Unexpected Blessing
Taeseok leaned his arms across the rooftop railing, feeling the cold night wind brush the nape of his neck as he swallowed a sigh.
A year had passed since that day.
Yet he still stood frozen in the same place.
After his parents and younger sister had all been taken at once in a traffic accident, the world had grown far too quiet.
He must have cried at first. For several months, certainly. But now there were no tears left, no sorrow—nothing at all. Only a faint gray fog drifting inside an empty chest.
The wind rose. The clothesline on the roof clanged with the dry rattle of metal striking metal. A rusted iron bar shoved into a corner, the earthy reek rising from nameless flowerpots, and the stale odor of old laundry. This place was a gathering of discarded things.
And he, too, was one of them.
Senior, Department of Economics, Seoul National University. A title others envied, yet it meant nothing to Taeseok. He had not taken a single step outside this rooftop room, let alone set foot on campus. He had long since silenced every notification on his phone. There was no one left to call, and nowhere left to go.
On impulse he looked down past the railing. Three stories of a detached house. Jumping would only leave him injured. Was that a mercy? If this place had been five stories high, he would have thrown himself off more than once.
Even dying sounds like a hassle.
That was the moment.
Whoooooosh…
It was not the wind. A low vibration, as if the air itself were tearing, bored into his ears. Taeseok’s head snapped up.
From the very center of the sky, a lance of silver-white light poured straight toward his chest. There was no time to dodge.
“What the—”
CRAAAACK—!
Something sharper and hotter than lightning punched through his body.
“Aaaargh!”
Liquid fire raced madly through his veins. His heart hammered as though it would burst; his brain seared white with agony. And yet, strangely… mixed into that pain was a sweet, addictive pleasure. As if someone were forcibly flinging open a new door inside him.
His legs gave way and his knees slammed into the railing. The world flipped; for an instant his pupils flooded silver before returning to normal. Deep in the center of his chest, something hot he had never felt before writhed and woke.
“Hah… hah… what… is this…”
For the briefest heartbeat the entire world filled with threads of transparent light. Between those threads, something vast looked down upon him.
Taeseok toppled forward. And he was sucked into the soft yet merciless embrace of the light.
The instant Taeseok opened his eyes he felt the cold concrete floor against his back. Morning sunlight stabbed sharply into his vision. He was still right beside the rooftop railing—exactly where the “lightning” had struck him the night before. His whole body had been chilled overnight by the wind until it was ice-cold.
He slowly pushed himself upright and let out a hollow laugh.
“…Shit. Slept out here? Guess I’m not dead.”
He raked a hand through his hair and sat up; every muscle ached. Separate from the pain, however, a clean, refreshing sensation spread through him, as though a fine current were skimming along his veins. The hot mass he had felt the night before still stirred faintly in the center of his chest.
His body was filthy with dust.
“Better go in and wash… I’m disgusting.”
He stepped into the cramped rooftop room and opened the bathroom door. Warm water cascaded over his head the moment he turned the shower on. Stiffened muscles gradually loosened, and at the same time a strange heat began to rise from deep inside him.
He scooped soap into his palm and scrubbed roughly; the instant his hand traveled downward, Taeseok froze.
“…What the hell.”
The sensation that should have been familiar was completely different. What filled his grip was heavier, thicker, and longer than anything he had known before. Even soaked with water, veins stood out and pulsed; the elastic weight that filled his fist was insanely intense.
He looked down. Something he had never seen—something that did not feel like his own.
Did someone swap it out while I was unconscious…?
Simply lifting it a little made his hips jerk of their own accord. The sensitivity had risen to absurd levels. Merely wrapping his hand around it sent a shiver racing all the way up his spine.
Taeseok barked a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Just what… happened last night.”
His hand began to move on its own. Slowly, up and down.
“…Hah.”
One palm braced against the wall, he worked his hand faster and faster beneath the hot stream. A body that had wanted to do nothing at all strangely refused to reject this sensation. No—he could not reject it. It demanded more, harder, faster.
