Liquidation
The early end to my overseas business trip was the root of all evil. Or perhaps the temporary assignment itself had been a trap from the beginning. If not that, then… maybe my life had been a misentry from some point onward. All without me knowing.
I kept it secret from my wife. A romantic delusion unbecoming of a man in his mid-thirties. That trivial desire to surprise my struggling wife had shoved me straight into the jaws of ruin.
Ding-ding—. The cheerful sound of the door lock shattered the silence.
The moment I stepped through the front door, what greeted me was not my wife’s bright smile. Not that she had ever welcomed me home that way since we married.
It was a pair of men’s luxury handmade shoes. And they were gleaming. I don’t think I’d seen anything polished that fiercely since my military days. In any case, it took less than 0.1 seconds to conclude they weren’t mine.
I wondered if this was how Cheoyong felt a thousand years ago, staring at four pairs of shoes left outside his door. In the shoe cabinet completely colonized by my wife’s heels, my own shoes were always exiled to a cramped corner. The pair that had wedged itself into that narrow gap stood there arrogantly, as if it owned the place.
Could it be a gift for me? But it’s not new, so that guess doesn’t hold up.
The last stubborn scrap of trust in my wife crumbled. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would buy someone else’s worn shoes on a second-hand app, if only for the sake of her pride. Those leather shoes soaked in another man’s sweat were irrefutable proof that their owner was somewhere inside this house right now.
Opening this inner door would make it irreversible. It felt as if the version of me beyond the event horizon was screaming not to open Pandora’s box, to turn back while I still could.
That was when it happened.
Thud. A book suddenly fell from the living room shelf. It was the one I had stood in line for hours to get signed by the author my wife adored. The word Stay on the open page drove into me like a dagger. As if another me from a different dimension was pounding on the study wall with everything he had, sending one final desperate signal to stop, to not take another step.
But the ominous gravity dragged me relentlessly toward the master bedroom.
The temporary provincial business trip, the ingrown toenail that had been gnawing at me for days, even the single white hair that had sprouted on my pubic area like an ill omen—my body had already foreseen this catastrophe and was screaming.
As always, my dark premonitions had never once been wrong.
Beyond the bedroom door, beastly moans and the wet slap of flesh leaked out.
When I opened it, my wife was clutching a man’s neck with an expression of ecstasy I had never seen on her face before. The neck of my college classmate who had somehow become my boss.
“Oh my, why are you back so early…?”
The look in my wife’s eyes when she saw me held more annoyance than shock.
My universe collapsed so helplessly.
*
That day, I expected my wife to turn deathly pale and drop to her knees. I thought she would apologize, beg that she had committed a mortal sin.
Instead, what I received was a gaze so indifferent it froze my heart.
Heejin picked up the gown she had tossed carelessly onto the floor, slipped it back on to cover her pale, soft body, and snapped at me coldly, as if I were a bothersome salesman at the door.
“What kind of manners is it to show up without even calling first? So annoying.”
Beside her, Choi Jeongbin—his unimpressive equipment still dangling—curled one corner of his mouth in a greasy smirk, finished dressing, and patted my shoulder as he walked past.
“Good work on the trip, Gangho hyung. See you at the office tomorrow.”
With the sound of the front door closing, my life may as well have closed too.
The collapse was brutally swift.
My wife, who had sworn we would both keep working after marriage, quit her job after only three months. Now she shoved divorce papers in my face and wrung out my soul until there was nothing left.
Citing her domestic contributions, she took not only the salary I had earned with blood and sweat, but also the assets my parents had left me years earlier.
Was it fortunate we had no children? No. When I thought about how I would have to surrender even my future pension to that woman, it felt more like a curse.
Faced with foretold ruin, I felt as if I were suffocating.
Misfortune exploded like a chain of detonations.
At work, an abrupt emergency audit for bribery charges began without warning.
“Accountant Baek Gangho, please come with us to the investigation room.”
It was a ruthless, unannounced execution. Choi Jeongbin’s father-in-law had clearly pulled strings. What made it worse was that the accounts that could have proven my innocence had already been hijacked by my wife Heejin and turned into laundering channels for his slush funds.
I had been nothing but the rag they used to wipe their dirty money. Once stained and useless, I was discarded without mercy.
Under the interrogation room’s cold fluorescent lights, Choi Jeongbin approached with a greasy sneer.
“Baek Gangho, feeling wronged? So what? What can you even do about it now?”
He kept patting my shoulder, whispering in a mocking voice.
“Who’s going to believe an accountant who took bribes and sold his own wife? Just go quietly, yeah? Wouldn’t that be the best way to protect the Heejin you love so much?”
