The End of Every Delusion Is Clink-Clink
For about three seconds after I said it, I actually thought it might work.
It was a scenario I'd seen play out hundreds of times on Hitomi alone. The heroine caught in someone's grip tears up, resists, and then finally nods her head. Then she realizes that every refusal only puts her in a worse position, and pretends to give in, sweetly assuming the position. Surely Seoyeon would pretend she had no choice and let me have it, too.
In the simulations I'd run in my corner of the room, this formula had never once failed.
At least, not in the fantasy version.
"What the hell did you just say to me?"
Noona, who had been bent over, lifted her head. The tearful face from moments ago was gone, replaced by a gaze that looked at me like I was something you'd scrape off a shoe.
"Huh? Noona, that was—"
"Pull your pants up."
A foreboding chill swept over me, the sense that something had gone horribly wrong.
"Not gonna? You're actually insane, you know that?"
Noona clutched her stomach, swaying on her feet, but her eyes alone were enough to kill me where I stood. Terrified out of my wits, I fumbled my pants up in a panic, my hands shaking so badly the drawstring kept tangling around itself.
"You've had your ear pressed to my wall. This whole time."
"No, no, it's not like that, Noona, I—"
"You said you wear headphones! That's what you told me at the recycling area, you little— Don't tell me that was a lie too!"
CRACK!
Her voice cracked across my eardrums like a whip.
"I trusted that one sentence and sat here telling myself it was fine. Like an idiot."
I wanted to say it wasn't true, but not a single word of it was wrong, so my mouth refused to open.
"Ah— Noona, wait, it's all a misunderstanding! That's not what—!"
I reached out a hand in desperation, and it was swatted away instantly.
Slap!
"Do that one more time and I'll break your wrist. I do PT. I know exactly which way a joint bends."
It did not sound like a joke. Her eyes dropped to the thing still standing rigidly at attention between my legs, and her face contorted like she was about to gag.
"Open the door."
"Noona, please, just give me one second to explain—"
"God, you're disgusting, you absolute piece of… You're in this state and you still want to argue with me? Open the door before I call the police."
"Noona! It's a misunderstanding, I was just messing around, I swear…!"
"Open the door. I said. I'm not saying it a third time."
The moment the door opened, Noona snatched her bag off the hallway floor and stormed into Unit 301.
BANG —!!
Then, a few seconds later, came the sound of everything she'd been holding back detonating through the wall.
— PBBRRRRT! KABOOOM!
A fart so vicious and thunderous it rattled the wall itself. But the very sounds that had driven me wild with excitement only minutes ago now tolled like funeral bells, pronouncing the sentence of my life.
"I'm… I'm so, so dead."
I collapsed in a heap in the corner of the room. Cold sweat ran down my spine like a downpour.
What had I done? Had watching too much porn finally rotted my brain through?
Forcible molestation? Sexual harassment? Public indecency? Every clause of the criminal code began spinning dizzily through my head.
The start of my criminal record… a fart. I tried to imagine how the verdict would describe the facts of the case and ended up pulling my blanket clear over my head.
That night, I didn't sleep a wink, and the days that followed were pure hell.
Every thud in the hallway made me hold my breath, wondering if it was a detective. Every passing ambulance siren sent my heart into freefall. When Mom texted asking if I was at least eating properly, I got so inexplicably choked up that I spent an entire hour agonizing over a single reply.
I could see it playing before my eyes: two cops bursting in, snapping handcuffs around my wrists, me writing my confession under the gaze of the Podori and Posuni posters.
What if my face gets published on the Sex Offender Info registry? If my parents found out… would I actually have to jump into the Han River?
It had all been the fault of my lazy, comfortable delusions. Just because Noona farted behind a thin wall didn't mean she'd meekly play along with my pathetic, creepy pervert fantasy. She was a functioning adult with a real career and a stubborn pride to match.
On the rare occasions we crossed paths—at the convenience store, or taking out the trash—the atmosphere was colder than the Siberian tundra.
"……"
And behind the wall, things changed too.
Noona stopped letting go at home entirely. Some nights I heard her burying her face in her pillow, groaning in anguish, and the days she ran the shower for ages before coming out multiplied overnight.
