The classroom hummed with the usual pre-class cacophony—pencil cases snapping, chairs screeching, and the acidic tang of instant ramen wafting from the trash bin. Jeon Il slumped in his seat, back row by the window, sunlight glinting off his phone screen as he scrolled through Rise of the Ultimate SIMP's shop menu.
Then Leo crashed into his orbit.
The dark-haired boy skidded to a halt in front of Jeon Il's desk, palms slamming onto the chipped wood. "Dude. What. The. Hell."
Jeon Il didn't look up. "If this is about the cafeteria incident, I already apologized to the lunch lady for 'accidentally' complimenting her hairnet."
"Not that!" Leo jabbed a finger at the hallway, where a group of Student Council members strutted past in tailored blazers, their footsteps unnervingly synchronized. "You threw Soo-yeon like a ragdoll yesterday. Why aren't you in the martial arts club? Or the Council? You've been hiding your skills this whole time?!"
Jeon Il finally glanced up, feigning nonchalance. "What's in it for me? A gold star? Extra homework passes?"
Leo's eye twitched. "Are you—how are you this clueless? Student Council members get 500 bucks a month. Untaxed. They can skip classes, override curfew, and order teachers around like NPCs. And the martial arts club?" He leaned in, voice dropping. "They get access to real cultivation manuals. The kind normal people sell kidneys to even glance at."
"500 bucks, huh?" Jeon Il drawled, spinning his pen. "That's… what, three months of my dad's overtime shifts?"
"Plus privileges." Leo mimed quotation marks. "Last month, Council Top 7 caught a freshman vaping. They made him lick the bathroom floors. Clean. And the teachers just… let it happen."
Jeon Il's mind raced. Cultivation manuals? Bathroom tyranny? This wasn't just a school—it was a feudal warlord's playground. Meanwhile, his old world's biggest scandal was someone microwaving fish in the teacher's lounge.
"And martial arts events?" he probed, keeping his tone lazy.
Leo lit up. "Inter-school tournaments! The winners get sponsorships from the Martial Arts Alliance. Last year's champ got a dragon-scale saber and a scholarship to Crimson Cloud University."
Shit. Jeon Il's mind spiraled. Dragon-scale weapons. Tax-free bribes. This isn't just an isekai—it's a badly balanced RPG. He glanced at his app, half-expecting a pop-up for [Achievement: World's Worst Isekai Protagonist].
"Look," Leo pressed, "even if you're some lone wolf edgelord, why not milk the system? You could've been rolling in cash and power this whole time!"
Jeon Il leaned back, chair creaking dangerously. "Maybe I'm not into… hierarchies."
"Bull. You're in a hierarchy right now." Leo gestured to Jeon Il's phone, where 47 unread messages from girls blinked like a deranged Christmas tree. "You're the SIMP Supreme. The Sultan of Simpage. The—"
"Okay, we get it," Jeon Il snapped, Hero Complex (Level 1) flaring. "I've got options. So what?"
Leo's smirk turned razor-sharp. "So you're either lying… or you've got amnesia. Which is it?"
Jeon Il's pulse spiked. Does he know? He schooled his face into a smirk. "Maybe I'm an undercover prince testing the school's meritocracy."
"Or maybe," Leo said, "you skipped every class that didn't have girls in it."
He shrugged. "I was busy."
"Busy?" Leo's voice rose. "You sent Park Yuna 147 'Good morning!' texts last semester. In a row."
"148," Jeon Il corrected. "She blocked me after the cat meme."
Leo leaned back in his creaky desk chair, the ghost of a smirk playing on his lips as he watched Jeon Il's face contort through five stages of existential crisis.
"You really don't know? I mean, I heard you were… dedicated to your hobbies, but this?" He gestured vaguely at the classroom window, where a Student Council member outside casually palm-struck a vending machine to dislodge a soda can. "This is like not knowing the sky's blue."
Jeon Il's eye twitched. "My parents were busy. Dad worked triple shifts at the cog factory. Mom's meds cost more than our rent. History lessons weren't exactly priority." The lie tasted bitter—he'd seen his (this world's?) parents' apartment yesterday. Spotless, with framed certificates praising Kim Sae-ron for "Outstanding Contribution to Provincial Security." His "sister's" trophies gleamed like accusations in the hallway.
"Here." Leo pulled a dog-eared textbook from his bag, its cover emblazoned with a dragon coiled around a sword. Modern Cultivation: From the Ashes of the Third Energy War. "Don't drool on it. Library's been out of copies since Top 3 set fire to the annex during a tantrum."
Jeon Il reached for it. His 30 Agility betrayed him—fingers blurring, textbook snatched faster than a pickpocket's grab.
"What the—?" Leo jerked back, chair screeching. "Since when do you move like a caffeinated squirrel?"
"Yoga." Jeon Il flipped open the book, pulse roaring in his ears. Page 1: The Great Awakening. Black-and-white photos showed cities cratered by what looked like meteor strikes. Captions hissed with terms like "Qi Overload" and "Mana Collapse."
