Who Are You?

I open my eyes and see an unfamiliar ceiling. Feeling groggy, I put my hand on my forehead; a force of habit whenever I feel under the weather.

“It doesn’t seem to be a fever.”

Realizing that it’s just the usual groggy feeling waking up after a long grueling night of hard work, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong here… Or maybe not. That unfamiliar ceiling, this sensation on my forehead; something is wrong here! I sit up and look around to see a room that felt stranger to me, or perhaps, I’m a stranger in this room. And it wasn’t just the room, I feel like a stranger in this body as well. I then lower my head and witness the most bizarre view in a hot minute.

“What the f—“

First, there’s this creamy-white cotton pajama shirt that I swear I never had in my life. It has prints of a weird yellow chick doodle with a pink “piyo” text written beneath its stick-like feet all over. Who in their right mind would wear this kiddie shirt, let alone buy it for themselves? But that’s not the main issue. I don’t just feel like a stranger in this room, I also feel like a stranger myself. Seriously, I feel like a stranger in this body. No, literally, this isn’t my body! I can’t see my belly. I’m sure I’m not fat but that’s not the reason. Two huge mounds are blocking the way. And that voice, was it mine? It was a high-pitched scream but it somewhat sounded nice. I stood up and scurried around the studio-type room and saw a door.

“Yes, it’s this one.”

I opened it and it doesn’t go outside. It’s the bathroom. I went in and stood up in front of the sink. “Who are you?” I said to that petite beauty in the mirror with a puzzled face and disheveled hair. What do they call this hairstyle again? Was it “hime cut” or something? I think it is because I remember seeing similar hairstyles in many manga and anime before. There was also that character I liked when I watched that harem anime on TV during weekends during my teenage years. It was a story set in an all-girls dormitory with an outdoor hot spring bath managed by an aspiring male Tokyo University examinee for some reason. Don’t ask, I know it doesn’t make sense but that’s just how it is for many manga and anime. So, yeah... One of the heroines in that student dorm is a very strong high school girl with black hime cut hair who practices kendo. She also has an older sister with a similar hairstyle and is just as pretty. Ah, I ended up ranting here. Moving on…

The girl in the mirror is wearing a creamy-white pajama shirt and shorts, both with the same “piyo” chick prints all over. She has long straight silky black hair reaching up to her tailbones, round sky blue eyes which is rare in this part of the world albeit not unheard of, long eyelashes, and a well-shaped nose and mouth to complement her face with a “cutesy” impression. That aside, it was a total contrast beneath the head. With such smooth milky-white skin free of blemishes and well-formed curves with meat in the right places, especially those two staggering mounds to top it all up, it is a full-on sexy vibe. The cutesy-sexy discrepancy would stupefy anyone who’d lay their eyes on her mentally unprepared. Overall, this goes well with her neither short nor tall stature. Anyone would mistake her for a model or celebrity of some sort. I raised my right hand, tilted my head to the left, and opened my mouth. The girl in the mirror imitated my actions. “Is that me?” I said in shock with a slightly high pitch and a startling yet adorable voice reminiscent of those you hear in anime echoed in the bathroom. I slapped myself a couple of times, just hard enough to hurt a bit but not hard enough to injure myself or make my nose bleed. It’s not even that easy to intentionally hurt yourself in the first place. And, it hurts… One more time and it still hurts. It stung and yet I’m still here. This isn’t a dream, is it?

My memory last night is still kinda hazy but for some reason, I ended up becoming a girl… Err, a woman? That’s when the thought came to my head. If I became a totally different person, then does that mean that my age, family, and my life as a whole are also different now? I went out of the bathroom and towards plastic drawers with a brand similar to the name of a champion from a popular MOBA game. And pulled the topmost left shelf but it’s not budging. I then look around and see a key on a repurposed luncheon meat can with the label “25% Less Sodium” and some coins and several pens and pencils in it. Using the said key, I managed to open the locked drawer shelf, rummaged through some manila envelopes, and saw an ID card. I checked what’s written on it.

