Bwegone!
Bwegone!
"Heh heh, heheheh…."
It was 3 a.m. — an hour when any respectable, upstanding Voluptuous Maiden should have long since drifted off to dreamland.
Instead, I was surrendering my brain entirely to the dopamine gushing out of the Gallery.
Gall rat, why did you even click on a post like this.
Dad's reached his limit. Just move out and live on your own.
Stop blaming your genes, society, the environment.
Dad and Mom have waited long enough.
…
…
…
Just… move out already.
This dad is exhausted too.
"Pffthahahahah… so it wasn't even a troll pic."
Being the middle of the night, new posts and replies had thinned out to a trickle, but even so, I sat there grinning to myself, repeating my sacred infinite-refresh jutsu over and over.
I love the Gallery. The reason is simple: nothing else in this world dispenses dopamine in quite the same quantity.
"Dopamine…! More dopamine…!"
A place where every kind of person gathers under the shield of anonymity and says whatever they damn well please. Where else could you find a fountain of dopamine like that? Certainly not anywhere I could think of.
Someone might ask why I'm so obsessed with the stuff. And if you asked that question, it's only common sense that I'd answer.
Part of it is that I was a dopamine-addled human being from the very start, but the biggest reason I ended up like this lies elsewhere: I once experienced, firsthand, a fantasy otherworld life so boring it nearly drove me insane.
The entertainment of a medieval fantasy world where survival comes first and the entertainment of a modern world where everyone can afford to eat are, it turns out, separated by a considerable gulf.
Fun games? None. Mind-blowing food stuffed to the brim with chemical additives? Also none.
The finest entertainment that wretched world had to offer was, at best, a banquet hosted by the Voluptuous Maiden Emperor. A truly horrifying state of affairs.
Watching the Voluptuous Emperor was its own kind of fun, I'll admit, but it couldn't hold a candle to modern dopamine.
"You have no idea how much I suffered, scraping together whatever dopamine I could find in a place like that…."
Sneaking in backhanded jabs at the Voluptuous Emperor, for example. Or heaping praise on the Voluptuous Emperor to Her face, for another.
It's true my neck nearly left my shoulders once or twice along the way, but anyway.
The conclusion is this: the reason I've gone insane for dopamine is entirely thanks to my otherworld life.
And so I gall-posted for another two hours or so before gently drifting off to sleep. Another deeply fulfilling day.
The next day, I opened my eyes and checked the clock. 3:20 p.m. After a brief round of mental arithmetic, I realized I had once again logged over ten hours of sleep. Deeply fulfilling.
Riding that joyful sentiment, I hauled myself out of bed.
"Voluptuous Maiden, WAKE!!"
Shouting my get-up call — a ritual I've performed without fail ever since becoming a Voluptuous Maiden.
My morning routine was simple: grab my phone and log into the Hunter Gallery. Straight into a close reading of the hot posts, to catch up on how the Gallery had been running while this little maiden was away.
★) [Breaking] S-Rank Gate Appears in the UK
★) [Fact] The Most Screwed-Over Person Alive Right Now.jpg
★) (Former) Gallery Master Spotted at a Daejeon Bakery, Whoa
"Yep. Peaceful today too."
From the looks of it, nothing major was going down. An S-Rank gate opening in the UK? Not my problem.
"They're merely reaping the karma of dragging modern world history through the mud…."
I'd been hoping for something fun — a troll rampaging through the night, a juicy new drama brewing — but apparently last night's Hunter Gallery had passed by uneventfully.
And with that light review delivered, I promptly announced my triumphant return to the Gallery.
Looks like I woke up a little early today?
"Ehehehe~"
The comments came pouring in the moment I hit post. Today, too, the Hunter Gallery was packed to bursting with compulsive liars.
Of course, I was not one of them.
"Because I am the world's most adorable Voluptuous Maiden…."
Gazing out over a Gallery where everyone but me was a pathological liar, I reached out to refresh it once more….
Vrrrrrrr—
…The very moment I was about to, an uninvited guest arrived.
Caller: Yoo Yeona
"…Bwegone."
It was, of all things, a phone call. The caller was none other than my friend from the orphanage — currently my one and only friend, and an active S-Rank hunter — Yoo Yeona.
For the record, she also happened to be serving as the Gallery's second and third Gallery Master, and its current one at that.
"Nnn… I don't wanna pick up…."
And at the same time, she was one of the people whose temperament clashed worst with mine.
For a fleeting second I considered just ignoring the call. But if I did, I knew exactly what would follow: thirty-four missed calls and three hundred-plus unread KakaoTalk messages piling up before I knew it. There was no way around it.
"Uuu…."
In the end, I answered with a trembling hand.
"H-hellooo…."
"…Did you just wake up?"
The instant I heard Yeona's voice, I sensed that I was about to be maiden-cursed.
"N-no? I've been up for ages."
"Really? What time did you go to bed last night? You didn't game until dawn again, did you?"
"I didn't…! I didn't play any games yesterday…."
