The World Had Changed
Jeong Min-ho pushed himself up in bed. His head was splitting. Was that a dream...? He pressed a palm to his forehead and slowly opened his eyes.
He remembered it clearly. He had been walking through Han River park when he found a woman in the water, and he had jumped in without hesitating. After that came the cold, the feeling of his breath being crushed out of him, and then darkness.
"I'm alive..."
Min-ho ran his hands over his body. He was intact. There was no sensation of water sitting in his lungs—only the same ordinary body he woke up in every day.
He looked around the room. It was his one-room, no question: a cramped six-pyeong studio, a battered desk, a computer, a wardrobe. Everything sat exactly where it belonged.
"So it really was just a dream..."
Min-ho let out a sigh of relief. He was thirty-two, an office worker at a small company—168 centimeters tall, 58 kilograms, with a face that could only be called plain. His withdrawn nature had left him without friends, and of course he had never once had a girlfriend.
And a man like that had tried to save a life. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that courage of that kind belonged only in a dream.
He picked up his phone to check the time, and a news headline on the screen caught his eye.
"AV... at the box office?"
Min-ho rubbed his eyes. He looked again, and the words were the same. He checked the other articles.
Ministry of Education Overhauls Sex-Education Curriculum... "A More Practical Education in Pleasure Is Needed"
Blue House Announces a Policy to Foster the AV Industry... "The Core of Cultural Content"
Newly Opened Gangnam Public Playroom Draws 10,000 Visitors on Its First Day
"What is this..."
Min-ho flung the window open and looked outside. It was the same Seoul as always—cars passing, people walking the streets. Then he stopped.
His eyes went wide. The clothes on the people below were wrong. Most of the women wore outfits tight enough to lay every curve of the body bare, and many of them had on tops so thin that the shape of their nipples showed clear through the fabric. The men were no different. Plenty of them wore something like thin leggings that clung hard around the hips, the outline of their genitals on full display.
And not one person seemed to find it strange. Everyone walked, laughed, and talked as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"The world... has changed."
Min-ho murmured it. This was no dream. He didn't seem to have died and come back, either. The world itself was different.
He rushed to turn on the computer, and the shock started on the front page of the portal. There was nothing like an adults-only warning. Instead, photo spreads of AV stars decorated the main screen, occupying the place idols and actors used to hold.
He started searching—Korean culture, sexual culture, the AV industry. The results came as one shock after another.
In this world, everything had changed in the year 2000, when a revolutionary contraceptive was developed. The pill, which both men and women could take, was swallowed as casually as a vitamin. It was cheap enough that nearly every adult with a sex life took one every day. People had come to call it the dual contraceptive.
Effects of the Male Dual Contraceptive
The fishy, bitter taste of semen disappeared completely. Premium products went further, giving semen a faint, pleasant fragrance. But there was a side effect. The contraceptive suppressed sperm production, and men with azoospermia multiplied at a staggering rate. As a result, pregnancy through ordinary sex became exceedingly difficult.
Effects of the Female Dual Contraceptive
The pain of menstruation vanished completely. Sex remained possible even during a period. The unpleasant odors of vaginal fluid and the wetness of arousal were eliminated, and premium products produced a faint fragrance as well.
The Enema Pill Revolution
A breakthrough enema pill was developed. Taken as a tablet, it brought about a perfect cleanse within ten minutes. The pain and discomfort of the old procedure disappeared entirely, and because of it, resistance to anal sex fell sharply.
Sex Becomes Ordinary
Oral sex and anal sex settled in as everyday acts. Sex by mutual consent became as natural as a handshake, and changed into one more way of showing someone that you liked them. Even between close friends, even between coworkers, sex was perfectly natural so long as both sides agreed.
Legal Protection
Forced molestation and sexual violence against someone who refused, however, were punished even more severely than before. Sexual contact without consent was classified as a serious crime and met with harsh penalties. Sexual freedom and the right of sexual self-determination, guaranteed at the same time—that was the foundation of this world.
Changes in the Social System
When the birth rate plunged, the government stepped in. A system took root in which the state assumed full responsibility for raising any child that was born. The cost of education, childcare, and medical care—all of it was covered by the state.
The Start of the Sexual Revolution
Contraception that was one hundred percent certain, and the development of a vaccine that prevented every sexually transmitted infection. Those two things were the starting point. Society's view of sex changed with violent speed. Sex was no longer something that had to be hidden. Pleasure was recognized as a basic human need, and a society took shape in which expressing it freely was simply natural.
AV was no longer an industry of the shadows. It was a proud pillar of mainstream entertainment, and AV stars were the greatest stars in society. Theaters screened AV as a matter of course. Network television broadcast the AV awards live. AV actors worked as faces of advertising campaigns, and the profession was respected.
"Crazy..."
A hollow laugh slipped out of Min-ho. At the same time, a strange anticipation stirred in him. Without quite meaning to, he looked down at his crotch. It was the one thing he had that other men didn't—the one thing he had lived thirty-two years without ever once putting to use. Useless, until now.
