BANG!
BANG!
'Open the door, you dog! NOW!'
BANG!
'I KNOW you're in there!'
BANG!
'Get out here, or I'll BREAK YOUR DAMNED DOOR DOWN! You PARASITE!'
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It was nothing short of a miracle that the front door held up against the barrage of hits it was taking. Even so, it creaked harshly in protest, and the way it jolted and shuddered with each pound was clear to see even in the dark room.
BANG!
'YOU LITTLE -! Open the door!'
BANG! BANG!
As bits of plaster on the walls by the doorframe loosened and crumbled to the floor, Ken sighed and slumped backwards. He was sitting with his knees pulled up and back sagging against the wall opposite the front door.
He held up a hand to cover his eyes, trying to block out the noise in an attempt to think. He wasn't worried about the door breaking down. He also knew that the crass loan shark who was causing the disturbance wouldn't be able to enter his apartment. Not tonight, anyway.
The man would keep at it for just a few more minutes before stumbling away in a drunken stupor, possibly to threaten some other unfortunate victim of predatory lending. His neighbors in the shoddy community housing wouldn't be visiting in concern for his well-being either. After all, almost everyone who lived here had their own share of troubles, with no desire to poke their noses into the lives of others.
Ken knew for sure that, for tonight at least, he could rest easy in the cold, bare, and otherwise unoccupied single room he was currently in.
He wasn't happy about having this knowledge, of course.
When he'd left his first and only negative review on a web-novel site for a badly-written melodramatic angst-fiction, the last thing he had expected was to be waking up as part of it.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the body he'd woken up in was that of the story's misfortune-riddled protagonist that just so happened to share his name.
He, Ken Parker, had been an ordinary, if rather uninspired teenager. He'd grown up in an orphanage, and although he hadn't had the good fortune of being adopted, it was lucky enough that the orphanage itself was a decently well-funded one.
He had passable grades, and was looking forward to wrapping up high school and leaving to spread his wings at some average university. With no passion or interests to speak of, Ken's only goal had been to secure a regular job that paid decently enough to let him comfortably settle down.
He was also gay. He had realized that a few years ago, when he'd watched a spy-thriller with some friends. He'd been baffled when he found himself agreeing more with the girls who were blushing at the male lead's abs than the guys who were hooting during the female-lead's bikini scenes. Not that he'd told them about it at the time, of course.
Ken just wished he could go back to a few months ago and tell himself to continue keeping it a secret.
He had lost a few friends when he'd come out, but that hadn't bothered him as much as he'd once thought it would. It seemed as though his heart had long since known that not everyone would be accepting of his orientation. Besides, he had made up his mind to leave his hometown for university anyway.
That wasn't the reason why he wished he hadn't told anyone.
Ken regretted it because that's how he'd ended up here.
His friend, Mari, was among those who had accepted him with open arms. Unfortunately, she had also taken it as an invitation to start gushing to him about her interest in BL stories. Try as he might, Ken couldn't explain to her that he wasn't interested in reading about cold-faced CEOs or male pregnancies or whatever she was trying to sell. His interests were more straightforward, like surfers with six-packs going at it in AVs kinda straightforward, thank you very much.
Still, at her insistence, he had decided to give one of the web-novels she'd recommended a try. It was a story titled 'Bitter Candy', and was, in his humble opinion, hot garbage. Like, unrecyclable, non-burnable, toxic garbage. Garbage with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Ordinarily, Ken would have closed the tab, texted Mari to mock her dumb taste in books, and gone about his day as usual. For some reason, however, he had been in a rare bad mood that day.
Maybe it was because the protagonist of the book shared his name. Or maybe it was because the book was just that bad. Either way, he had decided to take it out on the author of 'Bitter Candy.'
Seething with dissatisfaction, he had made an account just to leave a scathing review. After passionately expressing how he wished such stories could be rated in the negatives, Ken had gone on to tell the author to break their laptop and put it out of its misery rather than torturing the poor machine by involving it in the creation of such utter trash.
Then, feeling satisfied after venting, he'd finished up his homework, had a quick bath, and finally gone to bed. And when he'd woken up this morning, he'd been in the body of 'Bitter Candy's protagonist, on the very day that his father had abandoned him.