**********
Republic of the Philippines
Philippine Identification Card
xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx
Last Name: Amaro
First Name: Mayumi
Middle Name: Hiraya
Date of Birth: December 25, 2006
**********

On the left side of the card is the same girl in the mirror so there’s no mistake that this ID is mine. Wow, so my name is Mayumi? It’s not Japanese but it happens to sound like it The same goes for my middle and last names too, but all three are coincidentally syllabic and can be written in Japanese. Yep, sounds weeb to me but I like it. Wait, 2006? I feel a sudden chill upon realizing the fact that this body is a couple of decades younger than I used to be. “Oh, shit…” I muttered to myself as I looked around the room.

“There it is!”

Right on a small table with barely anything on it is a flip desk calendar. Yes, I have to know how old am I right away. There are many things I can and can’t do if I’m a minor. And if that’s the case, who and where is my legal guardian? Several questions spun in my head as I checked the calendar.

“…”

Wait, how do I even know the exact date from a calendar? It is a 2025 calendar, so I’d assume that I’m in the year 2025, but I can never be so sure. I looked around again and luckily found what I wanted right away. There’s a phone right next to a desk mirror so I picked it up and thankfully it doesn’t have a screen lock. The date is January 25, 2025.

“So, I really am in the year 2025.”

That means I just turned 18 last month. I checked my phone’s contacts and there’s not a single entry. Does this mean I have no connection to this world? No, maybe whoever originally owns this body cut ties to their family and friends. Either way, that means I’m starting here with a clean slate, right? Wait, does that even make sense? These thoughts kept eating me and there was no end to it so I just decided to drop it. It’s not like there’s any way to get any definite answer to those questions. It’s because I have one very huge issue to worry about right now, and it’s the root of all those questions that I couldn’t answer: I have no memories of the original owner of this body. It’s as if my soul got inserted and overwritten hers. I felt a pang in my stomach upon the thought of me somehow killing whoever the original owner of this girl’s body is, or at least being a reason why she is “gone” now. And that lack of memory of her past is also like a dread haunting me right now, and will surely keep haunting me as the days go by.

“What if I come across somebody she knows?”

“What if she has a family out there, waiting for her to keep in touch?”

“What if she had prior commitments, past actions, or relationships?”

From how things look right now, I will have to live in this body starting today. I feel like a lab rat put in a labyrinth, full of uncertainty in an unknown world. I guess I’m to blame for incurring the goddess’s wrath. Dammit, can’t she take a joke? Surely, it was a joke but I’d welcome it if she happened to agree. Hee hee hee… I just wish that if possible, the goddess made this girl’s existence from scratch and inserted it in this world, akin to the last Thursdayism theory. If that was actually the case, I at least wouldn’t have to feel guilty about the possibility that this girl got “killed” for me to take over. Oh well, it’s no use worrying about it now let’s just think about it when we cross that bridge.

Wait, that reminded me of something. I tried calling a number that I memorized like the back of my hand. It’s my number, or to be precise, the number of who I am originally. It doesn’t exist.

“Your number cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again.”

“Your number cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again.”

BEEP BEEP BEEP

It shows an “invalid number” text on the screen. Does this mean my number doesn’t exist? One thing is for sure, this isn’t the same world as I used to know. But it’s also possible that my former self exists here despite the discrepancy, like being in the same world line. I remember watching that time travel anime back then where the main protagonist kept jumping world lines but the changes varied. The same female character which I believed to be a love interest was proven to be true years later when the sequel came out. It was adapted from the game so the anime revelation was a bit late but still, I felt proud for guessing it right way back in 2011 regardless as an anime-only viewer.

