I Was Living My Life Like a Copypasta

They say a kitten learns to hunt by mimicking the way its mother stalks prey. Mash that habit together with the word copy, and you get a term everybody knows.

Copycat.

I was living my life like one.

Effort and I had never gotten along, but I was greedy enough that I needed a lot of money. So I sat with the question for a while: how do you make cash without wrecking your body? The answer I finally landed on was painfully simple. Just copy whoever's already winning.

I started blindly imitating people who sat at the top of jobs that looked easy from the outside. Pro gaming. Streaming. All of it. I genuinely believed that if you parked yourself in a chair and either played games or ran your mouth a few times, money would just roll in.

I never even made it to the starting line as a pro gamer, and my stream died with a viewer count of exactly zero. Things that looked easy turned out to be brutal the second I tried them myself. People always said that if someone else's job looks simple, it just means they're ridiculously good at it. They were right.

Most people who watched me loaf around told me there was no such thing as easy money in this world. But I found the answer anyway.

Web novelist. Or, more precisely — web novel copycat.

All I had to do was lift the stories sitting at the top of the rankings, and money started showing up in my account. Change the title, swap out the character names, and copy the rest. That was it. Ridiculously easy work. Easy on the body, easy on the brain. I never had to sweat a premise or worry about whether I could actually write. I just copied. And even though readers had already seen the story once, shuffling the order of the episodes was enough to make it feel fresh. They ate it up.

I could never outpace the original's view counts, but these were massive hits. Even a tenth of the original traffic paid well enough to keep me comfortable. I had found the job I wanted.

Today was the day I posted chapter one of Academy Rank #1, my rip-off of Academy Ranking #1. The titles were close enough that there was a decent chance of trouble. Fine. I'd bait the clicks with the title first and deal with the fallout later if it came.

Traffic's what matters. Traffic.

To juice the numbers even more, I had two extra pieces of bait ready to throw out.

First: you can't farm outrage without the community boards.

The second I uploaded the chapter, I logged into a web novel forum and started typing.

I dropped the rage-bait post and immediately prepped the second hook.

I logged onto the blue-bird social network. The account I kept there was named Yoo Hana, profile picture a blonde with a body that did all the talking. Twenty thousand followers. I'd made the ID back when I was catfishing in online games, and the follower count had swollen enough that I started using it for bait whenever I needed eyes.

Every photo on the account had been cooked up in an AI program. I'd pushed them close enough to real people that you'd have a hard time calling them fake. The posts themselves were almost entirely thirst traps — cleavage shoved in your face, skirts short enough to flash panties, that whole menu. More than enough to hook a bunch of horny idiots.

Alright. Let's go.

I posted it with a shot of her from behind in a pair of tiny, skin-tight dolphin shorts that put the entire ass on display. The notification count started climbing almost immediately.

SNS really is fun. The reactions come in so fast.

Most of the comments were the usual disgusting garbage, but I'd locked in at least one actual reader. That was enough. I ignored the rest of the comments still pouring in and hopped back over to the novel community.

"...Huh?"

Notifications piled up over here too.

People who actually read novels for a living weren't nearly as easy to fool. The reaction was ugly. Still, the comment count was high enough that the post's views were sitting well above everything else on the board. Proof the bait had worked.

Getting cursed out was old news, so I scrolled past all of it — except one comment snagged my eye and wouldn't let go.

So it's you...? The hell is that supposed to mean?

The kind of comment I should have ignored. For some reason, I couldn't.

A notification chimed from my phone. A DM. I didn't use any SNS except the Yoo Hana account.

I locked DMs on the Yoo Hana account, though?

A message was sitting there anyway, from an account I didn't recognize.

"...What?"

Another ping. This time, a text message.

"F-Fuck..."

A chill crawled straight up my spine.

How did they get my personal info? How did they know Yoo Hana was me?

I had never told a friend or a family member that I was Yoo Hana. The cops? No. Nobody was sending the police after someone for ripping off a web novel. Hacking, then?

My phone started ringing.

