Switching to a Reverse Harem, But the Male Lead Changed the Genre

Natalie blinked again and again, trying to reclaim her flickering vision.

Someone was standing right in front of her. Tall, with a small head, broad shoulders, and long legs. The man in a tone-downed navy classic suit owed his runway-model silhouette to a towering frame that managed to look lean and solid at the same time.

Early thirties at most?

Beneath a straight forehead, his bloodshot eyes — red as though he'd pulled three all-nighters in a row — were shaded by thick lashes. Natalie had just registered that her hand was being held by the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen in her life when she yanked it free with a jolt.

"Na... talie?"

The man asked, gazing at her with dazed eyes. The crease that caught only one eyebrow when he frowned, the habit of biting one corner of his lip — they were unfamiliar gestures, and yet she felt she'd seen them somewhere before.

Natalie, though. Don't tell me this man is McLane's real self?

"Wait — are you McLane?"

Only then did it dawn on her that her own appearance had changed too. Her formerly flawless white skin was now a shade of light tan, and her long wavy hair had become a sharp bob cut — the kind that suited a professional office worker and could be styled a dozen different ways with the smallest touch.

Her outfit had changed as well: black slacks, comfortable but not overly loose, a white shirt with plenty of stretch, a thin beige cardigan for the indoor air conditioning, and black flat shoes.

Wait. This is the work outfit I always wore before I got transmigrated.

She was still examining herself with a bewildered expression when someone's sharp shout rang out through the empty space.

"Kang Seohyuk! Get over here right now!"

Startled, Natalie spun around looking for whoever had spoken — and in that moment, the eyes of the man before her went unfocused. Wearing the face of someone possessed, he slowly turned his head and rose to his feet.

"H-hey, McLane! This is an illusion. Don't let it get to you—"

Natalie tried to grab his hand again, chanting her mental barrier dispelling incantation — but she couldn't reach him.

Whoosh! The instant he turned his body, he shot away from her at blinding speed. Neither of them had taken a single step, and yet some transcendent force seemed to be stretching the distance between them endlessly, pulling it taut like thread.

"McLane!"

She shouted desperately and broke into a sprint after him. No matter how she called, he refused to look back. No matter how hard she ran, the gap between them never closed.

Before she knew it, her surroundings had transformed into the living room of some grand mansion. It looked like the kind of house where a famous tycoon might live — the living room alone appeared larger than the entire apartment she'd lived in before her transmigration. Long sofas faced each other on either side of an enormous table, and at one end sat a luxurious armchair enthroned like a king's seat.

In the armchair sat a middle-aged man with a cold, obstinate face; on the long sofa across from him were a middle-aged woman who looked equally frigid and sharp-tempered, and a young man in glasses.

McLane's real self, who had been walking with a blank expression, was suddenly a teenager in a school uniform, and he sank onto the corner of the sofa with a wretched look on his face.

As if he'd been waiting for exactly this, the middle-aged man flung a single sheet of paper at the boy's face and launched into a furious tirade.

"What exactly do you plan to do with grades like these? Your mother has been pocketing money from me for your education all these years, and all she has to show for it is this pathetic report card? I've told you time and time again — if you want to keep the Kang name, you'd better hang the Seoul National University brand on it."

Cowering under the man's roar, high-schooler McLane collapsed to his knees on the floor.

"I'm sorry, Father. It's just — my nose started bleeding right in the middle of filling out the OMR sheet, and I had to scramble to redo my answer sheet in a hurry, so the marks all smeared—"

"Mistakes are competence. Where do you get off making excuses?"

The man called Father was merciless.

Even a straight-A student who studied his heart out would lose the will to study for a while after hearing that from his parents, Natalie thought — and in that very moment, the middle-aged woman sneering from the sofa and the bespectacled young man beside her cut in.

"That's enough, Gyeongsu's father. What can you expect from mixed blood? The real mistake was letting a lowborn thing like this into our family and calling him your son in the first place."

"He's right, Father. I've studied medicine, and I can tell you — trying to overcome inherited genes through effort is truly impossible. With that filthy DNA from his stepmother mixed in, what could the boy possibly do about it?"

Uh... am I watching a makjang drama right now?

