The social forces that prevent you from being able to admit to your own desires in the safety of your own mind are far more evil than any desire you could have.
Unacted desires are fundamentally neutral, and you can't decide what to do about the things you want unless you can admit to yourself what they are in the first place. Everyone has desires that would hurt other people if they acted on them, but most people would not actually go out and do anything they know would cause harm. Far more harm is done in this world by people who are trying to pretend they can't possibly want anything they think is bad than people running around going "ehehehe I love hurting people!"
All of us have a hungry, horny, angry, scared animal inside ourselves. You do not need to excuse or justify what that animal wants, it simply is. You cannot escape it. Lying to yourself about the animal that you are will only give you less control over it, not more.
This one was hyped up big time when it was still ongoing and honestly I can see why, I think this is one of the few times I've seen a full on all encompassing god that can control every aspect of someone's life. The last couple of chapters especially are very wild and it makes me want to see more stories about it as it's very unique. Personally though, I think the smut in this one is more of a bonus thing in the story rather than something that really needed to be there since the concept itself is already very good. This story is finished at 26 chapters.
The story starts with Yoo Yirae waking up in the hospital, the doctors telling her she as amnesia. Surprisingly, she doesn't seem to shocked about this until she sees her husband, who turns out to have tentacles for a head. She tries to get help from one of the nurses, but the nurse only sees the husband as an incredibly handsome man. YIrae talks to the doctor about this only to find out that the accident she was in seems to have warped her perception of what she sees her husband as, for everyone else sees him as human. She actually can see what he looks like in a photo and even seems smitten by his appearance. Yirae asks how the two of them got married, with her husband explaining that he chased after her until she fell in love with him and she describes what his tentacles look like to her. She gets a strange dream about a city whose sky is colored in various colors and the buildings breaking apart, before waking up after she sees her husband destroying everything. Yirae searches up her condition, Capgras syndrome, where the victim believes that their lover has been replaced with someone who is an exact copy of them. Upon seeing her husband again, his head has changed from tentacles to planet and he reveals his name is Go Yohan (though Yirae swears he says something else that makes her get a splitting headache). She asks if she can be discharged (also finding out in the process that Yohan is rich, because of course he is) and then going to his rich apartment before teasing him. Yirae finds out that they have a cat named Shan, and finding out that Yohan has no reflection in the mirror. Yohan revealed that the two knew each other in high school, and that she quit her tiring job after she got married. However, Yirae feels conflicted as the memories that Yohan tells Yirae about her job and what she did leading up to it are significantly different than what she remembers. Yohan comforts her and she wakes up in bed the next day with Shan staring at him and Yohan's head turned into a bouquet of flowers. She starts to notice strange things like Yohan's buttons being missing or being able to somehow smell the flowers that Yohan has for a head. The two decide to go on a date and Yirae meets Nia, Yohan's personal secretary who drives them back home. The two watch a movie and Yohan gives Yirae a massage afterwards. The two have a conversation about lifespans, Yirae states she doesn't want to live an average life which seems to bum Yohan out. When Yohan asks why she doesn't want to have a long lifespan, she states that she doesn't believe she has the mental fortitude for it, nor does she feel like she'd want to watch the others around her die, though Yohan compliments her by stating that her mental fortitude is stronger than she gives herself credit for. Yohan makes Yirae food and Yirea notes that while the presentation is very good (almost too good), the food itself tastes soulless, which makes sense as Yohan seems to not really care about taste or even eating for that matter. Yirae freaks out after seeing a fish monster clinging onto the outside of the window, though when she looks again, there's nothing there. Yohan tells Yirae that she might be seeing things because of a scary movie that she saw with a similar premise, which calms Yirae down. While trying to remember him when she was younger, she sees flashes of her past thoughts, cursing him out and resenting him.
