Anyway, Eugene
“Damn.”
The word slipped from his lips as he gazed at the extravagant portrait hanging in an already extravagant hallway — a painting of a family dressed as brilliantly as fairy tale protagonists.
“With a face like that, you don’t need power. You are the power.”
“Young master?”
It was a rather unbecoming remark coming from lips that were the spitting image of the beautiful man seated at the center of the portrait, as though he were the darling of the entire world. The servant following behind asked back in confusion, and the young man hastily fumbled for words.
“I was expressing my gratitude to Father.”
“You must miss him, don’t you? It’ll feel like the blink of an eye. You’ll be seeing him again before you know it.”
“Perhaps so.”
The servant looked at his young master’s face with an admiring expression as he laughed awkwardly — an “aha-ha-ha” sort of laugh. Even with the stiff expression, the beauty that the portrait had failed to fully capture was undeniable. Brilliantly shining golden hair, full and long lashes, large and distinct eyes, and a straight, elegant nose with a gentle curve. The kind of face that made you think, if a god of beauty existed, surely they’d look like this — that sort of admiration rose naturally within him. The only flaw, if one could call it that, was the bandage wound tightly around his head.
The servant quickly moved to support his young master. Judging by his words and behavior, it was clear he was still not quite himself. The third son of the Primrose earldom, Eugene Primrose. It had been only two months since he had been able to walk on his own two feet again. Every servant in the townhouse fretted endlessly, worried he might collapse in the rain or be swept away by the wind — they were anxious about their young master day and night. The thought of him falling again was something none of them could bear.
“I’m fine now, I keep telling you.”
“Yes, I know, young master. But still — my heart just won’t stop worrying.”
Supporting him with his own body, lest Eugene lose his balance and stumble, the servant walked alongside him. Supported by the servant, the youngest young master of the Primrose household passed by the portrait of his family.
* * *
“Being handsome is everything. In the end, all you’re left with is your face! A face you could spend a lifetime looking at and never get bored.”
Once again, without fail, a thoroughly lookist declaration emerged from the lips of the beautiful man reflected in the mirror. It was a statement that amounted to a life philosophy for Park Yujin — now two and a half months into waking up in the body of Eugene Primrose.
Eugene had been nodding contentedly at his own reflection when he suddenly glanced around, guilty as a man who’d done something wrong. There wasn’t a single soul within earshot — he was completely alone — yet he felt, afresh, that he ought to be more careful with what he said. He cleared his throat with a small “ahem” and took a brief moment for self-reflection.
My name is Park Yujin. Twenty-eight years old. An ordinary Korean.
He paused for a moment, uncertain whether he truly qualified as “ordinary,” but decided he didn’t fall into the category of the remarkably unusual either, and gave a small shake of his head. It was a bit cringe-worthy, but every day without fail, the first thing Eugene did upon waking was look in the mirror and repeat the same words to himself. So he wouldn’t forget who he was.
He had opened his eyes one day to find himself as “Eugene Primrose” — a person he had never seen or heard of before. Simply put, but in truth, quite a lot had happened to get there. It was a messy, bleak story he had no particular desire to dwell on, yet for the sake of the day the real Eugene Primrose would return, he had to keep chewing it over — never forgetting who he had been.
Park Yujin’s childhood had been harsh and impoverished. How poor? Poor enough that after going hungry for two days, he and his older sister had finally cracked and boiled instant noodles together, only for their father to beat them for it. Poor enough that he’d burned his forehead on the ramen pot during the beating and never even considered going to the hospital.
Around the time he entered middle school, his sister and mother left — taking nothing but themselves, leaving Park Yujin behind. Even now, he didn’t particularly resent them for it. If anything, it was easier without them there. With no one he needed to protect from his father’s fists, he could fight back however he wanted, and if things got bad enough, he simply didn’t come home.
Given those circumstances, university was naturally out of the question. Even before finishing high school, he worked every job he could get his hands on. He scraped and clawed, earning money like a man possessed.
Just as life was starting to feel livable on his own, his violent father passed away. The man had gone in and out of psychiatric hospitals with alcoholic dementia before dying alone in a dingy basement room with a bottle in his hand. Around that time, Yujin had been so consumed by money that he’d been furious at himself for bothering to go see a man who would have been processed as an unclaimed body — and for wasting money on a funeral no one needed.
After that long, grinding adolescence, at twenty-five, Eugene finally spent the savings he’d scraped together so desperately. On what? A plastic surgery clinic. He wanted to erase the burn scar on his forehead.
With a close-cropped buzz cut and a scar on his forehead, his first impressions were bad no matter where he went, making it hard to find work. Looking run-down and rough-faced, service industry jobs were completely out of the question, and he was mostly limited to quiet, physical labor.
By his mid-twenties, he realized he needed a proper job rather than day wages, and without much deliberation, he walked straight into a plastic surgery clinic. At first, he only intended to remove the scar. Not completely — just enough so it wasn’t the first thing people noticed.
One visit, two visits — returning repeatedly for the difficult treatments, listening to the head consultant at the clinic — he started to feel like a single surgery could make him a new person. And it actually did, in a way that felt like being reborn.
He erased the traces of violence and his father from his face. The eyes, nose, forehead, and cheekbones that were the spitting image of his father — he removed them one by one. He had his uneven teeth fixed, got his broken ones replaced, and poured every last coin he’d scraped together into it. In the end, he was reborn.
Eugene had nothing holding him back. There was no one he was particularly close to, and no one to make a fuss about the fact that he’d had work done. He wrote reviews in exchange for discounts and became a model for the clinic. Park Yujin was deeply satisfied with his new life.
It’s what’s inside that counts.
