Another story to go with a great photomanip by you would not believe how long I'd left this one half finished. Can you tell I love to make them manip hands?

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"Kochi, I've got big news for you."


Chi Keo-Jin spun her eyes against the pink burner flip phone held to her ear. It was always big news from her agent, but rarely good news. At least not lately.


"What contract is it this time? Another girl group? I told you, I only want solo work now." One more word about the latest drama with her leaving LMN and she might just snap this phone in half. Paparazzi really had nothing on irate kpop fans who got their news off Instagram rumor mills. Two giggling middle school brats taking pictures of her from behind clothing racks had Chi almost aiming for their heads with her purse.


Now she’d moved to a less crowded entrance of the clothing store now to take the call, removing her N95 mask and pushing her shoulder length coal black hair behind her ears. Bored fingers plucked at her black tank top straps and thumbed on the fake pockets of her low cut denim shorts. A full blush of peach pink eyeshadow and cotton candy lipstick wasn’t exactly the most incognito for her A-list celebrity status. Deranged people recognizing her was just what she expected, so at least she’d look her best in their hate click videos.


"Can you take that chip out of your shoulder and shut up for once? For fucks sake..." Her agent voice muttered into silence while waiting for Chi to bite his head off in return. This was their usual back and forth until the idol inevitably felt like playing ball. Was it any wonder that she was aways booted for haranguing other girls off stage? She should have had enough black marks on her history to call it a Dalmatian and keep her out of the music industry for good.


Yet somehow, always to the bafflement of her agent, there were still groups that wanted the drama. Chi was good for driving up engagement with her outbursts, you had to give her that. Bossy girls with too much attitude had their own intense charm, though fans usually got tired of it fast. Then it would be back to shopping around for half-bit gigs before her agent could get her to play the role of a weekly villain for some rising super star without Chi realizing it.


"Charlie, don't fucking talk that way to me. I hire you to get me work.” Chi ignored the phone for a moment to scratch at her rose petal finger nails. “If you don’t want to do that, then don’t work for me.” Agents came a dime a dozen. Charlie just happened to be pretty effective for how little Chi paid him. She suspected that he also enjoyed seeing her stumble, so she couldn’t go too easy on the man.


“Am I doing this out of the goodness of my heart? You’re paying me peanuts to find you gold.”


“It’s better than nothing for your sorry ass if you can’t get me a job.”

If they were having this meeting in person, their hands would be at each other’s throats by now. "It a role in new Netflix show." There was a solid pause that gave the agent an invitation to continue the pitch. "It's a big role, I think. Wouldn't let me look at the whole script."


That was enough time spent without being obstinate for Chi. "I don't do English."


"That's fine, your parts are in Korean. And some uh... animal noises." If there was anything to ruin it, this would be the deal breaker. Charlie braced for impact with his hand over the phone speaker.


"What??"


"Listen, I don't know all the details. Something about special vocal training. Vocal coaching, I don't know."


Chi squeezed her eyes shut. "Whatever, just send me all the stuff. This sounds too weird, you love to set me up with weird shit. Remember the anime thing?"


"Oh quit complaining, that was a fine gig! Maybe you should’ve read the source material like I told you to.“ If Chi knew all the details of every voice acting job, ad read, or pop song before she took them, she'd have taken a vow of silence at a monastery instead. It was her agent's job to make her sign that little slip of paper and take their 10% cut to the bank as soon as possible. Good looks and a nice voice didn't move much on their own when they belonged to a woman as stubborn as a mule.


Chi folded one arm under her chest defensively. "That's why I don't do anime now. Cause of you."


"Chi, you have more baggage than a fucking airport. You are lucky to get anything right now. Come on, it’s Netflix, the money is as solid as it gets. I even made them get rid of the part where they get to use your likeness for AI. See? I’m out here fighting for you!”


"I'm not sold. At all...”

“Just take a listen to the stuff I sent over. The producer included a special message for you that she said would change your mind. Sounded like they were pretty dead set on getting you for the role. But what do I know, right?”

Her eyes swerved towards the phone, but she let nothing slip before Charlie hung up on her after a pause. “Hey!” That jerk of an agent made everything sound just a little too sweet for her. That was his job after all. Chi had already walked outside the store, turning her glower up at the overcast sky. Just her luck if it rained on her the moment she tried to cross through a park. She sat down at an empty bench nearby, silently cursing and pulling out a crumpled box of cigarettes from under her ass to light the least beaten up smoke between her lips. Her other hand switched out the burner phone for a smartphone from her purse. A device she didn’t like tainting with work, though it was useful for browsing the internet.

