Seo A-jeong — Fragments of the Future
The novel’s setting is Earth in a parallel universe.
It is 00:00, July 3, 2025, Los Angeles time. For the next four hours you will experience the future from the perspective of your pre-regression self. Kim Ian.
A voice spoke inside my head, yet I could not answer it, could not even force a sound from my throat. I had no control over my own body. Everything I saw, everything I felt, I could only receive passively.
Where the hell am I?
I was walking down into a basement that reeked of damp and mildew. My clothes were ordinary—just a T-shirt and shorts.
“Aah—haaam!!!”
I yawned hugely, cracked my back with a little twist, and kept descending the stairs. Even in the near-dark the world was sharp and clear. That alone was strange.
How is this possible? Crystal-clear vision… even in the dark.
Every muscle ached as if I had slept wrong; little needles of pain stabbed through me.
“Please… please save us!!!!”
Women’s sobs drifted up. The moment they heard footsteps they began begging for their lives—in English.
What the…? That desperation feels real.
“Quiet!!! You want your tongues cut out too? Shut your fucking mouths.”
The words were vicious, yet the tone was almost lazy, almost bored. That calm made it ten times more terrifying. Even spoken softly, the threat cut like a blade.
Why come all the way to America just to lock women in a basement?
The system had said LA, so this was definitely the United States. And the man walking these stairs—me—had women caged underground. I couldn’t understand it. Maybe slaughtering my uncle’s entire family had made Korea impossible, but the fact that America had taken me in was almost more surprising.
“Hic…”
The basement fell silent. The dozen or so women who had been making noise went dead quiet in an instant.
“Heh.”
I smirked and took the steps one by one. Raising my arms, I stretched the sleep out of my body. Nocturnal, or maybe just freshly woken—either way, I was still half-drowsy.
Click.
Lights snapped on. The basement flooded with brightness, and what I saw made me want to claw my own eyes out.
“Hhk…”
Bitna? Why is she like that…?
Kim Bitna hung from the ceiling by her hair, bound in a high ponytail. The weight of her body should have snapped her neck, but a rope around her waist was also tied into the hair, taking some of the strain. That was the only mercy. Her arms and legs were gone. She hung naked, eyes vacant, tracking me as I walked. Behind her nine more women dangled the same way—limbs severed, suspended in mid-air. Three East Asian, the rest Black, White, Latina.
“Onahole Number One.”
“Yes!!! Master.”
Bitna answered in frantic Korean.
“Today’s July third… how many days have you been locked up here?”
“T-today is day ninety-nine, Master.”
She answered too quickly, eyes darting to gauge my mood. I snorted, stepped close, and twisted her breast hard.
“Haaang!!!”
The sight was grotesque. No arms, no legs—only the stump of a shoulder twitching. Yet even while her breast was being crushed she leaked slick down her thighs.
“The ace of the Korean Awakener Association chases me all the way to America just to be a nuisance. Hmm? Want me to turn you into Minju?”
“I’m sorry, Master.”
“A hundred days and I’m already bored… shall I introduce you to the goblins like Reina? Reina’s about to give birth… so besides that full-term Minju carrying a goblin pup, I’ll need a fresh bitch…”
“Hiiik!!! Hhk… please, I’m sorry. I’ll squeeze my cunt harder, I’ll use my throat-cunt to satisfy Master. Please… don’t throw me to the goblins. Ungh!!!!”
My gaze shifted while I still had her breast in my fist. In the dark corner a steel cage came into focus; the moment I looked, my vision sharpened and another nightmare filled my eyes. The only mercy was that I didn’t stare long.
Inside the cage a Black woman—limbs already gone—was being raped by a muscular, moss-green monster nearly 180 cm tall. Her belly was swollen far past nine months; her huge breasts bounced violently with every thrust. The monster held her torso in both hands and used her like a living onahole, slamming her up and down. Sound must have been blocked; nothing reached us, yet every woman hanging from the ceiling trembled with pure terror. Only the one called Reina wore an expression of ecstatic, screaming pleasure.
That’s a goblin… fuck, it’s disgusting…
Its mouth was stretched in a sex-drunk grin—five-head proportions, huge ears, a maw packed with shark-like teeth. The kind of face that would follow you into nightmares.
Then came the click of heels.
My future self turned toward the stairs he had just descended. A-jeong was coming down naked except for high heels, a switch gripped in both hands. She looked late thirties; if this was 2025 she would be forty-three, so the face made sense.
“Master. Visiting my workshop again?”
Crazy… A-jeong did all this? These things?
“Ah… just checking the onaholes’ condition. Still deciding whether to scrap Reiko or keep her a little longer.”
“Mmm…”
She hurried over and melted into my arms. Her lips crashed against mine. I smirked, pulled her tight, and tangled my tongue with hers. When we broke apart her face was flushed.
