Before I could ponder this mystery any further, a shrill voice shattered the peaceful morning silence.
"MOM! Haley took my favorite pen again!"
"It's just a stupid pen, you little dork! And stop going into my room!" an older, equally annoyed female voice shouted back.
"Girls! It is too early for this! Stop yelling before you wake up your brother!" an adult woman's voice boomed from somewhere downstairs, sounding incredibly stressed.
I flinched, my eyes snapping open.
Who is screaming? Where am I?
I sat up slowly, the blanket falling from my shoulders. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sleep from my eyes as I took in my surroundings.
I was absolutely astonished.
This wasn't my cramped, moldy college apartment. This wasn't the small, shared bedroom I grew up in back home. I was sitting in the middle of a spacious, incredibly well-furnished kid's bedroom. There were posters of space and video games on the walls, a messy desk covered in school papers, a comfortable chair, and sunlight streaming through a large window.
I had never had a personal room this nice in my entire previous life.
Wait. Previous life?
The memory of the truck—the honk, the dodge, the unfair homing swerve, the impact—hit me like... well, like a truck. I remembered dying. I remembered the absolute certainty that my body had been crushed. So how was I sitting up, perfectly fine, in a strange bed?
I looked down at my hands.
My breath hitched.
These weren't my hands. My hands were calloused, tanned, and belonged to a nineteen-year-old. The hands I was staring at were smaller, softer, with pale skin. They looked like the hands of a kid.
A surge of panic bubbled up in my chest. I threw the covers off and scrambled out of bed, my bare feet hitting the carpeted floor. I stumbled forward, frantically searching the room until my eyes landed on a full-length mirror attached to the back of the closet door.
I walked up to it, stopping dead in my tracks.
My eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. My jaw dropped.
The person reflected in the mirror mimicked my shocked expression perfectly. It was not the tired, dark-haired nineteen-year-old college student I knew.
Staring back at me was a boy. He looked to be about 12-13 years old. He had a mop of unruly, shaggy blond hair that fell over his forehead in a messy wolf-cut style. His skin was pale and healthy, his cheeks carrying just a tiny bit of baby fat, giving him a healthy, well-fed look. He wore oversized, comfortable pajama pants and a graphic t-shirt.
He looked entirely foreign, yet... weirdly familiar.
Eh?
I poked my cheek. The boy in the mirror poked his cheek.
Ehhhhh?!
I pulled my hair. The boy pulled his hair.
WHO THE HELL IS THIS?! I screamed internally, my mind short-circuiting.
I took a sharp step back from the mirror, my chest heaving as I hyperventilated. I closed my eyes and pressed my palms against my temples. Okay, calm down. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Use your Webnovel reading experience. Think!
Fact one: I was hit by a truck. Fact two: I died. Fact three: I woke up in a younger, different body.
Conclusion: I had been Isekai'd. Reincarnated. Transmigrated. Whatever you wanted to call it, my soul had hijacked the body of a blond kid.
"Okay," I whispered aloud. My voice was slightly higher pitched, lacking the deep bass I was used to. It startled me, but I forced myself to keep talking to stay grounded. "Okay. No demon lords. No system screens popping up in my face. Just a normal room."
I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror again. Why did this kid look so familiar?
I thought back to the voices I heard outside the door. Haley.Alex.Mom. I thought back to the very last thing I was watching before Truck-kun sent me to the great beyond. A sitcom about a chaotic family. A try-hard dad. A stressed mom. A rebellious older sister named Haley. A nerdy sister named Alex. And a goofy, blond-haired son...
"Luke," I breathed out, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
I was Luke Dunphy.
I stared at the mirror, blinking slowly. "No way. The universe actually put me in Modern Family?"
I reached down and rubbed my right thigh. There was a faint, small bruise there. A welt. Almost exactly like the kind of mark you'd get if you were, say, shot by a BB gun during a family squabble. Which had literally happened in the Pilot episode I watched yesterday.
I let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-groan.
Of all the places to reincarnate, I ended up in a cheesy, suburban sitcom. I didn't have magic. I didn't have a cheat skill to conquer the heavens. I just had a really weird family living in California. And the worst part? Because I was too lazy to watch past the first episode, I had absolutely zero knowledge of what the plot was actually going to be. I only knew the basic premise!
"Luke! Breakfast!" The woman's voice—Claire, my new 'Mom'—yelled from downstairs. "If you make you and your sister late for school, I am throwing your Xbox out the window!"
My eyes sharpened at the word 'Xbox'.
Threatening a man's gaming console? That was crossing a line.
I took a deep breath, forcing my racing heart to slow down. Getting panicked wouldn't help. Running out there screaming about being a nineteen-year-old from another dimension would just get me locked up in a psychiatric ward.
If I wanted to survive this, and more importantly, if I wanted to live a comfortable, lazy life where I could just play games, eat good food, and chill, I needed to play the part. I needed to act normal. Or, well, whatever 'normal' was for Luke Dunphy.
"Just gotta blend in," I muttered to my reflection. "Keep your head down. Be the lazy middle child. Watch the drama from the sidelines. Try something new, maybe build a gaming PC, and let the rest of them handle the sitcom misunderstandings."
I turned away from the mirror and walked over to the wooden dresser. It was time to find out who I really was in this crazy household. I pulled open a drawer and started rifling through the clothes, pulling out a casual hoodie and some jeans.
It was time to face the Dunphys.