apparent) memory loss, chose to hush it up rather than make a big matter of it. The director was clearly worried that an audit might start because of me.
'Honestly, I doubt this was a mistake alone.......'
As it happened, today's date was November 9th. The day before the examination you absolutely had to sit in order to enroll in the Hwadam Military Academy.
Put another way, tomorrow, not any other day but tomorrow, was when the Hwadam Army enlistment examination that the original Ya-hwi had been aiming for would take place. It was a suspicious coincidence if there ever was one.
'Was this the interference the original Ya-hwi received?'
I did not know. The comic never depicted the manner in which he was interfered with.
But the timing was too exquisite. An accident two days before the entrance examination, of all times. Was that not too contrived to be a coincidence?
'If there is one saving grace, it's that the body itself is in perfectly good shape. Though I don't know how it went in the original.'
Right after the fall I was transported to a hospital and examined, and there were no particular injuries.
As for the evaporated memory, well, the moment they confirmed there was nothing wrong with my health, the orphanage director badgered me to keep my mouth shut, so I never even received a proper diagnosis.
Of course, since it was not real amnesia, that in itself was not a bad thing for me.
It was only not a bad thing. The bleak road ahead remained the same.
'What do I really do now.'
The shock of having been possessed into a comic character's body had mostly been shaken off when I woke this morning. There was no helping it. My present circumstances were in no state to keep holding on to that sort of worry for long.
'First, I absolutely have to take the exam. As it stands I'd just be sold off exactly like in the original.'
The original Ya-hwi's talent or not, a life of being sold to a crime syndicate and raised as a knifeman was not for me. Even if I ended up quitting the military academy later because the aptitude did not suit me, going that way first was better.
Conveniently, the Hwadam Military Academy was a place that granted anyone who passed the final examination the right to move into the dormitory that same day. If I only passed tomorrow's examination, I could escape the orphanage's clutches immediately.
It was the only...... well, not quite the only, but the highest-probability, most favorable escape route I could aim for now.
'As for interference...... they probably won't go out of their way to do more. Even with no physical injuries, to everyone else I'm a person whose memories have all flown away.'
Could a person with incomplete memories even sit an examination properly?
So whether this accident was intended or truly a matter of coincidence, the people at the orphanage would not try to harm me any further. An accident two days before the exam can be passed over as 'unlucky,' but accidents occurring one day apart right before the exam is a fine way to earn a 'that's suspicious' remark.
'The question is whether the original Ya-hwi's talent remains in me too.......'
The body seemed sturdy, at least. After all, I had tumbled hard down thirteen stairs and had not so much as twisted an ankle, let alone suffered a brain hemorrhage.
Compared to my previous body, which could not even run because of a weak heart, this was practically an iron man. Whether the rest of his talent remained in me too was the difficult question now.
'Even supposing the talent doesn't remain, it doesn't matter.'
I laid a hand over my chest. A heart beating normally came through my palm. It was a pulse that moved me by its very existence, a vibration that made it impossible for me to stay still.
'Even if a singularity called possession is what made it happen, look at how I got this chance.'
I no longer needed to worry first about my heart reacting abnormally before doing anything. There was no longer any reason to put limits on my actions for fear of straining it even slightly. And on top of that, I had been given advance notice of a future in which staying still here would ruin my life.
Then of course I had to take the challenge.
Of course I had to thrash about with everything I had.
"Actually, I feel like 'Ya-hwi' would want me to as well?"
I glanced at the mirror mounted in the room. Bright yellow eyes were reflected on the glossy surface.
"Right, Brother?"
Why exactly was it 'me,' into 'Ya-hwi,' 'at a point before the event that becomes the source of all his misfortune,' that the possession landed?
And in that last moment, why did the brother simply keep his seat instead of calling a nurse or a doctor even as he watched me collapse?
No, before that, the conversation we shared right up until I collapsed. The golden eyes I had never noticed and the familiar features.
Looking back on it now, you, who never once let me hear your name.
"For the record, I'm not going to think of it as having taken it."
......Where had the 〈Ya-hwi〉 who must originally have been inside this body gone?
I settled on an answer to the sentence I had chewed over again and again since waking.
"Because you're the one who said let's try it once, first."
If the last moment I remember was not a mistake, then my possession must have been carried out with 〈Ya-hwi〉's consent.
I did not bother considering for now how such a thing could be possible. What mattered was that I had decided to regard it that way.
I am a truly selfish bastard, so I tend not to refuse whatever benefits me.
'So sitting the exam is settled...... mm. Where was the testing site again?'
I looked for the location of the testing site recorded in the notepad. At that, a neatly folded notice tumbled out. It was the notice concerning the military academy examination.
But perhaps because it was military-related information, the location of the testing site itself was not written down. It only announced several waiting points, saying that a vehicle would be sent to take the candidates in.
'Is the waiting point inside Sejong City too dangerous?'
