Suddenly Became a Boy – What Should I Do? - Chapter 67.1

“Cough, cough…”

Lin Xin’s mother cleared her throat, as if her baffling behavior moments ago had never happened. She composed herself, exuding a calmness appropriate for her age, though her gaze betrayed a complexity that was hard to decipher. Turning to Lin Xin and Cheng Shiyin, she said, “Come inside. We’ll talk.”

Lin Xin hurried after her, quickly grabbing the bags from her hands. With an exaggerated flourish, he flexed his bicep to show off his strength. “Leave the heavy lifting at home to me from now on.”

Reality, however, swiftly slapped Lin Xin in the face. The bags remained firmly clutched in his mother’s hands. If not for the veins bulging on her forehead, Lin Xin might have been tempted to ask, “Dad?”

Perplexed, Lin Xin watched his mother’s strange behavior and gave the bags a tentative tug. Her grip was unyielding, and as they tugged back and forth, one particularly flimsy bag ripped in half, revealing its secret contents.

Both Lin Xin and Cheng Shiyin stared at the objects spilled onto the floor. Neither of them had expected this—Lin Xin’s mother, over forty years old, had bought a whole bag full of comic books. Specifically, Japanese manga.

And not just any manga, but the kind that gave many newcomers a headache when first encountering the right-to-left reading format of black-and-white pages.

As Lin Xin squinted at the covers, a flood of question marks filled his head, forming a glowing halo of confusion that shone outward like a Bodhisattva’s radiance.

He recognized those comics immediately.

Purehearted Muscle Man—a story where protagonist B, who has a crush on protagonist A, eats a magical fruit that gradually turns him into a girl so he can confess his feelings.

Ichinose Can’t Get Excited—a protagonist who transforms into a girl whenever his heart rate exceeds 130 beats per minute.

Brother and Sister, Yet Not—a sibling duo swaps bodies, leading to double gender transformations.

Clearly, Lin Xin’s mother’s collection wasn’t official editions, nor were they cheap pirated versions. Judging by their appearance, it seemed she had found digital copies and had them printed herself, opting for A4 paper and stapling the pages together crudely. After all, the market didn’t sell oversized, stapled manga that looked like DIY projects.

Hurriedly, Lin Xin’s mother scooped the scattered piles of A4 paper from the ground and retreated to her bedroom. Once she’d stashed the evidence, she returned to invite Cheng Shiyin—Lin Xin’s “classmate”—to sit with him on the couch and enjoy some fruit and tea. But her attention soon turned back to Lin Xin. Her eyes scrutinized him from head to toe, assessing every detail of his transformation.

However, she could only hold her focus for a second before Cheng Shiyin’s radiant presence blinded her once again. Without a word, Lin Xin’s mother reached under the coffee table and retrieved a pair of sunglasses, last used during a solar eclipse, to shield her eyes from the dazzling aura beside her son.

“Phew…” she sighed, adjusting to the now-bearable brightness. She turned back to Lin Xin and said gravely, “Alright, start explaining.”

Her piercing gaze locked onto him as if demanding answers. “Did he get gender reassignment surgery?” The absurdity of the idea made her dismiss it immediately.

But before she could say those words, Lin Xin’s mother dismissed the notion herself. The reasoning was simple. First, Lin Xin didn’t have the money for it. Second, even if she had gone to Thailand for surgery, turning herself into a spitting image of her father would be downright disturbing.

Lin Xin’s mother was beginning to form a different theory. “Perhaps, much like the manga I’ve been obsessing over recently, Lin Xin’s situation is just some cosmic joke.” The timing was too strange to be a coincidence. Otherwise, how else could she explain her sudden fascination with material so incompatible for someone her age?