Choi Soohan (1)
"Honestly. Pull yourself together. We've arrived at Time River. Seoha? Seoha?"
I signed an autograph for the taxi driver, stepped out, and was about to stand there in a daze when I felt Franc take hold of my shoulder and give it a gentle shake.
"Ugh... I really hate that nickname..."
"Just accept it with an easy heart. Your father said the same thing."
Franc can talk like that because she doesn't have an embarrassing past! Every time I hear that nickname, a whole month's worth of kicking the blankets in shame comes crashing over me like a storm!
I was screaming it on the inside when Franc cupped my cheek, worry written across her face.
"You seem to have an unusually strong aversion to the eyes of strangers, Seoha."
"...Everyone has some social anxiety. It's only a matter of degree. Right now you're pulling in every stare on the street. Doesn't that bother you at all?"
"Not in the least. The gazes of people I don't know aren't worth a single grain of sand beside the way you look at me."
Watching Franc stand so firmly in herself, I wondered whether I ought to take after her a little.
With mixed feelings I hung my pass around my neck and stepped into the Time River Building. In the lounge set up in the first-floor hall, a familiar figure caught my eye. Thinking I might be mistaken, I checked with Spatial Perception. It was exactly who I thought.
The mannish woman — Phase Power 27,000 — sat on a bench in vintage jeans and a white T-shirt, watching the people crossing the hall with a face that held not a spark of life.
"That's Choi Soohan."
"Choi Soohan, huh."
As I walked toward her, the people around us edged quietly out of my path. Their eyes locked onto Franc following behind me. If it were me, I would have frowned or squirmed with embarrassment, but Franc took the attention as calmly as if she were being stared at by monkeys in a zoo.
The last person left between Choi Soohan and me flustered, then bolted. Our eyes met as a matter of course.
"...!"
Her eyes widened, then shrank, and her gaze dropped. She looked as pitiful as a puppy caught in the rain. I swallowed a private smirk and asked.
"It's been a month and ten days. Have you been well?"
"Mm. Have you been well too, Seoha?"
"Me? I've been living a very eventful life. Oh — and it isn't because of you, Miss Choi, so you don't need to make that face."
Her own mistake or not, the direct cause of her life's collapse was standing right in front of her, and still Choi Soohan showed no hostility. If it were me, I would have resented her or hated her regardless.
Was this the influence of my Mana Vision? Or was my backing just that overwhelming? Either way, the attitude wasn't a bad one.
"R-right. I heard you became D-Class? Congratulations. Your talent must be high, growing that fast."
"C-Class."
"Huh?"
"I'm C-Class. Right now."
"I... see. With talent of that order, I suppose it's only natural."
Honestly. To see the once-lively Choi Soohan with her tail between her legs, wilted like a beaten dog. Franc looked at the bowed head with eyes that held almost no feeling, but the longer I watched, the more uncomfortable I got.
How was someone this drained supposed to do any real work? Shove her into the Phase World like this and she'd trip over her own feet and drop dead.
......
Jung So-hee's photograph inside the glass display case caught my eye. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before Choi Soohan's photo hung right beside it.
No. Strictly speaking she wasn't even part of Time River, so she would simply vanish from people's memories.
...I didn't want that. She had given me a hell of a scare, but that had been her own rough, careless mind making a mistake — not a crime committed because she resented or hated me. And she was already being punished for it.
She was a bit of a pain, but I didn't want her dead.
"Cheer up. Deputy Director Kang Woohyuk even demoted himself to the middle of nowhere for your sake. You shouldn't be showing him a face like this, should you?"
"..."
Watching her bow even lower, I felt a strange mix of anger and irritation. When it came down to it, Choi Soohan and I were strangers. I could simply stop caring whether she lived or died.
"I saw Choi Soohan on the first floor. She was so drained I almost didn't recognize her."
When I brought it up to Hwayeon in her office, the answer I got was not the one I expected.
