A Room You Can't Leave Until You've Done XX
I was an utterly ordinary — completely, thoroughly ordinary — burnt-out office worker, just living out my life in the year 2026....
Could it be all the overtime I've been putting in lately?
At some point, out of nowhere, I started getting sleep paralysis night after night.
I'd had the occasional episode back in the day, so I didn't pay it much mind. No — the important part was that, at the very edge of my vision...
Sob... hic...!
—accompanied by a quiet weeping, something had begun to seep into view, little by little.
Bit by bit, its outline sharpened into focus. Something white, and pillowy, and boingy-boingy....
And that something was none other than a heinous, absolutely titanic...
"Whoa… check out them badonkers."
[??]
—was that not a long-haired woman swathed head to toe in a white robe, concealing a figure of astounding, supernatural proportions beneath it...?!
"Hnnngh… maman… num-num milkies…."
[What is this lunatic?]
Forming our two-piece con team was all well and good, but we ran into a small snag right out of the gate.
First, exactly as our scenario demanded, we selected a suitably worn-down male office worker (we picked him because he looked loaded) and successfully planted Cheogwi inside his home. Then we even managed to approach the man — who'd been startled awake by the sight of her and sprouted dark circles from the shock — with a few meaningfully loaded remarks....
"My, my. Dark circles that deep mean you've gotten yourself into quite a dangerous situation, I'd say. You haven't been tormented by anything super-natural lately, have you? A white-robed virgin ghost appearing while you sleep, perhaps?"
"Gah! H-how on earth did you know?!"
"Haha! Rest assured. I am, in fact, an exorcist. I provide a comprehensive, flawless solution to every spiritual and supernatural affliction that breeds domestic discord and stress, resolving my valued customers' troubles at a modest and reasonable price — that is the nature of my business, you might say."
It was the very moment I reached for one of the business cards I'd rushed out at the print shop.
"Please let me have sex with a virgin ghost!!"
"...I beg your pardon?"
I beg your pardon?
"Please let me have sex with a virgin gh—"
THWACK!
"Don't go announcing it to the whole street, you lunatic!"
"KYAAAAH...!"
THUD...
Because the client's request deviated ever so slightly from what I'd been led to expect, I'd reflexively brought down a Death Chop on the crown of his skull and knocked him out cold.
For the record, the Death Chop was my signature, sure-kill finishing technique, deployed frequently back in the old days to resolve disagreements among fellow survivors. (The force is adjustable so that nobody actually dies.)
"Murmur, murmur... is this gonna blow up online or what? Murmur, murmur."
"That Death Chop just now was fucking incredible, fr. Murmur, murmur."
Hm... it's the morning commute. Far too many eyes on us.
Drrrrrrag...
Given the abundance of watching eyes, I decided to escort my briefly unconscious client back to his home for a house call, where we could discuss the particulars. I'd already scoped the place out when I planted Cheogwi inside, so this was hardly a challenge.
"Cheogwi~ I'm here. Open up."
[It's daytime, I don't feel like exerting myself. Passcode's 2468*, so let yourself in.]
Ugh.... how is a thing like that a supernatural entity? It should be the one getting walloped with a supernatural plank and bawling its head off.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep, ding-dooong~!
Left with no choice, I propped the client up with one hand and punched in the passcode with the other.
"Hm? A man living alone, and the interior is surprisingly tidy? That's unexpected."
An exhausted bachelor salaryman who also keeps his place spotless? That is, for all intents and purposes, Tier-1 husband material.
Of course, in light of his being a pervert who goes into heat over virgin ghosts, I demoted him to Tier 15.
[The guy kept apologizing that the place was too dirty for me, and apparently he's been cleaning since first thing this morning?]
Demoted him to Tier 16.
"Kya... would you look at that — popular with the men the moment you're dead. A femme fatale through and through, our Cheogwi. 10/10. You, Cheogwi, possess a talent for mass-producing humpers of thin air, and I hereby acknowledge it."
Perhaps at a loss over my salacious compliments, Cheogwi — who had sworn she was saving her strength in the daytime — abruptly materialized and began advancing on me, cracking her knuckles with sharp pops.
[Lol, you little shit... how about it? Care to shoot one more installment of the Death Game right here?]
"Ohh... so you're closing in on me? You, the weakest of all the Chasers, closing in on me, the Death Game champion?"
[...I can't wring your neck unless I get close, now can I?]
"Hohoho... then by all means, give yourself every opportunity to close in. That is, if you'd care to sample the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch I have prepared in your honor."
Not that I'd done anything more than watch a YouTube tutorial on how to make holy water and fill a few water balloons with it.
At any rate, the sight of the anti-great-fiend grenade briefly restored Cheogwi's reason, and she let her materialization go. And then, perhaps sensing some psychic shift, our client finally came to.
"Uuugh... huh? You're... the exorcist?"
"Ah, welcome back, my dear customer."
"But why are you in my house? I never gave you the passcode."
....Hm. Oh, right. What do I even say here. Time to improvise something vague.
"Haha! You see, our client's energies were so depleted that he up and fainted on the spot! So I escorted him home personally. And then, wouldn't you know it, his front door just happened to be unlocked again? I suspect that virgin ghost of yours left a little prank in store for you. Haha."
"Ohh... I see. You've just saved me a hospital bill. Thank you."