He knew. But because of his appearance, he’d rarely been given the chance to show what was inside. Before Yujin was reborn with the help of medicine, he’d been an NPC no one wanted to approach — likability rating: -50.
He wasn’t quite at the level of an idol or actor, but the moment people started saying he was warmly handsome, Eugene was already meeting the world with a likability score of 50 already banked. Of course, by “protagonist” here, he meant the kind of boss who would pay him for his labor.
Nothing had changed but his face, yet his life opened up. Finding work was easier, and with just a little effort, everyone saw him differently. And not just that — now that he was polished, people were even willing to pay a premium. From that point on, Park Yujin’s interest in his own appearance grew enormously.
He changed his hairstyle to cover the remaining scar traces, and began taking interest in skincare and clothing too. Since his funds weren’t particularly abundant, he naturally spent time seeking out things that were affordable yet suited him well, and one day it occurred to him that he wanted to share that kind of information with people who had similar struggles.
It started with a plastic surgery review forum he’d joined just to write a post. He didn’t stop at sharing his own experience — he began taking photos and videos too. He wanted to show just how much had changed.
He wasn’t particularly outgoing, nor especially entertaining, but he started making videos — regardless of gender — useful to people covering scars, or those who wanted to put effort into their appearance but didn’t know how and were fumbling through trial and error.
What he’d been doing as a hobby gradually spread by word of mouth, and before he knew it, he’d gained a following that could genuinely be called influencer-level. On top of influencer, various other labels attached themselves to him. Online content creator. Content creator.
Sponsorships came in, and advertisements followed. Money arrived from places he never expected. It finally felt as if his wretched past life had been completely erased, and he was overflowing with confidence in everything he did. Filled with the belief that he could accomplish anything, he even reached out first to his sister and mother, whom he hadn’t contacted in years.
As life grew more comfortable, he wanted to scrub away just a little more of poverty’s stain. Not the lavish lifestyle of the celebrities he saw on social media — but he wanted to give his editor, who worked hard alongside him, a generous bonus, and he wanted a proper broadcast studio too.
He wanted to find his mother and sister a place to live. It might not even count as a dream to some people, but he had dreamed of living beautifully decorated in a clean, newly built high-rise apartment.
Casually posting photos taken at home, getting comments on the vaguely visible background — “Eugene, where’s that mood lamp from?” and “Could you share the table info?” — that kind of life.
But it all came crashing down. And not just crashing — he was in debt again. Poverty had come back to find Park Yujin. It had been a lease scam.
Honestly, he was devastated. Losing the money was bad enough, but then being saddled with debt on top of it — he felt a deep and crushing helplessness. Maybe because he’d been running so hard for so long, he couldn’t easily shake it off and tell himself to take a breath and start over. It wasn’t that he’d given up on life.
He was simply exhausted, and that particular night he drank too much. And just to save every last coin, instead of taking a taxi, he stubbornly opened CashWalk and walked along the waterside promenade.
Then — oh no! — at the exact moment that thought flashed through his mind, there came the sound of a splash.
It was cold. He couldn’t breathe.
And the world went dark.
That was the end.
When he opened his eyes again, he was Eugene Primrose in an unfamiliar world. The moment he woke, everyone in the townhouse was calling out to the gods. He was very much a beloved youngest son.
Eugene Primrose was a person who was the complete opposite of Park Yujin in every way. A flawless, perfect face. Close, warm bonds with his brothers. A luxurious earl’s estate and parents who were the wealthiest in the kingdom. Truly perfect. And yet, this young master had suffered a severe head injury and teetered on the edge of life and death before barely waking. Everyone couldn’t help but rejoice.
Of course, he acted a little strange — a little dim, as if his mind had gone blank — but given that he’d suffered a major head injury, that was understandable. At least he could still speak.
The fact that the injury was to the head, of all places, worked in Park Yujin’s favor. If he pretended not to remember things, pretended to have a headache, the servants would fuss and explain everything on their own and take care of everything themselves. Two and a half months of living as Eugene Primrose. Park Yujin had picked up on quite a lot.
The scenery resembled something from a medieval aristocratic film, but this was not Earth.
Eugene Primrose had originally been frail and prone to fainting.
The reason he had collapsed and injured his head this time was the fault of the eldest son, Kyle Primrose.
And in this townhouse, only the eldest, the second son Ivan Primrose, and Eugene lived together — their parents resided far away at the earl’s estate.
The more he learned about Eugene Primrose, the more Park Yujin couldn’t help but feel that beyond the fact that they shared a name and Eugene happened to have something between his legs, they were entirely different people with absolutely nothing in common.
Where had the real Eugene Primrose gone? It was a ridiculous thought, but — could it be that the grim reaper had gotten confused by the matching names and placed the wrong soul?
If so, was the real Eugene Primrose now living inside the body of Park Yujin — debt-ridden, somewhere in the Republic of Korea in the year 202X? And if the Park Yujin on that side of the world had died? Or what if the original Eugene Primrose came back as early as tomorrow? There were too many questions no one could answer.
Park Yujin pushed the unanswerable questions and the useless, depressing thoughts far, far away. There was no point in agonizing over them alone. It was better for his sanity to assume their bodies had been swapped, and that Eugene Primrose was currently inhabiting Park Yujin’s body.
He felt guilty for gifting the sudden victim of a lease scam a debt-ridden body — not to mention a far inferior face — and had to wait for the day they would each return to their rightful place. Unlike himself, whose gloom evaporated the moment he so much as glanced at his reflection, Eugene Primrose would be having quite a rough time — so it was only right to live calmly and smoothly until he returned.
The thought of quietly borrowing his body and returning it to him whole. That thought was why Eugene reviewed the truth of his own life every single day. To not get greedy, to stay clearly aware of who he was, and to never lose sight of just how different a person Eugene Primrose was from himself.
