I'm the Villain?

Still no comeback?

It had been a fifteen-plus novel he'd thoroughly enjoyed — and it had been on hiatus for three years running. He dropped by whenever it crossed his mind, but there was never a new chapter waiting. There wasn't even a hiatus notice.

If I'd known it was going to die like this, I never would have started it.

He dragged the mouse cursor down and checked the comments. Up until a year ago, at least one or two people would still wander in to ask when the author was coming back. Now even those had gone silent.

It was exactly my kind of story.

A modern hunter novel. And within that lane, a fifteen-plus harem. It had never been a smash hit, and it was nobody's idea of a tightly plotted masterpiece stuffed with clever foreshadowing and satisfying payoffs.

If anything, it was drowning in forced writing.

An ordinary protagonist piled up Opportunities with zero narrative justification, grew absurdly strong, and then — for the flimsiest of reasons — women beautiful enough to put celebrities to shame fell in love with him and glued themselves to his side.

And that was exactly why I loved it.

Because it was nothing like his own gutter of a life.

I'm so jealous.

He envied Kim Woobin's existence with an almost physical ache. The Opportunities that dropped into the protagonist's lap one after another. The gorgeous, perfectly built heroines who hung on his every word. The protagonist himself had started out as a four-eyed, acne-faced slob, and then, little by little, he grew. The weight came off. His face turned handsome. He even got taller.

Of all the places to launch, why did it have to be Cocoa Page?

Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life had crashed and burned the moment it went up.

Not that it didn't deserve to flop.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A story stuffed with contrivance. Coherence left to drown. And the decisive blow…

Fifteen-plus, my ass. It should have gone full-throttle nineteen-plus from the start.

If it had, it never would have died this badly.

What kind of harem protagonist is a eunuch? A goddamn eunuch.

For a novel calling itself Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life, Kim Woobin himself was a celibate monk who looked at women the way other people looked at rocks.

Premarital chastity, my ass. How does a man hold out when heroines that stunning are throwing themselves at him, doing everything they can to get him to fuck them?

Forced plotting and drowned coherence aside, the reason he had spent three years waiting for this novel to come back from the dead was simple: those heroines were far too attractive to let go.

Fuck. If the author had thrown out that premarital-chastity garbage, gone nineteen-plus, and had him screw every last heroine from chapter one, this thing never would have tanked.

He would have staked his ten-year career as a shut-in web-novel reader on that guarantee.

They were probably aiming for the bigger all-ages market by launching on Cocoa Page.

But if that was the plan?

Then they should have slashed the heroines' page time and written the whole thing around the protagonist's growth.

Instead, Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life lingered on the heroines' bodies and sexual proclivities with a frankness that left very little to the imagination.

Just because nobody actually has sex doesn't make it all-ages.

Stranded at that awkward, in-between heat, the novel hadn't received an all-ages rating at all. It had been stamped fifteen-plus.

That was the mistake. If they'd just launched it as nineteen-plus on Novelpia, it would have been so much better off.

A novel that never picked a lane. A novel that tried to straddle both sides and died for it. That was Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life.

Seen through the eyes of a ten-year veteran of the form, the novel's two greatest flaws were the fifteen-plus lock clamped over it and a protagonist who clung to premarital chastity like a eunuch on a holy vow.

If I were Kim Woobin, fuck…

He would have been screwing those heroines from the very first chapter.

I want to be Kim Woobin.

He wanted to become the protagonist of Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life and fuck every last one of those irresistible heroines.

Fuck it. Just go to sleep.

It was a wish that was never going to come true anyway. Tomorrow was Monday, and if he wanted to survive a brutal early shift, he needed to force himself into bed at a decent hour.

"Young Mas… the time…"

He was still half-drowned in sleep, his mind a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠warm, formless haze, when someone started shaking him.

"Don't wake me. I'm sleeping."

The words drifted out of that same haze.

"It's morning… you need to start…"

The voice came again. He was too exhausted to care.

What the hell?

A sudden coolness washed over his lower body.

A breathy, muffled moan — and then something wet and clinging wrapped around his cock.

"What the— fuck!"

He bolted upright in shock, and an utterly foreign scene unfolded before his eyes.

The room was incomparably vast next to the studio apartment he had fallen asleep in. And this was no cheap mattress thrown over a single frame. The bed beneath him looked custom-built, large enough that five people could sprawl across it and still have room to spare.

Wet, devoted slurps filled the air. And there, between his legs, wearing a crisp white dress shirt and a tight black pencil skirt, a stunning woman sucked his cock with a blank, focused expression. Her skin was as white as fresh snow. Her hair burned a vivid, fiery red.

"You—"

He started to ask who she was and what the hell she thought she was doing. Then, unbidden, a complete dossier on the snow-skinned, fire-haired beauty currently working her mouth over his cock surfaced in his mind.

Yu Seoyeon.

An A-class hunter. Jung Hoyoung's secretary.

And…

A slave.

In the same instant, other information came pouring in like a dam had burst.

What is this?

These were not his memories. They belonged to a man named Jung Hoyoung — someone who, until this moment, had had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

I'm losing my mind.

His thoughts tangled over themselves.

Jung Hoyoung?

Jung Hoyoung was one of the villains in Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life. Not a one-off, either — a villain who had been there from the first chapter all the way through to the hiatus.

