The Ratio That Rewrote Society
The imbalance between doctors and eunuchs. At first glance, it might not sound like much. Some might even tilt their heads in confusion if you called it a disaster. After all, it wasn’t a virus spreading, food supplies cut off, or a catastrophic weather event swallowing an entire city. It was simply one gender being slightly fewer than the other. Anyone unaware could easily dismiss it—until they learned the full story.
“The global gender ratio collapse is said to have begun in earnest after the appearance of dungeons,” my elementary school social studies teacher explained. She projected a world map onto the board and pointed to regions marked in red: dungeon outbreak sites, monster invasion zones, and the initial defensive lines that had collapsed. Beneath them came the statistics—sharp drops in male survival rates, declining male birth rates, skyrocketing male Awakener mortality, and worsening imbalances in the marriageable population.
As a child, I hadn’t understood what any of it meant. I’d only thought the numbers looked strange. One man to every hundred women. A ratio that defied common sense. Yet the people of this world accepted those numbers as normal. Every year the news announced new policies to preserve the male population, and textbooks treated male protection laws like required reading. Schools even scheduled separate safety education for male students.
At first, I found it funny. Men being rare. Men needing protection. To someone who remembered the Korea of my previous life, the very idea felt like a twisted joke. But as the years passed, I came to understand that the gender imbalance was far more than just “dating being difficult.” When the number of people who could never form a pair exploded, it meant the population capable of building families was shrinking. Birth rates scraped the floor despite policy support, and the institution of marriage turned into something resembling a marketplace. Questions like who could marry, who could have children, and who deserved to be assigned a man’s genes were no longer personal matters—they became entries on a national administrative chart.
Viruses kill people. Food shortages starve cities. Natural disasters sweep away land. But a gender ratio collapse reshapes the very structure of society. It turns love into policy, marriage into rationing, and human bodies into state resources. And in that world, being born male meant you were protected simply for breathing—while simultaneously needing permission for how you breathed.
I learned this lesson repeatedly through elementary, middle, and high school. Through textbooks, news broadcasts, the way people looked at me, and the countless rules that clung to my body. A male-to-female ratio of 1:100 was not just a statistic. If the Black Death of the Middle Ages had swept away populations, the gender collapse of this world had twisted human relationships and social systems wholesale. And in such a world, a man’s life was far more miserable than I had ever imagined.
“Excuse me? You’re saying I can’t advance because of insufficient credits?”
I doubted my own ears.
“Professor, this isn’t some American university. Since when does that happen here?”
“Jihoo, the thing is…”
The academic advisor sitting across from me adjusted his glasses and avoided my gaze. This was Korea’s top medical school—the same institution that had existed in my previous life, now merely flipped in gender ratio. I had entered it for the second time. And I hadn’t exactly been slacking.
“I know my own grades. My GPA is 4.42.”
“That’s true, but…”
“I got full marks in anatomy lab, and I ranked at the top in physiology and pathology. The paper I submitted recently was even praised by the professor as unusually advanced for a first-year.”
“That’s also correct, but…”
“Then what do you mean by insufficient credits?”
The advisor couldn’t answer. His expression alone told me everything—this wasn’t about grades.
“It’s not because of my scores, is it?”
“……”
“Then what is it?”
He cleared his throat as if swallowing a sigh.
“Jihoo, a university doesn’t run on grades alone. Medical school especially. We have to consider curriculum, practical training environments, patient safety, student protection… many factors.”
“Ha.”
The words left me speechless. Student protection. It sounded reasonable enough. But in this world, the word “protection” attached to men usually carried the same meaning: don’t move without permission, don’t go to dangerous places, don’t stray from the role society assigned you. It all amounted to the same thing.
“Are you saying I’m dangerous, or that the patients are?”
“Both, I suppose.”
The advisor finally spoke in a low voice, as if he had given up.
“You already know there are almost no male medical professionals. Especially clinical doctors who interact directly with patients. There have been a few attempts in the past, but… most didn’t end well.”
“For example?”
“In the United States, a patient complaining of chest pain locked a male resident inside an examination room. In Germany, a patient who hadn’t fully woken from anesthesia attacked a male surgeon, and the entire operating room had to be shut down…”
His voice grew quieter.
“There are also cases of stalking, illegal filming, forced contact, threats under the pretext of refusing treatment, attempts to lure someone out of protected zones… The list goes on.”