“‘I’ or ‘you’?”
“Tsk. Does that even matter anymore?”
That night, the memory of his thick fingers wrapped around my wife’s waist in our bedroom flashed before my eyes like a hallucination.
The empty bank balance. The “criminal” stamp that would be branded on my name tomorrow. The fragile hope of revealing the truth in court had already been pulverized long ago.
Before such a colossal scheme, the truth of one accountant was lighter than dust.
I stood at the edge of the rooftop railing. The night wind slapping my cheeks was cold as a blade, yet far gentler than the black rage boiling inside my chest.
I chose to remain myself until the final moment. With the feeling of drafting the final balance sheet of my life, I closed my eyes.
Total Assets: 0 KRW (Betrayed trust, plundered property)
Total Liabilities: Infinite (Unjust stigma, trampled honor)
Audit Opinion: Disclaimer (Business continuity impossible. Conclusion: Liquidation is the only answer.)
I threw my body into the void.
The world flipped. At the instant the colossal force of gravity dragged me toward the cold asphalt, all sound vanished into a vacuum. In that absolute silence, piercing blue letters began to flicker in the air.
System Inspection: Subject ‘Baek Gangho’’s life settlement report has been received.
Error Detected: Forced liquidation attempt caused by external pressure has been identified.
The fall was brief. Yet in that instant, my brain stretched time grotesquely as a final act of survival.
The moment the asphalt rushed up to meet my face, every sound in the world was stripped away and an eerie silence descended. When I opened my eyes again, there was no cold city night air, no clammy despair.
Only a painfully white space in every direction. I floated alone in that boundless void where even the boundaries were indistinct.
What… is this?
My voice scattered into the white darkness without leaving so much as an echo.
Then a translucent interface radiating piercing blue light appeared before my eyes.
Retroactive Application Initiated: Total assets abnormally omitted. Returning to base balance point.
A brilliant light exploded. In the center stood a naked, androgynous mannequin-like figure. To its right stretched an endless array of precision sliders.
It resembled the character customization screens I had seen in games, yet the atmosphere was entirely different. The first thing I noticed was the absence. The “Select Gender” option that should have been fundamental was nowhere to be found.
I reached out, entranced. But it was not a finger that crossed the air. Having lost my physical body in death, I had no hands. Still, the moment the intense will to manipulate the sliders flashed through my mind, an invisible sense touched the interface. It felt like the wave of my soul resonating with the system rather than physical contact.
The instant my consciousness touched the slider, the central figure began to transform with grotesque precision. Bones twisted, muscles rearranged, and numbers beyond human belief redefined my existence in real time.
…Is this a dream?
If it was a dream, it had to be the final bonus granted by a god before logging out of this hellish reality. Fragments of the “ideal type” I had longed for over thirty years—and throughout that miserable marriage—flashed through my mind.
My obsessive, meticulous accountant’s habits kicked in. I focused every ounce of attention on the curves changing by 0.01 mm increments. Like a child in art class, or an engineer drafting precise blueprints, I began to sculpt the figure before me.
The first place my mind went was breast size. An instinctive choice no male could deny. I pushed the slider all the way to the extreme right without hesitation.
The mannequin’s smooth chest ballooned grotesquely. In an instant it swelled to the size of a human head, becoming a massive, heavy mass that looked as if it would swing and slap heavily with the slightest movement.
…This isn’t right.
I shook my head and dragged the value back left. This time it became a completely flat AAA cup. I had not come this far to stare at something so plain. I adjusted the sliders again with precision.
A heavy volume that would overflow a full hand, yet maintaining perfect elasticity and an upward, perky angle. The curve of the breasts where the slider stopped was a work of art that defied gravity.
Since I was creating it, it had to be the best. I set the skin to porcelain-smooth with an ivory tone that suggested fragile beauty. The face was given feline elegance—haughty yet carrying a hint of melancholy when it smiled. The slender neckline flowing into the shoulders, the narrow waist that looked as if it could be encircled by one hand, and the explosively flaring hips beneath it.
I no longer cared how many points remained or what this act meant. I was simply intoxicated by the perfect beauty taking shape before my eyes. The woman I could never have possessed in life. The woman I would have given my money and soul to obtain.
Perfect…
A sigh of admiration escaped me. The woman standing in the white space was a sinful creature where cold beauty and scorching sensuality coexisted.
Base balance setting completed.
Reconstructing the world based on the entered data.
Huh…?
Before I could even press confirm, the space twisted. A crushing pressure seized me as my soul was forcibly crammed into the clay-sculpted body of the woman I had created.