# Chapter 43
The bright sunlight shined down intensely enough to sting my eyes. As I blankly opened my eyes in the midst of it, doubt began to creep into my foggy mind.
Where on earth was I? At first, I thought it was hell or heaven. But something felt off. From the blanket wrapping my body to the gentle breeze and the intense sunlight—everything felt too vivid.
The place I was in earlier had all sensations cut off to the point where I had accepted that I was dead. But unlike that place, this felt like reality.
I applied force to my stiffened hand. Then, following my will, my hand twitched and bent. This too was something I couldn’t do until just now.
In this strange space, I slowly raised my body. My body moved sluggishly, as if wearing ill-fitting clothes.
There was a limit to just lying still and thinking. To know where I was, I had to move first. So I was rolling my eyes around to observe my surroundings when it happened.
Something strange caught my eye. It was my hand holding the blanket.
Would anyone question their own hand? But my current hand was so alien that I couldn’t just dismiss it.
No, it couldn’t even be called alien. This was an entirely different hand. Instead of my hand that had been full of calluses, a snow-white hand covered in wounds was connected to my body.
My hands weren’t clean either, but they were all old scars. However, this hand had unhealed wounds densely covering the back. Moreover, these wounds were all self-inflicted—like someone had scratched the back of their hand forcefully with their nails.
“What on earth…”
Words unconsciously slipped out at this bizarre phenomenon. And once again, I couldn’t help but be bewildered.
Even my voice was unfamiliar. Unlike my usual voice, the sound that came out now was a higher-pitched, beautiful voice. This kind of voice couldn’t emerge no matter how hard I tried. Unless my vocal cord structure had changed—
“…No way.”
At that moment, my thoughts were interrupted, and a hypothesis wedged itself in.
“Mirror…”
I needed to see a mirror right away. If my guess was right, it was the best way to confirm the situation. Since the room was a studio apartment, finding a mirror was simple.
Just turning my head was enough to capture a full-length mirror in my sight. This meant that my appearance was also clearly visible. Whether I could call it “my” appearance was questionable, though.
In this utterly unbelievable situation, I dazedly moved towards the mirror.
The closer I got, the more my mind filled with countless thoughts. What was this surreal situation? Surely what reflected in the mirror should be me. But the image of myself shown through the mirror was a complete stranger.
Different from my original brown hair, curly black hair covered half of my face. And between that hair were faint green eyes. Drooping eyes, downturned lips, and even wounded lips as if they had been bitten—
There was no way this could be me. But it wasn’t a stranger either. Looking closely, I remembered seeing this face before.
It was a face faintly etched in my memory. When I had snuck into the control room, someone who had entered with a hunched posture and asked about the life or death of a test subject.
“Why…”
Did this person’s body become mine? I clearly died. But something seemed off about my appearance changing after death.
Rather than that—
“It looks like possession.”
Possession was a relatively well-known ability that occasionally appeared on broadcasts. If I had possessed someone else’s body, the situation would roughly match up.
The problems were that I didn’t have possession abilities and that I was already dead.
But it felt strange to say I was dead. Since it was my first time dying, I couldn’t be certain, but if I were dead, it would be normal not to feel any sensations.
However, as I felt earlier, this place was excessively vivid. Almost to the point of mistaking myself for being alive.
Besides, if I were dead, I wouldn’t have changed into someone else’s body.
“Haa…”
My head started throbbing at the unsolved questions. Given the headache, the scale was tipping more towards this being reality.
In fact, the most plausible theory so far was that I was still alive. I certainly died on the day of the operation. But if I had survived by a miraculous coincidence or if someone had saved me, this situation wouldn’t be far-fetched.
I had two hypotheses in mind.
First, someone deliberately made my consciousness possess this body.
It wasn’t impossible. In a world where supernatural abilities existed, even the impossible was made possible. It could very well happen.
But I had to discard this hypothesis soon. No matter how I thought about it, whoever saved me had nothing to gain.
