Ruho Jin's life had been reduced to exactly six square meters of miserable existence. The studio apartment—if you could even call it that—was more like a concrete coffin with a window that looked out onto another concrete wall about three feet away. At eighteen years old, he'd already dropped out of school, burned every bridge his parents had carefully built for him, and now survived on convenience store kimbap and the occasional odd job that paid under the table. The landlord had stopped knocking for rent two months ago, probably because even he felt too depressed climbing the seven flights of stairs to this shithole.
The apartment itself was a masterwork of cramped desperation. In one corner sat a hot plate that only worked if you jiggled the cord just right, balanced on top of a plastic storage container that held literally everything Ruho owned—three shirts, two pairs of pants, underwear he should've thrown out a year ago, and a phone charger that was more electrical tape than actual cord at this point. The bathroom was technically a separate space, but only if you counted a moldy shower curtain as a wall. The toilet ran constantly, a endless whisper of wasted water that had become white noise in Ruho's pathetic existence. His bed was a thin mat on the floor that he rolled up during the day, mostly out of habit since there wasn't anyone coming over to impress. Ever.
But right now, none of that mattered because Ruho had his pants around his ankles and his laptop balanced precariously on a stack of manga he'd found in the dumpster behind a bookstore in Gangnam back when he gave a shit about anything. The screen glowed in the darkness of his room—he kept the lights off to save on the electric bill, not that he'd paid that in three months either—casting flickering shadows across his face as he worked his hand with the mechanical precision of someone who'd perfected this particular skill through thousands of hours of practice.
His breathing was getting heavier, that familiar tightness building in his gut as the video on screen reached what was clearly the main event. The actress—some woman with proportions that probably required either amazing genetics or surgical intervention—was making sounds that Ruho knew were fake as hell but still did the job. His wrist was starting to hurt. He'd been at this for nearly forty minutes now, edging himself with the dedication of someone who literally had nothing else to do with their Friday night. Or Saturday night. Or any night, really.
The laptop fan whirred louder, struggling to keep up with the multiple tabs he had open. Ruho had a whole system—he'd cycle through different videos, different genres, sometimes watching three or four at once in a desperate attempt to find that perfect combination that would finally get him across the finish line. His free hand reached for the bottle of lotion on the floor, the cheap shit from the dollar store that smelled like synthetic flowers and sadness. The bottle made that obscene farting sound as he squeezed out another glob.
His mind wandered even as his hand kept working. This was his life now. This was literally all he had. No friends, no family that would talk to him, no prospects, no future. Just this six square meter box and his right hand and an internet connection he was stealing from the restaurant downstairs. The thought should've made him sad, should've made him stop and reconsider his choices, but Ruho had gone numb to that kind of self-reflection months ago. This was fine. This was comfortable in its own pathetic way.
The video switched angles and Ruho felt that telltale surge building. Finally. His breath caught in his throat, his abs tensed, his toes curled against the grimy floor that he hadn't mopped since moving in. This was it. This was happening. His eyes squeezed shut, his hand moving faster, the wet sounds mixing with the artificial moaning from the laptop speakers, and then—
Nothing.
Not nothing as in he didn't finish. Nothing as in everything stopped. His heart stopped mid-beat. His lungs froze mid-breath. His hand stopped mid-stroke. And then there was a sensation like being yanked backward through a tunnel made of television static and broken glass, except he couldn't scream because he didn't have a throat anymore, didn't have a body, didn't have anything except the horrible awareness that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
Ruho Jin died with his dick in his hand at 11:47 PM on a Friday night, alone in his shitty apartment, and nobody would find his body for six days.
The white void that Ruho found himself in was so aggressively bright that it actually hurt to look at, except he didn't have eyes anymore so the pain was just sort of happening directly to his consciousness in a way that was really fucking inconvenient. There was no floor, no ceiling, no walls, just endless white in every direction that somehow still felt claustrophobic. He tried to speak, tried to ask what the hell was happening, but he didn't have a mouth either. Panic set in—or would have set in if he had a body to panic with. Instead he just existed in this blank space, screaming internally, wondering if this was hell or heaven or some kind of fucked up waiting room between the two.
And then he heard laughing.
Not just a chuckle. Full-on wheezing, can't-catch-your-breath, this-is-the-funniest-shit-I've-ever-seen laughing. The sound echoed through the void, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, and then suddenly there was someone—something—standing in front of him.
Except "standing" was generous. The figure was humanoid in the loosest sense of the word. It had the shape of a young guy, maybe early twenties, wearing a baggy gray hoodie and matching sweatpants that looked like they came from the clearance rack at some off-brand streetwear shop. But where there should've been a face, there was nothing. Just smooth, featureless gray skin. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, even though the laughing was definitely coming from it. No hair either. Just a blank mannequin head sticking out of a hoodie, and somehow it was looking at Ruho even though it didn't have eyes to look with.
"Oh man," the figure said, the voice coming from nowhere and everywhere, young and casual like they were talking about a funny meme instead of Ruho's actual death. "Oh man, that's—that's really how you went out? That's actually how it happened? I'm looking at your file right now and holy shit, dude."
Ruho would've felt his face burning with embarrassment if he'd had a face. Instead he just existed in mortified silence as this gray hoodie-wearing thing doubled over with laughter.
"Forty-three minutes," the figure said, apparently reading something Ruho couldn't see. "You were going for forty-three minutes straight. That's honestly impressive in the worst possible way. And you had like, what, nine tabs open? Damn, dude. Committed to the cause right up until your heart gave out."
