This is Korea, a post-apocalyptic nation that barely survived a near-destruction.
To be precise, it’s Seoul.
Every city outside Seoul has been reduced to rubble, turned into a wasteland.
You could say it’s truly become the Seoul Republic now.

The Hope Orphanage, where I’ve spent my entire life, is located on the outskirts of Seoul.
It’s not exactly a nice facility.
Most of the scenery is ash-gray, and hot water rarely works.

“This place is a landfill for human garbage.”

That was the assessment of Kim Jin, a friend from the orphanage.
He’s a guy my age, extremely cynical about the ways of the world.
And, like most boys in the orphanage, he had a crush on me before I shot him down hard.

“People born with a silver spoon live it up in central Seoul, while the losers of life get pushed out to the outskirts. Once you end up here, no matter what you do, your life is over.”

If the orphanage teachers heard him, they’d have given him an earful.

– Don’t say things like that!
– Talking like that drags down the other kids trying their best!

– Or something like that.

But at that moment, it was just me and Kim Jin.
It was the perfect chance to share my opinion.

“I think it’s a pretty decent place to live.”
“What? Here?”
“You get regular meals, there are no monsters, and the beds are decent enough.”
“I really don’t get you. Just plain rice with some radish and fish cakes—is that even food? Meanwhile, the rich kids in Gangnam are slicing steaks every day.”
“It’s better than starving. Better than getting eaten by a monster.”

From the perspective of someone who lived through my past life, the orphanage was a surprisingly good place to live.
You get food. No monsters show up.
How many people died just to make those two things possible?

“Thirty years ago, people died because there wasn’t enough food. In my past life, I had to boil tree roots to eat.”

For the record, I don’t bother hiding my past life.
In an orphanage in a region where infrastructure and everything else got obliterated, what kind of entertainment is there?
You’ve got to share some epic stories to pass the time.

The people at the orphanage seem to think it’s fiction or my imagination.
They’re amazed I can come up with such detailed stories from my room.
It’s not fiction—it’s my lived experience.

“Here we go with your past-life shtick again. Don’t you get tired of it?”
“Nope, not at all. It feels fresh every day.”
“I’ve always thought this, but you’re seriously weird. Though, I guess you’d have to be to live in a place like this with a smile.”

Kim Jin shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
I grabbed him right at that moment.

“Hey, Jin.”
“Uh… yeah?”

The moment I called his name, his breathing hitched.
His usual cynical expression melted away instantly.
A girl his age calling his name in a friendly way? That’s a critical hit for a guy at this age.

And I’m pretty, aren’t I?
With a bright smile, I tossed out the line I’d been waiting to use, out of sight from the orphanage teachers.

“Do you have any money saved up?”
“Money…?”
“Yeah! I need some cash.”

I smiled innocently, adding a touch of charm.
This trick I learned from an older girl at the orphanage.
I’m pretty good at picking up what others do.
And since I’m prettier than her, the effect is doubled.

“I do have some money saved, but…”

The money each person saves up at Hope Orphanage.
This is where I need to explain the orphanage’s system.

Here, the kids are given simple tasks.
Baking bread, looking after younger kids, preparing meals, making geeky merch, and so on.
We get paid for it, and that money piles up in an account, becoming our independence fund.
The interest rate on the account is pretty high, too.

It’s a surprisingly good welfare system.
Especially when you consider this is post-apocalyptic Korea.
Kim Jin constantly badmouths the elites in central Seoul, but in my opinion, they’re doing their part.

They support the orphanage, provide education, and give us enough money to function in society.
The disaster killed so many people that humans became a precious resource.

Well, to be precise, there’s a shortage of people to do the grunt work in the city.
Once you leave the orphanage, you’re just scraping by as a low-tier laborer.
Dreaming of a cushy life in the upper class is out of the question, but still, this isn’t bad.
It’s better than starving to death.

The welfare is decent enough.
But on the outskirts of Seoul, you still hear about homeless people and starvation deaths.

Why?

Because the people at the bottom scam and exploit each other.
Just like me.

“I’m planning to go independent from the orphanage soon, so I need a lot of money. I’d love it if you could chip in, Jin.”
“What about me? I need to eat and live later, too.”

