Pervert on the Subway
Riiiing—
Kim Hyunsoo woke up in bed with his eyes still closed. It was time to go to work again today. For a small-time citizen living in the modern world, there was no escaping labor. The only ways out of the endless grind were getting rich or winning the lottery jackpot.
Come to think of it, he'd heard that even the lottery first prize wasn't really the top prize these days. Not long ago, more than sixty people had hit the jackpot at once, and the payout had dropped below three hundred million won each. After taxes and various deductions, it wasn't even enough to buy a single apartment. The word "jackpot" felt like a cruel joke.
Meanwhile, if you won America's Powerball across the ocean, your life flipped overnight. He'd heard the prizes there ran into the trillions. Just thinking about it simply—if you deposited the money in a bank, the interest alone would multiply into tens of billions every year. As long as you stayed away from gambling, nightlife, and other nonsense, it was enough for three generations to live comfortably off of.
The only problem was that the odds were, frankly, embarrassing to compare with the lottery. Despite the population being far larger than Korea's, there had been stretches with no winner at all. He'd heard the probability was astronomically lower—not only did you have to match the numbers, but the order had to be right too, and there seemed to be all sorts of other restrictions on top of that.
As always, he headed into the bathroom to get ready for work. Thankfully, his studio apartment had air conditioning, so he hadn't woken up drenched in sweat. Every summer the news blared headlines about "record-breaking heat!"—and this year, the hype wasn't hype at all. Even after the sun went down and night fell, the temperature refused to budge below thirty degrees. It was insane weather.
Who was it that called the four seasons a blessing? With heat like this, that saying deserved to be retired. Paying silent tribute to the great mind who invented the air conditioner, Kim Hyunsoo finished his shower and stepped out. The vanity table, which had once held nothing but a single bottle of lotion, was slowly being overrun by a multiplying colony of cosmetics.
Since cosmetics didn't reproduce by forming relationships with one another, every new addition was something Kim Hyunsoo himself had put there. He didn't particularly care about skincare products, but the gifts from his Rental Boyfriend clients kept piling up regardless.
Kim Hyunsoo never accepted cash or extravagant gifts from clients. Doing so was tantamount to handing them a leash with his name on it. But turning down small, inexpensive presents was another matter entirely—refusing them was somehow more awkward than accepting. Perhaps that was why his clients had learned to read his personality so well that these little tokens had become the standard gift.
They were the fastest in the world to pick up on the fact that he didn't take cash or luxury items. Kim Hyunsoo applied his lotion, then spritzed on the perfume Shin Yuna had given him a while back. She'd made him promise to always wear it on the days he had a date with her. He kept a note of every client's requests on his phone so he'd never forget one—and today happened to be a perfume day.
Pssh—
The moment the perfume misted into the air, a fresh fragrance spread through the room. Kim Hyunsoo held the bottle up to his nose and took a sniff. Even for someone with zero knowledge of fragrances, it smelled wonderful. Is this one expensive too? It was frustrating—there was no way to tell whether any given cosmetic was cheap or high-end.
"Thank you for the gift..."
Offering his gratitude to Shin Yuna, who wasn't even present, Kim Hyunsoo stepped out of the room. Today's date spot was the Han River—a classic date course that couples frequented all the time.
"It's hot..."
It was August, with the end-of-summer season nearly upon them, but the sunlight still bit down mercilessly. It was as if the sun itself was protesting, demanding to know why it wasn't allowed to keep summer going. Kim Hyunsoo hurried on his way to the Han River. His place wasn't in a great location, so the hassle of taking the subway annoyed him. If only he lived in one of those apartments with a river view, he wouldn't have this problem at all.
Of course, buying a Han River-view apartment was laughably out of reach on Kim Hyunsoo's income. Nobody with an ordinary salary could ever afford one. The people who could were probably running their own businesses, or else genuinely executive-level at some corporation.
