The Heroine Who Could Never Be
As expected, it was no easy day.
Dealing with a relentless parade of nightmare customers was draining enough on its own — but on top of that, no matter where he turned, he kept running into Jeong Da-jeong.
As the hours crawled by, an uncomfortable weight began to fill his chest to the brim.
It was because of the extraordinary interest he had taken in Jeong Da-jeong ever since meeting her, not long after introducing the character Baek A-in into his novel.
He couldn't help it. The shock of first laying eyes on her had been almost identical to the moment he'd received Baek A-in's finished first illustration.
The instant he saw that drawing — a perfect transfer of the Baek A-in who had lived only in his imagination — he had practically dropped to the floor in a full bow toward the artist's home. So of course he would develop a secret fascination with Jeong Da-jeong, whose appearance matched Baek A-in down to the last detail.
She was a heroine into whom he had poured every single condition of his ideal type. Standing before her felt like encountering a mythical creature.
Her looks were that unreal — and the Jeong-hyeon of those early days had been hit with a second shockwave when he realized her bust was even larger than Baek A-in's.
And so those moments kept flashing through him in rapid succession, tormenting him without mercy.
For the past two months, Jeong Da-jeong had been the single greatest force in breathing life into Baek A-in — and now she turned out to be an exhibitionist non-virgin?
The reality was so hard to accept that a splitting headache bloomed behind his eyes.
Ha. Da-jeong… Da-jeong-ah…!
He wanted to scream her name at the heavens and demand an explanation from God right then and there.
Why on earth had God stuck exhibitionism into Jeong Da-jeong's body and made him suffer like this?
His heart ached so badly.
Looking at everything he had seen of Jeong Da-jeong and Baek A-in, the only real difference between them had been that exhibitionism. And now that it had been filled in, the present Jeong Da-jeong was, by his standards, nothing short of a perfect heroine.
Unfortunately, a catastrophic error had occurred in one critical process.
Baek A-in was that kind of character.
She was convinced that Lee Tae-hyeon — the owner of the restaurant where she worked — was the most perfect ideal man she had ever seen, and she staked her entire life on having him tear through her hymen.
So she deliberately tossed out nothing but provocative lines, slowly raking at his temper until he grew restless. Then she staged an outdoor-style exposure scene straight out of the dirty stories he always read — right inside the closed shop — got caught immediately, and was fucked like an animal until she finally achieved the virginity graduation she had been craving.
And Jeong Da-jeong? What about her?
For the past two months she had been raking at his temper while secretly collecting photos of her own exposure.
Photos meant to be shown to whoever had graduated her from virginity — or to any number of unspecified people.
Because of that absurd exhibitionism, Jeong Da-jeong had become a woman who could never be Baek A-in again.
And for him as an erotic novelist, that fact landed as a serious problem of its own.
Now that the inspiration he had been drawing from Jeong Da-jeong was gone, there was a real chance that Baek A-in would no longer be able to satisfy his arousal going forward.
The only element that could reverse the situation was the possibility that Jeong Da-jeong was still a virgin…
But no matter how he turned it over, that made no sense.
Why would a woman with looks that perfect do something like that in the first place?
She could flash a bright smile, drop a confession out of nowhere, and have nearly any man fall for her on the spot.
In Baek A-in's case, she was a character faithful to her desire to be forcibly violated — and the photos with filthy phrases written across her body had been taken specifically to turn Lee Tae-hyeon on harder, so he would fuck her even more violently.
In the end, the only conclusion left was that Jeong Da-jeong could not possibly be a virgin.
"W-why are you glaring at me…?"
"…It's nothing. Get back to work."
Ah. He had ended up staring daggers at Jeong Da-jeong without realizing it.
Honestly, he knew he shouldn't be doing this.
Even if Jeong Da-jeong were a virgin, the odds of her liking him were vanishingly small.
But he couldn't help feeling a profound sense of betrayal.
She was the only idol his heart had ever fallen for in twenty-four years of life.
"Manager."
"What is it?"
"It's almost closing time, so…"
"……Just handle it yourself. You know how to do everything."
"Yes…. I-I'll do that…."
Once his fan feelings had gone ice-cold, even exchanging words with her felt like a chore.
"Well then… I'll head out for the day."
"Yeah."
"Th-thank you… for your hard work."
"You too."
He had always thought of himself as a broad-minded person.
Apparently he hadn't known himself very well.
The moment Jeong Da-jeong slipped out of the cafe, a long, heavy sigh escaped him.
