Chapter 165 - Blood Donor II

5

To be perfectly honest, embarrassing memories weren't particularly painful for me, the Undertaker.

It was rather like how running up to Shakyamuni and teasing him with, "Whoa, I hear you pointed a finger at the sky the moment you were born and declared, ‘In heaven and on earth, I alone am supreme.’ Aren't you embarrassed?" wouldn't inflict any psychological damage.

Does a butterfly feel ashamed of its days as a caterpillar?

I was generous toward others, and toward myself as well.

But apparently, things were different for everyone else.

-Anonymous: This sounds weird, but doesn't having a mosquito suck your blood feel kinda good? Just me?

(Photo)

-Anonymous: It feels so good I've trapped a mosquito under a glass and deliberately let it bite me every hour. My forearm's all bumpy now, but running my fingers over it gives me this weird pleasure too. You guys should try keeping a ‘pet mosquito’...

└BookishGirl: Excuse me, are you out of your fucking mind;

└Anonymous: Lmaooo I've actually gotten addicted to mosquito bites lately too, so I deliberately don't kill them. Same here lol

└[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear5: That's an anomaly! Letting it bite you could get you into serious trouble! >_<);;

└Anonymous: There are seriously so many lunatics here

└[National Road]Historian: I truly cannot understand this.

The atmosphere on SG Net was the first thing to gradually change.

Only a few days earlier, it had been overflowing with rage and curses directed at mosquitoes. Now, talk of ‘pet mosquitoes’ cropped up fairly often.

It was a sign that the Mosquito anomaly was beginning to show its true colors.

Suddenly, I had an urgent problem on my hands.

"Saintess. Didn't you warn the awakened about mosquitoes through constellation messages last time?"

["Yes, I did. Even now, I keep urging caution about once a day, switching constellation names each time."]

"And people are still getting bitten in droves?"

["Well, they are mosquitoes."]

This must be exactly what people meant by falling for something even when you knew it was coming.

Completely escaping mosquitoes on the Korean Peninsula was all but impossible. Weren't mosquitoes the creatures that kept crawling out of somewhere even after you sealed up every window?

["Above all, the problem is that people feel pleasure the moment a mosquito sucks their blood."]

"Pleasure? They really feel pleasure?"

["Yes. Try getting bitten yourself, Undertaker. Having your blood sucked once shouldn't cause any major problems."]

I tried it.

I dispelled my protective sheath of energy, caught a mosquito, and placed it on the back of my hand. I'd pinched its wings off with my fingers, so it had nowhere to escape.

SLUUURP.

The little bastard drew my blood in a desperate struggle to survive.

"... Well. I don't feel any particular pleasure."

["Hmm. I suspect it's because you don't have enough ‘embarrassing memories,’ Undertaker. My guess is that the more of those someone has, the greater the pleasure."]

"Wait a moment. Then Aryeon, who had more blood sucked out of her, and sooner, than anyone else on the Korean Peninsula, and practically attained nirvana...?"

["She must have more embarrassing memories than anyone else. On the Korean Peninsula, at least."]

That made sense.

In any case, the situation grew more serious with each passing day.

That wasn't just a figure of speech. The Mosquito anomaly genuinely grew more rampant with every passing hour.

Posts saying ‘Having mosquitoes suck your blood feels good’ multiplied, while responses calling it unpleasant dwindled. The board even coined a new term: ‘mosquito drugs.’

-Anonymous: Honestly, I've had insomnia ever since I finished the tutorial dungeon and got out.

-Anonymous: I'm fine with it now, but watching people drop dead right in front of me back then left me traumatized.

-Anonymous: But weirdly, I've been sleeping well since getting bitten by mosquitoes. Those people died, but I feel grateful that I'm alive, at least.

-Anonymous: The constellations keep going on about how dangerous mosquito bites are, so yeah, I'm honestly scared... But I can't sleep without this little guy anymore, so I don't have a choice.

Yes.

I'd called them ‘embarrassing memories’ for convenience, but those memories actually constituted psychological trauma. In severe cases, they could even develop into PTSD.

In truth, there was no way people's mental health could be sound these days.

What could you expect in an age when a bug getting in someone's eye during a daytime stroll could turn their human DNA into potato DNA?

People disappeared every day. More precisely, you could just as well say their ‘humanity’ disappeared.

After realizing that the DNA inside their bodies held together worse than the glue sticks used in elementary-school art classes, countless people began relying on something external.

Alcohol. Drugs. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And so on.

That was the age we lived in, and that was why the potato-Saintess's VTuber counseling project had been such a tremendous success.

