Minji's Memories — Awakened Registration
At first, she had hesitated over whether to accept Seona's kindness.
But the guilt she felt toward her friend Yurin had been too heavy, and she couldn't bring herself to take what he offered.
Then Seona was kidnapped, and she had "no choice" but to take him right there in front of Yurin.
It hadn't been her first time having sex, but what she did with Seona was on an entirely different level from anything she had experienced before.
She had only ever been with one man, and even that had ended more than three months ago. The moment she recalled the feel of that hard thing that kept rising no matter how many times she made him come inside her, her lower half began to grow wet.
In her experience, men almost never came more than twice. After a single climax they would go soft and limp, and in the worst cases most of them simply passed out. Virgins wouldn't even get hard unless you spent a long time caressing them first.
Women, with their vigorous sexual appetites, could keep going as long as their stamina held out, so a single round with a man was rarely enough. Once he finished, most women ended up masturbating beside his unconscious body to deal with what was left of their desire.
Seona, who could take a woman's lust again and again without flagging, was the finest husband material she had ever seen. Good-looking, sharp-minded, and able to endure a woman's endless hunger…
She thought she finally understood why Yurin treasured him so fiercely.
Which was why, when Yurin slaughtered the thugs, subdued them, and came toward them—
Minji realized Yurin had Awakened.
Even though she was in the middle of adulterous sex under duress, the thought that kept filling her head wasn't fear of Yurin. It was the desire to keep going with Seona.
Even while the investigators questioned her, that luscious cock kept surfacing in her mind. And after she got home, she spent the entire time masturbating to the memory of taking him.
"Seona… nnnh…"
Once she had tasted him, her own fingers and every other toy she owned felt pitifully inadequate. She needed that thing that pulsed hotly, swelled even larger at the edge, and flooded her insides with heat.
She lost herself in it so thoroughly that by the time she looked up, it was already time to leave for university. Unfortunately, she had no free period today.
A deep regret settled over her—why hadn't she accepted him when he confessed yesterday? Now that she knew how he tasted, she no longer cared if it meant betraying Yurin.
She needed Seona.
He had confessed to her. And in that container warehouse, when they were kidnapped, he had even given her permission to put their bodies together. Didn't that mean he had already opened his heart to her?
Whatever conscience she once had was gone. The desire to steal Seona from Yurin had taken root in her chest.
When she arrived at campus, neither Yurin nor Seona had shown up. Through a male acquaintance she knew on campus, she asked someone to check whether Seona was in the dorms—only to be told he hadn't returned the night before.
She remembered what Yurin had said after the incident ended: stay away from Seona.
She tried calling. Both Seona and Yurin had blocked her number; neither picked up.
Was she never going to see him again?
That couldn't be allowed to happen. Now that she knew his taste, the craving was unbearable, and she couldn't focus on a single lecture. She spent every class replaying what they had done, and before she knew it the day was over.
She had to figure out how to see him again.
He's probably at Yurin's place.
After the incident, Yurin had grabbed Seona by the arm and led him somewhere—so she had a fair idea where the two of them would be. Barging into Yurin's house was as good as impossible. Given how obsessive Yurin already was about Seona, the idea of her willingly letting Minji near him was hard even to imagine. And even if they did leave the house, after yesterday they would almost certainly move together.
Still, she had no choice but to cling to the thinnest thread of hope and wait for Seona to come outside alone.
So she began waiting in front of Yurin's house.
She remembered walking the same way after a drinking party once, chatting about this and that. She was glad she had taken note of where Yurin lived—and at the same time a crushing self-loathing rose in her throat.
She was standing outside her friend's house, waiting for a chance to fuck her friend's man. Of everything she had ever done, this had to be the most insane.
Time passed. There was no sign of anyone coming out. But it was still too early to give up. She could come back every single day until she saw Seona. Now that she had tasted him, there was no going back to who she used to be.
The next day was a free day, so she was outside Yurin's house from early morning.
She began to feel eyes on her.
A second-floor window with the blinds drawn opened, and a face she knew appeared. Yurin. Her bare upper body was visible through the glass. Did she always walk around naked at home?
There was a man inside that house right now. Minji was fairly certain her guess was correct. Yurin was taking everything she wanted from her boyfriend Seona—stroking that luscious cock, sucking it, grinding it between her lower lips and savoring every inch of it. Minji was so jealous she could barely stand it.
The thought barely had time to form before her eyes met Yurin's through the open window.
For no more than three seconds they stared at each other. Yurin's expressionless gaze bored into her as if it already knew every filthy thing inside her head. That cold-blooded look snapped her back to reality.
Miserable tears welled up. She fled home, locked her bedroom door, and sobbed while she went back to masturbating.
Some time later, a message arrived.
It came with no number attached, and its contents were devastating.
She knew exactly who had sent it. The subject of the threat was left out—who not to approach, where not to go—but it had to be Yurin. Yurin herself never appeared in any of the photos, so there was nothing to report. The muscular women's faces were all mosaicked.
It wasn't hard to understand: if she kept trying to get near Seona, those pictures would end up all over the internet. They had been made for the sole purpose of blackmailing her.
A stubborn spark of defiance flickered for a moment, but she couldn't bring herself to put her own family in danger. She had never had the courage to cross certain lines.
