My Muscles Won't Grow (1)
The next morning. Or more precisely, dawn. It was barely past five, that raw early hour when the first buses begin to run. I stepped out of the house into air that still carried a chill, summer not yet arrived. A single pair of slacks I’d managed to scrounge up, a plain white tee, and a denim jacket completed my construction-worker look. After all, jeans and clothes like these had originated with laborers in the first place. No matter how pretty my face might be, the outfit at least didn’t hinder movement.
If I’d been planning to do this for more than a year, I would have bought proper work clothes and safety boots right away… but there was no helping it. I headed straight for the day labor agency—the one closest to my place.
“…What the hell?”
“A guy?”
Most of them were middle-aged women. First came curiosity, then interest, and finally, as expected, naked lust. They sat in chairs clutching paper cups of coffee mix, waiting for the van that would carry them to the site. I walked past their blatant stares—eyes crawling over my face, chest, and ass—until I reached the woman seated at the desk.
She wore glasses and, unlike the laborers, was dressed in neat, clean clothes. Early thirties, I guessed.
“Do you have any work available?”
“…? The jobs here are tough.”
Most of them required real physical strength, she explained, rattling off a list of reasons. Women in this world want men. That absolute truth somehow translates into basic kindness. My chest itched with a strange, murky feeling.
“I know. I need the money. Manual labor is fine.”
“What about safety boots? Have you ever worked a site before?”
“I don’t have any… but I really need the work. I’ll do the dirty jobs, anything.”
On construction sites, safety boots and hard hats were mandatory. Shin guards too. Hard hats and guards were often loaned out because they were essential. But safety boots…
“You can’t work without safety boots…”
“Please. I’m begging you.”
I bent at the waist in a perfect ninety-degree bow. I needed the money. Desperately. The logistics center hadn’t called back, and day labor was my only other option.
“…What’s your shoe size?”
“Two-twenty millimeters!”
Please. It was pathetic, but spending money here would keep me from reaching the four hundred I needed. The day labor agency owner stroked her chin, then spoke.
“Can you wait a bit? My sibling used to work as a fire watcher. I think there are still some shoes left from back then…”
“Th-thank you! Thank you so much!”
What a relief. An almost painful wave of relief washed over me. A smile rose naturally to my lips and a deep breath escaped. The agency owner’s face flushed a faint pink. I didn’t bother glancing at the other laborers. A short while later she returned from the back room carrying a shoebox.
“Here they are. Even if you run off, you have to return them, understand?”
“I won’t run away…!”
In my previous life I’d tagged along with my uncle on construction sites for about a year. It wasn’t much, but the experience should help me adapt. She told me to wait, so I sat down on a chair. About twenty minutes later a van arrived, and five of us—including me—climbed in.
Daily wage: 150,000 won. Easy work usually paid 120 to 130,000, so this was on the high side. Even though this was twenty years in the future, the world felt almost identical to the one I remembered. Still, the nerves were unavoidable.
I sat in the corner staring into space when the middle-aged woman beside me suddenly put her hand on my thigh. At first it was just contact—the seats were narrow, so I stayed quiet. But she must have taken my silence as permission. The touch was damp and invasive. I couldn’t tell if my thighs were that thin or if the women here simply had large hands. Either way, her grip could wrap around my entire thigh with room to spare.
She looked well into her forties. Disgust flooded me instantly. The hand kneading my thigh felt filthy. Should I just endure it? I don’t consider myself a good person, but I’m not a bad one either. Could I keep working while spouting curses and acting shameless? Absolutely. In that case, there was no reason to hold back.
I looked her dead in the eye, the corner of my mouth curling up. You fucking bitch.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My clear, ringing curse sliced through the quiet van. If a voice like mine had belonged to a male character in a game, I might have tolerated it and kept streaming. The woman’s eyes widened in panic.
“Did I come here to get my thighs groped? I came to do manual labor, not sell my body.”
“N-no… I just…”
“You look like you could be my mother. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
It was a lie. I was an orphan—both parents gone. Or rather, the original Lee Seha had been. Understanding how twisted that kid had been only made the anger burn hotter. When I growled at her, the woman who’d been squeezing my thigh let out a pathetic whimper. Guess she didn’t want to get cursed out and then sued on top of it.
“……”
“If you apologize right now, I’ll let it slide this once.”
“Ah, okay. Sorry, I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t actually planned to sue. I didn’t have time to waste at a police station giving statements. And I wasn’t interested in squeezing settlement money out of her. People think I don’t sell my body for no reason? I’m going to earn my freedom through effort, build a modest harem, and live comfortably. The kind of life where heroines fall for the “aggressive man” trope with stars in their eyes.
…Yeah, it’s pure delusion. But without fantasies like that, I wouldn’t be able to endure any of this.