"The report I received from the team leader who returned two days ago said Choi Soohan barely survived a wound that nearly cut her in half."
"Huh?"
"A sharp attack entered at her left pelvis, split through all of her organs, damaged her spine, and exited through her right flank. While she was fighting an Aberrant in a subjugation, she literally crossed the threshold of death. Emergency treatment kept her alive, but she has been out of her mind ever since."
She set a photograph of the scene down in front of me. It was brutal enough to call a snuff film to mind, and all I could think was that it must have been truly dire.
Something large and sharp had torn across the abdomen as it passed. Only parts of the small and large intestine remained; above them, other organs — the stomach, the lungs — had spilled out. A horrific picture.
I sighed, turned the photo over, and thought of the face I had just seen. So the despair over her present situation and the shock of nearly dying to an Aberrant had stacked together and left her like that?
"Is it all right to leave her that way?"
"It is not. If she stays like that, it becomes a problem. Should the state continue, in the worst case the IWO may judge that she is refusing the enforcement order. Aggravated punishment and the charge of insolence would be added on top, and there is a high chance she would be sent to Alcatraz. If that happens, she dies. One hundred percent."
Yeah... The Ability User Alliance had its ruthless side, and more than anything Yeongeun disliked Choi Soohan a great deal. If it came to that, Yeongeun would be the first to move.
I turned it over for a moment — how to snap Choi Soohan back to herself — and decided to use her nature. Things had already come to this. I would make proper use of that masochistic perversion and knock her mind back into place.
Left as she was, nothing waited for her but a bleak future. Better to use a slightly extreme method and bring her around, wasn't it?
I went back down to the first floor and stood in front of her, but now she wouldn't even look at me. She only stared blankly at her toes.
A living corpse. Something about it displeased me, so I grabbed her by the collar and yanked hard.
"Ah—?!"
She must have been wearing nothing but a T-shirt on top. When I hauled on the collar the neckline stretched, and her bare skin showed clear through the gap. ...She wasn't even wearing a bra. Not that there was anything to see. A body like the Great Plains.
I sneered at her as she let out a small, startled scream.
"What a goddamn pathetic sight. You look, quite literally, like a beaten dog."
Held by the collar and hit with the abuse, Choi Soohan's face went red. So she hadn't completely lost her mind.
Around us, people muttered at my sudden move.
"Shouldn't we report that?"
"Report it? To whom?"
I waited to see what she would do... and the emotion vanished from her face almost at once. She turned her head away, limp and strengthless.
...Ah. I was angry. I was furiously angry. I was incandescently angry! That spineless look brought back what had happened on my second entry, and my guts started to boil!
If she had faced me boldly, the way Yeongeun would, I might even have admired her. Realizing I had suffered all of that because of someone like this sent irritation surging to the top of my head.
I glared at her with cold eyes, settled on a suitable treatment, and spat it out like a growl.
"Follow me."
Still gripping her collar, I walked straight for the elevator. The people around us startled and scrambled left and right out of the way. Choi Soohan didn't even think to free herself. She stumbled after me, dragged along exactly like a dog on a leash.
"S-Seoha?"
Franc seemed shocked and moved to stop me, but when she met my eyes she smoothed her expression at once, flew ahead, and pressed the elevator call button.
I swept the faintly twisted face — self-loathing, maybe — with Spatial Perception. The rock-hard muscle of a month ago was gone, and a moderate layer of fat had taken its place. The muscle-fanatic physique had softened into something like a fitness instructor's figure.
And I could see her petals slowly growing wet.
Was she getting aroused from being collared by a younger man and dragged in front of everyone like a dog? A genuine masochist, after all.
The elevator arrived and the doors opened. The people inside flinched at the sight of us, then hurried out.
I shoved Choi Soohan into the empty car.
She hit the wall with a thud and collapsed. Bracing her torso up on both arms, she stared blankly up at me. I looked down at her with cold eyes, stepped in, and pressed the door-close button.
"Sorry, but please take the next one."
