Chapter 2: Doki Doki literary club

“Wow…”

A vast, white, Western-style building stretched as far as the eye could see.

Perhaps because it was a prestigious private school, its sheer size was staggering.

As I walked with my head tilted back, a statue of Socrates near the main gate caught my attention.

A gasp escaped my lips involuntarily.

Glancing at the beautifully landscaped garden beside it, I felt like I was strolling across a university campus rather than a high school.

I’d thought the school looked impressive in the photos, but seeing it in person, its grandeur was overwhelming.

As expected of a prestigious private academy, backed by a chaebol corporation, its scale was different from ordinary schools.

Kids from less privileged backgrounds like myself couldn’t even dream of attending here without a scholarship.

Anyway, it felt surreal to think this was the school I would be attending from now on.

It wasn’t my first time in high school, but that had been ages ago.

A distant memory now.

Besides, I hadn’t even graduated back then.

More importantly, this was the main stage of the “game.” I couldn’t help but be awestruck.

“…Well then, shall we go in?”

I glanced at the watch on my slender wrist.

The entrance ceremony was about to begin.

I started walking towards the school entrance, memories surfacing naturally.

Memories from before I came here.

I looked like an ordinary high school girl now, but originally, I was an ordinary high school boy.

What nonsense was this, you ask? There’s no need to overthink it.

It is what it means.

I was a boy, but somehow, I had become a girl.

It was unbelievable, but true.

There were no special reasons, like a secret organization’s experiment or a dip in a magical hot spring.

I simply woke up one morning to find my body completely transformed overnight.

However, if it had only been my body that changed, I wouldn’t have been so confused.

On a late autumn day, with the heavy rain pouring down, I was messing around on my computer as usual when I was drawn by curiosity to play my younger sister’s otome game.

Somehow, I ended up clearing all the character routes, and the next morning, I woke up as a baby.

And the thing between my legs was gone.

I had been reborn as a girl.

Perhaps something every guy dreams about at least once.

But a dream is just a dream because it doesn’t come true.

Naturally, I couldn’t believe it at first, so I kept checking myself down there whenever I got the chance.

Every time, the emptiness that met my hand filled me with a sense of loss.

I hadn’t been hit by a truck or anything, so why had this happened to me?

With apologies to my now-missing penis, a change in gender didn’t significantly impact my life.

The more critical issue, however, was that I woke up inside the game, as the main character.

This world being inside a game sounded like something out of a cheap novel.

So even after a period of panic, I denied reality.

I desperately searched for a way to return to my original world.

At least until the incident in my early elementary school years, I dismissed this world as nothing but a falsehood, like a reflection in a mirror, not real.

After all, the reason I ended up here was absurd, and the very fact that I was possessing a game character felt ridiculous. And then there was my family, whom I could no longer see.

But well, as they say, humans are adaptable creatures, right? After a certain incident led me to accept my situation, I no longer deny this world.

No matter what kind of game world this was, the world I experienced firsthand was not some crude programming. The people here had the same blood and breathed the same air as those in my original world.

They gave and received affection, experienced frustration, and laughed with joy, more human than anyone.

How could I dismiss them as mere virtual characters? Once I realized that, I couldn’t consider this world a lie.

To do so would be to deny the lives of the people here.

*I got lost in thought while reminiscing. I stopped walking for a moment and looked around, realizing I was nowhere near the auditorium.

I looked at the school map placed at the edge of the garden.

The school was so large that it actually had a map.

I traced my finger across the simplified map, searching for the location of the auditorium where the entrance ceremony would be held.

“Sigh…”

It seemed I had walked in the completely opposite direction.

I scratched the back of my head at the thought of having to retrace my steps.

An unconscious habit.

It was one of the mannerisms my sister disliked, saying it made me look unrefined.

For me, it was a vestige that proved my previous self existed, but my sister didn’t know my secret. So it was understandable for her to say that.

Anyway, right.

I had nothing else to do while walking to my destination.

Let me continue the trivial story that I unintentionally interrupted.

Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t explained how I knew this world was inside a game.

To put it simply, there were three reasons.

First, my name was the same as the game’s protagonist.

Second, my only sister’s name was the same as the protagonist’s sister in the game.

And third, a school I’d never heard of in 17 years of my life existed as one of the top 3 prestigious schools in the country.

Other than that, there were minor things, like the serial killer mentioned in the news this morning.

There was a slim chance of coincidences piling up like this, but at this point, I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

As for the game itself, as I mentioned earlier, it was an otome game, a dating sim for girls.

And a very blatant one at that.

A typical Cinderella story where a spirited girl from a poor family enters a rich school, overcomes her rivals, and wins over the school’s handsome idols.

Apparently, its extreme cliches were what made it popular.

It was all unfamiliar territory to me, as someone with zero interest in that kind of thing.

Oh, of course, even though I had become the heroine of that game, I had no intention of pursuing any romantic relationships with the boys. Although I felt closer to being a girl now, thanks to my mother and sister’s strict upbringing, I was still wary of boys.

Kissing a boy taller than me? The mere thought sent shivers down my spine.

Speaking more about the game’s mechanics, each route had a designated target, and there were three in total.

There were also three rivals for each.

Rivals were other female characters who competed with the protagonist to win over the target.

In other words, love rivals.

The first target, and the easiest route in terms of difficulty, was a cheerful, athletic boy in the same class.

And his corresponding rival was a shy girl, also in the same class.

The second target was a handsome transfer student from a distant country, of noble birth.

His rival was a noble girl from the same country, who had been in love with him since childhood.

The third target, and the most notoriously difficult route, was the student council president from a chaebol family.

And his rival… was the student council vice-president.

However, in this world, she was my sister, who had somehow become the student council president.

Naturally, I had played and cleared all three routes.

So I still remembered their personalities, backgrounds, and so on.

*Don’t give me strange looks for playing that kind of game.

I was just bored of playing League of Legends all the time, and out of curiosity, I tried the game that was open on my sister’s laptop, which she had forgotten to close.

The reason I cleared all the routes was simply because I couldn’t leave a game unfinished once I started it.

Anyway, that should be enough explanation.

Just know that it’s the kind of game girls would like.

“Hey you, are you a new student?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Really? Then follow me. I’ll guide you to the entrance ceremony.”

“Oh, thank you!”

While I was wandering among the complex array of buildings, a male student, probably a senior judging by his uniform, approached me with a bright smile.

He seemed to be a guide for the entrance ceremony, and soon he started walking ahead of me.

As I followed him, I checked the time on my smartphone.

It was three minutes before the ceremony. It was close, but thankfully, I managed to avoid being late on my first day.

I followed him into a large building and down a flight of stairs, where I found a door that looked like the entrance to the auditorium.

“By the way, what’s your name? It’s fate that we met like this, so how about we exchange numbers…”

“Thank you so much! Thanks to you, I was able to find it!”

“No, but…”

“Then, goodbye!”

I quickly thanked the senior who stopped and turned to me as soon as we arrived. I knew it was a bit rude, but I didn’t have time to chat.

I practically ran to the auditorium door and swung it open.

Just before entering, I caught a glimpse of the senior’s smile, which seemed to have stiffened, but the hands on my watch pointed to the exact start time of the ceremony.

I really couldn’t afford to delay any longer.