The nearest waiting point in Sejong City was thirty minutes away by bus. By private car it would probably take less than twenty.
Which meant that if the orphanage came to catch me the moment they grasped that I had escaped, I could be caught right there.
'There's no guarantee I could even depart on time to begin with.'
Interference did not necessarily have to be carried out through harm. If the administrators locked the door to my room or stood the dawn watch, there would be nothing I could do about it.
'The problem is.......'
In that case, would it be better to go to a different waiting point?
But the second and third took about two and a half hours each by bus. Considering that the time for gathering the candidates and departing is eight in the morning, that means leaving here at five in the morning at the earliest.
'No, with the money I have I can only ride the bus exactly once...... so if I walk from the transfer point, that's a four in the morning departure at best. And there'd be no buses at that hour either.'
Regrettably, I did not have much money at present. This damned orphanage barely gave out any allowance, and even the little that there was, they would take back by any means if I saved it up.
That was what 〈Ya-hwi〉's notepad records said. Thanks to that, departing in the early hours on the day itself was absolutely impossible.
"Ha, this really is dire."
Should I have borrowed money from the kids before they left for school?
No, no. The ones who told the orphanage that the original Ya-hwi was preparing to enter the military academy were Ya-hwi's own friends. The comic never showed exactly who did it, and for that very reason I could not trust anyone.
'And I don't have time to spend on hunting down a hidden emergency stash either.'
Let us say there is an emergency stash hidden so meticulously that not even the orphanage administrators or the director could find it. Would I find something like that easily?
For that reason I ruled out the search for the stash right away. With time limited, I could not waste it on uncertain factors.
'Escape today, spend the night outdoors, then sit the exam...... this is no joke right from the start.'
But this was the only method. I steeled my resolve.
"......I'd better leave before the kids come back."
Once the kids who had gone to school came back as well, the number of watchers would increase double. So if I had to pick the best timing, it was right now, while only the adults were left in the orphanage.
Legs that had finished every preparation slipped quietly out of the orphanage's dormitory section.
"So Ya-hwi is resting today, then?"
"Yes. He said he's not feeling well and will rest through today."
Separately from that, I never expected I would be playing a stealth action game in real life.
I passed the office space connected to the dormitory. It was a space with so many windows that it felt gloomy, and my heart trembled, but nothing could stop an escape I had already committed to.
"Ugh. He should have just broken a leg and been done with it. Why did the memory have to......."
"Honestly, I find that part a bit suspicious too. Isn't he just pretending it's gone?"
While I was crawling along the floor pressed to the wall right beneath the windows, the administrators' voices came through unusually clearly. Thump, thump. My heart beat a little faster from the tension.
If an administrator came out with a 'It really is suspicious. I should go and look' attitude, I would be discovered at once, so I could not hold back the tension welling up.
If I were caught here, a beating would not be the problem. I might be handed straight over to the crime syndicate. Beads of sweat ran down my chin to my neck.
"Ah, that's probably not it. He didn't react much when Hyeon-seong went to see him either. You know how terrified Ya-hwi is of Hyeon-seong."
"Hyeon-seong did beat Hwi like a man hunting rats. Just the last time, his arm was fractured......."
At the end of a tedium in which one second felt like one minute, a window large enough for me to climb through appeared.
The front door? That place was far too exposed. Going over a window once and then climbing the wall that surrounded the orphanage was the safest. That is what 〈Ya-hwi〉's notepad told me, at any rate. Long live records.
"Still, you never know, so let's ask them to tighten things up one more......."
The administrators' conversation grew more and more distant. Click. By the time I had finished escaping and even shut the window to destroy the evidence, I could barely hear them at all.
My heart, which had felt ready to burst, finally began to settle.
Right after, I pressed myself to the wall at speed.
The structure was a concrete wall with spiked iron bars mounted on top, but my desperation was a little stronger than the danger of it.
Whether Ya-hwi's memories of climbing that wall remained in the body or not, it moved on its own, which lent a hand to the smooth escape. My body had escaped the prison called the orphanage, for now.
"All right. The phone could be tracked, so I'll turn it off for now......."
I shoved the phone, its power cut, into my pocket and began running in earnest.
The murky sky had pushed the weather, which had been straddling autumn and winter, fully over into winter. Every breath I exhaled sent white mist spreading out in wisps.
'Ah, a healthy body really is good.'
I could run. I could actually run!
If Mom and Dad had seen me like this they would have been overjoyed. Mm...... no. Would they not have cared?
I thought of the parents from my previous life, who had provided me material abundance but had not been able to give me love.
Somewhere in my chest smarted, but that was a kind of phantom pain. This body's heart was fine and it did not hurt. There was nothing wrong.
'......I hope you both stay healthy.'
After all, your child is going to live well in another world, in a far healthier body.
Clatter.
"One thousand five hundred won."
I did not even have a transit card, so I paid the bus fare in cash. Worried that paying the youth fare might draw suspicion, I did not forget to squeeze out the adult fare from the money I did not have.
