Chapter Text
It’s unfair, Gunwoo reasons.
It’s unfair that he wakes up, lost and confused, wearing another person’s face and body. It’s unfair that his choices have been taken away from him, unfair that he’s forced into an impossible situation, expected to go against his nature and bathe in the limelight at the cost of his life, unfair that everything has been turned upside down with no rhyme or reason or explanation.
But above all, he thinks as he commits the handwritten suicide letter to memory, it’s unfair that Park Moondae died young, cold, hungry and alone. The letter in his hands is simple, deceptively sweet, and reads:
Hello, my name is Park Moondae .
If you found this letter, first – I want to apologize for the trouble I have caused you and your business. Second, I left my wallet and all my information on the dresser. In my bank account, I have what’s left of my inheritance. Please use however much you need to process my body and whatever fees you may need to pay. You can keep the rest or donate whatever remains to a good charity – maybe something to do with animals? That would be nice.
There is no one to inform of my passing, my parents passed a year ago and I have no immediate relatives. I dropped out of school earlier this year so there is also no need to inform them either (please, do not contact my school please).
Again, I am very very very sorry for the trouble this is causing you. I’m sorry you had to find me like this but I didn’t want it to hurt. Thank you for providing a comfortable space for me and once more, I am deeply and sincerely sorry for the trouble. -Park Moondae
When he stumbled back into the living area from the bathroom, the letter was sitting folded next to an empty prescription bottle of sleeping pills. Gunwoo could feel his heart break as he forced himself to read on, spiderweb cracks spreading with every word he took in, his mind already filling in everything unsaid in between the neatly written lines.
This wasn't just some kid in over his head, this was someone deeply affected by his trauma, who saw the choices left in his life and yet still accepted that this was supposed to be his ending, he welcomed it with an innocent acceptance. Park Moondae's final apology, shaky and messy unlike the rest of the letter, had a searing, growing pain travel up his throat and settle behind his eyes, a pressure and heat that pounded with every beat of his pulse.
Gunwoo isn’t prone to tears or overt displays of emotion but what else could he do in the face of a lonely child’s last words? What could he do but mourn for someone who gave up so young but was good, kind, and considerate to the end?
For the first time in years, nearly a decade to the date that his own parents passed, Gunwoo lets himself cry. The motel is quiet save for the soft creaks of the upstairs occupant’s pacing steps and the muffled sound of his new body’s hiccuping sobs.
Park Moondae cries quietly, his thin fingers and slight hands coming up to muffle the sound like he was used to making himself smaller and silent. They tremble and shake over his mouth but they’re pressed tight against his flesh, almost as if he's afraid to be heard. And Gunwoo can’t remember what it feels like to cry in his original body anymore, a persistent numbness he couldn’t shake blurred everything before and after his parents’ deaths, but he can’t recall ever it being like this.
Like he's choking and drowning in front of a crowd and no one is looking, like the emotions are a tidal wave he has to weather until his body's tears dry, like it's a losing fight he has to keep getting up over and over again for - like he's begging for someone to help but too afraid to accept it.
It’s almost as if the phantom remnants of Park Moondae still live in his limbs alongside Gunwoo's soul, like echoes of the child gone was taking the chance to cry out one last time and his body was following its inborn instincts. But it’s Gunwoo who decides to pry his shaking hands away from his face, it’s Gunwoo who wraps his arms around himself in a facsimile of an embrace and it’s Gunwoo who decides to rock back and forth and whisper words of comfort that Moondae should have heard when he was still alive.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Gunwoo says to himself, desperate for a god he didn’t believe in that Moondae could still somehow hear him. “This will never be enough, I know, but wherever you are I hope you can feel this, I hope you can hear me. You’ve been so brave, Moondae-yah.”
Gunwoo's eyes feel hot and raw, his throat is already sore from holding back the primal, animal sorrow he feels but he keeps talking. It doesn't matter if his words will never be heard. It needs to be said out loud - something has to know that Gunwoo, a complete stranger thrown into this body, found love in the glimpses of the original Park Moondae he saw in his final letter; he saw someone who lost hope but never his humanity, and it's for that person that Gunwoo needed to do this.
“It’s alright to rest now because I got you, kid. I’m here and I’m-,” Gunwoo’s rocking only falters when he feels another shuddering sob wheeze, thin and tight, out of his throat. “I’m going to take care of you from now on – it’s you and me, okay?”
Gunwoo knows loneliness. He knows isolation. He knows what it's like to be an afterthought so he's making Park Moondae his priority.