The sole heir of Korea's greatest conglomerate, the Woosung Group. A D-class hunter. A piece of human garbage who, out of the cheapest, pettiest jealousy, had made it his mission to torment the protagonist at every turn from the novel's opening pages.

Why the hell did I become Jung Hoyoung?

He had no idea. Had some god actually granted his wish?

I asked to be the protagonist.

So why was he the insecure, inferiority-soaked loser of a villain instead?

This isn't a dream.

He knew it with a certainty that felt as if someone had driven the knowledge into his skull with a hammer. He had become Jung Hoyoung, the villain of the fifteen-plus novel Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life.

And…

This is real.

He was not dreaming. He was not hallucinating. He had not gone insane.

The novel…

had become reality.

And the most undeniable proof of that fact was currently pouring every ounce of herself into sucking his cock.

Yu Seoyeon's soft tongue worked over Jung Hoyoung's cock without rest, bathing it in the warm, wet heat of her mouth. She sealed her lips tight and sucked with everything she had, licking and nursing as if her life depended on it. Even so, he felt no real urge to come.

She's terrible at this.

She was licking with genuine effort, but her technique was painfully lacking. She was just holding his cock in her mouth and running her tongue over it. No bobbing her head while she worked her tongue. No teasing the slit at the tip. No taking him into her throat and grinding him there.

On top of that, Jung Hoyoung's cock was a rare, oversized thing. No matter how earnestly Yu Seoyeon licked, her tongue could only reach the head and a stretch of the shaft. Most of him was left neglected, aching in the open air.

She's a virgin. I suppose that can't be helped.

Yu Seoyeon was only twenty-six, but she had already climbed to the rank of a fully realized A-class hunter — a genuine prodigy.

And yet.

Even a prodigy doesn't become a polished A-class hunter at twenty-six with no support behind her.

She was also an orphan, and she had a millstone around her neck: a younger sister, Yoo Suyeon, who suffered from an incurable illness.

So how had an orphan like Yu Seoyeon graduated at the top of a ruinously expensive hunter-studies program without once having to worry about her sister's treatment?

All of it was thanks to me.

Jung Hoyoung, freshly enrolled in middle school, had happened to see a twenty-year-old Yu Seoyeon come in to interview for a position at the Woosung Guild.

And he fell for her on the spot.

But Jung Hoyoung was not Kim Woobin, the pure, lovably stupid protagonist of Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life.

He was the incarnation of twisted desire and inferiority. The worst villain in the book.

The woman he had fallen for at first sight. His first love.

An ordinary person would have carried that feeling around in secret, fidgeted over it, shyly struck up a conversation, and — once they were a little closer — worked up the courage to confess. If she said yes, they would have become a couple and grown into the relationship. If she turned him down, he would have suffered for a long while and then either tried again or given up.

Jung Hoyoung was a villain with a personality like trash.

And the way he thought was nowhere near normal to begin with.

The moment he saw Yu Seoyeon, a violent greed seized him. He wanted to make her his property. He wanted a slave who would lick his cock when told, spread her pussy when told, and bark like a bitch when told.

He was only fourteen at the time, but as the one and only heir to the nation's foremost conglomerate, Jung Hoyoung had more than enough power to turn a newly awakened twenty-year-old F-class hunter — an orphan, no less — into his slave.

The problem was that he was far too young.

Impatience made him reckless. He approached Yu Seoyeon too soon and put a deal on the table — and his father, Chairman Jung Junggoo, found out.

Not that Jung Junggoo is any less of a deranged villain than his son.

Chairman Jung Junggoo didn't blame his son for the desire. If anything, he was delighted. His ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠boy was showing interest in women. That meant he was growing up. What he did not want was a fourteen-year-old adolescent already living and breathing for a girl.

That had been the bargain between Chairman Jung Junggoo and his son. And after it was struck, Jung Hoyoung made no effort whatsoever. He never earned his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠father's recognition.

The idiot pissed away his time loafing around.

He had been useless as an heir, and he had never once tried to become a proper one. He had been lucky enough to awaken as a hunter, and that was the end of it. He had chugged elixirs priced beyond imagination as if they were water and armed himself head to toe with ultra-expensive items even an S-class hunter would struggle to own — and his actual ability was still rock bottom.

A D-class hunter. That's all he is.

If the support that had been poured into Jung Hoyoung had gone to Yu Seoyeon instead, she might have been an S-class hunter by now rather than merely A-class. No talent, and no effort to make up for it. That was the villain Jung Hoyoung in a single sentence.

Yu Seoyeon's breath came harsh and ragged as she struggled to keep his cock in her mouth. And the reason she was doing it at all, despite everything?

Jung Junggoo is a complete son-fool.

The reason Jung Hoyoung had been able to keep appearing as a villain all the way through Hunter Kim Woobin's Harem Life was simple: the chairman of Korea's greatest conglomerate, the Woosung Group, was an extreme, almost pathological fool for his son. Every time he dealt with Jung Hoyoung he put on the face of a stern, unyielding father. That was as far as it went.

In the end, he can never win against his boy.

Throw a tantrum and the man would give him anything.

Yu Seoyeon, in particular, was the woman his son had threatened to die over if she wasn't handed over. So from the perspective of a son-fool like Chairman Jung Junggoo, it didn't matter whether Jung Hoyoung had proven his worth or not. The result was irrelevant. He was always going to gift Yu Seoyeon to his son.

So of course this bastard never bothered to try.