The driver, who glanced at the fare, shut the front door without answering.
"......"
What if they looked at the CCTV and tracked me? Carrying that worry, I had boarded the bus at a stop much farther away instead of the one I usually used.
I hoped this kind of effort would work at least a little, though I had no idea how it would go in practice.
I pulled the hood of my zip-up hoodie and the hood of my padded coat down tight and adjusted the nose of my mask. In my present appearance, the part of my face on show came to my eyes at most.
The bus carried me far, very far away.
***
Over the course of an hour or so, Gongsanseong Fortress came into view across the river.
That was the direction of the second-nearest waiting point, in Gongju City.
'From here I have to walk.'
The buildings that had gone up haphazardly all around made Gongsanseong stand out all the more. It was a result of Sejong City being designated the capital on this life's Earth, unlike the Earth of my previous life.
Here, Sejong City and every city near it had developed enormously. Just as the Seoul of my previous life, the one called the Republic of Seoul, had.
'If I circle around downtown Gongju for a while and then go to the waiting point, even the orphanage people would have a hard time catching me.'
There was a possibility they would send someone all the way out here, but that much was not a part I could do anything about.
'If it were up to me I'd want to go all the way up to Seoul.......'
Regrettably, the Hwadam Army entrance examination was set up so that you could not take the examination at all if you left your assigned district. It was a measure to assign an even number of candidates to each testing site.
'Still, Gongju City is a Hwadam Army garrison district, so it's famous for having a lot of Hwadam Army soldiers walking around. Thanks to that the Hwadam Army's influence is stronger here than in other cities. That means even if I run into them at the entrance of the testing site, I'll have the advantage.'
The Hwadam Army had been a place suffering from a manpower shortage ever since its founding. Even though it was the most important place for national security.
So even if I were seized in front of the testing site, if I made a scene with something like 'I want to take the exam, so why on earth are you stopping me,' and if a Hwadam soldier passing by happened to see it, then the odds were high that I would come out with the advantage over the orphanage.
Because the Hwadam Army was a place frantic to scoop up anyone even halfway decent.
'So I just have to do well. I brought a wristwatch to check the time, too.'
Before turning off the phone, I picked out several points in downtown Gongju City and copied down into the notepad how long each of them took to reach the waiting point.
Even the routes to those points would come out if I referred to road signs or stopped a passerby and asked.
This was the best I could do.
'Phew. Let's put my back into it.'
The money in my possession came to exactly seven hundred won. I intended to spend it on water. My hand patted my cheeks and I strode onward.
「WEEEEEEE—!」
"Huh?"
But when I had been walking for about an hour, a siren rang out loud enough to tear my ears apart. It was a volume that made not only me but everyone around me flinch and jerk their heads up.
"What is it, what is it??"
The siren rang out on a flat tone for about a minute. Even after it cut off, my ears hurt enough that they felt like they were still buzzing.
"Insane, what the hell......."
"Hey, babe. Did you hear the siren? Yeah, yeah......."
"Uh, Mom. Yeah, I'll come straight home. Yeah, yeah."
While I was clutching my numbed ears, the people around me began moving in perfect order.
「Today at 11:27, signs of a Dimensional Gate forming were observed in Geumhak-dong, Gongju City. An alert warning has been issued for the Geumhak-dong area. Residents, please prepare to evacuate and take refuge at your designated shelter. Repeating. Today at.......」
An announcement followed behind the siren. It was an announcement that made me newly aware that the ground I stood on was different from the world I had originally known.
Unlike the Earth of my previous life, the Earth of this life was a place where Dimensional Gates occurred at any time and vomited out Otherworld Creatures.
'Should I call this bad luck.......'
The one saving grace was that an ordinary Dimensional Gate does not vomit out Otherworld Creatures until twenty-four hours after the point when the signs appear.
If I walked hard and only made it as far as Sanui-dong, I would be able to get past this without any particular trouble.
「WEEEEEEE—EEP!」
"......?"
But the moment I was about to hurry my steps, the siren rang out once more. Its tone was quite different from the one that had sounded earlier.
"......What?"
"......Insane!"
"This isn't the time to pack that, run!"
At the same time, the air, which had held bewilderment but had not been without composure, changed completely.
「Today at 11:28, the occurrence of a Sudden Dimensional Gate has been observed. A disaster warning is issued for the Geumhak-dong area. Please evacuate promptly to a designated shelter or to the underground space of a nearby building. Vehicles in operation should stop in an open lot or on the right side of the road.......」
A Sudden Dimensional Gate.
Unlike an ordinary Dimensional Gate, which pours out Otherworld Creatures at minimum twenty-four hours after the signs manifest, it was a special Dimensional Gate that spits out Otherworld Creatures within ten minutes.
"AAAAAAAH!!"
"M-monsters!!"
Screams poured out from the corner of the intersection right before my eyes, in the direction I had to go.