I Was Possessed By An Unknown Manga - Chapter 1

One day, I opened my eyes and saw a white ceiling. 

Next to me, a middle-aged couple with unfamiliar faces was sobbing while holding my hand. When their eyes met mine, they were really surprised and called the doctors outside.

Right after I woke up it was chaotic in many ways; the doctor came and ran some tests. After finishing it, I was left alone in the hospital room, I could finally have time to think calmly.

‘What’s going on?’

I was probably possessed, a phenomenon that would only be seen in novels or manga.

If not that, I couldn’t explain the situation I was actually in.

From the conversation we have had so far, the name of the body I possessed by was “Kim Yoo-sung,” a high school student living in Japan.

From what I heard, he left home two days ago to meet a friend but was hit by a car in front of a nearby crosswalk and fell unconscious.

If my soul took over the place of the soul of this child, Kim Yoo-sung, after it escaped, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

He died at the age of liberty. 

I could remember my last memory before I was possessed.

I had just become a graduate student of science and engineering and due to a bad choice, I couldn’t go home for a few days, solving room and board issues at the university lab.

However, I didn’t know whose mistake it was, but a fire broke out inside the laboratory, and I happened to be there. I couldn’t escape from the building. I inhaled a lot of toxic gas and lose consciousness while trying to get a hard disk containing two years’ worth of research data.

Maybe I was possessed by the body of this boy named Kim Yoo-sung because I died in the lab?

For a moment I was happy that I got out of my boring student life, but the excitement soon subsided. 

After all, I was like a cuckoo who suddenly ended up in the body of a boy named Kim Yoo-sung.

I wondered if I would be able to adapt to my future life.

Staring blankly at the ceiling, I picked up a small hand mirror from the drawer next to the bed.

The face of the boy that I saw for the first time was looking at me across the mirror.

As I smiled awkwardly, the boy with unusually long bangs smiled along.

To be honest, it didn’t look real.

Maybe this whole situation was only a dream?

I had a vague hope, but when I pinched my cheek, I felt a vivid pain.

“Ha, what’s that?”

I sighed deeply because of this meaningless situation, and I decided to wake up first and think about it later.

*** 

Two days later.

I was safely discharged from the hospital.

Of course, the possession didn’t vanish as I had hoped.

Rather, the memories of that boy, Kim Yoo-sung, naturally flowed into my mind during my dreams.

Kim Yoo-sung was an ordinary 15-year-old middle school student, about to enter in high school.

He was born to a Korean father and a Korean mother who immigrated to Japan. He was secretly discriminated at school, so he grew up as an introvert.

Still, he had about two or three kindhearted friends in his class. It seemed that he left home early in the morning of this weekend to play with them and got into an accident. 

I was driven home by the middle-aged couple – Kim Yoo-sung parents. I agreed to go upstairs when they told me to hurry and rest because I must be tired. So, I went up to the second floor.

It was my first time coming here but I acted so naturally, as if I knew this place from the beginning. 

Probably because of the memories of the previous owner of this body. 

I walked into the room, quietly closed the door, and felt distraught by the scenery in front of me.

No matter where you looked there was only manga and comic books.

Bromide1 with naked 2D characters were proudly hung on the wall, and the bookcase was lined with animation DVDs and figures.

I didn’t know where this guy, a third grade of middle school, got the money to buy all this stuff. But one thing that became clear was that Kim Yoo-sung must have been a weirdo.

I used to look up comic books and animations that people said were fun, but I was only confused because I wasn’t into it. 

First, since it was now my room, I cleaned up what I could and sat on the bed instead of the chair. 

‘What should I do now?’

Because I hadn’t inherited all Kim Yoo-sung’s memories yet, it was hard to act thoughtlessly.

Kim Yoo-sung’s parents were particularly the problem. If their son, who they had seen for 15 years, suddenly acted like a completely different person they would find it weird.

In other words, I needed an opportunity to act according to my original personality. 

Fortunately, Kim Yoo-sung had a good excuse. 

