How Mortifying
Is this what it feels like to get caught with a hobby you should never, ever let anyone discover? The mortification was so intense I wanted to throw myself out the window right then and there.
Fuck.
I never should have restored those VODs. Why the hell did I go and restore something that should have stayed deleted, only to create this absolute disaster?
Cursing out my past self—the one who'd boldly demanded the streaming site restore the replays—I carefully approached my older sister, who was staring at me with pure contempt.
"Noona."
"Don't talk to me, you fucking pervert."
"Hey, I'm not a pervert, okay? I was only catering to customer needs—"
"That's what they call self-justification, you psycho. If you weren't a pervert, you would've shut it down cold. Am I wrong?"
Noona started picking me apart point by point, cowardly armed with nothing but cold hard facts.
"If you weren't a real pervert, you would've used the fetish tag for the first stream and then dropped it. But the next stream, and the one after that—hell, even your latest stream is nothing but fetish clips. Explain to me how that makes you not a pervert?"
"I've drawn plenty of normal sexual content too, you know? Like a fox beastgirl getting training-romanced by a hung bald Black guy, or a fox beastgirl getting captivity-romanced by a yandere blonde…"
"You crazy bitch! That is not normal sexual content! Pure love should end at pure love—what's this training pure love and captivity pure love crap? And do you seriously think yuri counts as normal sexual desire?"
Faced with my blood sister's furious tirade, I countered in a calm, perfectly serious voice.
"Noona, try thinking for a second. Even one hot fox beastgirl is already incredible side-dish material for happy time. But two hot fox beastgirls? By simple math, doesn't that double the hotness?"
"…You really do spin the most elaborate bullshit, my adorable little sibling."
"I am pretty adorable, yeah."
"Yeah. Adorable enough that I want to tear you apart and kill you. You fucking bitch!!!"
WHACK!!!
Noona chopped me across the crown of my head with the edge of her hand.
"Are you going to keep doing this? This cheap little lifestyle where you grin and take money from complete strangers who don't even know your face—while they're sexually harassing you—are you going to keep that up?"
"I have to keep going if I want to live, Noona. You think I'm doing this because I want to?"
"Then don't do it if you don't want to! Why force yourself to do something you hate?"
Her voice was thick with the frustrated anger of someone hitting a brick wall. I answered more calmly than I ever had in my life.
"Because that's how I stay alive."
"…What?"
"I have to stream to survive. If I stop streaming, I'm on a timer. This body might look fine on the outside, but right now it's completely wrecked."
Whatever the black fox had done on her way through must have helped somehow—jeong-gi and yoreok were overflowing through my body now, buying me another three years. But if I wanted to live longer and keep watching even more ridiculously hot R-18 fox beastgirl manga, I had no choice but to force myself to keep streaming.
And even if, just as the Fox God had said, I managed to gather a million people's worth of jeong-gi and go outside again—even if I could hide the fluffy ears and the soft, luscious tail—I was still a shut-in at my core. I was terrified of other people's eyes. Unless it was someone I was close to, I couldn't even stand meeting their gaze. I was the ultimate outcast among outcasts. So if I wanted any kind of contact with people at all, internet streaming—where I never had to feel their eyes on me directly—was the only option.
Of course, if I ever gathered that million people's worth of jeong-gi and completely escaped this terminal life, I'd quit streaming and go back to earning money through commissions the way I used to. Or maybe I'd just create ridiculously hot fox beastgirl porn myself and spend all my time on happy time. But that was a problem for later.
While Noona sat frozen at the word terminal, I tickled her with my tail. She finally came over, stroked my head, and spoke in a distant voice.
"Aigoo, you idiot. That's why I told you to stop jerking off so much. Said it'd rot your bones."
"It wasn't my bones rotting—my gender changed. And into something that looks almost exactly like my ideal type!"
"That's what happens when you fap three times a day. You reaped what you sowed, you pervert!"
"Oh yeah? Could you hold it in after looking at ridiculously hot manga? If you're hard, the golden rule is you fire one off!"
"This crazy bitch turns into a girl and suddenly there's nothing she won't say to her noona? You really got a death wish?"
Murder in her eyes. A stance that said she was about to attack any second. My fox beastfolk animal instincts were screaming: one more word and I was taking a one-way trip to the underworld.
But a younger sibling's sacred duty is to say what needs saying, even under an older sibling's tyranny. I stepped up to her with the most serious face I could manage and whispered in a voice like rolling jade beads.
"What am I supposed to do if it turns me on? So what, Noona—you look at hot manga and don't masturbate?"
…I got beaten like a dog on the hottest day of summer.
