Obtained the Hypnosis App (1)
The blood had already lost even its fishy stench. And that stench had fermented into something so putrid—mixed with proteins, rotting away like it could melt his lungs—that it finally hit him.
"Urk, uweeeek...!"
Ha Ohu stumbled out into the middle of the living room, clutching his nose and dry-heaving. Nothing but bile rose from the depths of his stomach. He hadn't eaten a proper meal in days of wandering the streets, so there was nothing left to vomit up anyway. He wiped the bitter saliva from his mouth with his sleeve and glared at the source of the nose-piercing reek: the master bedroom.
Even the word tragic felt insultingly light before this scene. Beyond the open door of the master bedroom, a king-sized bed lay sprawled with what looked like a humanoid slime.
The corpse of the generation's top hypnosis creep, Ha Deok-gu.
Still, he had to go in. Even though the man's face was smashed to pulp, skull fragments and brain matter soaking the bedsheets in dark crimson. He had to go in. Even as the gruesome stench of death crept up through the humid summer air. He had to go in. Even though he wanted to back away. Even though he wanted to fling open the front door, bolt out, and call the cops right now.
He had to shelve his normal modern-person instincts for a moment. Because he needed to pry that thing from the hand of his slime-turned-father's corpse.
"Haa... haa... Shit, this is fucking insane."
Ha Ohu held his breath and stepped into the master bedroom. His feet squelched disgustingly on the blood-soaked floor. The closer he got to the corpse, the more the stench assaulted him like a physical blow, stabbing at his nasal membranes. Frowning hard, he approached Deok-gu's body.
Even in that split-second instant of instant death as his head exploded, Deok-gu's right hand had clutched the smartphone with desperate tenacity.
'It's a piece of shit... but I need it... It's all I've got...'
This eroge world. A world whose title was Hero Hypnosis Corruption Diary from the start. That meant there were heroes. And villains. For a total trash heap like him—body, mind, and soul united in garbage—to survive in a world without parents, he absolutely needed that device.
Even if it was the device loaded with the Hypnosis App that had caused this whole tragedy.
Ha Ohu reached out with trembling hands to pry the smartphone from Deok-gu's grip.
"Huh...? Ungh, shit, why won't it come loose."
But the dead man's grasp was far stronger than expected. Rigor mortis had set in. Deok-gu's stubby fingers were bent and locked around the phone like they'd fused into one.
The obsession of a gambling addict trying to check a last-minute sports toto reversal even as he died lingered intact in the corpse.
Ha Ohu gritted his teeth.
'Died like the maggot he lived... No wonder my body's such a wreck with genes like his...'
He wasn't about to let a mere corpse intimidate him.
"Hand it over, you fucking bastard."
Crack. Creak.
Ha Ohu started forcibly snapping Deok-gu's rigid fingers one by one with both hands. He'd never heard the sound of a dead man's joints twisting before. It was far more horrific than he'd imagined, echoing through the room.
Only after the fingers bent at grotesque angles, dangling limply, could he finally wrench the cursed smartphone into his own hand.
He hurriedly pressed the power button. But the screen stayed cold and black.
"...Ah."
Ha Ohu swallowed a dumbfounded breath. The battery was completely dead.
He glanced back and forth at Deok-gu's pulverized head, clicking his tongue in disbelief. Right up to the moment his wife awakened and smashed his skull, this piece-of-shit human had been running illegal sports streaming broadcasts that drained data and battery alike.
Even after he died pathetically, the phone must have kept playing the baseball broadcast until the battery finally gave out.
"Right up to the... fucking end, right up to his last breath, he was a beyond-imaginable trash bastard."
Ha Ohu rubbed the phone clean on his pants. Then he looked around. Luckily, a charging cable lay tossed on the nightstand. He plugged the phone in immediately. A red lightning bolt icon slowly appeared in the center of the screen, indicating it was charging.
While waiting for the phone to turn on, Ha Ohu could no longer tolerate the foul discomfort coating his body. Days of sleeping rough on the streets like a bum, caked in sweat and grime. The faint bloodstains from snapping the corpse's fingers. Above all, the repulsive rot filling the space seemed to seep into every pore of his skin.
He felt like he'd go mad if he didn't scald this filth off with hot water right now.
But he couldn't use the master bathroom. His mother—Shooting Star—had melted into black sludge, spewing a horrific stench.
Leaving the charging phone behind, Ha Ohu staggered toward the shared bathroom in the living room, away from the corpses.
The living room bathroom's white fluorescent light flickered on. Ha Ohu irritably stripped off his worn, filthy clothes, flinging them away. His sweat-soaked, reeking T-shirt and pants hit the floor.
Stark naked, he stood before the large mirror above the sink. And for the first time since possessing this body, he faced his nude form fully under bright light.
"...I look fucking awful."
The curse slipped out automatically. The man in the mirror was impossible to believe was a 20-year-old repeater student—a wretched sight. Matted, greasy hair clumped thickly on his forehead from days unwashed. Deep, dark circles sinking to his cheeks. Sallow skin pocked with acne craters. Worst of all, the double chin sagging hideously below his neck and the pregnant-belly gut protruding and jiggling in slabs of fat evoked pure disgust.
Shhhhaaaaa—
Even as he cranked the shower to scalding hot water over his head, watching the grime drip away, Ha Ohu felt visceral revulsion toward this bloated, maggoty flesh.
