Every morning, Hyung Suk's routine is the same.
He arrives home, and collapses into bed after a long shift. These days, his friends are always hanging around, so he's always got someone to talk to for most of the night. It's fun, and he's really grateful that they're happy to spend so much time with him, but after years of barely talking with anyone except for bullies, so much attention is still kind of exhausting.
He falls asleep, and wakes up in his school body.
Still, he thinks, as he steps into the shower and begins his school day, It's good.
There had been a point, not long after he first woke up in this crazy situation but before he'd really started making friends while in his original body, that he'd wondered if he just couldn't make friends as his original self. So many people looked at his school body and his original body so differently that he'd begun to wonder if there was something wrong with original-him. Even after switching schools, even when the people bullying him thought they didn't know him, things had been disturbingly similar.
But people like Duk Hwa, and Vasco, and Ji Ho had gotten involved, and they helped him even if they thought they barely knew him. Then he'd helped them, because with everyone being so kind and so brave, somewhere deep inside himself, he'd been able to look for something he didn't know he had. Something it was kind of a relief to know he could have, because after all those years of being a Pikachu he'd started to think he was stuck, like a piece of gunk glued to the bottom of someone's shoe.
Sure, his life has definitely taken a turn for the weird. He's seen a lot of terrible things, and met a lot of people that are awful beyond belief. But the person he was last year would never have been able to understand how strong and kind people can be.
Forty-five minutes later, Hyung Suk's eaten, dressed, walked Inu, and is almost ready to go to school. Ha Nuel is probably already walking up to his house. Hyung Suk's life has fallen into a comfortable rhythm, and this is the last part of his morning routine.
Stepping over to the chair his tired original body dumped his clothes on, Hyung Suk reaches into his pant's pocket and pulls out his wallet. He extracts a worn five-thousand won bill from it, and puts it in his school body's wallet, in the little pouch on the inside. Carefully, he places it in the front pocket of his backpack, zipping it up all the way.
Outside, Ha Nuel shouts, "Hyung Suk, you ready yet?" She knows he can hear her through his shack's thin walls.
He calls back, "Leaving now!"
He talked with her for two hours at last night's shift, but Ha Nuel never runs out of chatter-she's amazing that way. At first, he never knew how to respond in either body, but conversation with her has become easy. These days, she says whatever she pleases, and he responds whenever he likes, and that's worked out just fine.
He pats his five-thousand won bill once more for safety, chucks his clothes in the laundry, and heads out the door.
Before he heads off to work tonight, he'll call his mother.
AN: I have a lot of feelings about Hyung Suk's character development and all the opportunities his mother has given him. Also, bonus Ha Neul because she's lovely.
Constructive criticism is always welcome!