To be clear, it’s not exactly a scam.
I’m not that kind of shady person.

“Going independent means getting a job, right? I’ll find a job and pay you back later.”
“That’s a scam! The teachers always said never to give money like this!”
“Jin.”

Here’s the second trick I learned from that older girl.
Look straight into their eyes with an innocent, pure gaze.

“It’s not like that… I mean, it’s really not.”
“Just hear my plan out.”

It’s not like I don’t have a plan.
If I can secure the right investment, I’m confident I can pay back all my debts and even turn a profit.

“I’m going to start streaming online. As a girl, I’ll naturally pull in viewers, and I can get a lot of donations relative to the stream’s size. There are tons of guys who want to throw money at a female streamer to make her ‘theirs.’”
“Uh… what…?”
“The problem is that it makes growing the stream harder, and it could easily slide into some shady sponsorship deal, which I don’t want. I don’t want to cater to random guys I don’t even know.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“So, I need a different kind of main content. Something that’ll drive away those creeps and get people hyped up—something that’ll make their blood boil.”

I’ve been gathering info about streaming while living at the orphanage.
I mean, I was reborn as a pretty girl—wouldn’t it be a waste not to use it?

With looks like mine, I can pull in a ton of initial viewers.
Obviously. I’m gorgeous.

The problem comes after that.
Streaming that relies on pseudo-romantic feelings to make money—those “simp-bait” female streams—are a bottomless pit.
You have to constantly cater to viewers’ whims, and it wears you down mentally and physically.
For someone like me, who was a guy in my past life, that’s way too harsh a trial.

So, I need a different kind of main content.
Something that can draw a wide audience and drive the stream’s growth.

“Guess what it is?”
“…”

Sure, the world almost ended, but this is still Seoul.
People use the internet and old smartphones.
I know a bit about the hobbies of the boys at the orphanage, including Kim Jin.

“You watch streams all the time, right? Yelling and screaming at them.”
“That’s because it’s a game! It’s the kind of game that makes you do that!”

A game.
A virtual reality game where you can fully immerse yourself in its world.
It’s called [Knight Arc].

“Is it that fun?”
“Of course it’s fun. Even just watching it is a blast.”

To play [Knight Arc], you need a bunch of equipment, which costs a lot.
A single orphanage kid’s life savings wouldn’t cut it.

Subtly but surely,
I closed the distance between me and Kim Jin.

“What if I played that game?”
“You, Joo Wooyeon?”
“Yeah. With my looks and genius-level swordsmanship, don’t you think I’d kill it?”

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
This is a surefire hit.

[Knight Arc] is a survival game where you fight with swords and magic.
It perfectly replicates real-world movements.
I’m confident in my swordsmanship, so it’s the ideal game to leverage my past-life memories.

Imagine jumping into the most popular game, crushing all the top-ranked players,
and doing it as a black-haired, red-eyed beauty?
It’s a setup that can’t not succeed.

“Alright, I get it. I get it, but I’m still not convinced you’re a swordsmanship genius. Sure, you’ve always been good at fighting since we were kids, but that doesn’t mean you’re great with a sword.”
“Fair point.”

He’s not wrong.
I’ve won every fight that’s broken out at the orphanage, but there were no swords involved.
If I’d swung a sword around here, I’d have been kicked out in a heartbeat.

Still, I’ve been secretly training all this time.
I pulled a metal chopstick from my pocket and gripped it.

“Then watch closely.”

We were in an open lot, littered with fragments of the war.
It was also the place where I’d been secretly practicing my swordsmanship.

Tap.

With a movement that wasn’t even particularly impressive,
a chunk of concrete in front of me was sliced clean through in an instant.

“And don’t tell anyone.”

Grind, grind, grind—

The top half of the debris slid off along a diagonal cut, hitting the ground with a loud crash and kicking up dust.

Boom!

I tucked the chopstick back into my pocket and gave Kim Jin a steady look.

“So, you gonna lend me the money?”
“I’ll lend it! I’ll lend it!”

Kim Jin nodded frantically.
Somehow, it feels like all my earlier flirting was pointless, but whatever—good is good.

After that, I managed to hit up a few more people and scrape together some cash.

Thank you, dear investors.
Your lives are about to take off.