By Zephyria 
Excuse me,
Well…
To trace back to the origin of all these circumstances, my sister’s high school acceptance was the beginning of everything.
I spent my three years of high school solely focused on studying, and as I had aimed, I was accepted into what is called the best university in our country.
Not long after receiving my acceptance letter and reveling in my newfound freedom by lounging around at home, my sister, who had always been a better student than me, had her foreign language high school acceptance announcement.
The house was filled with double the joy, and we ate heartily every day. I was spending my days lounging so comfortably that I worried I might turn into a pig.
Then, in February, my sister had to move into the dormitory, so she left home even before I did. I had also spent three years in a dormitory during high school, so I wasn’t particularly moved by my sister’s departure.
We hadn’t seen much of each other for three years, so what difference would it make if we saw each other even less for another three years? We weren’t a family with particularly deep affection.
Since my home was within a reasonable commuting distance to the university, I decided to live with my parents. And the important part was this: I got to take over my sister’s computer when she left for the dormitory!
A desktop computer, after so long!
Although the dormitory had a computer lab, it was often plastered with A4 sheets saying ‘Under Repair’ due to the files they constantly downloaded illegally. So, the laptop I had bought for convenient use was so old it could barely write a personal statement. Even that, after three years of diligent use, would now crash from overload even while writing documents.
The joy of getting a desktop computer amidst all this was indescribable.
Excited by the thought of finally playing all sorts of high-spec games and taking my first steps into hobbies like video editing, I first started by organizing my sister’s hard drive.
I should have wiped the hard drive clean without mercy, but the problem arose because I was trying to be thorough, worrying there might be files my sister had forgotten.
And that’s when I found it.
On my sister’s hard drive, a folder named ‘Life’s Vitality♥Public Funds’.
Without knowing it was the root of all evil…
“Public funds? What’s public funds? Like embezzlement? What on earth has this kid been up to?”
Unconsciously, I clicked on the folder, and inside, I saw things I shouldn’t have.
For example, things with titles like these.
「Heart, Belly, Feet」
「If you drag it out, you’ll make gruel」
「Dad is the boss of money」
「The problem is the son’s princess」
「Non-authorized personnel entry delayed payment」
「Touch 5,000 won and try kissing」
「Kiss my dog with those arrogant lips」
Wondering what kind of titles these were, like a black dragon sealed on my left arm, I clicked on those files with the ‘.txt’ extension out of sheer bewilderment.
“Are these files compiled from web serials? Did you download them illegally? Why? …It’s not like she lacks copyright awareness because she’s poor, is it?”
Along with realizing my sister was utterly lacking in copyright awareness—meaning her respect for others’ rights, legal common sense, and basic decency were severely lacking—I thought, ‘What kind of novel has titles like these?’ Driven by curiosity, I couldn’t resist the temptation of the mouse wheel and scrolled through it a few times.
And then, I devoured those writings, characterized by bizarre line breaks where paragraphs should be and a feast of emoticons like (–^) (^\ㅁ^) (>0<) (=_=zZ), in the blink of an eye.
The result was this disaster I’m facing.
“Hae-jun?”
“…….”
“What’s wrong? Why is my sibling like this~?”
“Nothing’s wrong, can you leave now? I have a headache.”
“…What happened, Hae-jun. Who is it. Who bullied you? Hae-jun, tell me.”
And so, this person, whose face (^-^) was beaming like sunshine just moments ago, is now stiffening and speaking as if they want to bury the person who bullied me. This person claims to be one of the Four Heavenly Kings from an internet novel written in ‘2005’, and that he, who looks strangely similar yet dissimilar to me, is my twin brother. What a ridiculous situation.
Please leave me out of your friendship.
“Hae-jun. Shall we go to school together?”
“No, that’s fine. More importantly, you remember we agreed not to acknowledge each other at school, right?”
“Absolutely, don’t…?”
It felt like my ears, which shouldn’t be there, drooped towards the floor. Could this be what they call a main character buff?
