My Perverted Furry Friend Comes Calling
Weird.
A sudden flood of KakaoTalk messages from a guy who normally never contacted me at all. He said he needed about a million won in emergency cash.
Had he gotten into some kind of trouble?
But this bastard was a shut-in hikikomori who never left the house. There wasn't even anything for him to get into trouble with.
"...Voice phishing? No—the way he talks is way too much like that asshole for that. Still, it's weird. Other than manga, the guy never impulse-buys anything. He's not the type who'd need emergency cash."
I wrestled with it.
Should I lend him the money or not?
For a friendless shut-in loner, he was weirdly meticulous about money. If I lent it, he'd almost certainly pay it back... but something about this time felt off. I kept turning it over until I decided to go check on his situation in person first, then lend him the money.
If he was mixed up in something dangerous, I'd need to tell his parents right away.
After sending that dismissive reply, I finished my day's work the next day and headed straight for his studio apartment.
"Do I really have to come twice a month? Hauling out his trash every time is getting to be a real pain."
I wasn't his damn janitor. The fact that I cleaned up his garbage for the sake of his health every time I visited was ridiculous enough on its own.
"If he hasn't taken it out again today, I'm just not lending him the money. It's too good for a bastard who won't even put in the bare minimum of effort."
I stood at the door and pressed the buzzer. Normally I'd hear some irritated grumbling by now, but strangely, there was no sound at all.
"...This bastard. Don't tell me he actually left the house?"
No. That shut-in loner didn't have that kind of initiative. He'd probably walked for five minutes, decided he couldn't handle it, and turned right back around. Which left the remaining possibility: he was still napping this late in the day.
"God, he's lazy as hell. Some of us get up at dawn and work like ants."
A parasite freeloading off his parents' backs. If our talk went sideways today, I was just going to deck him.
I punched in the door code with that resolution firmly in mind, and stepped inside—only to be greeted by pitch-black darkness.
"...Fuck, it reeks in here. What is this, a raccoon den? Smells like something rotting."
"Well, not a raccoon den... though a fox den does seem about right."
"What?"
I spun toward the unfamiliar voice beside me in alarm, but it was already too late—a frying pan came whipping through the air, ready to split my skull.
"Fuck my life."
CLANG!
A clear, ringing sound, and then a dizzying pain bloomed from the crown of my head. A few seconds later, when the agony peaked, I couldn't hold on any longer—and blacked out.
My friend took the frying pan I'd swung square on the head and crumpled to the floor like a sack of potatoes. He went down so limply I briefly wondered if I'd killed him, but thankfully he was still breathing, so I relaxed and tied him to the bed.
"I hold no ill will toward you, my friend. Forgive me for making this choice."
"First you commit the deed, then you beg forgiveness from a party who cannot even hear you—a madwoman if ever there was one. But tell me, why knock him unconscious when words alone might have resolved the matter?"
"Because the second he sees me like this, he's only got two options."
"Two options, you say? And what, pray, might those be?"
"Either he fucks me senseless, or he runs like hell. If this guy came home drunk, the first one's very likely. If he's sober and in his usual state of mind, the second."
I answered without hesitation, and the Fox God stared at me with a blank look before firing back.
"They say birds of a feather flock together—and sure enough, your vulgarity is no different from his."
"Don't talk crazy. Unlike that animal-fucking fetish freak, I'm a connoisseur of hotness with perfectly normal tastes."
"That may be the finest joke I have heard yet. Is this what you would call, in your own words, 'bullshit'?"
"Bullshit, nothing. You saw it yourself yesterday—a commission client called me a connoisseur of hotness."
"...From where I stood, it looked more like two identical degenerates consoling each other."
The Fox God gave me a look of pure pity, then glanced at my friend lying on the bed.
"You two seem rather close."
"Less close, more of a pain in the ass. Nineteen years of friendship—we know each other way too well."
"Heh heh... Then is that not a fine bond? Extracting jeong-gi from your friend would not be such a terrible—"
"Don't even start. I'm not gay. Why the hell would I extract jeong-gi from that bastard? What kind of lunatic looks at the choice between kissing his ball-buddy and kissing his buddy's balls and picks both?"
