More Human Than Human
"Oppa, how's your body feeling? Are you okay?"
Even though she already knew the answer, Sung-ha asked the moment she stepped into the room, her hands fidgeting nervously.
For the record, Arin had left, saying she had things to take care of after sharing that one drink with me.
"Well, about that..."
It had been a while since the two of us were alone, and feeling mischievous, I let my words trail off while deliberately putting on a grim expression just to mess with her.
As shadows settled over my face, Sung-ha's own expression slowly grew heavy, then shifted into that of the monster's, her worry becoming unmistakably plain.
"Hyun-ok... don't tell me you really... *sniff sniff*?... Something smells delicious in here..."
Like a bloodhound, that one.
When the monster suddenly wrinkled her nose and crept toward me, I had no choice but to drop the act and fish the condom wrapper out of my pocket, where I'd been fumbling with it all this while, and hand it over.
It's a ridiculous comparison, but as I passed it to her, I felt exactly like a father coming home on payday with fried chicken, imagining how happy his kids would be.
"Here. The results."
Cradling what I offered in both hands, the monster stared wide-eyed at the semen sealed inside the condom, then lifted the corners of her eyes into a faint smile aimed at me.
"Thank you, Hyun-ok. Thanks to you... I've found a reason to go on living."
I'm sure the monster meant every word sincerely, but from where I stood, hearing it was a deeply awkward experience.
Especially when she clutched the condom wrapper tightly in both hands like she was treasuring something precious and pressed it against her chest, I genuinely didn't know how I was supposed to react.
Normally, that's how a woman might respond to receiving a ring or something of equal significance... The situation was delicate, to say the least.
But putting the humor aside, it was also proof of just how much what was mine mattered to the monster.
"Thanks to you, my precious little guy made a recovery and all, but next time give me a trailer or something first. I was seriously terrified at first. I mean... I did, ahem... enjoy myself, but still."
I raised my palm and gave the top of the monster's head a light tap, scolding her briefly.
"I apologize. There was a therapeutic purpose, but I also wanted you to enjoy yourself more pleasantly. In any case, I will make sure nothing like that happens again."
"No, sometimes... sometimes it's fine. Just don't do it too often..."
"Understood."
The monster looked straight at me, a soft bloom of a smile spreading across her face, and then asked,
"Hyun-ok, do you like women of that sort of personality?"
"Huh? Um... a-a little?"
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I answered in a flustered scramble.
"If you wish it, I will change my form and personality into that of a human woman like that."
I stumbled once at the completely unexpected words, then shook my head heavily.
"No, I like you just the way you are now, Sung-ha — your look and your personality. Sure, I have an ideal type and all that... but how do I put it, hmm... an ideal type is just that, an ideal type. It's not like it has to be a perfect match for me specifically, you know?"
"I see... Understood."
When the monster lowered her eyes slightly and her expression turned a little sullen, concern gnawed at me until I couldn't help but ask.
"Did that... did it bother you?"
"It did."
"What?"
I'd only asked on the off chance, never expecting a yes.
"It bothered me. And inside, I was jealous."
As the monster raised her eyes to look at me again, a distinctly human emotion was blooming softly within her pupils.
And so.
I was genuinely stunned.
"But you... last time, didn't you say you wouldn't care no matter how I looked at other women?"
If that had simply been a lie told for my sake, then everything I'd done to the monster up until now had been a terrible wrong.
Instead of answering, the monster stepped toward me as gently as spring sunlight, reached out with both hands, and wrapped me in a silent embrace.
Her bosom, brimming with tenderness and love as if to say worry about nothing, was warmer than any other human's could ever be.
"That's right, but please don't misunderstand. This feeling is not resentment toward you for looking at other human women. It is pure jealousy toward any human woman who might be able to give you more than I can, no matter what form that takes. So you need not feel guilt or remorse toward me. In fact, I want you to keep looking at the human women you find appealing, and keep telling me about them, just as you have been. Whether it is sexual, or whether you simply liked their personality — either way, it makes no difference to me."
Some of what the monster said skirted dangerously far outside common sense, but by now I didn't let it trouble me.
Just as I was about to thank her for the words murmured against my chest, the monster, for the very first time—
smiled at me, radiant as a flower in full bloom, and confessed her love to me all over again.
"I want to think of you, Hyun-ok, and only you, always, and to devote my life to you and you alone."
At that unadorned, utterly honest confession — more human than any human's — my eyes widened and my heart began to race.
