Huaya Country, the Gu family residence.
Early morning.
Gu Rou gently placed the bowl of miso soup in her hands onto the dining table. Then she went upstairs and stopped in front of a room whose door was covered with cute stickers. She knocked lightly.
"Xiao Xue, breakfast is ready."
There was no response from inside.
Gu Rou sighed, twisted the doorknob, and—just as she had expected—it was locked.
"Xiao Xue!" Gu Rou raised her voice slightly.
"Leave me alone!" A voice finally came from inside. Like Gu Rou's, it was gentle and pleasant to the ear, carrying the soft sweetness unique to a young girl—but the tone was bad, sharp and irritable.
Gu Rou spoke softly. "Xiao Xue, you've been staying in your room for three days already. What exactly happened? Can you tell your sister about it?"
"I already said it! Leave me alone!"
Gu Rou held onto the doorknob, feeling helpless. She had no idea what was going on with her younger sister. Logically speaking, her rebellious phase should have ended by now…
"Xiao Xue, is there some problem at work? If there really is, tell your sister. If you're truly unhappy, quitting is fine too… But honestly, I told you from the start—at nineteen, a girl like you really isn't suited for a job at an animation studio. The hours are chaotic and there's no security. That kind of place was never meant for someone like you. Ever since you joined, you come home late every night, exhausted, even your skin looks worse. And when I say something, you argue back about chasing your dreams…"
The more Gu Rou thought about it, the more certain she became. No matter how she turned it over in her mind, there was only one possible reason for her sister's sudden change in personality: her job. She began trying to persuade her sister, but as she kept talking, it gradually turned into venting her own frustrations in a stream of nagging…
Bang.
A dull sound came from inside the room. The person inside, clearly annoyed, seemed to have slammed a fist hard against the floor.
Gu Rou immediately stopped talking and sighed. Having lived together for so many years, she knew her sister's personality well. Although she looked cute, she was extremely stubborn—once she made up her mind, she'd be as unyielding as a bull, no matter who tried to talk her out of it. Like the decision not to continue her education after graduating high school.
"I have to go to work now. After I leave, make sure you eat properly."
Gu Rou knew standing outside the door and talking was completely pointless. She didn't say anything more, gently reminded her once, and went downstairs.
The sound of footsteps gradually faded away.
Inside the dim room.
A girl wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her figure graceful and well-proportioned, lit up her phone screen again. By the faint glow of the screen, her appearance became clear: long hair hanging messily over her shoulders, as if it hadn't been tidied in a long time. Her whole body radiated an air of decadence. This unkempt state would normally be terrible for a girl's image—but the girl sitting in the corner of the room was so strikingly beautiful that her current disheveled appearance hardly mattered at all.
How should one describe her looks? At first glance, the immediate thought would be—
A JK (high school girl), right?
Strictly speaking, she wasn't a JK anymore, but she had only graduated from high school about a year ago.
She was at the peak of her youth, her figure just fully matured.
Click.
The loud sound of the front door locking echoed into the room. Gu Yu… no, Gu Xue finally put down her phone, stood up, threw herself onto the bed, buried her face into the blanket, and shouted:
"What the hell is this supposed to be?"
Yes.
As you can see.
The soul inside this JK-like body was not the original one… at least, not a pure version.
Gu Yu—a man from Xia Country, a senior key animator at an animation studio in an island nation.
On his way home from work, he suddenly felt dizzy and lost consciousness. When he woke up, he found himself in a different body, along with an extra set of memories. The reason was unknown.
And the previous owner of this body also had the surname Gu. Her name was Gu Xue, nineteen years old. She graduated from her third year of high school the year before last and chose not to continue her studies. Instead, for the sake of her so-called dream, she had forced her older sister to use her connections and pull strings to get her into an animation company.
What a damn karmic joke.
Gu Yu… now Gu Xue, sorted through these memories and nearly burst into tears when she reached this part.
Doing animation is a dead end.
That was the deepest realization Gu Xue had gained after more than ten years of struggling in another world.
How could anyone willingly jump into a pit of fire like this…
While organizing the memories of her predecessor, she had carefully studied this world. It was different from the one she once lived in—a kind of parallel world. The planet wasn't called Earth, but Azure. The overall course of history was roughly similar, but compared to Earth, there were still differences. The biggest one lay in the territorial size of the major countries.
Huaya Country, the largest nation on Azure, was a full third larger in land area.
And Huaya's Sakura Province was roughly equivalent to a certain place on Earth—packed with hardcore otaku, famous for animation and manga, and currently one of the strongest provinces in Huaya's cultural industry.
Sakura Province's animation industry had the same strengths as that island nation on Earth—and even its flaws and current state of development were strikingly similar.
Although not as severe, people within the industry generally felt it was "doomed." There were even famous directors who had joked that animation only had five years of life left.
Of course, that was a joke.
But the continuous expansion of the market, the influx of huge amounts of capital, and the growing number of projects—while animation production itself had hit a bottleneck—was an undeniable fact.
The core issue lay in the production system.
Industry pay was extremely low, while the workload was enormous, especially in the drawing stages. Cultivating talent was incredibly difficult.
Each season brought more and more new anime series, and with them, more and more garbage productions—either made with a careless attitude or rushed out due to impossible deadlines.
Low pay had seen some improvement in recent years as the industry began paying attention to the issue, but it was only a superficial fix. The other problems had no real solutions at all.
In this situation, choosing to make animation was truly working on love alone.
When she first sorted through her memories and realized her predecessor had resolutely chosen to skip college and enter an animation company, Gu Xue almost wanted to slap herself.
With skills that were only average, why insist on doing animation? Just go to university properly, damn it…
The shock of that decision was so overwhelming that even turning into a girl felt trivial in comparison.
Day one: hiding in the room, confused and in pain, questioning everything.
Day two: hiding in the room, scrolling through her phone all day.
Day three: more or less accepting reality.
As the memories gradually merged, Gu Xue (Gu Yu) would sometimes even forget that she had transmigrated at all. The predecessor's memories were still there and inevitably influenced her—so it wasn't strange that she occasionally forgot.
Of course, this phenomenon completely disappeared whenever she took a shower…
After all, she had only basically accepted the fact that she was Gu Xue now. Truly adapting would still take time.
Fortunately, in her previous life on Earth, she had worked in animation and had been deeply steeped in ACG culture. Her ability to accept things was quite strong. Otherwise, forget accepting becoming a girl—she would've jumped off a building on day one.
As for why, after basically accepting her transformation and identity as Gu Xue, she still wasn't willing to face Gu Rou—her… sister—it was because she was afraid.
Afraid of what, she couldn't quite figure out herself.
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Even though it's gender-bender, I highly recommend you read this story. The author knows a lot about animation, and it's a very entertaining story.