39. Resolution
39. Resolution
A downtown area not far from the academy.
Perhaps because it was a weekday afternoon, the streets weren't exactly crowded with people.
Seolhwa beside me kept turning her head left and right, as if fascinated by her first experience of the downtown scenery.
"......Is it really that fascinating?"
"Of course it is. My family strictly forbids visiting places like this, so honestly, I still can't believe this is real. I'm dumbfounded."
Thanks to her family having gone off the rails about sixteen years ago, Seolhwa hadn't even been able to peek at leisure facilities like movie theaters, let alone the downtown area. She'd been forced into a miserable activity radius of academy → home → academy → home → academy → home.
In fact, even for this little truancy, I had to persuade and convince her—terrified as she was by the brainwashing-like education she'd received—that we absolutely wouldn't get caught, and only after she promised to return to school by 6 PM did I finally manage to guide her into the city.
"Wow, it's, it's really amazing...... This feels like a dream...... Hey, Yu, Yuriel?"
Unfortunately, because I had an absolutely unbreakable appointment around 5 o'clock today, the time I could enjoy with her was a mere hour or so.
Considering how little time was left, I figured the best choice would be to head to an arcade first—something stimulating time-efficiency-wise. Escape rooms would probably be impossible for Seolhwa's head to solve anyway.
But what exactly was that unbreakable appointment...?
......I couldn't quite remember. Still, for some reason—I didn't know why—I felt like no matter what, I absolutely had to keep that promise, so I had no choice but to plan on parting ways with Seolhwa earlier than expected.
With a blank expression like a kid seeing cola for the first time, Seolhwa's head bobbed around in wonder, unable to decide where to go despite the little time left. I grabbed her hand and dragged her toward a nearby arcade.
"Th-this is an arcade......?"
At this point, I couldn't help but feel genuinely sorry for poor Seolhwa. Judging from the original story's flow, her life until now must have been filled with education meant to please some man she didn't even know. At least because the work was all-ages, she hadn't received sex education—but still, she seemed so pitiful, fated to lose autonomy over her own life and live like a plaything.
"You don't know much about arcades, right? Follow me. Let's start with the easiest one first."
"Uh, okay......."
Pushing Seolhwa's back as she seemed excited, like she'd discovered some newfangled culture, I guided her toward the fighting game center.
To Seolhwa, who was squeezing her eyes shut while making patriarchal remarks like "girls shouldn't play such violent games" and "they should act modest," I let out a small chuckle and taught her how to play the fighting game.
"Here, this is the directional pad, and this is the skill button. So if you roughly operate it like this...?"
"Wh-wow......!"
"That's how combos happen. Give it a try."
"L-like this...?"
......She was seriously bad. To be honest, her skill usage looked like a broken wooden puppet—she'd cut off each skill sharply every time she tried to combo. I couldn't help but smirk, thinking that was just like Seolhwa, and taught her various combos that any human should be able to pull off.
"Alright, now it's time for the real thing. Come at me."
"Am I fighting Yuriel?"
"Of course. And I won't go easy on you."
"......Please go just a little easy on me..."
Seolhwa seemed extremely nervous—she'd started using formal speech toward me again at some point—then gulped and moved her character aggressively to attack.
"H-heit! He, heit?!"
"Whoa, that's too strong."
"Heheh. How about that? I'm not someone to be taken lightly, you know?"
I deliberately took her attacks—which would have cut through the air even if I left the directional pad alone—and put my heart into somehow boosting her spirits. Despite my efforts, because she kept hitting me with basic attacks that came as rarely as rain in a drought, the battle situation—just looking at the HP bars—looked like a bloody slugfest. In the end, the match used all of the 1-minute time limit. We both survived with 1 HP left, turning it into an artificially spectacular draw.
"Hoo, hoo. How about that, Yuriel? I've got talent for fighting games, don't I?"
"Uh, yeah...."
"But this is fun. Let's do it one more time."
...Alright, Seolhwa, as long as you had fun. Just seeing you happy gives me strength.
