Bam Bam Bam with My Childhood Friend at the Karaoke
As I stayed silent, another round of insistent knocking rattled through the room. “Kim Hyunjin! Are you even alive in there?!”
A woman’s voice, laced with equal parts worry and playful teasing. It had been ten years since I last heard it, yet because I’d listened to that same voice for twenty years before that, I didn’t need to guess who it belonged to. It was my childhood friend, Park Nayoung.
What the hell? I didn’t even contact her, so why did she come looking for me?
I had just set my smartphone down after wavering over whether to reach out to her or not, ultimately deciding against it. Yet here she was, showing up at my door at the perfect moment without a single message from me. Her studio apartment and mine were close by. She dropped in from time to time, but this was the first time she’d barged over and pounded on the door like it was an emergency.
It’s not like she came running because she somehow heard my prayer to touch her breasts… Ah. It must be because of Mom.
After thinking it over, I finally understood why she was here. Her son—who she’d seen just a few days ago—had suddenly called saying it had been a while, then hung up abruptly. No parent would stay calm after that. To anyone listening, it would have sounded like I was in serious trouble. So Mom must have asked Park Nayoung, who she occasionally kept in touch with, to come check on me.
What now?
I had barely managed to shove down my lust after wanting to grope her chest, but seeing her face now would only make it rear its head again. I was about to pretend I wasn’t home and just call Mom to say everything was fine when—
Click.
Park Nayoung burst through the door, her face flushed with urgency.
Wait, why was the door unlocked?
It was a password door lock that automatically secured itself when closed. There was no way it should have been open. Yet she had opened it naturally and stepped inside.
This was my first meeting with my childhood friend in ten years.
Seeing me flustered by the sudden encounter, Park Nayoung spoke first.
“What? You’re alive and kicking.”
Just as I suspected—she had come at someone’s request.
“How did you open the door?”
“Your mom said you were acting weird and asked me to check on you just once. She gave me the passcode. But what are you doing half-naked in the middle of winter?”
Park Nayoung kicked off her shoes as casually as if she were entering her own place. She must have thought my state—lying there without clothes in the dead of winter—was strange, because she approached me carefully, her expression full of concern.
“I was lying down to cool my head a little.”
“In this freezing weather? Have you lost your mind?”
Her tone was gruff, but I could hear a spoonful of genuine worry mixed in.
What the hell do I say to that?
Lying on the bed wearing nothing but underwear in the middle of winter. It was basically screaming that I wasn’t in a normal state. I hesitated, searching for an answer, until a decent one popped into my head.
“I was just working out a bit.”
“Working out, my ass. The same guy who ignored me every single time I suggested we exercise together…”
Park Nayoung scolded me for talking nonsense as she walked over to the bed. Then she noticed my changed physique and blinked rapidly. She still couldn’t believe her eyes, so she poked my rock-hard six-pack with a finger. The moment she touched it she yanked her hand back in shock.
“Wh-what the hell?! When did you get abs like this?!”
“I told you. I was working out.”
“You think this kind of body comes from exercising for a day or two?”
Even after seeing it with her own eyes and touching it, Park Nayoung shouted like she still couldn’t believe it. Since she worked out regularly herself, she knew exactly how difficult it was to build a body like this. These weren’t the kind of abs anyone could get just by dropping their body fat percentage. They were sharp, dense muscles forged through rigorous training and real combat.
“Hey… can I touch them?”
Before I could even answer, she reached out and slowly ran her fingers across my abs.
Now that I think about it, she always liked celebrities with nice bodies.
I remembered that she preferred the sleek, well-defined “fashion muscles” of idols and actors rather than the bulky builds of bodybuilders. My physique wasn’t just for show, but it clearly matched her taste.
Park Nayoung drew even closer, touching my body with a mixture of fascination and delight. We were so near that I could feel her breath. She didn’t see me as a man at all—just a close friend—so she approached without the slightest hesitation. But I wasn’t the same. In the past I had thought of her as a friend too, but right now she felt unmistakably like a woman. Or maybe I had always felt that way and simply told myself I wasn’t good enough for her, forcing the thoughts away.
