Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

’You poor magnificent fool,’ he murmured at the reflection, with something almost like tenderness — speaking to the boy whose body this was, to the boy whose memories had said the same.

’Whatever was wrong with this world that you, with all of this, still felt like a reject — ’

[Ding!]

A sharp sound cracked across the inside of his skull like a slate snapping shut three inches from his ear.

Park staggered back from the mirror, the soles of his (admittedly impressive) bare feet skidding briefly on the wet tile, his shoulder catching the wall before his balance caught up, he swore.

His body, helpfully, did not actually fall — its centre of gravity recovered with that same trained grace he was already starting to take for granted.

Hovering in the air a foot from his nose, glowing the soft serene blue of a billboard at three in the morning, was text.

It was translucent floating with his head as if following his gaze when he twisted his head experimentally, like it was a small obedient pet might follow a hand.

He could see straight through the panel to his own bewildered reflection behind it, every letter burning with a clarity that the wet bathroom mirror could not have produced and the fluorescent light overhead could not have powered.

[Peerless Idol System Successfully Integrated into the New Host!]

[Peerless Idol System Functions, Host Beginner Package, Traits and System Capabilities... unlocking.]

[10% ... 20% ... 50% ... 80% ...]

A voice accompanied the text inside his skull; the voice itself was smooth mechanical while dripping with the artificial charm of an airline announcement composed by a marketing department that had attended exactly one seduction seminar and taken extensive notes.

Park’s hand drifted up of its own accord as his fingers reached toward the floating blue panel.

He dropped the hand with a dark snort, halfway to the touch.

’And what,’ his thoughts said, very dryly, ’was I going to do, exactly. Poke the magic floating words? Brilliant plan, Park. Very dignified. Next you’ll try French-kissing a female reaper for better ratings.’

Peerless Idol System.

His mind spun, half-flustered, half-thrilled, and entirely unwilling to admit it was either of those things in a bathroom under fluorescent strip lighting.

’Of all the cosmic jokes. I die a pathetic extra in a snowstorm, wake up in a taller, hotter body that winks at me in mirrors, and now the universe — the grand serial debtor — has finally remembered it owes me a cheat menu. What’s next? A harem of goddesses who faint at the sound of my voice?’

The percentage crawled higher.

[ ... 92% ... 95% ... 98% ... ]

After reaching that number it stalled.

Park watched the loading bar through the translucent blue, then his own eyes behind it, then to the loading bar again.

The blue light caught faintly on the carved line of his new jaw and made it look like a movie poster.

He did not panic, scream in excitement, check his pulse, or do any of the small frantic things his old body might have done in a comparable emergency.

He simply leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms over the lean and frankly outrageous expanse of his newly sculpted chest:

And waited.

The system, whatever it was, would do what systems did. The universe, whatever it was, would do what the universe did.

Park had recently survived a winter god, a hit-and-run, a transmigration into a body that came pre-loaded with abdominal muscles, and an ER full of strangers staring at him as though he might be wanted on three networks.

A stalled percentage bar was, all things considered, was on the same threat assessment as his bladder had been forty seconds ago.

’I already survived winter’s divine temper tantrum and a bumper with my name on it,’ he thought, the dark amusement curling like good smoke at the corner of his mind. ’A floating blue rectangle from the heavens above? Child’s play; that what happens in all novels. Bring it, you magnificent bastard. I have waited lifetimes for a stage this grand and I am not about to flinch at the curtain.’

But he was lying really, the excitement bubbling deep in him was way too much Park was afraid bringing it outside his body would make shout out loud and become a spectacle, he played stoic, as hard as that was.

The bar twitched.

[ ... 99% ... ]

[100%.]

[Peerless Idol System fully Awakened.]

The blue glow flared once, softly, the way stage lights flared up at the start of a show.

[Welcome, Host.]

The system paused a beat as to let him feel impatient.

[Beginner Package available.]

The text dissolved before it settled into something that hovered with the polite expectancy of a maître d’ holding a menu.

Park looked at the floating panel. The floating panel looked back. Somewhere behind it, in the bathroom mirror, his ridiculous new face was wearing a slow, dangerous, delighted grin — the kind a man wore the first time he sat down at a table where the dealer had quietly slipped him a winning hand under the felt.

’Well,’ he said aloud, in a voice the bathroom tiles caught and threw back to him at the depth of warm whisky, ’don’t keep a lady waiting. Let’s see what the universe owes me.’

He read.