In any case, my former self could be out there doing something different even if my original phone number doesn’t exist. I browsed the popular SNS site in my country and tried to log in but to no avail. Same case as above, I might’ve been using a different account in a different world line so there’s no use trying to log in on any other site I use. Let’s keep going. I search for my original profile in the SNS site’s search bar, then the default browser search engine, and... Nothing. I can't find any profiles of mine, not my family and relatives, not my friends and acquaintances, not even my workmates and boss. At this point, it’s safe enough to assume that this is not just a simple worldline shift, but a brand new world where my former self doesn’t exist and this girl does.

But oddly enough, this world is both a stranger and a familiar one. The anime and manga I know are still here, or maybe mostly here since I have no way to know 100%.

The same goes for historical figures and other popular ones like scientists, etc. At least I still have these kinds of memories to cling to and feel nostalgic with.

“Alright, let’s live this life to the fullest!”

I shouted like an idiot alone in the room. Now that I decided to accept the situation I’m in, I went to my phone and opened a familiar local blue app commonly used for online and digital payment.

Available Balance: ₱12,549.47

Uh-oh… If my guess is correct, I, or rather, Mayumi, is an unemployed 18-year-old girl. This is a grave issue. I’ll end up starving in a few weeks. And I’m sure this studio apartment has a rent that I need to settle by the end of this month, which is just a few days away. I checked around the phone, the apps list, the browser history, and bookmarks, but I couldn’t find any bank app or any entry about visiting a bank website. That means everything in my blue mobile wallet app is all I have in cash. I went back to the drawers and rummaged through the manila envelopes and there’s nothing else in there besides my PSA Birth Certificate and a TIN ID. So, this means I have no baptismal certificate. It means I’m not Catholic so I won’t be able to have everything else that requires it like a confirmation certificate or a qualification to get married in a Catholic church. Not that I’m thinking about getting married, though! I have no driver’s license or passport as well, which are both not necessary but are powerful IDs that can be used in many things. I hope to get at least the latter in the future. I have Voter’s, Healthcare, and Postal IDs as well which are nice.

Now that I’ve checked the immediately necessary things to know about Mayumi, I should go to the apartment manager to check how much my monthly rent is. I went out of the door and saw a nice and clean corridor and a big old lady passing by. I tried to take a blind shot and asked her.

“Auntie, how much exactly is the rent here again?”

“Huh? Oh, Mayumi! It’s exactly ₱8,500 per month. Why do you ask? You already paid for a whole year so you should only be worried about your utility bills for now.”

“Huh, utility bills?”

“Don’t worry about the wi-fi. It’s mostly used by my son for his online classes through the pandemic period so you can use it too for free. I doubt there will be any issues.”

“Ah, alright. Thanks, Auntie.”

My guess was right. The kind big lady is the manager of this apartment building. I quickly checked my wallet app’s payment history and saw both the power and water bill payments, around ₱900 and ₱250, respectively. I guess I still have a lot of breathing room until next year. I’m going to use this time to get a job. I should take the Civil Service Exam and go straight for the professional license. I don’t have a high school diploma but I can just take the Educational Placement Test if I ever need high school education as a requirement for something.

₱8,500 for a 25.5 square meter studio apartment is cheap. I walked around and figured out some things along the way. The building is well-maintained, has good security, and only has female tenants which seems intentional. Well, the first floor has a small but nice cafe and a room and a manager room where Auntie’s son stays. It isn’t surprising since when I looked out the window, I noticed that we’re in an urban center next to a main avenue. It’s an ideal place that’s not too far from transportation, convenience stores, and a market but just far enough that our street don’t have too much traffic which spares us from the dust, smoke, and noise pollution. There’s a common area on the rooftop as well. It has chairs and a portion of it is roofed. It should be a good place to hang around even on sunny or rainy days.

Now, for a job… Maybe I can just start taking it easy and apply at a convenience store nearby. It’s an easy job that has no educational background requirement. It would also be convenient to have a job within walking distance to waive any transportation costs. I will be able to breeze through the day and enjoy life by watching videos online and anime, reading manga, and browsing through online communities. Maybe I can do some fandom stuff like scanlation and fansubbing as well while at it.

And that was the moment it dawned on me.

“Wait, I have no computer!”