The First Convention (1)
Late afternoon. The sun hung low over the horizon, casting long, amber shadows across the pavement.
"Haaah..."
Was it from the sheer, unaccustomed weight resting on my chest?
Hoping to work out the persistent ache in my back and shoulders, I stretched my stiff body and glanced over at the part-timer who had arrived to take over the register.
"The till balances out, right?"
"Yes, right down to the won."
"All right then. I'll get out of your hair."
"Take care! Have a good rest."
I gave a slight wave to the girl who was stuck grinding through the night shift until midnight, then stepped out into the evening air.
On the way home, I swung by the local corner mart to grab a bundle of bottled water.
"Whoa... Mommy, are those steamed buns?"
"Hush! That's rude, sweetie!"
Just as expected, my chest drew plenty of eyes again today.
The men around me desperately forced their gaze straight ahead, practically sweating from the fear of being branded creeps if their eyes wandered.
"Holy crap..."
"What cup size is that even?"
"An F?"
"Seriously? No way that's an F. Go touch grass and stop watching so much anime, dude."
If anything, it was the women who threw glances my way with a scrutiny so intense it bordered on suffocating. Yesterday, an actual high school girl had the audacity to walk right up and ask if she could touch them.
I'd nearly jumped out of my skin and bolted on the spot.
...
Subconsciously pulling my shoulders inward, I picked up the pace.
Before long, the familiar door of my semi-basement studio apartment came into view. I slipped inside, hurried to lock the door behind me, tossed the water bottles into an empty corner, and collapsed onto the bed.
I used to pride myself on being an unshakeable man's man, believing I could just laugh off a few stray stares without batting an eye.
Turns out, I wasn't nearly as tough as I thought.
Enduring the constant glare of the public was an ordeal in itself.
Lying flat on the mattress, I curled a lock of my newly lengthened hair around a finger. Back when I was a guy, I wouldn't have dared touch my head, desperate to protect every single precious follicle from the encroaching terror of male pattern baldness. But now that I had been transformed into a girl, the threat of hair loss was entirely off the table. I could twirl, tug, and fiddle with it all day without a shred of guilt.
Now this, at least, is a genuine perk.
Even though I'd only given it a hasty wash with cheap shampoo and conditioner following a random YouTupe tutorial, the magical plot armor of a gender-bent anime heroine seemed to be at work—my hair felt remarkably silky, lustrous, and thick. Reveling in the soft texture against my fingers, I pulled out my phone and fired up the gallery forum.
Attending the upcoming Ilco as an active cosplayer was a done deal at this point; there was no backing out now. And if I had to do it, wouldn't it be better to prepare to the absolute best of my ability?
I'd already done a trial run with the costume yesterday, so I could manage getting into it on my own. As for the colored contacts and wig... well, as long as I kept the current styling intact without letting it frizz up, they should be fine.
The real crisis was the meku.
Because modern cosplay culture was imported directly from Japan, the Korean scene was steeped in Japanese subculture lingo, universally abbreviating makeup as meku. The freelance artists who did makeup for cosplayers were naturally called meku-sa. At first, the slang had sounded foreign and bizarre, but once I heard it enough times, it started rolling off the tongue with dangerous ease.
What am I going to do about this?
I stared at the ceiling, racked with worry.
Throughout my entire former life, the absolute pinnacle of my skincare routine had been smearing on sunscreen before stepping outside. I was the purest definition of a cosmetic illiterate.
For a complete novice like me to pick up the craft, getting hands-on guidance from someone experienced was the ideal route. Aeru and Gina, whom I'd recently befriended, would probably agree to help without a second thought.
Still... I'd feel terrible begging for another favor.
They had already bent over backward helping me sort out my costume and wig. Piling another request on top of that felt shameless. Worse yet, if they realized just how utterly clueless I was about the most basic makeup products, they might start questioning whether I was even a girl to begin with.
"Haaah..."
Drumming my fingers against the soft duvet, I reached for my phone and navigated straight back to the gallery. When it came to asking for help under complete anonymity, nothing in the world beat an internet forum.
Drawing upon my seasoned years as a gallery lurker, I racked my brain to craft a convincing post.
I'm a girl trying to go to an offline con for the first time...
Everyone always tells me my body is great so I'm confident on that front, but I have no clue how makeup works T_T T_T
What am I supposed to do? T_T
Should I just wing it with my bare face...?
