Banned
Geumtaeyang.
What exactly was a Geumtaeyang?
The word itself meant a blonde, tanned delinquent. Anyone could see it was a character stitched together from three unmistakable traits slammed into one. He had a cheap, flashy look about him, ran with a rotten crowd, and made a habit of sleeping with other people's women.
Put like that, there wasn't a bigger piece of shit walking the earth. Just some third-rate thug who had the gall to steal another man's girl.
But from another angle, Geumtaeyang had more than a little alpha male in him. His personality might have been filthy, but he possessed every physical feature a woman could want. Superior height. Just the right amount of muscle. A handsome face. And a massive cock to match.
Weren't those the perfect credentials for conquering the world of Hitobi?
Of course, Geumtaeyang's appearance shifted a little from work to work… but the one I was going to draw had every last one of those traits. Because that was what would make people look. This was a world where a man's muscles were worth more than a woman's tits, so I had no choice but to cram in the best possible specs.
And just like that, I finished a Geumtaeyang who was a perfect alpha male — dirty in the personality department, and nowhere else. A biologically superior man who would make this world's "women" wet just from looking at him.
From my original world's perspective, the equivalent would be a huge-breasted blonde tanned gyaru, wouldn't it? Just imagining a dark-skinned gyaru swaying her tits at me, trying to seduce me, was enough to make my crotch twitch on its own.
So I was certain. This would work.
"Hoo. Done."
I set the tablet pen down. A sigh escaped my lungs and scattered into the air. A full week had already passed since I'd finished the concept and started drawing. My life in that time had been monotonous to the point of absurdity. I went to school for a bit in the morning, came home, and drew all day. I must have spent at least six hours a day sitting in front of that monitor.
I hadn't originally been this diligent a person… but the approaching pressure of my bank balance left me no choice but to work. Was this how those Black slaves had felt, laboring with the threat of a whip at their backs? Slack off even a little, fail to meet today's quota, and the leather came down without mercy. Nobody slacked off when they could feel the whip waiting.
And for me, that leather whip was my bank account. No matter how carefully I spent, watching the numbers drain away day after day made my body move on its own. Why? Because otherwise I'd die. In a few days a brutal zero-balance account would be waiting for me. So I had no choice but to work like a saint.
Ah, yes. A person needs a certain amount of desperation before their productivity actually goes up. Those cruel big-nosed bastards hadn't stood behind Black slaves with whips just because they were sadists. It was purely for the sake of output. It was a moment I almost understood how those fucking racists felt. People really don't move unless you beat them.
Anyway. I finished the comic over the course of a week and uploaded it straight to Pinbox. No such thing as free. From now on, anyone who wanted to read this comic would have to pay me a regular fee of four dollars a month.
The plot was painfully simple. Our horny friend Geumtaeyang hunted the pretty female characters around him and fucked them. Conquering this world's "women," who wanted nothing more than to get fucked, drawn at the least repulsive level I could manage. That was my Maginot Line.
This being my first work on this side, I had no intention of complicating the story. I figured I'd use the adjustment period to go hard on the visual stimulus and keep the plot simple. People didn't come to porn comics for the story. They came to jerk off. This was the right amount.
From here on, Geumtaeyang would drink his way through women's pussy juice and grow up big and strong. I checked the numbers on my supporter account with that hope in mind, certain that consumers who recognized quality trash would have rushed to pay.
But.
The money inside Pinbox was still a hollow void.
"Kh—!"
For a second that emptiness nearly punched a hole straight through my chest, but I pulled myself together fast. I nodded, more or less accepting it. Fair enough. It hadn't even been up that long. There was no way anyone had already found it and paid.
The world did not revolve around me. No matter how high the quality, people couldn't pay for a work they never saw. I needed to get noticed, at least a little.
Fortunately, I had confidence. Surprisingly, the very concept of a Geumtaeyang seemed vague in this world. Maybe it was a difference of the gender-reversed world, or something that had diverged in the course of cultural development. Either way, a Geumtaeyang character was fairly rare here. Tanned guys, delinquent guys, blonde guys — those existed separately. The hybrid that fused all three did not.
That was excellent news for me. Scarcity made money wherever you went.
"All right. Time to promote!"
With that decided, I went straight to BC to advertise. The place was packed with every damp, unsavory desire and thought imaginable, which made it perfect for grabbing attention. It was also the only place I actually knew, and it wasn't as though I could promote on Facebuk or Ingsta.
Clack clack clack.
