Chapter 18
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: The Easiest Thing Was Being Obsessed With
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I threw away the cumbersome laptop box.
I didn't have much luggage to begin with.
I discarded all my bedding, packed only my clothes and laptop into a suitcase, and left the studio apartment.
"Doesn't it hurt? Can you walk?"
"It hurts, but I can bear it."
"I'm going to do it as soon as we get to your place. Can you really bear it?"
"If you're gentle..."
Her pussy, swollen like a bee sting, came to mind.
[Lust S means you love sex so much it interferes with your daily life.]
Perhaps Lust S meant something like this.
Is that why she endured me, even when her pussy was swollen and she was on the verge of fainting?
By the way, living together before we even started dating?
It's true I didn't have anywhere else to go.
A 60-pyeong apartment in Samseong-dong?
That apartment, gifted by a woman named Yoon Jae-kyung whom I'd never even met, somehow didn't feel like mine.
"Oppa, as a welcome gift for coming to my place, there's something I want to give you."
"I think I should be the one giving you a gift."
"No, it's alright. I should give it to you. It was my wish to live with you for even just one day."
It brings tears to my eyes...
Being truly handsome is the best. No matter how smart you are, it's all useless.
"Let's go."
***
An S-brand camera store.
*Ding-dong.*
When the bell rang, a male employee wiping the counter greeted them with a booming voice.
"Welco—"
The male employee swallowed his words.
The visuals of the man and woman who entered the store were simply insane.
An incredibly stunningly attractive couple who looked nothing short of celebrity lovers, no matter how you looked at them.
Working at this store, he had never seen such beauty, and likely never would again.
'What? Are they filming something?'
He quickly looked outside, but there was no film crew in sight.
"Ha, ha. Please call if you need anything."
"Thank you."
And the woman's voice, how beautiful it was.
Lacking the courage to speak further, the male employee retreated as if fleeing.
The woman's visuals were crazy, but strangely, his eyes were more drawn to the man.
It wasn't because he had homosexual tendencies.
'Wow, if only I could look like that for just one day.'
*Thump-thump.*
Perhaps because the man was so handsome.
More than wanting to date such a beautiful woman,
he yearned more intensely to look like that.
After all, if you had that appearance, wouldn't such beautiful women naturally follow?
Isn't that a huge win?
"Ah, here it is. This is it."
"It's a vlogging camera? You're not suggesting I become a streamer or something, are you?"
"No. It's just too cumbersome to film what we do with just a phone and a laptop webcam like now."
"Is that so? I don't really mind."
"Since we're not just going to film once or twice, but continuously from now on, it's better to get proper equipment from the start.
This vlogging camera is light, so it's easy to carry around, and it's convenient to just pull out and shoot.
It has a built-in stand, so it'll be very easy whether you put it on the floor or hold it in your hand to film."
The male employee nodded inwardly.
So they were buying a camera to film couple videos.
"Oppa, perhaps... you're not going to film us doing it anymore?"
The employee thought.
What exactly were they filming that the atmosphere was so meaningful?
'Crazy, I'm having weird thoughts all by myself. They're probably just talking about couple date videos.'
"Of course I want to keep filming. Every single thing we do together is a memory, and honestly, I want to record all of it on video."
"Oh, that's a relief. I thought you'd already gotten tired of it."
"Why would I get tired? You taste so good."
The stunningly attractive couple whispered softly, but the male employee, with his ears wide open, clearly understood.
'Us doing what? Taste good? Video? What is it? What on earth are they doing?'
"And Oppa, you do it for a really long time, too."
"I do it for a long time because you're beautiful."
"If you connect this to an adapter, you can record until the card capacity is full without battery limits.
If you put in a 512GB SD card, you can record continuously for about 12 hours in 4K."
"But it's expensive."
"I've saved a lot. My salary also came in last week, so I have plenty of money. Please let me gift it to you."
"Ugh... I have my pride as a man, but since it's the first gift I'm receiving from you, I'll gratefully accept it."
"Hehe, we'll be able to film us doing it beautifully."
The male employee's eyes spun.
What were they doing, exactly?
What were they trying to film?
A couple's YouTube channel, something like that, right?
"Since you work in video editing, you certainly know a lot about this kind of thing."
Video editing!
That's right! They were indeed preparing a couple's YouTube channel!
"Oppa, then... since we're filming for the first time with the camera, should we buy some sexy lingerie too?"
The employee clutched his head and wailed inwardly.
Sexy lingerie shouldn't come up there!
Then his imagination would veer off in a strange direction again!
"No. I prefer doing it completely naked. Let's try lingerie another time."
"Okay, then... I also prefer doing it completely naked."
They whispered softly, just loud enough for each other to hear.
For the first time, the male employee resented his parents, who had blessed him with particularly sharp hearing.
"Let's buy two, not just one. I'll buy one."
"Oh, so you can film from multiple angles?"
"That, and it'd be frustrating if the recording messed up after all that effort. It seems best to turn on two every time we do it."
