Chapter Text
Song Taewon is used to waking up to the shrieking sound of his alarm blaring at him to get up and go to work. He’s even used to waking up to his phone ringing from an urgent call telling him he’s needed immediately even though it’s three in the morning and he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. What he’s not used to is waking up naked and sore in a bed he doesn’t recognize to someone screeching in his ears. He likes to think that he’s pretty good at rolling with the punches, he has to be in order to survive doing what he does, but this might be stretching it a little.
He distinctly remembers going to sleep in his own bed last night, fully clothed, after finishing his latest batch of paperwork. Did someone move him here while he was asleep? How? He’s not a heavy sleeper, no S-class is with their enhanced senses, so how could somebody have moved him all the way to wherever here is? He stretches his limbs tentatively and huh his limbs are much shorter than they should be what the-
“Get up!” A voice he doesn’t recognize screams at him and shoves him roughly off the bed and if he didn’t know something was wrong before he sure does now because he rolls off the bed and lands on the ground with a harsh thud, pain flaring up his side. A bunch of clothes are thrown at him as he struggles to blink his eyes open.
“What…”
“What, what, what.” The other man repeats mockingly. “What are you doing staring at me like that get dressed and go quickly! I have things to do and I’m not leaving you alone in my apartment.”
The strange man walks into an adjoining room, presumably a bathroom.
“I’m leaving in five minutes if you’re not dressed by then I’m tossing you out naked.”
He blindly starts groping for the clothes he assumes are his, except his left knee will not fully extend no matter how much he grits his teeth, leaving him struggling on the ground, desperately trying to pull up his pair of pants as well as himself of the ground. The hands putting on the clothes are not his, they are slender where his are big, long-fingered where his are shorter, bony and bruised wrists where he his were thick and muscly. He tries not to think about it to much as he desperately pulls on socks and shoes on feet that he also doesn’t recognize. He can deal with this later, after he’s gotten himself to a safe space so he can regroup. He also tries not to think about the fact that his body feels sticky and oddly sore. He very carefully shoves that piece of information aside as he struggles to pick up his shirt from the ground.
It’s at that very moment that the other guy comes back from the bathroom, grabs him by the collar, and lifts him effortlessly and starts dragging him towards the door even though he still doesn’t have a shirt on. So he wasn’t joking about dragging him out naked huh? He tries to drag his feet a little so he can a least throw his shirt on before he passes the threshold but the only thing it does is send waves of pain down to his left knee again.
“Wait! Wait a second!”
The other man does not listen, merely tosses him on the ground and leaves after locking the door pointedly behind him.
Okay.
Okay. He can deal with this. Dealing with situations on the fly is part of his job, he does it every day this is fine. He gets up, strange hands he doesn’t recognize grasping at the wall for support as his knee gives another painful twinge. He starts fixing his clothing in the middle of the corridor, praying that nobody decides to come out right now to see him awkwardly buttoning up his shirt in the middle of the hallway.
He starts to make his way down and onto the street when catches his reflection in the windshield of a car. The man who stares back at him is not him. He is short, thin, with eye bags to rival his and messy black hair that falls into his eyes. He looks absolutely nothing like he did just a few hours ago.
Am I going insane?
He had always suspected that S-classes were more prone to insanity but this was happening very quickly, and quite frankly he’s always thought Sung Hyunjae would be the first to succumb to it seeing as he is half crazy already.
Somebody knocks into him from behind as he’s staring at his reflection and knocks him on the ground, his knees taking the brunt of the fall.
“Watch where you’re going.” The person says before continuing on their way, presumably to work.
Oh God work.
He shakes his head to dispel all thoughts of work and focuses instead on getting himself somewhere safe so he can figure out what the hell is happening. He shakily gets back up only to get instantly knocked down again, this time purposefully he can tell. His knee, which was twinging in pain, is now screaming: loud and insistent, making itself known. He barely manages to get up again, keeping his weight carefully off the bad knee. Before he can even say anything, the sneering man who pushed him down speaks:
“Well, well, well. Look who have here!”
“Excuse me?” Did this person know the person whose body he was…what? Inhabiting? Possessing? Stealing?
“I know who you are.” The stranger says almost menacingly, stepping closer and closer into his personal space.
Really? Can you tell me then? He thinks almost hysterically.
“You’re that bastard Han Yoojin!”
Nothing. Blank. The name rings absolutely no bells. For a second he thinks he might have heard it before but it quickly disappears, leaving him only with mild confusion.
People around him start tutting and whispering, some even taking out there phones to record.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Someone from the crowd shouts.
“Yeah!” The man who pushed him said. “Who tries to extort their dongsaeng for money like that? Honestly how can you bear to show your face in public? If I was you I wouldn’t dare go outside my house!”
He doesn’t respond, but he finds that there is no need to. The people around him are more than happy enough to jeer at him for abusing, exploiting, and extorting his younger brother without him having to open his mouth.
“Excuse me.” He mumbles while pushing his way through the crowd. Thankfully none of them try to stop him, opting instead to hurl more insults at him as he hastily stumbles away from the crowd.
His knee is on fire, but it barely registers as, for the first time in his life, Song Taewon runs away as fast as his legs can carry him. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Only that it is away and that that’s all that matters. This body seems to know where to go however, since before long he finds himself standing in front of an apartment building. A cursory examination of his pockets find a pair of keys in his pockets with the apartment number scribbled on. Finally, he thinks, a lucky break.
"Out of service. Please use the stairs." The sign on the elevator says mockingly. The apartment he’s trying to get into is on the fourth floor. His knee hurts just thinking about the climb.