Kim Hyunsoo wouldn't have minded marrying a rich woman and living the easy life either. But he'd resolved to make the most of his youth first, so he shelved that line of thinking for now. Being bound to a single woman at the tender age of twenty didn't add up. He wanted to date all kinds of women until at least his mid-to-late twenties.
Which was exactly why this rental boyfriend gig was the perfect calling for him. It was a job that let him earn serious money while dating beautiful women of every type.
And nobody looked down on men for being rental boyfriends, either. If anything, it was introduced as a profession for men with genuinely masculine appeal—the equivalent of cheerleaders or racing models back in his original world. In other words, he didn't have to be treated like a man selling his body the way such jobs would be seen back home. Though who knew what kind of looks he'd get if he crossed over into actual sex work.
With women this easy to date, it had never once occurred to Kim Hyunsoo to go anywhere near that. If anything, that was probably where genuinely ugly men went to scrape together money. Shaking off the thought, Kim Hyunsoo stood at the edge of the street and hesitated for a moment.
The weather was simply too brutal today. It was the kind of temperature that made him dread even the short walk to the subway station. He felt the impulse to hail a taxi, but taking one from here to the Han River would cost an absolute fortune. In the end, Kim Hyunsoo resigned himself to the subway. As he walked, he could feel the gazes of women flicking toward him. Maybe I really should buy a car one of these days.
It really was a world where men were rare treasures—even just strolling down the street drew sly glances from passing women. He felt like a foreigner touring the streets of India.
Beep—
Through the turnstile and onto the platform, Kim Hyunsoo waited for his train. Look left—women. Look right—women. There were men around, sure, but the ratio skewed noticeably the other way. It wasn't even all that early. If it were rush hour, he could chalk it up to women commuting to the office, but it was long past morning rush.
Back in his original world, once the men's commute hour passed, the streets would still be teeming with women going about their day. Apparently most households there had men going to work while the women raised the children—and since this world was the exact opposite, he'd assumed the streets would be full of men. Kim Hyunsoo's assumption had been dead wrong.
🚇 The train is now approaching.
A flat, dry mechanical voice droned over the speakers, and the train began gliding in. Kim Hyunsoo waited until every passenger had stepped off before boarding. Whenever he saw people shoving their way onto a train before the crowd had even finished pouring out, his fist itched to knock some sense into them. People exit first, then people board. Basic physics.
Chik—
As the doors hissed shut, Kim Hyunsoo pulled out his phone. The crack spiderwebbing across the screen made him wonder if it was time for a new one. He'd been using this phone for nearly three years now, so the upgrade window had arrived. But he soon had no choice but to stuff it back into his pocket. There were still plenty of stations to go, and the train was packed to bursting. Getting jostled this way and that by the crush of bodies, he felt like he was suffocating. Maybe I should've just taken a taxi after all.
That was when Kim Hyunsoo felt a stranger's hand on his ass.
Slide, slide—
It was the hand of someone harboring very naked, very urgent desire. Kim Hyunsoo whipped his head around to see which woman was groping him—but by the time he looked back, the offending hand had vanished. If it had been some ugly woman or some old hag, he'd been fully prepared to throw a fist straight into her philtrum. And in this world, he would have been within his rights to do it.
In cases of sexual assault against men, violence in retaliation carried no legal penalty. But if a pretty woman had been the one touching him, he was prepared to let it slide to a certain extent. Kim Hyunsoo quickly narrowed the suspects down to three, using distance and the layout of the space to filter out the rest.
One was an older woman who looked repulsive at a glance. One was a completely ordinary-looking woman. And the last was a stunningly beautiful woman, seemingly in her late twenties, with long pink hair that caught the eye immediately. Kim Hyunsoo found himself hoping it was the last one. If he was going to get groped either way, better it be by the pretty one.
But since he couldn't be certain who it was, Kim Hyunsoo had no choice but to turn his eyes forward again. Barely a moment after facing front, someone touched his ass a second time.
He started to whip around again—but someone beat him to the punch. A sharp woman's voice rang out through the train car.
"Stop touching him!"