A Subtle Change
Every day had been the same. I'd wake up in my studio apartment, drink some water, turn on the computer, and hunt for work.
When a change that small creeps into a life that rigid, you feel it at once. Which is to say: the nameless awkwardness that hit me the instant I got out of bed was not, in fact, all in my head.
My body felt refreshed. The shoulder I'd wrecked doing parcel loading not long ago didn't hurt at all. My vision was crystal clear. I even had the uncanny sense that I'd gotten taller.
Something was wrong. Was "wrong" even the word? I wasn't sure. Anyway.
Up to that point, you could still have written it off as a good day. Then I walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and certainty arrived.
This was a catastrophe.
My face had been better than average — the kind of face that made people think, at a glance, that I was a decent guy. The man standing in the mirror looked like he could have stolen a few girlfriends and not lost sleep over it.
Put generously, I looked sharp. Put honestly, I looked like a delinquent. If I'd run into a guy like this on the street, I wouldn't have gone out of my way to make eye contact.
Heh heh heh... heh heh hahaha... Being better-looking than the original was a win. I'd take it. I was a man; if a face this handsome showed up on me, of course I was going to be happy, impression be damned.
Still. This was too much.
Skin tanned a full-body brown, as if I'd just stepped out of a salon. Dull blond hair with dark roots growing in, the dye job weeks past its prime. A single piercing punched through one earlobe.
It was like... no. There was no "like" about it. This was just Geum Taeyang.
The kind of character who showed up as the villain in web novels and hentai alike, the one who stole the heroine from the protagonist. Everybody knew him. The so-called blonde tanned delinquent.
Huh. So that's me?
A curse tried to claw its way out of my mouth.
Situation assessed. A massive change had arrived, and it was written all over my body.
There were upsides, sure. For a man who needed a job immediately, it was still a disaster. The money I'd saved would keep this studio over my head for about two months. I needed a part-time gig yesterday.
Who was going to hire a thug who looked like this? Work you could do without showing your face? Maybe I ought to start looking for that.
My chest went tight.
If my appearance was going to change into this anyway, they could have at least dropped me into a novel. Or I could've TS'd into a pretty girl and done livestreams... no. Becoming a woman still felt like a bit much.
My head was a mess.
Maybe I should go for a walk. Or, since the body had already changed, the convenience store?
Heh. If this were a web novel, something would happen the moment I walked into a convenience store. That was the cliché, wasn't it? You get a new body, you hit the corner store, plot ensues.
But my life had always been a goddamn tragedy dump.
A white short-sleeve tee and jeans. And... I'd never bought a leather jacket in my life. Was this some kind of Geum Taeyang starter perk? Was I supposed to put it on?
My life. This might have been a little bit of a comedy. Of course, I wasn't laughing. Who was this even for?
Hah...
If you can't avoid it, enjoy it. Or so they say.
I walked down the street in a leather jacket I had never worn in my life. Putting one on at the start of summer. I had to be out of my mind.
The sweat got to be too much, so I shrugged it off. The white tee clung to me, soaked through. Disgusting.
...I'd had the feeling, for a while now, that every person I passed was sneaking looks at me. Now they weren't even bothering to hide it. They were just staring.
In a neighborhood this empty, getting that reaction from the handful of people I actually ran into did not improve my mood. Did I really look that much like a thug? Then look away. Why keep staring?
I, Seong Yuhan. Twenty-three years old. An orphanage kid who'd eaten contempt for breakfast since he was little. Eyes like that were not going to shake me.
Ah. There it was, at the end of the street. A fifteen-minute walk to the convenience store. How anyone was supposed to call that "convenient," I had no idea.
I pushed open the glass door. A clerk who looked like a college student started to greet me — and froze.
What had I even done?
I was already irritated. Watching that reaction happen right in front of my face put a knot of unfairness in my gut, and my brow furrowed on its own.
"Hello."
The greeting came out curt. I, Seong Yuhan, the Sweet Hannam who had grown up through more than a decade of scorn without turning crooked — was my personality changing to match the packaging? I wasn't the type to let a bad mood show, not like that.
I bought ice cream first, to bleed the heat out of my body, and wandered the aisles while I ate. Sliding a Screw Bar into my mouth improved my mood immediately. I was supposed to be saving money. Days like this, though — maybe I was allowed to spend a little?
Slurp. Slurp.
Every pass of my hand over the bar felt like a small upgrade to my quality of life. I stood in the air conditioning and gave my sweat-soaked shirt a little flap to dry it out.
Ah. I locked eyes with the clerk.
Her face was extremely red. What was that about? Had I been eating it in some filthy way? Or was it the shirt? No — if that were the problem, she'd have looked disgusted, not flushed. Maybe she wasn't feeling well.
As if to prove the Sweet Hannam in me wasn't dead, my mouth went meddling on its own.
