Day Two
By the time I got home and slept it off, it was already around lunch. I picked up my phone and found dozens of KakaoTalk messages from Hyunji stacked up yet again. I wasn't sick of them. If anything, having a girl this pretty hunger for my attention left me strangely pleased.
I'd built up a certain immunity to obsession, and the old rule still held: pretty and good-looking made almost anything fine. So long as it wasn't a crime. I sent her a note telling her to eat well, then sat down at the computer.
Hmm.
I searched what Rahi and I had talked about the day before. It might have been nothing more than her own opinion folded into an argument. But it was true. She hadn't so much lied as left a few things out, and on every point that mattered she had been right.
I had never seen anything like it. In place of the ministry that once stood for an entire sex, there was a Ministry of Maternity and Childcare, and its history ran long. Its root was a Joseon-era office called the Chulsaengbu—the Birth Bureau. Needless to say, I had never heard of it in my life.
The compensation scheme is thorough, I'll give them that.
Whether that was because the history ran so deep, I couldn't say, but the budget was set aside as if it were only natural. I didn't know politics well enough to tell where the money came from. Funds meant for a child were locked until that child came of age, untouchable, and aside from a fixed salary paid after a woman registered as a civil servant in a childbirth or childcare post, there was no corner left for a mother to exploit. It wasn't a matter of handing out cash. The state simply took the whole of it on.
Even so, a house with money still has the advantage.
True to a country of private education, special-purpose schools and cram academies were still very much around. The fees were so enormous, though, that it didn't look as if just anyone could send a child. Even so, it didn't seem bad enough to leave ordinary people feeling robbed.
……The support is considerable.
It wasn't only public offices. Thanks to maternity policies backed even by the big corporations, from a woman's point of view there was hardly anything left to want. That childcare could actually be handled at the level of the state was honestly hard to believe. If there were few enough newborns, maybe it was possible.
I'd wondered whether the birth rate had gone that completely off a cliff, but when I actually looked it up, it wavered between 1.0 and 1.2. Low, yes—but nearly 0.3 higher than the world I'd come from. And what held the number there was women's sex drive.
Figures. If the birth rate dropped any further than this, men really might have ended up treated like livestock that existed to make sperm, just as Rahi said.
Picturing it raised a slight chill. The men of this world were living off a delicate balance: a birth rate just awkward enough to make radical policy difficult, set against the heat of women's desire. As I kept searching, women who had given birth seemed to be objects of a kind of envy. Boards carried posts titled "I want to get pregnant" in roughly the same volume as one of the community's signature brain-dead staples, "I want to have sex."
It didn't read as a cold weighing of profit and loss. It looked like one appetite among others. Posts announcing a pregnancy didn't contain a single word about the man. Congratulations were the mainstream. Threads fretting over whether to raise the child or send them to a facility were discussed in earnest, and the comment counts ran two or three times higher.
So I'm meant to understand this as maternal instinct turned into a craving.
Scratching my cheek, I settled it: what Rahi had said yesterday was fact. I bit into the bread I'd been holding and started rummaging through YouTube. There was quite a lot that only I could laugh at.
A male celebrity whose manner of speaking had grown controversially feminine. The phrase boy crush sitting where girl crush used to be. A male AV actor famous as the resident jerk-off uncle getting the teasing turned back on him by the actresses. The sexes were unchanged, but the feminine tilt of it all was pretty funny.
Come to think of it. What happened to porn, then?
I searched Google for AV and found an entry compiled on Namuwiki. I knew it wasn't a hundred percent reliable, but right now volume of information mattered more than trustworthiness.
……Yeah. This place is the same.
The porn industry looked as mighty as ever. The focus that had rested on female performers in the AV of the world before the change had simply shifted onto men.
Hmm.
I kept feeding the search bar whatever keywords came to mind, and I found out why Rahi had been ashamed of her large breasts. Here, the prevailing attitude was that a big-breasted woman was stupid. Now that I thought about it, I seemed to remember hearing something like that in the old world too—nonsense of a kind with the claim that blonde beauties are dumb.
I remembered watching a movie with that premise back in the army. Then the word army itself brushed through my head, and the information that came up left me with nothing to say. Most of it was about what I'd expected. The difference was that men didn't go, and a woman was exempt if she bore two children. That much, at least, made sense.