Was this why people said fans who lived completely immersed in a particular idol became terrifying once they turned dark?
A rage that surpassed everything he had ever felt through her seemed ready to take over his mind.
Afraid of what he might do if he stayed any longer, he shut the shop in a hurry and made the lonely walk home.
He finished a quick shower, dropped heavily into a chair at the dining table, and slammed his forehead down against it.
"Jeong Da-jeong… just why…!"
He wanted to tear his hair out.
That hymen…!
If only that thin little membrane had still been intact, everything would have fallen into place.
If it had just held out until his novel reached its ending, his emotions wouldn't be thrashing around like this.
Trying to pull himself together, he opened his laptop, took a sip of coffee, and set his hands to work.
Originally he had planned to continue with the Baek A-in backlog he had already written, but he made the bold decision to cut her page count.
He knew full well that plenty of readers were just as obsessed with her as he had been — but he no longer had the confidence to sit there editing prose about a Baek A-in his heart had completely abandoned.
In the end, he decided to pull forward the heroine scheduled to debut next month with a new illustration.
It was a wise call.
Because even looking at Baek A-in's bare illustration — the kind that would normally have him rock-hard in an instant — he felt not even a flicker of excitement.
I need to find a new heroine who can take Baek A-in's place.
Just handle it yourself. You know how to do everything.
Yeah.
You too.
The whole way home, Jeong-hyeon oppa's cold voice from earlier refused to leave her head.
He had seemed fine enough while they were talking about the interior — but after that, it felt like he had become a completely different person.
Had she made some huge mistake?
Through showering, eating dinner, and lying down in bed, she turned the day over and over — and still couldn't find anything particularly wrong with it.
The only slip-up she had made today was handing him the wrong phone, and he clearly hadn't seen her photos…
She hadn't meant to be suspicious of him, but just in case, she had deliberately leaned over the table earlier, pretending to look at her phone while checking down below.
There hadn't been the slightest sign of arousal.
If he had seen her exposure photos, there was no way he could have sat there that calmly.
He was a man with an enormous romantic fantasy about his first time, and her photos had been shot in compositions designed specifically to snipe a man with that kind of dream.
For someone like that to look at her naked body and feel nothing at all simply didn't make sense.
If he was the kind of total pervert who got hard reading smut in the cafe in broad daylight, there was no way he wouldn't have noticed she was desperate for him to fuck her.
This much was certain. He absolutely had not seen the photos.
And somehow, that made her feel freshly disappointed.
Because if he really had seen them… her dream might have come true.
The dream that had taken root the moment she left behind her cafe life under that angel of an aunt and, in the span of a single day, fallen completely for the new manager oppa she had just met.
That dream was simple: to be fucked senseless and savor a rapturous first experience — exactly like Baek A-in, the heroine from Author Dain's work How to Violate Them, the novel that had been responsible for a full year of her happy masturbation life.
And to do it through Baek Jeong-hyeon — her heart's number-one pick, the man who wanted his first experience to be the act of piercing a woman's hymen.
It was the kind of thing that would make an ordinary person recoil in horror — but for her, there had been no other option.
The moment she became an adult, her sexual desire had started surging like mad. She had spent nearly every night comforting her own body, but her far-from-ordinary pussy flat-out refused any kind of penetration.
Even easing her pinky finger in just a little sent extreme pain and a bone-chilling sensation racing up her spine.
Deciding she couldn't go on like that, she had steeled herself the moment she started living alone and brought home a dildo — only for dizzying agony to crash over her the second the fake glans touched her entrance, leaving her rolling around on the bed.
She had tried countless times after that. The result never changed.
She couldn't get a finger in, let alone a dildo.
Faced with that miserable reality, she had eventually given up and thrown herself into masturbation that focused on squeezing her clit and breasts — but she had never once experienced anything resembling an orgasm.
And then, like a single ray of light from the heavens, the erotic novel How to Violate Them had descended upon her.
Because the author's tastes lined up with hers to a remarkable degree, there wasn't a single scene worth skipping. She especially loved the setup where the heroines were treated like mere tools while being fucked — and then, afterward, showered with affection just like any ordinary couple.
Thanks to that, even if it never quite reached rapture, she had been able to keep masturbating in a way that felt better than before.
From then on, whether her day counted as a success hinged entirely on whether she could achieve a blissful session of masturbation while reading the author's novel.
She had been that deeply immersed in the story — and then, three months ago, a heroine who looked just like her had appeared.
That was when it started.
The masturbation she had only ever done once a day, at night, began happening during her cafe shifts as well.