In response to his tumultuous scream, the sea of number 7 flooding his vision vanished.
Seojin looked around, disoriented.
He was standing in a decorous and spacious room. It looked like the bedchamber of a noble's residence.
"H-huh? Where am I…?"
Blue curtains fluttered in the breeze from an open window.
Seojin felt like his mind was a tangled web as he tried to pull together the threads of the bizarre events.
"Ah."
As if coming to a realization, he smacked his fist into his open palm.
"I'm starving so I am seeing things, and this whole thing is just a hallucination. That's it, that must be it."
Truth is, after days of starvation, the starved mind becomes a theater of ghosts where hunger pulls the strings and forces reality to bow to delusion.
Seojin closed his eyes and forced his ragged breathing to steady.
When he opened them, the illusion of that noble room was gone. He was back under the streetlamp, just a few meters outside the convenience store.
He spat onto the road as he walked through the pedestrian crossing.
"That felt terrible. I should better get back and wash this shitty feeling off—"
Seojin stumbled back.
"O-ow."
He bumped into someone, or perhaps someone bumped into him. He couldn't tell who was the one at fault.
"That hurts like hell…"
His vision swirled here and there like a Van Gogh painting.
"Hey. Look where you're walking, asshole. I'm already pissed off enough. Don't push your luck and—"
Seojin gulped, swallowing back his words.
Rather, he was silenced by the girl standing before him, her arm extended to offer him a hand up.
"I beg for your forgiveness, my lord. I have no excuses for my lack of attention. Please, take my hand."
Seojin blinked.
"Huh?"
"Pardon? Is there something—"
"What did you just say?"
The woman looked utterly baffled at first. But after a few seconds of silence, she finally answered.
"I have no excuses for my lack of—"
"No. The part before that."
"Mm. I beg for your forgiveness, my lord?"
"..."
Seojin stared at her, glanced down at her extended hand, and then looked back up at her face.
'...My lord?'
All they had done was bump into each other, yet the girl was already being submissive.
'Wait, think about it. Is this it?'
A sudden surge of excitement hit him.
'Don't tell me my exceptional genes are finally taking effect? Perfect. At this rate, a cup of instant ramen is guaranteed tonight.'
Seojin accepted her hand, letting her pull him back to his feet.
'Actually, scratch that. She's giving me an inch, I might as well take a mile.'
He cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Fine. If you're really that sorry, you can treat me to a proper dinner. Follow me. I know a great place."
"..."
Seojin turned around to lead the way, showing absolute confidence. But one majestic step was all it took before his right pinky toe bumped into a hard edge.
"O-o-ow! That hurt- hu-huh?"
He scanned around, clutching his foot. The convenience store street was gone.
The girl, however, remained standing perfectly still, watching him writhe in pain with a total poker face.
It was then Seojin realized the truth. He was right back in that lavish, noble room. The only thing that remained real was the throbbing pain in his stubbed pinky toe.
"You seem to be somehow different today, my lord, are you alright?"
"No, I…"
Seojin forced a hard swallow, choking back the words before he could say anything that might sound suspicious.
"I... I just had a pretty unpleasant dream last night."
"I see. That's troubling then."
The girl glanced down at his foot.
"Perhaps you would like me to cast a healing spell on your foot, at the very least?"
"Yeah— I mean, no. I'm alright."
The girl gave him a polite nod and walked past him. Blue curtains rustled softly as she gently shut the windows.
"Well, then, I shall start preparing breakfast. If I may ask, do you have any specific cravings this morning?"
"...No."
"Understood. The usual morning menu it is."
Creak.
The girl left the room.
Seojin scowled, left alone in this unfamiliar room. He had absolutely no idea where the hell he was.
Sure, optical illusions could trick the eye, and starvation could make a mind wander. But could a mere hallucination conjure pain so vivid it burned under his toenail?
Absolutely not.
Scanning the room a second time, he noticed the walls were entirely plain. There was no such ornament that could hint to his noble origins.
He walked back to the window, pressing his fingers against the cool glass.
Outside, skeletal rows of trees stretched into the distance, looking bare and brittle. Their dark branches held a dustel layer of fresh snow.
Judging by the thin blanket covering the ground, the snowfall seemed to start just recently.
Perhaps a day ago, or perhaps less.
"Strange."
Seojin tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
"Was it truck-kun? No, that's not right. I'm positive I bumped into someone, or the vice versa."
He ran through every possible trope in his head.
Needing to test his physical limits, he did a rigorous set of jumping jacks. He monitored his breathing closely.
Satisfied that his lungs were drawing normal oxygen, he paced the perimeter of the room, counting his strides to calculate the exact dimensions of the space.
It took him 23 steps to walk from one end to the other.
Next, he performed a quick shadowboxing to test his reflexes and balance. To push his assessment further, he also performed a set of explosive push-ups.
"This is strange, too. I could feel no latency in movements."
In almost every novel with this same kind of trope, characters typically had a short calibration period.
For some reason, Seojin felt perfectly attuned.
Shaking his head, he walked toward an adjoining door beside the closet. Such a door was usually the bathroom.
Seojin grumbled.
"Sigh. I did say I wanted to take a bath, but I didn't mean for it to be in another world."
Standing before the bathroom, Seojin halted his steps. His gaze was fixed on the calendar pinned against the door.
"...Wait. That calendar."
Displayed before him was a month that read [Bruma], and beneath it were a total of 53 days.
Flipping back to earlier pages, there were six other months. Each one of them carried only 52 days.
More than the number of days, what unsettled him was the familiarity.
Seojin knew about this calendar. He had seen it before, studied the lores of each one before, and lived with it for seven years.
"N-no way. No damn way…"
He recalled the very comment he wrote on that cringe post by the author:
> [Seojin] Seojin, looks like me and is a genius like me. Any genius skill.
Hastily, he rushed inside that bathroom and stared intently at his reflection at the vanity mirror.
"I-It really does look exactly like me."
The reflection showed black hair, but he knew better.
His true hair was a very dark brown in color, so dark it often appeared black in dim light, yet under the sun it revealed those brown tones.
His eyes were the same as well, those rare irises.
In South Korea, such eyes were rarer than winning the lottery, falling as jjok within the ancient o‑bang‑saek hues.
"If that's the case, then am I inside that novel and the author's post wasn't just some complete bullshit?!"
Normally, he should be happy about this, but he had no privilege for that.
After all.
"If I look exactly like me as per my comment said, then that damned drawback should also be—"
[A perfect match!]
Ding!
A system interface appeared before him.
[A character that satisfies all aspects of the written description has been found.]
Seojin looked dazed, flabbergasted. He stared blankly at the floating system interface before him.
What surprised him wasn't that, but the mere fact he has indeed possessed the character described in his comment.
[Attempting customization.]
[The character's name cannot be altered. The original name has been forcibly restored.]
[Congratulations!]
The interface of customization was instantly replaced by a golden window with a golden text, appearing in a pop-up animation:
It also had a few golden decorations.
[Character customization is complete.]
"Damn crazy…"
Seojin rubbed his face with trembling hands.
No matter where he looked at this particular situation, there was one and only explanation whether he liked it or not.
Something that could finally get his blood pumping has started.
Exactly as he asked for.