Second Stage

Jiho didn't sleep that night.

Even though the bed was soft, the room warm, and the sheets smelled faintly of lavender — he couldn't close his eyes. Every time he tried, they opened again to a ceiling he didn't recognize. A heartbeat that didn't feel like his own.

The mirror confirmed it again and again: he wasn't looking at Jiho. Not the Jiho who worked at a convenience store, who barely scraped by in a studio apartment with ramen-stained t-shirts.This face — Yunjae's face — belonged to someone else.

Someone who was supposed to have everything Jiho never had.

So why did he try to die, too?

He sat in the room for hours, trying to piece it together. The journal. The pills. The quiet, cold perfection of the space around him.

Yunjae had lived under pressure. Jiho could feel it in the silence of the apartment — spotless, organized, almost like a doctors office. The kind of silence that didn't come from peace, but from absence. No warmth. No mess. No personality.

Just expectation.

Jiho found more evidence in the kitchen. Schedules pinned to the fridge. University prep books lined up on the counter. Every hour of Yunjae's life had been accounted for except the part that broke him.

Jiho wandered through it all like a stranger trapped inside a museum of someone else's life. He still couldn't say it out loud — that he was reincarnated. It didn't feel real, even as he moved through this new body, heard this new voice when he muttered, "I don't belong here."

He didn't belong here.

But somehow, he was here anyway.

It took a few days before Jiho could even step outside. He ignored phone calls from Yunjae's parents, his friends (if that's what they were), his school. The messages piled up.

"Yunjae, your mother is worried."

"You missed today's mock exam. Please explain yourself."

"Are you okay? You're acting weird."

He didn't answer. He couldn't.

How do you tell someone, 'The boy you knew isn't here anymore. Just someone who used to want to die in a different body.'

Instead, he stayed locked in the apartment. Read every page of the journal. Listened to the hidden recordings Yunjae had saved that had his own voice humming softly, nervously, when no one else was around. Sometimes, Jiho would play them on repeat, trying to imagine what it would've been like if Yunjae had ever been brave enough to try.

Maybe they weren't so different.

That thought was the first thread — thin, but strong enough to hold onto.

One afternoon, while scrolling through Yunjae's browser history, Jiho noticed something.

Searches.

"Can trainees debut even if they start late?"

"Audition for K-pop companies 2025"

"Is 19 too old to train?"

His stomach twisted.

Even at the edge, Yunjae had been searching, reaching, and wanting.

Was it ever really too late?

The question stuck to Jiho like humidity — uncomfortable, yet lingering.

That night, Jiho stood in front of Yunjae's mirror and looked at his reflection with something closer to curiosity than fear. He turned his head left, then right. Studied the features. It still felt like wearing someone else's skin, but something in the eyes, in the weight behind them, still felt familiar.

Jiho cleared his throat and softly said, "Annyeonghaseyo"

The voice that came out was deeper than his old one. Warmer. Not trained but nice. There was tone and texture.

He stared at himself, the words echoing in the still room.

He tried again, this time adding:

"Annyeonghaseyo, my name is Yunjae, and I'm auditioning for—"

His voice cracked, and he stopped.

Not from the nerves.

From the tears.

He didn't even know when they'd started. But there they were. Trailing silently down his face. All the fear, all the disbelief, all the pain he hadn't let himself feel these past few days — it broke at the sound of his own voice.

He crumpled onto the floor, hands over his mouth, sobbing in a stranger's body that didn't feel so strange anymore.

It wasn't a decision, not at first. Not a goal. More like an instinct.

The next morning, Jiho opened Yunjae's laptop and searched for open auditions.

Not because he believed he could do it.

Not yet.

But because Yunjae never got to try.

And because Jiho never stopped wanting to.