“Please set the link.”
“Sure. Link…”
This is…
Something inside my gut spun in a fixed direction, then poured out through my palm. The energy touched the ten limbless women hanging on the wall.
Whoosh.
All ten cunts lit up. Looking down, I saw A-jeong’s cunt glowing the same way. She kissed me again, hands already stripping my shorts. When I lowered my stance she guided my modest 21 cm cock into herself.
“Haaang!!!”
Fuck, why is the squeeze this tight? A-jeong was never this good…
At the same moment the women on the wall screamed in unison.
“Haang!!!”
“Hhhk…”
The link… don’t tell me it’s connected to all ten of those cunts?
It didn’t feel like A-jeong’s alone. Bitna’s cunt was stretched open around the phantom shape of my cock, dripping freely. Then A-jeong simply pulled off.
“They turned out well, didn’t they? The onaholes.”
“Yeah. Eight of them are top-grade. Good work, A-jeong.”
He ranked all ten just from that?
She kissed me again—short, bird-like—then pulled back.
“Haa… Michelle’s here.”
“Michelle? What does she want now?”
“Probably still looking for Bitna, Minju, and the dead awakeners from Korea.”
“Hmm… ah, fine. Keep managing things here, A-jeong. I’m going up.”
“Yes… Master. And I’m tired of the pillow in my room. Natasha’s White so she reeks of armpit musk. I’ll make Bitna my new pillow. First I’ll scoop out the womb…”
The word “pillow” made every woman on the ceiling and the four intact ones still in cages flinch hard.
“Hhk… Master. I can still squeeze my cunt properly. Please… I don’t want to be a pillow. Save me.”
Pillow? Using a person as a pillow? And she’s begging for her life over it?
Bitna sobbed and pleaded in pure panic.
Whish—crack.
A-jeong’s face twisted. She lashed Bitna’s breast with the switch. Something blue flared on the skin; the gem set in the switch glowed, and a long red welt bloomed across Bitna’s chest.
“Aaagh!!!! Master, please…”
“Hmm… leave Bitna. Take Reiko from the back—her squeeze is mediocre anyway. Big tits, good for resting your head. And she’s Japanese so she doesn’t stink as much.”
“M-Master, Bitna would suit me better.”
“Ah, I might have to hand a few over to Michelle, so what’s the subspace address assigned to you?”
“KLMA B8783 C0511 D3319 GK.”
KLMA B8783 C0511 D3319 GK?
I forced myself to memorize it, repeating the string over and over. As my body started walking again, the Japanese woman called Reiko began to scream. The despair in her voice raised every hair on my skin.
“Master…!!!!!”
“Hoho. There won’t be any pain. You’ll die before you even feel it.”
A-jeong’s voice was pure nightmare.
“Hhk… Master… throw me to the goblins instead… please save me!!!!”
Unlike the slow descent, I climbed the stairs quickly. On the first floor naked women greeted me as I passed.
Hyeon-ju… Eun-hee…
Their bodies were covered in tattoos; dog collars circled their necks, silver chains and piercings linking them. They had aged badly—well past fifty—and the sight of them made my chest ache.
“Master. We’re in heat.”
They still use that pose?
They dropped into the heat posture Jeong-mi had invented—squatting, panting. Since I supposedly had no connection to Jeong-mi in this timeline, it must simply be some SM position.
“Tsk… fine. Wait in my bedroom. Call Na-hee, A-reum, and A-hee too.”
“Yes!!! The mistresses will be delighted.”
Ah… so it’s true. He really made the A-reums his women…
Then more women with blacked-out faces passed by—faces I could not recognize no matter how hard I tried.
Their faces are veiled because the future can still be twisted.
Ah… now that I think about it, of all the women downstairs I only remember Bitna’s face…
From the one they planned to turn into a pillow to the Black woman being raped and impregnated by the monster—names and faces had already slipped away.
While I stood dazed, my body crossed the corridor. At the end of it a woman in her late fifties stood naked before a door.
Ju-ae. A-jeong’s mother, Han Ju-ae.
She opened what looked like a reception-room door for me.
“Go downstairs. A-jeong’s processing a pillow. Tell her to process Reiko and the Wang Baek-ji behind her too.”
“Yes, Master.”
Ju-ae gave a bizarre little smile, bowed, and vanished.
Inside, a blonde woman who looked to be in her twenties sat on a sofa sipping tea. Something like a uniform, a white skirt, red-and-blue diagonal sashes across her torso—American colors. Yet her face refused to stick in my memory.
What the…?
Same principle. You need to converse, so her appearance is shown, but a memory-interference spell is active.
“Lucas.”
Lucas? The English name I made up in conversation class?
The name I had invented for high-school native-speaker English class. I never imagined I would hear “Lucas” here.
