Let Me Have a Taste of That Money Too

A life with nothing going for it.

That was exactly my life.

My looks were nothing special, and my build wasn't anything to write home about either. Without the ability to hold down a real job, I scraped by day after day on the basic livelihood stipend the government handed out. Other people my age—twenty-four—were out chasing dreams. The only space the world allowed me was a single room in a no-deposit, 250,000-won-a-month goshiwon.

The place barely had a proper window. Even at midday a damp mold stench stabbed at my nose; it was a sealed prison on every side. Filling my stomach with convenience-store triangle kimbap whose expiration date was already on the edge of legal was the whole of my daily routine.

Then one day my body started hurting badly. At first I brushed it off—figured it was just my gut protesting all the cheap food. But the pain grew vicious enough that ordinary life became impossible, and I finally dragged myself to a hospital for tests.

The doctor's diagnosis hit like a bolt from a clear sky. I could hardly believe my own ears.

"It's terminal colon cancer. At this stage surgery is difficult, and you'd need non-covered chemotherapy… the cost won't be easy to manage."

Sitting there under the doctor's pitying eyes, what came out first wasn't grief—it was a hollow laugh.

Non-covered chemo for a welfare recipient with thirty thousand won left in his account… that's just a polite way of saying if you don't have money, go wither quietly in your room and die.

I don't even remember how I got out of the hospital after that. The shock left me walking in a daze. Before I knew it I was back at the goshiwon. I opened the familiar single-room door, collapsed onto the blanket, and only then did reality crash down on me.

"Haa… the world really is cruel."

Every time the absurd pain swept through me it felt like my whole body was being torn apart; I clutched my stomach. Cold sweat poured down until I was soaked through, but I didn't even have the money for a single painkiller. The unfairness of it—never given a chance to live properly, then strangled by disease—filled me with a bitter, aching resentment.

Bang, bang, bang!

A furious pounding on the thin door stabbed at my ears.

"Hong Yeon-woo! I know you're in there! You know you're two months behind on rent, right? If that five hundred thousand won isn't deposited by tomorrow, first thing the morning after I'm dragging every last thing you own out into the hallway!"

The goshiwon owner's enraged voice leaked through the cracks. Either freeze to death on the street for unpaid rent, or die writhing in cancer pain—those were my two options.

Cornered on the edge of the cliff, trembling on the bed as I fumbled through my smartphone, my eyes landed on a mysterious flyer I'd screenshotted a few days earlier.

Looking at it, a lot of thoughts ran through my head. Whether I died in agony like this or got experimented on and something went wrong—it was all the same.

If that's how it is, I might as well take the gamble. Let's just go.

The decision didn't take long. The last shred of cheap responsibility I had—pay off the back rent before I die—shoved me forward.

The next day, enduring the vicious pain, I found the anonymous, damp underground laboratory listed on the flyer. It was nothing like the clean facilities of an ordinary hospital—a bizarre, cavernous lab that reeked of secret money and some big hand running things in the shadows.

There, a man who might have been a doctor or a researcher explained various things and handed me a stack of papers. I was in too much pain to read them properly. I signed without hesitation. Thinking it didn't matter how I died either way, I lay down on the cold experimental table and willingly offered my body as a test subject.

"…Hong Yeon-woo, signature confirmed. Beginning drug injection now."

With those words, a cold mechanical whir started and an unidentified purple drug was injected into my forearm. The moment it reached my heart, searing agony engulfed my entire body as if I were on fire.

"Gh—ugh… hhk…!"

It hurt so badly I couldn't even scream properly. My heart hammered as if it would burst, then I felt it cooling and dying in real time. Whether the experiment had failed or my body simply couldn't take it, I didn't know—but my consciousness was slipping farther and farther away.

Yeah… better to die like this than suffer endlessly every day… Next life, please let me be born somewhere decent…

I let the pain wash over me and blacked out.

How much time passed after that?

"Nn… mmm…"

When I opened my eyes to a vicious chill, the first thing I saw was not the moldy wall of the goshiwon. I was lying on an operating table surrounded by banks of precision monitors flashing and cold mechanical tones beeping in steady rhythm.

I had been certain I was dead only moments ago, yet here I was—alive and intact. More than that, the horrific colon-cancer pain that had tormented me every night had vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.

"…Huh?"

The first sound that left my mouth after I came to froze my brain solid.

What had come out of me was a soft, delicate woman's voice.

In a panic I tried to sit up. An unfamiliar heavy weight tipped forward and my body swayed. Startled by a sensation I had never felt in my life, I looked down—and my jaw dropped.

I couldn't understand what I was seeing. I doubted my own eyes.

Filling my vision was an upper body of overwhelming volume and a waistline carved into soft curves. For reasons I couldn't begin to grasp I was completely naked, and nowhere on this body could I find even a trace of my cock.

"Th-this… no matter how you look at it, that's a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pussy…"

I was so shocked the thought slipped straight out of my mouth.

"Are you conscious, Ms. Hong Yeon-hwa?"

