Homecoming to the Corpse-Reeking Apartment
It's been a few days since my mind, body, and soul—all three forming a trash trinity—possessed this unfamiliar body for some inexplicable reason. Reeling from the intense confusion of jumbled memories, I'd wandered the streets like a madman until dawn. Who the hell was I? Even my original name had grown blurry by then.
Around that time, the only clue was a single text message lighting up the screen of the phone buzzing incessantly in my pocket.
Fuck, my name's Ohu? Who the hell names a person that?
Through that message, I barely pieced together that I was a repeater student named Ohu. But the real problem was the home address. With fragmented memories refusing to surface no matter how hard I racked my brain, I spent the entire night scouring the phone's map app and messenger logs for any trace. Cruelly enough, the battery died black soon after, leaving me with nothing.
The sole remaining clue was a small doorlock magnet key rattling in my pants pocket. In the end, half out of my mind, I roamed every residential neighborhood and apartment complex like a zombie, day and night for several days. Pressing that magnet key stupidly against front doors left and right in a deranged ritual.
Until finally.
"Fuck! Finally! Finally home!"
The miracle of the door beeping and unlocking.
"Urk...! F-fuck! What the hell is this smell?!"
The moment I stepped into the entrance, a vile stench stabbed my nose. It was like a butcher shop left rotting at room temperature for a month, mixed with the reek of sewer sludge. My fatigue evaporated in an instant. Pinching my nose shut, I cautiously advanced toward the master bedroom, the epicenter of the odor.
And there, beyond the open master bedroom door, I beheld the horror.
"Ah...!"
On the bed lay a naked man face-down, his head literally pulverized into oblivion, the decayed corpse staring back at me. The bedsheets were crusted solid with dark red blood and oozing pus.
"Wh-what the fuck...!"
My legs buckled, nearly sending me crashing to the floor. My heart hammered like a jackrabbit.
And at the same time.
Wait... this scene. I've definitely seen it somewhere before...
An unpleasant déjà vu hit me, like something glimpsed once in passing. Déjà vu, precisely. But the smell? That was a first.
Staggering, I turned my head toward the bathroom next to the master bedroom, where an even fouler stench wafted from.
Inside the open bathroom door, the bathtub brimmed with some unrecognizable, grotesquely bloated mass and disgusting black sludge.
Again, that visual déjà vu courtesy of some media. But the nose-assaulting stench of death? Brand new.
"No way... is that...?"
Dragging my trembling legs, I stared into the mirror above the bathroom sink. Reflected there was the same unfamiliar, repulsive man's face I'd checked hundreds of times while wandering the streets these past few days. Matted, greasy hair. Protruding gut. Shifty, sinister eyes. Clearly twenty years old, yet anyone would peg him as a creepy late-forties pervert.
"Ah, fuck... possessed into this piece of shit..."
I muttered hollowly at my gross reflection in the mirror.
"Ha... no wonder they called me 'Hypnosis Old Man' on the street despite being twenty. Born looking like this garbage."
The days of aimless wandering. This repulsive body. The gruesome corpses now seared into my eyes.
All the scattered fragments of clues finally snapped into a single picture.
I realized it. The place I now stood was the world of the eroge I'd snagged on half-price sale, Hero Hypnosis Corruption Diary.
And this horrific scene was the tragic conclusion to the first episode, "Retired Hero: Shooting Star"—and the game's very intro.
"No fuck, it was so goddamn hardcore I only played one hour fifty-nine and refunded..."
And it possessed me. Because of that 5,700-character scathing review? The instant I hit submit, boom—transmigrated.
And worst of all. The character I'd transmigrated into, this Ha Ohu, was about to inherit the Hypnosis App relic from the meat lump of a father sprawled in the master bedroom.
Transforming into the ugly protagonist of this world—the Hypnosis Old Man, corrupter of countless heroes.
"We're fucked, shit..."
A wave of utter doom crashed over me. Possessed into a bastard whose mind, body, and soul were all trash.