Prologue: If Only I'd Been Born a Woman
“Haa…”
I let out a long sigh on the way home after handing in my resignation, the wreckage of my company life still turning over in my head. Walking out on a job I’d fought so hard to get — on my own two feet, no less. With the family finances as tight as they were, why the hell had I quit so suddenly?
In the end, it came down to people. Most of the new hires got shipped off to other departments, while Maintenance was left scraping by with a skeleton crew, grinding ourselves raw for a pittance. One petty spat was all it took for the whole team to turn on each other, and after that, showing up every day became unbearable. The thought of working in the middle of that cold war made my stomach drop. So I quit.
“This sucks. I really did try hard.”
Every kind of thought crowded in at once. With no way to settle the mess in my head, I stopped at a convenience store, bought a bottle of soju and some snacks, and headed home. Back in my shabby rental apartment, I drank and fretted over what the hell I was supposed to do next — until sleep hit me all at once.
“Nothing ever goes the way you want it. If it’s going to be like this, I’d rather start over somewhere overseas…”
“Women have it easy. Be pretty enough and some guy will take care of you. I should’ve been born a girl…”
I stretched out on the cold wooden floor and tried to sleep.
If I just never woke up from this…
And then, the next morning.
“What the—? Where am I?”
Apparently someone had granted my wish. Not that I’d meant it seriously.
When I came to and took stock of myself, my body had changed. The lowered line of sight told me my height had shrunk dramatically. I’d been nearly a hundred and eighty centimeters; now I was nowhere close.
I looked around. This wasn’t the familiar living room of my rental apartment. I was in a narrow room finished in wood — an old room that looked like it had decades on it at a glance. Probably used as storage; antique-looking books and odds and ends were scattered everywhere.
“Ugh—!”
A sudden foreign pressure rose from my gut. I doubled over and threw up everything inside me.
“Damn it… this isn’t just from the booze.”
My eyes found a glass bottle on the floor. Mostly empty, with a few black pills still left inside.
“Rat poison?”
The label was written in characters I shouldn’t have been able to read — and yet somehow I could.
“Don’t tell me… she took rat poison?”
I frowned and checked the vomit. Half-dissolved lumps of pill were mixed in.
“What the hell is this? I threw it up, so I’m fine now, right?”
I was reeling. I didn’t know who this body belonged to, but the realization that she’d tried to die in a storage room on rat poison sent a cold dread crawling up my spine.
I staggered, wiped the filth from my mouth — and then I saw the mirror hanging on one wall of the room.
“This is me?”
The person in the mirror was beautiful and cute beyond anything words could capture. Silver hair that shimmered with every movement. Aquamarine eyes that glittered like gemstones. A face still young, but as lovely as a flower bud just beginning to open.
And her chest… it had gotten this big?
Even at a glance, it was enormous relative to her frame.
Is this what they call missile tits?
I’m not a woman, so I don’t really know cup sizes, but this has to be past a D… no, an E, easy.
Beneath a cinched waist, her lower body was lush in a way that couldn’t be hidden, and through the half-sheer fabric of her dress, pale thighs showed clearly.
I hesitated for a second — then decided that since this was my body now, there was no point looking away. I kept staring.
A pretty girl, starting over somewhere new… the wish actually came true.
A little short, sure, but otherwise perfect.
I stood there, lost in the reflection, until unfamiliar memories suddenly began to surface in my head.
“Ah…”
The body’s owner was named May Blair. Father, mother, an older brother, a younger sister — the middle child of three siblings. First daughter of Baron Blair, who held a modest estate out in the countryside. Not the baron’s blood child, though; an adoptive daughter left in his care by distant relatives.
She was twenty-one by full years, and in a few days she was supposed to enter the academy in the capital with her younger sister.
Unfortunately, the memories were hazy and fragmentary. I’d have to watch how things unfolded and act accordingly.
“Why would she try to kill herself?”
Outstanding looks and figure. A well-off, happy family. An academy waiting for her. Nothing but bright days ahead — so why?
I had no idea who’d granted the wish, but the fact that this girl had tried to die on rat poison made it clear her situation was anything but simple.
Becoming a beautiful woman was great and all… but the difficulty setting was probably going to be brutal.