"You okay? Your face is really red."
"Y-yeheh! Y-yes? Yes! I-I'm... I'm fine! Hehehe."
I'd done enough part-time work myself that watching someone suffer until their face went that color sparked a fellow feeling. I should have cut her more slack when she froze at the door. Now I felt bad for no reason.
I pulled a Pig Bar from the ice cream freezer, paid for it, and held it out to her. It was the kind of flavor nobody really hated. She'd like it, right?
"Eat this while you work. You look like you're having a rough time."
"Huh? M-me...?"
"...? Yeah. Oh — you don't like this one?"
"Ah... n-no, no! I love— I mean! I like it!"
A clerk with a lot of fight in her. Watching a cute woman get like that pulled a smile out of me, just as a man.
"Pff. I've done a lot of part-time work myself. You just looked exhausted, that's all. Eat it easy."
"Y-yes!"
I hadn't come off like I was hitting on her, right? With a face like this, it probably hadn't felt that bad. Then again, a delinquent putting moves on her might have felt plenty bad... not that it was any of my business.
My little shopping trip was over in no time. A pack of Buldak spicy noodles, a hot bar, and a drink. Breakfast that didn't need to envy a king's table.
"That'll be 4,800 won!"
"Yep."
While the card went through, the clerk kept sneaking looks at me.
"? What is it?"
"Um... would you... maybe give me your number...?"
My eyes went wide. In all my years, I had never been asked for my number. My mouth tried to levitate at the corners. A little cheap, maybe, but it felt good, and what was I supposed to do about that?
Right. This body looked like a thug, but it was handsome. Trading my job prospects for a brand-new experience. What a bitterly funny exchange.
Unfortunately, my actual life was currently on fire, and I did not have room in it for dating. I turned her down with a rueful smile, and her face collapsed like the world had ended.
Wasn't that reaction a little much?
"I'm sorry... take care."
"Y-yes... I'm sorry. Please get home safe..."
A pleasant experience was a pleasant experience. And yet a strange déjà vu clung to it.
My face had gotten quite a bit more handsome, yes. Enough that every person on the street stared. Enough that a clerk I'd never met asked for my number. Did the world really change its mind about you this hard? Handsome or not, I still looked like an actual delinquent.
"Whoa... hey, look at that guy. He looks so fucking hot."
"Holy shit. What the hell."
?
"What did you just say?"
I hadn't meant to call them on it. Hearing that with our eyes locked, though, left me too startled to play it cool. In my entire life, a woman had never told me I looked fuckable. Was this real?
Something... something was wrong.
"Ah... I... I'm s-sorry! I didn't mean to!"
The woman's face went pale as she apologized. A situation that felt, somehow, familiar.
"I-it's just, you're so handsome, we slipped up! We're sorry!"
They must have taken my furrowed brow for anger. The apologies got more desperate.
......
Ah.
Right. I knew what this was.
People staring at me with suspicious intensity even though my face had gone fierce. A clerk asking for my number when nothing in particular had happened. Women sexually harassing a man. Then apologizing like their lives depended on it.
If my guess was right...
My life might have been a little bit of a comedy after all. The kind you could almost enjoy.
I accepted the two women's apologies just enough to end it and ran straight home. Why hadn't I thought to turn on the computer the second this novel-plot situation started? It had been a cliché with the serial numbers still on it.
I needed information, and I needed it now.
Haha... anticipation pulled a laugh out of me on its own. Please. Let me be right. Let this situation be the rope thrown down to my miserable life.
I'll start with the conclusion: gender reversal.
I hadn't read a lot of it, but I read web novels in general the way other people breathed, so I knew the genre well enough.
The news portal had a female president I'd never seen in my life. I opened NewTube and found video after video with thumbnails of men struck in sexy poses. Then I went to an internet community, and...
One look at a photo of a man I'd never seen, and I was sure. I had not expected to live long enough to smile this wide at a picture of a guy.
I was in a gender-reversed world.
Could I rake in money with a handsome face the way novel protagonists did? Meet pretty women, too? I hadn't even gone to the army yet. In this world, women were the ones who enlisted.
More than half my life, straight profit!
No — I'd have been exempt anyway, so maybe it didn't count. Still!!
Even the few connections I'd had in the original world were still here: the Director of the orphanage I'd come out of, the owner of the chicken place where I used to work.
I was delighted. I was happy. The future looked wide open. I was going to be happy too. Time to enjoy a little easy mode.
I made the Buldak noodles, heated the hot bar, and carried both to the computer. My mouth watered on the spot. Tonight was a feast.
.
.
.
I'd forgotten. Run it through the Reverse Filter, and I wasn't Geum Taeyang. I was a gyaru.
Which meant my image was already in the ground.
The world's first virgin slut!
I'd become the reverse world's virgin bitch!
Fuck!