Rosario gripped the edge of the vanity table and stared hard into the mirror.
"Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!"
He smacked his own cheek. Hard.
The sharp sting bloomed instantly. His reflection winced back at him.
"...Ow." He rubbed the reddening skin. "Okay, still not dreaming."
He tried again. This time, he pinched his arm until his knuckles went white. Pain shot up his nerves. No change.
"Still not dreaming," he muttered darkly.
Panic settled like a storm in his chest. His hands were trembling, his heart was racing, and no matter how many times he blinked, the face in the mirror didn't shift back to Amera. That girl—her soft voice, her familiar reflection—was gone.
In her place was Rosario Bleubellé De Lobélia.
"Of all people, I had to become him?!" Rosario groaned, collapsing onto the bed. "Not the background maid. Not a shopkeeper in chapter three. Nooo, I had to wake up as the mafia's golden boy with a giant target on his back."
He kicked the pillow weakly, then flopped flat, arms spread wide. The silken sheets beneath him felt suffocating, like they were trying to swallow him whole.
His eyes darted to the ceiling. Gold embroidery. Velvet canopy. Chandelier. All still there.
"Come on. It's not real. Just… some crazy coma hallucination," he whispered. "Any second now I'll wake up in a hospital with IV drips and a bill I can't pay."
But the world stayed stubbornly beautiful. Painfully real.
Rosario sat up, glaring at his hands. They weren't his—they were too big, too strong, too steady. He flexed them again and again, half-expecting them to flicker out of existence like a glitch. They didn't.
He pressed a palm to his chest, then froze.
Flat. Solid muscle. A heartbeat drumming steady under unfamiliar ribs.
Rosario's face flushed crimson. He buried his head in his hands.
"I'm a boy. I died as Amera, I woke up as… this. Oh, fate, you twisted liar!"
The knock came again at his door, firmer this time.
"Young Master, your father does not like to be kept waiting."
Rosario's blood ran cold.
The father. The mafia boss himself.
He scrambled to his feet, pacing back and forth like a trapped animal.
"Think, think, think! What do I even say? 'Hi, Dad, surprise, I'm actually a reincarnated twenty-year-old girl who just got trucked into your messed-up BL universe'?!"
He grabbed a pillow, muffled another scream into it, and threw it against the wall.
But no matter how much he panicked, the truth remained:
He wasn't Amera anymore. He was Rosario.
And the mafia world wasn't going to wait for him to catch up.