Chapter 1

Incidents often strike unexpectedly.

The sudden passing of my parents due to cancer, the fire that spread from the neighbor’s house and burned all the heirlooms in my house, and the consequent failure of an important project at work all happened so abruptly.

The current situation was no different. Right after waking up, the latest computer I had bought less than six months ago was gone, replaced by an old, bulky white desktop where a sleek black one once stood. The monitor, mouse, and keyboard—all labeled by the same computer component designation—were, unsurprisingly, also replaced.

After I’d compensated for the damages of that fire and the failed project, the unexpected loss of newly acquired treasures was overshadowed by a more pressing matter.

“Could it be… I’ve been kidnapped?”

The desk was white, the wallpaper white, the clothes hanging on the rack—everything in the room was white. The bookshelves were lined with books covered in white dust jackets, and even the stationary on the desk was predominantly white.

Considering that ballpoint pens usually come in black ink, anyone would probably mistake me for a patient in a psychiatric ward. Compared to my sophisticated room, this place was absurdly barren of ‘something.’

Though it’s unlikely anyone would allow the use of a computer in a locked psychiatric ward.

Despite that, it’s also implausible to leave someone who’s been kidnapped with a computer, unless it requires a password to start, in which case I might as well consider the ‘kidnapping’ scenario plausible.

If the kidnapper, who might be mentally disturbed, had painted everything white, this preoccupation with the color white becomes explicable.

I couldn’t just lie down and examine the room forever, so I pushed aside the thin blanket and got up.

My head throbbed, perhaps from some kind of drug, but there were no handcuffs. Still, the weakness in my limbs ensured that I couldn’t resist even if I wanted to.

I decided to check if the door was locked—it might be an escape route. With a slight creak of the door, a staircase leading downwards and a corridor came into view.

We’re on the second floor, I deduced, as there was no visible staircase leading upwards. Carefully, I closed the door again.

It would be better not to let my captor know I’m awake, as anything could happen. However, there was a CCTV camera with a red dot on its black spherical body mounted on the ceiling of the corridor.

If the CCTV was being monitored, the captor would realize that I stepped outside briefly. But checking the corridor was necessary.

Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to check if there’s an exit leading to the front door of the house, despite the possible risk of being caught on CCTV.

‘It couldn’t be this sloppy, could it?’

If I could leave through the front door, I wouldn’t technically be confined here, meaning whoever brought me here didn’t intend to lock me away. Listening to the car exhaust outside my drawn-curtain window, it seemed like I wasn’t in some remote countryside.

The moment I escaped, I could report this to the police, return to my own house, and the owner of this residence might face imprisonment for kidnapping.

—But I didn’t move on such hopeful assumptions.

That’s what I’ve learned since “that day.” Even hearing about a car accident, I didn’t believe my parents were dead, nor the fact that the fire next door wiped everything I had. I thought that with the compensation money, I could restart my life, only to end up being told I was mentally fragile—a revelation I’ve had firsthand.

Thinking about the painful past made my headache even worse.

As I sat there with nothing to do but use the bed as a chair, something caught my eye. Amongst the entirely white-colored clothing hanging on the rack was a white blouse whose sleeves were oddly shaped.

While the average person might overlook it, I noticed this oddity due to my excellent observation skills. The sleeves’ design wasn’t mutilated or irregularly cut but were distinctive in a way that anyone familiar with such things could immediately tell the gender of the room’s occupant and maybe even the reason for my kidnapping.

This person’s popularity must be something that shows no signs of cooling down.

I chuckled helplessly.

I had uncovered the cause of this farce.

Oh, am I possessed again?

Me, Choi Yi-soo.

32 years old.

Forever single, not because of a lack of women admitting their feelings to me due to my good looks, but because of my resistance—still, I can’t deny that I’ve made many women fall for me.

Perhaps my being kidnapped stems from neglecting the women who loved me…

I thought that about whoever confined me here.

I wanted to think so.

‘Surely the captor isn’t gay… is it?’

There was no noticeable voice change, no feeling of having shrunk, no unusually delicate hands or thin fingers that might have hinted at having taken female hormones.

I knew that taking hormones for a day or two wouldn’t physically shrink me, but if I had been unconscious for a longer period, who knows? My skeleton could have shrunk due to excessive hormone intake.

Speaking frankly, homosexuality isn’t a sin. I’ve never particularly disliked people who are homosexual. I just didn’t want to practice it myself. Forcing someone to be homosexual by kidnapping them and injecting hormones, however, is a crime.

In this specific regard, it’s perhaps fortunate that there’s no mirror in this room.

Even if I once had a handsome but masculine face, if hormones had distorted this into something grotesque, I might have screamed like a banshee. The window was frosted gray, showing no reflection.

Beep-beep!

As I thought about my changed body with relief, the sound of the electronic lock unlocking reached my ears. Apparently, whoever had seen me through the CCTV was aware that I’d come out of the room.

The sound was loud enough that even with the door closed on the second floor, I could hear it. However, the kidnapper didn’t immediately come up the stairs since I couldn’t hear any steps. Instead, a high and fragrant aroma wafted in after a few minutes.

“Now that I think about it, I am hungry.”

There was no way for me to gauge how long I’d gone without food. Was the kidnapper cooking downstairs in an act of cowardice?

Still, I couldn’t just stay upstairs. What were the chances that the kidnapper was in the kitchen cooking the moment I opened the door? Zero, in my estimation.

It seemed they were confident I’d wake up, so if I refused to come down, they might deduce I was trying to escape and lock me up further.

I should probably go down to ask about their motives. Definitely not out of hunger.

I convinced myself as I opened the door I had been listening to moments before, and a tantalizing smell of meat hit my nose.

No matter how intelligent my body might be, as a human, I wouldn’t be able to discern the exact smell through a closed door.

Judging by the aroma, it was a good call to come down. Upon descending the staircase, I went directly to what I inferred was the kitchen, where an elaborate feast awaited.

Pass!

Another success!

The meat was described as the best. Though there were countless side dishes like fresh bean sprout salad, the main star of this feast was undeniably the meat.

As the saying goes, “See Mount Geumgang after eating,” I prioritized eating over learning about my captor’s identity or intentions.

If the captor intended to feed me something strange, they would have done it already. So, I picked up my chopsticks and immediately placed a piece of meat into my mouth.

It melted like snowflakes; this was a taste I’d never experienced in any other meat.

Was it the special cooking technique? Or were they using some rare meat? Curiosity pricked at my throat, but someone else spoke first.

“Seems like you find it tasty?”

A kindly woman’s voice. The hypothesis about the kidnapper being gay was discarded, but the possibility of her being a lesbian who abducted me to inject female hormones still stood.

Realizing that my captor was female, I suddenly felt stronger and raised my head, ready to counter anything strange, and instantly discarded all my hypotheses.

[Yoon In-na]

[Ability: Empathy]

[Role: Secondary heroine]

—It struck me that I might not have been kidnapped but rather committed for mental illness.