My body felt impossibly heavy.
As my consciousness gradually surfaced, that was the very first thing I realized.
This body didn’t feel like my own, and it felt as if I were entirely devoid of any sensation.
It was like being a mere soul, floating and looking down at an empty husk of a shell left behind.
Did I really even need to open my eyes?
A profound sense of helplessness and a thoroughly exhausted mind made my emotions fragile.
I chose not to force my eyelids open, leaving them as heavy as boulders exactly as they were.
While the rest of my body remained entirely numb, my sense of hearing was gradually returning to life.
There was barely any sound to be heard.
It was completely still and quiet.
It was difficult to deduce where I currently was.
But then again, did I really need to find out?
The sense of helplessness kept washing over me continuously.
Without a doubt, either my mind or my physical body was completely spent.
But because of what?
The moment that question surfaced, the very recent past unfolded before me like a panorama.
Yes, I had definitely opened my eyes in a place I didn’t recognize.
And on top of that, it was in a body that wasn’t mine, lying flat on the ground while vomiting blood.
What happened after that…
‘I’m certain I saw someone.’
Because my physical condition had been extremely poor at the time, I couldn’t remember their exact appearance.
However, it was absolutely certain that someone had approached me as I lay collapsed on the ground.
I felt like they had worn a deeply greedy expression—a face like a wild beast that had suddenly discovered a massive chunk of meat after starving for many days.
…No.
Rather than that, it was an expression as if they had looked upon some kind of awe-inspiring entity.
As if they had seen a ‘God.’
‘There’s no way that’s possible. Who do I think I am?’
While reflecting unconsciously, I noticed a subtle change.
A bothersome sound had begun to drift into my ears. Listening closely, it sounded like footsteps.
And it was an artificial sound, as if someone were making it intentionally.
“…It breaks my heart that our Yuan has been asleep for so long.”
The voice that followed immediately was riddled with questions.
I didn’t even know who this person was, but the contents of his words were even more impossible to understand.
‘My name is Lee Jaein, so who is Yuan? And who is this person to be worrying about me?’
The continuous flood of questions only added to my confusion.
From the very moment I opened my eyes in a body I didn’t recognize, everything had been a constant string of unknown events.
How on earth was I supposed to accept any of this?
It felt more exhausting than working an entire week with overnight shifts due to an excessive workload without even resting on weekends.
I desperately wished someone would just hand me an answer to this entire situation.
‘Or, ridiculously enough, is this something like a transmigration? Did I somehow get transmigrated into someone else’s body?’
When you look at novels, movies, or dramas, isn’t there always that kind of thing?
Content where someone hasn’t done anything wrong, but they unluckily get pulled into a book, transmigrated into a character’s body, or regress in time.
Even though it was a thought completely detached from reality, I wouldn’t be thinking like this unless I was truly desperate.
For now, I decided to fold away all these stray thoughts.
What mattered most right now was finding out where I was and discovering the true identity of the man speaking near my ear.
To find that out, I had to raise my heavy eyelids by any means necessary.
“…Ugh.”
A groan of pain escaped my lips entirely on its own.
Perhaps it was because I was in a state of severe helplessness.
To think that merely raising my eyelids would be this difficult.
Just as I was about to wonder if I should simply give up, my eyes fluttered open like a miracle.
The moment I opened my eyes, what appeared before me was not an unfamiliar ceiling or anything of the sort, but a person’s face.
A blonde man with a bit of black roots growing out was staring intently down at me.
And he was doing so from an extremely close distance.
We were in such close proximity that I could have counted exactly how many eyelashes he had.
The dark gleam in the man’s eyes was strangely shimmering.
It was a deeply greedy gaze, giving me the distinct impression that I had suddenly become some sort of treasure chest to him.
“Our Cult Leader has finally opened his eyes, I see?”
‘…Cult Leader? Did I mishear something?’
I felt an immense contradiction and a flood of questions from the man’s words just now, but I didn’t let it show on my face.
For now, it seemed best to observe the situation first and react accordingly to match it.
“Does anywhere hurt?”
No matter how much I looked at him, he wasn’t someone I knew.
No matter how much I combed through my dormant memories, let alone knowing such a person, I had never even seen anyone who looked remotely similar to him.
I fell into a brief internal conflict.
Should I play along with the title this man was calling me, or should I…
“…My head… hurts.”
I intentionally frowned around my eyes, pretending my head ached while checking the man’s complexion.
Seeing how he spoke to me intimately from the start using casual language, I decided to treat him similarly, and fortunately, it seemed to be the right choice.
In truth, I could have just played along with the word ‘Cult Leader’ that the man had spat out, but I hadn’t obtained any information yet.
Under such circumstances, pretending to be the ‘Cult Leader’ he was referring to without a care?
That would be impossible even for an actor with decades of acting experience.
This wasn’t merely a shoot; it was reality and actual life.
‘With my senses being this vivid, there’s no way it’s a dream.’
The pain I had experienced right before losing consciousness was definitely not a dream or an illusion.
To think that the sensation of having a hole drilled through my brain was a lie?
I sneered inwardly.
“The shock must have been too great. Well, it’s never easy to watch someone die right before your eyes, is it?”
The man’s words were still completely riddled with incomprehensible things.
I desperately wished someone would appear and explain this entire situation to me.
Opening my eyes after drinking myself to sleep only to be called a cult leader in some unknown place was completely absurd.
‘But wasn’t I collapsed in an alley earlier looking like a total beggar?’
I sank into calmer reflection.
When I first opened my eyes in that completely incomprehensible place, it certainly wasn’t a clean and perfectly fine location like this.
It was a horribly filthy alley, and there was absolutely no one around.
Before I could even grasp what the situation was, I suffered from an unknown pain and lost consciousness.
And right before I lost consciousness, I definitely…
‘This person is the one I saw before I collapsed.’
Otherwise, this situation simply made no sense.