He devoured pages—The Martial Arts Alliance's coup against the Seoul government . The Ministry of Magic's "accidental" zombification of Busan.
His stomach lurched at a diagram labeled "Common Hybrid Species." A cat-eared girl smiled beside bullet points: "Nekomata: Enhanced agility, prone to hairball-related diplomacy incidents."
What. The. Actual.
"You good?" Leo waved a hand in front of his face. "You're doing the goldfish thing."
Jeon Il slammed the book shut, the crack echoing like a gunshot. Twenty heads swiveled their way.
"Whoops." He forced a grin.
Leo's stare could've microwaved soup. "Dude. You just read 300 pages in four minutes. While muttering 'holy shit' in, like, seven languages."
"Bilingual epiphanies." Jeon Il's voice sounded tinny, distant. This isn't just another country. This isn't even the same species of reality. "So. These Council guys. They're all… superhuman?"
"Basic stuff." Leo counted off on grease-stained fingers. "Top 10 bench-press trucks. Top 5 dodge bullets. Top 1?" He shuddered. "Rumor says she dueled a Ministry archmage last year. Melted his tower into a popsicle."
"And my sister?" The words slipped out, syrupy with dread.
"Kim Sae-ron? The Blade of Moonlight?" Leo snorted. "Only person to ever make Top 1 bleed. They say she once cut a typhoon in half to save a fishing village." He leaned in, breath reeking of cheap energy drinks. "You're telling me you've never seen her summon sword-beams during family dinners?"
Jeon Il's mind flashed to last Christmas (this world's version?): a blurred memory of a stern woman in military dress, pinning a medal to his chest while muttering "Don't embarrass me." He'd assumed it was a dream.
"We're… not close."
"Understatement." Leo tapped the textbook's cover. "Look, if you've got a secret manual, spill. I'll trade you Council gossip. Did you know Top 6 pees his pants during lightning storms?"
Jeon Il's phone buzzed.
[New Quest: The Truth Hurts]
[Option 1: Confess You're an Isekai Noob (Reward: 500 Simp Coins + Leo's Eternal Mockery)]
[Option 2: Bullshit Your Way Through (Reward: 10 Simp Coins + Chronic Indigestion)]
He stood abruptly, chair screeching. "Bathroom. Now."
"But class starts in—"
"I'll Venmo you."
As Jeon Il fled, the textbook fell open to a highlighted passage: "Transdimensional Displacement: Theoretical Cases (See Chapter 44: 'When Gods Screw Up')."
---
Jeon Il stared at the contact name—[Ma Sistah Kim Sae Ron]—its juvenile misspelling a relic from middle school. His thumb hovered. In his old world, Sae-ron was a nursing student who'd once sewn his stuffed bear's arm back on after a tragic laundry incident. Here, according to Leo, she bisected typhoons for fun.
He hit call.
The line crackled with static, then
"Yo," he said.
"Yo your ass."
Not Sae-ron's voice. Not quite. This timbre could cut glass. Jeon Il pictured her in some warzone, blade in one hand, phone in the other.
aiming for nonchalance. "Got a sec?"
"For you? 23.7 seconds. Go."
"Martial arts manual. You have one?"
Silence. Then a sound like mountains crumbling—Sae-ron's laugh. "Finally hit your head hard enough? Last time I offered, you said"—her pitch shifted to a mocking whine—"'Why punch rocks when I can punch hearts?'"
Jeon Il's cheeks burned. God, my old self was cringe incarnate. "People change."
"People don't." Paper rustled, someone screamed distantly. "But fine. Celestial Fist, Volume 1. Basic footwork, qi circulation, how to break a neck with a love letter. I'll courier it."
"Thanks. I—"
"Address. Now."
He rattled off his apartment number, half-expecting her to already know.
"Three days. Don't die first." Click.
Jeon Il slumped, the dial tone morphing into the classroom's fluorescent buzz. His phone's reflection showed a stranger—sharp jawline, This face isn't mine. This sister isn't mine. This world—
[Achievement: Existential Crisis Level 5]
[Reward: 0 Simp Coins (Get it together, champ)]
Across the room, Leo mimed vomiting. Jeon Il flipped him off, then froze.
Mom. Dad.
His old mother's coughs echoed in his skull—wet, rattling, terminal. Here, her LinkedIn (stalked last night) listed her as "Chief Surgeon, Moonlight City Hybrid Medical Center." His father? "Senior Tactical Analyst, Martial Arts Alliance (Northern Sector)."
No factory grease. No pawned wedding rings.
Did I steal this body? Is the real Jeon Il screaming in some void?
Few seconds passed.
"Charming," he muttered, then spotted her—the girl two seats over, frantically patting her bag. Ponytail. Glasses. Panic sweat.
Old instincts ignited.
"Need a pen?" He slid his favorite (pink, heart-shaped) across the desk.
She flinched. "I—I couldn't—"
"Take it." His smile sharpened, "I've got twelve more."
[+3 Simp Coins: Low-Effort Simping]