Even while those thoughts ran through her head, her hand never stopped. This time, though, it wasn't Seona filling her mind—it was her little brother. More precisely, her body still needed a man of that stamina, and the image of her brother coming five times was simply what surfaced.
Masturbating to the thought of him being used made her drip without end. Five times meant they had almost certainly dosed him with aphrodisiacs and stimulants. Finding a man as tireless as Seona might be difficult—but if she did to some other man what they had done to her brother, pumped him full of drugs and heat, she could make someone nearly as good.
A bird in the hand. Seduce a decent-looking guy, flood him with aphrodisiacs and stimulants, and he wouldn't be all that different from Seona. Strip men down and, cock size aside, they were all more or less the same.
With that thought, she was able to let Seona go.
In his place, far darker desires settled into Minji's heart.
Seona was waiting at the Association for Awakened registration.
Strangely, lust was no longer something he could control. It was one of the problems that had appeared in his body after nearly dying at Yurin's hands. He could feel the aftereffects of Awakening still lingering in him.
He emptied his mind as best he could, trying not to get hard, and went through the Awakening tests.
His rank came back as C. A versatile healer—single-target and area recovery both strong, plus a slow, sustained regeneration ability. Well-rounded and practical.
Once registration was finished, the Association required every newly registered Awakened to undergo a mandatory psychiatric evaluation. Given how many people Awakened under life-threatening stress, the risk of trauma turning them into a danger to others was too high to ignore. The psych eval had been made the final gate of the testing process—a special measure to keep from releasing a wolf among the sheep.
Fortunately, he passed without issue.
There was still one problem, though. Ever since Awakening, his libido had been climbing without end. He had no desire to report it. Yurin would probably be thrilled if she found out—but the thought of anyone else knowing was too humiliating.
He suspected it had something to do with coming at the edge of death: that the pleasure of nearly dying had been burned into his mind. Caught somewhere between the survival instinct and the reproductive instinct, he had Awakened and lived—and this was the price. The old claim that orgasm at the brink of death felt better than anything else had turned out to be true. The pleasure he had felt while being strangled, breath failing, and the amount that had pulsed out of him—nothing else he had ever experienced came close.
He forced the useless thoughts aside and waited, anxious, for Yurin to finish her own evaluation.
Not long after, Yurin completed her Awakened registration as well. Her ability was exactly what he had seen—acceleration—and she received a C rank. But according to her, the psych eval had flagged a mild problem with impulse control. Specifically, difficulty regulating herself when she became aroused.
Thinking of how she had ended up like this trying to save him filled him with gratitude and a deep ache in his chest. The confession he had made to Minji suddenly felt unforgivable. Even the body he had been forced to give up—he regretted all of it.
Through registration, they learned what had changed in their bodies and what abilities they now possessed.
Outside, they wandered around as if on a date, talking about this and that. But they had been together long enough that even trying to find new topics, the conversation ran dry in under thirty minutes. Then they got to the real point.
Yurin hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"Seona… I think I'll be heading into the military soon."
"Yeah. I know."
She had already dropped out of university, so there was no reason to time her enlistment around a return to school.
"But if I'm gone for too long, I'll worry about you too much. I don't think I can do it."
"…"
Only a few days earlier he had been kidnapped, used, and confessed to another woman. He kept his mouth shut. One wrong word and Yurin would explode.
"So for now I'm going to do alternative service as a Duty Hunter. Every time you rack up credit closing Gates, your discharge date gets shorter. And you can make decent money."
"But that's way too dangerous."
Honestly, going into a Gate was extremely dangerous. He couldn't bring himself to approve of his long-time girlfriend throwing herself into something like that. His mother was a Hunter, and so was Yurin's—he knew perfectly well how easily a body could be ruined.
"Hwaryong Guild put out an open recruitment for Duty Hunters. It's my mother's guild. You really think they'd work me that hard?"
True enough—Executive Director Park Yura was unlikely to send her own daughter somewhere truly lethal.
"Even so, it's still too dangerous for you."
You never knew what could happen inside a Gate.
"Then you come with me."
The words came out of nowhere. He was a man—he had no military obligation.
"Huh?"
Yurin continued.
"I heard the Hwaryong Guild main base is recruiting new medical staff. You wouldn't be going into Gates—you'd be working at the emergency medical facility treating people who come out of them. You could put your ability to good use, and we'd get to see each other a lot. Why don't you apply?"
He had thought her obsession had eased a little after he nearly died. Apparently she had been planning this the whole time. The sheer inventiveness of it almost made him admire her.
He vaguely remembered his mother mentioning that the Duty Hunter dorms for Hwaryong Guild were at the main base.
"…"
He couldn't say a word. In a past-life equivalent, it was like a man about to enlist being told by his girlfriend that she was afraid he'd cheat, so she was joining the military as a civilian employee just to stay with him.
"Seona. I'm scared you'll cheat on me."
When he still didn't answer, Yurin looked at him with cold, icy eyes. She was already suspecting he would stray again.
"I was… thinking about it. Because I was worried about you. If that's how it is, then fine. I'll go with you."
In the end, the question of Yurin's enlistment settled into place, and they called their parents to tell them they had registered as Awakened.