I thought hard.
Where the hell was I?
I looked around the dazzling room and slowly sit up. After carefully examining the blindingly bright room, I put my hand on my stomach on reflex.
“What…”
I smoothly got out of bed and looked over myself. The scars that covered my whole body had disappeared, and my field of vision seemed to be shorter.
“What the fuck is this…”
The scars disappeared and I became shorter. And… I couldn’t see my precious muscles. The proud abs that made the people around me on the beach say, ‘You look great, Hyung!’ were gone.
“Oh!”
I groped between my legs in a hurry, unsavory thoughts passed by my head as I did. But fortunately, it was still there. The size wasn’t bad. Of course, it couldn’t compare to my original body’s.
“…..”
After looking around for a bit, I sat down flatly on the bed and got lost in thought. First, I had to figure out the situation.
My last memory was holding my bleeding stomach in pain. I felt a little embarrassed dying because of the betrayal of my beloved younger brother, no matter how painful the wound was. He was babbling something like ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I can’t help it’ before he stabbed the knife into my stomach.
‘Then… am I dead?’
Getting betrayed was nothing new, but this time the situation was serious. I was stabbed in the pit of my stomach, and my body probably bled out in the end.
I let out a dejected laugh.
I had struggled to survive in this cruel world for years, following other people’s footsteps, and I died in vain?
‘…So what the hell is this body?’
I was stunned by a reality I could never imagine to be real. Actually, all of this could just be a dream and I could be lying in the hospital asleep or in a coma. It was possible, dreams could be as real as reality from what I’ve seen. Well, at least it was worth checking out.
I jumped up and probed around the unfamiliar room. However, no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t find any knives or scissors. I threw a glass bottle across the room and the glass shattered on the floor. It would be a bit troublesome to clean later, but I needed to know where I was. To be honest, all of this felt more like a dream than a reality.
I grabbed one of the larger broken pieces of glass and held it up to my wrist. Red blood dripped out of my pure white skin. It wasn’t enough, so I swung my wrist, cutting it much more as blood gushed out.
“…It hurts.”
Why did it hurt? As I looked up from my bleeding wrist, I saw a face I had never seen before in the mirror. The face under the fine brown hair was neat and looked fairly pretty. But his skin was too white and his body was thin as if someone sucked the life out of him. Tsk tsk, you should’ve worked out.
The face reflected in the mirror was distorted. Whether it was a dream or not, I still felt pain. I should be careful. I sighed and pondered what to do with my bleeding arm when the door suddenly swung open and someone came in.
“Han Yi-Gyeol! Stop sleeping and wake up! Master–– what the fuck?”
The man who was stomping toward me stopped and examined me as he asked in a pitying voice, “What’s wrong with you? Did you really harm yourself?”
“……”
“What a mess… Geez, you sure have been busy. You’re such a loser.”
He shook his head disappointedly. As I listened to what he had to say, The name he stated tingled something in my memory. Han Yi-Gyeol. Why was this name so familiar? Han Yi-Gyeol, Han Yi-gyeol…
“Ah.”
After searching my memory for the name for a long time, I raised my head as if receiving a divine message. Han Yi-gyeol! It was the character in the novel I read yesterday, he was a character who appeared in the novel ‘Abyss’ only to die.
“Huh? What do you mean by ‘Ah’? Are your speaking skills deteriorating? Forget it. Hurry up and come out quickly, the Master is calling.”
The man forcibly pulled me away, seemingly uncaring about my bloody arm. As we left the room and walked down the hallway, it became difficult to come to my senses.
Really? Seriously? Did this make sense? I didn’t just come into anyone’s body, but a soon-to-die character in a fictional world?
And why did it have to be this one?
‘Wait a minute.’
Thinking up to that point, I belatedly remembered what kind of novel ‘Abyss’ was. ‘Abyss’ was a male-oriented novel. And that means the number of female characters was much higher than that of male characters. And, in the end, all of them became obsessed with the main character and fought for his love. A harem novel.