If Ruho could've thrown a punch, he would have. Instead he just projected pure rage into the void, which the figure apparently felt because it straightened up, waving its hands in a placating gesture.
"Right, right, sorry. I'm being unprofessional. Okay, let me introduce myself properly." The figure gave a little bow that was so sarcastic it was almost offensive. "Name's Azirel. I'm a trainee god. Well, technically a junior associate divine entity, but that sounds lame as hell so I just say trainee god. And you, Ruho Jin, are currently in my office, so to speak."
"What the fuck," Ruho managed to project, his consciousness finally figuring out how to communicate in this weird non-physical state.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," Azirel said, flopping down to sit cross-legged in the void like there was an invisible chair. "So here's the deal. You're dead. Massive heart attack brought on by a combination of malnutrition, dehydration, and honestly just jerking it way too hard for way too long. Your body basically said 'fuck this, I'm out' and shut down. Sorry about that, but also like, maybe take breaks next time? Oh wait, there is no next time. Because you're dead."
"I got that part," Ruho projected. "Where the fuck am I? Is this hell? Heaven? Why the hell are you dressed like a soundcloud rapper?"
Azirel looked down at his outfit, or at least turned his featureless head downward. "Okay, first of all, this is comfortable. Second, you're not in heaven or hell. You're in what we call the Processing Zone. This is where I figure out where you're supposed to go based on your karma score."
"My what?"
"Karma score," Azirel repeated, and suddenly there was a translucent screen floating in the air, covered in text and numbers that hurt to look at. "So basically, every human accumulates karma throughout their life. Good deeds, bad deeds, all of it gets tallied up. Fifty-one percent good karma or higher, you go to heaven. Forty-nine percent or lower, you go to hell. It's a pretty simple system, been working for thousands of years."
"Okay," Ruho projected slowly. "So which one am I going to?"
Azirel's blank face somehow conveyed the biggest shit-eating grin Ruho had ever experienced. "Neither."
"What?"
"You, my dude, are sitting at exactly fifty percent karma. Fifty point zero zero zero, we're talking perfect balance here. This hasn't happened since... well, ever, actually. You're literally the first person in all of human history to die with perfectly balanced karma."
Ruho would've blinked if he had eyes. "How the fuck is that even possible?"
"Well, let's look at your file," Azirel said, scrolling through the floating screen. "On the good side, we've got... okay, wow, the bar is really low here. Um. You never committed any actual crimes. That's something. You gave a homeless guy money that one time outside the 7-Eleven. You helped an old lady carry her groceries up some stairs when you were like twelve. You didn't kick a dog once when it would've been really easy to kick it."
"These are the good things I did?" Ruho projected, somehow managing to feel even more pathetic in death than he had in life.
"I mean, you didn't do a lot of good things, dude," Azirel said. "But you also didn't do a lot of terrible things either. Well, except for the bad stuff. Let's see... you skipped your parents' funeral to stay home and masturbate. That's a big one. You stole food from convenience stores like forty-seven times. You said some really racist shit online when you were sixteen. You told your middle school teacher to kill herself. You ghosted three different people who tried to be your friend. You faked being sick to get out of your grandmother's birthday party and then posted pictures of yourself at a PC bang the same day." Azirel kept scrolling. "The list goes on, man. You weren't like, evil, but you were definitely kind of a piece of shit."
"Thanks," Ruho projected flatly.
"Just being honest," Azirel said. "But anyway, it all balanced out to exactly fifty-fifty. Which puts me in a weird position because technically I'm supposed to send people like you to purgatory."
"Purgatory's real?"
"Sort of. It's basically just you go back to Earth as a ghost and you have to do one more good thing to tip your karma into heaven territory. Usually works out fine. Boring as hell for me to process, but fine."
"Okay, so send me to purgatory then," Ruho projected. "Whatever, I'll do a good thing."
"Yeah, see, that's where we hit a snag," Azirel said, and his whole posture changed to something that radiated barely contained excitement. "I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do something way more interesting instead."
Warning bells that didn't exist started ringing in Ruho's consciousness. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means," Azirel said, standing up and cracking his neck even though he didn't have bones, "that I'm making you a test subject. See, I'm a trainee god, right? Which means I'm supposed to be learning how to manage souls and process karma and all that boring administrative shit. But what I actually like to do is create worlds. Fantasy worlds, specifically. I've been working on this absolutely massive one for the past week and I need someone to test it out."
"Absolutely fucking not," Ruho projected. "I'm not being some guinea pig for your weird fantasy bullshit. Send me to purgatory. I'll be a ghost. I don't care."
"You sure about that?" Azirel asked, his blank face somehow conveying a smirk. "Because being a ghost means you're in spectral form. No physical body. Which means no eating, no sleeping, and most importantly..." He paused for dramatic effect. "No dick."
Ruho's consciousness froze.
"That's right," Azirel continued. "No masturbation. No sex. No physical pleasure of any kind. Just floating around trying to do good deeds while watching other people live their lives. Could take you years to balance your karma that way. Maybe decades if you're unlucky."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
"Nope," Azirel said cheerfully. "So what's it gonna be? Test out my cool fantasy world where you'll have a body and magic and adventure and shit? Or become a ghost with no genitals?"
Ruho wanted to argue. He wanted to tell this smug trainee god to shove his fantasy world up his non-existent ass. He wanted literally any other option besides these two terrible choices. But he also knew, with the absolute certainty of someone who'd spent his entire life making bad decisions, that he couldn't handle an existence without the one reliable source of dopamine he'd had.
"Fine," he finally projected. "Fine. Do whatever you gotta do. But fuck yo—"