Still, Life Goes On
Still, life goes on.
I had become a woman.
At first, I couldn't properly accept it. Why had I become a woman? Was there anyone else out there like me? How was I supposed to live from now on? Questions tangled into a chaotic mess inside my head, and the whirlpool of doubt scrambled my reason to pieces.
A day passed like that. Then a week.
I ordered every meal through delivery — asking them to leave the food at the door — and, unable to adapt to the change that had overtaken my body, I didn't even touch the games I used to love. I just curled up in a corner with a blanket pulled over myself, hiding what I'd become.
But at some point, a thought began to surface.
Could I really spend the rest of my life hiding like this? Even if I handled every daily necessity through delivery, there would inevitably come a time when I'd need the identity of the person I'd been before becoming a woman — Son Minwoo. And who on earth would look at me and think I was Son Minwoo?
The moment that thought hit me, the first thing that came to mind was securing a new identity.
I inquired all over the place about obtaining a new identity or laundering my existing one, and eventually managed to make contact with an outfit called Night Move.
Night Move was an agency that provided clients with a new identity and a new occupation. Ordinarily, the more complicated a person's relationships, the steeper the fee — but I had no friends and no family, so the process went surprisingly smoothly. With Night Move's help, I also finished converting the inheritance and insurance money my father had left behind into liquid assets.
Disposing of my old identity, acquiring a new one, plus the asset conversion service — the whole package cost a cool one billion won. But I didn't feel it was expensive, or that it was a waste. In a way, it was no different from finally being free of that bastard of a father for good.
I would shed the skin of the person called Son Minwoo and live as someone else from now on. Even if that life happened to be as a woman.
"Hoo… is it finally over?"
Son Minwoo — no, the me who had become Choi Nayeon — let out a long breath. I'd only just moved, and here I was moving again. But it didn't feel hard. If anything, I felt proud. A sense of complete liberation from the man called Father. A freedom I'd never felt before filled me inside and out.
"And the house is nice, too."
The place Night Move had prepared was a detached house. I usually hated large homes — but that was only because cleaning them was a pain. These days the world was convenient enough that I could just hire a cleaning service.
I like that it's not Seoul, either.
Seoul rent was absurdly expensive. My father's house had been in the capital region to begin with, and since I'd decided to start a new life, I wanted to live somewhere completely different. Night Move had honored that request, and the place I'd ended up with was this one — a detached house in Seo-gu, Incheon. Being a recently built property, the interior was solid. Nothing flashy, but the understated atmosphere suited me perfectly.
"Haa… it's finally over."
I went up to my room and threw myself onto the queen-size bed. The plush softness that enveloped my whole body felt like it might melt me right into the mattress.
My first experience with Night Move had been a very special one. Commissioning them with the line "I've had gender reassignment surgery and I want to abandon my life as a man" — if that didn't count as a special experience, what would? Even now, just remembering that moment made my face burn and made me want to crawl into a hole.
After savoring the power of the queen-size bed for a while, boredom naturally crept in. I'd been so busy with everything that I hadn't played any games in ages, and my hands were itching for it. I got up from the bed, sat down in the chair, and moved my slender fingers to power on the computer.
Wrrrrrr—
The familiar hum of the PC soothed me. Even if I'd gone from man to woman, daily life itself hadn't changed. What did gender matter? The most important thing — me — was still the same.
Anyway, the game I was going to play was Legend of League. Commonly known as Leori — a national game. No, a worldwide one.
"Time to warm up the hands a bit."
I'd been about to log into my main account, but I cleared the ID field and typed in my smurf's credentials instead. I hadn't touched Leori in a month, so warming up on a lower-tier smurf made more sense than jumping straight onto the main.
Once logged into the smurf, I checked the account info first.
Originally, this smurf had been Diamond 2. Now it was Diamond 3 — a dormancy demotion from a month of inactivity. It might have been disappointing in some ways, but Leori's ranking system had a hidden matchmaking rating, and mine was still high. As long as the MMR was up there, climbing the visible tier would be quick work.
More importantly, this smurf wasn't an account for climbing. It was an account built for stream sniping — for queuing into the games of Leori streamers and BJs.
In the top one percent of high Diamond, famous BJs and streamers clustered like flies. Streamers known as ADC human-rights activists. Former pro players who'd retired and become kings of Diamond. All kinds of named players nested in this high-Diamond stretch — the so-called hell tier. And for someone like me, a stream sniper known even among snipers as malicious, this tier wasn't hell. It was heaven.
I queued up, and a match popped almost immediately. I hit accept, and the ban-and-pick lobby appeared.
I shifted my gaze to the join messages in chat. Every single nickname looked suspicious. Two of them were openly toxic, and the other two were named players. LonelyGourmet was the handle of the popular Leori streamer Curry, and Showdown was the mid laner from the team that had just won Worlds.
I pulled up the match history. Showdown was the real deal.
Grinding ranked after coming back from overseas?
Pros didn't usually show up in this bracket. The timing must have just worked out. The problem was that Showdown had been assigned to support. Showdown was a player who took mid — the position with the greatest influence in all of Leori. A legendary player who'd turned Shanghai, the host city of Worlds, into a library.
Everyone else on the team had been assigned their main roles. Curry, a classic top-lane maniac streamer, was top. ADCRightsActivist was ADC. The long-named toxic player was jungle. And last of all, I was mid.
Curry typed in chat, soliciting my opinion. His angle was transparent — ship Showdown to mid and farm Mutyube content off it.
I moved my mouse and opened Curry's stream. The first thing that hit me was the cam of Curry broadcasting with his greasy hair.
"Come on, Nayeon, please… just help your hyung out this once."
The way he was begging was pretty funny, but if I were the type to grant a favor that small, I never would have earned the title of malicious in the first place.
The chat's reaction to me was ice-cold. Fair enough — I was a nobody who did nothing but stream snipe, and the other guy was a Worlds champion. But that was that, and this was this.
— Adventures are always more fun with a friend!
The moment I locked in Nana & Willump, curses erupted from Curry's mouth on autopilot.
"AAAAARGH!!! Nayeon, you fucking piece of shit!!"
The reason Leori streamers called me malicious was simple. My main role was mid — and I refused to play mid champions in mid.
After locking in, I analyzed the current draft. The enemy mid was Zad, the poster-child AD assassin. Nana had originally been a counter to Zad, but Goliath Games — unwilling to let mid Nana become a meta staple — had carved her limbs off with a patch. The mid Nana that had been popular at the time was rendered unplayable by that patch. Unless you had an extraordinary love for Nana and the mastery to match, you simply didn't play her anymore.
I'd been mulling over the Zad-versus-Nana matchup when we hit the final stretch of picks. The moment Showdown hovered Brando on his portrait, our fourth pick hovered Garen.
Garen was a melee champion with zero mobility — the original walking brick. Picking Garen in bot lane, where ranged trades reigned supreme? That was the equivalent of a declaration of war. A statement that you'd already given up on the game.
"Hey, fourth pick, calm down."
Even Curry seemed to sense the fourth pick's sincerity, trying to talk him down in a trembling voice.
Ten seconds left on the clock. But in the end, Showdown locked in Brando — a classic damage support.
— My sword and my heart for Demacia!
"YOU INSANE BASTAAAAARD!!!!"
ADCRightsActivistVanguardCaptain launched his own "human rights movement."
The game is beginning.