The Room You Cannot Leave Unless You Have Sex

Kwon Yuri and I stood there in a daze, staring at each other.

I'm sorry — what room, exactly?

This was hardly the kind of situation you'd expect to spring out of those eyes of hers.

And it wasn't just some tasteless prank someone had rigged up, either. The door genuinely would not open.

I grabbed the handle and wrenched it with all my strength, even gave it a sneaky kick or two, but the glass door didn't budge an inch — as if it had been replaced overnight with a single slab of solid steel.

Fuck, it really won't open. No glass door should be this sturdy.

The door wasn't locked, and nobody was holding it shut from outside. That much was certain. I was still racking my brain over how the hell to solve this when Yuri's voice drifted up cautiously from behind me.

"Oppa, that's not going to open."

"Sorry? Why not?"

"Well… this place is a room you can't leave unless you have sex now. So the two of us can't get out until we do it. Not ever."

Her explanation was astonishingly calm and matter-of-fact.

It was like listening to an elementary school teacher walking a class through one plus one equals two.

And hearing it, I found myself nodding along with perfect, natural ease.

"Ah, of course. Right — we haven't had sex, so naturally we can't leave."

A brief silence settled over us.

Three seconds later—

Hold on. Why did I just accept that unhinged lunacy as though it were obvious?

A violent wave of cognitive dissonance crashed through my skull.

By any sane measure, "you must have sex to exit the room" cannot possibly be a real condition. And yet, mere seconds ago, my brain had swallowed Yuri's words whole, accepting them as flawless truth without a flicker of resistance.

Is this the power of an Anomaly?

I hurriedly pulled out my phone and opened the Anomaly app. Beneath the anomaly report notification I'd left open earlier, the detailed information had been updated.

I stared holes into the screen before finally letting out a hollow laugh.

So basically, anyone inside this space would take it as simple fact that they had to fuck in order to leave — like it was common sense on par with "eating food makes you full."

What kind of nonsense is this… no way. There's just no way.

I turned off the screen and slowly rotated my head to look at Kwon Yuri. She had her legs subtly twisted around each other, watching me for my reaction. Both her cheeks burned red like a perfectly ripened peach, and the eyes looking back at me were glistening, dewy with moisture.

Well, then. Yeah. This tracks.

There was no doubt about it — Kwon Yuri was accepting this situation as completely natural, absurdity and all. And layered on top of that was my blind-attraction passive working overtime, which meant she actually seemed to be hoping for this outcome.

No — judging by that ravenous look in her eyes, "hoping" wasn't the word. She was aching for it.

What even is this? Absurd. Genuinely absurd.

Frankly, I'd assumed "Anomaly" meant nothing more than a few freak occurrences — women inexplicably liking me, a mystery app for reporting anomalies suddenly installed on my phone. That was the extent of my imagination.

But this thing didn't just rewrite common sense and social norms outright — it conjured outright magical, impossible events on top of that. If I kept treating Anomalies lightly, I had a feeling they were going to come back around and bite me in the ass one day.

That's a problem for future me, though. Right now? This is a jackpot.

My life wasn't in any apparent danger, and we were inside a convenience store — nothing bad could realistically happen here. The anomaly would dissolve on its own after a day anyway, so even if things went sideways, I could just sit tight and wait it out.

And above all else — Yuri was practically radiating the desire to use this anomaly as her excuse to get a round in with me.

This, gentlemen, was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a stage set up entirely for my benefit.

While internally cheering, I kept my outward expression calm and gentlemanly, perfectly composed.

"Haaah, this is a real mess. Who'd have thought something this insane would just… happen out of nowhere."

"R-right…. What do we do, Oppa?"

"Well, I did some searching on my phone just now, and it looks like this thing automatically lifts itself after about a day."

"Sorry? A… a whole day?"

Yuri's eyes wobbled violently, like an earthquake had just torn through them.

She'd clearly expected us to get right down to business — the sudden talk of "a day" had thrown her completely off balance.

"Yeah. It's not like we're stranded on some desert island — this is a convenience store. We've got lunch boxes, instant ramen. Nobody's starving to death in here."

"B-but…."

"Nothing we can do about it. I'll talk to the manager and we'll close the store for a day and ride it out—"

I deliberately played the part of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the considerate, level-headed, dependable oppa, firmly slamming down an iron wall of restraint. And the instant those words left my mouth, Yuri's expression began to darken at remarkable speed.

There it is. She's getting desperate.

She bit her crimson lip, visibly anxious, and within moments began marshaling every excuse in her arsenal to argue back.

"B-but Oppa! You've been up all night working — you're exhausted! You should go home and get proper rest after your shift!"

"Eh, I can sleep on top of some flattened boxes in the storage room. It's only a bit smaller than my apartment anyway."

"And — and! The manager comes in at eight in the morning! What if she sees us standing around like this outside the door? You could lose your job, Oppa!"

