The Reason? - Yoon Jeonghan

Chapter 17

     Ophely looked in the eyes of the person standing in front of her. She was surprised to not see herself, like she had seconds ago. Now she was looking straight up into Jeonghan's eyes. And he was looking down at her. He was holding the door knob. Which he hadn't a second ago.

      "Hi." Her voice felt foreign. That was a weird thing to think. Your own voice feeling like someone else's. "Hello." Yeah. It was definitely hers, somehow feeling like a long lost friend. It was her, with her own voice, in her own body.

      "Hello." Jeonghan answered back, feeling the same as her. Good to be back in his own body, but having been used to the temporary one he somehow felt out of place in his own skin.

      The two just stood in shock in front of the other. Looking at the body they had occupied for the past few weeks through their own eyes. It seemed that neither of them really understood what had happened. If meeting the two bodies was enough for them to get back to their own life, then they should have done that as soon as possible.

      The moment it downed on her, Ophely just gaped at him. Mouth hanging open.

     "What ..." Her hands went up to touch her body, verifying that it really was her body she was in, her gaze not leaving Jeonghan's, which was also frozen in shock. "... the ..."

     However, their happy moment, being back to their usual self was quickly ruined by a simple glance. Jeonghan had looked away from Ophely, breaking away from the other. And it was like the magic was broken and everything fell back like it wasn't supposed to.

     "... heck." Ophely managed to finish, in the other body. Jeonghan's.

     It was weird to jump back to another body which was doing something else before. And as Ophely went back to the other body, she was looking at the floor away from her own body in the door-frame. Her hands gently groped her own arms, but as Jeonghan came to it, they stopped moving. This was confusing.

     Could they only be in their bodies while looking straight into their eyes? Was that making the link work best?

      "I give up." Jeonghan just screamed in the lobby before instinctively taking his shoes off and going into the apartment fully.

     Don't even ask what the boys thought about the encounter, because they seemed to understand what had happened even less. One moment the couple was looking at the other and the next they were awkward and slightly angry. Had meeting their own bodies not worked?

     No. It hadn't.

     Ophely was still in Jeonghan's body. Jeonghan was still in Ophely's body. The teenager in the body of the idol and the man in the body of the girl. Still the wrong way round.

     The girl wouldn't show it to the world, but she was extremely saddened about the failed swap back. She wished she could have gone back to her own body, she was deceived by the magic that hasn't worked. Or worked partially. She had gone back to her body, but only at the expense of living. Staring into someone's eyes to be into your body wasn't the most practical way of living.

     No, it hadn't worked. That little swap back was only an appetiser to what she hoped to have, and it left a bitter aftertaste. One of too little, of lack of nothing more. It left wanting for more. But how?

      It didn't dawn on her until an hour later, when she was silently drawing in Jeonghan's bedroom, that she was sad because of the fact that swapping back to her own body was the only escape from this nightmarish situation. Now she really was stuck in Korea, in a body that wasn't hers, and would probably switch at random intervals back to her personal one, the number of scenarios she had created in the past hour was abundant. But her own body had already felt unlike hers, getting something back that was yours after so long that now felt belonged to the other. That was how she felt. Being away from it for so long had affected her mind, her habits, her intellectual capacities, and simply the way she looked at herself, or at the body that wasn't hers. One she didn't know how long it would belong to her for, or vice versa.