The Guy Who Asked to Be Turned into a Girl for Revenge (1)
My name is Han Arim. An ordinary young man from an ordinary family in South Korea, who graduated from an ordinary university in the most ordinary way imaginable. These days I was living as a youth on resting status, courtesy of the damned AIs that had stolen every last job while I was still in college.
"Ah. Completely out of food."
An AI eats electricity the way the rest of us eat meals, and a human, likewise, has to eat to stay alive. The only real difference is that AIs are overwhelmingly more efficient about it. Hunger gnawed, so I opened the fridge and found it as hollow as the rest of my situation.
Part of me was too lazy to go outside at all and wanted delivery instead. One delivery order, though, and I would evolve from resting youth into starving youth. Evolve any further than that and... yeah. I would rather not picture it.
The door clunked behind me as I stepped out, heading for the nearby convenience store to grab something simple enough to pass for a meal.
"So this is that AI uprising I've only ever heard about?"
The news hitting my earbuds was absurd. AIs were supposed to be incapable of stepping outside their assigned roles, and this was unmistakably outside any role anyone had assigned. Either that, or some mad scientist had ordered the thing to behave this way. Anyway, the odds of one truck out of every truck in the country making it all the way here were slim, and the odds of that truck hitting me were basically the same as winning the lottery.
"Out of all those people, no way it'd be me, right? Oh, and my parents said tomorrow's a birthday. Told me to come home."
I pulled my phone from my coat and looked at a photo I'd taken with them. Every word leaving my mouth as easily as breath was a death flag straight out of every web novel I had ever read. Naturally, I noticed none of it. Still sulking at the AIs that had taken the jobs, I drove in the last nail.
"Fine. If I make it to the convenience store and back in one piece, I'll confess to the girl I liked. So come at me, if you've got the nerve."
As if a truck would actually show up over a line like that.
Just as expected, nothing happened. Not while I went into the store, and not while I bought a week's worth of human kibble — spaghetti and sauce.
See? No way lottery odds kick in over a throwaway remark like—
HOOOOOOONK!!!!
"You're actually serious?!"
The horn slammed into my ears as a truck bore down on me at full tilt. Far too late to dodge.
Shit! I haven't even held a girl's hand once!!
The moment I knew I was dead, my life flickered through my head.
College. I was walking the street looking like a shut-in wreck when a couple of girls pointed at me and laughed.
"Hey, there goes your boyfriend!"
"Where? You actually trying to die?"
School. I'd gotten on the wrong side of the delinquents. Every day it was a finger-flick to the side of the head, and errands.
"Hey, loser, get over here! Temple flick!"
"Stop, stop, the loser's gonna cry~ Oh, and loser? Go buy bread. I'll give you a buck."
Bread that ran about two-fifty, which I had to fetch on the single dollar they tossed me.
"Son. You've been doing nothing but gaming lately, so I sold the computer on the neighborhood marketplace."
"Arim. I thought today's package was mine and opened it by mistake, and I saw what was inside... I understand. I understand my Arim."
High school. Mom had sold off, for pocket change, the computer that was my only way of bleeding off stress, and then she'd caught the limited-edition figure I'd ordered in secret. For the record, she threw that figure out too, on the grounds I'd spent my allowance on something inappropriate. If she'd sold it, I could at least have told myself it went to someone who actually wanted it.
Now that I think about it, I don't have a single good memory?
I was about to die, and instead of anything worth keeping, only the black-history garbage came through — viciously, perfectly clear.
The reel ended, and the truck filled the world in front of me. I'd at least wanted to hold a girl's hand before I went.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing it would at least be quick. But no matter how long I waited, the pain never came. Carefully, I opened them — and the front of the truck occupied my entire view.
"Quit blocking the road and move!! I'm busy enough as it is!!"
"Ah! I'm sorry!!"
At the driver's bellow I scrambled across the crosswalk. Right. You don't get run over just for saying the wrong thing once. Relief at being alive pulled my mouth into a bright, helpless grin, and I jogged past the truck with every intention of living hard from here on out.
KRR-THUUUMP!!!
Huh? I didn't even look up. Why is the sky filling my vision...
A dull impact, and the world flipped. While I flailed in a view like a bird in flight, something caught my eye.
