A Game Character's Body
I had become a game character with ridiculous curves.
I’d turned into a woman.
Only then did I finally remember what the ghost had told me in my dream.
-You little sly thing. I’d better take steps so no other woman can lay a hand on you.
So that was what she meant by that?
At the time I’d assumed she was just being possessive in a vague, sexy way. Now I understood. If things had turned out like this, there was no way I could ever do anything like that with another woman. I could probably imitate the motions well enough, but actually getting someone pregnant, or doing anything along those lines, was absolutely impossible.
My God. What the hell had happened to me?
I couldn’t even begin to figure out where to start untangling this mess.
I had work at my part-time job in a little while, too. What kind of bolt from the blue was this supposed to be?
Would anyone believe me if I said I’d experienced a spirit coupling in my sleep, then wound up like this because I’d driven the ghost away too thoroughly?
People would probably find the story fascinating on the other side, the kind of “Can you believe this happened?” stuff they’d lap up with sparkling eyes. Meanwhile, I’d be living in hell.
I was clutching my head and trying to decide what to do when my phone suddenly rang.
I was screwed. It was a senior coworker from the place where I worked part-time.
Should I just pretend I wasn’t there and ignore it? But if I did that, the fallout later would be a headache and a half.
In the end, I cleared my throat once and answered in the lowest voice I could manage.
“Hello...”
“Seha? Why are you answering so late?”
“Uh, well...”
“And what’s with your voice? Are you not feeling well?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me it’s that day? Is it bad?”
That day? What day? For a second I had no idea what she was talking about, but I answered anyway.
“A little.”
“That’s a pain. If it gets too bad, just come in and sit at the counter for now. I’d rather let you rest if I could, but I’m alone right now, and there are more customers than usual today, so I called to see if you could come in early.”
As the call went on, I started feeling that something was off. The tone of the conversation was different from before—strangely different.
Then a thought struck me, and while I kept giving vague answers, I pulled out my wallet to check it.
And there it was.
On my resident registration card was the same girl’s photo I’d just seen in the mirror.
What the hell was this?
I hurriedly ended the call and checked the gallery on my phone. I didn’t exactly enjoy taking selfies, but at the very least there should still be some old photos saved there.
And then, once again, I thought: holy shit.
Every single picture there was of a woman.
I even checked the old photos saved in the cloud, but it was the same story.
-In short, without extreme cosmetic surgery such as rib removal or pelvic fillers, these proportions are practically impossible to achieve. You’d only see numbers like this on a Barbie doll, a game character, or an overedited social media image.
That was what it said.
But I’d actually become that body type. So that was why the volume had felt so unreal.
I could still feel people’s eyes on me inside the train. Even dressed in clothes that didn’t show off my figure much, I was getting this much attention.
I ignored everyone’s stares and got off at my stop. For an introvert like me, this kind of attention was pure torture. I was actually starting to sweat cold.
I left the station and headed into the PC bang not far from the gate.
As soon as I opened the door and stepped inside, a senior coworker who had been cooking spotted me and brightened at once.
“You’re here? Seha, sorry, but can you cover the counter first?”
I wanted nothing more than for her not to recognize me, but reality wasn’t nearly that kind.
Ah. So I really had turned into a woman after all.
At least I’d lost my virginity in a dream, if nothing else. Maybe I should take what comfort I could from that.
What she’d said on the phone about being busy hadn’t been a lie, either. The moment I got behind the counter, I was so busy knocking out incoming orders that I even forgot, for a while, whether I was a man or a woman.
Anyway, after I was given a short break, the senior coworker handed me a drink and said, “You saved me. I was wondering what I was going to do alone.”
Apparently the person who normally worked this shift had suddenly been called away because of cram school.
“Everyone’s getting so swept up in this whole awakening thing that it’s becoming a real problem.”
She could say that all she wanted, but once she awakened herself, wouldn’t she be singing a different tune?
After I finished my shift and started heading home, a thought suddenly came to me.
