The Witch Look
The sun rose again today.
Maybe it was because I’d started wandering the neighborhood these past few days, but my sleep felt deeper somehow. With my activity levels skyrocketing, it was only natural.
Back then, exercise had meant nothing more than aimless walks around a parade ground the size of a fenced futsal pitch inside the facility—and even that had come with strict time limits so my path never overlapped with the other detainees. Farewell to all of that.
“Nnngh…! Ugh-cha-cha.”
Still, for morning it felt oddly dark. Had I woken up too early?
I checked the clock on the bedside table.
Oh great. The display was fried. Time to apply the universal method of machine repair.
Its name? Physical therapy.
—Thud!
—Thud!
Huh…
Weren’t electronic circuits just an extension of mana circuits?
I pulled a mana-circuit etching kit from my subspace storage.
First thing after waking up and I was repairing a clock? But once something caught my interest, I couldn’t let it go.
“Generate blueprint. Scale adjustment. Enchant box. Draft plane.”
I floated a mana plate—the magical equivalent of a PCB—into the air and began replicating the electronic clock’s circuitry.
With auxiliary etching spells running in parallel, I could write mana circuits without a magnifying glass, mana blower, or tester.
“Zoom in. Hmm… multi-layer circuit. That’s a capacitor, that’s a diode…”
It felt ridiculous to be doing this first thing in the morning, but I was a responsible mage. Not some evil Magic Tower fossil who caused disasters and then dumped the cleanup on lab students.
…How hard could one little clock be? Still, honestly, it was fun. Crafting mana circuits based on electronic principles had a whole new flavor.
“Done.”
I’d restored its original function of telling time.
While I was at it, I embedded a few of the mana stones piled high in my subspace so it would run without batteries, and injected mana into the crystal oscillator for better precision. It could also double as a beacon for generating teleport coordinates.
Space mages always left a beacon or two in emergency shelters. That way you could teleport out in a pinch.
To any mage fluent in spatial magic, it was the most basic implant imaginable.
“What was I supposed to do today again?”
Yesterday had left me exhausted from a full day of café-and-mart outings plus endless interviews inside the facility. I’d definitely been given a schedule, even if I hadn’t done much.
Short discussion and meal with VIP scheduled. Resident registration card to be delivered.
Ah.
I was meeting the president.
Since it was an official occasion with important people, should I dress a little more seriously? My subspace still held several sets of hero’s formalwear and ceremonial robes from the other world.
But every single outfit from that world was men’s clothing. If I put them on now, the size difference would make me look like a kid borrowing her dad’s clothes…
I considered just resizing my old men’s clothes, but the fact that I was a woman now held me back.
In all the records and personal interviews I’d submitted to the intelligence agencies, I’d carefully avoided any mention of “I used to be a man,” so probably no one knew about the gender swap.
Fitting clothes… wait, I did have some. A few high-performance pieces that were women’s gear, which I’d lent to my comrades back then.
“What’s the most wearable…”
I pulled out every women’s set I could remember from subspace—six in total.
Bikini armor and the black leather catsuit were out immediately. Even before being a man, as a human being I had standards…
Full plate armor and the dragoon’s kit were also rejected. We weren’t in a war zone; no need for something that menacing.
Especially the dragoon armor and weapon set…
I pictured myself standing before the president in that blood-red armor bristling with spikes, a crimson halo dripping magma and blazing behind my back…
Yeah. Absolutely not.
That left two options: the witch look and the officer look.
First, the witch look.
It was basically a witch cosplay set—pointed hat, jacket, shirt, and corset. I’d beaten the first witch I met while raiding the Demon King’s army and taken it off her. Looking at the black pointed hat with its cute pink ribbon decorations made me feel weirdly unsettled.
Then the officer look.
These pieces looked like military dress uniforms, looted from a Demon King’s army warehouse. Black outer fabric with red lining, a high collar that rose stiffly past the neck—an extremely authoritative uniform set.
