Isaac lay quietly on the bed and fell into thought.
So this really means this is my body…. Then what am I supposed to do now?
As he lay still and raised his hand, he saw a smooth white hand. The calluses that had formed from learning the sword, the dark mark under the ring fingernail where ink had soaked in, none of it was visible. All he could see was a white, smooth hand that looked as if it could barely do more than hold a spoon by itself.
“The jesters of this era are truly nobility itself.”
Even when a being of unknown identity appeared and said it would send him back to his original body, even when he absorbed the knowledge of another world with their help, it didn’t feel real—just like dreaming.
He merely wondered if, as on any other day, he’d enjoyed a nap in the garden and gotten so bored that he was even dreaming something like this.
But delusions only take shape within the bounds of one’s imagination, don’t they? When he saw objects he was sure he’d never seen before, and yet their names and uses surfaced naturally, he had no choice but to acknowledge that all of this was reality.
That he was no longer the thirteenth prince Isaac Pelkins Mashilburg, but the idol Gi Cheonghyeon.
“Say that again.”
“Uh, that is….”
“You’re telling me I’m not a prince of the Mashilburg Empire, but a jester of this small kingdom?”
A jester of a small kingdom…. It takes talent to belittle a top-tier idol who rakes in billions—no, tens of billions—in a year like that.
Looking at Isaac, who had cut him off, the reaper let out a sigh with an exasperated face.
“Enough. Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times, so I’ll put this land’s knowledge directly into you.”
Who here really wants to sigh?
Isaac, who had been warily watching the man before him with a steadily more dumbfounded expression, soon couldn’t hide the look of confusion that rose to his face.
The knowledge that rushed into his head was too detailed to be dismissed as a momentary manipulation or someone’s trick. In a brief span of not even five minutes, the worldview that flooded into his brain was truly vast and delicate.
“Isaac Pelkins Mashilburg. I am sincerely sorry to you. Since you have awakened, that soul will have returned to its original body by now.”
When Isaac stared blankly with a confused gaze, the reaper calmly opened his mouth.
“Twenty-five years ago, while dividing souls among the various dimensions, we made a small mistake. To offer a bit of an excuse… in truth, this doesn’t usually become that big a problem. Even if something like this happens, people generally live out their lives in a body of another world and die without ever knowing. But this time, the situation is a bit complicated.”
As the reaper spoke and furtively watched his reaction, Isaac flicked his hand as if to say, Go on.
“First, I should talk about the side effects on souls that have been swapped. When one lives in a body from another world like this, it becomes very hard to receive attention from those around you. Your presence grows faint.”
At those words, Isaac’s expression turned sour. So the reason his presence had been fainter than a servant’s, despite being born a prince, was precisely this?
When Isaac’s eyes turned ominous, the reaper hurried to continue.
“That is why we try to do as well as we can by the souls that went to the wrong place. We wait until that soul has adapted to the other world to some extent, and then we grant the wish they most intensely desire.”
At those words, a memory from childhood flashed by. The most intense moment in his life, which had always been peaceful and quiet.
‘So when my eldest brother became emperor and killed all the other princes and princesses, and only I survived, that must have been included in that wish.’
But then why say they’re putting the soul back into its original body at this point in time? As he rolled his eyes and stared fixedly at the reaper, the reaper, wearing a complicated expression, slowly opened his mouth.
“The convenient truth is that you didn’t have a particularly intense wish.”
“Wasn’t my wish ‘I want to live’?”
When the reaper raised his eyebrows as if to say, Don’t interrupt, Isaac hurriedly shut his mouth.
Damn it. After admitting they messed up and made me live someone else’s life, he makes me feel really small just because I cut in a little.
The reaper cleared his throat a few more times and continued his explanation.
Souls tend to mature by repeating birth and death. Isaac’s soul had already repeated life hundreds of times like a battle-hardened veteran, so he instinctively weathered the tempests of life with a certain stoic ease.
“The problem was… the soul that entered this body.”
Unlike Isaac, worn down and dulled, this soul was a baby soul on its first journey in this life, and the wish it held was something even the reapers had trouble granting.
“What was that kid’s wish?”
“To be loved by many people. That was the one and only wish he held, right up to the moment he died.”
Even Isaac, who had been grumbling all along, could only shut his mouth at this point. A soul with a faint presence wanting to be loved by many people? Unless they returned the soul to where it belonged, it was a wish that could never be granted.
“So you returned the soul to its proper place in order to grant that kid’s wish?”
The name of this body is Gi Cheonghyeon. Cheong meaning “clear,” Hyeon meaning “to appear.” Yet in Cheonghyeon’s life, not once did clarity appear. Cheonghyeon was born into a wealthy family and worked part-time jobs. The reason he enlisted voluntarily despite having U.S. citizenship, and the reason he became an entertainer… all of it was Cheonghyun’s small flailing to be noticed.
