Late-Night Whispers: Twenty-One Pages of Rude Awakening
Chapter 31: Recommendations for Material, Part 1As always, the aftermath of finishing a serious bout left the body weighed down with exhaustion. Once the energy drained out of your system, your physical frame simply refused to function properly.My limbs felt loose and floppy, my head was strangely heavy, and my eyelids kept drooping downward as if something weighted had been placed on top of them.The ancients weren't just making things up when they described someone drained of their jeong (vital essence) as frail and feeble.Of course, blowing four loads didn't actually leave a person on the verge of death. It was just a heavy dose of fatigue.Still, the feeling was great."Hoo—haah."Strolling down the night street, I paused to take a deep breath.The chilled night air flowed in and out of my lungs. I always felt this way, but the air at night somehow felt much more alluring than during the day.Especially right after having sex, even this smog-mixed air felt oddly refreshing."Phew, what a sexy weather."11:30 PM.Right now, I was walking back to my own place after parting ways with Sung Arin.Originally, I would've liked to grab a bite to eat together after leaving the motel... but by 11 PM, all the restaurants were already closed.Even if we wanted to find a pub, we both had things to do the next day, so ending the night early was inevitable.Sung Arin had also looked reluctant to leave, casting lingering glances at me after washing up in the motel room.Well, I felt a bit bummed too, but it wasn't like we couldn't meet again later.Since our places were only a thirty-minute walk apart, we had plenty of time to hang out as long as we lined up our schedules.Suddenly, I remembered what Arin had said right before we parted."U-Um, see you later! And... take care of me!"Her face had turned bright red, as if she was summoning every ounce of courage she had just to spit those words out.The awkwardly uptight corners of her lips and the flush on her cheeks were quite funny. What the hell was she even asking me to take care of?I had half a mind to tease her about it right then and there, but I held back for the sake of an energetic tomorrow. I really was dead tired.Instead, I gave her this parting gift:"Sure. Make sure you use what I drew for you to rub one out properly.""! No way!"That had been the end of it, leaving her with a thoroughly scorched face.I heard some muffled bullshit from behind me protesting, "I don't masturbate!" but I completely ignored it. After all the proof you gave me about how many times you came, who do you think you're fooling?It was a blatant, crystal-clear lie—purer and more transparent than Sung Arin's own cum.Anyway, after walking for a few minutes while reminiscing about what happened just moments ago, I finally arrived at my studio apartment.My quiet and cozy nest came into view. I roughly shed my clothes and collapsed straight onto the mattress.Thud—My soft sanctuary enveloped my entire body. It felt like the fatigue accumulated over the entire day was melting away."···Phew."A sigh slipped naturally from my lungs.I'd felt it at the motel too, but beds were truly a god-given invention.Even if the 'Lee Sewon' of this world couldn't really afford a proper bed, there was a good reason why I had insisted on buying at least a decent mattress.It improved the quality of sleep so drastically that I would've gone into debt to get one.···It would be so comfortable to just sleep like this.I had purged the bad fluids built up over two weeks and even scored a cute FWB, so I thought I'd be able to sleep with a light heart.But the moment I got back home, the cold, harsh reality slowly crept up inside my head.Namely, my bank balance.I felt like I'd been spending a bit too much lately.I lifted my phone and launched the banking app.It felt like it had been a strangely long time since I last opened it.Understandably so, because lately I'd grown complacent with money coming in and hadn't bothered to check my account balance.Since fifty or a hundred thousand won trickled in every now and then, I just assumed it was accumulating nicely on its own.···Right, I had temporarily forgotten about the cold, unfeeling reality of society.The reality that money drains away the moment you simply breathe.[65,585 KRW]The reality I faced once again was devastating.My utter complacency came back as bad karma to stab me right in the heart. I honestly couldn't fucking understand it."Wh-Why···?"I was sure a lot of money had been coming in recently?Just a few days ago, our sugar daddy, Legalize Rape, had even sent me a hundred thousand won.So why on earth was my bank account balance reduced to the size of an ant's dick? Where did my magnificent, hefty 100k won monster go, leaving behind a flaccid 60k won sitting in my account?It was a painfully unfair and pathetic reality."Fucking hell."My head spun a little, but I forced myself to snap out of it and analyze the cause.Checking the transaction history, a considerable amount of money had leaked out over the last few days.It was dangerously close to seventy thousand won.Thinking about why it drained so fast, I realized I'd been hanging out and playing around a lot lately.Two days ago, I went out with Eunbyul in the city, and today I drank coffee with Sung Arin and even went to a motel.Not to mention the daily food expenses just to survive at home. It was a structural inevitability: money went out just as fast as it came in."Right··· fucking hell, it's my own fault for playing around as I pleased."Living in this world cost money not just for breathing, but for drinking booze and dumping loads.A fleeting, anti-social thought crossed my mind.Why on earth had modern society advanced to this point?I just wanted to drink a little booze and drain some bad fluids, yet even that sucked blood taxes out of me.I could practically cry at this sad societal structure. If this wasn't a dystopia, what was?Ping!Right as I was thinking that, my phone chimed.Checking the screen, I saw a text message from a newly registered phone number—meaning Sung Arin.