"Eat properly, call me if anything's hard, and don't change the door code—I'll be dropping by whenever. You change it and you might actually die."
"You show up more than three times a week and I'm moving. I've got more than enough money for it."
"I've got contacts too, so if you try moving and I catch you, you're actually dead. Got it?"
"Even if I die, I'll die crying out for freedom. I am a citizen of a free democratic nation."
I already had enough lunatics crashing into my peaceful daily life. If Noona piled on top of that too? That would be the true starting point of total catastrophe.
I stared at her with the expression of someone who'd just bitten into shit as she tried to insert herself into my life by any means necessary. She sighed and put both hands up.
"You've got some nerve, you little shit. Oh, right—what are you going to tell Mom and Dad? You've got less than a week left of hiding behind texts and KakaoTalk."
"It'll work out somehow. Just buy me a little time, Noona. I'm not mentally ready yet."
"What's there to prepare for? Just blurt it out like you did today. I'll fill the parents in on the situation, so contact them within the week. They're waiting for your call with their necks stretched out."
"Situation report received. I'll contact them as soon as I can, so don't worry too much."
After hammering home one more time that I absolutely had to call our parents, Noona left the studio apartment. I turned to the bald-balled buddy still lingering in my place and issued an eviction order.
"Hey. You get out too. I'm streaming now."
"Does it matter if I stay? What if something happens mid-stream?"
"I feel like something's more likely to happen if you're here. What do you think people will assume if they see you next to me?"
"Just a regular boyfriend or a fuckbuddy, right? What's the problem?"
"If there's a guy hanging around, the amount of jeong-gi coming in changes. They get turned on looking at my body, then some bald muscle gay is standing next to me—doesn't that just make everything wilt on the spot?"
Faced with a perfectly rational argument, he nodded and started packing up the stuff he'd brought.
"Fair point. Call me if anything dangerous comes up. Don't be stubborn and get yourself hurt."
"I'm never getting hurt in my life, so don't worry about it."
"You know that line is a flag, right? I'm honestly looking forward to you turning into a bitch in heat who only knows how to mate."
"Shut the hell up. Watch yourself on the way out, Baldy. Don't go far."
"Yeah. Good luck."
Once I'd finally driven out every last uninvited guest, I quietly summoned the Fox God.
"I've got a question."
"And what might thou be curious about?"
"Ever since that fox lady came through, my jeong-gi suddenly shot way up. Can you tell me what happened?"
After the fox lady's visit, this body that had always creaked and complained of exhaustion no longer tired even when I moved hard. My stamina recovery seemed faster too, and overall I felt vitality circulating through me. I had never once felt myself getting healthier since meeting my bald-balled buddy, so it couldn't have been his doing. Which meant the fox lady had done something to my body, right?
I put the worry into my voice as I asked the Fox God. She cackled and answered.
"Worry not so much. This goddess has handled everything herself. Thou need only savor the feeling of restored health."
"Still, I'm curious. At least tell me what she did to make my body healthier."
"I simply ripped away a massive amount of the jeong-gi that fox lady had been gathering. With more jeong-gi, the rate of thy body's collapse has slowed, so thou feelest relatively healthy."
Having answered matter-of-factly, the Fox God pointed at the monitor and continued.
"Thou need not concern thyself with anything else. Simply think of how to extract more jeong-gi. This goddess shall handle all the rest."
"That's a pretty hard line to buy. After all the idiotic shit you've pulled, you want me to trust you?"
"Thou must place thy full trust in this goddess."
"I'd sooner leave fish with a cat than trust you. Even if the sky splits in two, I will never trust you."
Trust the bitch who erased my precious baby-maker and flipped my entire life to hard mode? Yeah, right. Even if she offered me a fortune to believe a single word, I wouldn't. Her track record so far had been far too spectacular for blind faith.
I was staring hard at the Fox God as she wore that unreadable little smile when the doorbell rang, followed by the sound of a delivery guy setting down a package and leaving.
Finally. The essential item for the next stream.
I used a fox's incredible hearing to confirm there was no one nearby, then cracked the door open just enough to stick my arm out and pull the package inside.
The moment the box entered the apartment, the Fox God lit up with curiosity. She turned it this way and that, then spoke as if fascinated.
"And what is this now? Judging by the packaging, it looks like clothing."
"It is clothing. Just the kind you absolutely cannot wear outside—or even at home, under any normal circumstances."
"Indecent clothes, then. So why didst thou purchase this cumbersome garment? Art thou preparing some manner of ritual?"
At her question, I grinned and told her exactly what the outfit was for.
"The concept for the next stream is a ridiculously hot fox nun who takes confessions."