"...Okay. Hey, Seolhwa, do you want to switch characters? The one you picked earlier is on the harder side difficulty-wise. I was thinking maybe using a character with easier controls might be better."
"It's fine. Heroes are meant to appear in troubled times, after all."
"Ah, okay...."
I had no idea what that had to do with anything, but anyway, that's how the second round started. Even though I tried to throw the match with gritted teeth, Seolhwa somehow managed to take every single one of my attacks like a ghost and barely lost.
"Hah, one more time!"
"Uh, yeah? Yeah...."
"Ah, so close! Just one more!"
"......Okay, I get it.."
"Ah, now I get it. So this is how you do it!"
"......."
In the end, I had to sit at the fighting game machine for over an hour until Seolhwa finally won. Seriously, is it even normal to play nothing but fighting games for a whole hour?
"I-I-I won! I won!"
"Wow... congratulations, Seolhwa."
"How about that? I'm not so easy, am I?"
"Uh, yeah...."
Seolhwa, who got that happy from winning just one match out of over fifty rounds. She'll never know that this time I didn't even use a single basic attack. There was a risk of her finding out, but at this rate the match would never end... and more than anything, my condition felt way too strange.
"Ah, um, hey, Seolhwa. Don't you think we should head back to school soon?"
"......Ah, you're right. Time's already gotten this late...... That's too bad......"
4:57 PM. It was already way too late to run back to the academy. But for me—who can teleport anywhere I've been once, no matter who I'm with or what time it is—it was plenty of time.
"Here, take my hand, Seolhwa."
"Ah, okay! B-but your hand is really sweaty...... Your face is a little red, too. I guess you were pretty nervous, huh?"
"Ah, no, sorry. I almost touched something."
"Don't worry about that. My hand was sweaty too."
......It's not sweat, you know. Hong Seolhwa—whether she knew my feelings or not—laughed cheerfully and grabbed my hand, which had been cleaned with a wipe.
"When I count to three, Seolhwa, you'll probably be teleported to the rabbit hutch, and I'll be in my room. Hold my hand tight. It's not dangerous, so don't be nervous."
"Ah, okay...!"
"Then here we go. One, two, three—!"
"W-wait!"
Her sudden shout made me stop the teleport I was about to cast. Seolhwa locked eyes with me for a moment, then smiled with a strangely wistful look and asked.
"......Can we come here again next time?"
I was wondering what she was going on about. I answered immediately.
"Of course."
Until just a few days ago, the person named Hong Seolhwa had been nothing more than a novel heroine to me. A heroine with a sorrowful past—if things kept going this way, pitch-black darkness awaited her path, and she would be dramatically saved by the protagonist who noticed it, gaining freedom.
The reason I decided to save her was simple pity. There was a heroine with a fate woven in tragedy, and I could save her without any particular risk—it was just to ease the slight guilt I'd feel if I didn't save her. That was it.
But now it's different. Now I know the person named Hong Seolhwa.
She likes not only rabbits but also dogs, cats, even pandas—all kinds of animals. She secretly loves physical contact with animals. She prefers sweet chocolate lattes over bitter iced Americanos. And despite being worn down by her family's education, she secretly likes lazing around. She doesn't know it herself, but when she's in a good mood, one of her eyebrows keeps twitching. Sometimes when she's tired, she lets out huge yawns and then denies it as if nothing happened.
......And sometimes—actually quite often—she dreams that some nameless wonderful person will reach out and save her from drowning in a bottomless, deep swamp.
That person,
that person who has been waiting for so long for someone to save her from sinking into that endless abyss—
I will save her.
I swear it.
"Hoh, hohhh... th-the nipple feels weird...♥"
Yuriel was currently staring at her own disgraceful reflection in the full-length mirror—legs spread wide and bent, fingers pressing down hard on the nipple covers.
In Yuriel's eyes, which had already lost reason, was reflected her own image, far more lewd than a completely naked body—face flushed, drool dripping, with a pussy covered by one cute cat-shaped bandage and two bandages on her nipples. It was an utterly obscene sight.
