♥Happy Night Shift♥
To be honest, I didn't fully understand a word the good doctor was saying.
If I could keep up with an expert babbling away in a state of pure excitement, I'd have been an expert myself!
For now, let me list out just the things I actually managed to absorb.
In this era, in this place, men were treated as fragile, precious creatures.
The male-to-female birth ratio was apparently around 1:50, to start with.
An extremely lopsided figure.
Because of frequent wars in the distant past, the male population had steadily dwindled, and industry and welfare alike had tilted heavily in women's favor.
Generations of men, living under constant anxiety and tension, had undergone changes at the genetic level.
Aggression dwindled, physical strength declined, and men gradually became more passive.
Women, on the other hand, settled into proactive, assertive personalities, while all manner of physical responses—maternal instinct and desire included—were amplified enormously.
On top of that, natural selection meant only the most beautiful women went on to leave descendants, and the result was the world as it stood today.
As the power gap between the sexes widened and crimes against the endangered male population grew rampant, every nation had established related legislation and government institutions to protect men.
Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to believe any of it.
"But don't worry. Everyone who works here went through a grueling hiring process to get in."
The doctor described the female staff as well-trained dogs on leashes.
"Excuse me, but are you... a man, Doctor?"
I asked, just in case.
"I was born a woman, but what do you think? You can see a bit of the masculine in my appearance, can't you?"
Ah. Understood.
Judging by the way she mimed giving an injection, she was apparently on hormone therapy.
After that, I was wheeled all over the center undergoing a battery of tests.
As I explained my current situation and my muddled memories between exams, the doctor pulled up my overall records for me.
A twenty-five-year-old male college dropout. Family: one mother and one younger sibling, two years his junior.
When I asked why she'd counted my mother as "one," she explained that same-sex marriage was the norm here, so that was simply how people phrased it...
According to the center's intake records from about two weeks ago, an Emergency Male Rescue Call had come in from my home, and a rescue team had been dispatched.
The reported grounds were domestic violence and abuse.
When they recovered me, my consciousness was fading. They tried every measure they could, but I slipped into a coma anyway.
And that was how things had arrived at the present moment.
The life I remembered myself living?
Had all of it been a dream?
I grew up without much of a family to speak of, so I couldn't say I had any deep regrets, but still...
—Tap, tap.
On the way back to the hospital ward I'd woken up in.
I bid farewell to the doctor who had devoted the entire day to me.
"Thank you for everything today, Doctor."
"Just doing my job. I'll see to it about what you mentioned earlier."
I bowed my head in another polite nod.
"Go on in and get some rest."
At those words, I opened the door to Room 903.
Ah. Goddamn it.
A smell my every instinct rejected.
—Click.
I shut the door again.
Then I caught up with the doctor, who was walking away.
"Could you help one more pitiful young man, just this once?"
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On the way back to the counseling room.
With a single phone call, the doctor transformed the counseling room into my private quarters.
"Yes, speaking. This time, I'm afraid you'll have to do me a favor."
"Ah, yes, yes, sorry, what?"
"Haha. Put a bed in the counseling room immediately. You have five minutes."
"Level-one emergency protocol. You know the procedure, yes? Put them on standby rotation. Yes, yes."
"Hmm... good point. Shift them out every two hours, and make sure they wear soft-soled shoes."
"Come now~ the poor thing mustn't wake at the sound of footsteps, must he?"
"Yes~ goodbye."
Is this person, by any chance, a little terrifying?
Either way, all it amounted to was a single bed added in the corner.
Ah, and there were staff members who would be standing night watch for me, too.
Through the big window set into the counseling room door, two female staff members were visible.
"A personal honor guard, huh... this is a bit much for me to carry..."
And then there was the jug the doctor had handed me as a token of her own particular brand of consideration—telling me to use it as a chamber pot.
I'm not using it. I'm not using it.
I'll just walk out and go, like a normal person.
All that orange juice after my evening blood draw had left me needing the bathroom.
I glanced at the clock hanging on the counseling room wall. One in the morning.
Perfect timing—pop to the toilet, then sleep.
—Clunk.
The moment I opened the door to head to the bathroom, the two staff members on duty flinched at the sight of me.
A different scent than Ryuah's.
Tangerine and... grapefruit? Something close to a citrus fragrance.
"Sorry for all the trouble I'm causing you~"
With those words, I passed between the two beauties.
Ah, and here was a fact I'd picked up earlier while being shuffled around the second floor for tests:
The men's bathroom in front of the counseling room was the only men's bathroom in existence.
The floor was enormous, yet the women's restroom, the women's staff lounge... every last facility was for women.
The third floor, where I'd woken up, must have been the mirror image.
