<Prologue>
The world was perfectly fine right up until I fell asleep. It was reality, not inside a game. Definitely.
— Quest complete! Go Jin’s affection has risen by 7%! Go Jin’s current affection level is…
“Juwoo, come out and eat.”
“Later.”
“Later again? Come out and eat with everyone else.”
“I’m busy. Later.”
“You’re not doing anything — what do you mean you’re busy—!”
When I refused to come eat, Mom started scolding me and banging on my door. I held my ground without budging, and she tried to open it, but the handle just rattled uselessly — the locked door wouldn’t give.
I let it go and kept my focus on the game. Food wasn’t what mattered right now.
— Lee Yura’s affection has risen by 10%! Lee Yura’s current affection level is…
A cheerful game notification chimed from my phone, and at the same time — ding — another alert popped up.
[Hello. This is the hiring manager at XX Electronics. After reviewing your application, Yeon Juwoo…]
“I didn’t make it.”
A screening result text. Anyone could see it was an important message, but I swiped the notification away without reading it, clearing it from the top bar. It might have been a pass — but I’d already decided it was a rejection and ignored it. I didn’t think there was even the slightest chance.
I had no choice but to think that way. I’d already received over thirty rejection texts. One failure after another had worn down what little confidence and self-esteem I had left, and by the time I’d come back to my senses, I’d become a full-blown shut-in who couldn’t even bring himself to eat meals with his own family.
[Final mission clear! Would you like to see Go Jin’s ending?]
I’d been sprawled out on my bed, but the moment I saw that message, I bolted upright and let out a silent cheer. The last capture target’s ending had finally unlocked! He was the hardest character — I’d even seen the bad ending multiple times — so the struggle had been immense. Which is exactly why the rush of satisfaction I felt in that moment was beyond words.
My one and only joy. Pathetic as it sounds, what comforted me through the crushing depression of my failed job search was a game. A romance simulation game for women, no less. I’d never been interested in that kind of game before, but for some reason, this one caught my eye right from the ad.
It was rated for all ages, and the pure, innocent love story of kids with nothing edgy about it was just as wholesome as I’d expected — and honestly, kind of childish. But that’s exactly what made it so fun. It was like some dormant sense of innocence was quietly blooming inside me. Like going back to my school days. The game even brought back memories of a first love I’d long forgotten, and because of it, each day became just a little more bearable.
“That’s so satisfying.”
There are four capture targets in this game, and Go Jin is the last male lead to appear. He’s also the third main character whose ending I’d seen.
Having watched Go Jin’s ending, I pressed ‘Delete App’ without a second thought. There was still one character whose ending I hadn’t seen, but I had no desire to pursue him. He was the one character I genuinely couldn’t stand.
Having seen all the endings I wanted, I felt at peace. I tossed my phone onto the pillow beside my head and drifted off to sleep — with no idea whatsoever of what was about to happen.
1. I Possessed the Body of an Extra
“……woo. Juwoo, Ju……”
“Ugh, stop it……”
I was in the middle of a perfectly good sleep when someone started shaking me. Was it Mom? She’d told me to come out and eat earlier, and since I hadn’t, she must have come to wake me up. Though how she got the door open when I’d locked it, I had no idea.
Maybe because I’d finally gotten the ending I’d been waiting so long for — even without eating, I felt strangely full. I stubbornly buried my face into my pillow. What came back at me was a shout that nearly blew out my eardrums.
“Yeon Juwoo, wake UP!!”
“Wha—!”
“Geez, finally awake.”
I’d been certain it was Mom — but it was a male student I’d never seen before, staring blankly down at me.
……Who is this kid?
Who was this little punk? That was the very first thought that crossed my mind when I looked at the boy in front of me. The second thought was: this kid has absolutely no manners.
“Juwoo, math, math! Please, please!”
I caught a glimpse of the name tag pinned to the boy’s chest.