She had definitely applied medicine to the bandages covering her pussy and nipples before going out, but somehow her nipples were already so stiff that the barely-used bandages were tattered and about to come off, wobbling.
"...I have to press them down so they don't get hard... kku, kkuu, ohhtt?! Oh hohht?!"
No, I can't do this—every time I press down on the nipple-specific bandages to make them go down, love juice keeps leaking from my pussy. The cute cat-shaped bandage on her pussy was already soaked with aphrodisiac and love juice, having long outlived its usefulness.
"I wonder where you've been wandering around lately. You don't even have friends. Right?"
"Th-the nipple... hoo, oh hohk...♥ feels so goood...♥"
"Pfft, can't even answer properly. Oh right, do you remember what I told you to do with that? It was like this...."
"W-wait... th-the nipple got, wa, way more sensitive, hiik♥ hiiik?!?♥"
"Works great."
The spell that Yuriel had taught me—roughly 'a spell that makes the entire nervous system insanely sensitive.' Thanks to her uselessly high-performance body, her mental barrier—already eroded as much as it could be—still seemed to reject casting the spell on her whole body at a deep subconscious level.
But it's possible to make a tiny specific area sensitive enough to rival that.
"W-wait, I'm dying♥, I'm gonna die from how good it feels!!!♥"
"Yuriel, say that thing for me. Then kind me will dispel the spell."
"Huu, huuu...!"
Even though I'd placed a perception-blocking spell, Yuriel instinctively turned her ear toward me. Her pupils were already rolled somewhere strange, drool dripped from her gaping mouth, and her pussy kept spurting love juice uncontrollably.
"'I am the empire's greatest genius in a millennium, the Miracle of Elysia. Start.'"
A single sentence that could describe the person Yuriel at Seowol Academy. That glorious title, never granted to anyone before, Yuriel began to utter as a means to calm down the sensitivity of her now crazily sensitive nipples—while still idiotically pressing down on the nipple-specific bandages soaked in aphrodisiac, her thoughts still twisted and shameful.
"Nyah♥, I am the empiah's greatest genius in a millennium, the Miracle of Elyshia..."
"Time's up. Penalty is a nipple flick. That's fine, right?"
"Ah, no, anything but that...!"
"Yap."
"Ohoh♥, oh hoh ock?!?♥"
With just a flick on her nipples, the empire's greatest genius and Miracle of Elysia, Yuriel, rolled her eyes back from pleasure she'd never felt before, climaxing hard as a jet of love juice burst out like a water gun. Leaning close to her ear, I whispered sweetly.
"Oh right. I was thinking earlier—do we really need to make Yuriel's body so lewd that daily life becomes impossible?"
"Huu... huuu...?"
"At the academy, you act normal. Instead of making yourself sensitive in this room, we train Yuriel's body until even cold air makes her cum, then cast a desensitization spell at the academy. That way there's no risk of being caught. That's fine, isn't it, Yuriel?"
"Uuh...! Uuhuuu......!"
Despair filled Yuriel's eyes. Probably because she instinctively realized her fate.
But there's nothing she can do about it. She's already become so vulgar that she can't go on without me. Well, it seems she doesn't even suspect a thing anyway.
"For today, let's just train the nipples. We'll do the rest slowly. Oh, yeah. It's hotter to say 'nipple' than 'teat' anyway. From now on, call them nipples. Got it?"
"Huu... huuuuu......!"
"No need to worry that much, Yuriel. Kind me is going to reshape your thinking into 'it's common sense for an academy student to develop their nipples every day to make a shameful body.' Yuriel won't feel any discomfort and will diligently masturbate your nipples. Fighting."
"Uuh, uuhuuu......!!"
Yuriel shakes her head violently. Is that also an expression of her subconscious? How interesting.
Don't worry, Yuriel. By the time you come to your senses, your body will already be so degraded that you'll cum just from me looking at you—but I'll warmly embrace you anyway.
I love you, Yuriel.
Forever.