The Con Artist Became an Export Model (2)

I was riding the KTX back to my studio — which doubled as my home.

Not the standard car, either. First class. A single window seat, watching the sunset bleed across the landscape as the train carried me south.

Trains always put you in front of every kind of person. Couples. Elderly parents visiting their kids. Families hauling a baby on vacation.

A weekday afternoon first-class car was relatively free of all that. Part of it was the higher fare, but the people who rode first class at this hour tended to be a certain type.

Businessmen.

People who'd finished a work trip and were now ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠resting in first class — or people who still had to work even on the train. Laptops open, grinding out reports stuffed with English and graphs, as if they were prepping a PowerPoint for some board of executives.

Was it okay to peek at that stuff?

Eh. Probably fine. They were sneaking glances at me the whole time they worked, too.

Pretty girl walks by, eyes follow. That's just how it is.

Even I — a man in my past life — still got briefly snagged by my own reflection in the mirror sometimes. Everyone else didn't stand a chance.

Thankfully nobody was taking secret photos, but plenty of them were capturing me with their eyes and their memory instead of a camera.

And I was a civilian. I hadn't done anything public-facing, and still this face pulled stares wherever I went.

An appearance that makes it genuinely hard to decide how to live.

My past life was spent in the shadows. So how was I going to live this one?

I never answered that question with a simple straight into the light, no matter what.

If I was aiming for the light, it was for one reason… money.

And the way a man falls into the shadows is very different from the way a woman does.

So I was doing everything I could to keep my moves aboveboard.

In murim terms, the light was the orthodox sects and the shadows were the unorthodox. Making money was never easy either way — but the shadows meant living under the social judgment that came with demonic arts.

In the smartphone-armed twenty-first century, that was a problem.

I had zero interest in becoming some coquettish little thing who let men put their hands all over her body.

I can see that kind of ruin coming.

Dreams.

Sometimes I dreamed.

My trainee days as an idol. After debut fell through at a major agency, a mid-tier company reached out — and what if I'd bitten?

I'd have plunged straight to the bottom of the shadows.

By now I'd probably be in the entertainment underworld, doing certain things for certain broadcast PDs and certain powerful men.

So what about swinging hard the other way, into the most male-dominated lanes possible?

I'd thought about it more than once. The problem was always the face-to-face work. You'd shoot a pictorial that pushed the rating right to the edge, the photos would leak, and you'd get buried in the shadows all over again.

No thank you.

If I was going to stay unmarried and live alone for the rest of my life, I needed money. I was playing the stock market and buying lottery tickets, sure — but raking in real seed capital was still hard.

Time will sort it out.

For now, this was the easiest, fastest path. Stream to build a foundation for the future. Whenever a gig came in, head up to the capital ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠region, shoot photos, collect the day rate.

And once I turned my eyes toward livestreaming, a whole direction I'd never known in my past life opened up.

Cosplay.

Shadow-adjacent without being pure shadow — light-adjacent without being pure light. What you'd call the "subculture" scene.

It makes money.

I could do it. If it was me.

And it might help both the stream and the side hustle.

I'm going to grind like a dog before I get old.

Want to live like a minister without working? You need enough money that money itself starts earning money. And for that, you had to be ruthless.

Work hard.

After getting home on the bus and subway, I checked that I still had time before stream and fired up the internet immediately.

Stream content prep was already finished on the train. What I needed to look into now boiled down to two things.

Cosplay.

Not just any cosplay. The most mainstream cosplay in this scene was, of course, anime and game characters.

Question: did places like Comic World or Comic-Con actually generate revenue?

Not at all.

If simply cosplaying made money, every professional hustler on earth would have claimed a booth. Cosplay was a billboard. You used yourself as a model at doujin events, built a photo portfolio, and turned it into a traffic funnel.

The real direct revenue came from digital photobooks and merch sales. Partner with a company and that pipeline got solid…

There's also stuff like OnlyFans.

There were places where a light shadow-move would do the job. Non-contact ways to rake in cash by the fistful. The internet was already full of decent business models, wasn't it?

Cosplay on YouTube while playing piano, then use the exposure to funnel people toward a personal photobook. Or dump B-cut photos on a global tip-based subscription platform and pull in fixed income.

That was gray area.

Sink too deep and you might lose your shot at the big contracts. Say, a cosplay event scout from a mega game company. I'd heard there were studios so flush with cash they paid cosplay models a full regular person's monthly salary — per day.

