Chapter 45: Office
Chapter 45: Office
If I had to describe the Eastern Continent as I saw it through the screen, I'd have called it the Oriental Continent.
It looked like a world where someone had blended East Asia into a vague soup and then seasoned it with a Western gaze drunk on oriental fantasy.
Setting aside the reversed gender roles that didn't come across well on a screen,
even in a city of concrete and high-rises, the same aesthetic was everywhere.
A traditional restaurant with a lantern-shaped sign mixed Korean tile roofing with the corridors of a Japanese mansion.
A cultural festival held at something like a museum paired Chinese lion masks with fire-juggling dances.
Everything was jumbled together exactly the way a Westerner might depict Eastern cultures without distinguishing one country from another.
That was what the world looked like through the screen.
But once I went down in person, the gender-role reversal hit much harder than the Oriental-continent aesthetic.
A matriarchal society where the social positions of men and women were swapped, but the clothing and cosmetics hadn't been exchanged.
Men didn't wear skirts, and women didn't grow beards, so from a distance it looked no different from ordinary Earth.
When I descended using an avatar, the story shifted.
Maybe it was because I'd become a dream demon, but the first thing I registered was the women's sticky stares.
Not the gazes of apocalypse survivors sizing up whether a man was a threat.
These were sexual stares, fixed on my groin and chest.
Like trying to sense whether a creature lurked beyond a dark tunnel,
the looks from women on the street stung.
I didn't find it unpleasant.
Whether it was because I'd turned into a dream demon or because I wasn't actually a man native to this world,
I could just brush it off with an "oh well" and move on.
From a middle-aged office worker with a leering face to a plain-looking student with a choppy bob who seemed not to know how to dress herself,
they all couldn't help letting their eyes land on a well-built man.
It was the way men in my old world would sneak glances at a beautiful woman in skimpy clothes walking down the street.
I wandered the streets for a while, then headed toward Han Ye-ji's guild building.
My avatar-operating time had increased, and I'd learned to move through this world almost like I belonged.
Rather than popping into existence in the office, I wanted to walk in from the first floor holding a coffee, like a normal visitor.
No particular reason except that I wanted to feel alive.
The hardship I'd endured during the apocalypse must have sunk into my very soul,
because just tapping a visitor card and riding an elevator was pure joy.
Simply using the conveniences that an intact, un-ruined civilization provided felt good.
Even so, I'd bought the coffee with points.
Enjoying civilization's perks was one thing; tasting that 1-point coffee was the real issue.
The coffee bought with points was, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, better than anything sold at market.
For a plain americano, it was practically addictive.
Thanks to Lee Ha-rin, who'd somehow become a major art-world player through the rituals,
a single cup of coffee a day — a fixed monthly cost of 30pt — didn't burden me in the slightest.
The points coming in now had easily skipped past the thousands and were well into the tens of thousands.
Even if you treated 1 point as 1 won, a monthly allowance of five hundred thousand won meant a 30-won junk-food purchase was nothing.
'A Constellation's recognition affects their point income... I didn't think it would work like this.'
On top of that, the points a Constellation earned scaled with their Incarnation's deeds and their own visibility,
so buying coffee and bringing it along was itself a way to grow my point balance.
If I went to the office, handed out coffee, and chatted for thirty minutes, several times that amount in points would flow in.
Handing out coffee worth about a hundred points generated around five hundred points' worth of recognition —
not a meaningful income stream, but at least it covered snacks.
Not just snacks for myself, but enough to buy coffee for Han Ye-ji's office and Lee Ha-rin's academy instructors.
the points weren't the point.
I straightened my clothes in front of the elevator mirror.
Dark blue jeans and a navy short-sleeved shirt. A simple, comfortable outfit.
That was by my standards, anyway. Unbutton two buttons here and the story changed.
I'd read about it online earlier.
[spilling the tea on the time I got coffee from a Constellation] +12
[are Constellations' names not way too convoluted lol] +7
[lol ㅋㅋ a Constellation descends at my workplace every week] +89
The Constellation and Incarnation Gallery — the Seonghwa Gallery for short.
An anonymous site where people discussed Constellations and Incarnations, so it drew a huge crowd.
There were Constellation fan cafés and Incarnation fan cafés, but this was the only place you could run your mouth about them anonymously.
Being anonymous, it had racier content than most other sites.
