The Con Artist Became an Export Model (1)
Life is easy when you're good-looking.
Even babies prefer attractive faces—so why would society be any different?
Looksism.
Just look at the phrase "a face that looks good at studying." The more beautiful you are, the more ways there are to make money in this world.
I made a living off my face and body in my past life, too.
The direction was a little different, but I used my looks to charm countless women. Even that older prosecutor lady who told me she'd keep me out of prison if I became her man eventually tried to make me her kept boy, didn't she?
She said it herself. With a face and body like this, and a brain like this, why was I running around scamming people?
—Then try being born an orphan and living like that.
It might sound like an excuse, but that was the only environment I had. If I could go back, I'd design a different path. Not that I'm ashamed of my past as a host club ace—it's just that I now know a more effective, more efficient way to make money.
The ceiling of the legitimate world pierces the sky!
I lived in the shadows. I kept my face out of the public eye, and that's how I made my money. A world where the floor is stable but the ceiling is capped. A world where you never know when the handcuffs might come, and one wrong move could cost you everything.
The legitimate world is different. The floor is far more catastrophic than the underworld—but the ceiling? Sky-high. Celebrities who debuted as idols in their teens buying penthouses before they even hit thirty. Stories like that don't come out of nowhere in this world.
I never had marks like that myself, but I heard the stories from colleagues who'd been called out to entertain celebrities during my host club ace days.
Anyway. Without pouring fourteen hours a day into studying until your nose bleeds, just debuting in the entertainment industry lets you rake in money by the shovel-full. Especially if you start as a kid.
I was born pretty—why wouldn't I use it?
My dick may have disappeared, but in exchange I was reborn as a girl whose beauty was obvious from childhood. Naturally, I tried to pave a path into the entertainment industry from a young age. Child model, child actor—whatever path a kid could take, I tried to open it.
I even tried. Made some money, too. The fatal mistake was that the money went into my parents' accounts, not the wallet of a seven-year-old me.
Seed money? Went up in smoke.
Goddamn family bastards.
If anyone ever asked why I hate my family so much, I'd answer: because they blew through nearly a hundred million won I earned over ten years from age seven to seventeen—and on top of that, they sabotaged my entertainment debut.
The path of legitimate glory. As if the curse wasn't hard enough already, my so-called family clung to both ankles and tried to freeload off me.
Maybe next life I'll be born into a normal family.
Round one: orphan. Round two: the kind of family the internet calls "worse than having none at all."
—Trainee Eun Harin. Everything's great, okay? The dancing, the singing, and above all, the visuals. The compulsive lying? As long as she's talented and the sales come in, we can live with that… but we have to start factoring in family risk now.
There had been a major incident. The parents of an idol who'd made it big under twenty had tried to mess with the contract, and it blew up into a massive scandal. In the aftermath, whether it was one of the Big Three agencies or a mid-tier outfit, everyone was scrambling to avoid parental risk as much as possible.
…If the parent issue had been the only problem, I could have waited until I turned twenty and figured something out as an adult. But there was another problem.
—Harin. Your chest got bigger again?
—Seems that way.
—What cup are you now?
—…I-cup?
—Wow. No way.
—If you think I'm lying, feel free to check, Manager.
—Between girls, chest is… oh my god. It's real? …If this gets any bigger, we're going to have a problem.
The idol industry. A market where slender beauties are considered the gold standard, and girl groups primarily have to win over female fans.
—…Reduction surgery is out of the question, right?
—Do we really have to go that far?
—Well, it could get in the way when you're dancing, too.
—Just be honest with me.
—…The people who find it uncomfortable are the ones we have to sell to, Harin.
In the world of K-idol business, a silver-haired, blue-eyed, busty idol was simply not allowed to debut.
Hair? Dye it. Eye color? Put in contacts. But the chest? That wasn't going anywhere. I tried every kind of compression imaginable, but the more time passed, the better the development got.
In the end, I was cut. Internal jealousy played its part, and the bigger my bust measurement grew, the lower my marketability sank. If I'd been a modest C or D cup, I might have aimed for the next Waterbomb festival queen route—but an I-cup was never going to debut on the Korean peninsula.
And that went for the modeling industry, too.
The idol path I'd been eyeing had closed, but I'd also been doing some modeling work on the side, leveraging my looks. That avenue started drying up as well.
—The clothes just… don't hang right. Sigh.
—Can't you just make custom pieces?
—No. We're not exactly selling clothes overseas here.
Damn it. Other people got to shoot pictorials or act, but finding a market for me domestically was nearly impossible.
…There was a way, though.
One option was going full male-oriented.
—Hello, Ms. Eun Harin. Once you're an adult, would you be interested in shooting a Maxim pictorial?
If I was going to become the enemy of women anyway, I might as well go all the way. That route would turn half the population of South Korea against me—and turn the other half into fans who went ahh ahh somewhere no one could see.
…And every kind of unwanted advance would come flying my way.
I get that people get turned on. I just don't want the problems that happen on set.
