Breathing Life into Real Dolls

1.

The sex that started at dawn continued all the way until the evening.

Every time Ciel’s masochistic tendencies were stimulated, she tightened down below. I enjoyed the sensation so much that I aggressively groped her here and there.

As a result, her body ended up with red palm prints all over. It was quite fun, like coloring on a blank white canvas.

If someone were to see these handprints, they might misunderstand, but I was innocent.

Because every time I tried to restrain myself a bit, Ciel would plead,

“Just a little more, please…♡.”

In contrast to Ciel, Serena preferred lovey-dovey sex over rough handling.

Whenever I ejaculated inside her, she would wrap her legs tightly around me, pressing my buttocks as if she couldn’t help but love the sensation.

Receiving that passionate embrace, it felt like she was cheering me on to climax more, so I could do it with even greater pleasure.

“Hmm……”

It was still early evening, but Serena and Ciel were already fast asleep.

It was too early to call it a day, so I decided to finish one task at a time that I could do.

What I could do now was……

2.

I walked down the hallway of D-Mart, holding five SSDs that I had taken.

These were all taken from the computers at the Paju MHC (Make Human Company) warehouse.

I needed more high-quality Real Dolls to use my abilities. However, all six Real Dolls in the domestic MHC warehouse had been destroyed.

Fortunately, Ciel, who had been kept separately for special inspection, could be salvaged and turned into a human, but it was regrettable that I couldn’t get any more Real Dolls.

But……

‘What if I could obtain information about the Real Dolls that have already been delivered or were in the process of being delivered?’

In this zombie apocalypse world, the likelihood was high that the owners of the Real Dolls had either abandoned them to flee to shelters or had already died.

After all, they wouldn’t have headed to the shelters carrying Real Dolls made in a 1:1 ratio with actual people while zombies were swarming outside.

In other words, if I found their addresses and paid a visit, there’s a very high chance that unclaimed Real Dolls would be waiting there.

With this thought, I tried turning on all the computers in MHC’s warehouse, but……

‘All of them had security programs installed that blocked access to information without an employee ID.’

So, I reluctantly took only the secondary storage devices, the SSDs, just in case someone who knew how to hack might be able to extract the information.

And there was one person at our D-Mart shelter who claimed to know how to hack.

That person was……

Knock, knock, knock.

I knocked on the door and waited. A timid female voice came from inside.

“Wh-who is it……?”

“It’s me. Kim Doha.”

“Captain!? Wh-what brings you here all of a sudden……”

Creak.

Who was revealed through the opening door was a woman with purple hair, dressed entirely in a black tracksuit.

She was Shin Jiha.

3.

My first meeting with Shin Jiha was quite an impressive one.

Mistaking me as an ability user under Choi Cheolnam, who ruled D-Mart, she had suddenly ambushed me.

Fortunately, Serena protected me, so I didn’t die, but even thinking about it now, it was a chilling attack.

The reason why I, who belonged to the considerably strong category even without Serena or Ciel, almost fell victim to her blade was because of Shin Jiha’s special ability.

The D-Class Special Ability, [Shadow Walking].

In simple terms, it was the ability to blend into shadows, and the deeper the shadows, the more the ability was strengthened.

At that time, I had caused a blackout in the mart to attack the enemies, and I was in pitch-black darkness, making it the perfect situation for me to become Shin Jiha’s prey.

Of course, after that misunderstanding was cleared up, Shin Jiha repeatedly apologized every time we met, and we built a bond as we worked together on the extermination team.

Shin Jiha has quite a timid personality, so it was hard to strike up a conversation at first, but now I can confidently say we are quite close.

I might be one of the few people she can initiate a conversation with.

“Captain……?”

Shin Jiha looked up at me with her purple eyes.

[Shadow Walking] had turned the color of her hair and eyes to purple when she awakened it…

Without hesitation, I entered the room.

“Excuse me.”

“Aah……!”

Creak.

Shin Jiha quickly closed the door and followed me.

“Wh-what’s going on, Captain…!?”

I looked around the room and found it to be as expected.

There were PCs. Two of them, no less.

Two main units and four monitors. Quite a splendid setup.

I waved the SSDs in front of Shin Jiha’s eyes.

“Could I ask you for a favor?”

She glanced at the SSDs and hesitated in her response.

“……If it’s something I can do……”

It seemed like a response lacking confidence, but… I believed in her. I knew that Shin Jiha was the best choice for what I needed.

4.

The first time I heard the story was from Baek Seona.

The conversation about Shin Jiha came up as we indulged in pillow talk, stroking each other’s bodies after sex.

“Ah, Oppa, do you know about Jiha?”

“Jiha? Do you mean Shin Jiha? Why her?”

“At first, I couldn’t recognize her because of her changed hair and eye color, but it was indeed Shin Jiha from our school.”

“Your school… Seoul National University?”

“Yes.”

Baek Seona spoke while caressing my thigh.

“She’s been famous since her first year. A genius hacker joined our computer science department this year.”

