Can a person born colorblind truly understand the reds and blues of the world?
Or can someone without wings perfectly sense how a bird flutters its wings in the sky?
Even with the power of modern science, such feats remain elusive.
Thus, I found my attention irresistibly drawn to the two new fingers wiggling on my right hand.
My grip was now daintily small, significantly tinier than my original hand.
On that hand, a full complement of five fingers existed.
The congenital deformity, which had left me with only three fingers on each hand, was now completely healed.
How could this possibly be?
Yet, it wasn’t just my hands sending strange signals.
My body felt unusually light, a tightness constricted my chest, and hair that now reached my waist cascaded, tickling my arm.
Involuntarily, my fingertips reached out to touch that hair.
Naturally, I used only the three fingers I was accustomed to, excluding the thumb and pinky.
Soft, lustrous silver hair danced at my fingertips.
“What is this…. Oh?”
I was startled by the sound that emerged from my own throat.
A delicate, melodious voice, transmitted through bone conduction, vibrated in my cochlea.
This was strange.
Too strange to be real.
I immediately rose from the bed and made my way to the sink in the small bathroom of my studio apartment.
There, reflected in the mirror, was a young girl with half-closed, languid eyes.
“What in the world.”
As my eyes widened in surprise, beautiful blue pupils fully revealed themselves.
When I raised my hand, the girl in the mirror raised hers too.
When I stuck out my tongue, she, too, poked out a small, cute red tongue.
Slowly, I scrutinized her reflection.
Gone was my sun-darkened, brown skin, replaced by a fair complexion so delicate I hesitated to touch it, fearing it might leave a mark.
My reduced height undoubtedly placed me under 160cm.
Soft, plump cheeks, lips parted with a protruding tongue, and two eyes sparkling in surprise.
Anyone with a conventional sense of beauty would undoubtedly agree that this girl possessed considerable cuteness.
The only problem was, the girl in the mirror was me.
“Ah. Aahh. What in the….”
Dizzy, I stumbled back into the main room of the studio apartment.
With trembling hands, I searched for a cigarette.
Just as my birth parents, who abandoned me in an orphanage due to my deformity, must have been heavy smokers during my mother’s pregnancy,
I, too, was a considerable chain smoker, likely influenced by genetics.
However, where my cigarettes usually lay, there was nothing.
Instead, a cute, sky-blue wallet, seemingly fit for the girl in the mirror, occupied the spot.
Click.
I opened the wallet and examined its contents.
Before long, I easily found an ID card.
The photo, of course, showed the woman I had just seen in the mirror.
“Yoo Seo-ha?”
That was the name of this body.
Only then did I begin to slowly survey my surroundings.
Everything had changed.
From the furniture to the cosmetics, the bedding, and even the wallpaper.
Everything had been transformed into a feminine style.
Had the layout not been completely unfamiliar to what I remembered, I might have worried I’d mistakenly entered the wrong apartment.
A parallel world? A dream? Or had my dissatisfaction with my physical disability finally driven me to insanity?
I tried to perform an RC check by bending my fingers backward.
However, the vivid pain from my perfectly normal pinky finger made me flinch and stop immediately.
‘I don’t want to become disabled again.’
Even after repeatedly slapping my cheeks, reality remained unaltered.
Washing my face with cold water, talking to my reflection in the mirror, or even kneading my chest—though outwardly modest, it possessed a certain assertiveness—yielded the same result.
Reality stubbornly refused to change.
Only after a long period of such frantic attempts did I finally concede.
Whether I had transmigrated into a parallel world’s version of myself, Yoo Seo-ha, or if my entire reality had been inverted…
Assuming I hadn’t gone mad, I had unequivocally and completely become a woman.
“Don’t be ridiculous….”
First, a cigarette.
Let me think things through while having one.
I hastily pulled a coat from the wardrobe (choosing one with a relatively neutral feel), grabbed the wallet, and headed out the door towards the convenience store.
