I'm Not Free (1)
"We're breaking up."
When I said those words, I was honestly a little curious how he'd react. Would he get angry? Or would he cry and cling to me?
What I got back was nothing like either of those.
"Why all of a sudden?"
He asked me for a reason. Of all things.
"You seriously have to ask?"
Leaving thirty-one missed calls because I wouldn't pick up. Smashing the door and breaking into someone else's house when I wouldn't open it. Charging at me like a brute and yanking on someone else's horns. Where was I even supposed to start?
…The memory of him grabbing my horns was so mortifying I wanted to scrub it out of my head on the spot, if I only could.
His lips twitched like he was trying to say something. Then, unable to find the words, he reached for me.
"Don't touch me."
I shut him down and turned my back.
The air was damp, like rain was coming. I picked up my pace, intending to get out of the weather and away from him both at once.
And then—
"Philin!"
That voice stopped me cold before I even realized I'd halted.
Junhyuk came running the short distance between us, gasping, his face crumpled like he might collapse into tears at any second, and the words poured out of him.
"What's wrong with you? You promised you'd understand the stuff that happens at night!"
I stared at him, dumbfounded. What kind of nonsense was that?
"Ah."
One crucial fact clicked into place.
In the game, every single service scene with Yeom Junhyuk happened at night, no matter which heroine you were on. I'd shrugged it off as just the game's concept—lose by day, win by night—and never thought much of it.
But looking back, even the conflicts with the heroines tended to take place at night, service scenes or not.
Could this be… No. No, don't say it first.
I needed to hear it from his own mouth. One wrong word and I'd be handing him ammunition.
"At night, what? What promise was that, exactly?"
Junhyuk looked at me with open disappointment, but when we were already in the middle of a breakup, a little coldness hardly mattered. If he was the one who cared, he could explain it himself.
Sure enough, he launched into it like he'd been waiting for the chance.
"At night I get a little… rougher. We fought about it a few times even before we started dating, and I always apologized in the morning."
"……"
"You really don't remember?"
It wasn't an official setting from the game, but it was exactly what I'd expected.
He wasn't just Submissive by Day, Dominant by Night in the sexual sense. He was that phrase taken literally—docile and soft during the day, then foul-tempered and determined to win by any means once night fell.
Once that clicked, even his earlier nonsense—"Why all of a sudden?"—started to make a kind of sense. He hadn't meant I don't remember what happened. He'd meant You already know all of this, so why are you making an issue of it again?
But still.
"I don't want to anymore."
"Huh…?"
"I don't want to understand it anymore."
How was that any different from I hit you, but I was too drunk to know what I was doing?
Even granting, for the sake of argument, that the original Philin had agreed to put up with a certain amount of it—that was her problem. I had zero reason to tolerate that kind of garbage.
"If you really loved me, you'd have done everything you could to stay away from me during those hours. Am I wrong?"
Thinking it over again, that was a pretty nauseating line to deliver man-to-man. I still wasn't used to this.
But Junhyuk froze solid the moment he heard it, so it had done exactly what I'd intended.
"If you're done talking, I'm going."
Raindrops had started to fall—tap, tap. I ducked into the lecture building before the downpour could pick up.
When I opened the classroom door, the other students murmured at the sight of me arriving without Junhyuk. I drank in the fact that I was finally free of that lewd, violent pervert, and a quiet, delicious satisfaction settled over me.
The taste of freedom. Exhilarating.
"All right, everyone. Let's begin class."
The professor arrived just in time and quieted the last embers of chatter. Once the room settled, he finally started the lecture.
A worldbuilding dump disguised as a history class. Having already learned the setting the natural way—by clearing endings with countless heroines—I could barely get any of it to stick in my ears.
Yeah, yeah. I know all this.
I stared out the window with a bored face, and a thought drifted up unbidden.
In the original route, today was supposed to be the final day of Philin's conquest path. After melting the constantly tsundere Philin with (supposedly) tender affection, the ending had you living out ordinary days with a newly docile Philin.
I'd smashed that ending's final checkpoint yesterday.
What happens from here? Maybe this whole bizarre situation would just… end, the way a game does when you finish it.
I hope so, I muttered, watching raindrops strike the glass.
My cheek kept tickling. Hair. My hair was too long, constantly brushing against my face.
It was an awkward bob that didn't even reach my shoulders, but I'd never had hair this long in my life, so it just felt wrong.
I thought about it for a second, then swept it back behind my ear—
And my hand snagged on something unfamiliar.
More alien than the smaller body, the slender limbs, or even the longer hair: a part of me I still couldn't get used to.
Horns.
Obviously I'd never had anyone grab my horns before—I'd never even touched them myself—but—
Hyaat…!
Just remembering it made my face burn. How had I let out a sound that mortifying? I didn't think I could do it again if I tried.
Honestly… I really shouldn't be thinking this way anymore.
The horns rose up like a goat's, but they also curved gently back the way a ram's did. Once you got a grip, front or back, the hold would be perfect. Optimal, even.