Maybe it wasn’t just my appearance that had changed.
My body itself had become absurdly, impossibly voluptuous. If that much had changed, was it really only my looks? What if I’d gained a game character’s combat abilities, too?
Of course, even with just this body, there was plenty I could do. If nothing else, I was at the point where I wondered if I could just take pictures and post them to social media. The problem was that my appearance was so unbelievable people would immediately start yelling about editing, AI, filters, plastic surgery, and God knows what else.
But if it wasn’t just my appearance, and I’d inherited the abilities as well, then the whole story changed completely.
Looking around, I headed toward a nearby elementary school playground. It was late afternoon, so there were only a few middle-aged women strolling slowly around the field.
It wasn’t as if I’d suddenly come here to jog or anything. My target was the pull-up bar set up off to one side of the playground.
Since it was built for children, it sat fairly low. Hanging from the highest bar, I lifted my feet and tried a pull-up.
My body shot upward with shocking ease. I stretched my legs forward into an L-shape, and even while doing pull-ups, I didn’t feel the slightest strain in my abdomen. How strong would your core have to be for that to feel natural?
After dropping down from the bar, I looked at my arms. At this level of strength, even a woman should have noticeable muscle, but there wasn’t the slightest trace of that. Not a speck.
Was this the famous TS power-up? Or was it simply because I was a game character?
I hung from the bar again and slowly did pull-ups, moving my legs as if I were walking through the air.
It was a motion several times harder than a normal pull-up, but I could do it naturally, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
I pushed it further and made my body horizontal while hanging there, as though I were lying in the air.
It took a little effort, but I could still do that steadily, too.
These had only been a few simple tests, but the conclusion was clear. It wasn’t just my appearance that had changed. I had really gained a game character’s abilities.
I could feel other people stealing glances. I supposed that was only natural. Suddenly seeing someone on an elementary school pull-up bar doing moves that looked like they’d come straight out of a YouTube clip would draw attention no matter what.
Trying to act casual, I left the area and muttered under my breath, “Status window.”
At this point, I really did feel like the physical specs of an Awakened should be showing up. But no matter what I said, nothing appeared in front of me.
No way. This was the physique of an ordinary, unawakened person? Why?
It was a startling realization, but it also meant that if I did awaken now, I’d become even more ridiculous than this.
While everyone else had to fight like hell just to get to first base, I was basically starting on third.
At this point, maybe I really could seriously aim to become an Awakened.
Looking around again, I headed this time for a small mountain nearby.
Because the early summer sun was blazing down so fiercely, there weren’t many people on the mountain.
After checking my surroundings, I made my way to the badminton court about halfway up the slope. Maybe in the cool of dawn or evening it would’ve been different, but at midday there wasn’t a soul in sight.
There, I turned on my phone and looked up videos about this character’s techniques and combos.
Game character moves were often flashy at first glance but not especially practical in real fights. Still, if I could actually use them, that had to be better than trying to learn a new martial art from scratch now.
Wasn’t there a saying? The strongest martial art in the world was the martial art used by the strongest person in the world.
There was one problem, though. This character normally fought with a fan in one hand, so most of her hand techniques were built around swinging a fan.
I looked around for something that might substitute for one and spotted a broken badminton racket lying nearby.
I picked it up and started testing the basics one by one.
To my surprise, the moment I mimicked the movements from the animation, my body moved as naturally as if I’d always known how.
Every time I swung the badminton racket, the air split with a savage sound.
I tested kicks, too. High, middle, and low kicks, jump kicks, spinning kicks, double-leg kicks—moves that looked difficult were all executed with ease.
I fixed my phone in place nearby and recorded a video of my kicking form, because I wanted to see how it looked from someone else’s perspective.
“Whoa...”
Even though I was wearing loose clothes that didn’t reveal my figure very well, the sight of my long legs snapping through the air made me gasp in admiration.
And with my proportions being what they were, my height of barely 170 centimeters felt almost meaningless.