I Won the Lottery...?

"Aaaaah!!! Help me!!! Please, someone help me!!!!!!!"

On the far side of the street, a young woman was under attack by a zombie.

Don't pull aggro. You pull aggro in a situation like this, you're fucked!!!!

The usual Kim Taeshik would have turned toward that woman on reflex. At the very least, he would have stolen a glance. But the apocalypse was here, and a zombie was charging straight at him. He didn't spare the screaming woman so much as a look. Every ounce of his attention locked onto the thing lunging ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for his throat.

He took a short backstep, shoes scraping over the pavement, opening just enough space to bring the steel pipe down on the zombie's skull. The distance was there in a heartbeat.

"Die, you son of a bitch!!!"

He smashed the pipe down vertically onto the zombie's head without a shred of mercy. A thick, ugly crack exploded through the air, and the zombie's center of gravity lurched hard toward the ground. Kim Taeshik was already moving — a half-pivot to the creature's flank, space carved out in an instant. The zombie's body pitched forward, and the back of its head hung there completely unguarded. He put his full weight behind the pipe and brought it down on that exposed skull.

The impact was enormous. The zombie, hammered in the back of the head, collapsed in a wet heap on the pavement.

But Kim Taeshik had already been through this. Mere moments ago, a zombie he hadn't finished off had come right back at him. He was not walking into that twice. He wrapped both hands around the steel pipe, lined it up on the fallen zombie's skull, and chopped down like he was swinging an axe.

The head burst apart. A perfect confirmation kill.

"Damn... my stamina's draining like crazy... swinging this thing while I'm wound this tight, it's just..."

Having put down two zombies, Kim Taeshik swept his eyes left, right, then left again, checking for anything else closing in.

"This isn't some game where I get to run around happily farming zombies. I need to get back to the base camp I built on the outskirts before the ones pouring out onto the main streets spread any further."

Kim Taeshik had always trained hard. After hearing the prophecy that a zombie apocalypse was coming, he had trained even harder. But beating zombies to death in a life-or-death scramble chewed through stamina and left a kind of fatigue no gym session had ever touched. That only made the objective sharper. Get to the base camp.

He put his head down and sprinted for it with everything he had, footsteps hammering the pavement.

"I'm fucked..."

I was already fucked, honestly.

Shit, I died jerking off.... nngh... this is so goddamn embarrassing...

This was about five months ago. I'd been in the middle of a thoroughly heated happy time in the rooftop room I lived in. I'd like to say it was a truly hot, secret night. I'd found a porn video I liked so much that my lust simply detonated, and a man with the virile body of a twenty-four-year-old who held that kind of desire back couldn't call himself a man at all.

I was going at it hard enough to lose my mind... I just didn't think I'd actually lose my soul...

I jerked off like a man possessed. Twice, three times, on and on without end. In that moment I was clearly going at it alone. But I was so far gone I milked myself as if I were actually having sex with the woman on the screen, burning with the kind of passion you'd bring to a real lover. I guess I burned a little too hot. I toppled over backward mid-stroke, smashed my head on the floor, and died. Thanks to that little catastrophe, twenty-four-year-old Korean male Kim Taeshik departed this world while masturbating.

Oh... the Goddess is insanely pretty...!!!

After dying so gloriously, I arrived in the Underworld, and there I met the Goddess. She stood before me as massive as an apartment building. I felt like the Monkey King trapped in the Buddha's palm. She was truly beautiful. Her form shone with a radiant light that looked downright sacred, and the humiliation of dying with my dick in my hand felt, for a moment, completely healed.

I'm fucked. I was fucked all over again. I'd been staring at her face in a complete daze when I was suddenly forced to my knees. Dying while jerking off was already a sour enough mood — now I was being made to kneel like a criminal. Looking down at me in that wretched state, the Goddess began reciting my supposed charges with a slightly angry, haughty expression. Then she lost her grip on her temper entirely and started stomping around, calling me a psychopath and God knows what else.

She's so goddamn pretty I don't want to talk back... but no matter how I look at this, the Goddess is talking complete nonsense, isn't she?

Something in her speech wasn't adding up. The incidents she was listing had absolutely nothing to do with me, no matter how I turned them over. It's a bit much to say this myself, but human Kim Taeshik was the kind of man who could live just fine without laws — a man who loved a good meal more than a good statute. If God told a sage to pick fifteen righteous people off this fallen earth, I would be one of them, no question. That's the kind of person I am. I was the kind of guy who paid for his porn. Those AV girls have to make a living too, don't they? The video I was watching when I died was something I'd paid for. Of course, porn is illegal in Korea. But that much should be well within the bounds of reasonable discretion. With that kind of confidence, I cut the Goddess off on the spot and lodged a complaint.