"……"
The fact that I could look at the horns on my own head—an actual part of my body—and still think something like that meant the sturdy male identity was still hanging around.
If even I thought that, what about him?
"…Ugh."
I understood. I just refused to be understanding about it. Let me say it again: in this game, Philin was the only heroine with horns.
The second you start cutting him slack, those things become permanent handles… so I decided to keep any sympathy strictly private, locked inside my own head.
"Now then. As you all know, monsters still threaten human lives, and you, as Academy students, are here for their sake…"
The professor was so passionately hammering home the proper Academy mindset that spit kept flying from his mouth. I suddenly felt sorry for the students in the front row.
While I was pitying them, my eyes snagged on an empty seat.
Yeom Junhyuk's.
What's he doing that he's still not here?
Not that I was worried. I just glanced over because it was pathetic.
Two breaks came and went. The lecture ended. He never showed.
Where the hell did he go?
"That concludes today's lecture. Tomorrow is monster subjugation practice, so we'll meet at the gymnasium—don't mix it up. That's all."
A chorus of yes, sir tangled with the scrape of chairs as everyone stood.
I hauled myself up too and headed out of the classroom—then remembered that if I went straight home, I'd be stuck starving again.
Ramen first, then. If I remembered right, there was a big supermarket in the shopping district. The sight of an absurd number of ramen varieties was going to put me in an excellent mood.
I was thinking that as I went down the stairs when—
"Philin!"
Someone called my name from behind and suddenly grabbed—
My horns.
"Hyaat!"
I let out a sharp, involuntary shriek and jerked my shoulders.
Thankfully it wasn't the kind of overwhelming stimulus that had short-circuited my brain last time, but it was still thoroughly unpleasant.
I spun around, irritation packed into every line of my face. Who the hell—
"Kyaa, you're so cute today too!"
A healthy orange bob, pointed ears—an elf girl grinned mischievously and hooked her arm through mine.
What was this kid's name again? She wasn't a heroine, so it was fuzzy, but she showed up so often as comic relief that—
Ah. Got it.
"What, Serena? You haven't gone home yet?"
This little troublemaker of an elf girl was a bit of a prankster, but she was also a social butterfly—the kind of speed-wagon exposition character who popped up at least once no matter which heroine you were chasing.
Back when I was playing the game, she kept barging into the middle of the protagonist and heroine without a shred of tact, or dumping way too much useless information, and I'd been constantly tempted to mash the skip button.
Right now, though, she was exactly the character I needed.
"Perfect timing. I'm going shopping—want to come?"
"Sure! But what's with you? You usually only eat steak and salad at home."
Serena tilted her head, and I found myself nodding along with a sudden, natural realization: Philin's parents hadn't been smothering her with love so much as simply stocking the house with what she actually ate all the time.
So I answered without awkwardness.
"Eh, eating the same thing every day was starting to feel greasy."
I waved it off lightly.
Running into Serena was pure luck. Thanks to her, we reached the big supermarket without a single wrong turn, and she walked me through every trick for discounts, points, and secret coupons.
"Philin, you don't even need to bother with discounts and stuff, though."
"Well… I figured I should try building some thrifty habits."
Judging by the fridge and the size of the house, Philin's parents were seriously rich. I could probably blow money on whatever I wanted to eat without any real problem.
But old habits die hard. Skipping those little savings left me vaguely unsettled, like something was off.
I installed every discount and points app on my phone and beamed as I picked out ramen. Two packs each of the brain-meltingly spicy kind and the mixed cold noodles, plus four packs of the mild stuff, all went into the cart.
"Are you stocking up for a natural disaster?"
Serena looked at me like I'd lost my mind, but I didn't care.
She had no idea how badly I'd been craving ramen yesterday.
"Oh, right, Serena. How does the monster subjugation practice actually work?"
"Wow, you're really advertising that you've been coasting, huh?"
I'd asked while the mood was good, figuring I should get a head start on tomorrow's activity. The answer I got was not what I expected.
"Coasting?"
"Ah—did that bother you?"
"No, no. That's not it. I genuinely want to know."
Technically the game had a mini-game inside it—"Monster Hunt with the Submissive-by-Day, Dominant-by-Night Protagonist!"—a shooter. But I wasn't the type to download an otome game just to play a shooter, so I'd never touched a single round.
Which meant I had no idea how monster subjugation actually worked. If I'd known it would matter, I would have tried it once out of curiosity.
Serena answered with a halfhearted look.
"You're a healer, and you've got a dedicated martial artist, so you just tag along. If that isn't coasting, what is?"
Right—Philin was a healer. The unusual setup of a demon hybrid working as a healer came back to me in a flash.
But what had she just said?
"Dedicated martial artist?"
"Come on. You've done this how many times already?"
Philin's route hadn't had any monster-related episodes, so I couldn't quite pin down what Serena meant in detail.
But I had a pretty good idea who that dedicated martial artist was.
"You just trail after Junhyuk again this time, same as always. Must be nice, huh?"
I screamed internally.
Not this guy again.