I could hear a ringing sound in the distance. It seemed really vague and hazy, like it didn't exist in the same time and space as I was in. The darkness around me receded like the sea when it was low tide, replaced by a blinding light that grew from as small as a dot to the size of a miniature sun in the blink of an eye, bent on swallowing me whole…
And then my eyes snapped open. The ringing was unbearably loud now, roaring in my ears until they seemed about to go deaf. A groan uncontrollably escaped my throat as I fought to regain some semblance of clarity. I blinked my eyelids hard as I squinted at the newfound brightness after the prior complete darkness. Wincing at the still ringing noise, I hastily stretched my arm to grab at the jumping bedside clock that was sounding the alarm like there was some kind of code-red emergency. Smacking at the top of the clock, the alarm finally stopped in an abrupt cut-off. I grumbled as I thought of what an annoying clock it was, sitting up and stretching my arms while yawning as wide as my jaw could go.
"Wait a minute… Something feels off," I mumbled as I finally looked clearly at my bedroom… Or rather, what seemed to be an entirely different room from what I had always been familiar with. Although there was still the usual desk for studying, closet and wardrobe for my clothes, and the bed I was sitting on, everything was different. Be it the wardrobe, desk and bed, all of them were designs that were completely foreign to me. It absolutely felt like I had accidentally slept in someone else's bedroom. Realizing this, I reflexively jumped off the bed and looked warily around, my mind spinning with all the possibilities of why and how it turned out like this.
"Sleep-walk? Kidnapping? Or is this actually a dream? Am I still sleeping?" Words shot out of my mouth as I checked out the room again, feeling increasingly certain that something really strange was going on. This was definitely someone else's bedroom, and looking at the posters of idols and anime on the wall, plus the work-out and exercise gear like the running mill and dumbbells, this was probably the bedroom of a male high school student like me. The deciding factor was the obvious uniform of a seemingly prestigious high school hanging on the clothes rack behind the door to the bedroom and the wardrobe. They were obviously a little fancy-looking. Was this a rich kid's bedroom? It really looked like it.
As I felt a little panic setting in, I inadvertently looked at a full-body mirror standing at a corner of the bedroom next to another half-body mirror equipped with a chest-of-drawers and a set of makeup for boys. I was stunned as I studied the assortment of makeup tools lined up neatly on the desktop. I had only ever seen makeup for women, courtesy of my little sister. Seeing the masculinity and the brands, I instinctively knew that the makeup was for men, vastly different to the pinkish aura of my little sister's makeup set. I walked slowly there to see the rare makeup for men more closely. That was when I caught a glance at my reflection on the half-body mirror before I could reach the desk with the makeup. Instantly, it felt like the miniature sun that swallowed me in my dream returned, but with a freezing aura that made it feel like it was a dead star.
Staring back at me with dumbfounded eyes… Wasn't me.
My first thought: the guy in the mirror was freakishly handsome. Like, really, really handsome. There was a mixture of western features amid the usual soft Japanese nose and jawline, along with the pretty-boy looks that need not to be mentioned. My height… Wasn't as freakishly tall as I was handsome, around 177 cm, probably? Not even 180, so I couldn't be said to be tall, just slightly above average. My hair was a fascinating color blend looking like exotic black gold, or dark gold. My eyes were a deep blue reminiscent of the oceanic depths, swirled in black ink like the spilled oil of a shipwrecked tanker polluting the sea water. Anyway… Why was I using a first-person perspective when describing this mirror reflection? This bishounen was absolutely not me.
My second thought: because I was reading a romantic comedy light novel last night, Shirogamine-kun and Saionji-san or Shion for short, I instantly recognized the guy in the mirror to be Shirogamine Kaede, the male Shujin-ko or protagonist of Shion. The fact that I was looking at what was supposed to be myself… Brought a splitting headache that forced me to support my body by leaning on the mirror with both arms. Cold sweat formed on my scalp as I stared at my new but familiar face, eyes twitching from the absurdity of it all.
"C-calm down, me. Even if the impossible happened, nothing's preventing me from staying as calm and cool as when nothing happened," I took a deep breath as I tried to calm down. This was a simple case of entering a book. Let us think of it that way. When it was proven that this was all a prank or had a sensible and logical explanation to it all, I could just laugh it off and dismiss this past self as merely the victim of a god's cruel joke.
"But… Have I really entered the world of Shion? Am I inside the story; the light novel? Could such a thing really happen in mundane real life?" I mumbled as I looked again at Shirogamine Kaede's typical bishounen face.
…I couldn't deny that I was happy to have such a handsome face for once. Not that my original face was ugly. In fact, I was already quite the looker, but compared to Kaede's out-of-the-world looks, I ended up just plain ordinary. Some kind of exhilarating feeling was bubbling in my chest when I thought of going to school with this face. After all, in the light novel, Shion, Kaede was the school's Prince, standing alongside the Goddess and Angel of the whole academy.