"We're going to be okay, we're going to make it through this. You're never going to suffer another day in your life, you hear me?" Gunwoo whispers roughly, like he's trying to convince himself too. "I'm going to make sure everyone loves you because it's the least you deserve. You should've been loved the entire time."
Gunwoo squeezes his hands around the skinny diameter of his arms tight enough that it hurts. He's furious at the world for breaking Park Moondae down to skin and bone, until he felt that he had no choice left, and at whatever entity thought it’d be funny to put someone like Gunwoo into this fucked up situation.
When he first saw the status abnormality threatening his life, he wanted to give up right then and there. Gunwoo can barely take care of himself, has barely cared about himself, and now he's expected to care enough to go against his very being. He's private, he's introverted, some would even say anti-social, what business does he have in the idol world? Someone with a better grasp of their emotions might point out that he may be doing this out of a guilt that's severely misplaced, that he's being forced to not only fight for himself but for Park Moondae who never had a chance, out of pity for a child who reflected his own circumstances.
It should feel manipulative but he can't know if this is something that the being running the status window accounted for and not just Gunwoo's usual sense of responsibility. It should feel like a chore, like an endless tormenting quest but all Gunwoo feels is rage. He's so fucking angry that a kid died and the world didn't stop and reflect on its mistakes, it just tried a bandaid solution for a gaping wound.
Gunwoo suddenly can’t stand the silence, too big and looming around his new frail little body, and he wants to scream and destroy everything in sight. It's just so fucking unfair. There's so much he wants to do, he wants to throw things and punch walls. He wants to break down and throw a tantrum until someone comes and fixes everything for him.
He may look like one again but Gunwoo isn't a kid, he hasn't been one in a very long time and he already knows that the only person he can rely on is himself. So he calms down with deep, slow breaths and keeps his head out of respect for the child whose body he was now occupying.
“Let's do this,” he says instead. “Happy birthday, Moondae-yah.”
Ryu Gunwoo wakes up as Park Moondae on a cold winter evening in the middle of December. Park Moondae had turned 17 yesterday.
When Ryu Gunwoo fell asleep, absolutely plastered and drunk beyond comprehension, he was 22 years old, in his first year of college and mourning the start of the new semester with the rest of his department.
The two high school friends he managed to keep were horrified when he let them know he was enlisting early, right after graduation, but Gunwoo just wanted it done and out of the way. He’d rather disrupt his life now when it was still nebulous and unformed rather than when he was more settled in and settled down somewhere more permanent.
Sure, he was starting life a little late and would be entering the workforce older than most graduates but he was sure whatever company he settled with would be glad that they wouldn't have to lose him to conscription somewhere down the line.
The only real issue was that, as a first year, Gunwoo was expected to show up at certain events and be present for parties he had neither the patience nor funds for. Drinking parties were the backbone of many students’ social lives and even Gunwoo, who preferred to be alone, knew that he should at least show up to get to know the faces he’d see in all of his classes for the next few years.
The drinking culture in his university was rampant and it didn't take long for upperclassmen and his classmates alike to start dragging him to all sorts of parties and events. Gunwoo didn't know if it was the friendlier, sociable version of himself he slapped on while in public or the unfailingly polite way he spoke to everyone but he managed to endear himself to a few upperclassmen who would graciously pay for him as he acted shy and grateful while putting up paltry refusals of their generosity.
Gunwoo quickly learned that a respectful addition of 'sunbae' and a smile was sometimes all it took for the more hierarchy-obsessed individuals to start spoiling him. Socializing wasn't too bad a price to pay if it meant free food and drinks.
Not that Gunwoo ended up doing much socializing that night, one particular sunbae was adamant on monopolizing his time and clearly trying to get him wasted with how often he kept refilling his drink. That night, Gunwoo was already tired and achy from being jostled by concert crowds all afternoon during his part time job as a data pal so it didn’t take much for him to lose track of how much he drank and he quickly overindulged.
One minute, he was listening to his classmate rant about the notoriously difficult tax admin professor he hated, while another upperclassman on his other side kept cooing over him and insisting he call her ‘noona’ (all the while, his annoying sunbae pressed another full glass into his empty hand) – the next, he was home and slamming the door in his sunbae's face as he tried to wheedle his way into Gunwoo's apartment.
The man was shouting something about wasting his time and putting out but Gunwoo was very very very drunk and couldn't find it in himself to care. That was a problem for tomorrow Gunwoo - right now all he wanted to do was lay down on the nearest flat surface and wake up when the world wasn't spinning.
His last memory as Ryu Gunwoo was taking the time to block that particular sunbae from his contacts and then falling into bed without changing.