Unlike the witch outfit it came with pants and high-heeled boots, so the resistance was lower, but uniforms still felt too oppressive.
“Uh… wait a second.”
And the intended use was impure. This was the first time I’d checked the full contents carefully, so I hadn’t known—string panties, a micro bikini, and a whip were included.
“Those Demon King’s army freaks, every last gentleman and lady among them…”
Process of elimination won. Decision made, I started changing quickly.
—Rustle rustle
Black tights.
Never thought the day would come when I’d wear something like this.
And for something that looked ordinary, they were no ordinary premium goods.
True to the first witch’s reputation, even the tights were packed with special materials like fairy dust and Arachne Queen’s mana silk, layered with durability, impact resistance, and magical protection.
“This is cosplay this is cosplay this is cosplay this is cosplay…”
Performance-wise they were top-tier, but…
“Urgh…”
I nearly tore them trying to pull them on like pants, but solved it by rolling them up and putting them on like socks.
“I really am a woman now.”
The realization hit me afresh.
It was flat between my legs. Well, more precisely there was a straight little cleft…
“Ahem…!”
Observing my own body sent a sudden rush of heat to my face. Even if my little buddy had turned into a Null state, we still hadn’t become friends.
Seeing it every day in the shower didn’t make it any easier to get along with.
My right-hand friend who always cheered me up when I grabbed him had suddenly gotten TS’d one day. The friend who used to hold my hand—no, who used to be held by my hand—when I was at my lowest was gone.
Yeah.
Forget it.
And then wreck the Goddess.
“Ah, that’s not it.”
What was between my legs wasn’t the important part!
I was meeting the president? The number-one guy in the country, the symbol of power. Of course, everyone who’d actually flaunted that power had been driven out.
If the image of a certain general who personally drove a tank and crushed every last rebel came to mind, that was pure coincidence.
“What am I even going to talk about when we meet?”
—Click
I fastened the waist button of the skirt, tastefully decorated with frills and lace, neatened the hem of the shirt, and tried hard not to notice the strangely empty space between my legs.
Not wearing pants felt incredibly awkward. And also kind of breezy.
What conversation would I have with the president I was about to meet? That was the bigger worry right now.
“…Ah. This.”
But the president was still just a human being.
Compared to the trial of the navy-blue corset in my hands, he was downright laughable.
Still, I had to put it on… It even had a built-in equip magic.
Equip
The black corset woven from mana silk and Arachne Queen’s spider thread was a true work of art.
Using the built-in equip magic made it cling perfectly to my body, and the options for mana defense rate, durability, and balance correction were outstanding.
“Seriously, ha, I’m really… this isn’t me.”
No one was watching or listening, but I still wanted to deny it.
“And the outerwear isn’t even a robe—it’s a jacket with a cloak…?”
A lavish jacket of deep gray embroidered with blue roses, plus a brooch that hung nicely on the collar and faintly radiated sky-blue mana light. Looking closer, it contained a full eight cores for formula calculation assistance.
Imagine taking an engineering math exam while carrying eight AI engineering calculators that could recognize problems. Its mere existence was broken-level cheating!
“Even the Empire only managed to make one with two cores.”
I clicked my tongue at the insane craftsmanship I hadn’t examined properly when I first acquired it.
And the cloak? The vivid blue lining was absolutely plastered with top-grade mana stone powder for increased movement speed and limited gliding options, while the deep navy outer fabric was coated with heat resistance and physical impact reduction formulas.
The first witch.
I could almost see the illusion of that ajumma cackling underground and giving me a distant thumbs-up.
This crazy look-tal karma-farming ajumma…!
Standing in front of the mirror and settling the hat on my head confirmed it. She’d created a mage look-tal skin that looked like it had jumped straight out of an RPG.
Still, it was pretty. I found myself thinking I should wear it more often.
“…Maybe it’s actually wearable?”
I pulled out a pair of Mary Jane loafers (these were ordinary shoes) from subspace and slipped them on, then grabbed a waist-high staff of ancient wood that was perfect for leaning on with one hand.
