The First Morning
2000.
An unidentified gate appeared.
Monsters poured out from it.
And humans awakened to fight them.
Twenty-six years later.
Gates and Hunters had become part of everyday life.
But humanity faced another problem.
“Ugh… I’m dying of exhaustion.”
Kang Do-yoon, a twenty-eight-year-old job seeker, woke to the sound of his alarm.
As he reached to turn off his phone and sit up, he froze in place.
“…Huh?”
It was a room he had never seen before.
Much larger than a studio apartment.
Clean furniture.
An unfamiliar scene.
“What the hell is this place?”
The only memory from last night was one thing.
While browsing game sites, he had stumbled upon a game.
And stayed up all night to see the ending.
That was all.
“Don’t tell me… possession?”
His heart began to race.
Kang Do-yoon immediately grabbed his phone.
2026, XX month, XX day.
The date was the same.
But instead of a message from his part-time job boss, a strange notification appeared on ChocolateTalk.
[Korea Hunter Association]
“A Hunter story?”
He felt a slight disappointment.
It wasn’t one of the popular gallery or chaebol stories.
He had thought possession would finally let him live the sweet life, but apparently not.
He hadn’t read a Hunter story in a while.
Just what had he possessed?
He opened the green window and searched.
Gate.
Monster.
Hunter.
So far, normal.
But then—
「Seven S-rank female Hunters publicly court one man」
「Controversy over the Male Hunter Protection Act」
「87% of male awakeners in Korea monopolized by female Hunters」
Kang Do-yoon’s eyes widened as he read the articles on the screen.
“Huh?”
It was familiar.
Too familiar.
“No way.”
He searched frantically.
The more results piled up, the stiffer his face became.
And then he was certain.
He knew exactly where he had been possessed into.
“…Crazy.”
This was the world of the adult game he had finished the ending of last night.
Kang Do-yoon rushed straight to the bathroom.
“No way.”
With trembling hands, he pulled down his pants.
“…Shit.”
The curse slipped out on its own.
A silver ring he had never seen before was fastened around his waist.
The very item he had seen countless times in the game.
The Ejaculation Control Ring.
“Crazy.”
Kang Do-yoon clutched his head.
It was a setting he had thought made no sense even while playing the game.
After the gates appeared, sudden deaths among men had occurred one after another for unknown reasons.
After long research, the cause was revealed—and it was shocking.
Every time a man expended sperm, his life force was consumed along with it.
As a result, the male population plummeted, and the current gender ratio had collapsed to one man for every ten women.
And the device developed to solve this problem was the Ejaculation Control Ring.
A special artifact created to preserve men’s lives.
It blocked sperm release, regulated production, and came equipped with various functions to prevent wasting life force through unnecessary arousal.
He had laughed it off while reading the explanation in the game.
But now that it was actually on him, it wasn’t funny at all.
“No, seriously, this was real…?”
Kang Do-yoon recalled one scene from the game.
It had been part of a romance event.
The protagonist removing the ring and sliding it onto a female character’s finger.
『Are you really giving this to me?』
『Can someone like me accept your sincerity?』
『Really, to me?!』
Every heroine had blushed with emotion.
At the time, he hadn’t understood.
Actually, before understanding, he had found it hilarious.
Why would anyone be moved by having a ring that had been on someone’s crotch slipped onto their finger?
So he had genuinely thought—
‘Isn’t this actually a comedy, not an adult game?’
But now that he had confirmed the world’s information, he couldn’t laugh.
In an era where the number of men had drastically decreased.
Humanity had carried out countless policies and studies to maintain the birth rate.
As a result—
The current natural pregnancy rate had reached a staggering 90%.
Men were precious beings.
A society where the very ability to have children carried special meaning.
And the Ejaculation Control Ring was directly tied to a man’s life.
Kang Do-yoon stared blankly at the ring below his waist.
“…So basically.”
In modern society, offering a ring was a confession.
In this world, offering this was a confession?
“…What a crazy world.”
He felt like touching the ring carelessly could cause irreversible problems.
In the end, Kang Do-yoon decided to leave the ring as it was and just relieve himself before leaving.
Trickle, trickle.
But something felt strange.
Even though he was wearing something, he felt no foreign sensation at all.