Every time I heard it, it hit home that I'd made a person unable to even breathe freely in her own home. And strangely, this time, it didn't excite me at all.
It was the fifteenth night of that suffocating, hellish existence.
1 a.m. I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, wrestling with insomnia as usual, when—
Knock knock knock.
Someone choosing to knock when there was a doorbell. So it's come at last, I thought. Detectives don't care if it's day or night—that much I'd picked up somewhere.
On legs shaking like a newborn foal, I shuffled to the front door and cautiously lifted my eye to the peephole.
"!!!"
The person standing outside was Seoyeon.
"You're awake."
The voice that carried through the door wasn't an angry one.
"I can see the light under your door. Open up. We need to talk."
I swallowed hard and carefully opened the door.
"Noona, about that day, I swear—!"
I was in full groveling mode, bowing my head, when the sight of Seoyeon's face stopped me dead.
Her complexion was beyond terrible. Deep dark circles ringed her eyes and her lips were so dry they'd cracked. And above all, her lower belly was swollen taut as a balloon, unmistakable even above her track pants.
Noona glanced left and right down the hallway like a thief, then slipped inside my room.
Click.
She started to sit down on the floor, stopped halfway, and tilted her hips off to one side instead. Apparently she couldn't manage a proper seat.
"If you're here to press charges, I'll admit to everything. I'll pay whatever settlement it takes—I'll pick up two part-time jobs if I have to…"
"Haah… F-press charges? Over my dead body."
Her face, half-hidden by her tangled hair, was burning red.
"If I was going to report you, I'd have done it already. What am I supposed to say at the police station? 'The guy next door eavesdropped on my farts and pulled down his pants'? Really?"
I had nothing to say.
"Hey."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
"How long… how long have you been listening to my farts?"
A straight fastball, right down the middle. Beads of sweat on my brow, I answered in a voice that kept shrinking.
"Since the day it rained. Before that, I honestly had no idea. I swear."
"So exactly that day. Of course it was that day."
Noona buried her face in both hands. Through the gaps between her fingers, I could see her earlobes glowing crimson.
"That day a client bought me dinner after our PT session, so I had a sweet potato salad. Then downed two protein shakes on top of it. And I'd been clenching my whole butt through the entire class the whole time—kept thinking what if I let one slip while demonstrating squats."
"Um… have you been to a doctor?"
"I went. They said irritable bowel. Apparently I don't process lactose well either, so they told me to cut the shakes. And do what, exactly? What kind of trainer doesn't take protein?"
"I heard switching to isolate whey gets rid of almost all the lactose."
One eye appeared between her fingers.
"And how the hell do you know about that?"
"…I, uh, looked it up."
"Looked up what, exactly?"
I couldn't answer, and she didn't push. We both knew exactly what kind of search that had been.
"I haven't been able to let one go at home since, either."
Noona murmured, hugging her knees.
"The second I think about you listening at the wall, I just… can't. I run the shower and sneak them out, and on days even that doesn't work, I just hold it. For fifteen days straight. I'm honestly scared something in my gut is going to rupture."
She sniffled, on the verge of tears. She looked so pitiful that the terror of the would-be demoness who'd been shaking me down minutes ago evaporated completely, and a strange tenderness bloomed in its place.
Then her stomach made a sound.
— GUUURRRRGGGLE
It was practically seismic. Loud enough that I could hear it crystal clear from across the room.
"Kang Minchul."
"Yes."
"What you said that day."
"That was honestly me losing my mind and talking nonsense—"
"Not that. No, actually—both things, kind of."
Noona raked her hands through her hair in frustration.
"Do you actually like that stuff? Fart smells and whatever. Or were you just spouting garbage to blackmail me?"
I briefly considered lying. But the headphones incident had already sunk me more than enough.
"At first, I thought there was something wrong with me too."
Noona didn't respond. It seemed like an invitation to keep going.
"I wasn't joking, and I wasn't trying to mess with you. Noona… out there you're so confident and cool, and then the sounds that come through that wall are just… they drive me crazy."
"Leave that part out."