Even if her love strayed somewhat from the kind shared between ordinary people, even if the path it had taken was warped and misaligned, I could not fault a being who looked only at me and whispered its love so purely.
When she could share warmth and words with me like this, what did it matter that she wasn't a pure human?
Some of her usual remarks included imitations of other people's personalities and calculated behavior woven in, but I now believed without a shred of doubt that at their core, there had always been genuine feeling directed at me.
The moment I finally understood that, the monster became unbearably, maddeningly dear to me.
Not yet complete, but transforming into something more human for my sake — the monster was showing me that process not just in words, but as an expression of a human life itself.
To come to know someone is to learn the way their eyes see the world.
Even if you can't understand the whole of the life they've lived, you come to know the way of facing the world through that being's perspective and senses, and it spreads between you, seeping into one another.
Perhaps in that sense I, too, was being stained by the monster, warping little by little — but by this point, that no longer mattered.
And so...
"Sung-ha..."
"Oppa, can I go first?"
Before I could say my next words, Sung-ha beat me to it, unexpectedly.
Our eyes met again, and reading that we were thinking the exact same thing, we each felt a small, quiet thrill.
"Will you have sex with me? I'm... I'm turned on again."
I could feel that this wasn't her usual calculated seduction meant to arouse me.
As our embracing bodies slowly separated, Sung-ha flushed like a girl fallen in love, her moist eyes gleaming as she seized the collar of my shirt with both hands and pulled me close.
"It aches down there... it's not hunger... I just want you inside me... I want to be connected to you, Oppa."
"But you... you said you don't feel lust..."
Faced with this fervent courtship, so full of an affection and love unlike before, I turned red as a boy having his first experience, completely at a loss.
"I don't know... I just... I just want it... with you... I've lived so long and this has never happened to me before, so I'm confused... but one thing is certain. I want to do it with you."
*Gulp.*
My throat bobbed visibly, and my breathing grew ragged all on its own.
My heartbeat pounded joyously alongside the fluttering in my chest.
What man alive could keep his composure when his lover begged him this earnestly, right before his eyes?
"Inside my womb... won't you wreck it completely until it's yours alone? So that it remembers only your shape for the rest of my life... Please, Oppa."
When Sung-ha burrowed into my arms and looked up at me from within them like a kitten, the last thread of my reason snapped.
And that night.
I made passionate love to Sung-ha so thoroughly that I cleanly forgot she'd drained me dry just days before.
"Hyun-ok... I want to carry your child."
"...What?"
After we'd indulged freely in tender lovemaking atop the bed, the monster — still wrapped around my naked body, rolling over onto her side — abruptly spoke into the darkness.
"While you slept, I studied many things through books and videos. And every time I came across material about sex, the subject of children always followed."
It made sense. The act of sex was, at its root, fundamentally meant to create children, so the connection was only natural.
Saying nothing, I stared up at the dark ceiling and listened in silence as the monster whispered beside me.
"At first, I felt nothing. With a numb gaze and dulled senses, I merely thought, so such a thing exists. After all, our kind cannot carry a human child. But the more I came to love you, the more a desire began to well up within me, little by little — the desire to have a crystallization of us, something that resembles you. Every time I watched a child in those videos take its human parents' hands and toddle along, I even felt, faintly, a pang of envy. So what I want to ask you, Hyun-ok, is..."
As if groping for something, the monster asked calmly, carefully, for my heart.
"How do you feel about it?"
This, too, was a question I'd never anticipated, and after a moment of flustered hesitation, I answered honestly.
"Well... hmm... I'm sorry, but... I don't know yet. I've never really thought deeply about it before."
"...I see."
"I'm sorry, but... this is important, isn't it? From a human standpoint, and for you too. That doesn't mean I don't love you. I absolutely don't want you misunderstanding that."
"No, it's fine. Since I haven't yet found a way for you to give me a child in the first place, there's no need to decide anything right now. If anything, I'm sorry for pressuring you."
"What are you... of course you can say things like that. It startled me a little, but I'll think about it seriously too, starting now. And if it really happens, then we'd actually get married, and introduce you to my pare—"
The instant that thought reached its end — and I realized I was only *now* remembering something I should have thought of long ago — I covered my face with my palm as if in self-reproach.
When the monster gave me a puzzled look at my sudden movement, I spoke with a trace of urgency.
"First thing tomorrow morning, let's go down to my family home in the countryside."
Now that I'd finally recalled something I should have considered from the very beginning, my heart began to race with impatience.