"From where I sit, you are already quite thoroughly mad. And if one is already mad, what harm is a little more madness?"
Watching her try every angle to persuade me, I grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter, pressed it to my wrist, and said:
"Keep talking. I slit my wrists right here and we both go down together. Mutual annihilation."
"...I apologize. This one was entirely in the wrong."
"No, you didn't do anything wrong. I just want to die."
A man draining jeong-gi from another man didn't make any sense to begin with, did it? At least if I killed myself now, I wouldn't have to feel the psychological agony.
Wow. Even I had to admit that was a stroke of genius.
"Compose yourself. You seem rather overwrought."
"I am perfectly composed. I lost everything that mattered to me in the span of two days—would you want to keep living?"
"By 'everything that mattered,' you mean your reproductive organ, I presume. Is copulation truly so important?"
"You think I'm saying this over a dick?"
I glared at the Fox God, pulled my ID card from the wallet sitting on the desk, and held it up for her to see.
"See this? This is how you prove who you are. But my face has changed like this. So can I prove my identity or not?"
"...It would seem not."
"Right. I can't prove who I am. And every human relationship I've built collapses overnight. You asked earlier why I cracked my nineteen-year friend's skull? Because if I didn't, I'd get dragged off by the cops for home invasion. This apartment belongs to my old body. This body isn't the owner."
I felt genuinely bad for my friend, but I'd planned to clock him over the head from the moment I walked in. If he'd been drinking, the odds of getting raped were close to seventy percent. If he hadn't, he'd take one look at me and report a home invasion. Either way was a disaster, so I'd decided to lock him up first and take the time to talk him around.
Of course, with only six days left to live, I didn't have much time to spare.
Then again—how was I actually going to convince him? He was colder and sharper than he looked. Even if I spilled every single black mark from our shared past, he probably wouldn't buy it.
Tch. If it came to that, I'd just have to threaten him into cooperating.
I sank into that problem for a good long while before the Fox God spoke up, her voice thick with worry.
"A-are you all right?"
"About what? The persuasion? Well, what I'm doing is basically a real-life yandere routine, but what choice do I have? I'll just pretend I've been possessed by a yandere for a bit and talk him into it."
"Not that. I mean your human relationships. I appointed you as my Apostle in such haste that you have suffered for it..."
"Don't worry about it. How many people am I even close to? At most, it's this bastard and my family. Everyone else? Commission clients I've never even seen face-to-face. And if I can just convince the guy tied to that bed, the family will be no problem."
Having one person vouch for you versus having none made a world of difference. If I could just get this furry-obsessed freak on board, my family—who barely paid attention to me anyway—would come around in no time.
"Think he'd fold instantly if I let him touch the tails? They do look pretty fluffy."
"They do not merely look fluffy—they are fluffy! Do you know how comfortable it is to sleep holding one?"
"...You can sleep holding them?"
Taking the Fox God's advice, I carefully slid a tail between my thighs.
Let's see. Out of exactly nine, I could probably sleep holding just one. Shove any more between my legs and it'd get so uncomfortable I wouldn't sleep at all.
I wrapped my arms around the tail, and the sensation hit me like a soft plush toy fused with the unique silkiness of fox fur—a murderously comfortable combination.
This thing was broken. Sleep with one of these and you'd pass out like a baby.
...Aside from the fact that it was getting a little too itchy between my legs.
I was still hugging that narcotic tail, basking in pure bliss, when my friend started to stir—groaning as he came to.
"Ugh, my head... What kind of deranged bitch cracks someone over the skull with a frying pan?"
"This bitch right here, you bastard. Friends can crack each other over the head with a frying pan every now and then. Why are you making such a fuss about it like some little girl?"
"...I've never heard that voice before. The way of talking is his, but the voice isn't."
In a voice gone ice-cold, my friend—still bound to the bed—locked eyes with me, murder written plain across his face.
"Where the hell did you sell my friend, you fucking bitch?"