「Yang Inho」
An unfamiliar name. I didn’t have a single friend, relative, or even acquaintance with the surname Yang.
“Yang Inho.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re being awfully informal with me, aren’t you?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
The male student who looked significantly younger than me — no, who was definitely younger — was talking to me like I was a friend his own age. Calling me Juwoo, Juwoo, like that. On top of that, he seemed to be looking at me like I was the weird one. When he was clearly the weird one.
There was no way someone who was obviously an adult would look like just a friend to him — so what was going on? Oh, wait. Was this maybe a dream? If my appearance in this dream was my face from high school, then Yang Inho acting like this would make sense.
I looked around and found myself in some kind of classroom. I thought it might be the school I attended as a kid, but it wasn’t. And every student in the classroom was a completely unfamiliar face.
Everything here was something I’d never seen before — but there was one thing, and only one, that felt oddly familiar: the school uniform. I’d never seen a uniform this colorful, the kind that looked like it belonged in an anime, and yet for some reason it felt familiar.
“Aah. So you wanna be called hyung, is that it? Juwoo hyung! Would you please lend me your math notes!”
Yang Inho, having misread what I meant, clapped both hands together with a loud smack. He switched to playful formal speech and asked to borrow my math book. Was he possessed by the ghost of someone who died failing their exams or something? Why did he keep asking for the book?
“You want to study that badly?”
“Huh?”
“You want to study so badly that you’re even begging for a book in a dream?”
I caught myself right after saying it. I knew this was a dream, but none of them did. To these kids, this was just their school — and of course they’d need their textbooks for class. Just like I used to, back in the day.
Wait. Wasn’t there something about how if you say out loud that you’re in a dream while you’re in one, you can’t wake up? What if I was going to be trapped here?
A chill shot through me. I looked at Yang Inho, and he burst out laughing.
“Pfft, hahaha! What are you on about. You’re seriously still half asleep, aren’t you? Come on, man — this isn’t a dream.”
His reaction was reassuring — it didn’t seem like I’d be stuck in the dream after all. Yang Inho started waggling his fingers at me going “how many is this?” which was giving me a headache, so I swatted his hand away.
“Three. Thanks to you, I’m fully awake now.”
“Must’ve been one intense dream. How hard were you studying that you can’t even tell a dream from reality?”
“Yeah, really.”
“In that case — I’m grabbing the book!”
Yang Inho gave me a small shove to the side and started rummaging through the desk drawer like he’d done it a hundred times. He was yanking books out carelessly when he finally found the math book he’d been looking for and cried out “Found it!” with visible delight.
“Thank you, thank you! The teacher said he’d make me do push-ups again if I came without the book today. I’ll bring it back at lunch!”
“Oh — wha — oh, okay, sure.”
Yang Inho darted out of the classroom in an instant. I sat there thinking, what kind of dream even is this.
Could it be because of the game? Staying up playing games right before falling asleep might have something to do with it. I’d been going so hard at it that I ended up dreaming about something with a similar setting. No wonder the uniform felt so familiar — the uniforms the characters wore in the game were the same as the ones the students here were wearing.
But for a dream, the situation felt a little too vivid, and a strange sense of wrongness was creeping in. It didn’t feel like I was simply in my subconscious — it felt like I’d been dropped into an entirely different world apart from reality. Like a dimensional transfer or body possession, the kind that shows up often in fantasy stories.
That is…… what exactly?
A male student reflected in the window suddenly caught my eye. He was a short kid whose eyes looked tiny behind thick, high-prescription glasses. I didn’t wear glasses like that — my vision was perfectly fine — and I was well over 180cm tall. So that kid wasn’t me.
But then why was he staring so fixedly in my direction? With a sinking feeling, I raised my arm — and the kid raised his too. I turned my head — and he turned his. And then it hit me.
That boy in the glasses was me.
“Wow. This is……”
What an absolutely terrible character design.