Her initial searches made Chi roll her eyes right out of her head. The show was based on a trashy mobile game, Girl’s Race, with the inane conceit of horse girls racing against each other while also at a high school to become idols, for some reason. She wanted to gag at the trashy dance animations and fanservice cutscenes. How something so pandering and idiotic became popular enough for a television show was beyond her. Netflix was really scraping the bottom of the barrel if this was an IP they’d sink money into. The show adaptation seemed to have a decent amount of hype surrounding it, something about the director teasing a realistic redesign of the girls. This praise was also mostly being parroted from the type of jobless freak Otaku who Chi despised.

She scrolled through a few videos of influencers giving their thoughts on TikTok about the show’s announcement. Chi skipped past any take that didn’t anticipate the show being an absolute garbage fire.

One clip speculating on the casting caught her eyes however. “For Cherry Hawk, don’t you think Chi Keo-Jin would be perfect? Hawk is such a stubborn bitch to the other girls, and I think Chi Keo-Jin would play a great villain like that. She’s never been in a TV show, but she has a killer singing voice. Plus, don’t you think her face is already a little horse-like? Maybe its just me.”

Chi hand squeezed on the sides of her phone as if she had the strength to split it in two. She sighed, exhaling a thin whisp of smoke to let the feeling of annoyance pass through her naturally. It was too early in the day to let losers on the internet get her riled up. They didn’t know a single real thing about her. She let the video play five more times, watching it with a restrained glare before switching over to her email to look for Charlie’s message.

Something in her flinched when she saw that she was being cast as the protagonist’s uptight rival, Cherry Hawk, and then her eyes widened at the huge bonuses if the show secured a season two or three. Charlie would have pipped in to tell her that Netflix would be sure to cancel the show after the first season for a tax break. Without him talking in her ear, Chi only thought of how her talent could easily carry the whole production. Sure, the concept was still a complete joke, but there was potential too, or maybe it was the thought of being able to freely play a bitch. That type of method acting always got people’s mouths wet. She could pull it off easily and enjoy herself the whole time.

She got up from the bench, dialing up Charlie again before stopping her fingers and backspacing his number. No, he would gloat too much if he thought she’d been won over so easily. Better call him in a few days, make him sweat a little. Instead, she pulled up the producer’s voice mail message to her ear as she started walking out of the store.

Instead of a voice thanking Chi for her interest in the role, the phone rumbled with a low hum. Chi tapped the smoke against her hip, then letting it fall under her foot as she waited for the audio to start in earnest. As she rubbed the phone against her ears, they gently perked up, Chi’s black hair spreading over the back of her neck and behind her ears. The more she listened, the more her ears rode upwards on the sides of her head, her earlobes absorbed into a deeper, folded ear canal with fuzzy round tips that wiggled over the top of her scalp. The more her ears changed, the better she could hear the voice calling her name. Her new name.

“Can you hear me Cherry Hawk?”

Cherry nodded with a blank stare into the middle distance. Her fingers felt numb, slipping against the smartphone’s dark glass to fold it back into her purse. Yet the voice remained in her ears, making them elongate and twitch, peeking up through her hair like velvety waffle cones. She bent them to catch the sound as it dipped low into a whisper that coiled itself through her mind.

“You’re the perfect horse for this role. Strong, beautiful, wild.”

“Oh, I know it.” Cherry scoffed at the easy praise, flipping her hair back. With a small grunt, she wiggled free the boney growth bulging in the back of her shorts. A thick tuft of black hair coated over the thin tail, slowly building into swaying back and forth against her hips. Cherry drew her hands underneath her chest, feeling her ribs barreling out, choking back saliva as her neck thickened. “You’d be lost with anybody else.” There wasn’t another mare who could even compare. Not to her looks, nor her talent.

“Your legs are so powerful from years of dancing.”

She shorted, nostrils flaring as the skin over the tip of her nose cracked and flattened. Stringy black horse hairs dripped down the back of Cherry’s leg, occasionally thwacking at bothersome flies. “Honestly, I prefer the racetrack for my workout.” The seams on her shoes pulled tight, soles ripping away as Cherry’s toes balled into hardened hooves. Her heels lifted up, stretching ankles adding to her height and tearing away the remains of her sneakers. Shoulders bent forward with Cherry’s whole body hunching slightly into a unguligrade posture, posed precariously on to tips of her clunky feet. She rubbed her thumbs against the palm of her hand, feeling her fingers fold together tightly. Rosey nails plated over her knuckles, digits compressing together into glossy pink hooves.

“But the stage is where you really shine. The audience loves your deep voice and your long sexy face.”

Cherry rolled her shoulders, letting a tail of dark horsehair beat lightly against her thighs. If the strange voice in her ear was trying to lull her to into trace, it only had the opposite effect by emboldening her. “Niighhaturally, I have a lot of fans.” Her tight smile clenched down on the unruly neigh rippling from her broad cheeks, jaw extending to accommodate a mouth of flattened molars and buckteeth. With each snort, Cherry’s equine snout jutted out further in front of her face, pushing her eyes wide to the sides of her head.

