Chapter 3: Awakening in a "Heavy" Body
In the beginning, there was no light—only a persistent buzzing in his ears, like the drone of angry bees. Rian tried to open his eyelids, but they felt as though they had been glued shut with a thick, resinous substance. The last thing he could recall was the bitter chill of that dark alley and the metallic taste of blood in his mouth... so how was he still able to hear this buzzing?
[Suitable Host Detected...]
[Synchronizing Soul... 1%... 15%... 50%... 100%]
[Binding Complete. Welcome to your new life.]
Strange, luminous golden words pierced the darkness of his vision. Rian's eyes snapped open in a daze, but he didn't find the dark alleyways of Seoul. Instead, he saw an old, cracked ceiling with a large damp stain in the center that looked like a forgotten map. He tried to take a breath, but a sudden wave of panic seized him; every inhale required immense effort, as if a massive boulder had been placed upon his chest.
He tried to sit up, and that's when the ultimate shock hit him. His body did not respond with the lightness he had grown accustomed to over thirty-two years as a lean delivery man. Instead, he felt a colossal mountain of flesh swaying with his movement. He looked down, and his eyes widened in sheer horror.
"What is... this...?" He tried to scream, but his voice came out thick, heavy, and muffled by fat.
The hands he placed on the rickety bed were massive—his fingers short and thick, to the point where he couldn't even see the knuckles clearly. His stomach protruded from under a cheap, tattered cotton shirt—a vast, round mass that completely blocked his view of his own feet. This wasn't just a body; it was a "Prison of Flesh."
His trembling hand reached for an old smartphone with a cracked screen resting on a broken wooden table by the bed. He pressed the side button, and the screen's glow reflected onto his face, revealing the date: June 20, 2032.
"A whole year has passed since I died?" he muttered, stunned.
With fatal hesitation, he opened the front camera app. The image reflected on the cracked screen made the phone nearly slip from his hand and hit the floor. The face he saw was not the "Rian" he knew. It was an excessively round face, its features entirely submerged beneath layers of grease. His black hair was dry and dull, like grass that hadn't seen water in months, and his eyes... his eyes were mere narrow slits, squeezed shut by the puffiness of his cheeks, their color dark and devoid of any spark.
At that moment, the wooden door creaked open with an annoying sound. A small boy in humble clothing entered, looking at him with an expressionless gaze: "Brother Jino, Matron Lian said you must come down for food immediately. You're late."
As soon as the boy left, Rian felt an explosion in his head. It wasn't physical pain, but a violent influx of information. Memories he had never lived began to storm his consciousness like crashing waves.
He saw himself—or rather, Jino—standing in the schoolyard while other students moved away as if he were infected with a contagious disease. He heard the toxic whispers: "Look at him, the fat orphan from the shelter." He saw a painful scene of a mother pulling her child away from him, saying: "Don't go near him, those kids from the orphanage are nothing but trouble."
Rian now understood the tragic reality of this body. "Jino" was a victim of brutal school bullying that showed no mercy for his orphan status or his poverty. Because food was the only thing he could control, he fled into it greedily, using those layers of fat as a shield to protect himself from the world—sinking into a deep depression that turned him into this "thick," outcast person.
Jino had studied day and night, not for the love of books, but because he saw "University" as his only escape—a dream of a dorm that would distance him from the pitying looks at the orphanage and the homelessness that awaited him as soon as he turned nineteen.
Rian (now inhabiting Jino's body) gripped the edge of the bed tightly, feeling a bitterness in his heart that mirrored his old life.
"My previous life was erased by a trivial mistake..." he whispered, staring at his ugly reflection in the mirror. "And now, I've been reborn in the body of someone slowly killed by society. Is this the second chance fate has granted me?"
He didn't know that the answer was about to appear before his eyes in the form of glowing golden letters that would change the course of his new life forever.