"What did you just say? It was a mistake?"

The truth came out. The whole situation had been a mix-up. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Goddess's people had mistaken me — Kim Taeshik, a righteous man — for another Kim Taeshik who happened to share my name. Judging by the episodes she'd been reciting, that other Kim Taeshik was a psychopath. Dying a pathetic death with my hand on my dick was bad enough. Getting tangled up with a psychopath on top of that was truly lamentable. The original point, anyway, was that the righteous Kim Taeshik had never been fated to die while jerking off. He was supposed to pass out and then wake back up. But the Goddess had confused me with another Kim Taeshik who shared not only my name but my age and my gender, and turned a fainting into a funeral.

"Wow.... how do you mix up not just the name, the age, and the gender... but fainting at the exact same time? And hard enough for the soul to slip out?"

Still. She was a Goddess. A Goddess shouldn't be doing this. I sternly rebuked her for making a mistake of this magnitude just because the name, age, and gender lined up, and that was how I got the more detailed version of events. The coincidence was so staggering I had to slap my balls in disbelief. The psychopath — the wicked Kim Taeshik who shared my name — had, of all things, fainted at the exact same moment I had. On top of that, both ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of us had gone under hard enough for our souls to slip out a little. To be precise, mine was a normal faint. His was a near-death faint. In a case like mine, they said, the soul wasn't supposed to leave the body at all. But my overly passionate happy time had overlapped with the shock of the fall. An explosive orgasm stacked on top of a blow to the head, and that was what made my soul pack up and run away from home. That's the Goddess's analysis, at least. I agree. It really was that kind of night.

"If it was a coincidence like that, well, what can you do."

Mistakes happen. I, Kim Taeshik, am not that uptight of a person. Especially not when the Goddess is a beauty of that caliber — I'm a man who can afford to be generous. Now that we both knew it was a mix-up, she just needed to acknowledge it and send me back. So I asked her if she could bring me back to life.

"You already... cremated me...?"

She'd already cremated me. I hadn't realized that much time had passed since I arrived in the Underworld. According to the Goddess, the so-called psychological sense of time differs quite a bit between the Underworld and the world of the living. Anyway, fuck. Thanks to the Goddess's mix-up I'd died while jerking off, and my body had already been reduced to ash, so there was no going back.

Fortunately, the Goddess didn't go into "so sue me" mode. She hadn't seemed like that kind of person to begin with. She'd been genuinely sorry. She came up with a plan of her own, and that plan was reincarnation into another world. After that, we started scouting various worlds as potential destinations.

"Wow... so the people who wrote those novels really had gone to another world and were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠writing about their own experiences???"

Among the places nominated as my reincarnation destination, there was even another world with a Demon King. The one I saw through the Goddess's hologram looked a lot like the image I'd pieced together from novels and manga.

"A gender-reversed world has its own kind of appeal, but..."

There was a gender-reversed world on the list as well. In the end, I declined both the other world and the gender-reversed one. Enjoying something through novels or webtoons and actually living there seemed like they would be completely different things. Kim Taeshik, that deranged jerk-off addict, was ultimately a man domesticated by modern civilization. I figured I'd have a miserable time adapting to a medieval-style other world. And as for the gender-reversed one... I wasn't sure I could handle the possibility of reverse rape. I'm a bit of a pure-love guy at heart, quietly. And so I turned down world after world of every flavor.

Then, finally, I was offered two worlds similar to the Earth I'd lived on. Both of them had the feel of parallel versions of Earth. Both of them also came with their own risks. One of them wasn't a risk at the level of a threat to my life. That's right. It wasn't a life-threatening risk. It wasn't a risk that would threaten my life, per se — but depending on how you looked at it, it could feel like that much of a threat. Maybe even worse. That risk was a gender transformation. Reincarnating into that world meant I'd have to give up my dick. I was a man who'd arrived in the Underworld while jerking off. That's how much I loved the happy times my other half used to bring me. I simply could not accept a gender swap.

After all those twists and turns, the world I ultimately chose is the one I'm in now. A world sitting on the verge of a zombie apocalypse.

The righteous Kim Taeshik, on the verge of being dropped into a world facing a zombie apocalypse with no foundation whatsoever. Given that I was in that position, the Goddess said she would give me a few perks — enough of a head start to actually prepare for what was coming. She implanted two pieces of information into the mind of my reincarnated self. The winning numbers for first prize in the lottery, and information related to cryptocurrency.