Chapter 181: A Star That Serves as a Substitute

Mizuki Hoshi—this name was fake.

No, perhaps this name was the “real” one now.

And “Mizuki Kotaro” was the rotten past I couldn’t wait to discard forever.

Mizuki Kotaro, 20 years old.

A textbook “Dead Fat Otaku.”

Before obtaining my Ability, my life was like a puddle of mud.

It happened around New Year’s Eve.

It was raining coldly outside, but the room felt exceptionally stuffy because of the heater and the heat radiating from the computer tower.

My room, as always, was the only place in the house that lacked any New Year’s atmosphere.

The curtains were always drawn, making it impossible to distinguish between day and night.

The air was thick with the scent of instant noodle soup base, the sickly sweetness of energy drinks, and… the sour stench emanating from my own body after a long time without exercise.

“Kotaro! How long are you going to hide in there?! The relatives are all here; the least you could do is come out and say hello!” my mother’s scream came through the door.

I tightened my headphones and pretended not to hear.

“Leave him alone!” my father’s voice sounded closer, carrying unconcealed disgust.

“Let him rot in there! He’s a total loser! He’s disgraced the entire Mizuki family!”

“How can you talk about your son like that—”

“I don’t have a son like that!”

The footsteps and the sounds of their bickering gradually faded away.

I let out a sneer, pretending not to care about the argument outside, but my eyes still felt inexplicably stingy.

Loser.

Yes, I was a loser.

170 centimeters tall, 115 kilograms.

I had barely managed to get into a university, but after attending for six months, I dropped out due to “social anxiety.”

Since then, I had never stepped foot outside my door.

My life was confined to this four-and-a-half-mat room.

On the computer screen was the gacha game I was currently grinding.

The Player with the ID “Miyazaki_Saki” had once again taken the MVP in the guild war.

Miyazaki Saki…

She was the only girl I had ever gathered the courage to confess to in high school.

I still remembered that day.

Behind the school building, I had handed her a piece of idol merchandise she loved, bought with three months’ worth of saved allowance.

I didn’t even dare to look at her face.

I could only stare at her white knee-high socks.

“I… I like you!”

I heard the giggles from her and her friends.

“Eh? Mizuki? Are you joking?”

“Pfft… sorry, Mizuki, you’re… too disgusting.”

“Stay away from me. That smell on you—”

That day, I threw away the gift.

And I also threw away the last shred of dignity Mizuki Kotaro had as a human being.

From that day on, I hid inside this shell.

Two-dimensional girls in games were so much better.

They were beautiful, cute, and would never betray you.

As long as you spent money, they would smile at you and call you “Master.”

I looked at my carefully dressed female character on the screen, wearing a gorgeous magic robe.

She was the perfect “Goddess” of my fantasies.

If… if only I could become her.

If I were her, how would a woman like Miyazaki Saki dare to look down on me?

The sound of the New Year’s bells seemed to arrive through the vibrations of the floor.

I shut down the game.

The room fell into a deathly silence.

I looked at the small, grease-stained mirror on the desk.

In the reflection was a greasy, bloated monster with dull eyes.

“Ah…”

I didn’t know where the strength came from, but I grabbed the mirror and smashed it hard against the floor.

“Why… why is it me…”

“I don’t want to be Mizuki Kotaro anymore! Anyone… let me become someone else! Let me…”

I knelt on the floor, weeping bitterly amidst the trash heaps of instant noodle boxes and manga.

“Let me… become her!”

At that moment, a light appeared.

It wasn’t a physical light, but a metaphor.

It felt as if it pierced through the ceiling and my roof, pouring directly into my body.

“What…?”

My body convulsed as if hit by an electric shock.

No, it was like being thrown into a washing machine.

More accurately, it felt like being broken down and reassembled.

My bones let out a screeching groan, and my skin felt like it was burning.

I screamed, thinking I was going to die.

Then, everything stopped.

I… I felt lighter.

The sour stench on my body had vanished, replaced by a faint body fragrance, like the scent of flowers.

The kind of scent you could only ever smell on a beautiful girl.

I tremblingly raised my hand.

It wasn’t my filth-covered pig trotter.

It was a slender, porcelain-white hand of a young girl, with nails that had a soft pink luster.

I…

I lunged toward the full-length mirror on the wardrobe.

The person in the mirror had smooth, long black hair that shimmered with a watery light.

Her skin was pale, almost translucent.

A pair of watery, light blue eyes were wide with shock and fear.

Her features were so exquisite they didn’t seem real.

Her figure… my figure…

I looked down.

My flat—or rather, what used to be D-cup fat—chest had turned into slightly rounded, nearly perfect curves.

My Adam’s apple was gone.

My legs… my legs…

I, Mizuki Kotaro, that 115-kilogram Dead Fat Otaku… had turned into a peerless beauty 100 times more perfect than the “Goddess” in the game.

“Ah… ahh…”

The voice I produced was no longer a coarse male voice, but a crisp, melodious female one.