****
Presenting my ID confidently to the part-timer who eyed me with suspicion, I successfully acquired a pack of cigarettes.
According to the ID, I was 22 years old.
Whether fortunately or not, despite my transformation into a woman, my age remained the same.
With trembling hands, I tore open the cigarette packaging and held one between my fingers.
I instinctively placed it between my index and middle fingers, but as I went to light it, I realized I had no lighter.
I re-entered the convenience store, bought a lighter, and quickly lit the cigarette.
Smoking on the street (TL Note: ‘Gilbbang’ is a Korean slang term referring to smoking in public places, usually on the street, where it might be frowned upon or illegal.)?
I’m sorry, but in the demon realm of Incheon, law-abiding citizens who diligently follow the rules cannot survive.
Although I typically only smoked in designated areas and avoided street smoking, the situation I was experiencing was far too absurd.
Having undergone such a bizarre ordeal, I simply couldn’t restrain myself.
“Cough! Cough! A-achoo!”
My longtime companion since high school, Bohem Cigar Caribe, violently rejected me.
The smoke was so acrid that an uncontrollable fit of coughing erupted the moment it passed into my throat.
Unable to endure it any longer, I was about to extinguish and discard the cigarette when,
“Excuse me, student, could you please stop for a moment?”
“Yes?”
A man in a fluorescent vest stood before me, looking down.
The words ‘Smoking Enforcement’ were clearly emblazoned on his vest.
‘Oh, I’m screwed.’
“We are the smoking enforcement team from the district office. How can you smoke on the street?”
“I apologize….”
“Are you an adult?”
“Yes, y-yes….”
I meekly offered my ID, shrinking into myself.
The suspicious gaze was still there.
However, my ID proved I was an adult.
“Yoo Seo-ha? The fine is 50,000 won, and if you pay within the voluntary payment period, it’s reduced by 20% to 40,000 won. You can deposit it into the account written on this violation notice.”
My hands trembled with embarrassment as I accepted the violation notice.
With a feeling akin to spitting blood, I rummaged for my phone in my pocket and opened my mobile banking app.
Fortunately, even with my body changed, my phone’s password seemed to be the same one I originally used.
Then, seeing my account balance, I flinched.
‘Why is there so little money left?…’
“…I’ve deposited it. 40,000 won….”
“Alright. Here’s a portable ashtray for you; please dispose of your cigarette butts there. We kindly ask for your caution in the future.”
A portable ashtray, emblazoned with ‘Incheon City,’ dropped into my hand.
A worn-out plastic butt holder.
I had just bought this for 40,000 won.
Since it was my own mistake, I couldn’t blame anyone else.
The man from the enforcement team bowed his head slightly and disappeared.
I could swear this was my first time smoking on the street.
Yet, I got caught and had to pay a fine.
I quietly kept my mouth shut and bowed my head until the man was gone.
Truly, Incheon, a city where order breathes.
Those who failed to abide by the rules could not survive….
“…Is he gone?”
Confirming I was completely alone, I hastily turned on my phone.
And upon checking the account balance, only 360,000 won remained.
“My money! Where’s my money!”
Immediately after graduating high school, I had joined a public corporation.
To be frank, I had greatly benefited from the special disability recruitment system unique to public corporations.
I had managed to enter a respectable company that my original academic performance would never have allowed.
Thanks to that, I had diligently saved a considerable amount of money over two years.
But now that my body had transformed into a woman’s, it seemed as though such events had never even occurred.
Hastily, I rummaged through the contacts, searching for where the original Yoo Seo-ha might have worked, but my hopes were betrayed.
The phonebook was conspicuously empty.
Only traces of a life sustained by various short-term part-time jobs were visible.
In an instant, I had become unemployed.
To be honest, I felt a slight joy at escaping my disabled state, more so than the predicament of becoming a woman.
But this was simply unacceptable.