“Push out those cute lips for everyone to see.” She obliged, a thick tongue spreading slobber over her snout, smoothing the groove between her nose and upper lips as they slid into one surface at the tip of her sensitive muzzle. Flabby peach lips puckered below her huffing oval nostrils to produce Cherry’s cutest modeling pout. “Give your ears a wiggle to bend the crowd.” She smiled once more, stroking her hoof over her forehead to part her hair in a messy split, then whipped her wrist down over her face seductively, shaking her snout to let her ears beat the stray hairs back into place. “Plant your firm hooves on the ground.”

“Uh, no?” One of her ears bent to the side, hooves grinding onto her front hips to blast out an exasperated snort that briefly flared her large front teeth. Folding one arm into the angle of her elbow, she brushed the perfectly polished pink hoof under her chin to admire its glossy finish. “I just got my hooves manicured!”

The voice proceeded without wavering. “Fill your snout with a nice whinny.”

Both of her ears folded down angrily, grinding the flats of her teeth to blow air from the side of her mouth. “Hhnighy, you’re getting a little pushy for a producer. I don’t preform on command like a fucking showhorse.”

“Flip up your tail for those big strong stallions.”

“Like hell?” Cherry brayed obstinately, slashing the dirt under her legs with stamping hoof stomps. “I’m not a slutty breeding mare you fuck, I’m a goddamn thoroughbred racehorse!” The voice had no response, though she’d scarcely paused to give it time. “You’re useless. I already know I have the role, so I’ll set the demands. I want my own stable between shots. I eat five carrots a day, and only high-quality corn-free feed. You put a stick of hay anywhere near me and I kick your skull in. Got it?”

“…” There was a palpable silence, the rumbling tone that once overtook her mind now shoved to the ground until it was as distant as a far-off cicada call.

Cherry continued, her blood beat to a boil. “I need a bowl of sugar cubes between shots. But get the stablehands to round off the edges, I hate when they cut my gums. Oh, and they better not be shy about heavy brushing. This mane doesn’t care for itself!” Her tail swished up and down, fanning the flames that made her snout puff with heated snorts.

“……” The whimpering murmur of a voice long faded gave a scratchy rub that made Cherry bristle her neck hair, like someone trying to politely cough their way out of argument.

“I don’t do tricks and I don’t do reshoots. Get over it or go through my rider.” Charlie always backed her up when directors tried to saddle her with a raw deal, or saddle her in general.

“Uh, yeas girl…”

“Yes girl? Do I look like a filly to you? Actually, you know what, deal’s off. You don’t know how to treat me right. Fine, I have plenty of other offers. Byyee bihhhtch.” The voice offered a weak shiver as protest before it was stamped out a swift kick by Chi’s back legs into a hapless maple tree trunk. Dislodged leaves drifted down the park floor, one of them landing over Chi’s snout. She shook it off, freeing herself from the last vestiges of that annoying influence.

She’d almost started calling herself the name of some poorly designed anime character! What new awful tricks where production companies employing these days? To think she’d been this close to letting them lead her around with a bridle and harness. The very thought of it made Chi scrunch up her snout and twist her tail. Casting off the remains of someone’s ruined sneakers that must have fallen from the tree, she was prepared to carry on her trot through the park when she noticed someone staring at her from across a bush.

“Chi Keo-Jin?” A younger woman had stopped to stare at the unemployed idol, their eyebrows woven together with deep perplexity.

“Uh huh…” She folded her arms, giving the woman the same level of scrutiny as was being passed over her. Didn’t look like they were one of those brats who’d been giggling at her in the mall earlier.

“Uh, wow… you look different…”

“Huh?” Chi balked, cocking her snout at them with teeth bared and nostrils wide. “What the hheighll is that supposed to mean?”

“N-nothing! I mean different… to meet you in person.” The panicked woman hurriedly reached into her backpack, pulling out a composition notebook that was covered in stickers. “Can you sign m-“ They looked down at Chi’s hooves where they were crossed fiercely under her chest.

Chi snorted, eyes rolling over. Just her luck to have the most hapless fans imaginable. Must be why they liked her headstrong nature so much. “Got a pen?” The woman held out a cheap ballpoint pen procured from their bag. Chi carefully clasped the pen between her wrists, squeezing it till a sudden crack dripped black ink over her the flat of her hoof. After giving the ink a moment to settle over her keratin, Chi stamped down on the woman’s notebook, blotting out numerous other signatures in the indentation of a large inky hoof print. “There.” They better be grateful. Signatures were such a bother for her these days.