It didn't feel like washing a body—it felt like disinfecting a lump of filth.
But as he blankly looked down, scrubbing his belly, his gaze froze on one spot. Nestled below the bulging gut.
"...Huh?"
His dick was there. A massive dick.
Ha Ohu's eyes went wide. Even accounting for this eroge world's peculiarities, the size was abnormal.
'Ah... Mom was an enhancement hero...'
His mother—Shooting Star Han Sara—had been an exceptional physical enhancement hero in her prime. Tragically, none of her superior superhuman genes had manifested in Ha Ohu's looks, strength, or intellect—not even 1%.
'No... Come to think of it, after days without food, this body's still fine...'
Despite the obese weight, his legs only had slight muscle fatigue bearing the load. Some of Shooting Star's genes had seeped into his physical capabilities.
'That's why the dick's huge too... Got it, that's the setting...'
Very plausible. Fuck. The corner of Ha Ohu's mouth twitched upward involuntarily as he'd despaired over his ugly form. In this pathetic, repulsive reality, it was the sole consolation he'd found. The absurd satisfaction of his enormous cock filled his crushed self-esteem, if only by a tiny fraction.
Ha Ohu let out a hollow chuckle, squeezing a heap of body wash onto a towel and scrubbing the loathsome flesh raw.
He scoured until his skin burned red.
"Hah... I'm turning into the same trash... Thinking shit like this..."
He'd just seen his father's head-smashed corpse in the master bedroom. And confirmed his mother's horrific end, melted into black sludge in the master bath. In the middle of a home where his parents had died gruesomely, their orphaned son laughed vacantly at his own huge dick in the mirror.
This world hadn't fully sunk in as reality for Ha Ohu yet. Just days ago, he'd been an ordinary modern guy playing an eroge for 1 hour and 59 minutes in his room before hitting refund.
The deaths before his eyes felt like brutal 3D VR game prologue cutscenes. The bone-deep reality of the heavy water temperature. The towel's texture on his skin. The immediate disgust from his possessed body's ugliness—all seemed like staging.
* * *
Having somewhat washed away the foul smell and fatigue with hot water, Ha Ohu emerged from the bathroom. He changed into a fresh tracksuit from what he assumed was his room. He roughly toweled his wet hair dry, then headed back to the blood-reeking master bedroom.
Deok-gu's smartphone, plugged into the charger, was now powered on.
Ha Ohu sat on the relatively clean floor untainted by blood and carefully picked up Deok-gu's phone. Swiping up unlocked the screen lock icon at the top.
The main home screen appeared immediately. No password or pattern lock to worry about.
"Ah, shit... Face recognition."
He faced something far worse. This horrific, ugly mug that had fucked his dad to death had bypassed the dead Ha Deok-gu's face unlock like a free pass.
'Wish it hadn't unlocked... Guess even a corpse face won't work smashed like that...'
And there, among the sea of standard apps, stood out an icon with a vortex pattern emitting a heterogeneous purple aura. No name label. That app was the core of Hero Hypnosis Corruption Diary. The Hypnosis App with absolute power.
Spotting the app icon, Ha Ohu's mind cooled coldly.
'For now, I'm trash.'
He coldly objectified his situation. Right now, he was the victim in a domestic violence case: father exploited mother until death; mother killed father then drowned in the tub. He was an orphan now. No money. No immediate debts, but Deok-gu the gambling addict meant Shooting Star had scrimped on living expenses just to send him to cram school for his repeat year.
Intelligence... 'Can't call it exceptional. Whatever happened to make him repeat, it's probably average...'
Looks: the kind of creepy pervert uncle face that high school girls would report to the cops if they locked eyes on the street.
The only saving grace was his body. Thanks to Shooting Star's enhancement hero genes, it was sturdy and healthy. Plus the massive dick he'd confirmed in the bathroom.
But that was it. Sure, innate physical durability was great, but with near-morbid obesity and no fighting skills or training whatsoever, he'd gasp and get pummeled by street punks in a real fight.
Body, mind, soul. In the end, Ha Ohu was a perfect maggot—nothing remotely useful in a real scrap in any of the trinity.
The one and only absolute asset for the possessor to survive was right before his eyes: the Hypnosis App.
"...No other choice."
Ha Ohu rummaged a drawer for a paperclip. He jabbed it into the SIM tray on Deok-gu's phone, popped it open, and yanked out Deok-gu's SIM. Then he pulled his own SIM from his drained phone after days on the streets and swapped it in.
Rebooting brought up the carrier logo, and the network connected normally. The Hypnosis App remained crisp on the screen without error.
Luckily, the Hypnosis App was built into the device itself.
Confirming all that, Ha Ohu picked up his old phone rolling on the floor. Clang! Crack! Without hesitation, he smashed it on the floor and stomped it to pieces with his heel. He crushed it until the reinforced glass shattered and the internals crumpled.
"Hoo..."
Any needed data had moved with the SIM via cloud. In an unavoidable police investigation, if Deok-gu's phone vanished, he'd draw suspicion as unrelated to the murder scene. This way, things would be easier later.
He'd secured a powerful weapon. But the most horrific, immediate, realistic problem loomed: how to dispose of the two corpses abandoned in the master bedroom and bathroom. The dilemma choked him.