Caught
It happened entirely by chance — the kind of coincidence that only ever belongs in a novel. On a warm afternoon that chased the chill from my skin, I met an angel.
Not a real angel, of course. I'm no devout Catholic, and I haven't done nearly enough good in this life to deserve a ticket to heaven.
To put it plainly, I am a wicked person. The sort who makes a habit of unforgivable things. And yet, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, God saw fit to bind that person's fate to mine.
So cute.
I first saw him at a café I visit often. I was parked in my usual seat, putting away an absurd quantity of sweet drinks and desserts, when he walked in out of nowhere.
He waddled through the door, his gait so clumsy it was almost endearing. His clothes looked like they'd been grabbed in a panic off some market stall — the patterns were tacky, the stitching sloppy. None of that dimmed his charm in the slightest.
For one thing, he was tiny. Smaller than my little sister, even, and she's still in elementary school. His face was so babyish that if I hadn't sneakily watched him pull a wallet with an ID card from his pocket, I might have made a very dangerous assumption.
If I could just hug him once, I'd never ask for anything else.
The ordering kiosk sat far too high for someone his height, and my angel couldn't even place an order. The truth is, students in Korea's hero departments — men and women alike — all stand six feet or taller, so the kiosks are built on the large side. That way nobody has to stoop to tap the screen.
He was so short he had to push up onto his tiptoes, straining and making the tiniest little grunts of effort. Ah, it was genuinely too much. He looked like a doll that had learned how to walk.
Lucky I made the first move.
Every girl in the café turned to stare at him as if she'd been put under a spell. They were all biting their lower lips, fighting desperately not to smile. A few of them even started to stand, ready to snatch him up for themselves.
Dangerous. Every last woman enrolled at Hero University is a complete psycho. I had no choice. I beat them to it and saved him.
Did that earn me some goodwill? I hear assertive women are popular these days.
Unfortunately, he turned out to be the dense type. I slipped a hand onto his shoulder as casually as I could, and he didn't react at all. If anything, he looked faintly annoyed. A shame... but even that was so cute I thought I might lose my mind.
Why am I acting like this?
I've always been the type who couldn't care less about other people. And yet from the moment I laid eyes on him, I found myself closing the distance on purpose. I wanted to have him. No matter what I had to throw away to do it.
I can't just let him walk out of here. I'll keep him close for now, and then...
Either throw him away. Or keep him. One or the other. I flashed him a bright little smile and led my angel over to the table where I'd been sitting — the way you'd set rice and side dishes down on a dinner table.
My whole body locked up. That look in her eyes... I knew exactly what it meant. It was the same look Han Yuri used to get in high school, right before she hurt someone.
I'm scared. I'm so scared!
I'd tried to stand up to her. Once. The price was a long set of nail marks carved down my arm. After that, I made up my mind never to resist her again. The idea that I could turn around and subjugate her now was probably laughable.
"Would it be all right if I asked your name?"
"Um..."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
I hemmed and hawed, then decided to give it to her anyway. My real name, even.
"Sehyun. Baek Sehyun is my name."
"...What?"
"My mother gave it to me."
There wasn't any deep reason for using my real name. I just wanted that terrifying expression of hers to crack into something like confusion. The second I looked into those eyes, the trauma came roaring back and I couldn't do a thing.
I have to get past this.
If this relationship stayed locked in a stalemate forever, I wouldn't be the one doing the subjugating — I'd be the one getting chained. I didn't want that. If I died because of Han Yuri, I wouldn't be able to close my eyes even in the grave.
"That name... it's the same as someone I went to high school with."
"Is that so."
"Yeah. Oh, maybe I should look him up. It's been a while..."
"Hiek!"
Why would you want to see him?! Three years of torment wasn't enough for you?
"Huh? Your face just went pale. And your hands are freezing... Did something not sit right?"
Han Yuri grabbed my hand without asking. Hers was ice-cold. It suited her temper perfectly.
"N-no! I just remembered something, that's all."
"Hm?"
"Please just forget what I said just now!"
"Ah. All right."
I wanted to down cup after cup of the bitterest coffee I could find. Every word out of my mouth had to be chosen with extreme care.
"Sehyun. This might sound strange, saying it the first time we've met — but would you like a look around our school?"
"Pardon?"