At this distance I could smell the faint, sweet scent of her shampoo. That subtle feminine fragrance slowly paralyzed my reason. I wanted to reach out toward the knit top that beautifully outlined her breasts. Every time her soft fingertips brushed my skin, the lust I had barely suppressed surged up again.
Whew. Calm down.
In my head I wanted nothing more than to grab her chest. But if I did that, word would reach not only my parents but possibly the police. I couldn’t turn into a criminal the moment I returned from the other world.
If I stayed still any longer, blood would definitely rush downward. Not just my abs—everything below them was starting to stiffen.
“Hey, stop touching!”
“It’s not like they’ll wear out from a little touching. What’s the big deal?”
They will wear out. My sanity.
She kept running her hands over my body. Half-joking, half-serious, I shot back.
“Keep that up and I’ll touch your breasts too.”
“Why the hell would you touch those?! Pervert!”
“It’s not like they’ll wear out from a little touching. What’s the big deal?”
When I repeated her exact words, she was speechless for a second. But only a second. Then she smacked my stomach in annoyance.
“Ugh, how is that the same? I’m not touching that—it’s gross.”
She could touch me all she wanted, but I wasn’t allowed to touch her. I had thrown it out there just in case, but of course she wouldn’t let me feel her chest. Too bad. Time to stop here.
Before she could say anything else, I quickly pulled on a loose pair of training clothes. She clicked her tongue, looking disappointed.
“Now do you believe I’ve been working out?”
“When did you even start?”
“Hmm… about ten years ago?”
It wasn’t a lie. It really had taken ten years to defeat the Demon King in the other world.
“That’s hilarious. Remember in high school when you were so weak I had to carry you home on my back?”
“Hey, that was forever ago!”
“It hasn’t even been ten years, you know?”
She laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world while bringing up my embarrassing high-school history. So I countered by digging up her own dark past from when we were kids.
We traded stories from our childhood, laughing and chatting like old times.
I finally feel like I’ve really come back.
Watching her smile, I let a small grin slip across my face.
“Why are you smiling like such a creep?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen your face. I’m happy.”
“You want to keep talking nonsense?”
From her perspective, the guy she had seen just days ago was suddenly saying things like this. Of course it sounded weird.
“Aish, I’m already in a shitty mood.”
“Did something happen?”
“You don’t need to know!”
I took a closer look at her. A white knit top that clearly showed the curve of her breasts, a black pleated skirt that stopped above her knees, a beige coat thrown over it, and light makeup. This wasn’t the usual comfortable, casual outfit she wore when meeting me. This was what she wore on dates with boyfriends.
It was just past lunchtime, so she couldn’t have gone on a date and come back already. Which meant—
“You got dumped again.”
“I didn’t get dumped! I dumped him!”
Jackpot. She must have had a lunch date, broken up on the spot, and then received my mom’s call on her way home, which brought her straight to my room.
“Hang in there.”
“Ugh, I said I was the one who ended it!”
I could roughly guess why she kept getting dumped. Her straightforward, almost guy-like personality and the way she casually approached men made her incredibly popular. But none of her relationships lasted. The reason was simple: she was a firm believer in staying pure until marriage.
I never understood why that was a problem before.
I used to think that holding hands and going on dates was enough—that just being together and feeling mental love was all you needed. I believed physical love didn’t matter if the emotional connection was there.
But after experiencing it myself, I finally saw the issue. Back in the other world, countless women whispered that they loved me, that their feelings were pure and spiritual. Yet when I defeated the Demon King and was forcibly returned, not a single one of them lifted a finger to help me. Mental love without any physical aspect was something I could no longer believe in.
The guys who dated Park Nayoung must have felt the same.
They would say they loved her, but she wouldn’t sleep with them. It might have been fine at the beginning, but as time passed they would start doubting whether she truly loved them. The relationship would slowly fall apart until they eventually broke up. Most of the men she dated were handsome and had great bodies too. They had no reason to cling to her when they could easily find other women.
Things that never made sense to me in the past finally made a little sense now.
When I looked at her with obvious pity in my eyes, Park Nayoung must not have liked what she saw, because she smacked me on the back and said,
“Ugh, I’m in a bad mood too. Let’s go out. This big sis is buying.”