Chapter 1: Nothing works

“I’m dropping out.”

I open my eyes in the morning.

I look in the mirror.

“Aaaah-” I let out a scream.

I scream that this is a dream.

Thud, thud, I bang my head.

After staring blankly for over an hour.

I receive an unexpected call.

Getting angry at the question of why I’m not at work, I impulsively blurt out.

“You always said I was no help to the lab. Yes, I’m a useless guy.”

It started impulsively, but once I opened my mouth, the rest followed naturally.

“There’s probably no need for a handover. So…”

The emotions I’d suppressed for years poured out.

“I’ll stop here.”

Not using curse words was the least I could do as an intellectual.

There was a brief silence.

But it was short-lived.

[Jinha, you bastard… Did you drink this morning? Your voice sounds wasted, you must’ve drunk a whole bottle.]

Hearing his advisor’s furious voice, Jinha burst into laughter without realizing it.

It was obvious what kind of face his advisor was making.

Ah, I can’t see this directly.

He wanted to rush to the lab right away, but.

‘…Who would go out looking like this?’

He had to be content with just hearing the voice, for now.

[Hey, you think grad school is a joke? You think a degree is a toy? Yeah, if you leave like this without any manners. Do you think you’ll get a job easily?]

There it is. The professor’s macro number 1. Threatening with degrees and employment.

If it were Jinha from yesterday, he would have shrunk back in fear.

“So what? What do I care?”

[…What, what did you say, bastard?]

“Ah, I’m sorry. My inner thoughts slipped out.”

Jinha, who has completely veered off the track of life, is invincible.

“Anyway, I’ve been a f*cking burden for a long time. Bye.”

[Hey! Hey, you f*…]

As soon as he hung up, the smartphone rang again. It was as if someone was waiting right next to him and called the moment he ended the call.

[Byeongjae]

This bastard was really waiting on the side to call.

[Hyung, are you really quitting the lab?]

“Well, it happened.”

[What on earth did you say to him? I’ve never seen the professor this angry.]

“Can you send me some pictures?”

[…Do you want me to die? But hyung, why does your voice sound like that?]

“You’re quick to ask.”

[At first, I thought I called the wrong number because it sounded like a woman’s voice. Did something happen?]

“Byeongjae, listen to me. There’s a very complicated situation here…”

[This hyung, he probably passed out while drinking outside again and his voice is hoarse. Drink moderately, hyung.]

Sigh. If only it were that simple. Jinha sighed deeply, feeling complicated.

[So why are you quitting the lab? Did you hit the jackpot with crypto?]

“No way. I got liquidated.”

[Ah… ah…]

The atmosphere became solemn.

A moment of silence for Jinha’s account, which was buried in All-in-Blue and drowned.

[So when are you coming to get your stuff, hyung? Will you stop by the lab when the professor is not around?]

“Just dispose of it. I won’t be going back there.”

[I’ll take care of it later. Just get some hangover soup and sleep. Ugh, why does the speaker smell like alcohol?]

Click, the call ended, and a sudden sense of emptiness washed over him.

“Haa…”

He’s at the age where the first digit of his age is about to change from 2 to 3. His bank account balance has hit rock bottom, and he has to worry about next month’s rent. He just angrily quit the lab, which used to give him a meager salary. But the biggest problem was something else.

“F*cking life…”

Jinha trudged to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror.

Long, greasy hair and full eyelashes. And a slender jawline.

More than anything else, the two lumps protruding through the stretched-out shirt are the most noticeable.

“How did it come to this…”

Waking up to find his gender changed to a woman.

It was an unbelievable thing that had happened to Jinha, something no one would believe if he told them.

“What am I going to do for a living now?”

After forcibly accepting the absurd situation of waking up as a woman, a practical problem immediately arose.

It’s not ‘from now on’.

It’s ‘now’.

Right now.

Figuring out how to become a man again?

That’s a problem to worry about after solving the livelihood issue.

‘I should probably start sending out my resume.’

Surely the professor’s influence wouldn’t reach small and medium-sized businesses in the provinces, Jinha thought as he turned on the computer.

The work folder containing files he had been accumulating since his undergraduate days.

The file at the top when sorted by modification date.

Vtuber_HANA.fbx

Also known as, Hana.

Seeing the filename at the top of the folder window made his nose twitch.

AI-based digital human creation research.

To put it more directly, it’s the modeling research for a high-quality human-like avatar.

This is the research topic Jinha had been wrestling with all day in graduate school.

And ‘Hana’ is Jinha’s masterpiece, something he had been refining since long before entering graduate school, since his undergraduate days.

It started as a simple lump of polygons. Since Jinha was terrible with his hands, even creating a basic model was difficult.

So he designed a 3D generative AI model himself. With its help, he established the framework for an ideal female body.

After that, he pondered how to add reflected light to the water-like blue eyes.

He spent nights searching through materials, meticulously adding each strand of moonlight hair.

He implanted detailed controllers for nuanced facial rigging, and after adding various other miscellaneous features…

‘You brought this as a research topic?’