I put force into my eyes and focused Mana Sieve lightly through my whole body as I spoke. The people waiting to board nodded hard.
The doors shut. On the way up toward the nineteenth floor, I spoke to her.
"Miss Choi — no. Even a title is wasted on you. I'll drop the courtesy."
Choi Soohan, sitting and staring at the elevator floor, flinched at my icy voice and looked up.
"If you had at least shown the will to pay your debt, I was going to go through Hwayeon and lighten your sentence a little, much as I dislike you. You're as good as in debt to me, so I figured I had that much discretion. And the money you'll earn from here on doesn't mean much to me anyway."
Franc, standing with her back to the elevator wall, half-hid an admiring look and watched me with heated eyes. ...What exactly was there to admire? Sometimes I really couldn't understand her.
"But looking at you now, all I can do is sigh. Even a mangy mutt would be more useful than you."
"Ngh..."
On the surface she looked like someone hearing a humiliating insult. I knew better. That wasn't the kind of grimace it was. Franc seemed to have noticed too; she stared at Choi Soohan in disbelief.
"Since it's come to this, I'll educate you thoroughly and turn you into my perfect personal purse."
"Wh... what are you saying...? How could you, Seoha— aagh!"
"From now on your life is nothing but a slave made of debt, isn't it? My exclusive slave, one I can dispose of the moment you break or wear out. So it's fair to call me your master, don't you think?"
At the insulting words, Choi Soohan's face twisted with humiliation. Even so, slick kept spilling endlessly from her lower lips. Impressive.
"So from now on, when you address me, you will call me Master. You mangy bitch."
I spun Mana Sieve hard and brought out a level of strength a D-Class physical enhancement user like Choi Soohan could not overcome, seized her by the throat, and lifted her.
"Hk—?! Kuh, kehk!"
It cost TP, but in exchange I manifested C-Class physical enhancement. Choi Soohan, barely at the threshold of D-Class, couldn't resist at all with her throat in my grip. Her legs thrashed as she gagged.
She put strength into her arms to pry my hand off, but she couldn't beat my power, and the effort came to nothing. Choked, she stared down at me in shock.
"H-how... Seoha... you... this...!"
"I told you to call me Master."
"Don't... do this. Seoha, please...!"
"Hm. An ill-mannered slave needs punishment."
I swallowed the sadistic urge rising in me and grinned.
"This is the penalty for using my name so freely."
And the moment she drew a breath, I drove my fist into her lower abdomen.
The blow landed with a heavy thud.
"Kehuk?!"
My fist sank into a belly that felt a little soft and yet, somehow, hard. From her lower lips, her slick gushed out in a rush.
Wow. I had thought a constitution like this only showed up in Japanese erotic manga.
More than that — when I struck her stomach just now, my hand had caught on something hard. Did Choi Soohan have Stone Skin?
They said the subcategories of physical enhancement included disease resistance, enhanced regeneration, and increased skin hardness, so that was probably it.
The pain of suffocation and the pain rising from her womb seemed to blend. Her face twisted strangely, and spit trailed from the corner of her mouth. Feeling her struggles grow weaker, I spoke in a cold voice.
"Understand? From now on, when you address me, you will call me Master. Without fail."
"Nnghh..."
Her face was reddening past the point of going blue. I drove my fist into her navel again.
Another heavy thud.
"Kehek!"
"Your answer?"
An ordinary pair of white panties was soaking through with her slick.
"I... I got... it!"
Thud.
"Khhuk!?"
"Honorifics."
"I under... stand!"
I flung the blue-faced Choi Soohan onto the elevator floor. She coughed in agony and curled in on herself.
There was a difference in where we stood, and I had no intention of persuading her with kind words, but I couldn't think of a better method. It wasn't as if I had time to spare, so this would have to do.
I was watching her with cold eyes when a chime sounded and the speaker announced that we had arrived at the nineteenth floor.
"Get out."