If anything, it felt like it wasn’t there.
‘Wow, artifact performance is really something.’
Impressed, he headed to the sink to wash his hands.
And the moment he casually looked into the mirror—
“Huh?”
A man he had never seen before was standing there.
Well-defined features.
Clear skin.
A face so handsome it could pass for a celebrity.
Kang Do-yoon stared blankly at the mirror for a moment.
What the—
‘Who’s this good-looking guy…?’
And a few seconds later—
“…It’s me.”
The man in the mirror muttered the same thing.
The corners of his mouth naturally lifted.
He was handsome.
Really handsome.
Kang Do-yoon leaned closer to the mirror.
But upon closer inspection, he felt a strange familiarity.
The shape of his eyes.
His lips.
His face shape.
Completely different, yet traces of his original self remained somewhere.
At a glance, his original face seemed to overlap with this one.
“Interesting.”
After examining his face for a long while, Kang Do-yoon nodded in satisfaction.
At this level, the possession seemed successful.
Leaving the bathroom, he finally noticed the wallet on the bedside table.
When he casually opened it, he found an ID card inside.
“Let’s see.”
Kang Do-yoon.
The name was the same.
But the birth year was different.
Born in 2006.
Currently twenty years old.
“Huh?”
He checked the resident registration number again.
And blinked.
Something was strange.
Except for the birth year, all the other numbers matched his own resident registration number from memory.
Kang Do-yoon alternated between looking at the ID and the mirror.
Rather than possession—
It felt like he had fallen into some twisted parallel world.
After staring at the ID for a long time, Kang Do-yoon suddenly remembered one important fact.
“Wait.”
He still hadn’t checked the most important thing in possession stories.
Kang Do-yoon cleared his throat and straightened his posture.
Then he carefully opened his mouth.
“Status window!”
A brief silence followed.
Then a translucent window appeared before his eyes.
“Huh?”
He checked the status window again.
And checked it once more.
No matter how many times he looked, nothing changed.
“That’s it?”
It really was the end.
One skill.
Just Heal.
And even that was level 1.
“No way.”
Kang Do-yoon tapped the status window with his finger in disbelief.
“Where’s the damage skill?”
None.
“Passives?”
None.
“Hidden class?”
Of course not.
“Is this for real…?”
A sigh escaped him.
Of all things, a Recovery Mage.
It was the class he had been least interested in even while playing the game.
The protagonist had been a monstrous dealer who launched sword energy, exploded flames, and wiped out dozens of monsters at once.
But he was just a healer treating wounds from the back.
The comparison was too stark.
Kang Do-yoon lifted his head with a gloomy expression.
And looked at his face in the mirror.
“……”
He was handsome.
Still handsome no matter how many times he looked.
Handsome enough to pass for a celebrity.
“Wait.”
Kang Do-yoon’s expression grew increasingly serious.
After thinking it over—
Did he really need to be a dealer?
With this face.
As a healer.
Plus, a female-dominated society.
A world where men were rare.
After a moment of silence, Kang Do-yoon nodded.
“Actually, isn’t being a Recovery Mage the best?”
Now that he thought about it, this seemed better than being the protagonist.
Less risk of dying.
Could still make money.
And he was handsome.
“It’s actually good, isn’t it?”
His face, which had looked like he was dying just moments ago, brightened instantly.
As expected, people should think positively.
Just then—
Vrrrr.
His phone vibrated.
“Hm?”
When Kang Do-yoon casually checked the screen, he blinked.
[AM 06:30 — Prepare for work]
“Huh?”
Work?
He checked the notification again.
It clearly said “work.”
Work.
The kind of work that office workers did.
“…Wait.”
For a moment, Kang Do-yoon’s eyes widened.
“I’m not unemployed?”
All thoughts of Hunters and gates flew out of his head.
Twenty-eight years old.
Job seeker.
Dozens of resume rejections.
Dozens of interview failures.
And yesterday, browsing game sites until he launched a game.
That had been Kang Do-yoon.
But now?
“I’m twenty and I have a job?”
Kang Do-yoon frantically searched through his phone.
After checking the information for several minutes, he collapsed onto the bed in a daze.
“Crazy.”
Unlike his twenty-eight-year-old unemployed self—
This body had already succeeded in getting a job.