"It never once felt gross to me. That's the strangest part. It felt like I was the only one who got to know that side of you, and it just—"
My mouth had started running on its own.
"You were so hot."
The instant the words left my lips, I regretted them. Noona slammed her face down into her knees, confronted with the raw, unfiltered confession that had spewed out with zero processing.
"You absolute lunatic… you've completely lost it."
It was a curse, but there was no venom in it. After agonizing for a long while, she spoke again.
"You're genuinely sick. You need a doctor more than I do."
"I know."
"If you know, then get it fixed! What kind of deranged human gets aroused by the smell of someone else's farts? And that's not even counting some protein-shake-chugging gym girl's farts—one whiff and you'd pass out, damn it."
"Doesn't matter. I imagine your sounds every single night, and—"
"Ah, SHUT UP! I don't want to hear it, you pervert!"
Noona clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. But the outburst didn't last long—because her stomach let loose another sound, horrifyingly long and loud.
— GURGLE-GURGLE, RRRRUMBLE… nnngh
"Huk!?"
A thunderclap that seemed to wring her small intestine and colon dry.
She had long since blown past any physical limit of endurance. The gas she'd been suppressing for fifteen days, unable even to release it in the privacy of her own home, was churning now in a way that threatened to shred her insides to ribbons.
With trembling hands braced against the floor, Noona stealthily slid her hips backward.
"Hey."
"Yes, Noona."
"What you said just now… was that for real?"
"Yes."
"No regrets? Then there are conditions."
Noona held up one finger.
"Kill the lights. I cannot, under any circumstances, do this while you can see my face."
A second finger.
"Don't touch me. You stay put, and I'll handle everything myself."
She paused halfway through raising the third finger.
"If you walk out that door, none of this ever happened. If you breathe one word to anyone—"
"I won't. There's nobody I'd tell anyway."
"…That's kind of sad, actually."
I flipped off the fluorescent light. With only the monitor's glow remaining, the room turned a deep, bluish gray.
"Noona, go ahead and let it all out. It's my room, after all."
"Let it all out my ass, you pervert! Don't you dare throw up. If you sniff it and get grossed out and lose your lunch… then I'll have to kill you, and then kill myself too."
After a long hesitation, Noona slowly shifted her position.
She knelt, pressed her forehead into her folded arms, and pushed her hips back behind her. The thin training fabric stretched drum-taut. It was the Cat Pose—the very one she must have demonstrated for her clients a hundred times in the gym mirrors.
"Don't look. Shut your eyes, I mean it."
I only pretended to close them. Taking one step forward on my knees, I closed the distance until Noona's body heat brushed against my cheek.
Her lower body began to tremble. It was as if a long-sealed floodgate had begun, after endless suppression, to crack open ever so slightly.
— Psssssssshh~
The first release came thin, like air bleeding out of a tire—the sound of fifteen days' worth of pressure forcing its way through a narrow gap. Noona's back arched, and at the same moment a wave of hot air rolled into my face.
'Nngh?!'
The first aroma of intestinal gas aged fifteen days. It was a searing, pungent heat—a blend of the sharp fishiness of a freshly cracked hard-boiled egg and the vicious reek of sulfur rotten past all redemption. A devastating stench that didn't just pierce the nose but scorched the mucous membranes inside it.
Noona must have realized too, because a moan of pure despair escaped her.
"It STINKS, it really does! Minchul, are you okay? If you're gonna throw up, say something. Don't force yourself."
Even now, she was worried about me. Instead of answering, I inhaled. Pressed my nose closer and dragged the air all the way down to the bottom of my lungs.
"Noona."
"What?"
"Keep going. That one doesn't even count—I can tell there's way more where that came from."
"You are genuinely… genuinely out of your mind, aren't you?"
My voice had gone low, my breathing ragged. And my hands descended, carefully, onto the taut curve of her hips.
"I SAID DON'T TOUCH ME!!!"
But for all her screaming, she didn't push me away. Beneath my palms, I could feel the storm brewing in her gut rolling in like the tide.
"Haah… damn it, I don't even know anymore… You brought this on yourself!"
Noona dug her fingers into the floor and bore down with everything she had.
The next instant, the entire one-room apartment shook.