_
BANG!
'Oh, shut the hell up,' Ken muttered under his breath, frowning as a particularly loud slam on the front door resounded in the dark. He then frowned harder as he recalled the contents of that stupid book, and the details regarding the life of the protagonist.
His namesake Ken Parker, had been an ordinary, tragic protagonist. His mother had died of an illness when he'd been very young. His father, already an abusive alcoholic, had responded to this loss by downgrading further to become an abusive alcoholic with a gambling addiction.
The man spent all day at the slot machines, only occasionally stumbling back to his home in the slums. There, he would berate the protagonist for being a burden before hitting the bottle and passing out on the sofa. If he was in a particularly good mood that day, he would make an additional effort to include beating his son into his routine.
In spite of his upbringing, or perhaps because of it, the other Ken had grown up to be almost unrealistically resilient and level-headed. Since minors' protection services in the world of 'Bitter Candy' were somehow even worse than usual, he had received no external help. Instead, he had become responsible for managing the household and helping pay off the loans his father had fallen for, all from a very young age.
As soon as he was old enough to convincingly lie about being a teenager, he took on jobs like newspaper delivery and flyer distribution. When he actually did reach his teens, he expanded his repertoire to include shifts at the convenience store and moving boxes at a warehouse. And after breaking his back at work, he would come home to take care of all the cooking and chores.
Of course, like any true-blooded tragic protagonist worth his salt, not only did the other Ken somehow find the time to do all this while enrolled in school, but also managed to ace his academics. He attended a local school during the day, studied diligently with his second-hand books and borrowed stationery, and regularly ranked first in his class. He had even snagged an early admission to his preferred course at a top-rated university.
The protagonist had his own dreams, ambitions, and goals in life. In any other type of story, a hard-worker like him might have been a phoenix rising from the ashes, reaching the pinnacle of success as a part of some aspirational feel-good tale.
Unfortunately for him, the script fate had handed him was that of this angst-riddled rag.
In the protagonist's final year at school, it was discovered that there had been an accident at the hospital where he'd been born, and that he was in fact the legitimate child of the rich and influential Gray family from the city. And about a month after his shameless father had run away (having finally sobered up enough to realize how dangerously in debt he was), a well-dressed man had appeared at the other Ken's doorstep in the dead of the night and discreetly 'invited' him over to the Gray family mansion…
…And into a life of uncaring and selfish family members, restrictions, despair, and even a death. Not his own, of course, but one that had left him emotionally drained and permanently locked him out of the elite circles he'd never even gotten the chance to become part of.
The events of those years had ended with the other Ken being abandoned, blacklisted, and left without a future. That's where the 'L' aspect of the 'BL' genre came in, in the form of a cold, cruel young master – the next in line to inherit his family's wealthy and powerful front company.
Naturally, the veneer of the love interest's front company served to hide his great influence over the filthy underworld and all its aspects, big or small. Money laundering, murder, blackmail, drugs, trafficking, and even petty factions that deployed predatory loan sharks to the slums, where they preyed upon the unfortunate and the inebriated, bleeding them dry.
This included the loan sharks that the other Ken's father owed money to.
And so, the rest of 'Bitter Candy' was about the sincere and hard-working protagonist being forced into the ugly and harsh (and shockingly R-18) world of the male lead. He was repeatedly hurt, manipulated, and corrupted by his 'lover' until all that remained was an obedient bed partner.
'A different kind of love...' the author had called it.
_
Ken shuddered, holding himself back from gagging in disgust.
What the hell, Mari?!
Sighing, he knocked the back of his head on the wall he was leaning against. The cramped apartment had gone quiet at some point, the hollering loan shark having left to terrorize other victims.
Ken remained where he was. Alone in the dark, he had many thoughts swirling in his mind. Many questions. Many, many curses for the author of 'Bitter Candy', and for his friend who had recommended the book to him. Stupid Mari.
Among it all, however, he knew one thing for sure.
He, Ken Parker, refused to suffer the fate of the other Ken Parker.