An Ordinary Day
It was hot, and I was out of breath. Today was the second Saturday of August.
This was the season when people planned their summer vacations and set off, buzzing, for the mountains or the sea. I, meanwhile, was running myself to death on a treadmill.
"Huff—huff!"
"Don't push it all at once. If you want cardio to actually work, you have to run at least thirty minutes without stopping, so take the long view. And if you're trying that hard to kill yourself, why won't you take the mask off?"
"None of your business!"
The System Helper had told me. If I manifested an ability like changing my face, I would have to rewrite the memories of anyone who already knew what I looked like, the same way it had worked when my sex was altered. The more people that applied to, the more of the Goddess's power it would burn, and there might even be cases where extra points were required.
Having heard that, how could I just let it be? There were other people in the gym. I was going to stay wrapped up tight. No exceptions.
Besides, these people aren't just standing around.
Maybe becoming a woman had made me more sensitive. The stares of the men around me stung like pinpricks.
I'm not even wearing anything skin-tight. The cut is this loose—why is everyone looking at me like that!
I'd come to Myung-hoon's Gym with nothing prepared, on the word that they provided workout clothes. The design wasn't far from what they hand out at a Korean sauna, and I'd thrown one on without a second thought and started exercising—only to realize, somewhere along the way, that I was drawing the eyes of every man working out around me.
Even inside a loose set of gym clothes, the line of my torso insisted on announcing itself. A pelvis that belonged on a model—the expensive kind—and a sensual waist. Eyes had nowhere else to go. All the more so if the ones looking were gym regulars, people already obsessed with bodies.
"I'm gonna restock a few things. Be right back."
"Haaah... Y-yeah. Go."
I escaped the treadmill of death, and while I stood there wheezing, Myung-hoon stepped away. I was leaning against the wall, dizzy, catching my breath, when a shadow fell over my head.
"...?"
"Ah, um—hello. You must be new."
I looked up. A clean-cut man in his twenties, with a body that was clearly in good shape, stood in front of me.
"Yes. Today's my first time."
An ordinary woman might have gotten shy, or cut the conversation short. I was used to men, though, so I could take it without much resistance. At that, his face brightened in a peculiar way, and he started making small talk about this and that.
"...The machines are really good for the lower body. Want me to check your form?"
We talked for a moment, and the stares around us grew sharper. I glanced aside and caught several men whipping their heads away the instant our eyes met.
Haaah. Truly pitiful creatures, the lot of you. The one you're staring at with drool hanging off your chins is, in fact, a man.
Announce a truth like that and I'd be written off as unhinged on the spot, so I gave up and set about gently shaking off the man in front of me.
"I appreciate the offer, but I'm learning directly from the trainer here. I'm just on a break, so I'm on my own for a bit."
"Ah... I see. Understood. Then let's at least say hello the next time we meet."
Maybe he figured one more word would make him look clingy. He withdrew cleanly, and right on cue Myung-hoon reappeared, his errand done. Around us, the other men clicked their tongues in open disappointment.
Excuse me—do I look like something to eat? What are you smacking your lips for.
Anyway, the hour of exercise from hell started up again.
I'd decided to work out three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I could have ground harder than that, but I wanted to avoid too violent a change in how I lived, and I had a large goal in front of me—a hundred thousand subscribers. Investing any more time than this felt like a bit much.
In any case, the first real exercise I'd done since becoming a woman was hard, yes, but the feeling of it was stranger still. No. It wasn't the exercise. The problem was the men's eyes, and the attention they aimed at me.
"......"
"No, I..."
The words died.
Right. The Helper had it exactly. I was a man, originally. But I was a woman now, and so I made a conscious effort not to dwell on anything tied to that.
Aside from trips to the bathroom, the heavy weight at my chest, and the hair tickling my cheeks and the slope of my shoulders, those efforts had been remarkably successful. What I'd felt today, though, was intense—the kind of thing that doesn't wipe away easily.
Friendly looks from a whole crowd of men. Of course, underneath them lay intentions that were plenty obscene, plenty sexual. Even so, they forced me to see my situation with perfect clarity.
I had become a woman.
It was a deeply strange feeling. Once, I would have simply hated it, and if it got bad enough, been revolted. Now it was a little different. The men's favor, and the women's glances edged with jealousy, gave me a sense of superiority. Pride welled up with it, and that pride let me acknowledge, just a little, myself as a woman.
"Damn it... Ah, forget it!"
The last thing I wanted was to drag myself home from a hard workout and then get a headache from thinking too much. I shook my head and sat down at the computer. It was about time to set up the stream. What to do today? On a day this scrambled, simple was king.
Right. Legend of League. Time to run it, for the first time in a while.
"This is me? I might be stronger than I thought..."
At five in the afternoon I turned the stream on and played Legend of League for the first time in a while.
The power of Guillotine Match 4, picked up for the Blame Game, was still with me—a vicious weapon that let me perform at Master tier or higher, so long as it was a one-on-one. My rank sat at Diamond 3. Unless someone was on a smurf, there was no one who could stop me.
From the opening I locked in a predatory early-game jungle hero and counter-jungled with my brain switched off. Kill their jungler, scale off the kill, and keep invading. Unlike a team game, solo queue gets worse at communication the lower the tier. Laners who rotate an eternity too late, an enemy jungler counter-jungled again and again—their mental simply snapped. Then came the all-chat flood. Infighting broke out inside the enemy team, and the game rolled over to us without a fight.
I strung four wins together that way, and before I knew it about two hours had passed. The viewers started howling that they were bored. Closing out in the middle of a streak was a shame, but bending to the crowd is a BJ's fate. I shut the client and asked them what they wanted.
"Quite a few opinions. First, the penalty stream... I'll do it within two weeks. I'm not quite ready to lock the date, though."
I decided to clear their questions one by one.
"The mask... September 9 is Mia's birthday, right? A bunch of BJs are getting together that day for an in-person collab, and I think that's probably when it'll come off."
"Keep it appropriate. Next time, you're banned."
I quieted the viewers spouting nonsense and sorted through the rest one topic at a time.
"Collabs are tough. I still don't know that many BJs. The singing contest—I only just heard about it, so jumping in with zero prep feels off. I'll aim for next time. A pool-villa bikini cam... I'll think about it."
"Visiting Wagyu... I did say I'd go if he carried. Did Wagyu actually carry?"
"He enlists at the end of August anyway. Once he's through basic and gets assigned to a unit, it'll be early October at the soonest. At first it'll be family, or people closer to him, who go visit. So if I've got time around November, a visit is worth thinking about. It'd make for pretty fresh content, in its own way."
"Oh, come on. You all exaggerate way too much. What kind of goddess am I."
I broke up their bickering by imitating a sultry-voiced cartoon character. Up surged another flood of KYAAAA spam.
That was when it happened.
For the first time in a long while, a Discord window lit up. Not Mia or Yerin, of course—the ones I heard from every day. It was Clemoomoo, someone I'd only traded the occasional how-are-you with since we'd exchanged contacts at the Miracle collab. From him came an offer for a joint stream.