The Otherworld After One Year
The last time I stayed in this otherworld, a year ago, most of the buildings were made of stone and wood—the kind you’d only see in novels or comics. So seeing a concrete structure here was something I genuinely never imagined… and of all places, pulling into a modern tower parking garage and stepping out just felt… weird.
“…”
“What are you doing? What the hell are you thinking about, standing there like that?”
“Huh? No, it’s just…”
“I was thinking that in the past year, this place has been heavily influenced by the human world…”
“Honestly, I never thought I’d see a convenience store here of all places…”
It really was unimaginable… Though, with asphalt roads laid out and cars driving on them, I guess that says it all. It’s kind of funny to be thinking about this now, but the mix of this world’s worn-in, cozy charm and the cold, rigid creations of the human world just feels… off. I can’t get used to it.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if convenience stores started popping up in the otherworld?”
“Sure, but… you know how there’s that specific image that comes to mind when you think of the otherworld.”
“The kind you see in manga or novels…”
“What the hell are you talking about… If you’re gonna keep spouting nonsense, let’s just go to the store. I’m thirsty.”
“…”
Fuck… Yeah, of course an otherworlder wouldn’t understand this strange feeling. So I just said okay and stepped into the otherworld’s convenience store for the first time in my life… and what the hell? Why was there a mountain of condoms stacked right at the entrance?
“Hey. Wanna use condoms today?”
“Haa… Didn’t you hear what the doctor said this morning?”
“Whatever. If you’re just gonna keep talking shit, go buy me something to drink already.”
Hurry up. If you’re going to say ominous things like that, get the hell out of my sight right now.
Feeling the fatigue from driving pile up behind my eyes, I decided to sit on one of the plastic chairs and wait until Elphy came back.
(Haa… fuck. I’m so goddamn tired…)
(By the way, is there some kind of festival going on? There’s a ton of stuff plastered all over the streets.)
I’d been too focused on driving an unfamiliar route to notice before, but now I finally started paying attention to the city’s scenery… What the hell does that say? K… Kha… Krha? P… Pe… Pueas?
“What are you looking at?”
“Huh? Nothing… I was just wondering what that sign says…”
“Kr… Kha? I have no idea what that means… but Pueas… does that mean festival?”
My memory was hazy. I fumbled through the otherworld vocabulary I hadn’t used in about a year… and Elphy’s answer was that it was the Leaf Canopy Festival, a very famous holiday in Ferid.
“Leaf canopy? What the hell are they recording… you pervy otherworld bastards?”
“No… not that kind of recording… You know, when the leaves and branches are thick and lush, people say the canopy has grown in.”
“It’s a festival held to honor the god who first cleared away the branches for us…”
Apparently it was an incredibly old and deeply rooted tradition that had continued from ancient times all the way to now. But why the hell would they stack a giant tower of condoms on such a nice day?
“Well… that’s because it’s festival season?”
“Everyone drinks, then goes for round two with some sex…?”
“…”
I see… Her explanation was pretty vulgar, but I got it in one shot. So even in this insane otherworld, the universal formula of festival equals sex is the same everywhere, huh? The fucked-up sense of chastity these lunatics have combined with that global equation had created that horrifying monstrosity.
While listening to the unwanted explanation about the Leaf Canopy Festival, I stood up with a tired expression.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it… It’s a super famous and huge festival, right?”
“Would that be like Chuseok or Lunar New Year for us?”
“Pfft… Chuseok and Lunar New Year can’t even compare to the Leaf Canopy Festival… It’s probably bigger than both of them combined.”
“So… ta-da! Look at this~ It’s a Leaf Canopy Festival commemorative condom!”
“…”
I’m going crazy… It’s great that they’re commemorating it, but please don’t use adult products to do it. And in the middle of all that, she didn’t buy just one pack—she bought a whopping six.
If my body had been in normal condition, I shuddered to think how much sexual exploitation I would’ve suffered.
“Wait… if you’re going to commemorate it, why didn’t you just buy one…? Why six?”
“Huh? Because there’s a promotion going on right now?”
“It’s two-plus-one during the event period, and anyway, we usually go through five packs in one go, right? Don’t we?”
“…”
Excuse me? Who the hell uses five packs of condoms in one round of sex? And it wasn’t even the three-pack—each one generously contained eight condoms. Five for immediate use, and one left as a souvenir… I suddenly felt dizzy.
“Why? What’s with that face? I’m telling you, it’s not even that expensive.”
“No… that’s not the problem…”
If we did it forty times in one go, my dick wouldn’t survive. The thought of this slave tying up each used condom from her string panties and saying “Twenty-eight left” already made my head spin… Then a brilliant idea suddenly came to me.
“Um… honestly, I don’t really like it with a condom on.”
“It dulls the sensation so I can’t feel you completely, you know? So these…”
Let’s return them. Put those dangerous items back where you found them right now.
