The TS Memoir of a Misogynistic Novelist

Several days passed like this. I don’t even know how much time has gone by since I collapsed.

After my first seizure, what I did was denial.

I told myself that it couldn’t be true, that it must be some bad dream. If this isn’t a dream, then it must be some elaborate hidden camera trick. Of course, I knew that such absurdities couldn’t possibly be real.

The next stage was anger. Why did this have to happen to me? I resented the world, and I loathed my fate. I was furious that such a thing could happen on the day of my interview, and I hated Jin Seo-hye for dredging up my past and ruining my interview. Despite knowing that the changes I underwent had little to do with her, I couldn’t help it.

I despised the god that brought me this trial.

The next was bargaining. No, could it really be called bargaining? It wasn’t bargaining; it was begging. I begged the doctor, practically on my knees. I pleaded for him to return me to my original state, rubbing my hands together in desperation.

When that didn’t work, the next step was to call on god. I completely forgot about cursing and hating god and prayed again for the first time since childhood. I begged that this would all turn out to be a terrible nightmare. Of course, there was no answer.

And now what I felt was depression. I felt a profound sense of loss and sadness that I thought I had long forgotten.

This process was reminiscent of someone who had been sentenced to death. If that was the case, wouldn’t the next stage be acceptance?

But I could never accept something like this. The final fifth stage would never come to me.

I refused to eat. Since I couldn’t move my body properly, it was the only way I could express my refusal. I kept my mouth tightly shut and rejected the porridge the nurse tried to feed me. It was a passive suicide attempt. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t have any meaning.

After all, I was hooked up to an IV, and the minimal nutrients needed for survival would still be delivered.

When I continued to refuse food all day, they finally resorted to extreme measures the next day. They forced me to eat. They pried my mouth open and fed me porridge. No matter what, I didn’t have the strength to forcibly vomit what entered my mouth.

In the end, I surrendered to the nurses. It meant I had begun to eat the porridge they fed me.

Once I crossed that line, everything else became easier. It meant my passive suicide attempt had been thwarted. Once I let go of my stubbornness, I became an obedient patient. Of course, it was more akin to resignation than reformation. They treated me like a fragile glass bottle, and I just wanted to disappear from this place as soon as possible.

My body was gradually recovering. Once I was able to move somewhat, I immediately examined my body.

It was small.

I had thought of myself as quite a big guy, but that appearance had completely vanished. My arms and legs were skinny, and my hair had turned white. I had definitely lost some height. My perspective had changed. I felt small, and there was even a slight breast formation. My male organs, which should have been in my groin, had completely disappeared. Instead, there was only a straight line of a crack in their place.

I didn’t discover this by checking myself. I merely saw it when the nurse helped me with my urination. It was horrific.

I had come to recognize to some extent that I had become a woman. I could not accept it, but at least I understood it intellectually. And that imbalance shook me terribly.

I am a man, but I am a woman.

I was a man, but I became a woman.

Yet my mind is still a man.

But can I truly call this body a man?

Perhaps it would have been easier if I were insane and thought of myself as a man.

However, my memories and this world vividly disproved my past, ultimately forcing me to admit that all of this was real.

Had I become so foolish as to lose my mind by becoming a woman? I found it difficult to think properly all day long. Of course, it was natural for someone experiencing such an unprecedented circumstance to feel confused, but to me, it felt as though it was just because I had become a woman.

Once I recovered enough to take some steps, I realized something strange. Yes, it was the door. When I tried to open it from the inside, it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. I realized that I couldn’t leave this hospital room.

In an instant, the mind of a novelist conjured all sorts of bizarre scenarios. Perhaps I was being subjected to human experimentation and was locked up to cover it up, or conversely, there was a mad doctor eager to use me as a test subject since I’d turned up as such a rare specimen.

It was an excessively emotional delusion, one hardly worth considering, yet somehow it made my heart uneasy. I crouched on the bed and waited for the nurse. To prove that all my delusions were false.

At lunchtime, when the nurse came in and opened the door, she looked slightly taken aback upon seeing me crouched in such a strange position.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I tried to leave earlier, but the door was locked. Why is that?”

“That’s locked for the protection of the patients.”

“For patient protection?”

“Since your condition has improved, the doctor will be here soon. I’ll let you know then.”

The nurse’s words didn’t particularly raise suspicion, so I accepted her explanation and received her assistance with my meal. By now, I could probably eat on my own, but since I’d initially refused to eat, I could do nothing to stop the nurse from feeding me.

When I left half of the tasteless hospital food uneaten, the nurse took it away. She knew that it was genuinely beyond what I could handle. Since I had become this way, my food intake had dropped to less than half. Just eating a little too much made my stomach feel bloated.

I sat there absentmindedly waiting for the doctor. Not long after lunchtime ended, the doctor arrived with the nurses in tow for his rounds.

The doctor didn’t speak to me but began chatting with the nurses about my condition. He ordered them to take my pulse and used a stethoscope on me without warning. Like a voyeur, the doctor examined my body thoroughly before finally speaking.

“Hmm… Your body is perfectly normal. If your condition continues to improve, you should be able to be discharged in about a week.”

I didn’t ask him to return my body to its original state. I had tried repeatedly, but he always deflected my question, looking troubled. It was likely impossible. Instead, I asked something else.

“I tried to leave the hospital earlier, but the door was locked. Why is that?”

“Of course, it’s locked for the protection of the patients. It’s similar to the reason this room has no windows.”

That meant they had locked the door out of worry that I might commit suicide or run away. But the nurse had talked as though there was some other reason.

“Is that the only reason?”

“There’s something I need to tell you since your condition has improved. Someone from the National Intelligence Service will probably come by this evening.”

“The National Intelligence Service?”

Instantly, my complexion darkened. Are they really planning to conduct human experiments on me? But dismissing my delusions, the doctor continued to explain.

“Sudden Gender Change Syndrome is a rare disease that occurs worldwide. It’s unknown why it happens, but those afflicted transform into the body of the opposite sex. Completely. Mr. Seol-guk, your current body, while not strong, is completely normal and typical for a woman.”

“…What does that have to do with the National Intelligence Service?”

“For state policy reasons, patients with Sudden Gender Change Syndrome find themselves in a situation akin to having no identity, so the National Intelligence Service manages them. While there are some supports in place, a proper system has yet to be established, so you might face some hardships. They will explain everything in more detail.”

In the end, I couldn’t extract whether there was something more to why the doctor locked the door. He had implied that my body was normal but noted that it wasn’t strong and that I was in a very vulnerable state where exposure to ailments was quite easy, advising me to be cautious.

There were a number of medical discussions that followed, but I just sat and listened. The doctor informed me of various instabilities within my body and points to be cautious about, yet it didn’t even feel like he was talking about my body, causing me to tune out partially. However, there eventually came a point in the doctor’s story that I couldn’t help but question.

“So, the patient’s body hasn’t fully completed its growth yet. In terms of bodily age, it’s slightly younger than your original age. You could consider it around middle to high school age, but it doesn’t show any signs of menstruation yet, which could start at any time, so please be careful.”

“…Menstruation?”

“Yes, menstruation. You will experience it, probably soon.”

“I’m going to menstruate?”

“Thus far, there haven’t been any documented cases of patients with Sudden Gender Change Syndrome becoming pregnant, but based on your physical condition, it is fully possible. So, if you’re going to have sexual relations, be careful…”

“What do you mean sexual relations, damn it?!”

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