Anyway, the van’s chilled atmosphere lingered as we finally reached the site. Work ran from six in the morning to four in the afternoon. If I didn’t run away and managed to last the full day, 150,000 won would be mine. Just endure thirty days. Thirty days like today would equal 4.5 million won. Suffer for one exact month with no days off and I could scrape together 12 million. Then I wouldn’t have to live as a male prostitute.
One hour later.
“Huk… kkeugeuk…”
I was going to die. Every cell in my body screamed. The task itself was simple: place industrial fire extinguishers around the massive convention center under construction. The problem was that each one weighed a baseline twenty kilograms. They had wheels, but most of the terrain made rolling them impractical. I had to move a total of twenty units. The site was huge, so I had to walk constantly, and every step demanded brutal muscle power.
My thighs felt ready to explode. My lower back was on fire. My arms trembled so badly I could barely grip anything. I was a hero with regeneration ability, but even that had limits. Why else would it be stuck at F-class? Yesterday it had healed the bruise on my cheek beautifully. But while my entire body’s muscles were being shredded in real time?
“Kkeu, kkeuhit… haa, haa…”
Sweat slid down the strap of my hard hat. My whole body was sticky. It was only April, yet the heat was unbearable. Worse, every step made my heart feel like it was being squeezed dry; I could sense my stamina hitting absolute zero.
It had only been one hour. One single hour since the workday began. In my previous life it had been difficult, sure, but men in this gender-reversed world were far weaker than I’d imagined. They couldn’t even exert the same strength as women, and their damned bodies seemed programmed to burst into tears at the slightest strain. My mind felt fractured—maybe it was the hormones. The urge to quit surged up like smoke from a chimney.
If not for the hope that regeneration ability gave me, I would have stopped for the sake of my health alone.
“Kkuk…”
I clenched my teeth until they creaked. Hands that had barely managed twelve kilos now wrestled with twenty. A pathetic five-centimeter threshold. After clearing it I moved while constantly checking the others’ reactions. I couldn’t afford to slack off. The site foreman’s gaze was already unfavorable. In any other job it might have been different, but for a day laborer doing grunt work, being male offered zero advantage. Especially not for someone hired as a regular employee by the main office—there was no coddling or “how cute” treatment here.
If I’d been assigned something lighter like fire watcher or signalman, they might have greeted me with smiles. But I was a disposable day laborer earning 150,000 won a day. I had to earn every won, at minimum matching the middle-aged woman who’d come with me.
Feeling eyes on me, I pushed even harder. It hurt. My muscles whispered for me to stop. Only when I reached the point where I couldn’t apply any strength at all did the regeneration ability finally activate.
“Huu, huu.”
It’s hard. I can do this. Just a little more. Move one more and then rest. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. In a state of total exhaustion, it recovers just enough to keep me from collapsing completely. Muscles literally tearing, being worked to death—yet they regenerate only to the point where mental strength can force them to keep moving. Probably because I wasn’t taking any real rest.
While I was moving in that frantic haze—
“Let’s eat.”
“Ah… haha.”
It was lunchtime. Only after my entire body was soaked in sweat, my legs were shaking uncontrollably, and I could barely hold a spoon did half the day finally pass. We headed to the cafeteria—what people commonly called a hamba house. It was more accurate to call it a Korean buffet. Large plates piled high with side dishes: white rice, cabbage kimchi, spinach, fruit salad, stir-fried pork, soybean-paste stew. A simple spread, but to me it looked like a royal feast.
The only meal I’d eaten since being possessed into this novel had been five-day-old rice mixed with soy sauce and sour kimchi.
“Th-thank you for the food…”
My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Simply lifting the spoon made it sway wildly. Only by sheer force of will did I steady it. It was so hard. Each breath felt like it caught in my throat, the air congealing into a lump inside my chest. I shoveled white rice into my mouth. The taste of freshly cooked grains. Another bite. And another. I crammed in side dishes until my cheeks bulged, chewed with difficulty, and forced it down.
“Kheum, keum, keum…”
I thumped my chest. The dry mass finally slid down my esophagus. I wanted water, but the distance to the dispenser felt impossibly far. I barely survived the crisis by chasing it with soybean-paste stew. It was delicious. Energy seemed to surge through my whole body. Strange. I wanted to eat more rice, but my body kept trembling in fits. My vision blurred. Why was my body reacting like this?
Half the world looked as if it were submerged underwater. I held on, stuffed more rice into my mouth, and felt my body slowly recovering. I clung to the hope that tomorrow would be better. Because muscles regenerate and grow stronger, right? Tomorrow would be easier than today. The day after that, even easier. It wouldn’t be this brutal. Tomorrow would be a little better. Just hold on a little longer. Yeah.