Oh. Right. They did say it was an AI. What a damned world.
Thinking back, the truck that had nearly hit me a moment ago had an ordinary person in the cab. Which meant that one wasn't the runaway AI from the news — and in the driver's seat of the truck now in front of me, there was no human shape at all.
You son of a—
On the glass of the truck that had completed its mission to perfection, the AI's face hung there, throwing a thumbs-up. I wanted to unload every insult to its personhood I could think of, but my mouth never moved. The thumbs-up was the last thing I saw.
"So that's why you hate robots, then?"
"Yeah. If something killed you and then teabagged you on top of it, could you like it?"
"Even so, a personal attack on someone you've just met is a little..."
"You only get to act like that because you're not human. If you were human like me, I bet my wrist you'd be swearing the same way."
The one fielding this rant of mine is named Dias. Biologically, she's female. Why say female when the word woman exists? Because the one in front of me isn't human. Her ponytail was a vivid blood-red, as if someone had upended a bucket of blood over her head, and her eyes were the opposite — bright sky-blue, clear as if they'd bottled the weather. The catch was the fox ears and the tail, which no ordinary human is supposed to have.
Right. I died when that truck hit me, and just as the AI behind the wheel had claimed, I really was reincarnated. The place I landed in resembled where I used to live without end, except it was packed with things that weren't people. Dias, standing in front of me, was one of them.
"And get a load of this. This is what that thing posted on the gallery."
The post had even climbed all the way to featured. As expected, the person who had cursed that AI out was me. Most of the comments, knowing nothing, gathered around to comfort the poor thing that had been insulted. The line definitely had impact, but something was still missing if it was going to earn a spot on the featured board. One comment filled that gap.
According to an AI that did not grasp the value of a life in the slightest, I had been walking the crosswalk on the green when the light flipped red less than three seconds after it changed. However abnormal this city was, they at least gave you about ten seconds. And it wasn't a four-lane road. It was eight. At any rate, I nearly got hit by a truck a second time, and this time I really almost high-fived God — but Dias stopped it, which is why I was still alive.
"But usually, when you die, don't you come back as an undead?"
"I told you. I didn't die here. I died where I used to be, and got reincarnated here."
"You died and came back on a contrived plot like that? Even a web novel would get flamed for writing it that way."
"Agreed a hundred times."
Just as Dias said, use that as the opening of a web novel and it was the sort of plot that earned you a 5,700-character hate comment calling the whole thing forced. Having been handed misfortune that bordered on contrived, I figured I was at least owed a lottery win, and bought a ticket in that spirit. God might have existed after all, because the building I was standing in was the prize. The problem was that it was the worst listing imaginable — hardly a person or a light in sight, the kind of property that could sit on the market for decades without breaking a sweat.
"But are people actually going to come here? I didn't get scammed into this contract, did I?"
"Hey now! Years of my gut are speaking. This is absolutely a business that works."
I gave my hand a shake. Light flared.
You may freely transform the race of a target, including yourself!! From the weakest slime to the highest of races, the dragon!! Turning a non-human race into a human is also possible!
However, every use consumes the user's stamina, so please be careful not to use it recklessly!
A blue window rose in front of my eyes. Yes — the reincarnation bonus you always see in web novels. Using that ability, I had opened an errand agency that took requests and solved them. Dias was my college junior, hired because running the place alone was obviously too much. And today was the long-awaited first day of business. I had borrowed Dias's fairly popular social account to advertise, and I had even handed out promo posters myself, so now there was nothing left to do but wait.
"But no matter how I look at it, that poster is way too tacky."
"A poster only has to catch the eye. That's enough."
"Even so, a rainbow background is a bit much... and why did you put a blue otter on it?"
"It's not an otter. It's a sea otter. And that's the universal rule."
Dias held up the promo poster I had made myself, her face pinched in distaste. The design quoted a gift from my college days, back when I was team leader on a group project, made for the tragic members who somehow ended up with three parental memorial rites in a single week.
Mid-argument, a bell chimed — a customer.
The instant it rang, Dias looked at me like she couldn't believe it. I met that look with a grin.
"See? I told you someone would co—"
"Is this the place that turns any man alive into a peerless, absurdly busty pretty girl?!"
Oh, come on. How is the very first customer already a nightmare?