I Am an Erotica Writer (Part 1)
Ah, shit… Why the hell did it have to pop up right there of all places?! I’m so fucked.
Wahahahaha! Hand over all your money, you bastards! Jackpot today, jackpot! Uahaha.
As I passed the second floor, a noisy clamor leaked out from inside. No surprise for an old building—the soundproofing was absolute garbage.
“Must be playing cards in there.”
The second floor of the guard station was where the so-called “pursuit team” waited on standby. To kill time they’d shoot the shit, swap dirty stories, or gamble over hwatu. Honestly, whenever the dirty talk got going I’d sometimes stop and eavesdrop from outside. These grown-ass adults had wild imaginations. They’d even talk about what their own wives were like in bed.
Where else am I supposed to hear stories like that?
Last time I overheard that Jung-hee lady… apparently she tells her husband Seon-gyu to come straight to bed after work without washing, just a quick rinse with water. Something about loving the smell of his unwashed cock. For real?
Even though it came straight from her husband’s mouth, I still couldn’t picture it. Jung-hee didn’t look like the type who’d be into that. She was always so gentle and kind. I knew her face. When I was little she’d pat my head and slip me candy whenever we ran into each other. She had that warm neighborhood-auntie vibe. The idea of her sucking her husband’s cock still carrying the day’s sweat and grime…
“Nah, he was probably just talking shit.”
Typical male bragging. You couldn’t take everything you heard at face value. I shook my head slightly and kept climbing.
The third floor belonged to the reconnaissance team. Their main job was scanning the area with telescopes through the windows. In my opinion, recon was the cushiest post. You didn’t have to fight zombies even if you spotted them, so zero real danger. They always complained that staring through a scope for six straight hours on rotation made their eyes feel like they were about to fall out, but… come on. It wasn’t like they were glued to the lenses the whole time. Every time I walked past I heard them bullshitting instead.
“Of course the guys with the sweet gigs are the first ones to whine about how hard they have it.”
I muttered it under my breath so no one would hear. It definitely wasn’t because I’d applied for recon and got rejected for being too scrawny and weak. Absolutely not.
“Quiet today, huh.”
That was unusual. Normally when I passed by I’d hear them ranking zombies—how this one looked, how that one moved. Maybe they were actually working for once.
Thud, thud.
I climbed another flight. The rooftop door creaked open.
“Huu… haa…”
The air up here really was refreshing. I walked to the center of the roof and leaned my arms on the railing. With no tall buildings nearby, the view opened up nicely.
“Alright. Let’s take a look…”
I pulled out my second treasure—a standard-issue telescope—from my waistband, held it to my eye, and adjusted the magnification.
From the town gate all the way to the church about six hundred meters out was what we called the Developed Land. It was territory the townspeople had slowly reclaimed over the years. Proof that even after being pushed back by the zombies, humanity was still clawing its way back to the old world, inch by inch.
There were no zombies wandering around in the Developed Land. If you let even a couple roam freely, their numbers would explode, so we regularly swept the area and set up a perimeter. This side of the line belonged to us humans.
Beyond the road past the church was the Undeveloped Land—crawling with every kind of zombie imaginable.
When the third-floor recon team spotted zombies crossing the road into the Developed Land, they’d keep watch and alert the second-floor pursuit team. The pursuit team would then head out and take care of them. That was how the Developed Land stayed relatively safe.
For people in E-Sector, it was basically a gold mine for making a living. Unlike the empty buildings inside town that had been picked clean over the years, the structures out in the Developed Land still yielded valuable items from time to time. So residents went out regularly to scavenge for stuff they could sell. We called it farming.
Anyway, the Developed Land was supposedly safe enough to live in if you really wanted. Not that anyone actually did—there were plenty of empty houses inside the town walls—but it had earned a reputation for being secure.
“Not in my book, though.”
Was I the only one worried? The only one scared? Everyone else seemed to have developed some serious safety blindness from getting too used to it. Even the hotshot Awakeners hated fighting zombies in tight spaces, so no matter how brave the guards were, they couldn’t check every single house. Which meant… there could still be zombies trapped inside some of those abandoned buildings.
The ones who’d turned in the early days and got sealed inside before they could escape. Back then the Zombie Virus had just erupted for the first and last time, so people turned without even being bitten.
Around the time I hit puberty, a thought suddenly hit me: what if I got really unlucky and ran into a zombie inside a sealed-off space? My overly sensitive teenage brain and wild imagination recreated that terror and helplessness so vividly it felt real. From that day on, I started avoiding farming.
