Not the Sperm Bank, Anything But That...!
The ratio of men to women in this world is exactly 10:1.
Perhaps because of that, men are treated as precious from the moment they are born, receiving all sorts of "Male Welfare Packages" the second they enter the world.
If you just show up at the sperm bank every quarter, you can live your entire life without doing a single thing.
'Honestly, at first, I thought it was a sweet deal...'
A life where you don't have to do anything. Just play the games you want, watch MiTube, streamers, and broadcast content, then sleep and sleep some more. I was personally proving that the phrase adults used to say, "living like a pig," was actually possible.
Then, one day.
In my second year of middle school, the scale hit triple digits. In the mirror, I saw a face where the flesh was so squashed that my lips were half-hidden. My breathing was labored, and my knees throbbed after climbing just a few stairs. My body was, naturally, falling apart at a rapid pace.
But I was the only one who saw it as a "crisis."
"Wow~ Hyunwoo, you got even cuter since you put on weight!"
"Your cheeks are so chubby~ You look just like a doll!"
"Hey, this isn't being fat, it's being prosperous~!"
Not a single person stopped me. No, everyone was actually praising me.
At that moment, something in my head just 'snapped.'
My body was clearly collapsing, yet people called it adorable. They said it was fine because I was a man, that I was cute, that I was living well—and that terrified me.
'Ah, if I really live like this, my life is going to be ruined...'
After that, I exercised like a madman. I lost weight, toned my body, and started going to the "school you don't even have to attend."
That's right. Humans are ruined just by playing around. This world, which people call heaven, was actually a place where the sin of sloth was hidden in plain sight.
I didn't want to end up like that. I died from overwork in my past life, and in this one... well, I went right up to the edge of dying from happiness and barely made it back.
So I made a decision. This time, I would sharpen a radish, hold a sword, and use this life in a way that was "meaningful."
With that resolve, I prepared for the Baek-San Group interview. But for 30 minutes, I didn't get a single question, just sat there blankly, and then got rejected.
"Haaaaa..."
The sight of me sitting on a seesaw in a suit. It was fucking embarrassing.
The moment I was kicked out of the interview room, I was transported back to where I originally came from: the Miso Orphanage. For the record, it wasn't a voluntary return. A military unit, not even the police, came and loaded me up, saying it was dangerous for a man to be wandering around alone.
Thanks to that, my mental state was completely at rock bottom.
I had recalled the nightmare of my "middle school pig days" and vowed never to collapse like that again. I exercised, changed my eating habits, and literally poured everything I had into living like a human being with just this body. But if that effort isn't even given a chance in the first place...
"Then what was all my effort for, dammit!"
I let out a deep sigh on the seesaw again.
'Please, just send me to a world that's somewhat normal!!'
You said this was a normal world, God! You even created a romantic, exciting job like a Hero, but you're telling me a man can't do it because of the numbers?
Isn't that just too much, you son of a bitch?
I shouted that toward the sky. Of course, there was no answer. Only the gazes of the orphanage teachers and the children watching me secretly from inside the building settled quietly upon me.
That was when it happened.
"Hyunwoo... is it because you failed the interview?"
"Ah... Hayeon-noona."
She was someone whose blue hair fluttered like waves beneath her nun's veil as she walked toward me. She was a presence that couldn't help but draw eyes even from afar. Her outfit was clearly a nun's habit, but the chest line was tightly cinched, and the fabric hovered precariously above her thighs—a costume that anyone would say was closer to a seduction outfit than a religious one. Beneath that, her breasts and hips swayed naturally with every step. A nun who walked in sin, with no sense of restraint whatsoever.
Lee Hayeon.
She was five years older than me, a close "church noona" who had protected me from the other lecherous noonas since my orphanage days, keeping me within a "relatively" normal boundary.
"Yes... I prepared so much for the interview, but I didn't even get to show them anything before I was rejected."
"That's a shame..."
"Yeah. But I won't give up. I've only poked at one company so far, right? You never know. Maybe I'll poke at another company and it'll just work out."
I looked at Hayeon-noona, who was sitting across from me on the seesaw, and nodded shortly as if to make a vow. In the first place, being disappointed after failing just once wasn't manly. I was someone who had flown in from a world where even pretending to be tired wasn't allowed just because I was a man. For someone like me, just having an environment where I could pour out my true feelings to someone like this was enough to give me the strength to stand up again.
But.
"Are you... are you going to interview again? That... to be a Hero?"
"...? Yes."
"Uuu... Hey, Hyunwoo. A man being a Hero... honestly, when you were young, I thought you were just being immature... but, noona honestly doesn't want you doing something that dangerous!"
Hayeon-noona looked down at me from the seesaw, looking like she was about to cry. Well, unlike the pathetic, gay-like boys in this world, our noona had struggled a lot since I was young, watching me act like a woman by this world's standards.
