Let's Do Good Deeds

"Mmh... pop! Oh, there's still a little left. Mwah♡"

After swallowing down everything she had been holding in her mouth, Ryu Ayoung carefully let me slip free of her lips, then caught the last faint trace of me with a soft, deliberate kiss, as if letting even a single drop go to waste were unthinkable.

I barely had time to marvel at the sight. This was the same woman whose glare had once seemed downright ferocious, yet here she was, coaxing out the very last drop with a tenderness I could not have imagined back then. Only after she had wrung me completely dry and taken everything did she finally sit up.

"Hahh... maybe it's just thick? It still feels like it's sticking to my throat... Anyway, rent received in full. I'll get going, then?"

"You're leaving already?"

"Yeah? I got the rent, so I should go. Besides, don't you think it's about time you put some clothes on?"

"Hold on just a second."

The moment the Common-Sense Alteration clause, 'rent payment,' was fulfilled, Ryu Ayoung made for the door without a flicker of hesitation. I stopped her before she could take another step. There was no way I could meekly wave goodbye to the maddeningly fuckable woman standing right in front of me.

'I've finally gotten my hands on a lead for losing my virginity, and I'd just let this chance slip away? Absolutely not.'

So, while the afterglow still hazed my head, I put my brain into overdrive, hunting for an alteration that could keep Ryu Ayoung here. Ideas soon came flooding in, every last one of them soaked in selfishness and lust. But a single problem snagged me by the ankle.

'It is common sense that Ryu Ayoung sleeps with Han Junsu whenever he wants.'

'It is common sense that rent is collected by Han Junsu, with no limit on how many times, whenever he wants.'

From firing them off without thinking, my Good Karma had dwindled to a mere 29. Failure notices kept flashing before my eyes one after another, and amid it all, Ryu Ayoung, who had been staring at me like I was insane for stopping her and then going silent, turned to leave.

"What, you stop me and then nothing...? If you've got nothing to say, I'm leaving."

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"No, wait—"

Snatch! Desperation moved my hand before I knew it, and I caught the wrist of the landlord's daughter just as she reached for the door.

Ryu Ayoung gave a small shudder and turned her head halfway toward me. A beat later, she fixed me with a venomous glare and spat out a few short words.

"Hey. Let go."

"Yes, ma'am."

The instant that cold, rock-hard voice hit my ears, I released her wrist without a fight. The alteration had cured my anxiety, but twenty-five years of being a hopeless virgin did not evaporate overnight.

'When an angry woman tells you to let go, you let go. What else could I possibly do?'

Still, letting her walk out like this stung too much to bear, so I called out to her one more time as she stepped toward the front door.

"Um, excuse me."

"Haah... what now?"

"Would it be okay if I called you noona?"

What you call each other is one of the most important things in moving a relationship forward. If nothing else, getting closer to her would lower the Good Karma cost of future alterations, so I asked whether I could start calling her 'noona.'

"...Do as you like."

Ryu Ayoung hesitated for a beat, then gave the smallest nod, and the front door closed behind her.

Ten minutes had passed since Ryu Ayoung's visit, the one that had given me a proper demonstration of what Common-Sense Alteration could really do.

Tap-tap-tatatat.

I was hammering away at my laptop keyboard. Before any of it could slip my mind, I was committing to notes everything I had read in the underworld about Common-Sense Alteration via Good Deeds.

When the relentless clatter of keys finally produced a finished text file, I looked at the clock, still early in the morning, and rose from my seat. Then I grabbed black trash bags and a pair of gloves and stepped outside. And without asking permission or weighing anything, I started cleaning the building stairwell and the streets around it. It was Good Karma farming time.

The weekend. To an office worker it is gold, no, something worth even more than gold. I poured every hour of it into one endeavor, and the result was this:

I had managed to stack up 12 points of Good Karma. A little short of what I had hoped for, but enough for one alteration of reasonable scope. And there I sank into deliberation. Like the dopamine-pickled modern man I was, the question was whether to blow it all on the landlord's daughter right that second, and whether to finally be rid of this cursed virginity of mine.

