The Con Artist Became a Beautiful Girl (2)
What the hell is this situation—!
That thought had come out as nothing more than a raw, wailing "Waaah—!" From that day on, I started my second run at life wearing the name tag Eun Harin.
I was Kang Sunwoo—former ace host at a high-end host club, professional romance scammer, and all-around con artist—with every last memory of my past life intact. Sure, the catastrophic loss of the 22-centimeter large-caliber barrel that had once reeled in countless women was a genuine tragedy. But every time I looked at the face in the mirror, I cheered myself on from the inside.
Damn, I'm pretty. Way prettier than any of the women I used to scam.
Silver hair that glittered like grains of sand whenever the light hit it. Two eyes as clear and blue as a lake. If the first world I'd seen after being born hadn't been a twenty-first-century maternity ward, I honestly would have wondered whether I'd dropped into some fantasy realm.
My mother was Russian, apparently. Even among Russians, silver hair and blue eyes aren't exactly common—how my father managed to produce me with her remains a mystery to this day.
What was I going to do with a face like this?
Long before I could even walk, I was already drafting my entire life plan from the cradle.
Start as a kids' clothing model, move into child acting, then full modeling. Break into entertainment and live off pure looks alone.
My family—my parents, that is—weren't particularly well-off. The silver lining was that I'd started in a functional household instead of an orphanage. Solidly middle-class, living in the Gyeonggi area. I could just take one of the cases from the women I'd previously "worked" and apply the same playbook.
Build capital as a child model, go independent as an adult, then roll that seed money into bigger things. When crypto hit the market, invest early. Use the stock charts still burned into my memory. Instant life success.
No more scams.
Having died once already, I'd decided not to walk the same path as my previous life. Live cleanly. ...Well, not that far—but at the very least, don't become a criminal. Make money comfortably, live rich, and just don't pull the same reckless garbage I had last time.
If I got to grow up with the face I'd seen right before dying in my past life—if that was a locked-in future—what was there to regret?
"Mom. Is this my little sister?"
"That's right, Woojin."
There was something.
A significantly older brother—ten years my senior. The reason I call him a little bastard is tightly bound to the first time the karmic curse from my past life ever manifested.
Babbling had been fine. The problems started the moment I learned language and began speaking in earnest.
"Honey. Did you take money out of my wallet?"
"No?"
"Weird. There was definitely fifty thousand won in there...."
Around the time I turned five and that guy was a fifteen-year-old middle schooler, something strange started happening in our house.
"Maybe you dropped it somewhere? You drop things all the time."
"Maybe.... Damn it, where is it? Did I leave it in my pants when I did laundry?"
"I already checked all the pants. Let's look together. It might've fallen under the bookshelf."
We had a thief in the house.
That thief was none other than my brother, Eun Woojin.
A rotten little punk who was already bold enough, at that age, to stick his hands in our parents' wallets. He was careful about it, thinking he could even fool me—
But he couldn't fool my eyes.
To a former professional con artist, that clumsy little theft was impossible to miss. For someone who could slip a bill out of a wallet mid-kiss as easily as a crab tucking away its eyes, his technique was completely transparent.
How was I going to steer him onto the right path?
Unlike me, born a beautiful girl, his looks were mediocre enough that a club bouncer would probably turn him away at the door. To keep him from becoming a scammer himself and wrecking his little sister's future, I decided to nip his sticky-finger habit in the bud for the sake of my own solid life plan.
I decided to.
Which is to say: I failed.
In my past life, I would have gathered evidence, taken photos, left him with nowhere to run—but I was five. No personal smartphone to collect proof with. I just went with common sense.
"Mom!"
Looking back, it was definitely careless. The moment our parents were distracted, I caught him red-handed slipping a fifty-thousand-won bill out of the wallet and shouted on the spot.
"Woojin hyung took money out of the wallet!"
One hundred percent true. He'd done it before, so this was essentially a field bust.
"He's got the money in his hand!"
A fact confirmed with my own two eyes.
"Woojin?"
"N-no, this is my allowance. Harin's just saying weird stuff."
Like any first-time petty thief getting caught, he spun a lie that wouldn't convince a toddler.
Right. It was definitely a lie.
The problem was the single sentence that flashed through my mind in that exact moment.
Your words shall never be taken as truth for as long as you live.
It didn't happen under ordinary circumstances. Only at the most critical moments—as if the ghost of Cassandra herself were screaming "Now!!"—did the curse activate.
Slap!
"Ow, why'd you hit me?!"
"Harin, are you trying to pin this on your brother and lie about it?"
"...What?"
I'd gotten smacked across the back.
"I knew it ever since yesterday, when you spilled cookie crumbs under the sink and said your brother ate them! Ugh, honestly...!"
"No, I'm telling the truth! He stole it...!"
"Enough! You're going to keep lying to the end?"
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Was it because I'd reincarnated? The curse was so powerful it twisted the truth even for blood relatives.
And just like that, from the age of five, I became "that brazen little girl who lies at every opportunity."
That was the moment.
The moment I became certain my life was completely screwed.
Elementary school. The time I said I'd done my homework and my brother had thrown it in the trash.
Harin. Next time, just be honest and say you played around because you didn't want to do your homework. Promise with your teacher. Understood?
Ah.
I realized then that words alone weren't going to cut it anymore.
