The Saleswoman at the Door
"Uh… ah, h-hello?"
When someone I never could have expected appeared at my door, I flustered my way through a greeting.
Why?
No… why is this person suddenly showing up at my apartment?
It was far too much to believe as coincidence.
Barely suppressing the turmoil in my chest, I forced myself to think rationally, and only one conclusion surfaced.
No way…!
"…Seong-ha? Hey…?"
I called out carefully, half on a hunch—but the conviction behind it filled my voice with wariness.
"…I'm sorry? What do you…"
When the woman looked at me, bewildered and clearly not understanding, I realized I'd guessed wrong, and my face flushed crimson.
"Ah, s-sorry about that… it's just… you resemble someone I know…"
She's not the monster…?
So it really is a coincidence?
I found it hard to accept, but with the person herself denying it so firmly, there was nothing more I could say.
"Oh—right. I'm here on business. I'm a door-to-door saleswoman. You've heard of Seosan Life, haven't you?"
"Ah… of course I have."
There probably wasn't a single person in this country who hadn't heard of Seosan Life.
It was a first-rate insurance company belonging to the group affiliates of Seosan Electronics, the largest corporation in South Korea.
"I'm one of their employees. I've come today to recommend an excellent insurance policy to you."
Trying to soothe whatever distrust I might have been harboring, the woman handed me her business card, speaking in a gentle tone with a courteous smile.
I took the card, checked it, wiped even my lingering suspicion clean away, and gave a polite start of surprise.
Wow, it really is a coincidence… incredible.
Ah, wait—more importantly, I need to go out looking for Seong-ha.
"Sorry, but…"
"It'll only take a moment. If you could spare just a little of your time, I'll throw in a pair of Verion earphones—a product from our group—as a free gift."
When I moved to refuse, the woman cut in quickly, stressing the word free, and blocked my retreat.
"Ah, well… okay then… come in."
Cornered, I had no choice but to let out a deep inward sigh and accept.
It wasn't because of the free wireless earphones.
I was the kind of person who found it nearly impossible to turn down a request, someone with a track record of getting cornered on the street more than once by people asking, "Have you heard of the Lord?"
In the end I did have the resolve to refuse eventually—but that very first request, that initial pitch, remained as hard to reject as ever.
"Thank you very much. Then I'll come in."
Though she was older than me—a man in his twenties—the woman bowed politely, removed her heels, and stepped carefully into the apartment.
Giving her directions to the table, I watched her settle into the seat across from me. Just as I'd seen that morning, she was a beautiful woman with a neat, intellectual air.
The woman, wearing thin black-rimmed glasses, pushed them up and reached into the briefcase she'd brought with her to pull something out.
"This is all I have to offer, I'm afraid."
"Thank you."
I set down a cold cup of barley tea, fetched from the refrigerator, in front of her and in front of me, then simply sat there staring blankly as she rifled through her documents.
Her ingratiating manner and smile were unmistakably sales patter, but she gave off the image of someone who handled her work flawlessly at the office with an airtight expression.
Judging by the lean figure that didn't show so much as a hint of excess flesh beneath her clothes, she clearly managed herself rigorously even after work.
Come to think of it, though… it's the weekend, and she's doing door-to-door sales at this late hour?
Wouldn't that just annoy the customers?
"I'm Lee Ji-yoon, an assistant manager here. May I ask your name, sir?"
"It's Kim Hyun-ok."
"Do you happen to hold any insurance policies at the moment?"
The sense of wrongness I'd briefly forgotten resurfaced in a flash—but when Ji-yoon handed me a sheet laying out the product details and kept the conversation going, I soon forgot it again.
"No, I don't."
"Well then, that's lucky. Excuse me for asking, but your age…?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Have you completed your military service?"
"Yes."
"I see. You look so young, I actually assumed you'd just graduated from high school."
Even if it was empty flattery, the pleasant words made me feel awkward and flattered at the same time.
"Well then, as it happens, we have a product that would suit you perfectly. It's a savings-type plan rather than a whole-life policy…"
From then on, Ji-yoon carried on like a textbook saleswoman, walking me through the product, while I listened vaguely, my mind drifting elsewhere.
It's not Seong-ha…?
Right?
If it is her, this is no time to be wasting the afternoon like this.
I feel a little bad, but I should quietly turn her down.
Clack. Splash.
"Ah!"
"Oh, no…"
As Ji-yoon reached out to hand me something, she knocked over the glass in front of me, and the contents spilled across my clothes, soaking them.
And of all places, it was my lower abdomen—and that spot—that got drenched.
"I-I'm so sorry, sir!"
Drip.
Ji-yoon sprang up hurriedly, then crouched down beside me, pulled a handkerchief from inside her jacket, and began dabbing at the wet patches.
Tap. Tap…
"Ah… u-um, I-I'm fine! Really, so…"
Say it again and again if you must—the soaked areas were my crotch and its surroundings, and when Ji-yoon's hands pressed intimately here and there across them, blood began rushing to one very particular place.
Worse still, with her kneeling on one knee and lowering her body so that she was looking up at me from below, the swell of her cleavage peeked out between the buttons of her white blouse, and I couldn't even bear to let my eyes rest on it.
"Please don't apologize, sir. This was entirely my fault. Let me clean you up properly."
Despite my protests, Ji-yoon kept wiping away, her expression apologetic—and beyond my control, that part of me rose up unmistakably beneath my clothes, swelling into full view.
