The Goddess's Convenient Sex Repayment
The sun beat down mercilessly. Once again, I squeezed myself into the crowded bus among the throng of people.
It was the height of rush hour. Everyone, myself included, wore exhausted, haggard expressions.
No one wanted to bump into anyone else—not even the person sitting right beside them. The entire bus was filled with office workers wearing earbuds, each lost in their own solitary daydreams in a desperate attempt to minimize stress.
Another fucking day begins.
Work. Get crushed. Get yelled at.
While others sat comfortably in the office, I had to lug a water cooler on my back and haul it all the way inside, only to be given more orders the moment I arrived. Sweat soaked through my dress shirt and clung disgustingly to my skin. If I tried to grab a cup of coffee after that, I’d get scolded for being drenched in sweat and told to wipe myself down first.
Was it because I was too narrow-minded that this left me feeling so miserable?
I wiped the sweat away and returned to my desk, hammering at the keyboard. That was my actual job. But then a stack of papers would come flying at my head, and the cycle of endless new tasks would repeat. No matter how hard I tried, my performance never improved. I could never join the group laughing together in the distance. It hadn’t been this bad at first, but before I knew it, this had become my reality.
A man my age, desperately clinging to his position just to hold on. That was me.
When I first joined the company, I had ambition for promotion… but somehow I’d turned into the guy who got asked to move heavy things, who took on everyone else’s work, who couldn’t even join casual everyday conversations.
I hadn’t made any major mistakes, yet at some point I’d ended up treated like this…
When the workday finally ended, there were group dinners… but I was always left behind.
People said pork belly wasn’t good for someone my age, but I couldn’t ruin the mood, so I forced it down. That was fine. The real problem came the day they fed me something like spicy mala hotpot and I nearly threw up. I genuinely couldn’t handle dishes with that strong herbal scent. After that, I was labeled as someone who couldn’t keep up with the younger generation’s tastes and started eating alone. By the time the meal ended, my routine became watching everyone else stroll back to the office with coffee in hand, laughing and chatting freely.
The sense of alienation had disappeared long ago.
They didn’t care about me either.
But… why did it turn out like this… That thought haunted me every single day.
I’d done exactly what my parents told me—studied through the night, worked hard, and joined a decent company. Yet now I was barely scraping by. My personal relationships were a complete mess. I didn’t know a single woman. The only contacts in my phone were business associates and old school friends. Even those had mostly stopped reaching out because everyone was too busy.
I knew exactly where I stood in this company. I knew it would be nearly impossible to advance from here.
…I had considered quitting.
But… what about the loans? How would I live from now on? At this age, in this economic climate, reemployment was practically hopeless…
Every year when I went home, my parents asked when I was getting married. They nagged me for allowance money, saying they were getting too old to work. Every year, wedding invitations and news of marriages flooded in from people around me, each one demanding a gift envelope. It wasn’t a huge amount, but watching everyone else’s happy news while I felt like a hamster stuck on a wheel brought its own small but constant stress.
And when I looked outside, it was night again.
Another overtime shift… My subordinate was ignoring me and heading off to drink with the others.
The woman who joined recently was nothing like me—she had excellent social skills and had already carved out her own solid position. You could call her the queen bee. I had no right to criticize her. If I did, the arrows of blame would surely turn on me. So I ignored it and finished my work.
On the way home, I grabbed two cans of beer, one of those new, reasonably priced convenience store lunch boxes, and some snacks to go with it.
Back in my one-room apartment, I opened the windows to air out the lonely bachelor smell. After a shower, I clicked away on my laptop while finishing the beer and food, then rubbed my stomach. The body that had stayed slim no matter what I ate during my school days had become the belly of a middle-aged man. Lately my stomach had been hurting, and I was seriously considering going to the hospital.
“Should I take sick leave… But they’ll give me dirty looks…”
The small amount of alcohol blurred my vision. I muttered to myself about sick leave while watching webtoons on my laptop…
My hobbies and thoughts were still the same as when I was young, yet here I was, repeating regrets about becoming this kind of middle-aged man before falling asleep. I realized even the anime I used to love so much now filled me with nothing but shame.
Another fucking day begins.
Even though I’d been thinking about taking sick leave yesterday, I naturally went to work again.
Work. Get crushed. Get yelled at.
Inside that endless hamster-wheel routine, the pain in my gut never went away.
One day. Two days. Three. Four. A whole week passed. I kept showing up with the vague thought that things would get better with time. A few more days after that, and my face had turned a sickly yellow. The stubbornness that had kept me going could no longer hide the problem. I finally mentioned taking sick leave.
“Sick leave? What sick leave?”
It was exactly the reaction I had expected.
Fortunately they didn’t stop me. After a few minutes of scolding, I stepped out of the building.
“Haa……”
When I came to my senses, the world looked blurry.
This… this might actually be dangerous. The thought felt painfully real.
There were no major hospitals nearby, so I took the subway. Unlike the morning rush, it wasn’t commuting hours now. The train was quiet—almost empty. I let my body sway with the rattling subway car, too drained to fight the motion.
“Ah… ugh… ah……”
The yellow-tinted world shook. The stress I had buried beneath my emotions crawled up like a swarm of ants biting at my toes. If I relaxed even a little, I felt like I would collapse forward. I kept breathing heavily, waiting to reach my destination.
“Ugh—!”
When the train braked, the jolt sent me stumbling out onto the platform in a half-falling posture.
The station was completely deserted. The unique damp, metallic smell of the subway filled the air. Thankfully I didn’t collapse onto the floor. I stood there like a zombie, staring at the ground, when I noticed cold sweat pouring down like a waterfall.
If I stayed like this, I’d get dehydrated…
I’d die…
Instinctive fear kicked in. I tried to move my legs, but they barely responded. I flailed weakly while still looking down at the floor. If anyone had been there, they might have seen this ridiculous sight and helped me. But the platform was empty.
“Huu… heh… uuuuuh… huu… uuuuuh……”
Before I knew it, I had become one with the floor.
The characteristic coldness of the subway tiles pressed against my cheek.
I tried to stand, but I couldn’t.
Huu… huuuh… huu……
I wanted to say something, anything, but no words would come out. In movies or comics, this would be the moment someone spat out their resentment, but even that was impossible for me. It wasn’t that I died instantly or anything. I probably should have felt resentment if I stayed like this a little longer, but something far more shocking appeared before my eyes and sealed my mouth shut.
『$#@$? ^%&*@?! $#^#$^─!!』
What the hell is that…
Something like a writhing octopus was crawling toward me.
It was about the size of my palm, squirming and twitching.
And it was making those grotesque sounds……
『$#^#$^$%&~!!』
Why is something like this in the subway…
A hallucination before death…?
『**&#^#$%#%! #$@#$!!』
I could tell it was trying to say something.
But to see something like this right before dying… I wondered if I was seeing hallucinations instead of the usual life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment. Still, the thing kept coming closer.
Don’t come near me~!
『%#$^%&&&&*#!!!』
The unpleasant, writhing movement felt far too vivid for a hallucination.
A bizarre cry echoed throughout the entire station.
The mass of wriggling flesh drew closer. My exhausted body managed a feeble attempt at resistance, but eventually even that will faded away.
『#$^$%&~!! #$^&&&~?!』
It looked repulsive… but somehow it seemed worried as it approached…
At least it didn’t feel like the same kind of presence as my coworkers who used to talk to me at the office…
When I came to my senses, I was reaching out toward it…
The moment my fingertip touched it—
──Aaaaaah!! I finally survived!
That was our first meeting.
The day the goddess met her savior.