For them, large-scale event cosplay was fundamentally advertising for their own games. But when it came to setting labor rates, a little self-actualization crept in — "we're hosting a concert," "this is avant-garde" — and the numbers got generous.

If I was aiming for that?

Cosplay photos of characters with a little skin were fine. But if the main lane was adult 19+ streaming…

I'd make money, sure. But one wrong step and I'd actually get assaulted.

The risk was too high.

I'd worked the host bars in Gangnam in my past life. I never used them myself, but I knew full well there were people who leaned on drugs to go full predator.

Not that everyone in that line of work did that kind of thing.

But I would be the one it happened to.

I could see it. What was I supposed to do with that?

Other cosplayers filtering out of the venue. A sudden DM. A private side room. A hand of darkness reaching out of the gloom. Refuse and the work dried up. Accept and you'd get paid, but…

"Tsk."

The light was still better. Right now I didn't need to eat the risk of the shadows. Even if the start was a little ruthless, locking down a foundation and aiming for the light was the far smarter play.

That said, I was not giving up the money cosplay could make. A path to cash using this face and this body was sitting right there — no reason not to take it.

I can't just lie in bed doing nothing during the hours I'm not streaming.

A day had twenty-four hours. Eight for streaming, eight for sleep — that still left eight I couldn't spend sprawled out killing time. If those eight hours also went toward making money, just not through the stream?

"Decision made."

No-cam streaming and modeling. Dual track.

No-cam could stay no-cam forever, or — once some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠money stacked up — pivot into VTubing. Modeling could keep going the way it was now, fashion magazines and shopping-mall promo work, or swing into cosplay if the pay there started coming in high.

I should build out a bunch of portfolio shots.

Business email, SNS accounts — all of it needed to be separate from the stream. Luckily, I was already good at running multiple accounts and keeping them surgically isolated.

In my past life I ran four women at once and never got caught.

I could do this. If it was me. I'd done it before. I knew.

The problem was…

"It always comes down to money."

What did cosplay actually require?

If you were just doing it for fun, cheap costumes worked fine. But commissioning real cosplay outfits cost a fortune. One look at those bisque-doll cosplayers told you everything. The baseline assumption was that you already had an exceptional base model — and even those people poured the money they earned modeling into production costs and high-end cameras for proper cosplay.

If that was true for a hobby, I was trying to make this a real job.

Fortunately, my base model didn't fall short of theirs. The problem was that even though my height was about the same as a gyaru high-school beauty, I was closer to the big-chest side of the pool — the kind where shirt buttons threatened to pop — which narrowed the character selection.

Well. Even if the chest armor sat a little differently…

More was better. Bigger was better.

Which meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that early on, I'd have no choice but to hunt costumes with a budget-scavenger mindset. Rent from cosplay specialty shops, or scoop cheap ones off Chinese shopping sites—

"Hm?"

I was net-surfing, poking through shopping malls, when—

"…Oho."

My eyes lit up.

"This is it."

Something that worked for cosplay and for stream content. No — I'd already planned this when I was thinking about stream content. I'd just turned it down a few times under the pressure of funding.

A major mobile game. A chunky little character. Half-cam cosplay dual-lane proxy-gacha specialist stream—

"…But I can't do that one yet."

Not right now. That was for after the stream had properly matured.

"First — today's broadcast."

Stream time had arrived. I went live.

Beep.

Ten viewers the moment the stream started. A good sign. People drawn in by the thirty-three-win aggro.

"Hello, everyone."

Playing any other game in front of these people would be suicide, so the content was locked to PoChamps for now.

"Starting today, I'm climbing the Master Ball ranks."

The demands were already all over the place. After a thirty-three-win undefeated climb, some of them wanted the streak to keep going — or something else entirely in a new shape.

But a streamer had to push the content they'd prepared. If the stream tanked and viewers bailed, then you pivoted on the spot. Until then, you had to believe the content you'd built would land.

Unfortunately, I couldn't see the future right this second.

That's probably a good thing.

If future sight had PP — technical points — you didn't want to burn them on whether the content succeeded. You only needed the foresight to show up inside the broadcast itself.

"Today."

Click.

I opened YouTube and queued the BGM I'd prepared in advance.

I'd heard this sound triggered instant PTSD the moment it hit your ears. A piano line ringing out, sharp and urgent.

And the core of my thirty-three-win run — budget scout or not — had been our sand shark. The Emperor.

…I'd checked the cosplay sites. Major popular character. The outfits were cheap, too.

"Today I'm going to see how far I can climb with a Sirona entry."