I’d developed a genuine fear. Like how I used to catch cockroaches as a kid and play with them until one day I flipped one over and saw those twitching mandibles and those disgusting wriggling legs… and never touched another one again.
After that I gradually drifted away from my friends. Back when everyone was running around the Developed Land like it was their backyard, I started avoiding them so I wouldn’t get called a coward. They always picked the creepiest-looking houses to explore, so half the time I just stayed home, terrified I’d run into something and get dragged off.
That’s how I became a loner.
Looking back, I was basically worrying myself sick over nothing. In the twenty years I’d been alive, I’d never once heard of anyone actually encountering a zombie while farming. It’s kind of amazing that even though people called me a weakling, no one ever called me a coward. I guess I’d gotten really good at avoiding danger.
You really went through it, Kang Woojin. At least you grew up into a decent adult who isn’t ashamed of himself.
Of course I still went farming occasionally. Had to eat somehow. That’s how I got my second treasure—the telescope.
I got lucky that time.
But the best thing was that last year I finally found my calling. It still had a lot of rough edges, but if I played my cards right it was a job where I could make money without having to risk my neck running around out there.
“Let’s see…”
I slowly panned the telescope from center to right. Zombies came into view. Pale skin with no blood flow, veins bulging across the surface. Those cloudy gray eyes with no focus. People called them “dead-fish eyes.” Seeing them in person gave me chills. A zombie in torn clothes with one cheek ripped away, gums fully exposed, clacking its teeth. Another stumbling around completely naked and mangled. One standing blankly in place before suddenly sniffing and whipping its head toward any noise.
“They really do look horrifying.”
Goosebumps prickled along my arms. Their grotesque appearance made my skin crawl, but those were actually the low-tier ones. Their damaged bodies made their movements jerky and unnatural. If you ran into one you could usually shake it by bolting.
I could see an exploration team searching through rooms on the second floor of some building, and others hiding from zombies on a nearby street.
“Everyone’s so damn brave.”
I wouldn’t go out there even if you paid me to die trying.
I kept adjusting the magnification, observing the zombies both near and far, when suddenly—
Found one.
A female zombie with an almost perfectly intact appearance entered my view. Zombies that looked this whole had usually fed on human flesh and blood. The ones who’d tasted people.
It was a trait of the virus. Unlike zombie movies where biting and eating flesh didn’t change their appearance, real zombies recovered physical damage based on how much human blood and meat they consumed.
“To them, we humans are basically a superfood.”
Whether we tasted good was another question.
Ugh, that gave me chills.
Individuals who regained a complete appearance were called high-tier zombies. Unlike the low-tier ones whose joints moved like jelly and who sometimes tripped over their own flailing limbs while running, high-tier zombies had fully restored bodies. Their skin became even more elastic than when they were alive, and their movements were almost human. Some were faster than humans, making them extremely dangerous. Especially to us, since even a scratch could kill.
Anyway, what mattered to me was that high-tier zombies retained their original looks.
“Whoa… This is it. Seeing them in person really hits different.”
The woman looked to be in her late twenties. She must have been quite arrogant and beautiful in life. Even with the zombie veins visible on her face, it didn’t detract from her looks at all. If anything, it looked strangely erotic. The tattered remains of clothing barely clinging to her shoulders had long since lost their shape. Beneath them, round breasts jutted out proudly.
“Damn… Look at those tits. They’re insane.”
My groin tightened. Like any zombie, veins stood out across her skin, and the same was true for her breasts. Thin, pale-green veins with no clear starting point snaked around the curved flesh before gathering toward the center. Somehow it didn’t look disgusting—it looked sensual. Like her entire chest was erect. After all, when veins pop out on a cock it looks thicker and harder, right? So these breasts looked unusually firm and swollen, as if they were raging with lust. They seemed so full they might burst if you squeezed them.
And then there were the nipples, protruding sharply from the centers. Hers were fully swollen. I imagined they’d feel firm rather than soft to the touch. That vivid mix of purple and light brown, glistening with a strange sheen—I swallowed hard without thinking.
I gripped the telescope tighter, staring as if spellbound.
This was why I climbed the watchtower every so often to look outside.
It was directly related to my job.
I was an erotica writer.
What I was doing right now was research. I’d only seen a real woman’s naked body once in my entire life. I’d never even kissed anyone, let alone had sex. To someone like me, the bare body of a high-tier female zombie was precious material that filled in all my missing knowledge.