‘What have you been doing in the lab? Were you watching cartoons again?’

He got thoroughly scolded.

Just thinking about the professor’s words still made him feel like his insides were being overturned.

Jinha quitting the lab wasn’t actually an impulsive decision. It was a problem he had been 고민ing about since the first day he entered graduate school, fooled by the promise of being allowed to do the research he wanted. It was just that years of built-up frustration exploded due to an unexpected accident.

In truth, the professor wasn’t wrong. While others in the lab were building their track records with papers and practical projects, Jinha’s research was always treated as niche.

The person who knew this best was none other than Jinha himself. It’s like a mage in a game putting points into strength.

The proof is in the fact that he’s at a loss for what to write in his resume.

Unique modeling skills.

Data processing experience in unpopular fields.

And analysis data of animation characters.

It’s not that there’s nothing to show, but writing this on a resume… isn’t that a bit much?

Bitterness washed over him. It’s ridiculous that even after the absurd incident of his gender changing, he still has to worry about making a living.

“Ugh, f*ck.”

His sighs just kept increasing. He tried to force himself to squeeze something out by grabbing the keyboard, but eventually had to let go.

“I can’t do this.”

He needed something to alleviate this gloom, even for a moment.

Jinha unconsciously accessed the internet broadcasting platform ‘Pasta,’ operated by a famous portal site.

10 AM. Over an hour past the lab’s start time. It’s a time when other ordinary office workers would have already started their work.

But for streamers who make a living from broadcasting, it was like the middle of the night.

Because of that, there weren’t many broadcasts worth watching. Only a few streamers who had been doing all-night gaming content and were now experiencing a slump in their tension were visible.

Suddenly, his own reflection, now that of a woman, caught his eye on the cheap LCD screen.

‘It really doesn’t feel real.’

Looking at it, the body shape isn’t bad. The curves are in the right places, making the body line quite pretty.

He felt a bit excited, feeling like the muscles between his legs were about to stand at attention, but realizing it was his own body made him feel down again. Right. He realized he no longer had the thing that gets excited.

For a brief moment, he thought debuting as a female camgirl wouldn’t be a bad idea. After all, he needed to make money, and objectively, he looked quite decent.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

He quickly dismissed the idea. Jinha knew well that the internet broadcasting industry wasn’t a place you could break into with just looks. He wasn’t particularly good at talking, nor did he have any special talents. Moreover, Jinha’s personality was extremely introverted, a capital ‘I’.

Gender might change overnight, but a person doesn’t easily change overnight.

Jinha scratched his head and headed to YouNobe.

Since there was nothing to watch on live broadcasts, he planned to scroll through some shorts.

But then.

“…Hmm?”

The thumbnail of the top recommended video caught his attention.

[Thank you for everything.]

Striking white letters on a black background.

It was none other than Jinha’s favorite VTuber, ‘Minari”s graduation announcement.

“Quitting…?”

At the unexpected news, Jinha unconsciously swallowed hard. He felt his fingertips grow cold.

Today, nothing was going right.

Minari.

She wasn’t actually a very famous broadcaster.

Her average viewership was under 50.

She probably didn’t spend much money on broadcasting equipment, as the sound quality was rough.

Naturally, her avatar was low-end. The polygon mess that looked like a rough copy of a 2000s anime character had lower quality than what Jinha could randomly generate with his AI program.

Nevertheless, Minari’s broadcasts had a strangely healing quality.

She completely captivated her few viewers with her unique cheerful laughter and bright voice.

When she communicated by calling out the nicknames that appeared one by one in the chat window, it made one’s lips curl up in a smile.

Late at night, when Jinha was in the lab, pounding away at the keyboard and yawning, Minari’s voice was like a blanket covering his tired heart.

Such a broadcast was ending.

The reason was obvious.

It must have been hard to even maintain her current viewership.

Not only had her viewer and subscriber counts been stagnant for months, but donations weren’t frequent either. It was a wonder she had been broadcasting regularly for so long. If he had known this would happen, he would have added another zero to his donation amount.

“Well… it’s a shame.”

Honestly, he wished Minari would continue broadcasting.

It didn’t seem right for her to disappear like this. It might be a selfish wish, but someone needed her broadcasts.

Like Jinha, for instance.

“If only her avatar was a bit better, she would have gathered quite a few viewers.”

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him.

What if Minari breathed life into the avatar he had created?

What if she could be revived with Hana?

A thought that started as a fantasy gradually turned into a concrete plan in Jinha’s mind.

He would gift Minari the research results he had been painstakingly refining. Hana would surely be able to change Minari’s mind about quitting her broadcasts.

He would be giving a mythical-grade weapon to someone with exceptional broadcasting talent. Hana was indeed of that grade.

As if possessed, Jinha searched through Minari’s YouNobe channel information. After finding her email address, he started typing.

No need for grand words. As a fan, he wrote the email with all his heart, thinking of her voice.

It might be a discarded address. She might have closed her mailbox.

Still, it was worth a try.

Not wanting to let go of his little streamer, Jinha sent the email.
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