The Minimum Cutoff of Life
That's how it happened.
You know, everyone's thought about it at least once. What if I were the opposite sex?
You haven't? Then get out... No, actually, I guess that's possible. People live with different values and thoughts, after all.
But I, at least, have thought about it once... actually, way more than once.
But I always ended up dismissing it. First of all, because there was no way it would ever actually happen. And second, even if it did, I was already a scrawny anchovy with a face so "unique" that even I couldn't love myself.
What were the chances that someone like me would become a beauty just by turning into a girl? Zero. Absolutely zero.
If anything, I'd probably end up like those heavy, miserable people who go to weird, toxic protests, rotting away with twisted beliefs...
So, I stopped thinking about becoming a woman altogether.
To begin with, wanting to become a gorgeous woman—the kind who makes everyone turn their heads on the street—was purely out of a desire to get an easy win at life. In this day and age, with so many ways to promote oneself, looks have become an incredible talent and a lucrative source of income.
It all stemmed from wanting to make big bucks without putting in any effort.
I'd imagined becoming a stunning girl, turning on a stream, and sucking dry the wallets of simps—uh, I mean, viewers.
While scrolling through YouTube, I'd watch videos of guys throwing money at dancing girls and think, Man, I want an easy win like that. It was just a fleeting, disposable thought.
For someone like me, living like this—refusing to change—suited me much better.
...Or so I thought, killing time day by day, choking on my own existence.
Anyone who's played an RPG knows the concept of a "minimum cutoff."
And... though everyone denies it and looks away, I believe life has a minimum cutoff too.
Take part-time jobs, for example. Serving customers requires a minimum cutoff for your face. Physical labor like loading and unloading delivery trucks requires a minimum cutoff of having a normally functioning body.
People might curse at me for saying things like this, but strictly speaking, these are real cutoffs. And I was a piece of human trash who fell far below them.
...Because I felt disgusted just looking at my own face, I couldn't even do basic things like working at a convenience store.
I know. It's just me being pathetic and overthinking. But that's really how it felt to me. I'd imagine a customer leaving the store and texting their friends, Did you see that guy's face? Just imagining it made me want to throw up.
Loading trucks? Earning money with physical labor? If that were possible, I wouldn't have ended up with this mindset in the first place. I'm a cripple who can't even move without a wheelchair.
...My parents are long gone. Actually, my family situation was so bad that it was probably for the best.
Despair piled upon despair.
So, I was just going to die like this.
No money, no friends, and obviously no lover. There wasn't a single soul I could rely on. No one would mourn my death. Even if my life thread snapped right this second in this room, it would probably take a month before anyone discovered my lonely corpse.
That's why I wanted to die. I didn't have the courage to kill myself, so I planned to let my dwindling bank account be the signal to quietly fade away.
...So why, of all things, did I wake up as a woman?
I don't remember which philosopher said it. But they said you can't step into the same river twice.
It means that because new water is constantly flowing down, you can never dip your body into the exact same water again... It's a philosophical concept about how nothing in this world remains constant except change itself. Even now, I don't really get it.
Apparently, even Socrates looked at the guy who said this and couldn't figure out what he was thinking.
...What's my point? In a world where only change is constant, how am I supposed to adapt to the most sudden change of all?
I thought I'd die young as a piece of trash incapable of change. How on earth am I supposed to process and react to a sudden shift like this?
I looked in the mirror. It was a cracked mirror hanging in my cramped studio apartment. I was the one who cracked it, of course. It looked like it would shatter at any moment and should have been thrown away, but since it was the only mirror in the house, I'd kept it around.
I stared intently at the reflection staring back at me.
"...Beautiful."
In the mirror was the face of my dream ideal.
I stared, completely spellbound. The mirror reflected someone who had never existed in my twenty-plus years of memory.
Pretty, beautiful... common words like these were far too inadequate to describe this face.
Pure white, silver hair that looked like the flutter of first snow. In stark contrast, crimson eyes so deep they made me wonder if she belonged to some beautiful, non-human race like vampires.
For over twenty years, I'd insisted that I would only date someone with silver hair and red eyes. Now, my perfect ideal was staring right back at me from the mirror.
It was a cracked mirror, but the cracks somehow made the reflection look even more beautiful.
