A World Full of Beautiful Girls
Three months ago.
I died.
It was the first day I had started hiking to build up my stamina. I saw a child lose their footing and tumble down the slope. In that instant my body sprang forward on pure reflex—to save the child. In the process I smashed my head hard against a rock, and that was how I met my end.
I have no regrets. It was not such a bad way to go. I may have died, but I managed to save one young life. And thanks to that, I was able to escape my miserable original world and be reborn in a new one.
No—more precisely, a Transcendent granted me a mature body. A grace, they said, bestowed upon those who had not been destined to die yet still willingly sacrificed their lives for others.
Name: Kang Hahwi. Age: twenty. A little on the short side, but a face so handsome it left every rival in the dust. The body I had dreamed of for so long—a body far too good for the likes of me. With that body I crossed over into the new world.
I had no family or acquaintances here, yet thanks to the Transcendent’s consideration my identity papers were perfectly in order. When I checked the wallet that had been tucked into my pocket, I found a genuine ID card and two million won in cash. I was moved. To think they would even give me money. Right then and there I dropped to the ground and bowed in gratitude for the Transcendent’s grace—once in each of the four directions.
Thank you.
This place differed from the world I had known in many ways. First of all, there existed a power that formed the root of magic: mana. Only women could wield mana, and there was not a single woman who could not. Perhaps because they had adapted to it, every woman aged slowly and possessed looks that were, without exception, far above average. In short, every woman was a beautiful girl.
As the information above already made clear, men were utterly incapable of handling mana. Perhaps because they had never adapted to it, a great many of them suffered a sharp drop in libido. At a glance it seemed similar in flavor to those gender-reversed worlds you only ever see in novels. The flavor was similar, yes—but it was no extreme role reversal. The male-to-female ratio sat at roughly four to six. Not a dramatic gap. Women themselves were not so different from the women of my previous world.
Put simply: most men had weaker sexual desire and had lost their aggressive edge. In return, women had grown more combative and far more proactive when it came to romance. That was about the size of it. Women’s libido seemed unchanged; the only real difference was that the old habit of pretending not to care about sex because of social expectations had vanished.
Even so, this alone made it a dream world. Beautiful girls everywhere, and women more forward than men. Yet I was not properly enjoying this fantasy realm at all.
How could I? Appearance may have changed, but a loser personality doesn’t just disappear.
I am a loser. I cannot hold a proper conversation with a woman—especially a pretty one. Call it a phobia that triggers exclusively for beautiful girls. And in this world every single woman is a beautiful girl. There was no woman with whom I could speak at ease.
The reason for this personality of mine was simple: trauma from my school days. A pack of girl delinquents, every last one of them stunning, and the memory of every kind of bullying they put me through was still vivid.
With a personality like this, will I even be able to adapt to the academy?
Worry came first. Tomorrow I would enter the Hunter Academy. Whether I could settle in there at all was another question entirely.
For reference: the academy accepted only those twenty and older. It was an institution that trained hunters to subjugate the monsters that emerged from dungeons. Any woman who wished could enroll. Men, however, could enter only if they possessed an ability called Shinbi.
Shinbi was a power only a tiny fraction of males could wield—a kind of superpower that let them manifest magic-like abilities without using mana. I possessed Shinbi as well. That was how I had been able to enroll.
My reason for entering the academy was nothing grand. Hunters make money. For someone without any outstanding talent, there was hardly a more attractive profession. It was a job that put your life on the line, true—but having received Shinbi, I could not simply let it go to waste.
There was one other reason. Having been given this handsome face, I also wanted to experience a proper school life for once. Make friends I clicked with. Laugh and chat over meals. Meet up downtown on weekends. Travel to the sea or a mountain valley… I wanted to settle the regrets I had never been able to fulfill in my previous life. It would not be easy with my personality, but if I kept trying, something would work out eventually.
Academy entrance day. Early morning.
“……”
Without a word I held out an envelope toward a woman. Inside was this month’s rent.
“What? You asked me to wait a little, so I figured it would take forever, but it only took a day?”
