By Zephyria 
“Listen here. When did you even see me to be calling me crazy or whatever? Do you think you can evade your mistake like that? You’ll have to explain clearly. About what you people did to me. I have no intention of letting this slide. Got it?”
“Cha Soo-kyung!”
“What are you talking about? Let’s not go around calling people by the wrong names. I’m really going to get angry. Who did you think would be grateful for being shoved into a hospital room like this? Just go find my balls. Honestly, they say you can get your nose cut off with your eyes open, but this is a situation where I closed my eyes and my balls were plucked away.”
“My god.”
The man couldn’t find words and only gaped. As if he were so appalled that speech failed him. Wasn’t I the one who should be appalled? Looking at the man who was acting like the victim, I suddenly stood up and began to fumble with the waistband of my pants to pull them down.
“You, what are you doing?”
“Since you keep denying it, I’m going to show you. Do I look like I’m lying? I’m telling you, my balls are really gone. The things that should be attached here have vanished.”
The man hurriedly reached out and grabbed my hand and my pants. A tug-of-war ensued between me trying to pull them down and the man trying to stop me.
“Let go of this!”
“Secretary Yoon. Secretary Yoon! Come in here right now and calm this brat down. Tell the nurse to give him a sedative or whatever. And contact the hospital director. Call the attending physician or a psychiatrist, quickly!”
As the man shouted like he was screaming, the man from outside rushed in and pinned me down onto the bed.
“Hey, let go! Do you think you’ll get away with this? You hold a person down like this and perform surgery however you want, huh? And I’ll tell everyone you’re confining me! I’ll make sure this hospital closes its doors!”
I struggled and yelled, and the man leaned back against the sofa, his face looking even more exhausted. Muttering “He’s truly insane,” the man shook his head, glanced at me, and then turned his face away as if to avoid me.
Anyone watching would truly mistake me for being crazy. As a prime example, even the caregiver standing far away was looking at me with an unusual gaze. Was it really this easy to frame someone as a lunatic? A sense of futility washed over me.
I have no money, no parents, and not only have I lived a wretched life, but I have cancer in my chest and not many days left to live—and after saving a guy who wanted to commit suicide out of the goodness of my heart, my balls vanished. On top of that, I’m being framed as a madman and might even end up in a mental hospital.
Is this what they want? Are they trying to get rid of me this way? But why? What wrong did I do? I simply saved the life of that nameless guy who is their family.
Were they that averse to saying thank you and giving a small reward? Did I look like I was going to extort an enormous sum of money? I truly had no idea.
“I’ll stay still, so let go of me.”
I spoke grumpily to the man still pinning me down. At my more calmed tone, the man glanced at the other man for approval, and I told him to let go again in a strong tone.
“Hold him until the nurse arrives. I think I’ll only feel relieved once he’s given a sedative.”
“Listen. This is actually a crime. You know that, right?”
“Sigh… I’ll contact the hospital director and come back, so keep holding him. Make sure he can’t run away.”
To witness a crime scene in real-time. And to be the victim, no less.
But if there’s a separate father who is the hospital director, then who on earth is that man? Is he one of the two arrogant Hyungs? Since there was a mention of an age gap, it’s possible. Recalling what I’d heard from that guy, it’s entirely possible for a Hyung to act like this toward me. They must have been absolute scoundrels.
The man left the room, the man who was his secretary still held me down, and the caregiver was glancing over from a distance, trying to grasp the situation.
I took a deep breath to calm my heaving chest, and noticing that the pressure pinning me down had weakened slightly, I pushed the man above me with all my might.
“Ugh.”
Taking advantage of the moment the man stumbled back a step, I rolled off the bed. The man would be outside the door, and the only place to escape was the bathroom. Before the man could grab me again, I scrambled across the floor like a lizard, dove into the bathroom, and locked the door.
Thump, thump. The sound of loud knocking echoed from outside. I could hear the man’s voice, having returned to the room, shouting and asking what happened.
I was the one wondering what was happening. What on earth is going on? What is this hospital doing? What situation am I in? I couldn’t know a single thing.
I braced my weakening knees and stood my ground, taking a deep breath to compose myself. I saved someone’s life, and now my own life is in danger. What kind of dog-eat-dog situation is this? No matter how few days I have left to live, I didn’t want to end it in such a filthy way.
Think. Think. Think.