“A genius hacker? Are you talking about the Shin Jiha I know?”

Surprised, I asked further, and Baek Seona replied while slapping my buttocks.

“That’s right.”

Of course, I wasn’t the type to just take it, so I pinched Baek Seona’s buttocks hard.

“Heuk…♡ Th-that’s why… In the world of hackers, there’s something called a bug bounty. Did you know?”

“No.”

“It’s offered by major corporations or organizations that consider security important. They’ll reward you if you find and report a critical flaw in our security system.”

“Aha……”

It sounded fascinating since I was hearing it for the first time.

A bug bounty, huh? It feels like an adventurer’s guild quest that would appear in a fantasy novel. Interesting.

“But Shin Jiha was incredibly famous in that field. A genius hacker who earned a million dollars by reporting a fatal security vulnerability to a global IT giant at the age of a middle schooler…”

“What? What? A million dollars!?”

“Yes. That’s about 1.2 billion Korean won.”

“Wow……”

1.2 billion for a single vulnerability? It felt like my sense of money was collapsing.

“Is it common to give that much?”

“Of course not. The vulnerability that Shin Jiha found was critical. If it had been discovered by a malicious hacker first, the entire service could have been paralyzed.”

Good heavens. A girl who had been in middle school discovered something like that?

“She’s a genius……”

At my admiration, Baek Seona enthusiastically responded.

“Right? Fascinating, isn’t it? I also learned about it when Shin Jiha first enrolled in our school. The whole school was buzzing about it.”

“That makes sense.”

After that, I recalled my conversation with Baek Seona when I ran into Shin Jiha at D-Mart, so I spoke to her.

“Jiha, I heard you’re a highly skilled hacker?”

“What? Who said that…?”

“Seona said so. She said you were famous at school.”

“Oh……”

Shin Jiha, who had been fiddling with her fingers, shyly nodded and replied.

“I’m good at security and encryption-related stuff.”

“Wow……!”

For Shin Jiha, who always seemed unconfident, to say that she was good at something herself, so I excitedly asked.

“So, if I have anything computer-related that I don’t know, can I come to you?”

“…Yes.”

Shin Jiha turned her head and added in a tiny voice.

“……You can come to my room.”

5.

… It was only a short while ago that we had this conversation. I never thought I would be asking for her help so quickly.

“So… you’re saying these SSDs are encrypted, and you want to read the internal data?”

“That’s right.”

“Where did you get them?”

I hesitated for a moment.

Should I say I took them from the computer in the warehouse of a Real Doll company?

“…… It’s a secret.”

“…… I’ll give it a try.”

Shin Jiha started booting two computers simultaneously, beginning to examine each SSD.

“Do these computers serve different purposes?”

“Yes. They are divided for connecting to the external network and for use only within the internal network. The one connecting to the external network tends to be more vulnerable to attacks.”

“……”

As I stood dumbfounded, Shin Jiha rephrased it simply for me.

“One is connected to the internet, and the other one isn’t.”

“Aha.”

She should have said that sooner. It was simpler when she said it.

Shin Jiha plugged one of the SSDs I brought into an external connection port on the main unit. It was the computer used for connecting to the external network.

A window requiring administrator access appeared on the monitor screen. Then Shin Jiha opened a small drawer on her desk.

Swish-

Inside were over a dozen similarly looking USBs.

“Wow…… What are all these?”

“These are hacking programs I made a while ago. I’ll try each one, and if all of them fail, I’ll have to find a vulnerability and create a new one.”

“Wow……”

Complex codes started to scramble up the monitor screen.

During this process, Shin Jiha only occasionally typed ‘y’ or ‘n’; she didn’t seem to be doing much else. Probably because she was just executing programs that had been previously created.

Shin Jiha’s room must have rarely had guests, as there was only one chair.

Since she was sitting in front of the computer, I stood behind the backrest, bending over to watch the monitor.

Standing like that, I……

“……”

Just below my face, the top of Shin Jiha’s head began to emit a pleasant scent.

Almost like the smell of grapes…… What kind of shampoo is this?

“Hmm……”

As I quietly enjoyed the fragrance, Shin Jiha suddenly realized what I was doing. Startled, she covered her head with both hands.

“Wh-why are you smelling me all of a sudden……!”

“No, it just smelled nice…… What shampoo do you use?”

“I-I don’t know. Please, don’t stand here; go, go over there……”

Shin Jiha pointed at the bed.

Everything was in shades of gray, from the bed cover to the blanket. If asked to guess based on the bed alone, one might think it belonged to a man.

“Please go sit there. If you’re tired, you can lie down too.”

“Really? Thanks.”

I didn’t refuse and went to sit on the bed. It’s likely I would disturb her if I kept hovering around while she was hacking……

But as soon as I sat down on the bed, the scent I had smelled earlier began to rise again.

Sniff, sniff…… Was that not the smell of shampoo?

Could it be, perhaps, Shin Jiha’s body scent?

“Why, why are you smelling the bed, too……!!”

Oops.