What… am I even doing.
A flicker of self-loathing rose, only to melt away at once into pleasure. The hot mass in his chest writhed larger; every stroke of his hand made threads of light shimmer at the edge of his vision.
In the end he came several times, releasing an enormous amount of semen. Staring blankly at the white fluid washing down the drain, Taeseok muttered,
“…I’ve lost my damn mind.”
His spent hand groped along the wall for support. He finished the shower, roughly shook off the water, and stepped out of the bathroom. His skin was still damp.
That was when it came.
Knock-knock-knock.
Someone rapped on the front door. Taeseok swept his wet hair back and turned toward the sound.
“Who is it?”
A bright, gentle woman’s voice answered from the other side. Still dripping, Taeseok opened the door a little wider.
Standing there was the landlady from downstairs—Kim Eunjeong. The face that must have been quite pretty in her youth still carried those traces. Her straight nose had not surrendered to the years, and the faint crow’s-feet at her eyes only made her look softer and warmer. Bare-faced, almost no makeup, her hair a simple shoulder-length bob casually swept aside. Her lips were neither especially full nor thin, yet they curved naturally whenever she smiled and put people at ease. Her figure, too, was nothing remarkable—just an ordinary neighborhood ajumma. Loose, stretched-out T-shirt and a baggy skirt. Clothing chosen purely for comfort.
“Taeseok. Did you sleep well?”
Her voice was natural, yet threaded with quiet concern. In one hand she held a container of side dishes.
“I brought you some banchan… Are you eating properly?”
Taeseok could not answer at once. He simply stared at the container she held out and at the soft back of the hand beneath it. The fact that someone still came looking for him—someone who never left the house—felt, right now, more like a burden than a comfort.
“…Yes. I’m eating. Ajumma… you really don’t have to do this.”
The gratitude was genuine, yet even that gratitude weighed heavily on him now. Eunjeong only smiled and quietly pressed the container into his hands.
In that instant, space split open right in the center of Taeseok’s vision as though a razor-thin line had been drawn. At first he took it for an afterimage—the kind of light-bleed that appears when you keep your eyes open too long. It was not. A transparent membrane rose soundlessly. Along its edges flowed a subtle radiance of mingled blue and violet. In moments it formed a perfect rectangle, the exact structure of a “status window” from a VR game.
It did not block his sight, yet its alien presence was unmistakable. Taeseok unconsciously raised a hand and swiped at it. His fingers met nothing.
What… is this…
At the same time, characters began to surface one by one inside the empty window. Specks that had first scattered like broken pixels snapped into alignment and sharpened into clear text.
Name:Kim Eunjeong
Age:39
Occupation:Landlord
Emotion Level:08 / 100
Dominance:05 / 100
• Widowed five years ago (has long suppressed her loneliness)
Taeseok’s eyes widened. His heart gave one heavy thud. Instinctively he looked at Eunjeong’s face again. She was still watching him with that same gentle smile—completely unaware.
Is this… visible only to me? Or have I finally gone insane?
Even as the thought formed he kept staring at the status window. The information was far too specific to dismiss as madness. Name and occupation he already knew, but age thirty-nine—he had never once asked how old she was, yet the window had nailed it exactly. Even the detail that someone had recently shown her interest… Of course, all of it could still be a delusion spun by his own mind. Yet for the first time in a year, genuine curiosity began to stir.
“Taeseok…? What’s wrong? You’re just standing there holding the banchan—what are you thinking about?”
Eunjeong’s voice snapped him back.
“Ah… yes. Sorry.”
He reached out a beat late and took the container. In that moment their fingertips brushed, the lightest of contacts.
An unfamiliar energy sparked from Taeseok’s fingertips—thin as a thread yet unmistakable—and seeped into Eunjeong’s skin.
…What was that just now…
At the same time her body gave a tiny shudder.
“Nn… ah…?”