Watching him fret over the hospital costs gave me a faint pang of doubt about whether I would ever actually collect my consultation fee.
"Now, now — shall we return to our super-natural subject? With the virgin ghost, you wish to, ahem...."
"Ah, you mean the se—"
"You wish to engage in carnal intercourse, yes?"
"...Yes. If you insist on putting it quaintly, I suppose that is one way to phrase it."
But seriously — why, of all conceivable targets, would you go into heat over a ghost? As a normal, red-blooded humper of humans, I simply could not comprehend it.
"...Why? Do you perhaps have some trouble... with human women?"
"No... it's not exactly that."
Then, all of a sudden, his eyes slid away.
"So... Mr. Client — terribly rude of me upon such brief acquaintance, but — have you ever done the secks with a woman?"
"...Why would that interest you?"
He hasn't. My bad for asking.
"...It's nothing at all. Whether a man is a virgin or not is... spiritually speaking, a distinction of great importance, you see."
"In any case, hm... the thing about this intercourse of yours is that it is an exceedingly dangerous act, both physically and mentally, and my personal recommendation would be that, in place of intercourse, you simply let me perform a virgin-ghost exor—"
"YOU SCOLD HER, YOU GET OOOOOUT!!"
"—orcised, which is, I'll admit, one method among many — but if you insist upon the intercourse, I shall make one attempt. Let us begin with a brief Soul Chat."
I turned my gaze to the ceiling and, with an air of deep significance, pressed a finger to each of my temples and closed my eyes. (The gesture is not, strictly speaking, necessary.)
And then, silently, I sent my thoughts to Cheogwi from the depths of my soul...!
Cheogwi? So... um, by any chance...
[You. Are. Dead. Meat.]
Okay. Copy that.
One or two more provocations, I sensed, and I might get to witness firsthand the ultimate technique Cheogwi had wielded in her Chaser days — so I resolved not to poke her any further.
"So... I just asked her myself, and it seems the virgin ghost isn't interested?"
"Lies... that's a lie! What about last night, when she crept up to me and seduced me?!"
"No, I really did just ask her."
That said, watching this office worker deploy a "well, YOU came onto ME first" against a ghost — a non-human, mind you — I was struck by the gut feeling that, had he been born a woman, he would have matured into a truly first-rate menhera.
[And now he's spouting that "you seduced me first" crap. All I did was show up beside him while he was sleeping and let out a single sob. One sob. That's it.]
[Welp. It's cooked. We're cooked. Let's just give up on this guy and move on somewhere else.]
Tsk, tsk. If you give up on the first attempt, do you imagine the second one will simply succeed? The harder the endeavor, the more your renown soars when you pull it off. Frustration is what forges a man.
Not just anyone can make a living as a con artist. It is work that simply cannot be done without loyalty and grit.
[Fine, then what ARE we gonna do?]
Now, look. What he wants is a virgin ghost — but it doesn't have to be you, does it? It's not as though there's only one virgin ghost in the world.
[Huh. Now that you mention it, he only ever saw my chest. My face was hidden behind my hair, so he probably never got a look.]
You're a what-you-see-is-what-you-get ghost, after all — pull a terrifying stunt like that, and of course the poor sap turns into a humper of thin air.
So, first, we abduct a wild virgin ghost off the street.
[Ooh.]
Then we lock him and the wild virgin ghost in a room neither can leave until they've banged. With a tasteful application of talismans, naturally.
As for virgin-ghost talismans, I had used them to my heart's content throughout the Death Game, so I remembered every last stroke of every hanja by heart.
[That is a genuinely human-garbage plan. Did you spare a single thought for the wild virgin ghost's position?]
And what's YOUR position on it?
[I obviously couldn't care less. Love it — let's start right now!]
Haha, you adorable little piece of trash!
Behold this fiend, selling out a ghost-type fiend just like herself without a moment's hesitation.
So in the end, Cheogwi, too, was a fiend plain and simple, steeped head to toe in malice!
Truly, the only one you can rely on is yourself.
Being ghost-type Pokémon of the same type, Cheogwi succeeded in tracking down an unemployed virgin ghost — one who had been squeaking back and forth on a swing at the neighborhood playground — in well under an hour.
Seeing that, I begin to suspect that, on the Korean Peninsula at least, virgin ghosts occupy roughly the same niche as Pidgey or Rattata.
The process by which Cheogwi escorted the wild virgin ghost to the destination was likewise remarkably simple.
[Psst, psst... if you head over there, there's a house where a blond, tanned, stupidly-handsome Western guy lives, psst, psst... and word is his xx is a whopping 23 centimeters, psst, psst...]
[Haaahhh?! For reals?!]
....
Anyway.
While Cheogwi finished her persuasion and brought the target over, I sent the client to wait in a windowless room. Then, having prepared a grand total of fifty virgin-ghost-binding talismans (forty-nine of them prints of the original)...
the instant the wild virgin ghost stepped into the room where the client waited—!
I snapped the lock shut and, in the same breath, bound the door completely with a rope strung with all fifty talismans, sealing it beyond escape...!!
I daresay I can now declare with all due confidence: this room has become a joint human-and-fiend facility from which no one may exit until the X is done.
Now get to banging, the both of you.
[Thump-thump...!]
"Somebody get me popcorn!!"