'Yesterday's "rent collection" had been fucking incredible... but pushing things all the way to the main event seemed like a stretch.'

'My anxiety is gone now anyway, so should I just hit an adult establishment and get it over with? Nah... for a first time, that would be kind of sad.'

Just as I was floundering in a dilemma I could not easily resolve, the phone lying nearby lit up and began whining at me, one message after another.

Leaving aside how freely she texted on a weekend, something close to taboo these days, Assistant Manager Kim was demanding overtime from me, still an intern, even if my conversion to a full-time contract was all but guaranteed. The instant her messages hit my eyes, texts from a vicious boss who ground me down as naturally as breathing whenever she saw me, the fate of the karma I had earned with my entire weekend was decided.

'Losing my virginity matters too, but... first things first. Work needs to become livable.'

Between giving up my seat on the bus to an elderly man with a cane and helping an old woman gather scrap cardboard in front of the office building, my Good Karma ticked up by 2 and landed at 43. The thanks from both elders filled me with a quiet pride, of course, but watching the number climb higher and higher drew a smile out of me all on its own. I arrived at the office twenty minutes before clock-in.

Beep! Shhhk.

After the badge tap that had long since become second nature, I passed through the glass doors, traded light greetings with the senior coworkers who had come in before me, and headed for my desk.

"Good morning."

"Morning to you too, Junsu."

Right up to that point, it was a scene of perfectly exemplary office life. But the moment my eyes met the woman sitting beside me, the genre flipped in the blink of an eye. From a breezy office romp to a pitch-black thriller.

"Junsu, what time is it right now?"

"It's 8:41."

"That's not what I asked. I texted you yesterday that I would be reviewing the material from last Thursday this morning. You saw that text. So you should have gotten here before me and had it ready to hand over the second I sat down. Do I really have to spell out even this much for you, piece by piece? It's basics, Junsu. Basics."

Skipping even that short, easy morning greeting, Assistant Manager Kim started carving into me the instant she saw my face. Until now, all I could do was helplessly endure the torrent, without even a gap to answer a single word. Not anymore.

"You think I like doing this? You're about to be converted to a full-time position, so you need to learn the work ahead of time, and..."

She had clearly made up her mind. She swiveled her whole body toward me to keep the lecture coming, and I ignored her voice entirely, gathered my focus, and cast Common-Sense Alteration.

'It is common sense to be unfailingly kind to Han Junsu in any situation.'

'Yes.'

"So, um... have a seat first, Junsu."

The alteration had barely finished taking hold before she stopped mid-tirade, a faintly bewildered look crossing her face. But that lasted only a moment. Her perpetually frozen expression softened for the first ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time, and her cold, monotone voice turned gentle and warm. Right after that, as if she had been this way all along, she began addressing me with a faint smile blooming on her face. Even the 'material review,' the one she used to run with a severity that made me wonder if she had personally decided to break me, changed.

"Junsu, trim out the unnecessary parts here... and do it like this. Got it?"

"Yes. Thank you, Assistant Manager Kim."

"Thank me for what...? It's only natural for a mentor to walk you through this properly."

The transformed Assistant Manager Kim walked me through every correction, one by one, meticulous and kind, like the 'angel senior' people say exists only in imagination. For the next thirty minutes or so, the work carried on in easy back-and-forth with a woman turned impossibly kind. 'So the saying is true. In the army and the office alike, it's never the work that's the problem. It's the people.' Even as I relearned that truth of the working world, the corners of my mouth refused to come down, drunk on a fullness I had never once felt before.

'Work is... fun?'

With Assistant Manager Kim praising every little thing I did and giving feedback the moment I needed it, I was actually living the fabled office life where work itself is enjoyable. It even sprouted a company loyalty I had never had before, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Assistant Manager Kim, still peering at my monitor, began to look different to me.

'Come to think of it, seeing her like this... Assistant Manager Kim is actually really pretty?'

It was the moment her beauty, hidden all this time behind a nastiness much like the landlord's daughter's, finally came shining through.