Choi Soohan rose unsteadily, legs pressed together, and tottered forward. That wasn't from the pain of being hit. Slick was running down between her thighs.
The moment she shuffled out of the elevator, I grabbed her shoulder and drove my knee up into her abdomen.
A dull, heavy impact.
"A... agh!"
The sensation traveled into my knee. The blow lifted her body a little before she dropped. Her eyes flew open. She clutched her stomach with both hands, sank down, and let out a stifled scream.
She knelt as if in reverence, torso bowed, twitching. I looked down at her and let out a small sigh.
Her body wasn't rigid with pain. Her thighs were clenching and squirming, almost as if... she had climaxed. I couldn't be sure.
"Get up."
"Nngh..."
The face that struggled upright was flushed bright red. So she had climaxed. Good grief. What a perverted masochist.
Over there, the secretaries at the desk in front of Hwayeon's office looked terrified.
That was actually for the best. Even if they had been captivated by my Mana Vision, a violent display like this ought to scare them off from approaching me.
Those secretaries had seen my eyes too. I should make sure they were properly frightened. Snap Choi Soohan out of it, and keep other women away. Two birds with one stone.
Looking into Choi Soohan's eyes, which had gone a little wet, I kicked Mana Sieve into a sharp acceleration — eighth stage — and drove my foot up into her crotch like lightning. Of course I blocked the view with my body so the secretaries behind me couldn't see. Showing them something that direct felt like a bit much.
"Kkrk...!"
I must have misjudged the force a little. A dull crack came from where I had struck, and I startled inwardly and checked her groin. Fortunately, nothing was broken.
Even if a bone shattered, I could just mend it with Healing Touch, couldn't I?
She wasn't trembling from pain. She was shuddering and going slack from pleasure. Should I grab her by the hair? If I wanted to build a notorious reputation inside the building, that would probably work better — but Franc and Hwayeon might see me in a worse light...
No. Maybe it was better to be rough with other women and gentle with my own.
Good.
I stepped in, seized Choi Soohan by the hair, and dragged her toward Hwayeon's office.
Half out of her mind, eyes rolled back, she only twitched now and then. The secretaries had gone stiff at the sight.
Passing the desk, I smiled wickedly at the frozen secretaries. Their legs seemed to give out; they collapsed in a heap, one after another.
Hmm. This was working a little too well. So well that I wondered whether an effect this strong might produce side effects.
I opened the office door and went in. Hwayeon started to speak when she saw me, then saw Choi Soohan half-unconscious with her hair in my fist, and shut her mouth, staring blankly.
"Se... oha? What did you... do to Choi Soohan?"
"Her head was rotten, so I thought I'd fix it."
As I said it, I winked my left eye at Hwayeon, sending a signal.
"..."
Franc flew over to Hwayeon, who wore a complicated expression, and began to whisper in her ear.
"...!!"
Training?! This is education! I shot Franc a sullen look, and she refused to glance my way, playing innocent.
Seeing my expression, Hwayeon finally relaxed a little. She rose, came around the executive hardwood desk, and spoke.
"What do you intend to do?"
What should I do? Drive her with words, and lay Mana Sieve under my voice to frighten her? Mana Vision would probably work, but then she might lose her mind and cling to me, so that was out.
Watching me think it over, Hwayeon looked back and forth between me and Choi Soohan sprawled on the floor, then made a face as if her head hurt and covered her eyes with one hand.
"For now, I'll watch."
First, push her mind to the limit. If I concentrated Mana Sieve hard in my throat and poured pressure — intimidation — over it, maybe she would awaken. Maybe there would even be a hypnotic effect.
That thing. Stockholm syndrome? She might even start to feel for the one hurting her.
I looked at Choi Soohan face-down on the floor, avoided the ribs where a bone might break, and jabbed my toe into the fleshy part of her side.
The toe sank in with a soft, heavy sound.
"Kehuk! Cough, cough!"
"Get up."
"Nnghh..."
