Episode 1. Tryout.
“Women’s open division, number 426, 3 hours, 22 minutes, 23 seconds.”
“Huff. Huff.”
I was breathing hard, but not enough to collapse where I stood.
If I’d pushed myself a little harder, couldn’t I have shaved off more than five minutes?
“Hey. Wanna grab a beer together?”
“How about your Stargram handle, then?”
“Are you Chinese? I’m Chinese too.”
“You can run pretty well. What do you say? Wanna work out with our crew?”
The moment I crossed the finish line and was still busy catching my breath, the losers who’d been running behind me, staring at my ass, immediately swarmed me.
“Get lost.”
“Whoa, whoa. I’m just saying we should say hello.”
“Ooh, scary. Heh-heh. Feisty one, huh? Bet you’re pretty tough at night too. What do you think? Interested?”
For a second, I considered kicking that black bastard right in the crotch, but since he was only talking and hadn’t touched me, I held back.
And a little while later, I received my record sheet: “Miami Marathon, Full Course, 3 hours, 22 minutes, 23 seconds.”
Why a marathon out of nowhere?
I had no choice. I was building my résumé.
★Main Quest★
- Become a professional wrestler within 1 year and 6 months.
(Current time remaining: 1 year, 4 months, 20 days)
On success: Items and skills.
On failure: Death.
This was why I’d run a marathon.
Damn it, if I’d been TS’d, wasn’t becoming an actress or a VTuber supposed to be the obvious move?
No matter how much I liked pro wrestling, wasn’t this a bit much?
It had blocked me off from pursuing any of those jobs.
On top of that, it had thrown me into Orlando, Florida, a place where I had no connections whatsoever.
And then there was the final quest.
★Final Quest★
- Become an icon of professional wrestling.
Time limit undecided.
On success: Return ticket.
On failure: Death.
An icon of professional wrestling, it said.
It clearly didn’t mean the kind of “icon” they slapped on anyone who did fairly well in the wrestling industry. If we were talking about true icons, there were maybe four? Seven if you were being generous?
If it was four, then probably Berserker Dagan, Iron Cold Steven Bogus, The Stone, and Jack Cena. If you stretched it a little further, Mick Flair, John Michaels, Deadman? Jarrett Hart?
A quest like this seemed like it would be much easier as a man, but it was telling me to do it as a woman.
So during the past month, I had been adapting to my changed body, to suddenly being a woman, and to life in America.
The one fortunate thing was that I had brought over the stats of the Charina character I’d created.
But time—time was far too tight.
So I spent the past month getting used to my changed body, to the body that had suddenly become female.
The first day I stood in front of a mirror, my mind honestly went blank.
First, I was shocked by my body, and even my voice wasn’t the voice I knew as mine.
Thankfully, the system had shown at least the bare minimum of consideration.
Things like how to live as a woman, makeup, dressing, and language had been patched into my head.
So the hopeless feeling of “How am I supposed to live?” disappeared quickly.
At the same time, I looked into how to debut as a professional wrestler whenever I had the chance.
If I’d had plenty of time, I would have formally entered the WWO Performance Center and followed the standard path.
But that would take at least a year.
If I slipped up even once midway because of something like an injury, that 1 year and 6 months could evaporate in no time.
So I gave up on WWO right away.
The realistic route was to debut first in another smaller promotion, then transfer to WWO later.
:
:
I understood why the system had dropped me in America.
After all, the world’s greatest professional wrestling promotion, WWO, was in America.
But why Orlando, Florida, of all places? Not LA, not New York?
After just a little research, I understood immediately.
Orlando had the WWO Performance Center—in other words, a wrestler training facility—and perhaps because of that, wrestling schools and gyms were everywhere, springing up like mushrooms after rain.
On top of that, Florida also had a promotion called TPA.
It mainly aired only in the Florida region, but sometimes it even made national broadcasts, and was roughly ranked fourth or fifth within the United States.
Of course, even if you combined every promotion from second place downward, they still wouldn’t amount to even 30% of WWO’s scale.
If WWO was Major League Baseball, then all the rest combined would be the KBO? Or maybe Taiwanese professional baseball?
Or should I say the difference between the NBA and the KBL?
Still, that was the only option.
TPA was relatively easier to enter, and the time until debut was shorter.
In the end, I decided to go with TPA.
If I had been an athlete back in school, I might have been able to go straight to TPA and become a trainee, but that didn’t apply to me.
For an ordinary person to get into TPA, they had to enroll in and complete either “Team 3D Academy,” run by WWO’s legendary tag team, the Dudley Boyz, or TPA Academy in Canada.
The test fee was 200 dollars.
The test would be roughly one or two weeks after submitting the application.
The academy’s location was barely around ten minutes from my house by car.
Everything was good, except I had nothing to write on my résumé.
From the elementary, middle, and high school memories that the system, or whatever it was, had put into me, the only useful things were my age, height, and weight.
Naturally, I had nothing that could count as preferential treatment for an athletic background, and I didn’t even have so much as a taekwondo certificate.
So in a rush, I at least ran a full-course marathon.
I wanted them to acknowledge my stamina, if nothing else.
“Haa. It could’ve at least given me a certificate in taekwondo or judo. What the hell is this!”