I'm kind of a pretty girl, ngl.
"Perfection."
No matter who read it, that was unequivocally written by a girl.
Smug with self-satisfaction at my own acting chops, I refreshed the page and waited for the replies to roll in.
...
Somehow, they sniffed it out instantly. The thread was an absolute wasteland of cynical mockery.
"Sharp bastards, aren't they?"
Clicking my tongue at the gallery's infuriatingly keen bullshit radar, I realized I had no choice but to provide proof. A cropped photo showing just my eyes ought to suffice.
"Let's see..."
Still lying on my back, I held the camera above my face and snapped a quick selfie, then cropped it tightly down to just my eyes in the gallery app.
Then, I sat down to compose a second post.
This time, I abandoned the cringey, awkward attempts at girl-speak and defaulted back to my usual aggressive gallery tone. The photo would do the heavy lifting anyway.
[Meme: Donald Trump unfolding an executive order that reads: 'Upvote so other bastards get baited too']
[Photo: Cropped shot of sharp, strikingly beautiful eyes]
I'm the girl who asked for help earlier.
Believe me now, you assholes?
Now help me out, for fuck's sake. I'm on a time crunch here.
[Sticker: Mint-haired VTuber firing a devastating beam from her mouth]
"Uh..."
Was it thanks to the eye verification?
Instead of creepy guys putting on fake personas, actual female cosplayers seemed to be chiming in. And they were dishing out what looked like high-level, practical advice...
I don't understand a single word of this.
The fundamental issue remained: it was all Greek to me. I faithfully copied every tidbit into my phone's notepad app, but without the foundational cosmetic literacy that most women took for granted, the notes might as well have been encrypted alien transmission logs.
Ryo... you really were an absolute god, weren't you?
A newfound, profound respect welled up inside me for Ryo, the male protagonist of A World Where Cosplayers Always Win.
A World Where Cosplayers Always Win was considered mandatory viewing for anyone stepping foot into the cosplay subculture. The story followed an earnest male lead who tailored exquisite costumes while an energetic female lead brought them to life on the convention floor. Throughout the series, Ryo single-handedly tackled everything: makeup, wig styling, garment fabrication, professional photography, and even emotional support whenever his partner spiraled.
Back when I was just casually bingeing the anime, I hadn't thought twice about it. Watching from the sidelines, it all looked so effortless. Only now, faced with doing it with my own two hands, did I grasp the astronomical scale of Ryo's genius.
"Hmm..."
Finishing my periodic session of fictional protagonist worship, I fed the scattered terms from my notepad into an AI assistant, gradually translating the jargon into plain English.
I have to start from the absolute ground up.
Before I could apply any advanced techniques, I needed to learn the fundamentals.
"Phoo..."
The digital clock in the corner of my screen read 10:00 PM. Watching the recommended YouTuper's beginner tutorials from intro to finished face would take roughly six hours.
"Shall we see this through?"
Tomorrow was my day off anyway. Steeling my determination to master the basics before sunrise, I queued up the beginner cosplay makeup videos on YouTupe and hit play.
6:00 AM.
The early morning hour when early-rising elders begin shuffling about, and exhausted salarymen toss and turn under their blankets, fantasizing about burning their offices to the ground before dragging themselves out of bed.
"Haha..."
In a room that had stayed brightly lit throughout the night, I stood before the bathroom mirror, grinning like an idiot.
I had binged tutorial after tutorial at high speed, enduring endless bouts of messy trial and error. And finally, against all odds, I had produced something that looked remarkably presentable.
"This... this actually looks pretty good, right?"
Click... snap...
Groggy and running on fumes from zero sleep, I snapped a handful of selfies and pulled up my Twitter DMs.
Right at the very top was my ongoing chat thread with Gina. Over the past few days of endless back-and-forth messaging, we had discovered we were the exact same age. We had instantly dropped honorifics, quickly bonding into comfortable, casual friends.
Half as a joke, I fired off several photos to her, including an extreme close-up where my face was crammed right into the camera lens.
The reply shot back within seconds. True to her reputation as a chronic smartphone addict, she was already wide awake and glued to her screen at this ungodly hour.
I held my breath, secretly bracing myself for a shower of praise.
How cruel.