To have the unparalleled fortune of my life snatched away—grief swelled to my throat.
With things as they were, there was no need to prepare for work today.
I trudged back home.
****
The cramped studio apartment.
Even searching the internet on my phone yielded no results about the situation I was experiencing.
In fact, I didn’t even know what to search for.
‘Woke up as a woman?’
‘Parallel world transmigration?’
‘Suddenly grew fingers?’
“There’s no answer for this….”
Various clues around me indicated that ‘Yoo Seo-ha’ was indeed me.
The address, phone model, bank password, and even the identification number of the check card.
It was almost as if, had I been born a woman, this was exactly how I would have lived.
Before I could even rage against this reality, I realized that if I didn’t adapt, I’d just be a crazy man… no, a crazy woman.
I continued searching, desperately trying to understand the situation, but found absolutely nothing.
Consequently, I shifted my approach to meticulously examine the phone itself.
At the very least, I might learn what kind of person Yoo Seo-ha was.
.
.
.
Nothing.
The phone was so pristine, one might believe it had just been activated.
There were no contacts for family, friends, or even colleagues, unlike my former self.
The photo gallery was filled only with meaningless pictures, presumably taken by accidental touches.
Friends aside, the absence of family contacts implied only one thing.
Yoo Seo-ha seemed to be an orphan, just like me.
I was abandoned because I was born with a disability, but why would she have been abandoned, with her beautiful face and perfectly healthy limbs?
Perhaps my birth parents were simply lacking in responsibility.
The fact that there was no one to contact, no family or friends, offered a strange sort of comfort.
I had no memory whatsoever of the life the original Yoo Seo-ha had lived.
It would be awkward if some complete stranger suddenly approached, pretending to be a close acquaintance.
Fortunately, it seemed Yoo Seo-ha was as severely introverted as my former self.
‘Am I still me, after all?’
My stomach rumbled.
I realized then that I had been so distracted I’d skipped breakfast.
Thankfully, upon opening the refrigerator, I found an array of familiar-looking side dishes, suggesting that the habit of cooking for oneself remained.
I quickly set the table.
Considering my reduced body size, I served myself less than half of my usual portion, anticipating a smaller appetite.
I picked up my chopsticks and began to eat.
However, that lasted only a moment.
“Ugh. I can’t do this.”
I threw down my chopsticks, exasperated.
Expecting someone who had lived with three fingers until yesterday to skillfully use chopsticks overnight was an unreasonable demand.
My custom-made utensils were gone.
Thus, today marked my first attempt at using chopsticks, and I quickly realized it was not a skill to be mastered in a day or two.
I now understood firsthand why foreigners found chopsticks so challenging.
Although the newly appeared thumb and pinky fingers moved freely at my will, precise control proved incredibly difficult.
In the end, I held one chopstick in each hand and used them to stab at the side dishes.
I began eating, using the chopsticks like forks.
While it might have looked childish from the outside, this method was far more comfortable in practice.
A similar situation repeated itself when I did the dishes.
Involuntarily, I found myself using only three fingers.
It was then that I truly grasped the gravity of the situation.
“I… I need rehabilitation.”
My thumb and pinky fingers existed perfectly, yet they remained unused.
In my case, ‘learning’ might be a more fitting term than ‘rehabilitation.’
As long as there was no way to return to my original body, living as Yoo Seo-ha was a confirmed reality.
However, having fingers but being unable to use them normally was no different from my three-fingered past.
At the very least, I needed to be able to use my hands like a normal person to hold any job or pursue anything.
While leaving it to time might eventually lead to familiarity, the dwindling balance in my bank account pressed upon me, preventing such complacency.
How could I, who had lived for 22 years with three fingers, become accustomed to my current hands in just a day?
Since I was now unemployed, I had ample time.
Sitting blankly on the floor, I began to ponder, clenching and unclenching my hands.
Honestly, I felt utterly lost.
Just then, my gaze fell upon the computer in the corner.
