The realization struck him with the force of a physical blow, a conclusion so bizarre yet so inescapable that it momentarily overrode his panic. "There's just no other way of interpreting it... this is.... obviously a 3rd person view!" As Ervin walked down the unfamiliar street, a strange sense of analytical calm descended upon him. He used the time, this bizarre stroll through a foreign city, to actively get used to his own impossible condition, to test its limits and observe its functions. And now, after a series of mental experiments, it made itself undeniably clear to him. This was, without any shadow of a doubt, a third-person perspective ripped straight from a video game. The interface was unnervingly familiar, a mechanic he had used for thousands of hours in virtual worlds, now horrifyingly applied to his own existence.
His vision had cleanly and permanently divided itself into two distinct, simultaneous streams. The first was his usual, ground-level view, the perspective he had known his entire life, seeing the world through his own physical eyes. His other vision, however, was a floating, disembodied camera view from about ten feet behind and slightly above his own head, as if he were a spectator following an avatar. He could, with a mere thought, move that floating vision around, panning it to get a different angle, pulling it closer to the ground for a more intimate view, or pushing it higher for a broader, more strategic outlook. He could swing it to the sides to check alleyways or see around corners. He discovered a limitation, however; he couldn't get this camera view to phase through solid buildings or walls. So he wasn't a ghost... was it just a bizarre extension of his actual perception, a new sense he had somehow developed? The mechanics were bewildering.
But weirder, far weirder than the aerial view, was the nature of his ground-level vision and the body it belonged to. His actual, physical body wasn't... entirely under his direct, manual control, but it still was, in a broader, more commanding sense. The contradiction was maddening. Right now, Ervin was profoundly confused, even internally panicked, but for some inexplicable reason, that intense emotional turmoil did not show on his face at all. His face, as observed from his third-person view, was calm, placid, almost casual as he walked down the street with a steady, purposeful gait. It was the face of someone without a care in the world. But, he discovered, if he focused all of his attention on his street-level vision, immersing himself completely in the first-person perspective, his true feelings would start to bleed through, his brow would furrow slightly, his eyes would widen with anxiety. Yet, as soon as he stopped focusing, his body would seamlessly re-enter what he could only term an "Automatic mode," and it would just follow his general instructions—'walk to the police station'—without requiring his constant, micromanaging input.
That was the precise reason everything felt so distant, so disconnected. He wasn't actually piloting his body in real-time!! He was issuing commands, and something else was handling the execution. Or more like... his subconscious, his base instincts, were taking the front seat and driving, while he, his conscious mind, was relegated to the passenger seat, giving only general navigation instructions. The metaphor was the only thing that made a shred of sense.
"AAAH! what to do, what to do... Should I go to a hospital then? I don't know what to do!!" his mind screamed, a silent, internal shriek that his placid face did not reflect.
Weirder yet, on top of everything else, Ervin had absolutely no idea where this place was. The street names were in Hangul, the architecture was foreign, the city was a complete mystery. But his body, this vessel he seemed to be connected to, seemed to know exactly where it was going. It was like it had a mind of its own, a separate navigational database different from Ervin's own conscious knowledge, as it walked the bustling streets without hesitation or a single wrong turn, moving with clear purpose toward what it presumably knew was the closest police station. It didn't stop to ask for directions; it didn't pause to check a map. It just knew.
This autonomy led Ervin to a deeply unsettling and existential doubt. He started to seriously question if that was actually his body. The thought was chilling, a cold wave that washed over his disembodied consciousness.
"Or am I not this body's soul?" Ervin thought, the question echoing in the void of his mind.
He had to test this, to assert some form of dominance. He mentally ordered it to stop. Immediately, it stopped dead on the sidewalk. He ordered it to spin. It spun in a complete circle, right there in public. He then, with a slightly hysterical edge to his thoughts, ordered it to put a hand on its head and do little jumps while making monkey sounds.
To his simultaneous horror and fascination, it did everything he ordered without question or hesitation. It wasn't like the tedious, deliberate process of consciously controlling individual limbs; it was more like simply imagining a scene, visualizing the action, and the body performed it as he had imagined, a perfect puppet to his thoughts. It didn't even seem to be embarrassed as people around gave it profoundly weird and concerned looks. And most tellingly, Ervin himself felt weirdly detached from the entire humiliating display, not even a tiny bit embarrassed by the portrayal as he undoubtedly would have been usually. The shame simply didn't register; it was data, not emotion.
This level of control, this clear division between commander and executor, was too structured, too rule-based to be a mere hallucination or a psychotic break. Those were supposed to be messy, confusing, and irrational. This was operating on a bizarre internal logic.
