Taking Root
Even at a glance, Mina was nowhere near all right. Rope had worked its way over every joint in her body and bound them tight, and the result looked, of all things, like—
Tortoise-shell bondage?
Our Mina. Here I thought she was a proper young lady. A gentleman all along, was she?
...Ugh. What am I even thinking at a time like this.
Bihyung turned his face from the violently striking sight of her.
The library was an Academy facility, no two ways about it, and there were not many people inside it who could have left her looking like that.
Did the faculty catch her?
For sneaking into the library in the dead of night?
If so, this was genuinely serious.
At that moment Mina shouted again.
"Bihyung! Behind you!"
He spun on reflex.
"Peekaboo."
His eyes met those of a woman who had tilted her head, smiling straight at him.
"So you finally came out. The yokai domain wouldn't close, so I figured there had to be one more of you... and that junior of yours wouldn't open her mouth to the very end."
Her appearance was familiar. Black hair asserted a presence all its own even in the dark of night, and though her clothes were neat and round-framed glasses sat on her face, they could not hide the unusually sharp cut of her eyes. She seemed conscious of it herself; the way she smiled with her eyes the entire time was a perfect match for the look he had seen in the game.
...The Library Committee Chair.
The very person he had waited so long for stood right in front of him.
What?
But Bihyung could not keep the confusion off his face.
I'm sure of it... The professor in charge said this would take the week.
So why was she here?
Instinctively, he opened the distance.
"Hmm."
Watching him, the Library Committee Chair let out a curious little hum through her nose, then smiled brightly once more and asked,
"Whatever is a first-year doing at this hour?"
Bihyung knew he had to choose his words with care.
Run?
Impossible. His face had already been seen; fleeing with Mina in tow was out of the question, and even if it hadn't been, bolting from the person in front of him was not an option.
A woman who holds both the Library Committee and the Discipline Committee.
Top of the second-years, besides, and one of the strongest in the entire Academy.
She's already built enough skill to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the professors.
And her specialty, barriers, was something even the faculty could not match. Running from her was a bad bet in every sense.
Bihyung bent at the waist and apologized with due courtesy.
"First, I apologize for sneaking into the library in the middle of the night."
"Hm?"
Perhaps she felt the reaction was nothing like what she had expected. For an instant the Chair's eyes flew wide.
"Ahaha! Our junior has such lovely manners. And here I even prepared a barrier, certain you'd try to run."
Snap!
The moment she flicked her fingers, the faint spiritual power spread across the area was drawn back in its entirety. She had dismantled the barrier.
Bihyung let out a silent breath of relief and straightened.
"So? What business did you have in the library?"
Fortunately, he already knew what would make her lose her head. He meant to carry the conversation from there.
"I heard the Chair had gone out on a mission, so I had no choice but to enter the library in secret."
"Ordinarily, waiting would be the proper thing, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. But they said it would take as long as two weeks... I had something that couldn't wait, so I committed the discourtesy."
"......"
The Chair read sincerity in Bihyung's eyes. Those eyes, hungering for something — that was not an emotion easily faked.
"True enough. It was a mission that should have taken the week."
She turned, lightly brushing a bookshelf as she went on.
"But then the barrier I'd set over the library reacted, didn't it? And in the dead of night, no less."
"So I pushed myself a little."
Only now did he notice that her face, as she said it, had gone a little wan.
Did she overwork her dantian to cut short the time it should have taken?
Perhaps she had gone past draining her vital energy and even damaged her innate true qi. Looking at her, Bihyung grew certain all over again.
As expected. A woman mad for forbidden books.
"But that doesn't seem to answer the question, does it? Why were our juniors so desperate to get into the library?"
"There was a forbidden book I wanted to see."
Forbidden book. At those words the Chair's expression changed at once, and she closed the distance to him in a single step.
"A forbidden book? Which forbidden book? Could the book my junior is after be tied to the forbidden books as well? Hm?"
Her face was close as the words came rapid-fire, and so, naturally, were her eyes.
...Full of longing.
The change had come the instant forbidden books were mentioned.
Only natural, I suppose.
The reason she had gone so far as to take the Library Committee on top of everything — a post she had no need to hold — and lose herself in forbidden books. It was to obtain the key that would lift the curse laid upon her.
Even now, a woman who stands shoulder to shoulder with the professors.
And—
In time, a woman who becomes a villain.
A woman fated to fall into villainy because she never managed to break the curse.
I want to help her. Unfortunately, I can't.
In Mina's case, the path by which she became a villain had been laid out in detail. For the Chair in front of him, the game had only ever stated that she was already cursed. There had been no method of dispelling it.
Even using the Warehouse, it's impossible.
Among the miscellaneous items of Dokja Jeon-gi, some could be processed through synthesis into medicines or spirit pills bearing all sorts of effects, and among those there had even been a potion that lifted curses.
But I failed.
Even Bihyung, a hardened veteran of the endgame, had failed to undo her curse.
"Junior?"
The Chair's voice pulled him back. Her face was still that close — close enough that her breath clung thickly to the fine hairs of his skin. Even so there was no desire in her, only longing, and looking into those eyes, Bihyung shook his head.
"It wasn't that impressive a book."
"Then?"
"A method of dispelling a curse. I was a little curious about that."
The longing burned hotter. The same as hers. Those were the eyes of someone convinced of it.
Bihyung felt a small prick of guilt, and did his best to ignore it.
Well. For me, the nature of a half-yokai is close enough to a curse.