A woman dressed in a sharp black suit accepted the envelope as she spoke. Her name was Cha Seolyu—landlord of the studio apartment I had moved into three months ago, and owner of the entire building. She was twenty-nine, I had been told.
“Where’d you get the money?”
“…I, worked.”
I forced the words out with difficulty. Of course I could not meet her eyes properly.
“Work? What kind of work? Nothing shady, right?”
It was not illegal. But it was nothing to be proud of either. The money the Transcendent had given me was long gone—tuition, living expenses, rent… cash was flying out in every direction, so I had been making ends meet through games. I still lacked the courage for a regular part-time job. Even the simplest shift demanded far too much bravery from a loser like me. Anyway, this money had come from converting game currency into cash the night before.
“Why can’t you talk? Did you really earn it doing something weird?”
“No. Through games.”
Conversation was pure agony. True to a world of beautiful girls, Cha Seolyu’s looks were dazzling enough to make a man squint. If she had been an ordinary-looking older woman it would have been fine.
“Games? Don’t tell me ssalmeok?”
I simply nodded.
Only then did Cha Seolyu let out a sigh of relief.
“…Good. At least it’s nothing shady.”
An unexpected reaction. I had been bracing for a lecture about wasting time on games instead of doing something productive. She was more open-minded than I had thought.
“More importantly—today’s academy entrance day, huh.”
Cha Seolyu looked me up and down. I was wearing the academy uniform. She already knew I was scheduled to enroll; three months earlier, when I signed the lease, there had been a space for occupation on the contract and I had written “scheduled to enter the academy.” I had decided on my path even then. As an aside, so many tenants delayed rent and then vanished that she had added the occupation field simply to judge whether someone was reliable. Apparently ordinary contracts never include that line.
“Hmm. I’m worried…”
Cha Seolyu studied my face and let out a low hum. I shot her a questioning glance for half a second, then dropped my gaze again.
“Sigh. With social skills this bad, I wonder if you’ll even survive academy life.”
So she had been worrying about me. For all her cold impression, she was a warm-hearted person.
“Hahwi. You know that guys who have Shinbi tend to have rough personalities, right?”
I nodded at her question.
“If you keep acting the way you do now, you’re just asking to get pushed around at the academy. So carry yourself with confidence—confidence.”
Cha Seolyu twisted a cigarette between her fingers. I took a step back. I hated the smell of smoke.
“Ah, sorry. You hate cigarette smoke, don’t you?”
She hurriedly pulled the cigarette from her lips, slipped it back into her pocket, and continued.
“Anyway, if any bastards give you trouble at the academy, tell this noona. I’ll go find them and half-kill them for you.”
Cha Seolyu smirked, turned on her heel, and walked off with a casual wave of her hand.
“Have a good day. Don’t get hurt.”
She really did have a good heart. Even so, that pretty delinquent aura of hers made me instinctively keep my guard up.
Dungeons appear most frequently in winter. During that season academy professors and instructors are dispatched in large numbers, which is why hunter-academy entrance ceremonies across the country are generally held in May. The academy I had enrolled in was no exception; the ceremony took place at the end of the month.
So many people. My stomach’s already turning.
After arriving I stepped into the large auditorium where the ceremony would be held. There had been crowds outside, but the hall itself was packed to the rafters. Every woman without exception was a beautiful girl. Most of the men looked ordinary. I slowly scanned the room, doing my best not to meet anyone’s eyes.
Hm?
A spot where men had clustered especially thickly caught my attention. Naturally they had gravitated toward their own gender.
I should go stand over there too.
Honestly, part of me desperately wanted to stand among the women. I simply could not. Surrounded by that many beautiful girls, my heart would race so violently I might actually faint.
I was still walking when a strange sensation prickled across my skin.
……
Not one or two gazes—many pairs of eyes were fixed squarely on my face. Or was I just being self-conscious?
I flicked a sidelong glance in the direction the stares were coming from.
“Oh…”
“Wow……”
It was no illusion. A considerable number of the nearby women were openly staring at me. The moment I realized the attention of countless beautiful girls was locked onto me—
…Should I just drop out?
My lips went dry and my breath caught in my throat.