Being Handsome Is Everything
Yu Ri-ra and her friends stood boldly in front of the Deluxe fan meeting venue, where a massive crowd was already swarming.
“Finally…!!”
“We actually made it!!”
“Oppas… we’re here!”
Do you have a moment in your life that stands above all others?
Yu Ri-ra could answer with absolute confidence.
This… this is it!!
Having won the brutal ticket war and arrived at her ultimate bias’s fan meeting, this was the most radiant day in her nineteen years of existence.
Her face was flushed, her legs were shaking, her heart was pounding like a drum, and dopamine flooded her system in waves.
Never mind that she had completely bombed her mock exam.
Never mind that they were third-year high school students staring down the college entrance exam.
She couldn’t hold back! Not when her bias’s smiling face was plastered across the entire outer wall of the gymnasium. How could anyone expect her to resist that?
“He’s gotten even hotter… every single day is a new peak for him.”
“I thought they’d reuse the same photo again… but wow, the uniform. I’m in heaven.”
“Did JM finally come to their senses…? Slurp…”
Deluxe—the flagship eleven-member boy group from JM, one of the country’s top three entertainment agencies.
An overwhelmingly dominant face!
An appearance with literally no openings!
And on top of that, they had cuteness, sexiness, and decadence all wrapped into one complete visual gift set—they had prepared everything you could possibly want!
Sound repetitive?
That’s because it was. This group ran entirely on faces.
JM had meticulously scouted the most handsome individuals across the nation, assembling only the absolute top rankers in every charm category to create a literal dream team.
When they stood on stage, lighting was unnecessary. Their faces were so bright it hurt to look directly at them.
Even the girls who used to sneer, ‘Heh, they’re just idols,’ would gladly open their wallets the moment they saw those faces, skill be damned. Just as Yu Ri-ra and her friends had done.
“Hoo. We can’t stand here with half-hearted determination. You girls ready?”
“Obviously.”
“Of course we are.”
When Yu Ri-ra asked with a solemn expression, the two friends who had pondered the very essence of beauty alongside her nodded firmly.
Three massive “cannons” emerged from their bags.
Our moments never return.
The oppa you photograph today is different from the one you’ll photograph tomorrow, and true fan activities demand doing everything possible to preserve today’s beauty.
That was the way of the fan. Nod.
With confident strides, they marched inside.
Wishing for this moment to be remembered forever…
Just as they were about to step through the entrance—
“Excuse me.”
“…??!!”
The deep male voice from behind sent chills racing down their spines.
In a space that was practically a male-free zone, a man’s voice was the last thing they expected.
It probably wasn’t “Do you know the way to enlightenment?”
Maybe it was a manager using insider slang?
Or had direct photography been banned?
Her mind was going blank when the voice called out again.
“Excuse me…?”
“…Y-yes?”
In the end, Yu Ri-ra and her friends turned around with the most pitiful expressions they could muster. And the moment they did—
“Eek?!”
The instant their eyes traced the perfect line from shoulders to neck to jaw, their breath caught in their throats. An ideal egg-shaped face with features arranged in proportions that defied human understanding.
There was purity dwelling in those seductive lips. Gentleness rested on that sharp nose bridge. Yet behind the slightly drooping eyes that looked like morning dew might fall from them hid the fragrance of decadence.
And one must not forget the playful spark hidden within those clear, double-lidded pupils.
She had heard of faces possessing reverse charm, but each individual feature having its own hidden reverse appeal? What kind of nonsense was that!
She didn’t even know anymore! It was real!
In her nineteen years of fangirling, she had never encountered a face with such multifaceted charm.
To pack into one human being enough appeal to sustain someone for an entire lifetime—and to make it all harmonize so flawlessly!
Yu Ri-ra felt as if she had glimpsed the very origin of the world.
God was not infallible. He made mistakes. The existence of a face like this on earth was proof enough.
At some point Yu Ri-ra had forgotten how to speak. She simply stared at the man with enchanted eyes.
“Would your name happen to be Yu Ri-ra?”
“…Yes…”
“Ah! Found you. I’ve been waiting. I’m Lee Shin of the Mir Guild. I’d like to speak with you for a moment… regarding the fan meeting—”
Lee Shin extended his business card, his gaze drifting toward the light stick in her hand.
In that instant, Yu Ri-ra casually glanced down at the glowing baton, then smoothly slipped it into her bag as if it had never existed.
