CH 1

Where the hell am I?

I looked around the dazzling room and slowly got up. After carefully examining the room’s interior, which was sparkling so much that my eyes hurt, I put my hand on my stomach reflexively.

“What……”

I calmly got out of bed and looked over my body. The scars that filled the whole body had disappeared, and my field of vision was slightly lowered.

“What the fuck is this…”

The scars disappeared and I became shorter. Secondly, I couldn’t see my precious muscles. Every time I took off my shirt, the proud abs made people around me say, ‘You look great, Hyung!’ were gone.

“Oh!”

I groped the middle of my legs in a hurry, thinking about the thoughts that had passed through my head. Fortunately, the size wasn’t bad. Of course, it couldn’t compare to my original body’s.

“…….”

After looking around, I sat down with my buttocks on the bed and was lost in thought. First, I had to figure out the situation.

My last memory was holding my stabbed stomach and struggling. No matter how serious the wound was, it was embarrassing to die because of the betrayal of my beloved younger brother. He was babbling something like he was sorry or he couldn’t help it before he put the knife in my stomach.

‘Then… am I dead?’

Being betrayed was not a new thing, but this time the situation was very bad. I was suddenly stabbed in the pit of my stomach, so my body probably couldn’t stand it.

I let out a dejected laugh.

It had been years of struggling to survive, stepping in other people’s footsteps, but I died in vain?

‘……so what the hell is this body?’

I was stunned by a reality I had never imagined. Actually, all of this could be a dream and I could be lying in the hospital. It was possible. Dreams that were as vivid as reality could be dreamed of. At least it was worth checking out.

I jumped up and searched around the hotel room. However, no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t find any knife or scissors. I threw a glass on the floor. The glass was shattered and scattered on the floor. It would take some trouble to clean it later, but I wondered what it would be like. To be honest, all of this felt more like a dream than a reality.

I grabbed one of the broken pieces of glass and held it to my wrist. Red blood spurted out of my pure white skin. This wasn’t enough, so I swung my wrist, letting red blood gush out.

“…it hurts.”

Why does it hurt? As I looked up at the blood dripping down, I saw a face I had never seen before in the mirror. The face under the fine brown hair was neat, and it looked pretty good. But his skin was too white and his body was thin, so I couldn’t feel the vitality. Tsk tsk, you should’ve worked out.

The face reflected in the mirror was distorted. Whether it was a dream or not, if I felt this kind of pain, I should be careful. I sighed and pondered what to do with my bleeding arm when suddenly the door swung open and someone came in.

“Han Yi-gyeol! Stop sleeping and wake up! Master… what the fuck?”

The man who was stomping towards me looked at me and 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 fiercely. I listened to what the other had to say in front of me. One thing I was sure of was my memory. Han Yi-gyeol. Why was this name so familiar? Han Yi-gyeol, Han Yi-gyeol……

“Ah.”

After contemplating 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 the only person who appeared in ‘Abyss’ only to die.

“Oh, 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, uncaring about my bloody arm. As I left the room and walked down the hotel hallway, it was hard to come to my senses.

Really? Really? Did this make sense? I didn’t just come into someone else’s body, but into a character?

And why did I have to be this one?

‘Wait a minute.’

Thinking up to that point, I belatedly remembered what kind of novel the Abyss was. Abyss was a male-oriented novel. That was, the number of female characters was significantly higher than that of male characters. In the end, all of them became a woman who was obsessed with the main character and cried out for his love.

‘Fuck…… Long live Han Yi-gyeol. Thank you.’

Suddenly, favourability for Han Yi-gyeol increased dramatically. Okay. He has a very good face, he has a good head, and he’s a man above all, right? He’s a man!

“Go in.”

I prayed in my heart to the godlike person who put me in this body, but the man who led me to the room opened the door and pushed me roughly. The hotel room I entered looked bigger and more expensive than the room I was in.

“……what’s wrong with your arm?”

As I stood still and looked around the room, I heard a strange voice behind my back. I turned around and the man who had just left the bathroom was looking at me. His large upper body was visible through the white robe.

I slowly raised my gaze to see a sculptural appearance wiping his wet dark hair roughly with his hand. It was a face that could only be described as outstanding. Even a popular actor who went to a salon to maintain his looks in his free time wouldn’t look like that.

The man’s face made him look like a devout believer or an insidious murderer under subtly different lighting.

The man who met my eyes, was looking at my face absentmindedly, and threw out a sentence.

“Point your eyes down before I pull 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 while then answered politely.

“Nothing.”

“……”

Cheon Sa-yeon, who heard me, looked at me with his eyes asking, ‘Are you crazy?’ Didn’t I answer right? I answered with the utmost care in mind.

As Han Yi-gyeol in the original story was so quiet, it wasn’t easy to find references to him. Originally, Han Yi-gyeol trembled in front of Cheon Sa-yeon and barely nodded his head, and in front of the main character, he did what Cheon Sa-yeon told him to do 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 a young flower-like man who I had never met in my life.

“I heard that ‘The Empress of Red Flames’ will clear the G7 area and come out through the gate tomorrow afternoon.”

The Empress of Red Flames. This naming was… 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. Let the Roheon Guild kid get the news.”

Who was the Empress of Red Flames again? …as I listened blankly, I naturally recalled the contents of the novel at the next command. In the beginning, it seemed that the main character rescued a kidnapped woman. The Empress of Red Flames that Cheon Sa-yeon said to kidnap was the target and the kid from the Roheon Guild meant the main character.

What happened to Han Yi-gyeol at this 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. Previously, I was full of confidence with my memory, but now I became 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 a lot of things I didn’t understand that I couldn’t ask Cheon Sa-yeon, who was like the final boss. It was advantageous to step back quietly now.

I opened my mouth, but thinking that I might 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. If it had been my face in the past, these immature people would not have been able to talk to me recklessly.

I just raised my eyebrows and brushed past him. All the way back to my room, I heard swearing behind me, but I pretended not to hear it.