With the desperate thought that I had to stop forty consecutive ejaculations at all costs, I forced an awkward smile… but looking at the expression on this girl’s face, I started wondering if what I was doing was even right.
“Hehe… You want to do it raw?”
“Okay, got it~ Then I’ll just buy three.”
“Wait? No… we have to return all of them, don’t we?”
“Come on… it’s two-plus-one. One for commemoration, two for…”
Whenever we feel like playing around with them… Despite all my efforts, the image of sixteen condoms already dangling from her string panties kept flashing before my eyes… But whether I liked it or not, Elphy just smiled brightly.
“Let’s go! Mr. Chanhyuk is waiting.”
After parking in the modern tower garage and even buying stuff at the convenience store—with a human part-timer ringing me up—I honestly hadn’t felt like I was in the otherworld at all… But the moment I stepped out the front door, the feeling of truly being in another world hit me hard.
(Haa… The air sure is nice…)
(Has it really been almost a year since I last set foot in the otherworld…?)
I never expected to come back here because of work, of all things… Just moments ago I’d been grumbling that there were too many concrete buildings and that it didn’t feel like the otherworld at all… but now that I was actually walking the streets, it still felt much closer to the otherworld than I’d thought.
I felt that way as I walked along the stone-paved paths, breathing in the fresh scent of grass carried on the breeze.
“It’s nice~ Being out on the streets like this… right?”
“Yeah, it is… but there are a lot of people, so be careful. If your hat flips off by any chance…”
“It’s fine! This hat won’t flip even in a typhoon…!!”
Like a fish back in water, she ran toward the gaps in the lush green canopy where sunlight poured through. I watched her with a fond smile.
(Well… no matter how much you hate it, it’s still home, I guess?)
(After all… it’s only been a year for us…)
I might have missed the air here more than I realized. Thinking that, I walked over to Elphy, who was waving at me.
“Look at this! Look! It’s totally different from seeing it from the car, right?”
“It really is… It didn’t look that big before…”
I never imagined the holes would be this massive… Staring up at the perfectly square patches of sky, it felt strangely moving even though it was the same sky I always saw. She took endless selfies, and I ended up playing photographer, snapping shot after shot like some professional… I genuinely felt like I was on a proper, bone-deep tourist trip to an otherworld attraction.
“Ah… the hat’s ruining the photos…”
“Yeah. So let’s stop taking pictures… You’ve already taken like fifty shots, that’s enough…”
Fuck. I was dying. These two eyes of mine aren’t a damn camera—why do you need more than one or two pictures? I sat down on a bench bathed in sunlight and sipped the banana milk I’d bought at the convenience store… By the way, why wasn’t that bastard Kim Minhyuk showing up even though we were past the meeting time? Did something happen again…?
Right on cue, my phone rang. It was Kim Minhyuk.
“Hello.”
“Ah… Hello, hyung-nim… Haha;;”
“What is it? Something come up?”
“Well… things got really busy… so I was wondering if we could push back our meeting time…”
“What?!”
“P-please calm down, hyung-nim…! I don’t want to do this either, but the festival completely threw off our schedule…! So why don’t you take your sister-in-law—no, your girlfriend—and enjoy a nice slow date while sightseeing? You can also check out some equipment you might need before the dungeon closes.”
The words this bastard’s lost his mind were crawling up my throat when a text suddenly popped onto the screen.
“…?”
“What the…?”
“I just sent you 500,000 won. Please use it to enjoy some sightseeing and shopping until evening. I’m sorry!”
“…”
What the hell? I’d been pissed off, but suddenly getting financially compensated left me so stunned I couldn’t say anything… and the bastard hung up in the middle of it.
“Hey… Hey!!”
“What? Who was that on the phone that made you yell? Minhyuk? What did he say?”
“Haa… Yeah, he said something urgent came up with work so he wants to push the meeting back a bit…?”
“What? No way… How can he handle work like that?”
The person who had been agreeing with me suddenly changed her tune the moment she heard we got 500,000 won for sightseeing expenses.
“Well… if he’s that busy, it can’t be helped.”
“Right?”
“…”
Right my ass, you materialistic brat. She switched her answer in less than a second without even hesitating—it was ridiculous… Haa… Whatever. Since it’s come to this, let’s just go sightseeing.
I asked Elphy if there was anywhere she wanted to go.
“Somewhere I want to go?”
“Yeah… It’s a tourist city, right? There must be stuff to see if it’s called a tourist city.”
“Hmm… I don’t know. Don’t you have anywhere you want to go?”
“Me?”
“…”
Honestly, I was so fucking tired I just wanted to go back to the hotel where I’d parked the car and sleep… but if I did that, there was no way I’d actually get any rest. I’d just get tormented by the string-panties-plus-used-condoms combo. So I racked my brain, thinking hard about what we should do next… but right now, what she was wearing was really bothering me.
“Should we go buy you some new clothes first?”