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Bong-Hwan hadn’t really expected it to be a problem.
After all, how often did you have to know history in everyday life?
Sure, it was a little confusing when he had to piece together his own personal history and the ways in which it had changed as a result of the larger historical changes his beloved Cheoljong (Cheoljo, now apparently!) had put into motion. But by now he was an old hand at adapting to not truly knowing himself; how hard could it be to become this Bong-Hwan who was still Bong-Hwan, if he had adapted to being Kim So-yong?
No, that was not difficult. In fact, since his new self was actually more like the self he had become after his alliance with So-yong inside her head, it was sometimes easier to act like the new Bong-Hwan than it would have been if he had tried to go back to his own, original life. He couldn’t have been the same swinging serial dater, the same camera-sabotaging self-centered fool he’d been. He was happier as this Bong-Hwan, and in many ways it was the greatest gift his time in Joseon could have given him.
Well, besides a better knowledge of himself, but the two were inevitably linked, so how could he have even tried to disentangle them?
But it was harder than he’d thought, adapting to a new history as well as a new self.
He kept getting tripped up by the dumbest things.
Like, the square in front of his apartment had been named for a king, and now it was named for (he’d checked) the constitutional prime minister who had been in charge during that same time. Nor was that the only example of such historical renaming. So he was always getting directions wrong, and he (who had used to pride himself on knowing Seoul well) had to carefully write down addresses and pay close attention to the directions he’d look up on his smartphone.
Thank God they had smartphones, at least. If he’d been from the 1980s, he’d have been doubly screwed.
There were lots of little itches like that, and they didn’t seem to get better. If anything, he was more confused, because he also kept thinking of places and customs from Hanyang that weren’t there or practiced anymore now that it was Seoul, and those memories stayed strong and powerful (as he’d hoped they would, of course) even as the ones of his old, pre-Kim-So-yong life, faded.
And there were other minor things like that. He’d actually gotten used to the fusion of Joseon-era methods and ingredients and modern techniques and recipes that he’d established in Kim So-yong’s body, and while this was not fundamentally a problem (in fact, his new hit restaurant, Hanyang Cuisine, relied heavily on this traditional-modernist fusion), it meant that if he wanted anything that really hit the nagging urge in his tastebuds, he had to make it himself (or at least at work, where his sous chefs always fell short of Man-bok’s standard anyway). He missed wearing women’s clothing from the period, and the fall of trousers and the cut of men’s shirts from his own time continued to feel foreign. Again, this was not all bad—he could afford to buy Joseon-era clothing to lounge around the house in, even if he wasn’t going to wear it in public, and no one questioned what gender the clothing was intended for—but it was...annoying. At best.
And so he studied history. He actually went back to get another degree in it—taking only early day classes while Hanyang Cuisine stayed open nights—and when that didn’t fully scratch the itch, he found himself writing down what he thought ought to have happened, how it had to have happened, based on the people he knew along with his memories.
First, he kept these to himself. It felt strange, writing as if Kim So-yong was someone else, as if she and not he were the only one in love with Cheoljong.
But it was also cathartic, and he started doing it more and more, and eventually, something (some mad instinct, almost like how he’d accessed Kim So-yong’s memories when he was in her body without realizing it) made him submit it to a publisher.
To his surprise, they loved the book, and wanted to see more.
Even more to his surprise, so did the public.
Hanyang Cuisine was successful, and fulfilling, and all he’d wanted as a professional before the change.
Queen Cheorin (and then, its sequels) was an addiction—not just for him, but for all of Korea.
And if it made Kim So-yong, Queen Cheorin, a household name again—well, he couldn’t help but feel a little pride.
He might never see Cheoljong again, or see Kim So-yong’s face in the mirror, but at least thousands of people—millions—could share in his memories of them.
And if there just happened to be a hit television show based on his novels, that just happened to have cast people who looked as much like the two of them as he could manage using his leverage over the rights—well, who was he to complain?
It wasn’t as good as reincarnating back in the past, or having his friends and loved ones with him. But it was a whole freaking lot better than nothing.