Ophely looked in the eyes of the person standing in front of her. She was surprised to not see herself, like she had seconds ago. Now she was looking straight up into Jeonghan's eyes. And he was looking down at her. He was holding the door knob. Which he hadn't a second ago.
"Hi." Her voice felt foreign. That was a weird thing to think. Your own voice feeling like someone else's. "Hello." Yeah. It was definitely hers, somehow feeling like a long lost friend. It was her, with her own voice, in her own body.
"Hello." Jeonghan answered back, feeling the same as her. Good to be back in his own body, but having been used to the temporary one he somehow felt out of place in his own skin.
The two just stood in shock in front of the other. Looking at the body they had occupied for the past few weeks through their own eyes. It seemed that neither of them really understood what had happened. If meeting the two bodies was enough for them to get back to their own life, then they should have done that as soon as possible.
The moment it downed on her, Ophely just gaped at him. Mouth hanging open.
"What ..." Her hands went up to touch her body, verifying that it really was her body she was in, her gaze not leaving Jeonghan's, which was also frozen in shock. "... the ..."
However, their happy moment, being back to their usual self was quickly ruined by a simple glance. Jeonghan had looked away from Ophely, breaking away from the other. And it was like the magic was broken and everything fell back like it wasn't supposed to.
"... heck." Ophely managed to finish, in the other body. Jeonghan's.
It was weird to jump back to another body which was doing something else before. And as Ophely went back to the other body, she was looking at the floor away from her own body in the door-frame. Her hands gently groped her own arms, but as Jeonghan came to it, they stopped moving. This was confusing.
Could they only be in their bodies while looking straight into their eyes? Was that making the link work best?
"I give up." Jeonghan just screamed in the lobby before instinctively taking his shoes off and going into the apartment fully.
Don't even ask what the boys thought about the encounter, because they seemed to understand what had happened even less. One moment the couple was looking at the other and the next they were awkward and slightly angry. Had meeting their own bodies not worked?
No. It hadn't.
Ophely was still in Jeonghan's body. Jeonghan was still in Ophely's body. The teenager in the body of the idol and the man in the body of the girl. Still the wrong way round.
The girl wouldn't show it to the world, but she was extremely saddened about the failed swap back. She wished she could have gone back to her own body, she was deceived by the magic that hasn't worked. Or worked partially. She had gone back to her body, but only at the expense of living. Staring into someone's eyes to be into your body wasn't the most practical way of living.
No, it hadn't worked. That little swap back was only an appetiser to what she hoped to have, and it left a bitter aftertaste. One of too little, of lack of nothing more. It left wanting for more. But how?
It didn't dawn on her until an hour later, when she was silently drawing in Jeonghan's bedroom, that she was sad because of the fact that swapping back to her own body was the only escape from this nightmarish situation. Now she really was stuck in Korea, in a body that wasn't hers, and would probably switch at random intervals back to her personal one, the number of scenarios she had created in the past hour was abundant. But her own body had already felt unlike hers, getting something back that was yours after so long that now felt belonged to the other. That was how she felt. Being away from it for so long had affected her mind, her habits, her intellectual capacities, and simply the way she looked at herself, or at the body that wasn't hers. One she didn't know how long it would belong to her for, or vice versa.
It saddened her. Deeply.
She sighed to herself, going back to the sketches she was making. One week, two weeks, and yet no contact with her friends, Ophely weirdly already felt detached from her own life. She was used to waking up at ungodly hours with the boys going for some scheduled event, chatting with them during breakfast, cleaning up after them before being on her own, where she could focus on her studies and hobby, art.
She would clean while in Jeonghan's body, prepare lunch and dinner, prepare boxes for the boy group and then she would study for her exams at the end of the year. And then she would take some of her time for her personal benefits, doodles and sketches, studies of artists as to grow her references. She tried some things that the boys suggested, each one having had a few peaks at her work while she was doing something else. So she tried set backgrounds, clothing design or simply outfits creations. She was just having fun with colours and shapes. Art was her own way of being herself again, lost in her hand, heart and mind.
Jeonghan found her in that state, hunched over his desk, in his body, scratching away a pen on paper. He waited in the doorway as the girl flipped her sheet over and started again. As she frustratedly sighed and took another piece of paper out from a little folder that sat in one of the drawers.
"You need to go out a bit." He told her after some time, the girl was definitely tense in the bones. It was rightfully probable that she hadn't gone out since the statement the company had issued earlier that month. At the sound of her voice, Ophely sat up and looked over towards her body, which was standing uncharacteristically from her point of view. She never leaned on door frames with her arms crossed over her chest. Never. This was weird to watch. Was this how all the boys felt when seeing Ophely live in Jeonghan's body? How was she different from him? How did act unlike him?
