Come Running, Even in Your Sleep

"One americano, please. Warm but also cold."

Front counter of the daytime cafe. Faced with a troublemaker uncle whose order contradicted itself from the very first word, I fielded it with practiced ease while maintaining my soulless smile.

"Of course, sir. I'll serve the ice water chilled, with a double shot of hot espresso on the side."

"Oh…? R-right, sure."

Ziiiiing―.

I gripped the espresso machine on autopilot. My hands never stopped moving, but my head was a thousand miles away, still drowning in everything that had happened at the convenience store last night.

A system of unknown origin that let you force sexual acts on a woman simply by paying money.

After my shift ended I'd gone home and torn through the internet, and come up with nothing. I even asked an AI―.

That was the answer I got.

Of course it was. What kind of lunatic would anyone believe ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if he claimed he'd tapped a payment window floating in midair and groped a woman's chest?

And yet both my palms still held the vivid memory of that bitch's breasts from last night — the weight of them, the feel of her nipples against my fingers.

That was no hallucination. Not by any stretch.

As the machine pulled the shots, I swept my gaze across the cafe, packed wall to wall with customers.

Does it show up for other people too?

On the subway during my commute, and now with the people in this cafe, I found myself staring at them deliberately, one by one. But nothing like yesterday happened. Which left a single conclusion.

The system only applied to someone who met a specific condition.

Right at that moment, a nasal voice wormed its way into my ear.

"Oppa~ sorry, but could you remake the iced caramel macchiato with oat milk and an extra shot for me~? My hands are just so slow."

Park Daeun.

I turned my head to find her — hired about a month ago — looking at me with that whiny little lilt in her voice. Brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, big doe eyes, an innocent, demure face. With her light brown apron tied on, she looked, at a glance, like a sweet, hardworking college girl.

But a few weeks ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of working alongside her had led me to exactly one conclusion.

A sly fox.

The army had its share of them too — trash human beings who knew exactly how to toe the line while dumping their work onto everyone else.

Daeun was the only female employee in the store. She'd flash sugary smiles at the male staff, sprinkle oppa into every other sentence, and shovel her tasks onto them wholesale. The clueless idiots folded under that aegyo and did her work for her.

But with me? Not a chance in hell.

I dumped the shots over the ice in the cup and drew a cold, hard line.

"Can't you see I'm buried in orders right now? If your hands are slow, the answer is to make them faster. How long have you even worked here, still using 'I'm slow' as an excuse to shove your work off on other people?"

At my jab, that beaming face froze over in an instant. The venom that flickered through her eyes was genuinely unsettling — but she recovered just as fast, crinkling the corners of her eyes and pouting her lips in a sulk.

"O-okay~ someone's prickly today, huh? Did something bad happen?"

She was slyly painting me as the petty, narrow-minded one. I didn't bother answering — just turned my head away. A sidelong glance showed her already offloading the drink onto another male part-timer.

Fucking leech.

A sigh boiled up from somewhere deep, but I had no interest in letting things escalate. My nerves weren't free real estate to waste on her. What mattered was something else entirely.

The moment that girl had bolted out of the convenience store in tears last night, the notification window had bloomed before my eyes.

And immediately after that, my banking app had chimed on my phone.

Real money had landed in my account.

Twenty thousand won paid out. Five hundred thousand won earned as reward. For a few minutes of kneading that arrogant bitch's breasts, I'd netted a profit of 480,000 won.

My mother back in the provinces needed surgery, and I'd emptied the savings account I'd built up in the army to cover it. Re-enrolling meant tuition. Staying in school meant living expenses. The place I lived now demanded monthly rent, and maintenance fees on top of that. Even coming home and putting a single meal on the table took money.

Money. I needed it. Constantly. I needed money.

And to a man like that, this system of unknown origin was an enormous, honey-sweet rope dangling from the sky.

With it, I could make ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠money. And I could do it while ravishing the fucking bitch who'd stepped all over me. While ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠taking my revenge.

But there was one problem.

Right now, the system's only valid target was that one woman. Which meant―.