A cold voice came from beside me. A middle-aged man in a white coat stood next to the operating table, checking monitors as he spoke in a flat tone. Behind him, massive men in black suits stood in a tight, menacing formation.

"M-my voice—why does it sound like this…? And what the hell is this body…"

"You died of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shock during the clinical trial. However, the core of our project—the Soul Transfer Technology—succeeded. We transplanted your soul perfectly into a top-grade adult female artificial body we had prepared in advance."

Without the slightest change in expression, the man indicated a leather bag on the table beside the operating table with a tilt of his chin.

"The experiment was a complete success. Inside that bag is five million won in cash as your reward."

"W-wait a second. What exactly was this experiment?"

"This clinical trial involves administering a special drug we developed, extracting the subject's soul, and transplanting it into another artificial body."

"Th-that's…"

"As you can see for yourself, it worked. And so that you can function in society without any difficulty in your new body, we've prepared a fully processed official ID, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a bank account, and a bankbook under your name."

For a moment the man's absurd claims left me speechless—but given the state I was in, denying them felt pointless. I turned, reached for the bag, pulled it over, and carefully opened it.

Inside were thick bundles of crisp fifty-thousand-won notes and a resident registration card bearing a woman's photo. A card and bankbook sat neatly beside them; only then did it hit me that this was real.

The ID photo showed a dazzlingly beautiful woman. The name was Hong Yeon-hwa. The back digits, naturally, began with a 4—the mark of a woman in her twenties. And astonishingly, this was no forgery; it was a genuine national ID guaranteed by the state.

"I… what is all this supposed to…"

Still dazed, I looked back at him—but the sudden ice in his eyes made me shut my mouth before I could finish.

"…For the sake of project secrecy, we will take no further questions. We'll see you safely back to your goshiwon. Enjoy your new life."

With that, the men in black suits seized my arms, shoved the bag and some clothes into my hands, and escorted me out of the laboratory. Half-dragged, I threw the clothes on roughly at the door and climbed into the back seat of a car.

Some time later.

The moment I reached "home" I mumbled a rough thank-you and stepped into the goshiwon. Then I bolted for the bathroom and stared into the mirror.

The reflection looking back at me was an adult woman with blazing, intense red hair and red eyes. Her face was fresh and pretty enough to pass for a brand-new college freshman, but her figure was pure glamour.

"This is insane… no matter how you look at it, this is a woman."

I stroked my face and turned my head this way and that.

"Haa…"

Now that things had actually come to this, I had no idea what to do next. With my sex changed, staying here long-term was awkward at best, so I went back to the room and started looking for a monthly-rent place I could move into immediately with no deposit. After hunting for a while I picked something decent, vaguely pretended to the goshiwon owner that I was a "friend," paid off the back rent, and moved out at once.

I barely had any belongings anyway, and men's clothes were useless now, so I bundled them all up and dumped them outside on the way out.

Once I was in the new place, I still had no sense of where to even begin. I'd never lived as a woman, so how I was supposed to make money was a complete blank. Whether I needed to put on an act with my speech or could just talk the way I always had was another headache. And since the old me had simply vanished, whether I could still collect welfare was anybody's guess.

In the end I needed a new source of income if I wanted to survive—and nothing useful was coming to mind. I was still struggling just to get used to myself; the idea of showing this body to other people felt impossible.

So I spent a long time digging around online for anything that might make money. That was when something caught my eye.

Internet streaming.

Honestly, with this face and this body, I had nothing to lose. Curious how other female streamers did it, I hopped around various channels and looked them over—and it didn't seem all that hard. The women on screen danced a little, threw in some aegyo, and donations poured in like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Watching that, a wave of existential absurdity hit me hard.

"Wow. Making money is ridiculously easy. They flash a little cleavage, bounce their tits a couple times, and Star Candies explode? For real? At that level, I could do it too."

In my entire previous life I never could have dreamed of earning money like that.

"Man or woman, if you've got the looks, the money just follows. Life is fucking unfair."

They probably had their own ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠struggles, but to my eyes it looked like pure free money.

"But it's different now. Let me have a taste of that money too."

Looking at those women, I decided there was nothing I couldn't do myself, and I put the plan into action immediately. I went outside and hunted down streaming gear without any real plan, picking the cheapest options I could find since I didn't have endless cash. Of course my place had zero women's clothes, so I also grabbed some women's underwear and a few outfits.

Back home I put on something sexy, finished setting up the equipment. Everything felt alien, but I didn't have the luxury of dwelling on it. Accounts were all created; all that was left was to go live.

"…Alright. Prep's done."

Before hitting the button I hesitated for a moment—regular female cam or adult body cam? I needed money fast, so I went with adult body cam. It wasn't really my body to begin with, so I figured the shame wouldn't hit that hard.

The nickname took no thought at all. Matching my hair and eye color, I went with Cherry.

When it came time to actually start I was nervous, but it was too late to back out now. So with a "just do it" attitude I slapped on the tags [Newbie/Adult/Bodycam/Rookie] and clicked the start-broadcast button on the streaming platform.

But live streaming wasn't something you could take so lightly—and that unimaginable things were about to happen to me from here on… the me of that moment had no idea.