091. Kang Do-hee, Shall We Do It? (2)
091. Kang Do-hee, Shall We Do It? (2)
'......He wants to do that? What the hell is that.'
Jin Yu-ha had shown up out of nowhere spouting nonsense.
Normally she would've brushed it off, since he always talked drivel,
but the ambiguous object left Kang Do-hee's head suddenly flooded with inappropriate thoughts, and she missed her window to react.
In that instant, Jin Yu-ha slipped his body through the gap in the door.
"......You—!"
A flustered Kang Do-hee whipped her head around and reached for him, but it was too late.
Jin Yu-ha had already taken his shoes off, come inside, and was looking around the room.
"Whoa~ Kang Do-hee, you've got it nice! I thought it'd smell like a bachelor pad? No, a bachelorette pad? That sounds weird too. Anyway, I expected that kind of smell but it actually smells nice!"
She hadn't invited him or even given him permission to enter, but Jin Yu-ha was striding around like he owned the place.
"Ohhh! The TV's huge! Perfect to watch from bed! Huh? Is this mattress different from the one in my dorm? It's super plushy."
Squish, squish.
Jin Yu-ha sat on the bed and bounced up and down.
Then he looked at the ashtray beside the bed and put on a surprised expression.
There, the cigarette she'd been smoking just moments ago was still sending up a wisp of white smoke.
"Huh? You smoke inside your room? Doesn't anyone complain about the smell? Ah, the air-purification artifact keeps the smell from going out, right?"
And then without hesitation, he picked up the cigarette she'd been smoking and brought it to his lips.
Shhhhp—
Cough! Hack!
Jin Yu-ha inhaled what she'd been smoking and immediately broke into a coughing fit.
"Ugh, I still don't get the taste of cigarettes."
"......."
Kang Do-hee's mouth fell open, her expression baffled.
Then Jin Yu-ha's gaze moved toward a corner of the room, and her face went rigid.
"Pfft! No way, is that a Choco Digestive box next to the bed?! Then, do you have Sol's Eye in the fridge?!"
And with that, Jin Yu-ha sprang up and started toward the fridge.
Snatch.
Kang Do-hee, who couldn't just stand by and watch any longer, darted forward and seized Jin Yu-ha by the wrist.
"Yellow Dog."
"Huh?"
"What the hell are you doing."
"What do you mean, what am I doing? I just came over to a friend's place."
Jin Yu-ha cocked his head and said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
'Seriously, what is this guy.......'
Kang Do-hee was flustered.
No, she was dumbfounded.
Did this guy really have absolutely no sense of that sort of thing?
She'd thought it before, but Yellow Dog's sense of personal distance was bizarre.
She'd had zero interest in the opposite sex, spending every moment on training and dungeons,
and ever since her guild master had been ruined by getting entangled with some strange man, she'd kept men at an even greater distance.
But that didn't mean she didn't know about men.
Parandis Guild Leader Choi Hye-seo would drink or smoke while drilling all sorts of common sense into her—and plenty of dirty talk about men.
'I mean, for a man to march alone into a woman's place without any fear, barging all the way into her room......!'
She was already stressed to the max from this dungeon expedition, and now
here came Jin Yu-ha's bizarre behavior on top of it—Kang Do-hee felt a throbbing in her skull.
Haa—
She pressed firmly at her temples and called to him.
"Yellow Dog."
"Yeah."
"If you have business with me, deal with it and leave. I hate people entering my space without permission."
"Yeah, I know."
Jin Yu-ha nodded.
'You know......? If you know, how can you pull this kind of crap?'
A vein stood out on Kang Do-hee's forehead at his shamelessness.
But she inwardly recited the character for endurance (忍), closed her eyes long, then opened them.
And there was Jin Yu-ha's face, right in front of hers. Black eyes staring straight at her from point-blank range.
"Hmm......."
"!"
Kang Do-hee recoiled, jerking her body backward.