Like right now.
Click.
"Hmm?"
I'd been holding a pose quietly in front of the main camera when I heard a faint sound.
"What was that just now?"
This was a studio. A camera shutter going off wouldn't normally be strange—except the only person who should have been making that sound, the middle-aged male director shooting me, had just stopped filming.
"Didn't you hear that?"
"Hear what…?"
"A smartphone shutter. That wasn't my camera."
The director scanned the staff behind him, voice thick with irritation. About fifteen people. Mixed genders, though women outnumbered the men—as you'd expect in women's fashion.
"Hey. You."
"Y-yes?"
"Take out your phone."
But there were definitely men here, too.
"W-why all of a sudden…?"
"That thing in your pocket. That's a phone, isn't it?"
"I-it is, but why…?"
"Damn it. Are you an industrial spy? Or are you trying to sabotage the shoot? Who the hell do you think you are, secretly photographing a set and a model?!"
Well, well. He could have just kept it in his eyes, but he had to take a picture—and got caught by the director.
"Who brought this guy in?!"
"Assistant Choi…"
"What? For fuck's sake. We'll deal with that later. Phone. Now."
Some temp prop assistant who'd come in for the day, and he'd just torched his career. The kind of screw-up that might keep him out of this industry for good.
But.
"Director?"
"Ah, Harin. This is really—"
"Let's just finish the shoot first."
I could not stand watching the schedule get delayed because the director was busy tearing into some rookie who'd messed up.
"I have somewhere else to be this evening."
"Ah, r-right. Okay. Harin, are you…"
"I'm fine."
I gave the director a slight nod, struck my pose, and flicked a glance at the male staffer still under everyone's eyes.
"You don't really think he was a spy from a competitor, or that he was planning to take peeping photos and do something with them at home, do you?"
"Uh, well, I mean—"
"He just got carried away and took a picture without thinking. Because I'm too pretty."
"……"
The air went cold. Not the awkward chill of a bad joke falling flat—the thick, clammy kind that rises to the throat, the kind no one wants to name out loud.
"Please continue."
The mood had tanked, but I struck the directed pose like a professional.
"Hurry up."
I needed to wrap this. People were waiting.
I didn't post a break notice.
To cut to the chase: the market for my I-cup body opened up overseas. It's not like small people don't exist abroad, but the demand is relatively higher.
—A beautiful model who can still work for overseas shopping malls even when hired cheap because she has no name recognition yet.
Just as there's always a hole to climb out of when the sky falls, I found a way somehow. Back in my agency trainee days, I'd been sent out on shoots all over the place. The network I'd built then became a kind of transfusion pack for my income once I hit twenty as an adult.
"Here. Today's day rate."
"Day rate?"
"There was that unpleasant incident. Consider it… something like hush money."
Getting a cash envelope on set. In an age when you can transfer money in one second on your phone, they'd stuffed 1.5 million won into an envelope?
"What happened to him?"
"Fired him."
"Why'd he take the picture?"
"Because you're pretty?"
More than the originally scheduled pay? Even for a seasonal swimsuit shoot? For someone who didn't even have SNS to promote herself with?
"…Really?"
"…I wish. If that were it, he would've just stared. Industrial spy type, basically."
"Wow. First industrial spy I've ever seen."
"Yeah. So… I'd appreciate it if you kept today's incident quiet. Think you can do that?"
Ah.
So there's money that doesn't go through the books, too.
A kind of settlement, in its own way. An adult conversation: here's an extra five hundred thousand, let's resolve this nicely.
"Thank you."
"Thanks, Harin."
I quietly slipped the envelope into my inner pocket.
"By the way… when does the payment for that seasonal item we shot last time come through?"
"Ah. That… things got complicated."
"The money's still coming, right?"
"It's not that. There's a contract. Unless the other party unilaterally cancels and refuses to pay."
"……"
"Then we'd have to sue. It'd drag on that much longer, but the money owed to you would still be paid on schedule. …Probably."
The director, who knew my situation reasonably well, scratched his head. What could you do? This wasn't some mega-agency—just a mid-tier outfit that had barely graduated from small-time.
"Harin. The shoot wrapped early… want to grab dinner?"
"I'm sorry, Manager."
"Do you actually have somewhere to be? I thought you were just saying that because you were annoyed."
"These days I make a living cooing at men for money."
"…Huh?"
The manager's face twisted instantly—but then:
"Ahaha, very funny."
She didn't believe me.
"If you were the type to make money cooing at men, you'd already be a third-year idol, kid."
"……"
The curse was one thing, but she'd known me long enough to know the kind of person I was.
And yet. I hadn't lied. I'd told the truth—she just didn't believe it.
"You're not doing some kind of internet broadcasting, are you?"
"Excuse me?"
"You know, those adult cam streams and whatever. That violates your contract."
"I'm not the type who shows her face, and I have no plans to."
I hadn't lied.
"Besides, if I went that route, I can already see a future where I fully degenerate into a female content farm."