I sent an email with a résumé full of blank spaces and a brief self-introduction video.
Around the time I started thinking about questions and answers that might come up in the interview, I got a text before even an hour had passed.
It said my test would be next Tuesday at 9 a.m.
They sure handled things fast, unlike Americans.
“Guess I’ll watch some YouTube.”
There was nothing to do.
So I might as well watch wrestling technique videos on YouTube.
:
:
On the day of the test, I arrived at Team 3D Academy about twenty minutes early.
There were three rings. In one ring, four male wrestlers were practicing techniques, and in another, two female wrestlers seemed to be training. Around them were about ten more male and female wrestlers.
And stretching off to the side were three men and two women who looked like they had come to take the test.
“Rina Cha?”
“Yes.”
A man, who might have been a coach or something, looked back and forth several times between the photo on my résumé and my face.
“The photo’s a little…”
“Ah. I was in a hurry, so I just took it quickly with my phone.”
“Hmm.”
I could hear the existing male trainees murmuring from all the way over here.
“She’s gonna wrestle with that body?”
“One hit and something’s gonna break.”
“She’s ridiculously pretty, though. Thought she was an idol.”
“Heh-heh. Hope she gets picked. Training with her would be fun.”
“She’s hot as hell.”
“Hey! You over there, shut up!”
“Yes, Coach.”
So he was a coach.
“Cha? Rina? What should I call you?”
“You can just call me Rina.”
“Good. Rina. For now, warm up over there and wait.”
“Yes.”
A man and a woman who looked like a couple arrived as well, and around 9:05, someone who looked like a female coach appeared.
“You’re here?”
“Yeah. But there are eight of them?”
“One guy still hasn’t shown up.”
“Forget it. We don’t need an idiot who can’t even keep an appointment. Donald, let’s just start.”
Since one man hadn’t come, the numbers matched: four men and four women.
The test started with squats, burpees, and sit-ups, then moved on to push-ups.
Then came running inside the ring using the rebound from the ropes, followed by a stamina test.
The first two times were awkward, but after that, the feel of what I’d learned in my past life came back to me.
And so, the rope-running continued for five minutes.
At first, they watched me with expressions that said, “Well, okay,” but when they saw my push-ups and how I moved faster than the male test-takers in the ring, the coaches looked a little surprised.
Lastly, we each took a breakfall test, and with that, the physical test was over.
Everyone except me and the male-female couple who had arrived last was gasping for breath.
“Lastly, we’ll do individual interviews. You, come in first.”
The first man pointed out followed the coaches into the office, then came back out about three minutes later.
And fifth, I was called in too.
“Sit.”
“Yes.”
I sat down right across from the two coaches.
“Your résumé is so simple there’s nothing to look at.”
“Seriously. Wonder what kind of nerve that takes.”
What could I do?
If I’d had a little more time, I would have written at least one more thing.
“I didn’t write it down, but I do know some taekwondo. I didn’t list it because I don’t have a certificate.”
“Oh? That’s good news. Hmm. A full-course marathon in 3 hours and 20 minutes. That really is impressive.”
“Stamina won’t be an issue, then. But did you really lift a total of 450 on the big three? With that body?”
To be fair, my arms were so slender they looked like I’d never exercised a day in my life.
Even to me, when I looked at my own body, it seemed like cheating, so it made sense.
“I have a body type that doesn’t put on muscle easily. I can show you right now if you’d like.”
“Well, I doubt you’re stupid enough to tell a lie that would be exposed immediately. Asians are smart, after all.
Ah. That wasn’t a racist remark. Don’t misunderstand.”
“Yes.”
After that, they asked what other sports I’d tried, and I demonstrated on the spot how flexible I was.
“You’d be more than good enough as the eye-candy type.”
“With just a little polishing, she’d be competitive.”
The eye-candy type.
It referred to female wrestlers who made a living more off their looks than their qualities as wrestlers.
I had absolutely no intention of becoming that type, but if it meant I could debut quickly, what did it matter?
“Why do you want to become a wrestler? With your looks, you could be an idol or an actress.”
It was an obvious question, so I had already thought of an answer.
“Because I want to. And aren’t actresses, idols, and wrestlers all the same, just in different places?”
“Does that mean you’ll quit if you change your mind?”
“There’s no way I’d quit when I can legally throw people and kick them.”
“No, she’s completely insane.”
“Bibi would like that answer.”
Looks like Bibi Dudley had said something similar to me.
“Lastly, who is the wrestler you respect or consider your role model?”
I thought they would ask what my ultimate goal was, but I guess not.
“Jane Kim.”
“Ah. A fellow Korean! That makes sense.”
“Jane would be happy to hear that.”
Jane Kim.
A Korean female wrestler who had dominated the 2000s, a legendary-level women’s wrestler.
If WWO’s Victor McMahon hadn’t looked down on Asians and female wrestlers, she was such an extraordinary technician for her time that her entire life would have turned out differently.
“Is Jane Kim also why you came here instead of going to the WWO Performance Center?”
“That’s part of it.”
And currently, she was working as a staff member under TPA.
“Good. Very good.”
“That’ll be all for the interview. Good work.”
With that, the test at 3D Academy came to an end.