If I thought back to the sites that had existed in my last life, people really were the same everywhere.
The most upvoted posts were highlighted in chronological order,
and all three of the top posts were about me.
Not that I'd looked them up myself — I'd just happened to be beside Lee Ha-rin while she checked the site at her usual daily time.
The post asking whether Constellation names were too convoluted was about my Constellation name.
The poster said Lethargic Nightmare made them imagine some gloomy shut-in slumped in a corner, a hikikomori type,
so what was the deal with the muscular, healthy-looking handsome guy showing up instead.
The coffee story post had captured my avatar taking shape.
Instead of just popping in, apparently some kind of mist rose from the floor and shaped itself into a person.
Since I only opened my eyes after my body was fully formed, watching my avatar take shape from the outside had been utterly fascinating.
The people in this world, used to Constellation and Incarnation Authorities, didn't react at all.
Finally, the post with the most comments was titled [lol ㅋㅋ a Constellation descends at my workplace every week].
There was exactly one reason people were reacting so hard.
It was deliberately picking a fight.
'Have you ever even seen your Constellation's face?'
If you boiled that long, sprawling post down to a single line, that was it.
Apparently one of Han Ye-ji's office coworkers had a talent for provoking people — maybe a veteran internet troll.
The post had rubbed raw every Incarnation who adored their own Constellation — adored them in a romantic sense — all the Constellation otaku.
People who weren't Incarnations but loved Constellations got dragged along with them.
Our Constellation dresses sharply, brings us coffee every week, and chats with us — what about yours?
Wasn't comparison the most incendiary form of internet bait?
Watching the comments update in real time on that post drove it home.
Hundreds of comments flooded in, crossed the line and got deleted, got rewritten —
even after that cycle of writing and deletion, dozens remained standing.
How influential did a Constellation have to be for the mere fact one visited your office — not even a Constellation you were contracted to — to become a brag this massive?
Some of the venomous comments held such vivid jealousy I could feel it through the monitor.
I was checking the comments on the sly when the elevator chimed and the doors opened.
"Oh, Constellation, you're here! Let me grab the coffee."
A woman whose face I was starting to recognize sprang up from near the elevator and hurried over.
At the same time, her voice — energetic to the point of booming — drew a whole flock of stares.
The usual office members plus the handful of visitors, all of them.
Maybe it was the short-sleeved shirt, but the looks felt a little more persistent than usual.
Just because men and women's roles were reversed didn't mean masculinity and femininity had been swapped.
In the end, was it that women were drawn to roughly the same parts of a man?
Thick hands, the veins standing out on the back of the hand, well-muscled forearms, the glimpse of a muscular chest and collarbone through an undone shirt, a solid neck.
The reaction that followed finding those attractive was different; the body parts that triggered the reaction hadn't weirdly shifted.
'Though... when I see them wanting to bury their faces in a man's chest or biceps, maybe something has changed...?'
that was face to face. The perverts running wild behind internet anonymity — that was a different story.
Judging a whole world by the deviants online was tough.
In my old world, hadn't there been more than a handful of guys who got off on ponies or Pokémon?
Hell, high on drugs, some of them even went into heat over female-type creatures that still looked mostly human.
"Constellation, you came!"
"I did. Anything happen today?"
Han Ye-ji came out from the back of the office to greet me, and her seniors and juniors quietly shifted aside.
A deference toward a man and a Constellation saturated the whole office.
They only widened the distance a little, of course — I pretended not to notice them sipping their coffee and stealing glances my way.
It wasn't like I was being sexually harassed by some old crone, and I wasn't about to get angry just because young women were looking at me.
The angle was a little different, but I'd gotten plenty of appraising looks back during the apocalypse when I moved in groups.
If I give this man my body, will he protect me? — that sort of look.
Different intent, but still a calculating gaze.
"A few interview requests came in after that last incident. Other than that... not much. The occasional drunk Incarnation we have to subdue, I guess?"
"That so? Stay careful anyway. You never know when some strange character might pop up."
She beamed, and I smiled back.
I rested my hand lightly over hers where it sat on the desk, a little awkwardly.
Her hand twitched under mine.
The reason I came all this way for small talk we could've had in dreams was simple.
In dreams, we were busy.
In that sense, obviously.
She was laughing brightly in the office now, but once she entered my dreams tonight, she'd be whining and clinging again.