"Ngh…"
"Ah…"
Caught with myself grown hard, I turned my body away in a panic, my face burning scarlet, and Ji-yoon, realizing what had happened, let out a flustered sound of her own.
"Sir, there's no need to be embarrassed. If anything, this was my doing, so let me take responsibility."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
But when she followed that up with a remorseful look and grabbed my trousers, by this point even I couldn't help sensing that something, whatever the excuse, was deeply wrong.
"You're Seong-ha, aren't you!?"
"…I beg your pardon?"
I said it with near-total conviction, but Ji-yoon—no, Seong-ha—put on that same baffled expression once more.
"Stop pretending! No matter how you look at it, nobody goes this far!"
"Um… sir, what exactly…?"
…Huh?
No?
No—what the hell is going on!?
"I-if this is an act, cut it out. And what happened to her? Don't tell me you… don't tell me you killed her…? You didn't… right…?"
"I'm afraid I don't follow…?"
…She really isn't her?
"Sir, did my behavior perhaps make you uncomfortable…?"
I couldn't tell at all whether I was dealing with Seong-ha or Ji-yoon.
"N-no, not…? No, I mean… hah, I'm sorry. I can't tell what's what anymore…"
Wringing my hands through my hair in my tangled state of mind, I started to apologize—and then the woman, whoever she was, suddenly hiked up the skirt she was wearing, and I froze in shock.
Through black pantyhose, a pair of grown-up black lace panties came into view; my gaze was drawn there against my will, and my eyes went wide with alarm.
"Wh-what are you doing right now—"
"I sincerely apologize. My improper hands appear to have made your cock hard. How about solving the problem by burying it in my pussy, as an act of atonement? I'm rather proud to say my shape is quite pleasant to look at."
"…It is you. I knew it."
My eyes went razor-cold in an instant, and this time I nailed it down beyond any doubt.
"…Hm. I'd hoped you might simply enjoy the situation… but you're a hard one to fool."
Seong-ha—or rather, the monster—held that confused expression a moment longer, and then, as I spoke with certainty ringing in my voice, slowly let it fall away and reverted to its usual manner of speaking.
It was speaking in Ji-yoon's voice and with Ji-yoon's face rather than Seong-ha's, but that dead-flat tone gave away the monster at once.
"Forget the roleplay! Just explain what the hell is going on! Who is this woman!? Did you really… do to her what you did to Seong-ha…? Don't tell me you killed her—"
"I didn't kill her, nor did I harm her. This woman is perfectly alive and will go on living her life as she always has. Think about it—if I killed her, the police or the people who knew her would come looking, and my own existence might be exposed. That, in turn, would make it very likely that living with you would become impossible going forward."
"Then what's with the appearance?"
"I found this woman and stole her physical data and her identity."
The monster lowered her skirt, sat back down across from me, crossed her legs out of habit, folded her arms, and gave me a sly look from the corner of her eye.
That posture had nothing of customer service about it—it was the stance of an office superior looking down on a subordinate, and it seemed to be one facet of her haughty, domineering side.
The toe of her black stocking, flesh faintly gleaming through it, rested against my knee and wriggled there like an invitation.
Under normal circumstances, contact with a woman's body like that would have set my heart racing. But not now.
The thought that a human being might have died because of me—or suffered something worse than death—had left me anything but aroused.
"So what does all that even mean? Be specific!"
"Calm down. As I keep saying, that woman has suffered no harm at all. I went to find her, knocked her out without anyone noticing, and then a part of my main body—that is, this… hm, how do I put it—tentacle."
Shlorp… skreee.
From the side of the monster's neck, something like a pale pink tentacle—the very thing that had once burst out and swallowed Seong-ha whole—pushed through the flesh and emerged.
"I put this into the woman's body and extracted her physical data and memories. Do you want to hear the details of that process as well?"
"No, that's enough. But… after doing all that, this woman really has no harm to her body at all?"
"None."
"You're sure?"
"Certain. What she suffered from being knocked out was a mild concussion, and by the time she woke, it had done her no lasting harm. As for the memory of being knocked out, I altered that to suit myself. As far as she knows, she simply happened to be walking up some stairs, tripped, and fell."
Altered her memory…?
So it can even do that.
"Whew…"
It didn't look like she was lying, and only then did I finally relax, my tense shoulders sagging as I leaned back against the chair's backrest.
For a long moment, a heavy, uneasy silence settled between us for the very first time.
The anger I'd felt at her doing such a thing without a word of warning had only barely begun to fade, and now that it came to speaking, the words wouldn't come easily.
"I'm sorry…"
Breaking through the silence, the monster spoke up first, carefully.
When I turned my gaze on her, for the first time ever, the monster was avoiding my eyes as she talked.
"…It's like this. I thought you wanted to have sex with this woman, so I assumed you'd naturally be pleased if I arranged it this way."
"Well… yeah, I mean, technically… hah, I don't know. Either way, if this woman is really unharmed, I suppose I can't complain too much… But… if something like that was possible, why did you ever do the parasitism thing—no, the absorbing thing—to Seong-ha in the first place?"
"At that time, I was nothing more than a single mass of flesh. I needed a body to compose myself with. …And now, what do you intend to do?"
"About what?"
"About this woman. That is… me, sir."
The monster's manner shifted back to Ji-yoon, complete with a professional smile.
"I still haven't finished atoning to you, sir. What would you like me to do for you? Or do you truly intend… to end things just like this?"
Slide.
Ji-yoon rested her hand on my thigh and began stroking it in a soft, tantalizing caress.
As if coaxing me toward something.