Two births in your twenties, the prime of your life, struck me as an absurd condition. If it were me, I don't think I could manage it even if they gave me a medal instead of an exemption. The women of this world might think differently.
……Conscription for women only? Where do I get paid back for my blood, sweat, and tears?
There was such a thing as a men's corps, sure, but with my reserve duty all but finished, hearing about it didn't improve my mood. If there was any comfort, it was that I probably wouldn't have to show up for civil defense. I let out a long sigh and tried to put my thoughts in order. What mattered, in the end, was me.
That's all well and good, but the problem is what comes next.
The future was the problem. Money was money, but if I'd had the ability to earn it, I never would have worked at a company that brutal to begin with. What mattered most was enjoying a happy life like today's without anyone catching on that I was different from the ordinary men of this place.
From what Rahi said, I do seem physically well ahead of the men here. The problem is how many things my age locks me out of. There are too many paths it's already far too late to start.
And the fact that I wasn't all that good-looking was a problem in its own right. I wondered whether I'd have no choice but to go back into the industry, but I couldn't bring myself to face it. There was the betrayal of the boss who had been my senior in the club, and I had no wish to take that inhuman treatment with no day and no night. Even if the wind had shifted, IT was too disadvantageous a field for enjoying this remade world. Of course, not being trained in the major had only made it harder to adapt.
The one thing I could reasonably try is broadcasting…… My age is the snag.
Starting on air at thirty wasn't all that rare, but it wasn't a good condition for succeeding, either. On top of that, I knew well enough that you had to run YouTube alongside it if you wanted any return. And I knew that to be cut in on YouTube revenue, you had to upload steadily for close to a year.
……Even granting I lie about my age.
It was a method with real sense behind it. With makeup and lighting, looking five years younger was nothing at all, and a human being didn't hit thirty and immediately spoil like some food past its expiration date. Part of why I'd even considered broadcasting was Rahi saying I looked twenty-five.
Besides, until a few years ago, celebrities shaving a few years off had been treated as nothing more than cute, so even if I got caught I might take a little less abuse.
It'd be nice if there were someone I could learn the broadcasting side from.
The internet had every kind of information, but that was literally nothing more than a lump of information. What you really wanted was someone at your side who could pass the know-how on. Unfortunately, there was no one like that around me.
It caught me while I was still sunk in thought. A glance at the clock said a whole hour had already slipped by. I let out a short laugh at messages that had reached the level of an alarm and sent her a reply. If I was going to work out and still make the appointment, I needed to leave now—and I still had workout clothes to buy. After answering Hyunji, I slowly packed a bag and headed out.
"One, two. One more—last one! Good. More, more, more! Nice. One minute of rest."
When I showed up at the gym, the Rahi who greeted me was rather cute. The moment she saw me she broke into a bright smile, then went a little shy, color rising in her cheeks, and the way she fidgeted with her hands was very much to my taste. Once the workout started, though, she was nothing short of a demon.
"Huff—hah—this isn't revenge, is it?"
"It isn't."
"No. Something's off. There's personal feeling mixed in. Why am I the only one this heavy?"
I jabbed a finger at a man elsewhere lifting an adorable little pink dumbbell, and at another doing lat pulldowns with a single plate on the stack, but it didn't land at all.
"You're more than capable. I'm already going easy on you as it is. Shall I put more on?"
"I will remember this day. I swear I will."
"Please do. And when you're training alone, keep it firmly in mind and work. All right, rest's over."
"There's still ten seconds left, you know?"
"My watch says it's past. Lie down."
"Unbelievable."
Grumbling, I settled back onto the bench, and Rahi's voice reached my ear, muttered like a whisper.
"……Well, who told you to dress like that?"
"What was I supposed to do? It was suffocating. Why do I have to wear something that clings like that?"
"You still haven't come to your senses. Here we go. One."
On the way I'd stopped at a sporting-goods shop and bought leggings and a top to wear underneath, but when it came time to put them on they were so tight I couldn't stand it. The leggings were bearable. The top was not. Truly. I felt like I was being turned into a sausage. The compression was that strong.
"I am wearing the pants!"
"No talking during the set. Two!"
She looked like she was enjoying the sight of me grinding my teeth through the reps, which only made me angrier.