Of course, we'd been using the Saintess's [Clairvoyance] to inform drug dealers that the Korean Peninsula was no longer a drug-dealing free-for-all.

But even with the cheat code that was the Saintess, controlling the growth and reproduction of mosquitoes was impossible. Obviously. How were we supposed to catch the little bastards?

"Things are serious, Undertaker."

Even Dang Seorin occasionally came to me to vent.

"We've put screens on every train window, keep checking the drains, run fans whenever we have power to spare, and get rid of every puddle... But mosquitoes still keep popping up from somewhere."

"Even after spraying DDT?"

"Yes. It worked briefly, then stopped. I think they developed resistance in just two weeks."

I lamented our plight.

This was what made the void frightening.

Adaptations that should have taken living creatures decades at the very least occurred chaotically in the void in mere days.

A few years were enough for horses to turn into dinosaurs. Mosquitoes developing resistance to insecticides took barely more than a week.

"Look at this."

Dang Seorin held out a photograph.

It showed someone with a shaved head.

Strangely, their head had the shape of a pine cone, just like the Buddha's.

"One of my guild members. Their whole head got bitten by mosquitoes, and this happened. Pitiful, isn't it?"

"..."

"But they say they're happy. Something about feeling enlightened, freed from the pain of the past."

Dang Seorin sighed.

"It's not just their head. Their entire body's covered in mosquito bites. We've locked them in a cell for now, but they went berserk begging us to let mosquitoes bite them. Seriously. The world's gone mad. At this rate, we'll have people dying of blood loss from mosquitoes sucking them dry."

"Are you all right?"

"Me? I'm fine. I keep a fan running, too. It's easier for me to hold out than the others."

Dang Seorin's expression darkened.

"But even if we somehow get through this summer, if this continues next year... Honestly, I think things will get really hard. Undertaker. Can't you do something?"

Indeed, once the rainy season passed, the mosquitoes became even more rampant.

Just as Dang Seorin had feared, people began dying from having too much blood sucked out of them, at a rate of about one a day.

‘How in the world am I supposed to eradicate this anomaly?’

I agonized over the problem.

Should I breed large numbers of dragonflies, the mosquito's natural enemy?

That would help, but completely exterminating mosquitoes would still be difficult.

Should I work the millennial and Gen Z awakened to death until they could at least use a protective sheath of energy as a basic skill?

That would address the root problem, but it was a project requiring at least twenty years.

Could the Mosquito anomaly have merged with a ‘Vampire’ anomaly? It was possible, given that both made having one's blood sucked pleasurable.

But if so, that was strange. How dare a lowly creature like a vampire hover around Koreans, the people of garlic...?

"Hmmmm."

Unable to decide what to do, I paced the hideout lobby.

Then Oh Dokseo, who was in the lobby with me, shouted.

"Ugh, seriously. You're distracting me. Mister! If you're going to keep wandering around, just leave!"

"Dokseo. I'm pondering humanity's survival right now. If one of us has to leave, shouldn't it be you?"

"Huh? What the hell are you talking about? I'm fighting for humanity's survival too, you know!"

Oh Dokseo lifted her manuscript paper.

"Look! I'm writing your novel! If I fail to write this thing, a God of Alienation will descend, so who cares what happens to some stupid mosquitoes!"

She really was.

Oh Dokseo was writing on manuscript paper.

Several sheets she'd crumpled into balls with her fists lay scattered at one end of the table. Apparently, she wasn't happy with her writing.

"It's admirable that you're writing the novel, but must you do it out here in the lobby? You could just write quietly in your room."

"Oh, fuck! I came to the lobby because I couldn't write in my room! I'm already stressed because the words won't come, and now you're going to give me shit too? Huh? I'm writing this novel for you!"

"But... you were the one who started giving me..."

"Aaaaaagh!"

Oh Dokseo clutched her head and screamed.

"I don't want to write! Why did the me from that earlier run decide to write! Fucking idiot! Moron! Piece of shit! Die! Die!"

"Hmm..."

Dokseo seemed to have contracted an extreme case of ‘I-don't-want-to-write syndrome.’ I'd seen authors throw fits like this plenty of times while running the Canned-Author Hotel, so I was used to it.

Then a mosquito caught my eye.

BZZZZZZ.

The mosquito flitted gracefully through the air. I immediately summoned my aura to shoot down the harmful insect, then hesitated.

The bloodsucker wasn't targeting me. Nor was it targeting Oh Dokseo.

It was targeting the wad of manuscript paper she'd written on and discarded.

Then an astonishing sight unfolded.

SLUUURP.