Then she said,
“Let’s go.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s go talk.”
Being handsome was everything.
Yes.
Yu Ri-ra was a hopeless eolppa.
She had always loved beautiful, handsome things.
In daycare and kindergarten, Yu Ri-ra had always gravitated toward the prettiest and most handsome children.
She only followed the beautiful and handsome teachers.
They had to be good-looking. Only then could she feel happy just by looking at them, only then would her entire day feel bright.
It was only natural that someone like her would end up chasing idols.
Being handsome was the best.
Just looking at them made smiles spill from her lips and her shoulders dance with joy.
Adolescent gloom? Anxiety?
When Yu Ri-ra felt those things, she simply looked at her oppas. The moment she saw those eyes, noses, and lips, every worry vanished.
Her room during puberty had been plastered wall-to-wall with photos of her idols.
Being handsome was everything.
The conclusion was clear. Standards of beauty and all that nonsense aside, a man had to be handsome first.
Kind-looking? Good proportions? Attractive? Unique? Great vibe?
Those were just fancy words. Imitations could never defeat the original.
True handsomeness was decided in a single glance.
The kind that sent shivers down your spine and made the back of your neck tingle—the pure, one-hundred-percent, bone-deep shock of ‘Wait, that person is the same species as me?’ That was real handsomeness.
And so, at the tail end of her teenage years, right when her sense of self was solidifying, Yu Ri-ra had become a first-rate eolppa.
The group moved to a pleasant café.
“You look really different from your photo…”
“Haha, that was probably because it was heavily mosaiced.”
“Sorry for not recognizing you.”
“Haha, not at all. Actually, I consider it fortunate. It’s a bit awkward to say this myself, but my past isn’t exactly the most educational thing for students to know about. Anyway, you girls are fans of Deluxe?”
“Yes!”
“We love them!”
“I loved them… I guess.”
“Then if you’d like, I can get you concert tickets. I’m personally close with the JM representative. We grab meals and drinks together, that sort of thing.”
“Really?!”
“You even know the JM representative?”
“I think I’m good. I was planning to leave them behind starting today.”
“Ri-ra?!”
“Heh, just as I thought.”
“Wow, could you smile one more time?”
“Why wouldn’t I? A hundred times over.”
Hahaha~
Hohoho~
Lee Shin laughed brightly among the girls.
The girls laughed while looking at Lee Shin.
Everyone seemed to radiate hearts from their entire bodies, as if the world itself were overflowing with happiness.
Everyone except Chae Dong-ha.
“…What the hell is going on.”
He simply could not understand the situation.
Weren’t these the same girls he had seen at the fan meeting? The ones who had fought tooth and nail in the expensive ticket war and arrived armed with light sticks and cameras?
They were clearly fans of that Deluxe group.
Yet the moment they saw Lee Shin, they had pulled a one-eighty so sharp it would have impressed the police, and now they were shooting hearts at him nonstop.
Even Chae Dong-ha, who had a younger sister around their age, found it downright creepy.
“And why was that guy even at a fan meeting?”
It made sense that they had come up from Busan to Seoul to find a new AD Carry.
Given how unpredictable Lee Shin was—especially after the Mountain King incident—Chae Dong-ha hadn’t thought much of it.
But he never could have imagined the new recruit would be a high school girl currently blasting hearts out of her eyes. Wasn’t recruitment usually about bringing in famous or promising prospects?
Not only had Lee Shin singled out Yu Ri-ra among all those people, but he had perfectly tracked her movements, and had even been completely certain that a simple greeting would be enough to win her over.
Everything had gone exactly as Lee Shin predicted. Despite this being their first meeting!
“How about this pose?”
“Yes!”
“What about like this?”
“You’re so cool!”
It had turned into a small-scale fan meeting.
Lee Shin was now happily striking poses for them.
The girls were using the cameras that should have been capturing their oppas to photograph an entirely different oppa instead. A few customers in the back were even sneakily snapping pictures with their phones.
“Ha… I give up.”
Chae Dong-ha felt like he had been dropped into a one-eyed world while possessing two perfectly functional eyes. None of this made sense by any normal standard.
“Um… Secretary. Am I the strange one here, or are they the strange ones?”
“…”
“Sorry. I was just feeling frustrated.”
And it was only natural that Chae Dong-ha couldn’t understand.
The character known as Yu Ri-ra was simply that unique.