When I told her before that I was going to the Baek-San Group interview, she was one of the nuns who fainted at this place, which is run by both a cathedral and an orphanage. And even now, she was doing it again.
"No, Hyunwoo. What kind of Hero is a boy? Huh? You're an adult now, you should start looking at reality instead of dreams!"
"Reality, huh... then what kind of future do you want for me, noona?"
"Huh? Well, like other men, stay in a safe house and watch what you want! Eat what you want, and every quarter, just go to the sperm bank and... donate your genes. And, and... ehehe... if the bank isn't enough, noona knows other ways too..."
"Yes. Motion denied."
I dismissed Hayeon-noona, who was trying to sneak in her own selfish desires. Watching her drool and then pout, saying "Hiiing...", I thought to myself. If I live like that, I'll really fall apart in an instant. And she must be saying that because she doesn't know the true reality of the sperm bank.
'Even thinking about it now, it was terrible...'
If you're a man born in this gender-reversed world, there's a place you're mandatorily required to visit every quarter after you turn 15, when your sexual desires start to flare up. That place is the sperm bank.
In this world, men are treated as precious, but they are also subject to strict management by the state and the World Federation. Welfare and benefits are provided in abundance. However, in exchange, you must show up at the sperm bank once every quarter without fail. Attendance is managed by law, and there are even rumors that if you exceed a certain number of absences, you'll be arrested without warning.
On the surface, they call it a "management system for male health," but in reality, it's closer to a "state-led reproductive surveillance system." And if you ask what you do inside... well, if you're a man in his prime, does it really need an explanation? Especially since this world is full of nothing but 2D gay porn. For normal self-relief, the sperm bank, equipped with "men-only" adult videos, was effectively the only refuge.
So, not just once a quarter, there was a time I went there every single day for a whole week. During that period, the entire orphanage was strangely heated. A weird energy drifted through the cathedral hallways, the nuns' gazes kept chasing my hands, and at night, I could even hear the "presence" of someone brushing past my door.
'It was hard to just laugh that off back then...'
But now... I haven't set foot in that place for nearly a year. The reason was simple. Perhaps because my senses had become increasingly sensitive as I toned my body after middle school. It was the moment I was about to start my relief as usual in the sperm bank's relief room—a room with nothing but a computer screen left alone.
That was when.
A strange "presence" felt from behind the computer, from beyond the wall.
At first, I thought it was my imagination. I thought it was just a feeling, so I chose a different room the next time. But it was the same after that. No matter how I changed rooms, no matter how I changed locations, that presence was always there. Beyond the dark, cold wall, someone was breathing at a very close distance. Quietly, very slowly. The sound of breathing trying not to reveal its existence.
Then, suddenly, the material of that wall came to mind. It was a special material where you couldn't see the outside from the inside, but you could see the inside clearly from the outside. That was when I realized.
All those times I thought I was alone. Every single moment was actually being exhibited to someone else. Without knowing it, I had become someone's "side dish" from a certain point on.
Chills!
After that, I couldn't set foot in the sperm bank anymore. It was unpleasant, creepy, and just... the feeling was too dirty. From a certain point on, that place wasn't a space for relief, but a stage for someone's spectacle.
And immediately after that incident, as if a national emergency had broken out, police, doctors, psychological counselors, and welfare officials swarmed into the orphanage one after another.
"By any chance... is there a problem with your sexual function?"
"Have you had a decrease in the frequency of masturbation or a drop in your desire levels?"
"Have you felt threatened regarding your sexual autonomy?"
A female psychiatrist who brought an EEG from somewhere tried to attach electrodes to my head. Some woman even brought bed sheets to my room, claiming it was for sperm residue analysis. It was as if an "expensive gene production machine" had broken down.
Fortunately, I had already filled most of the sperm bank branches with my name, so I was able to quell the chaos with the rare title of "Temporary Suspension Due to Excess Holdings." ...Of course, that "holding grace period" had less than a month left now.
"Hyunwoo. Can't you just go to the sperm bank like other men, receive the benefits, and live safely? Noona just doesn't want you to get hurt..."
Back to the present.
Hayeon-noona, who had gotten off the seesaw and was now stuck to my side. She was speaking while wrapping her arms around her voluptuous chest, as if she were worried. Probably the other nuns at this orphanage, and even the younger kids, were thinking the same thing.
But I couldn't do that. The effort I had made so far, those times, did not allow me to make such a choice. So, just as I was about to state my will once again.
"You have a very good body."
"Huh?"
"...Eh?"
The air changed. And soon, intense, blood-red eyes pierced my vision. The hair fluttering in the wind was black, dark, and deep like the night sky. She was wearing a suit. But that clothing didn't look like it was meant to hide her body, but rather to reveal its curves. Her hip line, waist line, chest line—everything was cinched tight and then puffed out. Such a woman stood before me without any warning, at some point.
And then, she said something that no one else in this world had ever said to me.
"Hey, you there. Do you want to be a Hero under me?"