"…She has to crawl back into this convenience store on her own, huh."

2:20 a.m.

Chin propped on the counter, I murmured it low, glaring at the automatic door. Normally she'd have wormed her way in long before now, sucking on some two-hundred-won candy and making a racket.

But the store was dead silent. After what happened last night, there was no reason to expect her back.

The problem was, all I knew about her was her name and her age. No home address, no phone number — so I couldn't exactly go looking for her myself either.

Tap, tap, tap….

…Wait a second.

Just as I sat lost in thought, drumming my fingers on the counter, an idea brushed across my mind.

I focused my awareness into the empty air. Blue light rose across my vision, and the familiar menu unfolded before me.

The moment I'd pressed pay yesterday, she'd hung up her call and come straight to me — then thrust her chest out without a shred of hesitation, as if a command had been forcibly written into her brain.

So then… what would happen if I pressed pay right now, with her nowhere in sight?

Could the power of this system drag her here to me, across all that distance?

There was only one way to find out.

Yesterday's antics had stuffed a tidy 480,000 won of spare cash into my account. Even if I burned a few tens of thousands, the experiment was worth it. An amount I could stomach losing — and an opportunity to try something different from yesterday.

[Touching Pussy (30,000 KRW) — 1-Time Pass]

Gulp….

My throat went dry. Inside the panties of that haughty bitch who'd squeezed her thighs together and gone damp from nothing more than a grope of her tits.

I didn't agonize long. I reached out and touched the item.

Beep―.

My phone buzzed. Bracing a hand on the counter, I stared out through the store entrance at the dark midnight street beyond.

One minute. Five. Ten….

With every tick of the clock, the anxiety knotted tighter in my chest.

It didn't work?

By the thirty-minute mark, the irritation was starting to boil over — thirty grand of good money flushed down the toilet. Maybe it only worked when she was right in front of me. Clicking my tongue, I was just about to go do some shelf organizing—to tidy up the store instead—when—

Ding-a-ling―!

SLAM!

The convenience store door burst open like it was about to come off its hinges.

"Hah…!! Hah…!!"

A figure stopped short in the doorway, heaving for breath, chest heaving.

The girl who had tormented me for a solid week.

She must have sprinted the whole way here like a madwoman — her white camisole was soaked through with sweat and clinging to her, translucent, and her hair had tangled with the perspiration and plastered itself to the nape of her neck.

She actually came!

My heart slammed against my ribs like something unhinged. The system's compulsion held dominion over her brain regardless of distance.

Keeping my face composed, I curled the corner of my mouth up and played dumb.

"Welcome. What can I get for you?"

At my mischievous little question, her face flushed to the point of bursting. She staggered up to the counter, wheezing, then slammed her palm down on it.

"D-don't you fucking play dumb with me, you perverted bastard…!"

Her voice cracked under the weight of shame and indignation.

"You…! You paid for it, didn't you…! T-to touch my p-pussy…!!! You paid, so that's why I came sprinting all the way here in the middle of the night like some crazy bitch, you fuck…!!"

It was less a shout than a full-throated scream. Watching her go scarlet, screaming you paid to touch my pussy out of her own mouth, an electric jolt of conquest shot up my spine and detonated there.

"Ah~ that, you mean? Yeah, I did pay for it."

Even as I answered, I was already walking out from behind the counter toward the door.

The puzzle had clicked into place. The moment a purchase was completed, the system carved the act into her mind as an obligation she could not refuse.

Meaning: no matter how much she hated me, so long as I had paid, she couldn't go to the police — couldn't so much as dodge my hand.

In other words, within the bounds the system allowed, I could do whatever I wanted with absolute safety.

Click!

I locked the door and hung up the sign.

Now there were only two people left inside the convenience store — her and me.

I turned to face her, and the corners of my mouth curled up beyond my control.

"Well then… shall we get to it, like we paid for? Time to give that pussy of yours a proper feel."

Her face drained white. As if last night's memory came flooding back, her body flinched on pure instinct.

The bitch who used to look at me like I was dirt beneath her shoe — her time to be toyed with beneath my fingers had come again.