Yohan comforts him to sleep and the two hold hands. Yirae fakes sleeping and Yohan touches her before she wakes up suddenly and moves to another room. Yirae wakes up to see that Yohan's head is in the shape of a box with three holes, and contemplates about what might be inside of it. Yohan surprises Yirae with the "monster" that she saw the day before, which seems to be some sort of bathmat that has the monster design on it, to which she dances on top of it afterwards, causing Shen to freak out and run and Yohan to laugh. Yirae seems concerned that Yohan hasn't gotten back to work yet (given he is a CEO) and although he states that he doesn't care if the company gets bankrupt, Yirae asks to go visit it. Still, after visiting the company, Yirae gets no insight into her memories, even stating that it felt like she had never been there before. She has a dream where a bunch of gods surround her and wakes up with a migraine. Yohan is able to take the pain away by touching her forehead and has a wet dream about Yohan using his tentacles to touch her. After this dream, she starts to think about the lingerie to wear and gets teased by Yohan about it. Yohan takes Yirae for a drive to the city, but Yiare sees someone who distinctly looks like the CEO in the company she remembers. This causes her to question Yohan and become paranoid, and trying to search for reason. She calms down after seeing the discharge form for her hospital and tries to trust Yohan. She ends up going into Yohan's room and finding a black book inside one of the clocks, though when Yohan catches her, he seems to feel, not angry, but rather wondering why it took her so long. Afterwards the two exchange questions, with Yohan teasing Yirae about the underwear and Yirae asking why Yohan likes her. He states that she could see him for who he was, unlike everyone one, something that is too vague for Yirae to even comprehend. Yohan and Yirae eventually have sex, with Yirae being blindfolded and Yohan using his tentacles on her. After a break where Yirae sees Yohan as a head with angel wings they go back to having more sex. Yirea seems Yohan's head as more and more human and when Yohan leaves for work, Mr. Nia comes to visit, bringing her some food. When she lets Mr. Nia inside for tea, he starts to talk about entropy and how it cannot be stopped, basically implying that Yirae has the ability to stop it (because she is the closest to Yohan) though after her visit, she suddenly has a strong inclination to check on the book that was hidden in Yohan's office.
All of Yirae's doubts about Yohan surface to her mind, about the mismatched memories, her negative reactions to seemingly normal statements and her dreams. She decides to follow her memories and go back to her original office job, though once she heads there, nobody there remembers her despite she herself remembering everyone else. Upon going back home, she goes back to the office and finds her own diary. The diary details a monster that she sees at school that everyone else sees as human. As much as she tries to avoid showing that she noticed, the monster eventually moves into her classroom, seemingly unnoticed. This freaks her out so much she begs her parents to move, but when she does, the monster pretends to be her childhood friend instead. No matter what she does to beg her parents to move, the day resets, even having a day where she basically was in a killing game and was the final survivor. Even after stabbing Yohan, she wakes up again in the same loop. Yohan messes with Yirae, making everyone in the world dance, having everyone try to kill her and even becomes her older brother. As the years pass, some guys start to confess to Yirae, however, Yohan always ended up killing them in front of her, usually by delivering their head to her. As a result, she shunned off all relationships, though this doesn't stop Yohan from messing with her, like making her crush have sex with another girl in front of her, or making it so that siblings can marry just because Yirae brought up that they couldn't. Eventually, Yohan kills Yirae's parents, and she, out of desperation, jumps off the roof to kill herself. Yohan returns home and catches Yirae reading her journal. Despite her freaking out, Yohan is able to change her memories and make up reasons as to why her diary was all fake. Her memories reset and her mind reformed, she accepts Yohan as her husband.
In the final chapter, we see Yohan's point of view, how Yirae was the only thing that could see his true appearance. Initially he kept on killing her by accident due to the lack of control over his power, but he enjoyed messing with her. He saw all of her annoyances and fears as cute quirks, not realizing nor caring the actual turmoil that he brought her through. After she died, Yohan looked through all possible timelines to find where the two of them would be happy, with the story that currently plays (that we read) being the one and only timeline where the two could be together.
Ooh, okay how do I even start with this one. It's pretty much a great read from start to beginning, with the only really big issue being that the webcomic is far too short. I've heard that the novel its based off of expands the story more. I personally think that the pacing is very weird as most of the story focuses on Yirae sort of just not understanding what happened before we hit the true reveal of what she had to deal with when it comes to Yohan. I really wish that they had expanded more into how Yohan messed with Yirae in the past because I personally think that's the most interesting part of this whole story, but honestly, I think as is, it's already really good. This story is probably even better if you are aware of lovecraftian dieties as many of Lovecraft's characters are in the story including Yohan which is believed to be Azathoth and Nia being Nyarlathotep, although neither are confirmed in the story. I don't think I've ever really seen a yandere god to this degree being able to warp reality in such a way. Most gods that I read about are powerful, but not to the point of changing entire realities, and especially not like this which makes it even more compelling. Yohan's design of having various different monster heads not only fits with Azathoth's description (as a being with no real physical form) but also is great character design wise and mystery wise, as it's always a great hook when the lead in the story is the only one who sees someone missing a head or having something strange going on with their head. Then it comes the question of if Yohan really loves Yirae, as he definitely finds her interesting, but in a way a person might find their cat or dog cute. He messes with her reality, playing with her, and perceiving her fear as cute, never really understanding why Yirae hates him, yet clinging onto it. It sort of extends my fascination of ai or machines in love. Can they actually feel love in the way that two humans love each other, and if they can't, is what their feeling still be considered love? After all, gods are not the same as us, and their love might be different, but could it still work out?