“So what?”
I almost laughed at the absurdity.
“Because those things happened, I’m not allowed to become a doctor?”
“It’s not that you can’t…”
“Then why are you blocking me from advancing to second year?”
I had no intention of living like I had in my previous life. One hellish stint in a major trauma center was enough. This time, I had planned to be clever—aiming for something like plastic surgery or dermatology. Good money, a decent life, nights where I could actually sleep like a human being. My own little paradise. And now that path was being cut off before I could even reach second year.
“Did the government send an official notice?”
The advisor’s hand froze. That was answer enough.
“The Reproductive Resource Management Agency, right?”
“W-well…”
“Of course it is.”
A laugh I had been holding back finally slipped out. The national Reproductive Resource Management Agency—abbreviated as Saengjacheong. In this world where the gender ratio had collapsed, it was the government body responsible for managing men’s health, reproductive cells, and genetic information. On paper, it sounded respectable: protecting male rights, preserving humanity, managing reproductive resources, securing future generations. All the nice phrases were attached. But in the end, it did one thing: collecting, storing, and distributing the reproductive cells of adult men. More bluntly, sperm harvesting.
“Professor, you’re telling me to go to Saengjacheong, aren’t you?”
“…Do you really have to see it so negatively? It’s a legitimate national institution, and one of the safest career paths for men.”
“The one where I just jerk off once a week and get to live comfortably for the rest of my life?”
“……”
It wasn’t a story I didn’t know. I had received counseling from Saengjacheong back in high school. At first, I had honestly been tempted. For someone who had died from overwork as a doctor in my previous life, the idea of lifelong support, housing, and medical benefits in exchange for visiting an institution once a week had sounded rather sweet. But looking closer revealed the truth. The first year was once a week. If health indicators remained stable, the frequency increased from the second year onward. The facility provided hormone regulation, recovery IVs, prostate stimulation aids, and devices with names like “sexual response induction equipment.” On the surface, it was male health management. In reality, it was a support system designed to extract more, for longer. To someone ignorant of medicine, it might have looked like welfare. But not to me. It wasn’t a system that protected the body—it was one that managed it just enough to keep it from breaking while squeezing out as much as possible. And once a certain age passed and everything had been wrung out, resulting in “sexual dysfunction”? You were reclassified as an honorary donor and granted a lifelong pension. In truth, it was closer to storing used parts rather than discarding them.
“I have no intention of going that route.”
“Jihoo, wasn’t the life you wanted a comfortable one?”
“It was.”
“Then there’s no need to become a doctor. You’re a man. You can live a perfectly good life without stepping into dangerous hospital settings.”
“The comfortable life I want doesn’t include an ending as a eunuch.”
I did want to live comfortably. That much was true. I had no desire to grind away my own life trying to save others the way I had in my previous life. But if that comfort meant entrusting my body to a government agency, being harvested a set number of times, and ending up as a retired resource with a pension once my function declined—then the story changed. That wasn’t the life I wanted. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have children. In this life, I wanted to experience the ordinary family I had never even dreamed of before. One daughter, one son. Wasn’t that something I was allowed to hope for?
“So the university’s decision is final?”
“For now… yes.”
“And the insufficient credits excuse?”
“That will be the official reason.”
“What if I file an appeal?”
“You can go through the procedure, but changing the outcome will be difficult. It’s a decision backed by a recommendation from a higher authority.”
A higher authority recommendation. Such a convenient phrase. It blurred who was responsible while making the consequences of disobedience crystal clear. I stayed silent for a while.
Then, in the corner of my vision, a familiar window appeared.
Unique Job ‘Hunter Specialist Surgeon’ awakening conditions have been met.
Would you like to change jobs?
[YES / NO]
“……”
There it was again. It had started appearing after I entered medical school—specifically, after I had identified anatomical structures far too quickly during my first dissection lab. That damned status window kept showing up whenever it pleased. Hunter Specialist Surgeon. Even the name sounded exhausting. I was already sick of major trauma centers, and now it wanted me to become a doctor who specialized in hunters who had lost limbs in dungeons? Was this life telling a man who had died from overwork in his previous life to become a full-time physician for monster victims?
“Haa…”
Honestly, it felt like this life was also going seriously off the rails.