The click clack of a keyboard echoed through the empty office.
Almost there. Just a few more commas, a couple polite full stops, and Han Seo-yeon could finally log out of hell.
She could already hear the whirr of her gaming rig spinning to life back home, the rainbow glow of Eternia's login screen bathing her apartment in sacred light. Server 12 was about to merge with Server 11. The great migration. The showdown of showdowns. And that blockhead guild master from 11 had been running his mouth on forums for weeks.
"I'm going to kick his pixelated teeth in," she muttered, lips quirking.
Send. Report gone. Shackles off. Freedom won.
She pushed back from her desk—only for the world to tilt like someone had pulled the plug on her graphics card. Her chest seized, breath buffering in error.
"Ah… what the—" She stumbled, legs jelly, vision tunnelling as though her FPS had dropped to 3. She toppled sideways, carpet rushing up in glorious 480p.
The taste of dust filled her mouth. Old rubber. Someone's forgotten sneakers.
"Great. I survived wage slavery just to get killed by office carpet."
Her last thought before the screen cut to black was a furious, petty one: That blockhead's going to think I rage-quit the raid.
________________________________________
A rustling noise dragged her back online. Light stabbed her eyes like overclocked bloom effects. She groaned. Her head buzzed, her throat felt like she'd swallowed patch notes raw.
"H-Help," She tried to croak for water—except her voice came out wrong. Hoarse. Thicker. Deeper. Like someone had set her mic to "male avatar."
She cracked an eye open. Wrong ceiling. Gilded patterns gleamed above her, catching the sun like someone had coded in a particle effect mod. Curtains the color of expensive wine billowed in a soft draft. And the smell—sweet wood polish, perfume, cloying. Like walking into a whale's luxury skin.
She remembers the chest pain, but now it feels more like the aftermath of a brutal fever. Oddly reminiscent of that time where she went on a weekend bender to get that limited edition platinum rank assassin costume that added 20 more seconds to stealth with those pink daggers that ignore 15% of the enemy's defense.
"Where the hell is my rig?"
She rolled sideways, reaching for her phone—only to tumble off the bed in a cocoon of brocade. Her face met carpet again. This one smelled faintly of lavender, with a dusty aftertaste.
She groaned into it. "I swear to god, my face is starting to main carpet tank."
But what caught her wasn't the floor—it was her chest. Or lack thereof. No familiar double D bulge flattened beneath her. She froze.
A panicked cry broke through her lagging thoughts. "Young master!"
Soft hands tugged her upright, the rustle of starch and soap flooding her nose. A maid fussed over her, propping her back into bed.
"B-Bathroom," she rasped, just to buy a breather.
The maid hurried her into a marble-tiled washroom that looked like someone had built a Sims mansion with infinite money cheats. Gold-rimmed mirror. Carved basin. Everything gleamed.
But the reflection didn't. Smaller. Wrong. Adorable? Yes, but missing familiar parts. And there's something foreign… there, extra, between her legs.
She gripped the basin, cold stone biting into her palms. And then she looked.
Not Seo-yeon. Not the girl who'd survived late capitalism with caffeine and spite. The mirror showed a boy. Pretty. Fragile. Silver hair that belonged in a bad gacha pull. Wide purple eyes, porcelain skin. Almost too soft, too delicate.
Her hand rose. His hand rose.
"Don't you dare be me."
Her voice cracked low, deeper than her own.
She stared at the flat chest, at the faint lines of muscle where her desk-job muffin top should've been. And then lower. Her fingers brushed something foreign.
She screamed. Loud. The mirror screamed back.
"Okay," she wheezed. Her heartbeat slams in her ears. Her thoughts scatter into chaos "Okay, calm down. Calm down, respawn logic check: did I get gender-swapped DLC? Did I roll male avatar in New Game+ without consenting to it?"
Her laugh cracked, half-hysterical. "My double Ds… nerfed into oblivion."
Seo-yeon clutches her chest, then trails down. The muffin top from years of desk work is gone, replaced by faint abs. Her expression cracks when her hand brushes the foreign member between her legs.
Then she collapsed again, knees giving out, her forehead hitting the marble floor.
________________________________________
The next respawn came with the sterile beep of a monitor. Antiseptic air. A ceiling she didn't recognize, but one that definitely didn't belong to Seoul real estate.
She blinked—and saw a woman with silver hair leaning close, eyes soft as sunlight. Something in her chest ached.
"Mom," Seo-yeon croaked. The word slipped out before she realized it.
But the voice wasn't hers. Too soft. Too low. Too gentle.
Memories tangled. Dinner tables she'd never sat at. Guild raids she'd led at 3 a.m. Brothers talking over her. Her guild laughing in her headset. Two lives overlaid like glitchy UI, impossible to separate.
The woman smiled, stroking her hair. "My dear Elias."
Elias. The name slotted into her like a bad username she'd forgotten she'd registered.
"You're an omega," His mother, Clarisse von Arden said, voice trembling with excitement. "Another omega in the family. My precious son."
Seo-yeon bristled. Omega? That was… bad fanfic terminology. Yet Elias's chest twisted with equal parts dread and relief.
Then the doctor walked in, clipboard snapping like a loading screen. "Young master Elias, your differentiation has completed. Omega classification. Stabilization took four days—remarkably long."
Differentiation. Classification. Like he was a Moképon evolution instead of a person.
"Standard procedure follows," the doctor droned. "You'll be entered into the national Registry. Regular health monitoring. Pheromone reports. Suppressant access. At eighteen, your pairing with a compatible alpha will be finalized. Efficient. Safe."
Seo-yeon blinked at him. Registry? Reports? A government-sanctioned shipping system? She wanted to laugh. It sounded like HR onboarding, except for your genitals.
"So… I'm government property now?"
The silver-haired woman—his mother—smiled painfully. "No, darling. You're my son. Always."
But Seo-yeon's gamer brain couldn't stop supplying the truth: Congratulations, you've been tagged, logged, and stored in the National Database. Rare loot. Handle with care.
Protected, they called it. She scoffed inside. Protected sounded exactly like owned.
She'd clawed her way out of 21st-century wage slavery, only to respawn as a collectible pet in some fantasy dystopia.
From corporate cog to gilded omega.
"GG, Seo-yeon," she whispered bitterly. "From wage slave… to government-issue waifu."
The monitor beeped steadily on, indifferent.