An Unexpected Blessing
Tae-seok rested his arms on the rooftop railing, feeling the cold night breeze brush against his nape as he swallowed a sigh.
A year had passed since that day.
Yet he remained frozen in the same place.
After his parents and younger sister died together in a traffic accident, the world had grown far too quiet.
He must have cried at first.
For several months, at least, that much was certain.
But now, there were no tears, no sorrow, nothing at all.
Only a faint gray fog drifting endlessly inside his hollow chest.
A gust of wind blew past.
The clothesline on the roof clattered with a dry, metallic sound.
The rusted iron bar shoved into the corner, the earthy smell rising from an unnamed flowerpot, the musty odor of old laundry.
This was a place where only discarded things gathered.
And he himself was one of them.
Fourth-year economics student at Seoul National University.
It was a title others envied, but to Tae-seok it meant nothing.
He had not set foot outside the Rooftop Room, let alone attended classes.
His phone notifications had been turned off long ago.
No one to contact, nowhere to go.
On impulse, he glanced over the railing.
Three stories high.
Jumping would only leave him injured.
Was that fortunate?
If this place had been five stories or more, he would have tried to leap several times already.
Even dying feels like too much trouble.
At that moment—
Whoosh...
It was not the wind.
A low vibration, as if the air itself were tearing, pierced his ears.
Tae-seok snapped his head up.
A silver-white pillar of light poured straight from the center of the sky toward his chest.
There was no time to dodge.
“What the—”
Crack—!
Something sharper and hotter than lightning pierced through his body.
“Aaaaargh!”
Liquid fire raced madly through his veins.
His heart pounded as though it would burst, and his brain burned white with pain.
Yet strangely, mingled within that agony was a sweet, addictive pleasure.
It felt as if someone were forcibly prying open a new door inside his body.
His legs gave out and his knees struck the railing.
His vision flipped, and his pupils flashed silver for an instant before returning to normal.
At the center of his chest, something hot he had never felt before stirred and awakened.
“Hah… hah… What… is this…”
For a brief moment, the entire world filled with threads of transparent light.
Beyond those threads, something enormous gazed down at him.
Tae-seok pitched forward.
And was drawn into the gentle yet merciless embrace of light.
Tae-seok opened his eyes to find cold concrete against his back.
Morning sunlight stabbed sharply at his eyes.
He was lying exactly where he had been struck by that “lightning” the night before.
His entire body had grown ice-cold from the night wind.
He slowly pushed himself upright and let out a hollow laugh.
“…Shit. I slept out here? Guess I’m not dead after all.”
As he sat up, running a hand through his hair, his whole body ached.
Yet apart from the pain, a refreshing sensation—like faint electricity—coursed through his veins.
The hot lump he had felt in his chest the night before still pulsed weakly.
His body was covered in dust.
“I should go inside and wash up… I’m filthy.”
He entered the cramped Rooftop Room and opened the bathroom door.
When he turned on the shower, warm water poured over his head.
As his stiff muscles gradually loosened, a strange heat began rising from deep within his body.
He lathered soap and roughly scrubbed himself, then his hand moved downward.
Tae-seok’s movement stopped abruptly.
“…What the hell.”
The familiar sensation had changed completely.
What filled his hand was far heavier, thicker, and longer than before.
Even wet, veins bulged and pulsed along its length, and the elasticity that gripped his palm was intensely powerful.
He looked down.
It was something he had never seen before—something that did not feel like his own.
Did someone swap it while I was unconscious…?
Merely lifting it slightly made his waist twitch on its own.
Its sensitivity had risen absurdly.
Just wrapping his hand around it sent a shiver racing up his spine.
Tae-seok let out a hollow laugh.
“What the hell happened last night…”
His hand began moving on its own.
Slowly, up and down.
“……Hah.”
Bracing one hand against the wall, he moved his hand faster and faster beneath the hot stream of water.
His body, which had wanted nothing, strangely did not reject this sensation.
Rather, it could not reject it.
Instead, it craved it more strongly, more urgently.