And now a call...

Unknown caller. I answered with a shaking hand and started shouting into the speaker.

"Who the fuck are you? Are you the Academy Ranking #1 author?"

A kid? Or a girl? A young, hard-to-place voice came through the speaker.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"What the fuck are you talking about? Who are you?!"

They said something I couldn't make sense of, and then the line went dead.

Maybe it was the sudden crawl of dread, but my whole body started shivering. A cold, creeping tremor I couldn't shake off.

Wait... is that a nosebleed...?

My vision blurred. I couldn't keep my balance. Overwork? I'd never worked hard enough in my life for that to be the reason. Maybe I'd just taken too much stress too fast from some lunatic I didn't even know.

I crumpled.

"Khuh!"

The second I came to, I snapped my eyes open in a panic. Nothing hurt. A blanket was pulled properly up over me.

A blanket?

I had definitely collapsed in the room with my computer. I lived alone. There was no one around to tuck me in.

One look around was enough to tell me this wasn't my room.

Kidnapped? My hands and feet weren't tied, though, and nobody who snatched you off the street would lay you out on a bed this comfortable. I pushed the blanket off and sat up so I could get a better look at the place.

"Huh?"

I made a sound out loud at the sight of my own body. Then I heard the voice that had made that sound, and I made another one.

What the hell are these giant tits? And what is that voice? Fuck... no way...

No. That couldn't be it. It shouldn't be it. I hadn't even left hate comments. Getting isekai'd or gender-bent just for a little copying was the cheapest cliché in the book.

"Hyaah! Fuuuuck!"

Text appeared in front of my eyes without warning, laid out like one of those system windows you only ever see in games. Impossible things kept stacking on top of each other, and every one of them was wringing my nerves dry. I couldn't get used to any of it — including the fact that even my swearing came out in this beautiful voice.

"What? You can hear me?"

"Who the hell are you? Did you do this to my body too?"

"What?"

I got out of bed and followed the direction the system window was pointing. I stepped into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and found a naked stranger staring back at me. A woman.

A face that could put a blonde idol to shame. Breasts that had to be at least an H-cup, the kind you only ever saw in porn. Wide hips. A plump, springy ass. Neatly trimmed pubic hair.

This was me?

The little buddy I'd never even gotten to use had vanished, and in its place sat a brand-new friend with a hole in it.

Fuck... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I never even got to have sex... And more than that, this face...

"Y-Yoo Hana...?"

"Why... why am I Yoo Hana...?"

Yoo Hana. The fake person I had built out of AI. The body I was wearing now had her face, her figure, all of it.

I'd built her to look like my type, sure. I had never once wanted to be her. The netkama thing wasn't because I wanted to become a woman. I'd only done it to wind up a bunch of perverts. I was the type who absolutely refused to be the one getting fucked — being the one doing the fucking was the only option that worked for me. I did not want to live in this body.

Not that explaining any of that to this psychopath system bitch would make her care.

"What... are you? A god? Something like that?"

"Why did you bring me here?"

"That's it? That's the reason?"

A flood of text exploded in front of my eyes all at once. Being able to feel that much rage through letters alone... yeah. That tracked for a number-one novelist.

"Haah... fine. I'll delete the novel. Just send me back."

"What?"

"Copy..."

"Fuck..."

"Stop talking shit and send me back!"

"Ghhhhhk! Grrrhhk!"

Pain hit me out of nowhere, like an electric shock. It tore through my whole body so hard I couldn't even form words. I thrashed until I was foaming at the mouth, and only then did it stop.

"Hah... hah..."

I was on all fours on the bathroom floor. I sucked in air and gave the system window a weak nod.

"Academy...?"

"If I hit rank one, I can go home right away...?"

"Fuck... can't you just send me back? I'll apologize for real. I won't copy another novel as long as I live. I'll be good. I'm begging you. Just this once."

"........"

"Yeah! I-I mean—yes! Yes! I've reflected a lot! Please send me back!"

"You fucking bitch!"

"Ghhhhhhhhk!"