"Last one, one more! Good. Well done."
"……Starting tomorrow, I'm not wearing the leggings."
"……Have you lost your mind? Wear them."
"Forget it. I'm not. I'm taking them off right now."
"Suit yourself."
"What kind of boring reaction is that?"
At my words, Rahi jerked her chin at the room around us. At some point, there wasn't a single other person in the gym.
"……So it's fine because nobody's here?"
"Do you think I'd be the one embarrassed? You're the one who'd be embarrassed, Shinwoo."
"That's a roundabout way of saying you want to look."
"As if. Separating work from personal life is my specialty."
"Ah. So once you've had a taste. Right. You were the same kind of woman after all."
"……What kind of thing is that to say?"
She flinched at my words, startled and flustered. Of course, everything we'd said up to now was only banter. I was starting to enjoy turning around the lines women used to throw in the old world. Rahi, though, seemed to have trouble taking this one.
"If you're sorry, show me your breasts."
"……Why do you like breasts so much? Aren't they ugly?"
"I like them, so what does it matter? Show me."
Color rose in her face. She glanced around once more, then caught my wrist and pulled.
"……Not here."
She led me to a corner of the gym, stood me there, and slipped in past the angle of the wall. Looking up at me, she turned her head aside and slowly took the hem of her tank top and lifted it. What spilled free, swaying, was a great mass of flesh and a pink gleam like jelly, and I couldn't take my eyes off it.
This would cool a temper I don't even have.
Whether it was a trace of last night or of this morning, I couldn't tell, but a red mark remained on one breast. I reached out quietly and stroked over the bruise. She flinched when my hand touched her, but she didn't pull away or dodge. She only watched me, still.
"Did it hurt?"
"N-no. It felt good. Really."
"I'll be careful next time."
"……You don't have to."
Neither of us could have said who moved first. Our eyes met, and our faces were drawing closer when the sound of the elevator arriving carried from the entrance.
"Ahem. Let's pick this up next time."
"……Okay."
The obedient Rahi, so different from the one at work, nearly flipped my switch on the spot, but I drew a breath and settled myself. Watching her straighten her clothes, I asked.
"Do I feel too forceful?"
"……A little, actually?"
"Does it bother you?"
"N-no. It's…… I don't really know anymore. Part of me wants to take the lead, but yesterday…… and just now, too…… rather than unpleasant, I should say my heart was racing. It felt a little satisfying, like you needed me……."
Coming out of the corner, she murmured it as if she were embarrassed.
"I'll take this much as fine. If it gets hard, say so. Don't grit your teeth and endure it."
"……Okay."
"I'm going to wash up. When do you get off?"
"I'm on past evening today. Um."
With a towel around my neck and my bottle in hand, I watched her hesitate, then go on.
"……Are you…… coming tonight?"
"……Do you want me to?"
At that, Rahi slowly nodded. I nearly slipped again into thinking this world was a beautiful place. A woman who had lost her virginity only yesterday, shyly asking to lie with me again—that had real force. I almost laughed at how cute she was, but I flicked a finger against her pretty forehead and answered slowly.
"Ow."
"No. It was your first time yesterday, so you're probably torn. And I wasn't gentle. Tell me the truth. It still hurts a little, doesn't it?"
"……A little. But this much should be all right……."
The hand she set against her lower belly didn't look like pain so much as satisfaction—the face of someone remembering last night.
I swallowed hard and forced the rising switch back down. That morning, the finger I'd put in her mouth as a joke had carried a faint scent of soap along with the taste of blood.
"It's pretty down there, so you'd better take care of it. If it still hurts tomorrow, go to the hospital. If you're scared, want me to go with you?"
Her head snapped up, and her face was bright red.
"N-no! You don't have to!"
"……? What. Why are you this embarrassed?"
"Going with a man is absolutely not allowed."
Wondering if there was some social rule like that, I nodded.
"All right. Then you promise you'll go. Okay?"
"……Yes."
"From now on, look after it properly. That belongs to me now."
"……What?"
"You heard me. You just want to hear it twice, don't you?"
"No, no, I really didn't hear it."
"Liar."
Bickering our way toward the showers, I found my mood gone soft and warm. This feeling of being in the middle of a romance, the first in a long time, had me humming before I knew it.