What am I even doing…
The thought that it was pathetic crossed his mind, but even that melted away into pleasure.
The hot lump in his chest throbbed larger and larger, and with every movement of his hand, threads of light flickered at the edge of his vision.
In the end, he released an enormous amount of semen several times.
Staring blankly at the white fluid swirling down the drain, Tae-seok muttered,
“…This is insane.”
His strengthless hand groped for the wall.
He finished showering, roughly dried himself, and stepped out of the bathroom.
His body was still damp.
Just then—
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound of someone knocking on the front door reached him.
Tae-seok swept his wet hair back and turned toward the door.
“Who is it?”
A bright, gentle woman’s voice answered from beyond the door.
Tae-seok opened the door a little wider, his hair still dripping.
Standing there was Kim Eun-jung, the landlady from the floor below.
Her face still carried traces of the beauty she must have possessed in her youth.
Her straight nose remained unbroken by time, and the faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes only made her appear softer and warmer.
She wore almost no makeup, her hair simply cut to shoulder length and casually brushed aside.
Her lips were neither too full nor too thin, but when she smiled they spread naturally, putting people at ease.
Her figure was nothing special—just an ordinary neighborhood auntie.
She wore a loose, stretched-out T-shirt and a baggy skirt.
Utterly comfortable clothing.
“Tae-seok. Did you sleep well?”
Her voice was natural, yet carried a subtle note of concern.
She held a side-dish container in one hand.
“I brought some side dishes… Are you eating properly?”
Tae-seok could not answer right away.
He simply stared at the container she offered and the soft back of her hand beneath it.
The fact that someone still came to check on him, even though he never left the room, felt more like a burden than anything else.
“…Yes. I’m eating. You don’t have to do this, ma’am.”
His gratitude was sincere, yet even that gratitude felt heavy now.
Kim Eun-jung only smiled and quietly placed the container in his hands.
At that moment—
A thin line seemed to split the space in the center of Tae-seok’s vision.
At first he thought it was merely an afterimage.
A trick of the light, like the haze that appears when staring too long.
But it was not.
A transparent panel quietly materialized.
A subtle radiance of blue and purple flowed along its edges.
Soon it took on a rectangular form, identical in structure to the status windows he had seen in VR games.
It did not obstruct his view, yet its presence was unmistakably alien.
Tae-seok unconsciously raised a hand and waved it through the space.
His fingers touched nothing.
What… is this…
At the same time, characters began appearing one by one inside the previously empty window.
Points that had been scattered like broken pixels instantly aligned into clear text.
Target Information
Name: Kim Eun-jung
Age: 39
Occupation: Landlord
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Emotion Level: 08 / 100
Dominance: 05 / 100
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Special Notes
• Widowed 5 years ago (has long suppressed loneliness)
Passive Skill
Blessing of Beauty — Currently Active
Tae-seok’s eyes widened.
His heart pounded once, hard.
He instinctively looked at Kim Eun-jung’s face again.
She was still smiling softly at him.
A face that knew nothing.
Is this… visible only to me? Or… have I finally gone crazy?
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Tae-seok stared fixedly at the Status Window.
The information was far too specific to dismiss as madness.
Her name and occupation were things he already knew,
but her age—39.
He had never once asked how old she was, yet the window had stated it precisely.
Even the note that someone had recently shown interest in her…
Of course, all of this could simply be fabricated information his mind had conjured.
Yet for the first time in a year, a genuine curiosity about something began to stir within him.
“Tae-seok…? What’s wrong? Why are you staring like that while holding the container?”
At Kim Eun-jung’s voice, Tae-seok snapped back to his senses.
“Ah… Yes. I’m sorry.”
He reached out a moment late and took the container.
At that instant—
Their fingertips brushed ever so lightly.
A strange “energy” starting from Tae-seok’s fingertips seeped into Kim Eun-jung’s skin like a thin, yet distinct thread.
…What was that just now…
At the same time, Kim Eun-jung’s body trembled faintly.
“Uhh… huh…?”