Every excuse reeked of a girl so desperate to get her body tangled up with mine that she'd scraped the bottom of the barrel for reasons.

Oh, this was magnificent. Truly a sight to behold.

The ice princess of the elite university — that haughty, insufferable student of old — was nowhere to be found. What stood before me now was, for all intents and purposes, a bitch in heat, swaying her tail in front of me and silently ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠begging, please touch me.

I'm losing my mind here. A gorgeous elite university student throwing out every flimsy excuse in existence just to get me into bed with her.

As a man, holding back in this situation was agony — but I summoned every last ounce of patience and kept my expression serene. If I were the one panting and lunging at her, the dynamic would collapse, and I'd look pathetic doing it. The initiative was unmistakably in my hands, so I could afford to take things slow and savor this.

"Now that you mention it, that's true. The manager showing up would be a real headache."

"S-see…! So what I'm saying is… the rule is the rule, anyway…."

When I pretended to grudgingly concede, scratching the back of my neck, Yuri closed the distance in a single stride, as if she'd been waiting for exactly that. She gripped my collar ever so lightly, let her gaze drop to my chest, and murmured in a small, crawling voice:

"Wouldn't it just be… better to close our eyes, get it over with quickly, and walk out…?"

Jesus Christ. That line is delicious.

I barely strangled down the laugh bursting up my throat and answered in a heavy, serious tone.

"Yuri, are you really okay with this? I know the situation is what it is, but… sleeping with me. You won't regret it later?"

"Ah, that's…."

"Think it through carefully. I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to."

God damn, Kang Jinwoo. You were cool just now.

A line like that could drop women dead on the spot.

Granted, back in the old days, delivering that line wouldn't have killed the woman — it would have killed me socially. But the current me is a man who earns unlimited affection from every woman alive.

At my words, Yuri hung her head low, clamped her thighs tightly together, and whispered in a tiny voice:

"If it's with you, Oppa… it's okay."

That closing wedge, dropped like an afterthought to herself, was the final straw. I felt no further need to hold back.

I had a perfect shield called an Anomaly, and enthusiastic consent manufactured by blind infatuation. Any man who kept agonizing over this beyond this point wasn't a man at all.

"Then I'll take you up on that. If you've gone this far, it'd be poor manners of me to keep refusing."

I squeezed Yuri's small hand tight. Her burning body heat flowed up through her palm and into mine.

Right — we'd preserved more than enough face. Time to get this show properly on the road.

So, same as yesterday, we'd head to the storage room and I'd—

"Shall we head to the storage room, then?"

"Sorry? The storage room…? In that tiny little space?"

"Yeah. The whole front is a glass wall — I can't exactly do it out there where everyone can see."

I mean, I couldn't exactly broadcast WE ARE HAVING SEX in letters a mile high, could I? However much of a degenerate I might be, that particular kink was a bridge too far.

But at my response, Yuri just tilted her head in genuine puzzlement.

"Can't we just do it here? It's not like we're whipping it out at random — this is a room you can't leave unless you have sex."

"Sorry…? That's still—"

"Everyone in the vlogs does it right out in the open. Even the government says it's better to resolve these things quickly — they basically encourage you to just go ahead and do it."

"Sorry? What on earth are you—"

Reeling from that impossible combination of sentences, I hastily pulled out my phone and opened social media. Half-convinced I'd misheard her, I typed "room you can't leave unless you have sex" into the search bar — and sure enough, exactly as Yuri had said, the results streamed in, row upon row of videos of people having sex.

"…Holy shit. It's real."

"See? I told you. What, you don't believe me, Oppa?"

"No, it's not that, I just…."

Forgive me for not instantly believing the most ridiculous sentence ever spoken. I'm only human.

Mute with disbelief, I scrolled down through the search results. For a horrifying moment I wondered whether a deranged altered-common-sense anomaly had gone live that forced every sex video in existence to go public — but no, that didn't seem to be it.

Virtually every video I could find was connected to a "room you can't leave unless you have sex." And the public reactions were all uniformly accepting — along the lines of:

There's an Anomaly for literally everything, huh.

I closed social media and reopened the anomaly reporting app, rereading the explanation it had given me.

Cognition — so it wasn't just the people trapped inside the space. Everyone who knew this place had become a sex-lock room accepted that sex was required within it, as a matter of plain common sense.

Which explained Yuri's reaction perfectly. To her, there was no reason to squeeze into a cramped storage room when doing it out in the open was perfectly fine.

"Well… if doing it in the storage room is your thing, Oppa, I'm happy to follow your lead."

"N-no, that's not it. If we have to do it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyway… we might as well do it comfortably right here."

"Right, Oppa? Then…."

Kwon Yuri curled her lips into a strange little smile and began slowly untying her apron.

"Let's get it done and be finished with it."

"Mmm… yeah."

Wow. One invitation and she comes charging out like this? Didn't see that coming.

Swept up in her momentum, I slowly brought my own hand down to the zipper of my pants.