(Wait, is this really okay...?)
I hold my breath and peer out from the shadows, watching the group that just entered. One man and a few women who seem unusually close to him. Naturally, they're all naked. Their eyes gleam with a certain intensity, but strangely, the atmosphere isn't tense—it feels... relaxed.
Actually, that guy's body is really beautiful...
I find myself staring. It's the kind of body you'd only ever see on the other side of the internet or in manga. In magazines, you don't get to see looks like that anymore—discrimination based on appearance is banned, so ironically, only very... questionable older men get featured.
And in this society, where men are supported by their wives, they have no need to earn money. So the ones trying to make a living tend to be either past their prime or simply can't find a wife to support them. Often, they're not the nicest people either. To put it bluntly, the odds are stacked against you from the start.
The gender ratio means there should be one man for every hundred women—so why is it still not enough?
Even so, men are still considered incredibly rare and valuable, so there's demand no matter what.
If you want to find a good one, you have to look outside the usual places. Ideally, someone within your social circle already has a harem going, and you can try to benefit from that... but in our case—us artificial insemination kids—our family networks are filled with women and not particularly close ones at that. So it's pretty hopeless.
If you miss your chance early on, it's just a slow slide into despair.
Before you know it, you hit thirty and you're stuck using those weird government-issued turkey basters with tears in your eyes.
Once you start working, relying on others for introductions just leads to a sea of marriage scams and romance cons.
There are tons of women who've been scammed out of money. Honestly, it makes it hard to trust people anymore.
Which is why I ended up doing this—chasing down male sightings online and verifying rumors. Not that the success rate is great. Most stories are like "a mountain roared and gave birth to a mouse." It's all embellished or pure fantasy. Still, if you train yourself to recognize the unaltered first-hand info, you get better at avoiding the worst people.
But honestly, valuable info comes around once in a blue moon. You can count them on one hand.
...So, could I make this work?
I glance down at my own body. I'm still young, but all that poor self-care shows. My flabby, soft flesh hangs a bit too prominently. The guy currently being groped is pretty tall, so proportionally his size is... well, if that passes, then maybe I could pass too?
Still, I remember what I was told the few times I got introduced to a guy. "That's some tasteless excess flab," and similar gems. One even said, "Unless you pile up a few million yen, no way," and then laughed, adding, "Wouldn't even get it up anyway."
I almost cried and considered paying, just for a second. But then I thought: I could use that money to repay my student loans, or take my mom out for a nice meal for once.
So I politely declined. He made sure I could hear him shouting, "Don't introduce me to some ugly chick like that again."
(I should've shouted back "Your loss, loser!") But I couldn't.
On the way home, I bought tons of meat and sweets out of spite, barged unannounced into my mom's place—we'd been living separately since I moved to the city—and ate with tears in my eyes.
By the way, my mom's big too. Definitely genetic. I couldn't tell her about it—she'd cry if she heard the kind of things people said about me.
Sometimes, I still regret it a little. Sometimes I get flashbacks.
I do hope I find the next chance soon... but for now, I just want to burn this paradise-like live scene into my memory.