"Do I?" She asked back, feeling weird talking in Korean to herself.
"Yes, you're tense." She was, she knew it, the muscles at her neck were starting to ache and her hand (his?) was also cramping a bit.
She sighed, unaware of that starting to become a habit, and starting arranging her papers back in a neat pile and putting the pens and markers she had used in the pencil case in the top drawer. "Where do you want to go? You probably know the city better than I do."
"A walk in the park."
-
"We're leaving!" Jeonghan called out to his friends as he and Ophely pulled their shoes on in the little entrance hall. His hand went to rest on her shoulder, pushing her towards the coat rack next to the door.
A chorus of okays resounded back to them.
Jeonghan wanted neither of them to be recognised, he knew the small things to worry about when concealing their identity. He made sure that his hair was loose and covered the part of his face that the mask didn't cover, and a beanie to hide the top of his face (eyebrows are actually very easy to recognise people by. When he turned towards Ophely, standing calmly beside him, he sighed internally. She was not very hidden away. A+ for efforts, but details like little strands of hair sticking out and the eyebrows were clear to see. He silently wrapped a scarf over her neck and started pushing the little bits of pink hair under the cap she had chosen.
They both startled the other when his fingers touched her skin, but it wasn't the cold emitting from the dainty hands that had shocked them, but rather the fact that they had seen what the other was doing for a split second. Had their touch swapped them back to their own bodies?
Ophely awkwardly extracted herself from the closeness with Jeonghan. The switch situation was weirding her out more and more. Magic was involved, or she was completely bonkers and all of this was a dream (she had checked already - it wasn't).
Tentatively, the other took their hand out again and went to touch the face of his own body, the one he was born in ... This is complicated for everyone. The moment his fingers touched the skin of the other, he was looking at Ophely with her outstretched hand towards him. She let go, and he was once again looking up towards the man he once was.
"This is crazy." Ophely muttered as she pulled the cap lower down her face and fluffed the scarf up before pulling the mask over her nose and opening the front door to step out in the corridor. "I do need to get out a bit."
As quickly as it had started, the two were out in the freezing streets of Seoul in winter, one step away from the other, walking in silence.
-
It was Jeonghan that had initiated the contact, his hand gliding into her coat pocket and holding her hand in his. The outcome was immediate. Ophely felt shorter and her hands were not where she had put them. Jeonghan silently smiled as he took their hands out of his pocket and let them dangle between the two. It felt weird, he could agree with her on that point, to be back in his body after so long, and it felt a bit foreign, just like it had when he had first gone into Ophely's body. Being back in his own was a bit of a self-clap on the back. A sort of welcome feeling, similar to appraisal, but also closer to some feeling of not being where he was supposed to be.
He didn't say anything as they walked hand in hand towards the park, neither did she. She kept her hand holding his, welcoming the feeling of being back home, in the right body, too.
The streets were empty as it was close to being one in the morning during a weekday and the weather wasn't very welcoming either. A slight breeze and a negative temperature. The coat, scarf and hat were welcome. Even though none of the two were wearing gloves, as to keep the contact going, their hands were not cold, they were warm and fuzzy while being held by the other, a humming warmth emitted by the touch.
"Let's go and see what a seer had to say about our situation." Ophely stopped walking when she heard him, she turned towards him and moved her mask underneath her chin to clearly ask him what she had in mind.
"A seer?" It was more of an outrageous bewilderment than a question.
"Yes, so that they can tell us what this magic means to us, why it links us and all of that." Opehly laughed, this was ridiculous to her. Did people in Korea still believe in those superstitions? It seemed that yes.
"And you want to bring me too?" She had made it clear that this was just unbelievable to her, but Jeonghan was sure of his idea.
"You are in my body, though. If I go alone it will be as Ophely, and weird. It is the both of us that are connected, not just me." He was calm throughout all of this, the opposite of Ophely who was adamant to not go see a stupid person blabbering nonsense at the first comer who would pay them. They were swindlers, charlatans with a wonderful way with words and sympathetic eye contact. Most French people thought like that, Ophely wasn't part of the minority of people with a mindset like that, teacher and scientific backgrounds were not spars in her family, and nothing concrete was evidence. But then there were mystical things that people loved to jabber about on the internet, no evidence - therefore it was nonsense.
So when Jeonghan just innocently suggests a thing that Ophely just doesn't care about, she just lost it and couldn't take him seriously.
"Really?" She asked again. "A seer?"
"Yes, please accept, it won't do you any harm even if we get out of there without an answer."