“Haha… Hahahahahaha! I succeeded! I really became ‘her’!”

Was this my Superpower?

“Girl Transformation”?

However, the joy didn’t last long.

Three days later, while I was still clumsily learning how to use this new body, they came knocking.

It wasn’t my parents.

They thought I had died in the room and broke down the door.

Then they saw “me,” wearing old clothes like I was stuffed in a burlap sack—a strange, beautiful girl.

They called the police.

The Police arrived.

And then, the people from the “Special Incidents Response Headquarters” arrived.

They wore black suits and had expressions like they were there to dispose of industrial waste.

“Mizuki Kotaro.”

The man in the lead looked at me expressionlessly.

“We are from the Special Incidents Response Headquarters, Supernatural Management Office. Your ‘Awakening’ has been recorded. Please cooperate with us for registration.”

In their office, still in my beautiful girl form, I sat uneasily on a cold iron chair.

“Ability name.”

“Eh? I… I call it ‘Girl Transformation’…”

The man recording looked up at me, and that gaze made me shut up instantly.

He wrote on the form:

“Project: Form Change (Gender Transformation).”

“Duration.”

“I… I don’t know. I haven’t changed back…”

“Change back.”

“Eh?”

“Please deactivate your Ability. We need to record your ‘original’ information.”

The man pushed a camera forward.

“No! No!”

I had never made such a high-pitched sound.

“I don’t want to change back! That… that’s not me! This is… this is the real me!”

“Mizuki.”

The man frowned.

“This is a regulation. We must record the original file of the Ability User. If you do not cooperate, we have the right to take restrictive measures against you.”

I looked at the device on his waist that looked like some kind of taser, and I flinched.

I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want them to see that monster.

“Please, I beg you…”

I started to cry, using the most pitiful voice I could muster in my life.

“Can’t you just register me with this face? In the future… I’ll live like this forever!”

“Mizuki Hoshi.”

I quickly came up with a new name for myself.

“My name is Mizuki Hoshi! Not Kotaro!”

The man clearly had little patience.

He sighed and nodded to his colleague next to him.

“We don’t mind you registering a ‘stage name,'” he said, picking up the camera.

“But the file must show the ‘base body.'”

Cruel.

It was so cruel…

I closed my eyes in despair.

Under their forceful demands, I mentally recited ‘deactivate.’

The feeling of being reassembled hit me in reverse.

My light body became heavy, the flower scent was replaced by a sour stench, and my slender limbs were once again filled with disgusting fat.

I turned back into “Mizuki Kotaro.”

I could feel the two Special Incidents Response Headquarters members’ unconcealed disgust when they saw my “base body.”

Click.

The flash went off.

My most humiliating and wretched appearance was frozen forever on that photograph.

“Done.”

The man stuck the photo onto the file.

“Mizuki Kotaro, 20 years old. Ability: Form Change. Danger Level: Harmless. Registered.”

“As for this form of yours—” he looked at my fat face, which was flushed with humiliation and anger.

“We will make a note of it in the file.”

He signaled that I could change back.

I almost fled the room, immediately activating my Ability to return to being “Mizuki Hoshi.”

“Th-that,” I asked tremblingly.

“Can the file photo… use ‘Mizuki Hoshi’s’?”

“The file photo must be the base body,” the man rejected coldly.

“That is the regulation.”

That day, I understood.

Even if I turned into a beautiful girl, until the curse of “Mizuki Kotaro” was lifted, I would always be that piece of trash.

And that file was my curse.

***

Tokyo, Jiang Jian Apartment.

Jiang Jian Yue sat in her chair, chin resting on one hand, flipping through the documents Akimoto Miki had handed her.

“Nothing but combat; it’s too hardcore.”

Jiang Jian Yue’s finger swiped across the tablet.

“We… need something ‘softer.'”

“Idols.”

Akimoto Miki was stunned for a moment, then hurriedly added the item to the records on her mobile phone and notified the Business Development Department below.

The “Southern Cross” project was born right then.

“But, Missy,” Akimoto Miki added with a frown.

“Ordinary idols probably won’t match GSAC’s ‘Superpower’ theme, will they?”

“Let Superpower Users… be the idols,” Jiang Jian Yue said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“This…”

A few hours later, an encrypted file package from the Special Incidents Response Headquarters was sent to Jiang Jian Yue’s tablet.

She flipped through it quickly—feeling a bit inexplicably excited, like she was peeking into someone else’s privacy.

“So the guy who summons the giant mirror is named that…”

“This girl’s Ability is very suitable for an idol… but she looks too much like a big sister from the Northeast.”

“Hiss… ‘Fantasy Manifestation’? This Ability… I really want it…”

As Jiang Jian Yue flipped through, her brow furrowed slightly.

Those with interesting Abilities didn’t meet the visual standards.

And those with the right looks didn’t have interesting enough Abilities.

She continued scrolling down.

Then, her finger stopped.

On the screen was a file numbered “T-0934.”

[Name: Mizuki Kotaro]