Cheonghyeon had good looks and a well-off home, but he always hovered on the fringes. In his school days, when friends deepened their bonds after class, Cheonghyeon would always watch from one step behind and then trudge back home.
Even guys who were worse off than he was would have flings dozens of times a month, get girlfriends and break up, but Cheonghyeon had never once received a confession.
If he had to pick the moment he hated most while in school—truthfully, it was every moment—the worst of all was the end of the term. Not just any end of term, but the end when you exchanged rolling papers.
- Why does it feel like we never said a single word to each other?? ㅠㅠ If we’re in the same class next year, let’s get reeeally closer!!
- To kind and quiet Cheonghyeon~~ I didn’t realize you were so tall. We’re still awkward, but let’s get closer even in the few days we have left. When we move up a grade, let’s talk more lol
- Good job
- Hi! It’s a bummer we didn’t get to talk once this year ㅠㅠ Next year let’s get really close ^^
- It was nice spending the year together
- It’s a shame we didn’t hang out much at the end of the year. Let’s definitely meet at the reunion
- Wow, feels like I’ve hardly ever heard your voice lol Let’s study hard next year and let’s gooo Korea Univ
- Live well ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In his first meeting with the agency president, the president started by asking whether Cheonghyeon had ever been involved in school violence. After a brief thought, Cheonghyeon answered that he was ordinary. Then he quietly added:
‘If anyone comes out after my debut claiming to reveal what school life was like with me… it’ll all be lies.’
And that was the end of the meeting. The president didn’t ask further, and Cheonghyeon had nothing more to say. Even though he hadn’t done anything particularly wrong, his cheeks burned and he wanted to hide somewhere.
The president also asked whether he had a significant other, but of course he didn’t.
He had even tried a café part-time job—the kind perfect for catching feelings—but far from finding a lover, he couldn’t get close to anyone and ended up quitting.
What remained with Cheonghyeon were only the recipes of a major franchise café.
Even when he was standing right there in front of the POS, customers coming in would shout, “Boss, I’d like to order~!” When he spoke up—“I’ll take your order”—the startled customers would shriek, “Aagh!” and he had no choice but to quit.
It was the same in the army. He wasn’t hazed, but even after two years of rubbing shoulders together, no one remembered Cheonghyeon after discharge. He had simply lived a regular life for two years and then mustered out.
Cheonghyeon had always dreamed.
‘Please let me be loved. Please let me be loved by many people.’
Gi Cheonghyeon was always lonely.
The reapers succeeded in debuting him as an entertainer, but they couldn’t move people’s hearts.
On the contrary, having suddenly become a debut member without any preparation, Cheonghyeon could only remain distant with the other members. After debut, even the fans who should have loved him most told him to make some presence for once and gave him the nickname “Ghost-hyeon” (No-Trace-hyeon).
Variety shows, dramas, films. All the decent solo gigs always went only to the other three members, excluding Cheonghyeon.
Even though East, the group Cheonghyeon belonged to, won the grand prize at year’s end, at the wrap party not a single person offered congratulations to Gi Cheonghyeon.
The day after East won the grand prize at year’s end,
Gi Cheonghyeon committed suicide.
“…That is what happened. We tried to save him, but the soul refused to return….”
“But how did he become an entertainer? No matter how much you helped, with a presence this faint….”
“There are people like that sometimes. Those whose compatibility between soul and body matches too well, and their sixth sense opens. Because they see the essence, they react the same way they do when seeing another soul. Among people working in the entertainment industry, there are quite a few whose eyes are opened like this. So we made him catch the eye of such a person and placed him in the group that appeared most likely to succeed, but….”
He trailed off, but even a five-year-old could guess the rest. Only the other members of the group prospered, and Cheonghyeon lived a life no different from before.
Listening quietly to the reaper’s explanation, Isaac found those so-called members thoroughly odious. Surely part of the reason they were doing so well was thanks to the arrangements the reapers had made for Cheonghyeon, whose body had been swapped by mistake. And yet they gobbled up all the luck for themselves and didn’t look after the kid?
Moreover, given that this was Cheonghyeon’s first life descended into flesh, those members couldn’t look anything but ugly.
Isaac, too, had lived with scarcely any presence—but he was still a prince, so knights and attendants trailed after him, and he was not terribly lonely. True, if they let their eyes wander even for a moment, they would say things like, “Huh? Where did His Highness go?” despite Isaac being right in front of them. But thinking of how Cheonghyeon had lacked even that kind of attention made Isaac feel even sorrier for him.
Watching Isaac snort and grumble, the reaper conveyed the rough outline of Cheonghyeon’s situation along with a few words of advice, then departed abruptly. The main point was: since you’ve ended up in his body anyway, live splendidly.
“Right…. So you’re saying this really is my body.”
As he looked at the hand he had raised high and clenched it into a tight fist, the veins stood out on the back of his hand. His white hand turned even paler.
It was an undeniable reality.
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