The moment she found out today's actual wake-up time, I'd get another massive scolding. Realizing this, my super-Voluptuous-Maiden brain began churning at full power.
"…Really? Then what did you have for lunch?"
"Uhh? Nothing…?"
I desperately wrung my brain for a way out of Yeona's encirclement, but…
"…Why?"
"…Bwegone."
That attempt was suppressed before it even made it three words.
"You gamed until dawn again and slept in late, didn't you?"
"N-no, I didn't?"
"Then you stayed up messing around on your phone. What time did you sleep?"
"I-I didn't sleep that late…!"
"Then what time?"
Need I really explain what came after?
"Th… three?"
"Right. So you fell asleep at five."
With Yeona's insight seeing straight through every one of my lies, I finally declared surrender.
"…Can't you let it slide 'cause I'm cute?"
For the record, "surrender" here meant deploying the Voluptuous Maiden's last resort.
The final secret technique of the world's cutest, most lovable Voluptuous Maiden. Ultimate move: Appealing to Cuteness…!
"No."
"Hng."
And there was Yeona, heartlessly refusing the plea of the world's cutest Voluptuous Maiden. Her attitude was so brutally firm that I had nothing left to say.
"Hm? How many times do I have to say it? If you keep living like that, it's going to wreck your health eventually—"
What followed, naturally, was an endless lecture marathon. And to be fair, she had plenty of grounds.
"Did you shower? You haven't washed in days again, have you?"
"Uuu…."
I mean, there's no way the invincible Voluptuous Maiden's body could ever get dirty, could it? It sounds like an excuse, but amazingly, it's the truth.
A hero's body brims with every blessing and holy power imaginable, keeping it perpetually clean, healthy, and in peak condition.
But sadly, in Yeona's head, I was not the Voluptuous Heroine who saved the world — just an ordinary Voluptuous Maiden. And so I ate the full carpet-bombing of her nagging, head-on.
"Please, just eat your meals properly from now on and take better care of yourself, okay?"
Against this endless barrage of scolding, I responded in the most Voluptuous-Maiden fashion imaginable.
"Uuu… Yeona's saying mean things… I'm gonna cwy…."
"……."
Unfortunately, Yeona is precisely the kind of person my Voluptuous-Maiden tactics don't work on.
"Got it. So I just come over tonight?"
"Wh-what the—"
My Voluptuous-Maiden counterattack had led to the worst possible outcome.
"W-wait just a second. Yeona, honey…?"
"You got it? I'm heading into a meeting now, so bye?"
"W-waaaait!!"
Beep— beep—
Having unilaterally announced she was coming over, Yeona hung up on the spot.
"H-how could anyone commit an act of such cruelty…!"
I despaired at this unjust, unspeakably savage situation — but my super-Voluptuous-Maiden mindset overcame the hardship in record time.
"Right. Whatever, it's just a bit of cleaning…!"
One of the strengths of Voluptuous-Maiden thinking: lightning-fast adaptation. Having adapted to the situation in the blink of an eye, I set about cleaning my room at once.
Not that this was anything more than the regularly scheduled cleaning time, mind you….
"I am ab-absolutely not doing this to get on Yeona's good side…!"
Sure, Yeona had declared last time that if my room was still a pigsty on her next visit, she'd confiscate my computer. And sure, that computer was no ordinary machine — it was the one rocking the legendary, impossible-to-find twenty-million-won RTX 7090 graphics card.
"A-anyway, it's not because of Yeona."
And so I began cleaning. Blessed with the body of an invincible super-Voluptuous Maiden, I had the room spotless in no time.
"That ought to do it, right?"
My room now reached a level of cleanliness where a full sweep would turn up not so much as a speck of dust.
"Ehehehe~"
Chuckling a most Voluptuous-Maiden laugh at the results, I struck a self-assured pose.
Behold: the Proud Voluptuous Pose.
"Ahem!"
For the record, I planned to bust it out once more when Yeona arrived, so this was advance practice.
A glance at the clock showed it was just past six.
Let's see, Yeona always shows up after seven….
Which meant it was finally time to lavish my freshly cleaned body with some long-overdue headpats. In other words: dinner.
"Tonight's dinner menu iiiis~ stir-fried pork~~"
Humming a little tune, I headed for the fridge.
I gripped the fridge door and, just as I was swinging it open—
A magic circle appeared on the floor. Right beneath my feet, a deeply familiar magic circle.
After roughly three seconds of computation, I grasped what it meant.
I'm being dragged back to the otherworld…?
"N-nooooo…!"
Maiden profanity, you can't browse the Gallery in another world!! I'd never lay eyes on my beloved Hunter Gallery nickname and admin badge again!!
No more daily post streak!! I wouldn't even get the stir-fried pork I'd been planning for tonight's dinner!!
But those three lost seconds meant I'd already missed my golden window to leap clear of the circle, and my body was sucked straight down into the magic circle turned portal.
"Ngyaaaaaaahhh—!!"
All while letting out a scream of perfectly Voluptuous-Maiden quality, of course.