Prank in Progress #076
And so, the uncomfortable victory would be neither too short nor too long. Kang Sian and Cheon Mari planned to torment their opponents with it endlessly until the start of the academy term. If the guild’s stock price dropped in the process, they figured they might as well scoop up the shares while they were at it.
Naturally, the druggies’ parents and their guilds threw an absolute fit. At first they spat all sorts of nonsense at Sian—claiming it wasn’t funny, that it was defamation, and so on. But Sian had conducted the interview anonymously and hadn’t mentioned anything that could actually get him in trouble. Everything was too vague and too insufficient for them to take legal action. It was a situation that left them grinding their teeth in pure hatred.
Still, if they hadn’t wanted to end up like this, they should have picked their opponent more carefully from the start. How could anyone compare a guild’s legal team to a megacorporation’s legal department? On top of that, Sian’s aunt worked in law, and his cousin was an outright prosecutor. Even though he hadn’t asked for their help this time, the environment he’d grown up in had been perfect for developing at least a basic sense of caution. The chances of him blurting out something catastrophically stupid in public were practically zero.
In the end, they had no choice but to fight head-on against the endless stream of articles and rumors. They tried to take the pieces down, mobilized every connection they had to persuade people, and issued countless warnings. Unfortunately, the sensitive information they were so frantic about had all leaked from the darkest corners of the internet. Most of the sensational articles were nothing more than copy-pasted community posts. No matter how hard they tried, there was a clear limit to how much they could suppress.
Actually, even if they could block it, that created its own problems.
“Hello~ Editor Cha~ The gift I sent…”
“Team Leader Cha, some media outlet called ‘Whatever Media’ just took their article down. Find out who ordered it and…”
“Ah, hello. This is the person who gave the interview for that article last time…”
“I heard the reporter worked really hard this time. It’s nothing much, but please accept this small token of appreciation…”
Humans grew endlessly weak in front of enough money. And since Nartika alone was far larger in scale than any guild connected to those drug addicts, what else could they do? The influence-peddling and financial support were actions Nartika took because they clearly benefited from them—publicizing that a promising talent belonged to them, and signaling that Nartika’s Hunter Division was gradually changing thanks to Sian’s anonymous interview. In terms of salvaging the Hunter Division’s image that had been driven into the ground, it was actually a pretty good move.
On the other hand, it was also quite entertaining as a scheme to devour the guilds.
[142]
Overseas IPs are completely full [47]
There’s a guild that stirs up aggro and then throws a tantrum about suing? [156]
“Your mom” [201]
Aren’t those bastards seriously just high on drugs while responding? [172]
Where in the world would you find bastards who officially post “we’re gonna sue” on the gallery lololololol [124]
Dropped every kind of “nice photo” on the S-rank rookies’ SNS. Is this enough to get them permanently banned? [327]
Looks like they’ll actually get wiped out by a massive lawsuit in a month [114]
But the harsh world of the internet was full of all kinds of people. Especially when the line between good and evil was crystal clear from their perspective, there was no shortage of individuals who suddenly displayed tremendous moral outrage. The sacred fence of the law was lightly ignored in the name of becoming true alpha males and alpha females. In truth, the final investigation results hadn’t even come out yet, and it was possible they really were victims. It was a hasty reaction, but that wasn’t the netizens’ problem.
Anyway, what they could see right now mattered more. Moreover, these were the kind of pathetic losers who only appeared once every few years—if at all. And not even the kind who won, but the kind who lost. So of course this was bound to happen.
Around the time Kim Yujae’s nicknames on the internet became “The Man Who Underwent Gender Reassignment the Fastest in the World,” “The Fastest Transsexual,” and “Self-Castration (自知喪失),” something else happened.
“Sian, I just had a brilliant idea. Want to hear it?”
The villainess had decided to carry out a little prank. Sian instinctively sensed it was a crazy idea and made a sullen face.
* * *
Kim Yujae woke from a long sleep and found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. It was white, and so was his mind.
“Where… am I…”
He felt a strange emptiness. Sitting up slowly in what was clearly a hospital room, he moved on pure instinct—the same way he always did when waking up. He staggered toward the mirror on one side of the room.
A man’s face reflected back at him normally.
“Hmm…”
There was nothing particularly special about it. Aside from the refined aura that came from growing up rich, it was ordinary. Consistent. Something to be proud of.
Whether the Narcotics Control Bureau would find it praiseworthy was another matter, but anyway.
Kim Yujae stretched as if nothing had happened. Then, to take care of a perfectly natural physiological need for a man, he headed to the bathroom. Since it was a VIP room, the bathroom was clean and modern. He liked it.
Proudly, he lowered his pants a little.
“……?”
Something was wrong. Something that should have been there… wasn’t. Feeling a bizarre sense of alienation and emptiness, he looked down.
His pupils dilated.
“Uh, uhhhhh…”
His crotch was clean. So clean it made his breathing quicken. Quite literally, there was nothing. Not even a trace of the male symbol. It was as smooth as a mannequin. If he took his pants off in the middle of the street, the ratings board would probably slap an “All Ages” label on it and call it educational.
Before the shock could even fade, Kim Yujae felt a strange sensation from an unexpected place and finally noticed something else. He yanked his pants all the way down.
A plastic bag. A rubber tube. The plastic bag was taped to his leg. The rubber tube was inserted into his abdomen, sending some kind of liquid into the bag.
It was a urine bag. And a Foley catheter.
Both were medical supplies used when there were problems with urination. The kind of thing you only saw in news reports or documentaries.
In a panic, he pulled his pants back up.
“No, no, no.”
Trembling, he stumbled backward. Eventually his face took on the expression of a cat that had been neutered. In a way, the situations were similar. He was in a nearly neuter state—unable to function as a man or as a woman.