[Sung Arin: Hello! This is Sung Arin ㅎㅎ][Sung Arin: 'Sung Arin sent 40,000 KRW!'][Sung Arin: This is for the motel fee. I thought about it and realized Sewon-ssi was the one who paid···][Sung Arin: I had fun today!]Looking at that, I couldn't help but marvel."Well, well···"She actually sent it.It was money I hadn't expected at all. To think she'd pay not just half, but the entire motel fee.Come to think of it, this was a world of gender-role reversal.A world where 'women' paid for things much more often than 'men.'From her perspective, it probably felt somewhat uncomfortably guilty that I, the 'man,' had paid for the motel.From my end, I had just paid for it without thinking much. It was my wallet coming out purely from the old stereotype that the guy should pay.So I never expected to get it back··· but once again, I could feel the difference between the sexes here.Thanks! Thanks to this, I'm back in the six-figure bracket.I didn't bother rejecting the money and accepted it right away.Honestly, as someone who had equally enjoyed the experience, taking all the money felt a tiny bit guilty··· but I wasn't well-off enough right now to worry about such niceties.So this once, I'd take advantage of the gender role difference. I could always treat her next time.With the money safely received, I sent a reply.[Lee Sewon: Thanks]And I didn't forget to add this:[Lee Sewon: And drop the honorifics.][Sung Arin: Ah][Sung Arin: Yeah]That was the end of the conversation.She still seemed to find dropping honorifics awkward.When she was 'Legalize Rape,' she hadn't been a shy kid like this···Returned to the real world, Sung Arin sadly wasn't all that vulgar.It made me momentarily nostalgic for her slightly trashy side."Well, this extends my lifeline for now."My lifespan had stretched by roughly four days. But I couldn't just stop here.Immediate disaster was averted, but my life was still hanging by a thread.Ultimately, I needed to start thinking about new ways to make money··· and fortunately, the method was already there.It was truly time now. Time to set up a Pixiv Fanbox donation account.Thankfully, creating a Fanbox account wasn't too difficult.All I had to do was link my Pixiv account, fill out the support account details, and open it up.The real problem is filling that space up with content.Everything from here on out depended purely on my own hard work.Thinking about that made the future look pitch black."To do that, I'll eventually have to draw manga···"Like I said before, to attract people, uploading actual manga was much better than just tossing up a few illustrations.Once there was a bit of a story, people naturally got curious and came looking.The story didn't even need to be all that deep.It just needed to act as seasoning to boost the horny factor of the artwork.Ah, right. The story. That damned story.The moment I thought about it, curses automatically bubbled up.Fucking world.Of all things, the problem was that this was a gender-reversal world.That single fact made drawing doujinshis several times harder.How the hell was I supposed to make the women here horny without making myself feel thoroughly disgusted?Inevitably, drawing a doujinshi meant men would have to take center stage as the focus.Thinking about stuff like that automatically gave me a headache."Ah, whatever. I'll think about it later."After mulling it over for a brief moment, I gave up and pulled the blanket over my head.It was far too late to try and plot anything out.I had to wake up in the morning and go to school tomorrow anyway; I couldn't afford to stay glued to my desk all night.Plus, my body was pretty exhausted right now, so even if I forced my brain to work, nothing good would come out of it.Maybe I should just draw a real webtoon at this rate···The thought briefly crossed my mind. Rather than mentally draining myself by drawing adult manga, why not step out into the mainstream light and target the webtoon market?After all, I used to dream of becoming a webtoon artist and prepared for art school.Naturally, I still harbored lingering attachments to webtoons.That was why the thought popped up, but··· I discarded that option shortly after.Just look at how cutthroat that market was. The prep time alone was filthily long, easily rivaling Fanbox.And drawing hard to upload a webtoon didn't mean your effort would be instantly rewarded either.It was an unstable option all around. It was a tough choice for someone like me who was living paycheck-to-paycheck because of money.Living in this world is a fucking pain.Just as I was lying in bed, stuck in limbo with no clear direction,Ping!Right beside my ear, a KakaoTalk notification rang out once more.The cheerful chime slapped me back to reality.KakaoTalk was surprisingly busy tonight.Ah, I felt like a total popular insider. Who on earth was messaging me at this ungodly hour?Curious, I checked the app.The sender was 'FuckedUpMe'.For some reason, a bunch of unread messages had piled up.[FuckedUpMe: Asdkfjhasjdfkj] - Monday 23:54[FuckedUpMe: Hey ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ] - Tuesday 00:21[FuckedUpMe: I did something totally retarded ㅠㅠㅠ] - Tuesday 00:22[FuckedUpMe: Hey] - Tuesday 01:43...[FuckedUpMe: Please listen to my story] - Wednesday 23:51The sender looked half out of their mind.Glancing back at the timestamps, messages had been rolling in since Monday.I must have missed checking the chatroom while I was busy talking with Sung Arin.?I tilted my head at the screen.What's up with this guy all of a sudden?Whatever could have happened?I decided to just ask.[hala: What's wrong?]