Even soft, it ran past twenty centimeters. Fully erect, it cleared thirty. In thickness it was nearly double an average man's, on the order of the largest endowments people spoke of in Black men. So Min-ho had always been careful. He bound himself down in briefs and wore only loose jeans with a generous crotch, the kind that wouldn't give him away. That was the only way he didn't stand out.
In the army, at every group shower, and every time he stepped into a public bathhouse, eyes had poured over him. Envy, jealousy, curiosity. He had hated those looks, and so he had lived by hiding it all the more.
"In this world... maybe?"
Min-ho opened the wardrobe, and to his surprise the clothes had changed. Most of what hung there were leggings that clung to the body, and thin T-shirts. In the corner, though, a few pairs of loose jeans with room to spare in the crotch still remained.
Not yet...
He chose the style he knew. Briefs first, then a pair of loose jeans cut full through the rise, and a plain gray T-shirt on top. He looked in the mirror. It was the same face as always, and nothing showed below the belt.
He drew a steadying breath and opened the front door. In the hallway he came face to face with the woman from next door—a neighbor on the same floor, somewhere in her mid-thirties. They had never so much as managed a proper greeting.
She was wearing a thin white tank top that hid nothing of her nipples. Not even a tank top, really; the fabric was closer to mesh. The pink of her nipples showed clear as day, and the shape of her breasts was laid out perfectly. Below, she had on extremely short hot pants, the curve of her backside almost entirely bare.
"Hello."
She greeted him first. For a moment Min-ho couldn't breathe. In thirty-two years he had never seen a woman's body from this close, and never in a state that was all but naked. His heart hammered like it had lost its mind.
"Ah... h-hello..."
The instant he answered, he felt it. Down below, he was starting to respond. No—don't! But his body was honest. Blood rushed in, and he began to swell—twenty centimeters, twenty-five, climbing toward thirty. Min-ho snatched his bag around in front of him and covered himself.
The woman smiled at the sight of his panic.
"It's all right. That's a natural reaction."
Her eyes dropped to the place he was hiding. Even past the bag, he had the awful sense that the bulge could still be felt.
"Are you... in a lot of discomfort? I always wondered why you wear such loose clothes..."
"Ah, n-no. It's just a habit..."
Face burning red, Min-ho stabbed at the elevator button.
"I-I'll go on ahead!"
The moment the doors shut, he let out a long breath. The jeans were cut loose, but a full erection had its limits. Even now the inside of his pants felt cramped. Damn... this is going to keep happening in this world.
He tried to calm himself. By the time he reached the first floor, it had only just begun to subside.
He stepped into a convenience store, meaning to buy his usual gimbap and a carton of milk, but the atmosphere inside was different from the door. An entire wall was given over to adult goods, displayed without shame and without so much as a screen. The clerk behind the counter was just as startling—a woman who looked to be in her early twenties, in a blouse so close to transparent that the shape of her breasts showed through completely.
"Welcome!"
She greeted him brightly. Min-ho turned his eyes away and headed for the gimbap corner, but his gaze kept dragging back toward her. The reaction started up again. Please... calm down...
He snatched up a roll of gimbap and made for the register, pressing himself tight against the counter so that nothing below his waist could be seen.
"That'll be 2,500 won."
While he paid, the clerk looked him over without blinking.
"I don't think I've seen you before... Do you live around here?"
"Y-yes... the apartment right out front..."
"Oh, I see. But why are you dressed so heavily? It's hot out these days."
"Ah... this is just comfortable for me."
"Is that so? You're an odd one."
She smiled and held out his change. Min-ho fled the store. I'm going to have a hard time living in this world... And yet, at the same time, a strange excitement moved through him. Something he had pressed down for thirty-two years was beginning to stir.
Back home, he spent the rest of the day tearing through the internet. He wanted to know more about this world, and astonishing facts kept surfacing. Monogamy did not exist. Anyone could date as many people as they liked, and a person could marry more than one partner. What mattered was agreement between them, and respect.
Sex was as ordinary as a handshake. If two people wanted each other, they could sleep together at once, even if they had only just met. The incomes of AV stars defied imagination; the ones at the top earned tens of billions of won a year, fortunes running into the tens of millions of dollars. And the bigger a man was, the more popular he became.
One result in particular caught his eye.
Min-ho thought of his own thirty centimeters. In this world... I... His heart pounded at the mere imagining.
Evening came. Hunger drove him out toward a restaurant nearby, and in the hallway he ran into the neighbor again. This time her hair was wet, as if she had just stepped out of the shower, and she wore nothing but a thin silk robe. She didn't seem to have a thing on underneath.
"We meet again."
She said it with a smile.
"Y-yes... so we do..."
His heart started up all over again. He tried to look away, but the lines of her body, showing through the part in the robe, kept finding his eyes.
"Have you had dinner?"
"N-no... I was just about to head out."
"Then shall we eat together? I can cook a little. It's boring, eating alone."
Min-ho hesitated. He had no reason to refuse—and no courage to, either.
"Th-that would be... good."
"Perfect! Come on in, then."
She opened the door and went inside. Min-ho followed.
And that night, Min-ho's life began to change.