I tried to calm down, but I couldn’t. The situation made no sense, and I didn’t know what to do or how to do it.
“Fuck!”
Cursing, I stood before the sink. I needed to wash my face with cold water to wake up. As I splashed my face with water so cold it felt like it would freeze, I snapped awake. I rubbed my face roughly, dried it with the hanging towel, and as I looked in the mirror, I froze like a statue.
What?
The face reflecting in the mirror was far too unfamiliar.
It wasn’t a face I’d never seen before. It was certainly a face I knew, but it wasn’t the face I had seen for twenty years of my life.
How did this happen? The face in the mirror was not mine, but the face of the guy I had saved at the risk of my own life.
Hesitantly, I raised one hand, and the guy in the mirror raised his hand too. When I waved as if saying hello, he waved back.
Is this a dream? I pinched my cheek, and as I frowned from the pain, the guy in the mirror pinched his own cheek and welled up with tears, as if mimicking me.
“Crazy, what is this?”
These people must be truly insane. After plucking out my balls, they’ve now swapped my face for his. Was it possible to create another person’s face so perfectly through plastic surgery?
I stepped closer to the mirror and felt my face. The skin touching my fingertips was smooth, as if it weren’t mine. I felt a strange sense of dissonance.
As if possessed, I stripped off all the clothes I was wearing and threw them aside.
This wasn’t a body wasted by illness. Though the frame was still small, it wasn’t a body where the flesh had withered due to disease; it was simply a lean body.
The scar on my side was gone. Was it when I was fourteen? The scar from being stabbed as an example after being caught crossing territories while pickpocketing had vanished. Because a quack had stitched it up haphazardly, a large scar had remained, but now my side was clean, as if such a thing had never happened.
No other small scars could be found. Not only the stomach, but the skin on the arms and legs was clean. Even my hands, which had been rough from hardship, were soft and supple like a child’s. It was the body of a pampered young master.
Did they perform plastic surgery on my entire body?
It was incomprehensible. How many days had I been hospitalized here after losing consciousness? How much time must pass before the traces of a massive plastic surgery are completely undetectable?
There wasn’t a single stitch mark anywhere. Aside from some bruising that looked like minor contusions, there were no signs of injury or surgery. If they had performed overall plastic surgery, shouldn’t there be at least some surgical marks?
Looking closely, the genitalia, which I felt were strangely small, were not mine. The area where the balls should have been below the penis was smooth, as if they had never existed. There were no marks of cutting or stitching.
Come to think of it, my voice was strange too. I thought my voice sounded unfamiliar because my head was dizzy, my ears were muffled, and my throat was tight, but looking back, it was different from a tight voice. Unlike my original voice, it was a slender, clear, and melodic voice.
Non-existent testicles. A completely changed body. A face that wasn’t mine. A voice that wasn’t mine. How could I explain this?
Am I still Min Jae-hee? Anyone could easily mistake me for that guy whose name I didn’t even know.
The reaction of the man outside now made sense. If that man truly didn’t know the full story—if he mistook me for that guy—then from his perspective, it was perfectly reasonable to think I was crazy.
“This makes no sense.”
Who on earth created this situation? Who turned me into that guy?
Did that guy, who said he didn’t want to live, take advantage of the moment I lost consciousness to swap himself with me? Since he said his parents were the hospital director, it was entirely possible.
Then for what reason would those parents have agreed to it? What benefit would there be for them in making a street pickpocket who barely finished elementary school their son?
Why is the man outside pretending not to know about this situation? Wouldn’t it be easier to explain the situation to me, make me understand, and persuade me? Does he think it’s more convenient and less risky to frame me as crazy and lock me in a mental hospital?
Absurd conspiracies grew rapidly in my mind.
As I stared blankly at the guy in the mirror, the bathroom door made a click-clack sound. The loud knocking had vanished and it had become quiet, then the doorknob rattled and the lock clicked open.
The man peering through the gap of the smoothly opening bathroom door stopped and silently mouthed words when he saw me. His eyes widened in shock as he scanned my naked body from top to bottom.
Beyond the wide-open door, I could see the man, his secretary, and a caregiver all staring intently in my direction.
“…Nu, nurse! Nurse!”
The man called for a nurse, his voice sounding like a scream. Listening to that ear-piercing voice, I lowered my gaze from the mirror and closed my eyes.