“Am I… am I a eunuch…?”
The words slipped out reflexively. That single sentence made reality feel even crueler. He staggered back and collapsed onto the bed. For a long time, he simply stared at the floor.
He thought endlessly about the physical chaos. He thought endlessly about his situation. Finally, his lips parted.
“I’m… I’m a eunuch… sob…”
By acknowledging it himself, he became a true eunuch in every sense. The only people he could compare himself to were the eunuchs of ancient China.
Kim Yujae stayed seated like that for a long while.
It was quite some time later when a doctor wearing red horn-rimmed glasses and a nurse entered the room.
“Ah, you’re in the hospital. Please don’t worry.”
Starting with that clichéd greeting, many words were exchanged. Most of them sounded extremely bad to Kim Yujae.
“Um… unfortunately the chainsaw passed through a very bad spot.”
“As a man, you will no longer be able to have sexual relations.”
“The chainsaw shredded it so thoroughly that reconstructive surgery is almost impossible. There are other methods, but they’re…”
“We recommend you stay calm. Getting excited could cause bleeding at the suture site.”
“As for the urine bag… in your current condition, it looks like you’ll have to keep wearing it.”
It was the moment the bright future of a fresh nineteen-year-old drug addict completely collapsed. The doctor and nurse destroyed a boy’s life and left coldly.
The next people to appear in the hospital room were Kim Yujae’s family. The entire family cried, hugged each other, and talked about what had happened to their precious eldest son. But even then, Kim Yujae’s expression remained dark.
The problem wasn’t that he had survived—it was that he was still alive at all. In the end, the window began to look tempting. He approached it, but the floor was too low for it to be useful. Despairing, Kim Yujae returned to the bed.
What caught his eye next was a matchbox on the drawer. It was something his family had left when they visited. Inside were dried Madness Herbs.
Wishing to forget reality, he opened the matchbox and chewed the herbs. Shockingly, they had no taste or effect at all. All he felt was the sensation that the world was collapsing and Jehovah’s entire congregation was cursing him.
In the end, despair had crushed desire.
“This can’t be… this can’t be… ughhh… this can’t be…”
He cried and cried bitterly. As he kept wasting time like that, one person’s face rose in his mind. Of course it was his girlfriend—
“Kang… Kang Sian…!”
The world’s biggest son of a bitch. The human trash who had done this to him! A bastard who deserved to be torn to pieces! Suddenly rage exploded inside him. It was a sudden surge. Clutching that fury, Kim Yujae headed out of the hospital room. He grabbed only his phone and left without thinking.
Looking around the hospital emotionally, he screamed.
“I’ll kill you! You son of a bitch!!!”
Of course there was no way he would run into him. So he turned on the phone that had been completely powered off. The thought crossed his mind that maybe searching the internet or SNS would turn something up. The fact that he kept showing he had zero intention of reflecting was truly astonishing.
And the moment he unlocked his phone with that determination—
Vrrrr. The phone began ringing nonstop. SNS alerts. DMs. Kim Yujae thought people had sent messages because they were worried about him. Friends, family, company people, his lover. Maybe even more. So he put location tracking on the back burner for now.
He immediately tapped the most recent DM. It was from an unknown name, but they had sent photos. Probably someone from the company sending comforting images. That’s what he thought.
It was a colossal miscalculation.
Reality was something far greater than that.
One second later.
Humanity’s endless malice arrived.
* * *
“……”
Kim Yujae wanted to gouge out both his eyes. The result of witnessing such horrific photos was a bottomless abyss. Rage devoured by despair. The word “revenge” fading away. It was terrible. It felt like his will to live was being snapped in half. Especially since the drug addict had been forced to quit cold turkey. At this rate it felt like he might commit unplanned suicide.
But even if he did commit suicide, there was no way to fix it. Bringing back a blown-off stick and marbles was nearly impossible with current medical technology. Round and round, he ended up spending endless time in the hospital room again.
That appearance was endlessly reflected back at him by the doctors, nurses, and family. He turned on SNS to forget reality, but all that came back were curses and the abyss. On the internet and in the news, they only praised someone presumed to be Kang Sian. He himself was a proxy sinner. A complete idiot. It was the kind of day when he even felt inferior.
One day the doctor came in with a different atmosphere than usual. He asked outright what Kim Yujae planned to do from now on.
“I don’t… know.”
He couldn’t even see the future. That kind of situation. The doctor told the despair-looping Kim Yujae that there were two options.
The first was to be discharged as-is. Further treatment was impossible, so he would have to live like this until technological progress was made.
“It will probably cause a lot of inconvenience in daily life.”
“Damn it…”
There were hormone issues, and fundamentally he had to rely on the urine bag. The chances he would be unable to work as a hunter anymore were extremely high.
So the alternative appeared.
The second was a major surgery. However, it was closer to transforming the body than treating it. And it was extreme in many ways.
“W-wait… what did you say?”
“Since living as a man would be incomplete anyway, you would undergo full gender reassignment to become a woman.”
Through major surgery, he would discard all masculinity. Instead of this ambiguous identity, he would gain a new one.
“If you transition, you won’t have to worry about urinating like this anymore.”
“…Didn’t you say that part was completely destroyed and impossible to restore?”
“Ah, that was only in the case of remaining male. When changing to female, it can be resolved through magical means.”
He tilted his head. The word “magical” sounded extremely vague.
“What is it?”
“Actually, this is something people who do internet broadcasts usually look for…”
Just as doubt and suspicion were about to surge, the doctor pulled a small medicine bottle from the pocket of his white coat.
◈ Directions: Take one bottle every hour. Do not miss a single dose for one full week.
“The younger generation these days calls it ‘TS Potion.’”
Their eyes changed slightly. Both the doctor and Kim Yujae.