“Still, just a greeting…”
“Don’t.”
“Still….”
“Don’t.”
“Mmm, okay.”
After reiterating the words I had already emphasized multiple times, Seong Hae-min backed down. The person claiming to be my brother trudged out towards the kitchen.
I watched his retreating back for a moment, and only after hearing the sound of the front door opening and closing could I let out a long sigh.
“Haa….”
How can I possibly untangle this pathetic situation?
I wracked my brain for days, agonizing over it, but still, no solution came to mind.
I just woke up in a novel, what could I possibly do?
At this rate, the only way to escape this novel that comes to mind is the path of ‘One day, I woke up and it was reality again.’
So, there’s nothing I can do.
“…My university acceptance letter!”
I stomped my feet in the empty kitchen. I was so incredibly angry.
What did I sacrifice my three years of high school for, studying like a dog?
Every time my grades came out, I spent my time anxiously. On days I heard that the student in the next class got even one point higher, I would study relentlessly all night. For performance assessments, I always aimed for perfect scores, and if it involved group activities, I stayed up all night alone, carrying the team.
I even endured hearing insults like “That guy’s a virgin” or “He’s a saint” while giving up on going to the arcade with friends. That was my three years of high school….
‘And that reward disappears without a trace overnight?’
Does that make any sense?
I don’t think so!
I was furious.
How can they tell a high school senior who just finished their college entrance exams to live their life over from the first year of high school? I even held an acceptance letter from the university considered the best in the country! I even made an SNS account I didn’t have before and posted a photo verifying my acceptance!
Several days have passed with me just fuming alone like this. I spent countless nights thinking, ‘If I wake up tomorrow, it’ll be real. The next day, I’ll surely wake up in reality.’
But it’s still the same mess. I’m still Seong Hae-jun, the fictional character who shares my name and face.
That’s right. Although I woke up in a novel, my name and face hadn’t changed from reality. If I had to find a difference, it was… a slightly younger face. This face was the one I had when I first entered high school.
There was indeed a character in the novel I read the day I raided my sister’s hard drive who I thought, ‘Wow, this guy has the same name as me.’
‘I’ve become that person?’
The me in the mirror hadn’t changed at all, except for being a bit younger, but I had to believe this absurd situation where this was a novel and I was a character in it. It was incredibly painful.
However, despite tens of thousands of denials, there was a reason I had to believe this was the internet novel I had read. It wasn’t just that the place I woke up in wasn’t my home but an unfamiliar space, or that a strikingly handsome male high school student, who looked somewhat like me, suddenly claimed me as his twin brother. (Of course, those were part of the decisive reasons.)
The reason I had chuckled while reading the internet novel, thinking, ‘Is my sister reading this kind of thing?’, was that the characters in this novel, written in 2005, used items that would be displayed in a museum.
As I scrolled through the novel with my mouse wheel, I had thought:
A flip phone… Isn’t this the phone my mom used before she got married?
Replacing the phone battery? What era is this phone from?
Is blocking the number enough?
What’s a phone strap? My sister said something similar when she bought her Z Flip last time…
I can just turn on GPS. I can search on my phone.
I had scoffed and lectured them with all sorts of criticisms. But coming here, I understood why the characters had no choice. Because in this world, there were only feature phones! And they were as thick as a hard ice cream bar like Shark Bar or Ttubam Bar, with screens as tiny as a booger. They were even more ridiculously thick than the ice cream bars I remembered.
After realizing that, I cried once more.
‘My latest Apple phone, which I bought in person at the store after getting into university!’
It wasn’t just the phones. The computer monitor, touted as the latest model in the house where Seong Hae-min and I lived, was also a thick LCD. If the latest models were like this, then the computer monitors distributed at school must all have bulging backs.
I painstakingly turned on the incredibly slow computer and searched for ‘YouTube’ on a search engine that looked obviously outdated.
「No search results found.」
That’s when I truly screamed.
‘The world has no sense of moderation!’