Middle school. The looks that had been ripening since elementary school fully bloomed, and idol trainee offers started rolling in.
Eun Harin. I heard you hit Jihyun—is that true? If we pursue this as school violence....
Here. Evidence.
...Ah, ahem, ahem. This is why you need to watch your conduct on a regular basis....
Since talking didn't work, I meticulously gathered and submitted evidence—and somehow that made me "the calculating bitch who'd prepared for this in advance."
Still, after ten years of living as a lying little shit—sorry, a lying girl—I developed a few techniques. People might not believe my words, but they believed video evidence, recordings, contracts, and the like. Even if I stood in a courtroom and every word out of my mouth counted as perjury, the materials I prepared would at least be treated as "submitter is suspicious, but no evidence of fabrication found."
Then came the year I entered high school.
Eun Harin, what is going on with your hair?
It's natural.
What? Natural? Where do you get off telling such a blatant lie...!
Are you going to claim my mother's hair is dyed too?
...Ahem. Ahem. Ugh, that brat....
My externally evaluated character was thoroughly ruined, and I simply decided to live with it.
And because of that...
Eun Harin. Join our crew.
Jaehyung hyung said he wants to go out with you?
Ah, fuck.
I kept getting tangled up with the school delinquents, so I went looking for a new place to escape high school.
Starting training at seventeen is a bit late... but Harin's looks are solid enough. Mind if I call you Harin-ssi?
The idol industry.
A business world where even a seventeen-year-old high schooler could receive a certain degree of adult treatment. My visuals were more than enough—if the dancing and singing held up, I could walk straight into a debut lineup.
Fans, you know I love you, right?!
Yes! Harin-ssi, you're the best!
And since it was an industry where lies could actually work in a positive(..) direction, a path gradually started to open up.
I'd had plenty of entertainment talent even in my past life. Redirecting the skills I'd honed for seducing women toward fans wasn't particularly difficult.
Debuting as a female idol? No problem. If I just thought of it as running a scam through a screen, it wasn't hard at all.
What was hard... was the debut itself.
There was one fellow trainee in the same debut group, and getting involved with her caused problems.
Shin Chae-a.
A kind-hearted kid with a glass mentality who always made me feel a little sorry for her. She'd made it into the debut lineup but was constantly being put through re-evaluations.
Chae-a. Don't lose heart.
We were supposed to debut together, after all, so I stuck my nose in for the sake of future business.
Your tone is genuinely one of a kind. I'll stay up all night fixing your dance if I have to, so don't give up. I want you to debut with us as the team's main vocal.
At least that much was sincere. A twenty-nine-year-old man from a past life, now a seventeen-year-old high school girl, couldn't just ignore a crying seventeen-year-old.
Harin.
And the response I got back was—
You're really cruel.
...Huh?
The curse activated.
Everyone here already knows you dance well and sing well. Do you have to feed me pity like that?
This little bitch?
I barely managed to hold back the curse that almost flew out of my mouth.
No, I just wanted to help you....
Forget it! I'm sick of your fake act!
No—
Shin Chae-a stormed out of the room, and I was left standing there completely stunned.
And then, well... she ran a full public-opinion campaign inside the team.
A two-faced fox. A personality disaster who crushed her fellow trainees the moment her debut was locked in. Great skills, terrible character—total trash.
This is... solo debuts for female idols aren't easy.
Producer-nim.
Is there any way you could mesh with the other four? We know Harin's talent, but from our side, going out as a team—
I'll leave the team.
......Alright. You've worked hard. But there really wasn't any school violence, right?
You saw my clean school record and you're still saying that? Ha. Unbelievable.
I pulled out of the debut group. Fortunately no financial issues came of it, and I was able to leave the agency completely clean.
People really are shameless—after debuting without me, they promptly fell apart and vanished into thin air.
And so, with the path to idol debut blocked, I didn't take the CSAT. The moment I became an adult, I went independent.
You're not planning to go somewhere shady and make money in some weird way, are you....
I'm not, so don't bother looking for me.
Harin!
I'll take care of my own future, so don't call me later asking me to pay off that gambling addict's debts for him.
Harin...!
I had no choice but to go independent. They say blood is thicker than water, but maybe because I was never originally Eun Harin, my family never trusted me at all.
Still, Harin's visuals are solid... if you change your mind, get in touch. We still have some of the money Harin earned for us.
That money—Mom or Oppa didn't take any of it, right?
Of course not. We're not that much of a piece of trash... ahem.
Good to know. Just hold the settlement until I become an adult.
There were plenty of other problems stacked up regardless... but even looking at the objective facts alone, the internet would have been screaming "Is that even a family?"
So I went independent.
Life really does repeat itself—I entered society at twenty with a three-million-won deposit on a studio apartment.
How was I going to live?
I figured I'd start with a convenience store part-time job just to keep afloat. As long as I could land a factory or office job and pull a paycheck, I'd figure out the rest somehow. Dye my hair black so I wouldn't draw trouble, hide my eyes behind colored contacts, and just survive however I could.
That was the plan, anyway.
"No, I'm telling you I have zero interest in you, boss."
"You can stop playing hard to get, Harin."
...The world had no intention of leaving a twenty-year-old girl living alone in peace.
"You don't like Oppa? Okay, got it. Our Harin's a little feisty, huh?"
Fuck.