…Honestly, this was mortifying.
The thought that I was doing cross-dressing cosplay sent heat flooding into my face.
“Maybe I should just go with a suit—”
—Knock knock
“Hup.”
—Are you ready? We should leave soon if we don’t want to be late.
Damn it.
No choice!
I squeezed my eyes shut and yanked the door open. A tall female agent stood there, eyes round as saucers as she scanned my outfit from head to toe.
“…”
“…I should change after all, right?”
“Urgh… ahem. You look lovely.”
“I definitely heard a weird exclamation in there.”
“Your imagination. Let’s go.”
I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.
The agent, face oddly flushed, hurriedly guided me along while I kept my head bowed low.
“Woooow.”
“Clothes from another world, huh?”
“You look so pretty~!”
Enduring the mental assaults that flew at me every time I ran into people I’d gotten friendly with—or at least recognized—I finally managed to climb into the car.
To corner me this thoroughly…!
A grand procession of six vehicles, including the sedan I was riding in, cut through downtown Seoul.
Black opaque acrylic separated the driver’s seat, and the side and rear windows were all covered in black film so nothing outside was visible. The cool-white interior light on the ceiling only made the atmosphere gloomier.
I couldn’t see the surroundings, but the fact that the car never stopped once suggested the roads were being controlled.
Suffocating! And awkward!
Having to ride in this sealed-room of a car dressed in witch cosplay to meet the president.
My own mistake. What on earth had possessed me to put this on…
As I fidgeted with the brooch at my chest with a troubled expression, a voice came from the passenger seat.
“I was a little surprised you didn’t wear a suit.”
I offered the tall female agent a reasonable excuse.
“Ah, yes. I wanted to observe a bit of formality, and also…”
It had been somewhat impulsive, and looking back now I wondered why I’d done it.
“It suits you well, though. Mysterious, I suppose.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes. Actually, the higher-ups wanted a bit of image-making as well.”
Image-making.
I could roughly picture what they meant.
“They needed a visual that looked like a mage… right?”
“Exactly. It’s not something you can ignore in public opinion or the popular image.”
Ash-gray hair, red eyes, flames blooming from my hands and glowing dinosaurs were interesting.
But that was all.
What the higher-ups wanted from me was the image of a mysterious mage, and of a collaborator helping Korea and humanity.
Building that image required costumes and staging.
“I understand. I’ll have to wear things like this more often from now on.”
“Ideally you’d wear them all the time.”
“…That’s a bit much.”
Absolutely not.
“…Urgh. Ahem. Still, it really does suit you.”
“You’re just trying to satisfy your personal ulterior motives, aren’t you?”
“…”
“Hey. Answer.”
“…”
After twenty minutes of awkward silence, the vehicle began to slow.
“We’ll arrive shortly. The rear doors can’t be opened from inside, so please wait until we open them for you.”
“Yes.”
—Vrooom
Soon the car crawled forward, slowly rounded a corner, and stopped.
I couldn’t see outside, but the murmur of voices was unmistakable.
—Clunk
The door opened. I stepped out, lightly pressing the brim of my hat against the sunlight pouring down from outside.
“Thank you.”
“…”
Whether this counted as separating public and private or just being robotic, I stared hard at the tall female agent standing silently by the car, facing straight ahead, before giving up.
Then, from the center of a building with striking blue roof tiles, a crowd of people in suits came pouring out.
“This way, please.”
Guided by men with buzz cuts and uniformly solid builds, I entered Cheongwadae…
“Ahahaha, good to meet you! I’m President Jeong Tae-san!”
There stood a middle-aged man with slicked-back hair who was even more massive than the already massive bodyguards.
The giant of a president I’d only seen on TV approached with a hearty laugh.
Looking at the calluses and small scars covering the hand he extended for a handshake, I swallowed hard.
…They didn’t elect the president through a yaksha league system instead of voting, right?