"But why aren't you getting angry?"
"......What?"
"I just stepped across the line you drew and invaded your domain again. I'm asking why you aren't getting angry."
"Are you doing this because you want to see me really angry?"
If that was the case, then he'd come to exactly the right place.
She'd been simmering and boiling all day long as it was.
She looked at Jin Yu-ha's smooth, shiny face and clenched her fist tight.
And then,
she let her arm drop.
Then she spoke in a low voice.
"Get out."
"I don't want to."
"I said get out."
"No."
"Get out!!!!"
She glared and even yelled at him.
But Jin Yu-ha just stood there without flinching, looking at her.
"So Fighting Dog really has lost all her teeth."
He clicked his tongue and turned his back.
"Hey, Kang Do-hee. Follow me."
He headed for the bed.
Jin Yu-ha sat down right in the middle of her bed, legs stretched out.
"I said hurry up."
And he gestured at her to come over.
'......What is this guy, seriously?'
"We're gonna do that, so get over here."
And that word again—that, whatever it was—kept getting on her nerves.
"What is it."
"What else?"
Jin Yu-ha shrugged his shoulders as if to say, how can you even ask that.
"Grappling, obviously."
"......Grap, pling?"
"Yeah, you made getting free from a grappling hold the condition for our sparring match, remember."
Ah, so our party leader wanted to do some grappling?
The fuck. I genuinely cannot follow this guy's train of thought at all.
"Kang Do-hee, I'm gonna have to straighten you out today. Let's see who dies on this bed."
Jin Yu-ha rolled up his sleeves as he said it.
"Ha."
Kang Do-hee let out a hollow laugh.
In her eyes, Jin Yu-ha looked exactly like some mangy neighborhood mutt yapping.
'This bastard Yellow Dog. Does he seriously think he's stronger than me?'
Honestly, even back then, if she hadn't let her guard down and had responded calmly from the start, she could have escaped his hold.
She could have simply slammed him to the floor with her foot or kicked him away with the other.
'But this little shit....... Is he saying that on purpose?'
Showing up out of the blue, saying let's do that, telling her to die on the bed.......
From the very start, the idea of doing grappling on a bed was strange.
But Jin Yu-ha looked like he had absolutely no awareness of what he was saying.
"Scared?"
Kang Do-hee bit down on her lip and moved her feet toward the bed.
"Ha, fine. I'll play along. And I'll make sure you can never spout that arrogant crap again."
*
'What! Wh-what is this......!'
Kang Do-hee had taken the position Jin Yu-ha directed her into at his instruction.
Her eyes were shaking violently.
To be honest, her own posture was nothing special.
All she had to do was sit on the bed.
The problem was Jin Yu-ha's posture.
As if giving her a back hug, Jin Yu-ha had wrapped his legs around her abdomen from behind, locking them fully crossed.
And both his arms had slipped through her armpits, hands clasped together above the nape of her neck.
Which naturally forced her own arms up into a raised position.
At that intense physical contact, her face flushed bright red.
"Alright. From now on, if you break free, you win. If you can't, I win."
Jin Yu-ha's voice sounded right next to her ear.
The unfamiliar sensation made Kang Do-hee bite her lip.
Hup!
Kang Do-hee twisted, trying to break free from Jin Yu-ha's restraint.
But his firmly locked hands and feet didn't come loose easily.
"Ngh—!!"
Kang Do-hee flooded her whole body with Mana, writhing and twisting, trying to bring her raised arms down and thrashing her legs—but the more she struggled, the tighter Jin Yu-ha held her.
Jolt!
After twisting and turning for a long while, she stood up, making Jin Yu-ha look like a cicada hanging from an old tree.
'This son of a—!'
She was just about to slam Jin Yu-ha against the wall or floor along with her own body.
'......Ah, this is my place, isn't it.'
At the academy, if you destroyed your quarters, the instructor would come charging in immediately.