“Michelle… what is it this time? I already filled this month’s quota. I reported I caught and locked up Christina.”
“Mmm. I know. That was praiseworthy… but the Korean government is being a pain.”
“About Bitna?”
She nodded, expression blank, and took another sip. Then she crossed her legs; under the skirt a clean, bare cunt flashed for a second—no panties.
“Yeah… Bitna came because of Minju, and now the Korean government is trying to stop some crazy bitch named Lee Ji-yu from coming to America. Lee Ji-yu is off-limits. Bitna you could handle at your level, but Ji-yu… even all of you together would be cutting it close. Especially without Anna—if she ambushes you, you’re dead.”
“Fuck… that psycho is coming?”
Nod.
Ji-yu? Does she mean that Lee Ji-yu?
“So is Valhalla Guild moving too?”
“No. Solo action. Apparently Ji-yu used to be in the Awakener Association and was close with a lot of them back then.”
Anxiety prickled through me. Why the name Ji-yu made future-me nervous, I had no idea. Everything was questions.
“Shit… those bastards I killed already got pardoned. Why keep bothering me?”
“Heh. Because you kept murdering the hunters who came after you. That’s how the sins piled up. You should have just sent them home instead of killing them.”
“They charged in looking for achievements—how was I supposed to let them live? Back then I was barely surviving myself… I had no choice but to kill…”
“Can you release Bitna?”
“Well… I haven’t processed her into a pillow yet… still have the arms and legs in storage. I can send her back.”
“And Minju?”
“She’s carrying a troll pup. Half-troll that looks like that goblin…”
“Haa. You said you only breed villains. Why… an awakener from the Korean Hunter Association…?”
“Because that bitch took my non-awakened women hostage. Unforgivable. She’s not even pretty. She should be grateful I let her produce potion materials. That high-quality troll pup you bought last month? She birthed it.”
“Haa. Tsk. Korea’s so scared of something happening to Lee Ji-yu that they’re willing to wipe your slate clean. They already think all the male awakeners are dead, so if you just return Minju and Bitna, the Korean warrant disappears. They must figure that with Anna around, Ji-yu could get hurt.”
Anna? Who the hell is that?
“Haa, really? What’s gotten into them…? Tsk… fine, whatever. But when I send Bitna back I’m impregnating her with my kid first. Deal. When do I hand her over?”
“We’ll need about two weeks to reattach the limbs and heal her. Drop her here by tomorrow. We’ll collect her, clean her up, and deliver her to the Korean side.”
“Tsk… okay. But if Bitna walks back here on her own two feet after that?”
“Well… then Korea loses any justification to demand her return.”
Chuckle.
My body let out a low, nasty laugh. Michelle laughed the same way.
“Lucas. You know this guy?”
She showed a photo—a solidly built brown-haired White man, Spanish-looking, around 190 cm.
“Hmm… isn’t that Tam? The dungeon breaker?”
“Yeah. Tam Reimi. Any idea where he is?”
Tam Reimi? The mission target? They know each other?
The name snapped me out of the daze that had been settling over me since I arrived. The string of horrors had left me half-numb.
“Why? What did that bastard do this time?”
“Civilian massacre…”
“Crazy fuck. Why again?”
“Heard people talking shit behind his back and lost it. Wiped out an entire village—rats and all… absolute psycho.”
“So why ask me? I’m classified as a villain, but I never touch civilians. And as long as they don’t mess with me, I leave awakeners alone too.”
“I know. You only hunt villains. That’s why the U.S. government tolerates you.”
Ah… so every woman hanging downstairs was a villain?
“Tsk… you’re not about to put a bounty on Tam Reimi, are you? That rat only shows up when he wants to and then vanishes. Hard as hell to find.”
“No. If you don’t know, fine. Hohoho. You said you were making a pillow earlier. Who?”
“Reiko.”
At the name Michelle nodded.
“Ah… then what about the old pillow?”
“Why? Want it?”
“Yeah. I need a soft pillow.”
“Crazy bitch. An executive of the LA branch Hunter Association asking for a human pillow…”
“Hohoho. You’re the one who made them like this. I still can’t forget how that pillow felt the night I slept on it in your room.”
“Tsk. When A-jeong comes up, ask her for her pillow. It’s the one made from Natasha. That’s the one you used that night.”
“Hohoho. Perfect.”
Insane. A government official casually asking for a pillow made out of a person? How the fuck did I become this?
“Anything else?”
“There’s talk we’re entering Phase 5. Don’t get so lost in villain-hunting that you forget to watch your own back. Don’t get ambushed by some monster you’ve never seen. Mana’s unstable right now… feels like a cataclysm is coming.”
Michelle’s face hardened; the playful tone vanished. I grunted, stood, walked to the desk, powered on the computer, and turned the monitor toward her.