"Ah, it would be good to have another one as a backup. As expected, Oppa is a genius."
The giggling, stunningly attractive couple picked up two lightweight vlogging hand cameras and approached the counter.
The man looked around, checking if there was anything else interesting to see.
The woman grinned, her eyes fixed on the man's face the entire time.
The male employee had an epiphany.
What expression a woman makes when she's truly head over heels for a man.
That he had never seen such an expression before, outside of dramas, even among those around him.
The cruel realization spawned a profound sense of futility.
The male employee, as if enlightened and detached, accepted the card the woman extended.
"Please charge both of them to this."
"Ah, I was going to buy one—"
"Oh, please, please let me gift it to you today. Please, okay?"
"...Alright. Later, I'll definitely give you a wonderful gift too,"
"Oppa staying at my place is already too big a gift for me."
*Grind!*
Breaking through his detachment, the sound of him grinding his teeth involuntarily filled his mouth.
'Damn it, if you look like that, women will spend their own money to buy you cameras, live with you, and even film sex videos.'
The male employee had caught a glimpse of a cruel facet of the celestial realm, hidden by clouds and unseen from the ground.
After the couple left, the male employee's legs gave out, and he slumped into a chair.
"Damn it, with that face, they should be celebrities. Why did they have to come to our store?"
***
"It's quite humble, isn't it? I'm embarrassed."
It was a new officetel building, so it was clean.
However, the crampedness stemming from the spatial limit of a 1.5-room apartment was unavoidable.
Still, it was neatly organized in every corner.
The cleanliness proudly showcased Jung Hyena's usual living habits.
"This is the living room, and this is the bedroom. The bedroom is really just for sleeping."
As she said, the bedroom was small.
A single bed occupied most of it.
There was barely 50cm between the bed and the built-in wardrobe.
Compared to Lee Chang-woo's Samseong-dong apartment, it was indeed like a thatched hut.
But the place I lived in before my possession was also like this.
More importantly, although this was on the outskirts, it was still Gangnam.
"For Gangnam, this size must be expensive even for a semi-rent. How did you manage the deposit?"
"I saved about 40 million won while being an idol, and my family helped me out a bit."
"You saved 40 million won? That's amazing."
They say many small-to-mid-sized idol groups end up saddled with company debt even after their 7-year contracts expire.
"If you saved 40 million won by yourself, you were a pretty good group for a small-to-mid-sized idol group. It's a shame you disbanded halfway through."
"If we hadn't disbanded, I wouldn't be able to live with Oppa like this now. I think it's a blessing."
Lust S, Affection SS, truly...
"It's small, but Oppa, you use the bed. I'll sleep in the living room."
"Huh? We're not sleeping together?"
"Huh?"
Jung Hyena blinked.
Ah, perhaps I, the former dickless virgin, was the only one who jumped to conclusions, assuming that living together meant sleeping in the same bed.
"Sleep with me? Oppa, you really dislike it when someone sleeps next to you, don't you?"
"Well, anyone would."
I wouldn't know.
I'd never slept with anyone before.
"But I think sleeping with you would be nice. Let's just sleep together."
"But the bed is too small."
"Then let's not use the bed. Let's lay out blankets together in the living room and sleep there. We'll do that, right?"
I looked directly into her eyes and asked in a whisper.
Knowing what answer would come.
Having the next steps already drawn in my mind.
This was one of the countless dopamine rushes permitted by a handsome face.
"Okay, then... Let's sleep together..."
*Kuh*, this is the taste.
You only get to know this taste by dying and being reborn.
Dopamine exploded in my head.
Are all the handsome men in the world perhaps people who died once and were reborn?
Are they all subtly aware of it among themselves but keep it hushed up?
We went out and bought a two-person sheet and blanket.
I also didn't have any clothes to wear at home, so I bought three cheap tracksuits.
Jung Hyena paid for everything, saying it was a housewarming gift.
She seemed so happy to do things for me and spend money on me.
I remembered something a good-looking male classmate once said.
'Women spend money too. If a man is handsome, she'll pull out her card first.'
Back then, I had foolishly retorted,
'Wouldn't women like handsome men even more if they spent money well?'
'You don't understand what I'm saying. If a man is handsome, a woman will try to tie down his money and spend her own somehow. You'll never know until you die.'
He was right.
Only now, after dying and coming back to life, do I truly realize how true his words were.
By the way, there wasn't much left of the 50,000 won bills that Lee Chang-woo had stuffed generously into his wallet.
Buying the laptop was a big expense.
I fiddled with the single credit card in my wallet.
[Yoon Jae Kyeong]
Yoon Jae-kyung...
The card of the 26-year-old woman who gave him the 8.5 billion won apartment.
Lee Chang-woo must have freely used this for living expenses.
But for me, who wants to distance myself as much as possible from Lee Chang-woo's past, it's a card I shouldn't use.
Yet, throwing it away feels a bit unsettling.
What if we're truly pushed to the brink of poverty and starving? It could serve as a last resort, couldn't it?