You can’t try to understand Yu Ri-ra with your head.
Eolppa.
In short, this character was completely obsessed with faces.
Being handsome was everything, and everything had to be beautiful. It was somewhat shallow, but it was an aesthetic instinct that most humans secretly harbored deep down.
In Yu Ri-ra’s case, that instinct had grown so absurdly strong that it went beyond simply chasing beauty. It affected her physical condition and even her absolute stats. When a handsome person was nearby, her mind would calm and her condition would improve dramatically. She was quite literally the greatest eolppa in existence—someone whose body was ruled by beauty itself.
And the trait that perfectly represented this character was none other than Appearance Supremacy.
A unique trait that grants stat synergy equal to the average charm score of the guild members. An ability only she possesses.
At first glance it might seem like a gimmick for entertainment programs, but its grade was SS-rank.
When used in idol-squad concepts, she single-handedly dominates every round.
Since she was this serious about faces, it was only natural that the moment Yu Ri-ra saw Lee Shin, she would abandon Deluxe and everything else to follow him.
Charm 101.
At this moment, the person with the highest charm in the world was Lee Shin.
Therefore, according to the system’s current standards, the most handsome person in the world was also Lee Shin.
If Park Su-bin was Lee Shin’s dedicated tank, then Yu Ri-ra was a character who had been planned from the very moment he created the ‘Lee Shin’ character.
I wonder how much she’ll shine once she’s under me? Even I can’t quite predict it.
Since Lee Shin had never raised charm to such an extreme level before, he couldn’t accurately calculate Yu Ri-ra’s potential while she stood beneath his 101 charm.
But one thing was certain.
This Yu Ri-ra would show him a side completely different from any version of her he had seen before.
Lee Shin watched the chattering girl with an expression that said he could barely contain his interest. Then he spoke.
“Shall we wrap up the ice-breaking and get to the main topic? Vice Leader, could you escort these young ladies for a moment?”
“Yes, right this way.”
“Ah, okay!”
“Ri-ra, we’ll be over there.”
“Mm.”
Lee Shin and Yu Ri-ra.
Finally, the two of them were alone.
“Have you ever heard of our Mir Guild?”
“Sorry. I’m not really interested in the league.”
“No need to apologize. Then do you at least know what the league is about?”
“Oh! That I know. It’s where hunters come out and go thwack-thwack at each other, right?”
“Thwack-thwack. Perfect. You’ve got it.”
When Yu Ri-ra cutely thrust her little fists forward in a thwack-thwack motion, Lee Shin clapped enthusiastically.
“Our Mir Guild currently has a slight crack in that thwack-thwack.”
Thanks to Park Su-bin’s performance as the final weapon of Round 1—the ‘Finger’—they had achieved an overwhelming victory. However, to Lee Shin, that round had clearly exposed the limits of the Mir Guild.
It wasn’t simply a lack of experience.
What concerned Lee Shin was this:
Desperately hopeless damage dealing.
DPS that hit rock bottom beyond imagination.
Yes. They needed damage. Real damage.
It couldn’t be helped. Park Jeong-seok was a bruiser who served as a sub-dealer, and what Lee Hye-jung brought to the table was crowd control through poison and speed, along with lane control—not damage.
Even Park Su-bin, who had hard-carried Round 1, had done so by rendering the opponent’s attacks powerless with flawless defense. He wasn’t a damage-focused style.
The Mountain King was in no position to deal damage because of his public promise.
In the end, the team’s damage output had to come from the AD Carry, yet their current marksman was a spoon who couldn’t deal any damage at all.
“…It’s a fatal problem. To win at thwack-thwack, you need to throw punches, but our punches are cotton balls. Against average opponents we can win through sheer weight class, but the moment we face someone with even a little technique, we’ll struggle.”
Winning itself wasn’t difficult.
But Lee Shin wanted something greater—an unbroken ‘legend’ that allowed not even a single loss. For that, a spoon was useless. He needed a real dealer.
“That’s why I came looking for you, Yu Ri-ra. Ri-ra, will you join us?”
“Huh? Me?”
“Yes. Please become our AD Carry.”
“Ah… um, I’m sorry but…”
Yu Ri-ra pointed at herself with wide, round eyes.
“I haven’t awakened yet.”
Even so, Lee Shin simply smiled.
As if that were the most natural thing in the world.
“I know. That’s why we’re going to go awaken you right now.”