"Looking at you, I figured you came for a campus visit. I can show you around!"
I could hardly tell her I'd come here to break her sexually. I bobbed my head in a shaky little nod.
Actually, this works out. If we do it this way, I can close the distance bit by bit.
My answer must have pleased her, because Han Yuri stood up with a bright smile. Then she scooped up my unfinished iced tea and the coffee I'd ordered and marched them over to the drink-dumping station like they belonged to her.
"We've both finished, so shall we get going?"
"Uh, um..."
"What's wrong? You've gone pale again."
Was she always this aggressive? And why did she throw out my coffee? I might have changed my mind and wanted the rest of it!
Honestly. Touching other people's things without asking. Once a delinquent, always a delinquent.
"Come on! I'll give you a proper tour — a real thorough one."
"Y-yes..."
"By the way, how old are you?"
"Tw-twenty-one."
"Oh! We're the same age? Then I'll drop the formalities from now on. That's cool, right?"
Refusing to let Han Yuri speak casually to me would have been a serious mistake. I nodded instead of answering.
"Great! So, Sehyun — where should we go first?"
"I want to start there. The building for the department you actually attend."
"Oh, our department? Sure! Let's head over."
For the time being, I trotted along obediently in her wake.
Now that I've calmed down a little... I'm starting to notice things I couldn't see before.
Han Yuri's face belonged firmly in the beautiful category. If not for that vicious personality of hers, she would have been drowning in attention. How many men had taken one look at those features and come charging in? Sit everyone who'd ever carried a torch for her down in the schoolyard and they'd wrap around the field several times over.
I wouldn't have been in that line, of course.
Her chest is enormous, too. And her ass...
Even if I didn't want to look, I couldn't help seeing. Her breasts were far larger than most women's, and her hips were generously full as well. Not that you could get a proper view of them, hidden as they were behind that damn lizard tail of hers...
"Ta-da! This is the school entrance. Pretty huge, right?"
"Hm? Oh... yeah. It's really wide."
It would have been about thirty years ago. I wasn't born yet, so I only know the broad strokes — but the government took what had been the hardest university in the country to get into and converted it into this specialized hero college. The abilities superhumans possessed were simply too useful to the economy. And more to the point, the president in office at the time and most of his staff had been superhumans themselves.
The enormous campus they'd raised on Mount Gwanak had only grown since then. It was so vast now that buses ran routes through it.
"It's a long walk to our department building. You going to be okay? We could hop on the number 44 and be there in no time."
"Walking's fine. I don't mind."
I'd spent years shut in my room, but that didn't mean I had zero stamina. Back in middle school, hiking had actually been a hobby of mine.
I scurried along behind Han Yuri. She strode ahead, those long legs stretching out and eating up the ground in easy, sweeping steps. Meanwhile I had to go pitter-patter on my short little legs just to keep up.
"Hah... hah!"
"What's wrong?"
"I-it's nothing!"
Her legs were so long that every stride felt like it covered a full meter. The only way I could match her pace was to break into a light jog. And she was fast — stop moving for even a second and the gap between us yawned wide open.
Too fast! Walk a little slower, would you?!
My breath was coming all the way up into my throat. My heart hammered against my ribs. Sweat rolled down my slender jawline in a steady trickle. It was too much. I thought I was going to die. Even back when I was fat, it had never been this hard. At this point, was there something wrong with my heart? My lungs?
"Sehyun. Are you sick? What's going on with you!"
"W-wait, just a little... let's rest. Just for a bit."
"We only ran three kilometers. What's the matter?"
"W-we ran three kilometers...?"
The campus was already packed with uphill paths by design, and my legs were killing me. And we'd already covered three kilometers?
No wonder I was dying. It wasn't that I had no stamina. This woman was just insanely fast...
"This won't do. Let's take a break and then keep going."
"Then that bench over there—"
"That won't be enough! There's a dorm right around here, actually. Let's go there!"
"A d-dorm...?"
A dorm? Was she planning to drag me into a sealed-off space like that? Something about this felt wrong...
"Yeah! Hurry up!"
"I'm not even allowed in there, am I...?"
"Doesn't matter!"
Han Yuri caught my arm and pulled, casual as anything. And in that moment, the eyes looking down at me turned even more savage than before.