‘Eight-grader syndrome2.’

A syndrome that every young person gets at least once in a difficult time.

Fortunately, Kim Yoo-sung already had the eight-grader syndrome before I was possessed. He was so deep into it that one side of his bangs was long like the main character of his favorite manga.  

Of course, due to his introverted personality, he didn’t seem to have been seen outside often, but his parents may already had known that their son had eight-grader syndrome.

Then it was august. 

The final exams of the semester had just ended, and summer vacation had begun.

But there wasn’t that much time left.

When I checked the schedule on my smartphone, school was starting in two weeks.

And if you try to change your image in such a short period of time, not only your parents, but also those who knew Kim Yoo-sung wouldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. 

‘I should act as someone who has eight-grader syndrome for a while.’

After much consideration, I reached this conclusion. 

It was after going to high school that I would reveal my true personality. 

For the time being I felt like I needed to know Kim Yoo-sung’s original taste and the hobbies he used to like, so I turned in direction of the manga and comic books neatly placed on the bookcase in the room.

Looking at the title, it seemed that he had started with a fighting manga and watched all genres such as fantasy, cooking or love comedy. 

Gulp –

At first glance, it looked like more than 100 volumes.

If I had any homework given to me during this summer vacation, it was to be perfect as someone with eight-grader syndrome.

Anyhow, it was going to be considerably difficult.

*** 

Possessed by Kim Yoo-sung’s body, the time I spent as a middle school senior passed by very quickly.

It was physically very brief.

August, September, October, November, and December went by. 

Except for the third semester and spring break, it had been half a year at most. 

I passed the high school entrance exam without having to study. 

It was not necessary to worry about the middle school math and science level, as I was originally a graduate in science and engineering. In the case of Korean language and history, it was not as difficult as I was worried, perhaps because it was Kim Yoo-sung’s favorite subjects.

Honestly, I think I got a ridiculous score compared to the amount of study because natural sciences and liberal arts were combined. 

Anyway, because I thoroughly studied and reviewed my lessons during summer vacation, his parents, or people around him, didn’t find out that the person in Kim Yoo-sung’s body had changed.

Eight-grader syndrome was hard at first, but it didn’t matter as I got used to it.

I read all the manga and novels that he collected in his room and memorized the common behavioral patterns of the eight-grader syndrome on the Internet. It naturally became my daily life.

While looking at my phone, I hit my head against the door of the convenience store and said, “shit, is it a barrier?”. When I whispered, I was even admiring myself. 

“Here! Give me some skirt steak3 and Horumonyaki4.”

“Yes~!”

Amid my thoughts, I shouted to his father, who was working in the kitchen, about the additional order from Table 3.

“One skirt steak and one Horumonyaki on table 3!”

“Coming in a minute!”

His parents were running a small meat restaurant in Tokyo.

More precisely, it was a Korean restaurant, and they were selling yakiniku5 as the main menu.

The shop was small but there were many regular customers.

Despite his young age as a middle school student, the reason why he was able to buy all kind of goods was because of the part-time job he had by helping his parents’ store whenever he had time.

As it was lunchtime, I was dealing with customers who were rushing in, and while suffering from the heavy labor, I found and a man and a woman sitting at a table.

A tall and handsome boy, probably around my age, who looked like a celebrity.

The girl sitting next to him looked one or two years younger, but she was also a beauty with clear features.

“Oppa6! Say ah~!”

“Yuika, people around us are watching.”

“Hmpf, your younger sister is feeding you. Who cares~?”

I was staring blankly at those two familiar-looking people when I realized.

If I remembered correctly, the boy’s name was Ryuji Sakamoto.

The main character of “Scramble Love”, a popular love comedy that I encountered online before I was possessed by this body.

Although he was a little bit younger than I thought he originally was, I couldn’t forget this natural shaggy cut similar to the one of an escort.

I found out naturally thanks to this.

This boy, Kim Yoo-sung, was living in the world of a manga. And I was possessed by his body.