Once the shock, horror, and sorrow of his new life settled and once he was sure that it wasn’t a very elaborate alcohol poisoning-induced hallucination, Gunwoo - now Park Moondae - started to get to work.
"Oh my, look at you. You have rice on your cheek, my love," the waitress coos as he asks for another portion of rice as politely as he can manage while still eating, hiding his full mouth behind his hand. "I'll get that for you, give me a second okay?"
She thumbs the rice off of Moondae's cheek and smiles, fond, when Moondae flushes and apologizes, rubbing at his cheeks to catch any more errant food still stuck on his person. The adult man's personality in Moondae would've felt more embarrassment if he hadn't gotten similar treatment throughout the week.
Park Moondae was blessed and cursed with a baby face. When Gunwoo first saw the kid in the mirror, he could've sworn he was not even out of middle school yet. Moondae was small and slight, disconcertingly thin - from hunger, Gunwoo had sadly surmised as his stomach growled throughout that first night - the baby fat on his cheeks the only thing keeping him from looking gaunt. He had big amber eyes and gentle, delicate features that didn't hold any of Gunwoo's usual expressions well.
What was neutral on his old face, just looked sad and lost on Moondae's adorable little face and he had been stopped more than once by concerned mothers and fathers asking if he needed help finding his parents. Gunwoo felt ridiculous posing his face in the mirror but it helped and the amount of damage to his pride was lessened considerably in the following days.
"Here you are, my love!"
The waitress slides another bowl of rice onto his plastic table and then reaches up to her tray to give him a small plate of spicy pork bokkeum on the side. She winks when he looks up at her, head tilted to the side with a questioning look on his face.
"That's on the house," she says, pinching the same cheek that had rice stuck onto it. "You eat so well but you're still so skinny! Noona is going to make sure you leave full, full, full!"
She whips away as someone calls for her to bring another round of side dishes to another table but Moondae can't help but stop her with a tug on her apron. He wants to deny how warm and loved he feels with this simple and kind gesture from a stranger but he musters up everything inside of him to smile up at her when she looks back.
"Thank you so much, noona. I'll eat well."
There's a strangled scream as she turns around and Moondae is confused but grateful all the same. Gunwoo had never said no to free food and now Moondae would hold the same philosophy. Moondae's body was dangerously underweight after all, the bones in his wrists and the little ribs in his chest were visible and frail, so he would take anything he would get.
The entire staff waves him off with indulgent smiles and calls to come back as he thanks them for the food and if he skips a little as he leaves, that was all Moondae's body and definitely not Gunwoo. Gunwoo was too busy emailing the lease he signed back to his landlord to skip.
He would never know why the original Moondae refused to touch the money his parents left behind, but now that he was here, he was going to use it to make sure this body was taken care of. That's why Gunwoo's first order of business was to get out of the moldy motel room that Moondae chose as his final resting place and get a meal. He sent a quick apology to the original Moondae and a heartfelt thanks to Moondae's parents as he ate generous portions of a light and thin tuna miyeok guk and rice.
While he would've ideally had something more substantial, Moondae couldn't risk the shock of filling up this underfed body too full and too fast - the last thing he needed to do was get sick, he genuinely didn't know if he could survive it.
Once that Moondae could see his body slowly starting to keep the weight, he moved out of the tiny youth hostel he was staying in and found the cheapest studio apartment in the safest part of town and managed to wheedle the rent down to something more manageable after appealing to his landlord's soft grandfather heart.
It was tiny but clean, with enough open space for the heated futon he got on sale and his small closet, plus a standard kitchenette and fridge so he could start cooking for himself instead of going out all the time. The bathroom would've been too small for Gunwoo but fit Moondae perfectly and comfortably. It was not an ideal place for a child to live in, sure, but it was warm and safe and his, and that's all he could really want in the meantime.
Moondae moves in that night fairly quickly since he has next to no possessions and it's only when he's bundled in bed that he opens the status window and finally peruses it. He only has about 340 days left to fulfill his mission after the weeks of getting himself settled but nothing he did was a waste of time in his opinion, Moondae's health came first.
Name: Park Moondae (Ryu Gunwoo)
Level: 1
Title: None
Singing: C
Dancing: -
Looks: B+
Charm: B-
Traits: Infinite Potential
"What the hell," Moondae mutters to himself. "This face is so cute, how is it only a B+?"
Moondae opens his camera to look at his face and with a frown that looks like a pout, figures that maybe a haircut would do him some good. He already has a plan in place and needs to get the ball rolling. He has an idol survival show to win.