"So this is for real...? How am I supposed to live like this??" he started to despair, the weight of his new reality finally crushing down upon him. What should he do? How does one file taxes with a third-person view? How does one explain this to a doctor? He was really starting to get genuinely, deeply worried about the practicalities of a life he could no longer recognize.
Then, as if in direct response to his escalating panic, something impossible popped into existence directly in the center of both his fields of vision, overlaying the real world with a stark, blue-and-white transparent interface. Text scrolled into view with a soft, almost inaudible chime.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATION NOTICE]
Note: Upon request of [REDACTED] user Ervin has been Issued a [SYSTEM]. Assimilation has reached usable standards.
Initiating... System Initiated, Integration complete.
"H-HUH!?" Ervin immediately stopped in his tracks, his mental shout causing his body to jolt. He told his body to quickly enter a nearby alleyway, needing privacy while he read this unbelievable development. The body complied instantly, ducking into the shaded space between two buildings and leaning against a cool brick wall.
A new, permanent-looking window solidified in his vision.
[[System]
Player: Ervin Mandor
Character 1; Han Joon-seong
[Characteristics:
Adaptation(Perfect)
Talent(Perfect)
Auto Pilot(Perfect)
Money(Perfect|Middle-class)
Looks(Lvl. 2)
Speed(Lvl. 1)
Strength (Lvl. 2)
Endurance (Lvl. 2)
Vigor (Lvl.1)
Intelligence (Lvl. 2)
[Tasks:
None]]
"W-What is this?!" Ervin was panicked, so utterly panicked, that this time the emotion was so powerful it broke through the automatic control. His body's eyes widened comically, its mouth falling slightly agape, mirroring the shock of the consciousness controlling it.
This was a system??? Like, A SYSTEM?! An actual, honest-to-god game interface from those Korean Manhwas he devoured to escape his old, miserable life?? He had one of those? But why? How?
"Have... Have I been transmigrated?!" He thought, the most common trope surfacing immediately. But that didn't seem to be exactly the case. "No... I haven't transmigrated... not in the usual sense... I don't have a new body per se..." He looked at the young man named Han Joon-seong from his third-person view, the body laid against the wall, looking stunned. He floated his second vision down to ground level and looked at his own face with both views, a surreal experience of double perception.
There wasn't anything in front of the body in the ground-level view; Han Joon-seong was certainly staring right at the spot where Ervin's third-person camera was located, but there was nothing there, just empty air. The system window was visible only to him, the player, not to the character.
"Am I possessing you...?" Ervin asked the body, his mental voice quiet with awe. That was one plausible theory. Had he somehow slipped through the gaps in reality during his stress and ended up in another version of himself in a parallel world?
"Doesn't seem like so..." he replied with the body's voice, testing the theory. He had complete control of it if he wanted; a possessor wouldn't necessarily have such flawless, willing control.
"But you move on automatic," he argued with himself, the internal dialogue splitting along the new lines of his existence.
"Yeah, some kind of muscle memory maybe?" the body replied to the void, its voice thoughtful.
Muscle memory... but for that, this body needed to have lived here for quite some time, to have learned these streets, this language... Or... perhaps the answer was far simpler, and far more terrifyingly game-like.
Ervin called back the System window with a thought, his attention focusing on one specific line.
[Characteristics: Auto Pilot(Perfect)]
It had to be this, right? [Auto Pilot(Perfect)]... this body could act on its own, guided by its own set of parameters and knowledge... but guided by what? What was the source of its automatic behavior?
"My brain...." The body replied, the words slipping out as Ervin followed the thought to its logical conclusion. There was an old philosophical saying he'd once read, that humans are creatures born with two heads.. The "Him" and the "Self". The Self was the person's reasoning, the rationality mixed with opinions and beliefs, a person's true conscious identity. The "Him" was the body's natural instincts, the animalistic core where raw emotion, fear, lust, greed, and pride originated from.
So if Ervin had to map this new duality onto that ancient concept, the answer presented itself with chilling clarity.
"This is the Him," said the body, representing the physical form, its instincts, its ingrained knowledge of this world, its automatic functions.
"And this is the Self," said the disembodied voice of Ervin's consciousness, the player, the commander, the rational observer devoid of the body's base emotions.
His two parts of his brain, the conscious and the subconscious, had been surgically divided into two separate, operable entities by the System... that's why he felt so detached from his body, not caring for its emotions... because he simply didn't have access to them anymore. They belonged to the avatar. And that's why he was acting in automatic earlier, without showing emotion, without any opinion on matters... He, the conscious Self, didn't have any emotions here; he was pure intellect and will.
So, in brutal, practical terms... He had just become a videogame character.... He was both the player and the played.