NOVEL NEXT Chapter 0 - Prologue: This Isn't How I Meant for My Wish to Be Fulfilled
It was a life with nothing special about it.
An ordinary family.
Mediocre talents—not particularly good at anything, but not particularly bad either.
A conservative person who thoroughly desired a stable life.
If I were to compare myself to a character in a novel, I would undoubtedly be “Extra #1″—that was the kind of person I was.
If there was anything special about me, it was that all the friends I made were eccentric, but even though their personalities and tastes were unusual, they were just as ordinary as I was.
Except for the fact that my daily life wasn’t boring thanks to those friends, everything around me consisted entirely of ordinary things.
“That’ll be 15,800 won total.”
“Here’s my card.”
“Here’s your card back! Have a nice day!”
It was just another ordinary day.
After being discharged from the military, I missed the semester enrollment period and ended up working part-time at a convenience store.
Since I had experience from my freshman year of college, I was able to work at a relaxed pace today as well.
As usual, I was passing time by reading novels or browsing community sites, and before I knew it, my shift change was approaching.
“…I’ll go straight to bed when I get home. I’m unusually tired today.”
My eyes were incredibly heavy, probably because I had been giggling over novels until the early hours of the morning.
Maybe I’ll fall asleep right away after showering and lying in bed?
While I was spacing out, thinking about the comfort of my soft bed, the night shift worker soon arrived. After a brief handover, I dashed out of the convenience store.
“Another day comes to an end like this.”
The always enjoyable journey home.
I murmured quietly while looking up at the dimly lit night sky.
Was I going back to school soon?
Ah, I don’t want to go to school. Looking at my schedule, I have first period classes Monday through Friday—I really feel like taking a leave of absence.
Why can’t they just do remote classes like during COVID? Why am I the only one who can’t have the remote classes that everyone else gets?
Thinking about it again, my discharge timing was incredibly awkward.
While regretting that I should have gone to the military a bit earlier, was I complaining to the brightly shining moon?
In the middle of my muttering, I noticed a shooting star falling around the moon.
“That’s incredibly clear? Were shooting stars always this visible?”
I was stunned for a moment by a sight I’d never seen before in my life.
Recalling the superstition that if you wish upon a falling star, that wish will come true, I quickly made a wish.
“Please convert all classes to remote learning, please.”
Because I wished so hastily, I accidentally left out the words “recorded lectures,” but it didn’t matter.
It was a playful wish anyway, and honestly, it had no chance of coming true.
There’s no way our passionate professors would ever do remote classes, right?
Smiling bitterly at the thought of this vain hope, I soon arrived at my rented room.
Opening the door, the fatigue I’d been suppressing immediately guided me to the bed.
“…I should shower before sleeping.”
I said that, but once you lie down, not wanting to get up is a lazy person’s instinct.
Before I knew it, my body was wrapped in a thick blanket, and with the drowsiness and comfort the blanket provided, I fell asleep.
“Good night…”
Well, the fine dust levels were normal, and I barely sweated.
It wouldn’t matter if I showered in the morning instead.
[WAKE UP!!! YOU F*CKING BASTARD!!!]
“Ugh.”
A spirited alarm announcing the morning.
With the harsh profanity that cleared my mind, I opened my bleary eyes.
“Yawn…”
One hour until my shift change.
I needed to get ready quickly to make it on time, but my body felt unusually heavy today.
…Did I not sleep properly? No matter what, mornings had never been this difficult before.
It was even more bewildering because I had never experienced such poor condition since I started exercising.
It’s weird that my body won’t move just because I stayed up late once. And it doesn’t make sense that my voice is completely gone.
“…Come to think of it, my skin is completely white too. No, is it because my eyes are blurry?”
It was a strange morning in many ways.
A rare unpleasant deviation from routine, you could say?
But no matter how unusual, the fact that I had to go to the convenience store for work remained unchanged, so I forced my heavy body to get up.
“I should have showered before sleeping yesterday. Ugh, it smells really musty in here. I need to ventilate first. In the morning, fresh air is—”
As I spoke and pulled back the blackout curtain.
Tsssssssssss!
“Huh?”
When the sunlight touched my body, the exposed area started burning.
For a moment, I experienced cognitive dissonance and stared blankly at my burning arm, but soon I felt a terrible burning pain.
I screamed and quickly covered the sunlight with the blackout curtain again.
“AAAAAARGH!!! Huff… huff…”
As soon as the sunlight disappeared from the room, my burning arm mysteriously returned to normal.
It was so perfectly fine compared to how intensely it had been burning that I wondered if what just happened was a dream.
But judging by the vivid pain I had felt just now and the acrid smell of burning that permeated the room, this was definitely not a dream.
“…What is this? What on earth is happening?”
A sense of terror that something had gone wrong.
I rushed to the bathroom to check the mirror, but there…
“Why, why are there only clothes?”
There was just one invisible person wearing boxer briefs.
“What is this?”
With trembling hands, I picked up my smartphone.
The fingerprint recognition didn’t work, so I unlocked the screen with a pattern, and what I saw was a mountain of KakaoTalk messages and texts.
Worried that the world had turned into an apocalypse overnight, I turned on the internet and was greeted by huge breaking news headlines.
[Alien Species Appear After Meteorite Impact, Scientists’ Analysis and Response?]
“…F*ck.”
It seemed like the world had gone to hell while I was sleeping.
Judging by how empty my lower body felt, it seemed I had lost my manhood too.
“I did want remote classes.”
But.
“This isn’t how I meant for my wish to be fulfilled.”
A wish granted too extremely.
Hoping that all of this was a dream, I flopped back onto the bed.
When I wake up again.
Everything will be back to normal, right?