I hammered the keyboard and threw up a simple post.
I kept the tone as polite as possible and threw in a little poor-me act to harvest sympathy points. My situation really was hanging by a thread, so it wasn't even a lie. On top of that I'd cropped a section of the comic and attached it, so the promotion should have been more than enough.
The cropped panel was a shot of Geumtaeyang with his shirt off. Low angle, composed so that he seemed to be looking down at the viewer. That was all it was. I'd covered everything below the waist. The only bare skin was his upper body, so I figured there was no chance of it getting taken down.
"Oh."
The view count climbed with terrifying speed the moment the post went up. I mashed refresh and pictured the comments that would roll in. All right. This time I'd drawn something tailored to their godawful taste. The product of me coughing up blood to survive. They wouldn't be able to do nothing but curse me out like last time. Comments like hot damn and holy fuck that's hot were guaranteed.
And at first, my prediction held. Comments close to what I'd imagined started landing.
Every last one of them gasping or stunned. I smiled with satisfaction. So it did work. The picture I'd used to promote myself this time hadn't been rejected. The thought of the money that would land in my account made a smile spread across my face all by itself.
But only for a moment. Comments of a very different flavor started appearing.
"Huh?"
What the hell were they talking about. A crackdown? I was still trying to parse the nonsense when my post vanished, and a notification landed on me.
"What?"
The question popped out of me automatically at the ridiculous message. I'd posted one thing and gotten a thirty-day ban? And the reason was pornography, when I'd covered everything that needed covering? It was completely unbelievable.
Wondering if I'd hallucinated the whole thing, I tried posting again. Every attempt came back with the same account-blocked notification. Anger started boiling up out of nowhere.
"You've got to be kidding me."
It was rage born of survival instinct. An account ban wasn't something you could shrug off. Not being able to post meant one of my promotional channels had just been sealed shut, and that was a serious problem. For someone like me, promotion mattered. More eyes meant more recognition, and more recognition meant more people paying for my work.
Sure, there was a sample up on Paxiv, so anyone motivated enough would find me on their own… but not everyone was going to be that proactive.
"I covered everything that needed covering, so why the fuck did it get taken down."
I couldn't make sense of it, so I asked Seong A-rin for her opinion. Her relatively gentle personality made her easy to go to with this kind of question.
I sent her the image I'd included in the post. For questions like this, a one-on-one open chat was more comfortable. It wasn't that different from a private chat, but it felt a little more official, which I liked. That was probably why the polite speech came out automatically — but I was fine with that for this kind of conversation anyway.
"…Chest?"
What was she talking about.
He's a guy, though?
In that instant, I remembered all over again that this place ran on a different set of common sense. I'd been thinking entirely from my own standards. A man's chest could be exposed a hundred times and it wouldn't matter. Except it did!
By this world's "women's" standards, a chest was a perfectly valid turn-on. This hadn't been some picture straddling the line of daylight. It had been sitting fully in the dark. I could feel everything I thought I knew shattering to pieces.
"I really cannot get used to this…"
Still, I understood that I'd been in the wrong. I could accept the reason I'd been banned. That was all, though. The fundamental problem — that my promotional channel had been sealed — remained unsolved. I asked her again, looking for a way out.
Well. She had a point. The regulations there were relatively loose, but the line still existed. It was a somewhat awkward community to promote a Pinbox on. The second you posted a nude, you were getting taken down. I just hadn't expected it to happen that fast…
But what was I supposed to do. It was the only place I knew. Whether some site addresses had changed when I crossed over, or something else, the places I used to know were hard to find.
I had no choice but to ask her again. She was a fellow degenerates, so she had to know something…
But all that came back was that she didn't know. Disappointment seized my chest.
I left the chat as-is. The lie she tacked on at the end, I naturally ignored.
I set my phone down, and a cold silence settled over me. The problem was still unsolved. I pressed my fingers to my forehead and muttered.
"So what now…"
I considered waiting out the thirty days, but that wasn't an option. Any other time it wouldn't have mattered, but right now every last dollar was precious. The trickle of money coming in was nowhere near enough. Commissions hadn't been coming in lately either… which meant I needed to get Pinbox moving, fast.
So I sat there and turned it over. How was I supposed to get out of this. Was there anyone else I could even ask.
Someone flickered through my mind. I picked the phone back up and opened the chat list. One name caught my eye. I muttered to myself.
"Maybe I should ask this one…"
My eyes were locked on a username: HopelessMe.