It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to trek all the way to the fourth floor, his knee protesting every step while he drags himself up with help from the railing. By the time he makes it all the way up he is severely out of breath and nearly collapses on the welcome mat. He barely manages to open the door before toeing off his shoes and falling on the couch.
Now, finally, he can allow himself to think. This body is not his. Somehow, someway, he has been transported into it. Did he cause this somehow? He tries to think back to what he’s been doing the day before but other than a brief visit to the Seseong Guild headquarters nothing of note had happened. It does seem suitably monstrous of him to have stolen a random innocent civilian’s body though.
It follows then that Han Yoojin somehow got transported into his body. He feels a flash of panic at the idea of someone snooping through his highly confidential, sensitive, government files before the realization that he has officially been benched until they figure out how to switch back hits him. What is Han Yoojin doing right now? Did he go to the office? Did he stay in his apartment? Is he currently leafing through the files he took home with him or is he accidentally crushing all of his meager possessions due to his sudden change in stats?
He decides to peruse his surroundings in hopes of getting a hint. There is a worrying amount of beer and soju bottles littering the floor, as well as piles of bills on the kitchen table, most of which seem to be medical bills, and are all marked as being overdue in some way. The pictures on the walls, however, are much more informative. Because hanging on nearly every single surface of the walls are pictures upon pictures of the Haeyeon guild leader Han Yoohyun as well as newspaper and magazine clippings. Most of the pictures are of Han Yoohyun as a child alone, but others are of the two of them together, arms circling each other, smiling, and holding up a report card.
Suddenly he remembers hearing, years ago, right when Haeyeon was first getting started, about Han Yoohyun’s older brother. Vague rumors of them being estranged and getting into some kind of disagreement had reached him, but he’d been too busy to pay them any mind and since Han Yoojin hadn’t turned out to be a highly ranked individual he hadn’t had a chance to ever interact with him in person and thus he had faded quietly into the background.
He doesn’t know how much of the whispers he’s heard about Han Yoojin had been right, only that the amount of pictures he has of his brother clearly showcase a lingering attachment despite their apparent estrangement.
He resolutely turns around and stops looking at the veritable collage on the wall. It is not his business to judge whatever relationship Han Yoojin has or does not have with his younger brother. He has already intruded enough on his privacy.
He should probably go to his own apartment, he realizes after a while. Han Yoojin has just been transported into an S-class body that he has no clue how to control. It would be better to go out and find him himself. His plan is immediately thwarted when, two blocks from his apartment, he gets recognized again, this time by a much more hostile crowd.
Is this what this poor man has to go through every day? He wonders as he desperately tries to muscle his way out of the crowd. He barely manages to make it back to his apartment, locking the door behind him just in case. Alright then, so he’ll just wait for this crowd to pass and then leave.
His second attempt fails as well.
So does his third.
How does this man leave the house? Song Taewon is getting incredibly frustrated on his behalf. He must have a system, he surmises, one born out of trial and error that Song Taewon does not have the time to discover on his own.
So he is stuck in this apartment then. Until Han Yoojin comes to find him, or until Song Taewon manages to find out how to leave the apartment without getting shoved and kicked and insulted the whole way. He decides to give him until the end of the afternoon to get here before he attempts a fourth trip down. He doesn’t think his knee can stand taking the four flights of stairs again anyways. He wonders if Han Yoojin feels as trapped as he does right now.
He starts getting antsy after exactly ten minutes of watching the television. He had turned it on to see wether his disappearance had been noticed and how much damage control he would have to do once he switched back. Because he’s going to switch back. He has to. There is no telling what sort of damage a bunch of rogue S-classes would inflict on this country without him to mediate.
Surprisingly everything seems calm if he is to believe the television presenter. No riots. No explosions. No rampages. He really hopes Sung Hyunjae doesn’t get bored today.
He feels a strange nervous energy coursing through him, a pressing need to get up and do something, anything. Usually he would simply get some work done until he physically couldn’t anymore. (How can he justify his monstrous existence otherwise?) But now he can’t. He is stuck in a fragile body, with absolutely nothing to do except wait.
Cleaning proves to be a fruitless endeavor as his bad knee seems to have seized up and sends him sprawling on the floor the second he tries to gather some of the beer bottles on the ground. Hunting for a cane or a crutch to help him move around proves to be pointless as well since he could find neither, and he doesn’t feel quite comfortable searching through his bedroom. He would never dare rummage through the fridge either considering he is more intruder than guest, and he has a sneaking suspicious the fridge would be as bare as his anyways.
So it is a waiting game then, to see wether Han Yoojin will manage to pilot his body all the way here or wether he will have to risk braving the hostile crowds in the streets all out for his blood for some reason again.
His wish is answered a few hours later, when he hears the doorbell ring. He jumps out of his seat so fast his knee instantly burns in protest, sending him stumbling to the ground. He manages to catch himself on the table before he falls flat on the ground again and hobbles awkwardly to answer the ringing doorbell.
He opens up the door only to find himself face to face with Sung Hyunjae.
“Sung Hyunjae-ssi?!”
Sung Hyunjae blinks, looking confused.
“I’m sorry. Aren’t you Sung Hyunjae-ssi?” Not-Sung Hyunjae asks.
“No,” Song Taewon says, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, “I’m Officer Song Taewon. Who are you?”
“I’m Han Yoojin.” He answers. “You’re in my body.”
“Wait a second,” Song Taewon has an inkling he won’t like where this is going, “if you’re not Sung Hyunjae, and I’m not Sung Hyunjae, then that means…”
The realization of where exactly Sung Hyunjae is hits him like a ton of bricks.
“Fuck.”