Was it because it lacked any sense of reality? Or was this face simply so cheat-like that even its fractured reflection looked gorgeous?
...Honestly, I never could have imagined this.
Overnight, without putting in an ounce of effort, I went from someone who couldn't even meet the minimum cutoff for a part-time job to someone possessing an overflowing talent that guaranteed success in whatever she did.
What couldn't I do with this face?
I'd easily pass any customer service job interview. And unlike before, my legs moved freely, so I could even do physical labor.
...Not that I wanted to, of course. If possible, I preferred not to move my body at all.
"Sigh..."
What the hell is going on? I tried to organize my thoughts about what had just happened.
I woke up to find myself turned into a woman. And not just any woman, but one with the kind of beauty that would make anyone fall in love, adore her, and shower her with attention.
Honestly, I didn't think of this as a disaster.
If we're talking about disasters, my life up until yesterday was the real disaster. Compared to that, today was a stroke of luck. An unscientific, impossible stroke of luck that would get me called a drunk if I ever told anyone.
But even with this stroke of luck, I had a feeling my future would still be a quiet, uneventful hell.
Even though my legs were working for the first time in years, I was still huddled in bed, barely moving a muscle.
It wasn't my body that was rotten; it was my mind. If I kept living like this, nothing would change.
Yet, I felt myself slowly drifting away from that mindset.
Let's do something. Let's just try anything. The urge kept bubbling up inside me.
A new body, a new mindset. Up until yesterday... no, just a few hours ago, I wanted to die. I didn't want to live anymore, and I didn't want to worry about the future.
But simply gaining this beautiful body made those thoughts vanish like a lie.
Because this new body wasn't the old, disgusting one that made me gag. Because I now had a body that could actually see the light of day if I just tried, unlike yesterday when my future held nothing but despair.
My desire to die evaporated in an instant.
And that brought me to the real problem.
How was I supposed to live from now on?
How could I survive? How could I live with hope and actually find happiness?
Like I said, I was planning to die. I had no energy, no heart, and no desire to look forward to a future devoid of hope.
But things were different now. Just as a healthy mind dwells in a healthy body, the moment I got this body, my pathetic, suicidal thoughts were instantly sliced away.
"What should I do now?"
I spoke the thoughts aloud. Anxiety about the future. Anxiety about what lay ahead. And anxiety about myself.
Seriously, what was I going to do?
Because I'd spent my money so recklessly, my bank account balance was a single three followed by four zeros—a measly thirty thousand won. A desperately small number to survive on.
I'd barely be able to survive tomorrow on that. Sure, I could stretch it if I bought cheap food at the convenience store to fill my stomach, but I couldn't live like that for months or years.
...Now that I'd decided to live, earning money was an absolute necessity.
But I had never once thought about what I would do or how I would earn a living.
For someone who had spent the last week eating nothing but water and instant ramen noodles while contemplating suicide, such thoughts were a luxury.
...Ugh, my head hurts.
Thinking about things I'd always avoided was giving me a headache. I mean, who could have ever anticipated this?
How does a gender-bender plot straight out of a web novel happen to me of all people?
I knew I had to do something.
But I had no idea what. I had done absolutely nothing with my life. While others were studying and getting certifications to build up their resumes, I had spent my time doing nothing but eating and playing games at home.
Even if I tried to think of something now, the only "miracle" I could perform was rolling around in bed.
"Sigh."
I let out a long, heavy sigh.
You know what they call this? A dilemma, right?
The most dangerous situation in life: wanting to change, but having absolutely no idea what to do or how to do it.
I could scream at myself to do something! but there was literally nothing to do. And I was pretty sure wasting time playing games wasn't what that meant.
A sudden wave of emptiness washed over me... I really had never given the future any thought.
Maybe I got a bit too cocky thinking about the future just because I got a new body.
The confusion of not knowing what to do, the looming crisis of the near future, and every other anxiety crashed over me like a massive wave trying to drown me.
...Well, it's not like there isn't a way to relieve this suffocating feeling.
The perfect tool for killing time, the thing that swallowed eight years of my life, and the primary contributor to making me the wreck I was.
Gaming was the perfect escape.
"Alright..."
I reached out and pressed the power button on my PC, a motion as natural as breathing.