Saying he had been looking for a way to dispel it wasn't exactly a lie, was it? Right. He would think of it that way.
"But why reach for the forbidden books? Something of that sort, you could find well enough among the volumes over there, couldn't you?"
"The truth is, I called it a curse, but it's the kind of thing that has to be resolved. They say the forbidden books are tied to yokai, so I thought that within them I could resolve it well enough."
Only then did the Chair lower her face, as if her interest had fallen away.
Because it's a different kind from the curse she carries.
Listing symptoms like hers and stirring that shared curiosity would have been one approach, but in Bihyung's judgment it was a bad move.
A woman buried in forbidden books, hunting for a way to lift her curse — if she saw a curse of the same kind, would she sit still?
No. She would move. No question about it.
And if even then she couldn't dispel it, that means one of two things.
Either she had tried experiment after experiment and failed, or she simply had not encountered it yet.
Those eyes aren't the eyes of someone whose will broke because she failed.
If anything, she was desperate precisely because she had never had the chance.
Then the latter is the one that fits.
And into the middle of that, he was going to explain that he suffered something similar? The Chair would move at once.
She'd latch on, however she had to.
But that, too, was a bad move over the long term.
If I can't show her similar symptoms, she'll realize she was deceived.
She was no fool. Top of the second-years — a mind that quick would catch his lie sooner than he cared to think. So here, he would take the straight path.
"I'm sorry for breaking the rules."
Bihyung bent at the waist once more and offered his apology. The Chair stared at him for a long moment, then untied Mina.
"Even so, sneaking in at this hour isn't allowed. How did you get in?"
"With my ability."
"Haa. I'll have to report this to the higher-ups separately."
Good. Now it was time to make the deal.
She's strong, but she has no talent for seeking things out.
So even if he let his presence out for a moment, he was unlikely to be exposed as a half-yokai.
The professor in charge didn't recognize it either.
Steadying himself with that, Bihyung called back the lingering aura he had let slip through his dokkaebi cap.
For an instant, the air changed.
A vast, low pressure rolled outward — a presence that had not knelt even before a dragon. And when he draped Eodugi over himself as well, the existence called Bihyung was etched sharply into the library.
Thud...!
Thud...!
A frantic flutter!
The yokai of the forbidden books groaned and writhed, suffering before the sudden arrival of a being of a higher order.
"Nnh—!"
Mina made a strange sound partway through. He ignored it, and looked at the woman in front of him.
The Chair clutched at her heart. She was busy enough just steadying her quickened breath, and still the change around her drew no small measure of shock across her face.
"Wh-what is this..."
"Senior."
Bihyung lowered his head once more, then raised it and met her eyes. A cold ghost-fire seemed to gleam, reflected in her pupils.
"I offer you my sincere apologies once again. I know it is a shameless request, but could you treat this as if it never happened?"
In exchange—
"If there is any help you need, I will assist you with one thing. Whatever it may be."
"......"
The Chair felt muscles that still trembled and would not obey her, and turned her head again. The yokai of the library were screaming, seized by fear. Looking at them, she thought that perhaps what she herself had failed to find, this junior might be able to find.
"A-all right. I'll use my discretion and treat today's matter as if it never happened."
The instant he had permission, he wiped the lingering aura back into the dokkaebi cap. The resonance filling the library gradually settled.
"Thank you, Senior."
And so Bihyung left the library with Mina.
"......"
The Chair only stared blankly at his retreating back, and kept staring until that figure was gone.
The dormitory of the top second-year.
Feeling the coziness of a nest she had not returned to in a long while, the Chair dragged her exhausted body into the bathroom. She sank into the tub and soothed the meridians she had pushed too hard. Only after she had recovered a little did she start her shower.
Water streamed through the stall, rinsing the suds away and the worn-out fatigue with them. When she was done, she dried herself and stood before the mirror.
Her fair skin was clean, without a single blemish. Her eyes were sharp, but because she usually went about smiling with them, she had heard people say it made her look decadent instead. Firm legs, and wide hips besides — a figure so cleanly drawn it could lay waste to the hearts of men.
Even so, the Chair only frowned as she looked at her own body.
"...It's grown again."
More precisely, she was frowning not at her body, but at the pattern set upon her lower abdomen. A curse that had simply been there one day when she woke. After it appeared, the circulation of her energy had met with interference after interference — spiritual power that had been flowing well hitching midway, that sort of thing.
The pain that surges up now and then is infuriating, too.
What on earth was this thing? What kind of person had laid a curse like this on her? She was turning that over when—
Come to think of it...
The Chair brushed a hand over the pattern engraved on her lower abdomen.
"The junior I met in the library. That must have been the top of the first-years."
She had heard about it from a friend, over the phone. That an incomprehensible first-year had enrolled. At first she had taken it for the usual exaggeration. Facing him in person, she understood perfectly well why such a rumor had gone around.
"...A feeling of being overwhelmed by something."
She had seen it clearly: even the yokai of the library screaming before him. But what she understood least of all was something else. The Chair tilted her head.
"...Why is it that from the moment I saw that junior, the pain from the curse is gone?"
She had always lived with a pain like something stabbing into her dantian. But the instant she laid eyes on that junior—
"...the pain changed into a strange sensation."
Into a subtle heat. And her senses had grown so keen that even putting on clothes made her body flinch and tremble.
What in the world is he?
And so Bihyung settled deep into the Chair's heart.
...Strangely, her heart would not stop pounding.