The mosquito landed on the crumpled manuscript, ‘stuck a straw into the paper,’ and ‘sucked up black liquid.’

Not red blood.

The ink on the manuscript. It was sucking up the black ink as though it were absolutely delicious.

"Huh?"

All I could do was stare blankly at the mosquito sucking blood... no, sucking ink.

After feasting on the crumpled manuscript, the mosquito buzzed off somewhere, seemingly satisfied.

It appeared to have no interest in Oh Dokseo's blood or mine. Its wingbeats were carefree, as if to say there was no need to drink soju after cleansing its palate with the finest wine.

A fanfare rang out inside my head.

"Embarrassing pasts...!"

"What?"

"Yes, embarrassing pasts! We just had to let them eat embarrassing pasts!"

Why hadn't I thought of this?

The Mosquito anomaly was drawn not to human blood, but to embarrassing pasts.

In that case, it didn't matter whether that ‘embarrassing past’ came in human form.

"Saintess. Saintess, please answer me. This is urgent."

["Yes? What is it?"]

"Do you remember the story I told you last time? You know, the potato-Saintess-robot story from another run."

["Ah."]

Perhaps it was my imagination, but SaintessTalk crackled for a moment.

["I'm sorry, Undertaker. A mosquito just flew past my eyes... Anyway, I remember. But why bring that story up all of a sudden?"]

"Write down the potato-Saintess story yourself. Like a diary entry."

["What?"]

"Then leave it in a corner of your room. I guarantee it one hundred percent: the mosquitoes will probably all cling to the diary as though you'd lit a mosquito coil."

["..."]

The next day.

["... It worked."]

How should I describe the Saintess's voice? She sounded like a believer in geocentrism forced to confront the scientific truth that Earth orbited the sun.

["I left the diary out overnight, and twenty-four mosquitoes gathered on it. They didn't come anywhere near my bed."]

"Just as I thought. Exactly as I predicted."

["..."]

"To be safe, please contact the writers at the Canned-Author Hotel and instruct them to copy their old practice pieces onto manuscript paper. Oh, the younger they were when they wrote them, the better. Pieces from high school or middle school."

["..."]

"Of course, posts they put on social media will work just as well as fiction. Posts from the Cyworld days would be even better."

["Undertaker, are you a devil?"]

"Pardon?"

["... Never mind. This must be for humanity's sake as well. I'll pass it along right away."]

From that day onward, time ran backward at the Canned-Author Hotel.

The Korean Peninsula's writers had to devote all their efforts to ‘hand-copying’ the practice pieces they'd written in middle school and high school.

It was by no means an easy task.

"Fuck! Just kill me instead! Kill me!"

"Aaaaaagh! No! This piece is really, truly out of the question!"

"Please forgive me! Using corner brackets (「」) instead of quotation marks and putting tildes (~) in titles was trendy back then!"

"Um, couldn't I at least fix the typos? Please, show me that much human mercy."

"I deleted this work in the first place! I know I deleted it! So why do you have a text copy, Undertaker?"

"I don't want to copy it... I feel like I'm dying..."

I kept the sobbing, wailing, tantrum-throwing authors in line.

And so I, the Undertaker, finally completed it: an anthology of ‘The 100 Most Embarrassing Skeletons in Korean Fiction's Closet,’ selected with the utmost care.

Then I ran the printing presses at a factory, churned out copies, and distributed one to every household.

"Haaaaaaaagh!"

"Why? Why would you do something so cruel?"

"Yeah, let's die... Let's just die..."

The great literary masters screamed as their early practice pieces—and social media posts—were forcibly exposed to the entire world.

But I didn't mind. The effect was every bit as tremendous as the anguish steeped into their screams.

If anyone were to ask whether I didn't love those authors, and why I would inflict such pain on writers I liked... well, it was because, from my perspective, none of it felt embarrassing at all.

I happily devoured even the parody practice pieces they'd written in middle school. Honestly, I didn't see what the problem was.

In any case, thanks to the authors' blood-and-tears-soaked manuscripts, people became safe from the Mosquito anomaly.

Once every household pasted manuscript pages by its front gate, all the mosquitoes flocked there instead.

It was a moving moment: at long last, after countless ages, mosquitoes had overcome their stalker-like obsession with humanity.

Oh Dokseo, whose outstanding contribution had brought about that stirring conclusion, instead muttered in disbelief.

"... Wait. Then are you saying everything I'm writing now is basically embarrassing crap? Fuck. Mister! Kill every last one of those mosquito bastards! They're calling your entire novel embarrassing crap!"

Oh, there's no epilogue today. The end.

-Blood Donor. Conclusion.