As I relieved myself, a stray thought crossed my mind—weren't they cramming the men in a little too tightly?
'Hm... kinda feel like rubbing one out...'
Something about the dead of night put me in the mood.
My ammunition depot, going unspent for two whole weeks, was getting a little restless, you could say?
And not just Ryuah—the night shift staff were all extraordinarily beautiful women, too.
A caliber of beauty fundamentally alien to the world in my memories.
When I'd wandered the second floor during the day, every woman I'd passed—even the ones with some meat on them—had been lush and curvaceous... hadn't they?
There wasn't a trace of anything you could call fat to be found.
'So this is how natural selection worked on women...'
Anyway, in a world overflowing with beauties, this particular pre-dawn hour was getting just a touch hard to endure.
Quiet night. I considered taking care of it alone in the bathroom, but I held back, worried the sound might carry down the corridor.
"Tsk. Back I go."
Finished with my business, I stepped out of the bathroom and walked toward the counseling room.
A distance of barely ten meters.
I could see the staff members fidgeting restlessly in front of the door.
I gave them another polite bow, opened the door, slipped inside, and settled in to sleep.
It had been a day in which so very much had changed, so I drifted off with ease.
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1:06 a.m.
Second floor of the Men's Protection Center, outside the counseling room.
Nowhere on Earth, at this hour, would anyone be more worked up with lust than these two virgins.
A scent so unmistakable that any other woman would have clocked it instantly.
The two of them were pumping out a monstrous cloud of pheromones.
That dense musk was guaranteed to linger until the next shift change.
Besides, a man was sleeping mere feet away from them. The only thing standing between the two women and him was a single wall.
The opportunity for a forcible X that existed only in their imaginations.
Their breathing grew slightly ragged, and a heat was rising deep in their bellies.
These two women had even exchanged words with a member of the male sex (greeting received: one time)—they had taken one step closer to bidding their virginity farewell...!!
Night shift.
A situation in which conversation between the two of them could only grow deeper.
Fellow soldiers in the war to say goodbye to virginity—of course they wanted to talk!
"Hey... Arin...!"
"Quiet."
The staff members whispering so the man inside wouldn't wake.
Siyeon and Arin.
"You signed up for standby support to get assigned here, didn't you?"
"Th-they pay a bonus, don't they? I came here to make money."
Staff who'd applied for night standby hoping for so much as a glimpse of a man—never mind actual contact—numbered over seventy-four.
And of those, only about six had been selected.
"Did you see him earlier? When he spoke to us?"
"It was just a greeting. What's got you so worked up."
"I wish I could've held his hand, just once..."
"There you go again, you horny bitch."
"You never know... now that we've been introduced, who's to say what comes next?"
"Don't you dare do anything stupid. Just getting hired here is more than I could ask for, as far as I'm concerned."
Arin was cracking the whip, but sure enough, she too was one hungry female.
His greeting, looping in her head, made her belly clench and flutter♥.
Her poker face held, but Arin's shoulders were trembling, ever so faintly.
It was patently obvious that the moment she got home, she'd be putting her partner 'Jihun' (vibration function included) to work.
♥ Incidentally, Siyeon is a hands-only girl. ♥
"You saw the staff board blowing up this afternoon, right?"
"Who hasn't seen it... it even made it onto Bl*nd."
That app everyone called the Every*ime (community) of the working world.
Just listing 'Men's Protection Center' as your employer was enough to pull in dozens of incoming messages.
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Desire came gushing up at the knowledge that the man everyone was talking about was sleeping right behind their backs.
To say it once more: both of them were virgins.
"Support Team 1 posted a photo in the group chat this evening, and nobody even reacted?"
"We've traded air in the same room. Looking at a photo after that just feels, y'know, hollow."
"Same. If I weren't on duty tonight I'd have gone at it at home."
To be fair, when Arin said "hollow," she'd brought Jihun along with her.
As the deep, meaningful late-night talk wound on, the two virgins' night shift drew toward its end.
—Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps climbing the central staircase.
"Hrk."
In an instant, the air on the second floor turned thick and cloying, and the two of them felt physically sick.
"No unusual findings during shift."
"Handover notes are written up here."
The status board listed his bedtime, the room temperature, the humidity, and the bathroom usage log.
"We'll be heading off now."
"See you~"
Siyeon and Arin left with a faint trace of reluctance, consoling themselves with thoughts of round two at home.
Today's side dish was as good as a meat course, so no worries there.
3 a.m.
The staff taking over the shift picked up the status board—and saw one line where a number had been written in a very, very bold hand.
Bathroom usage: 1.
Just what information was this line conveying...?
As the heat rose, slow and simmering, the happy night shift carried on.
Mmmm♥