And what would that instructor think, seeing her tangled up with Jin Yu-ha like this?
'No, more than that....... The party would disband.'
At that, the flame that had flared up in her heart instantly died down, replaced by a crushing sense of emptiness.
Thump.
Kang Do-hee sat back down on the bed.
With Jin Yu-ha still clinging to her back.
That was when it happened.
"You don't have to hold back, you know."
A voice whispered in her ear.
"Are you that scared?"
"......What?"
She turned her head, but their position kept her from seeing Jin Yu-ha's face.
Kang Do-hee frowned.
What was she supposedly scared of?
She'd never doubted that fear was the emotion most distant from herself.
She'd faced plenty of opponents who were stronger than her, whom she couldn't beat. But against even them, if she felt anything, it was resentment or competitive spirit—never fear.
"......You think I'm scared?"
She muttered the words almost to herself.
"Yeah, I think you're scared. Maybe afraid that this relationship you worked so hard to build might break. Like...... your old guild."
Kang Do-hee's eyes shot wide open.
"You don't have to force yourself to endure it. You can just be yourself."
Her eyes took in the pitch-black TV screen.
An utterly unacceptable, shameful posture reflected dimly in the dark surface.
"Whether you lose your temper or beat someone senseless because you don't like them, I'm not gonna abandon you over something like that."
"Who's abandoning who—!!!!!"
Stung by Jin Yu-ha's words, she thrashed fiercely again,
but the gentle voice kept coming from behind her.
"I'm just gonna ask. Why you did it. Because you're not the kind of woman who gets angry for no reason."
"......."
"And that goes for the party members too. If you don't understand something, you can say you don't understand. If you think something's not right, say you think it's not right. If you hate it, you can say you hate it."
"......Then start by stopping this shit you're pulling right now."
Kang Do-hee's voice came out all pressed down and suppressed.
"Nope~"
The voice sounded playful.
The crease between her brows re-formed.
'......Is he playing word games with me right now?'
"This is how it goes."
"......How what goes?"
"Yeah, when we don't see eye to eye, well, we can clash like this. You want me to let go, but I don't want to."
Jin Yu-ha's laugh tickled her ear.
"But you keep it all bottled up and suppressed to avoid clashing at all. Because you're afraid that if you speak your mind strongly, this relationship might break."
Twinge.
Words that stabbed right into her core.
"But the same goes for me, Shin Se-hee, Lee Yu-ri, and even Ga-eul—none of us are just gonna get steamrolled because you come on strong."
"......."
"Right?"
At that, Kang Do-hee couldn't bring herself to say no.
In reality, she'd practically half-coerced Im Ga-eul to give up the identity of the person spreading rumors,
but Ga-eul had kept her mouth shut to the very end.
'So this is the party I joined this time.......'
It was only then that she belatedly realized she still carried a fear of forming relationships with people.
'And that I can just be myself.'
Ba-dump, ba-dump—
She didn't know why, but her heart started beating faster.
"......Yellow Dog."
"Yeah?"
"......For now, I get it. So, when are you planning to let go of this?"
"If you say you lost?"
Lost......!?
'This lunatic.'
Kang Do-hee twisted her body again, trying any way she could to shake Jin Yu-ha off.
And then.
Beep—!
In the flailing, a button on the remote that had been buried under the blankets got pressed.
Suddenly, the TV screen turned on.
"Hngh—!?"
Kang Do-hee's face went ashen in an instant.
And no wonder—because there it was. The video she'd been watching every night as she fell asleep.
— It's only natural to save a party member when they're in danger.
The video the Hunter Management Bureau had sent her long ago was playing.
"Huh?"
Jin Yu-ha poked his head out from behind her.
"What's that? Isn't that me......?"
Tremble, tremble—
"Why am I on there?"
Her face now burning scarlet, Kang Do-hee twisted her body.
Thrashing, flailing.