I think that Yirae as a protagonist is pretty good, being still headstrong and suspicious while trying to figure out what's going on. Honestly, given her opponent is Yohan, a god that sort of just messes with people for his own pleasure, she's doing pretty well, something that Yohan even admits himself, that she is much more mentally strong than she thinks. She is pretty normal all things considered and although she seems to fall for Yohan's looks pretty quickly (which, I mean is not really something that's uncommon in webcomics, plus the fact that Yohan can make himself look like anything he wants) still holds a healthy amount of realization that something is wrong. Most of the plot, she is getting swept along by Yohan, though she does try to do things like figure out where she used to work, going to Yohan's work to try to figure out more about her condition and eventually finds the diary that reveals her past. In her past, Yirae was mostly on survival mode, which is wise considering just how much Yohan messes with her, from killing anyone that shows interest in her, pretending to be her childhood friend, then brother and surviving a multiple of different worlds like when she was hunted down or her entire class went about killing each other, only to wake up and feel like nothing happened. It's a miracle that mentally she survived that long since having to face such terrors day to day from a god that finds that kind of stuff amusing must be incredibly difficult. I do wish that she was able to realize a bit longer that Yohan basically wiped her memory for the two to be together as the last chapter where Yohan makes up a bunch of bs to get her to forget (and probably uses his powers) is just way too fast for my taste- I mean Yirae barely had a time to have an existential crisis about what happened.
Yohan is pretty terrifying as a character, not really because of how he acts most of the time (though you could argue that it's part of it) but because of what he has done and what his powers are. Yohan is likely, as I said before, Azathoth, who as we see in Yirae's dream sequence very powerful and other being simply do not mess with him, else they turned into a bath mat. Even Nia, who is the closest to Yohan and even banters with him, still fears him to a certain extent, pitying Yirae for being Yohan's one interest. After all, being the play thing of a sadistic god is rather terrifying. The fact that he changes Yirae's existence so casually and out of just boredom and the way that the story juxtaposes how Yirae feels with how Yohan feels about the exact situation is super interesting to see and we see just much he enjoys watching Yirae suffer, without ever really knowing about the turmoil she goes through. It's pretty telling considering he did likely read her diary and her experiences and yet still continues to do the same thing to her in the new world. Even in this new world, Yohan doesn't really act that much differently, playing the role of a lover perfectly, but not really hiding what he does or how he feels, like when he quite literally tells Yirae that he absorbed her pain when she had a headache. I can't even really call him all that cunning either because while he does fabricate her world, most of the manipulations he does are mostly seen through or at least suspected by Yirae and when she does find out, he simply wipes that memory away. There isn't really a level of chess master manipulation, because he doesn't really need to be. He is very good at hiding things and making up reasons to why Yirae might see or feel things as he controls pretty much every person in the world and can make them do anything he says, yet none of them seem really concrete, mostly because he can just blame it on the fact that Yirae has been in an accident (and that's a pretty logical thing to think). As a yandere, Yohan is definitely manipulative (as he is hiding pretty much Yirae's entire past life from her and lying to her about being married), and as a god, he can just change anything that displeases her or explain things away, yet he also enjoys Yirae's suffering to a certain extent as we see in the past. It is really saying something that the only world where Yirae and Yohan actually get together is when Yohan brainwashes her/manipulates her into losing her previous memories.
So yeah overall this story is a great read. Although there is smut it in, it's one of those stories where the concept is what is really making the story shine and the smut is the icing on top. I actually do like this kind of story and I hope to see more in the future.
titsay
vaporwave
snowghoul
blakekathryn