What benefit would there be in transferring my consciousness? I thought they might be trying to extract information about “Alice” from me in my weakened state, but if that were the case, I wouldn’t have woken up in a room like this. I would have awakened in a dark underground prison.
Even if I was being monitored, there were no traces of it in this room. A supernatural ability might go unnoticed, but that would be inefficient. They could easily achieve their goal by restraining my limbs.
I tried to find various other reasons, but ultimately concluded that the first hypothesis was impossible.
So naturally, my thoughts leaned towards the remaining second hypothesis.
The second was that the owner of this body intended this. In other words, it wasn’t because of me, but because of the body’s owner.
If I, as a soul, didn’t create this situation, wouldn’t the body have an intention?
What if that researcher had possession abilities, and by using those abilities, I ended up possessing this body?
This made more sense than the first. If the researcher wanted possession, he could have caused this situation regardless of my will.
There were people in the world who lived hiding their supernatural abilities. I had heard that when using possession abilities, occasional control mistakes occur, and when that happens, random possessions can happen.
At the moment this body was using its possession ability, it made a mistake, and due to that mistake, I, who was on the verge of death, switched bodies with him.
It was an incredibly low probability, but at this point, this hypothesis seemed most realistic. Of course, this didn’t solve everything.
If this body used possession abilities, there would be limits. Since it was a hidden ability, it wouldn’t be of a high rank, and at most, it would last half a day. Normally, waiting like this should return me to my original body, but…
“My body…”
The fact that I’m in this body means he’s in my body. However, my body has long been blown to pieces by a bomb. There’s no way possession is possible in such a body, and…
“Is he wandering somewhere?”
If possession isn’t possible, that would naturally happen. Actually, when possession fails, it’s common to return to the original body, but if he made a control mistake, he might not be familiar with his ability yet.
“Let’s wait for now…”
For now, there was no clear method. I had no choice but to stay here until everything found its place.
When energy is depleted, it will automatically return. For now, the best option was to stay put. I didn’t know anything about this body, and moving recklessly would only raise unnecessary suspicion.
So I decided to wait inside the house with my thoughts organized.
To be precise, that’s what I thought until a day had passed.
But even after sleeping and waking up, even when a day passed and night came, nothing changed. I was still in this body, and there were no signs of change anywhere.
Something must have gone wrong. Or maybe the rank was higher than expected. Either way, returning to normal would take time.
In this situation, I needed to seriously reconsider the situation.
For a day, I deliberately wasted time without thinking about anything. It’s not that time wasn’t precious. But the thought of not wanting to leave unnecessary attachments was stronger.
Eventually, everything would return to normal with time. Knowing this clearly, doing anything else would only be miserable.
But now I couldn’t wait for time to pass like that. First, I needed to learn more about the owner of this body, this researcher. If he didn’t show himself for an extended period, there would surely be calls.
I needed to know to make excuses. If I had known this would happen, I would have investigated from the beginning. I got up from the bed, which I hadn’t left since checking the mirror.
From my cursory look yesterday, there weren’t many places to learn about this researcher. At most, it would be his phone and desk. And as I expected, all information about him came from the desk.
When I opened the drawer of the wooden desk, which had scratches here and there as if it had been used for a long time, various items were inside. Among them, the most noticeable was a diary.
I had never seen an adult keeping a diary, so he must have been quite diligent. The diary had been maintained without missing a single day for a long time. There were quite a number of discovered diaries.
Thanks to this, I was able to quickly grasp information about the researcher. Since it would take a long time to read everything, I started reading from a year ago.
And as I read the diary, my perception of him gradually changed. He was the opposite of what I had thought.
He was a researcher conducting human experiments. So there was no reason to view him favorably from the start. It wouldn’t be strange if vile desires were written. But rather, he wanted to help others more than anyone.
That’s why he joined Peace. His name was Kane, aged twenty-six, and he had a gentle nature by birth. Due to his non-confrontational personality, he had lived a smooth life until he joined Peace.
His life changed when he became a researcher at Peace.