Lowborn blood? Filthy DNA? Please tell me none of this actually happened to him.

Dialogue this melodramatic would blow up the drama discussion boards.

Unable to endure the verbal abuse any longer, high-schooler McLane's eyes flashed and he shouted.

"Hyung—!"

"How dare you raise your voice in this house!"

Smack! But the boy was sent sprawling helplessly by the backhand that came flying before he could finish. Natalie rushed over and tried to help him up, but her hand passed through his body like a ghost's, unable to take hold.

The middle-aged man was already upon them, face twisted with fury. He seized the fallen boy by the collar, hauled him upright, and began striking him again.

"You little—! When will you! Come to your! Senses!"

Smack, smack, smack!

Palm cracked against cheek in a relentless rhythm, and the boy's collared body swung violently from side to side.

"Hey! Stop it already! What kind of father does this? Let go of him right now!"

Natalie was straining to pry the man's arm away when—

"I told you never to contact us again!"

A woman's shrill voice pierced the air, and the scene before her eyes began to blur once more. The opulent living room, the middle-aged man, the woman, the cold young man in glasses — all of it vanished in an instant.

McLane's real self, now aged rapidly into his mid-twenties, was speeding away from her again, and Natalie bounded after him once more.

When she finally caught up, he was seated in some coffee shop. Across the table from him sat a woman with a proud, sophisticated air.

"Breaking up out of nowhere? You could at least tell me why. You owe me that much."

He was affecting composure, but panic and confusion bled through his voice.

The woman's reply was utterly frigid.

"How am I supposed to date a liar?"

"A liar? I've never once lied to you."

"You told me you were an illegitimate son of the group chairman, didn't you?"

At her sharp question, cracks spiderwebbed across the calm he'd been wearing.

"What?"

"That because you were the chairman's child born outside the family, you'd inherit next to nothing of the fortune. That's what you said, isn't it?"

"Where is this suddenly coming from—"

"Then why didn't you tell me? If you loved me, you should have been honest with me."

"What does any of that matter? Was it never me at all? Did you only approach me for my background?"

"Your background is you. What your father does for a living, how much money you stand to inherit — that's all part of you too. And you hid something that important. How am I supposed to trust you now?"

Listening from the sidelines, Natalie was truly aghast.

Was this man a drama actor in his past life? What kind of drama piles one makjang twist on top of another like this?

She was shaking her head when the man rose from his seat, smiling a broken smile. The corners of his mouth were lifted, but his face looked like he was about to cry.

"Ha. I see. Right. Love — who needs it. As if such a thing could ever exist."

The man's muttered words were so forlorn that Natalie's hand reached out to him before she could stop herself. Knowing it wouldn't land, knowing he couldn't see her, she still wanted, somehow, to offer him comfort.

The moment her outstretched hand brushed his arm, the man happened to turn his head — and their eyes met. His pupils seemed to widen ever so slightly. With the strange conviction that he was actually looking at her, Natalie hastily flashed her mental barrier dispelling incantation.

At once, the scenery enclosing the two of them began warping and dissolving again. Thankfully, the incantation seemed to have worked — and both figures snapped rapidly back to their original surroundings, back to the original Natalie and McLane.

McLane, who had been glaring into empty space with unfocused eyes, registered that he'd returned to normal and immediately looked her over with concern.

"Are you all right, Miss Pereira?"

Natalie stared at him in silence, taking in the sight of McLane restored to his original-hero-lead form. His face, which she had once thought of as simply a handsome man befitting a fantasy world, today somehow looked wretched and heartbroken to her.

When no answer came, McLane hastily seized her arm and shook it.

"Miss Pereira? Could it be that you haven't awakened from the illusion—"

Just as McLane had endured his nightmare moments ago, she too had nearly begun one of her own — complete with blazing headlights, an earth-shattering roar, and water pouring down in torrents. The memory of that accident. The one that stole everyone she loved in a single instant, that left her the sole survivor, drowning in guilt until it turned her into a workaholic who knew nothing but labor.

Fortune or misfortune, it was a nightmare that had once tormented her every single night — which was how she'd recognized, right away, that she'd slipped into a hallucination.