She trembled and struggled to her feet. I kicked her in the side again. Her posture collapsed, and she flopped onto the floor.
I grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, focused Mana Sieve into my throat, and whispered into her ear.
At my voice she began to shake as if she had been struck by lightning.
"N-no... that's not..."
I watched Choi Soohan grimace and gasp at my words, then opened my mouth again.
She looked up at me, unable even to hide the way her body trembled. I drove her harder.
Choi Soohan flinched every time I paused.
"N-no, that's not true..."
As if my words hurt more than the hair in my fist, her face crumpled, and a single tear slipped free. Even then, slick kept flowing from her petals. Remarkable.
Choi Soohan's pupils shook as if the ground were quaking. In proportion, slick poured without end from her petals and soaked her pants.
It was almost enough to make me wonder whether what this woman needed was simply a man who would grind her down and dominate her. Did she want to be ruled in a state of helplessness?
"Hhk..."
I put more strength into the hand gripping her hair, yanked her head back, and spoke into her ear.
At my words Choi Soohan flinched and trembled.
"N-no!"
I let go of the hair of the woman who had cried out as if in a fit, and drove my toe into her side again.
Thud.
"Nngh...!"
The instant she was struck she let out a sweet, nasal moan, and Hwayeon's face became one of pure disbelief, as if nothing could be more absurd.
"Hhk. N-no, I'm not...! I, I..."
Choi Soohan, who had been holding her upper body up with difficulty, was slowly folding forward.
"...!!"
Curled face-down, Choi Soohan flinched and shuddered every time I spoke. I moved behind her and kicked her backside as hard as I could.
Thud!
"Aahn— hk!"
...The instant she was struck a nasal moan slipped out, and she clapped a hand over her mouth in a hurry. Too late to take back a sound that had already escaped.
Hwayeon simply closed her eyes. Franc stood beside her with the look of someone observing a rare specimen, gazing down at Choi Soohan.
"Hhk..."
Arousal, pleasure, frustration, despair, longing, and desire were all churned together into a face one rarely saw. I kicked that thick backside again.
Thud!
"Hk!"
My instep caught her mound dead on. Her spine twitched, and I watched her waist and shoulders seize in a spasm.
I grabbed her hair again, hauled her up, focused Mana Sieve a little harder into my voice, and spoke into her ear.
"Hhk. Hnn..."
"Hhk. Hnnn..."
There was no answer. I kicked her backside once more.
Thud!
"Ahhk!"
"Y-yes!"
"Hnnn..."
Hmm. Ending it here felt like something was missing. There was still a haze in her eyes... Right.
"Franc? Step outside for a moment and buy something sturdy... that. As fast as you can."
"...That, is it. I'll be back quickly!"
Franc, having heard my whisper, shot out through the window and into the city like an arrow. Not many minutes later she returned with a collar large enough for a big dog, offered it to me meekly, and stood quietly at Hwayeon's side.
Why did both Franc and Hwayeon look a little tense?
"For now, I'll put this on you. Temporarily."
At my words Choi Soohan struggled to raise her upper body. Before her eyes was red leather studded with sharp imitation spikes — something anyone could see was a dog collar. She stared at it with trembling eyes, then looked up at me.
"Th-this, I c-can't... do."
The slap cracked across her cheek.
"Haahn!"
I had struck her hard across the face, but this time she didn't even try to hide the excited moan. She shuddered and curled in on herself.
I seized her hair again, met her eyes, accelerated my Phase Power as far as it would go, focused Mana Sieve into my throat as well, and snarled at her.
Choi Soohan turned toward Hwayeon as if begging for help. When Hwayeon avoided that gaze, she seemed to feel that every path of retreat had vanished. Her body began to tremble as if lightning had struck her.
Another slap cracked across her face.
"Hyak!"
She had been looking into my eyes when the other cheek was struck, and her expression was that of someone whose soul was about to flee.
Choi Soohan's face was becoming, in every sense, the face of a woman whose pride had been utterly crushed.