‘Fuck… Long live Han Yi-Gyeol. Thank you.’
Suddenly, my appreciation for Han Yi-Gyeol increased dramatically. Okay. He had a very good face, he had a good head, and he was a man above all, right? He was a man!
“Go in.”
In my heart, I prayed and thanked the god who put me into this body, but the man continued to lead me to push me roughly into the hotel room. The room I entered looked bigger and much more expensive than the room I was in earlier.
“…What’s wrong with your arm?”
As I stood in the middle of the room and looked around, a velvety voice behind me spoke up. I turned around, and a man looking like he had just left the bathroom was looking at me. His broad chest was visible through the white bathrobe he was wearing.
I slowly raised my gaze to see the willowy man brushing his dripping dark hair roughly with his slender fingers. His face was something that could only be described as absolutely gorgeous. Even a popular actor who went to a salon to maintain his looks regularly wouldn’t look as good as that.
The man’s face could make him look like a devout believer or an insidious murderer depending on the lighting.
The man met my eyes as he looked at my face and spit out:
“Pull your eyes down before I pluck them out.”
“……”
After he said that, I was sure of who he was. He was that bastard who Han Yi-gyeol always trembled around—Cheon Sa-Yeon.
“I asked you what was with your arm,” Cheon Sa-Yeon asked again. I thought about it for a bit and then answered politely.
“Nothing.”
“……”
Cheon Sa-Yeon, who heard me, stared at me as if asking, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Through the eye contact. Did I not answer right? I answered with utmost care in mind!
Han Yi-gyeol in the original story was so quiet that it wasn’t easy to find references for his personality. Originally, Han Yi-gyeol trembled in the same room as Cheon Sa-Yeon and could barely nod his head in front of him. And with the main character, did what Cheon Sa-Yeon told him to do at some point and got beaten.
I had no idea how a timid young man behaved. Most of the guys around me were the big and war-like type. Han Yi-gyeol was an adorable flower-like boy who I’d never met in my past life.
“I heard that ‘The Empress of Red Flames’ will soon clear the G7 area and come out of the gate tomorrow afternoon.”
The Empress of Red Flames. This naming was… Well, since the novel ‘Abyss’ was written 10 years ago, the naming was a bit childish.
“Wind is quite useful against fire. Go and kidnap her. And let the Roheon Guild kid get the news.”
Who was the Empress of Red Flames again? …I blanked out while listening to Cha Sa-Yeon, who was still in his open bathrobe. I naturally recalled bits of content in the novel. In the beginning, I recalled that the main character rescued a kidnapped woman. The victim was The Empress Of Red Flames, who Cheon Sa-Yeon told Han Yi-Gyeol to kidnap, and the kid from the Roheon Guild was the main character that saved her.
What happened to Han Yi-Gyeol at that time? I think he was beaten up by the main character. No, more than that…
‘I don’t know who the Empress of Red Flames is……’
I was confused because there were so many women who appeared in the story. Usually, I was proud of my memory, but now I was unsure. Cheon Sa-Yeon pulled out a cigarette while looking at the night view of Seoul outside the window and frowned.
“If you understand, why don’t you leave?”
I was going to ask Cheon Sa-Yeon who the Empress of Red Flames was, but I stopped. There were many things I didn’t understand that I couldn’t ask Cheon Sa-Yeon, who was like the antagonist. It was better to step back quietly now.
I opened my mouth, but as I thought I would be seen as crazy again, I just nodded and turned to leave. Behind my back, I heard a “Hm?” but it didn’t seem like anything to worry about, so I left the room as it was. When I came out of the hallway, the man who guided me was waiting for me. He looked at me and smirked.
“What’s up with you today? You usually come out crying.”
It was a childish provocation. In my opinion, Han Yi-Gyeol’s personality and appearance were a problem. It was easy to ignore the kind and soft-looking face, but if it had been my face in my past life, these ignorant people would not be talking to me recklessly.
I just raised my eyebrows and brushed past him. All the way back to my room, I heard quiet swearing behind me, but I pretended not to hear it.