Bridling the Foal (4)

Smack—!

"Agh—!"

The birch rod in my hand sliced through the air and came crashing down hard across the white undergarments exposed by her hiked-up jade skirt.

Her ample rear quivered like jelly in time with the impact.

A stifled moan burst from the lips of the dignified woman who, only moments before, had been barking out commands like a blizzard.

"Wh-what is the meaning of this! Raising a hand against your own mother!"

"Please hold still. That hurt when you did it to me earlier, you know?"

Smack!

"Hngh!"

I put a snap into my wrist and swung the rod with a satisfying crack. Yes, this was a virtual space, but the sting that traveled up to my fingertips was utterly, convincingly real.

That heavy, resilient sensation of soft flesh rebounding against hard wood as it compressed beneath the blow.

…This might actually be pretty great?

And yet when she was beating me earlier, she showed no mercy whatsoever. Now that the rod's in her own back, suddenly she wants to call it quits.

The instant I drew back for another strike—

Ring—!

A red system warning window flickered frantically into being midair.

"Oh, come on. What now?"

Tongue clucking, I clicked my tongue with the rod still in hand. Typical of the system, really. As if it would ever just let me breeze through a course with a plot straight out of a trashy melodrama.

But I had already given up on the idea of brute-forcing my way through classical Chinese like some illiterate peasant chipping away at a mountain. If the system wanted to play the logic game, then I would simply answer in kind.

I drew in a deep, theatrical breath, and with the rod still raised, dredged up every scrap of shallow knowledge crammed into my head and shouted with all the bluster I could muster.

"Have you no knowledge of the Three Obediences!"

At my roar, the shoulders of the woman sprawled across the floor stiffened with a jolt.

"Wh-what… hah…!"

"A woman must obey her father in youth, her husband upon marriage, and her grown son after her husband's death! With my father no longer in this house, the head of this family is me—his grown son!"

Riding the momentum, I slammed my hand against the floor and thundered.

"How dare a mere woman bar the path of this household's pillar and strike him with a rod at her whim! This is contempt for law and propriety—an act that sows disorder throughout the family line!"

In plain terms, it was pure word vomit. Honestly, I could hardly tell myself whether what I'd just said held together. If she asked why the "grown son" of the household had been bawling about relearning the Thousand Character Classic from square one just moments ago, I'd have nothing to say for myself.

But.

It worked.

It had definitely worked.

The penalty was still brutal, but the point was that it wasn't an outright "impossible" anymore.

Well, fair enough—if I genuinely believed that drivel, I'd deserve to be dragged off by our ancestors and lynched on the spot…

But so what?

This wasn't the actual Joseon era—it was a virtual space cobbled together for my convenience!

"Y-you wretch… when did your eyes grow so clouded…."

The Mother NPC tried to shrink backward, her voice thick with fear. But I pinned her shoulders down hard, and with my free hand seized the pale gores of her jeogori and twisted.

Sliiick—.

"Kyaaaah!"

The knot came undone with trivial ease, and the tightly bound hem of her skirt sagged apart. From within, two impossibly massive breasts burst forth as though a dam had given way.

"Y-you're mad! You've gone mad!"

She scrambled to cover her chest with both hands, but the violent contour and sheer weight of them were already on full display through the thin silk. Splayed as she was, gravity dragged the heavy mounds downward, and they swayed with every ragged breath she took.

Holy… shit. Unbelievable.

I swallowed dryly. For a fleeting second, a deranged impulse crossed my mind—pulling the damn thing out right now and conducting a very different kind of instruction.

But I reined myself in with effort. That wouldn't be discipline; it would just be rape. I made a point of never enjoying myself at someone else's expense.

If I pick up a sex education course down the line, who knows. For now, patience. The goal, above all else, was completing Confucian Education.

I raised the rod once more over the bare skin of the Mother NPC, her jeogori half-shed and her bare shoulders bared to the room.

"Now then, Mother. This is the price for defying your son's will."

Smack! Smaaack!

"Aaaahng! Hngh, it hurts…!"

Red welts began to stripe their way across the pale expanse of her back and the round curve of her rear. The dignified matron of a noble house had vanished entirely. All that remained was her rumpled jeogori, her underclothes tangled around her ankles as she crawled the floorboards weeping—a pitiable woman, nothing more.

"I was wrong, sob, I was wrong…!"

"You haven't been punished enough yet. Do you have any idea how much pain I was in earlier?"

Smack!

"Kyaaaaah! St-stop! Please, I beg you, stop!"

Unable to endure more than a few blows more, the Mother NPC flattened herself against the floor and began groveling with both hands.

"I yield! It shall be as you say! Only—only take the rod away, I beg you…!"

Looking down at her face, streaked with tears and snot alike, I gave a small tilt of my chin.

"Then swear it. From this day forward, you will never force the classical texts upon me again, nor raise a rod against me."

"I-I swear it! Never again shall I raise a hand against you!"

Finally, we're speaking the same language.

Gripping the rod in both hands, I laid it across my knee and snapped it in two. With a dull crack, I tossed the broken halves down before her eyes.

"If you truly wish to teach me something from now on, then do it properly. Start from the very beginning—the Thousand Character Classic, step by careful step. Am I understood?"

"Y-yes… my son…."

From there, everything flowed like water down a steep slope. The Mother NPC hastily tidied her disheveled clothing, then kept her distance and trembled as she conducted the lesson.

"The… the root of the Lesser Learning lies, umm… in filial piety and reverence…."

Since barely any time passed in here, I resolved to squeeze out every last ounce of value.

"Mother, what precisely does this passage mean? Why must women refrain from going abroad?"

"Th-that is…."

"In detail. Very clearly, please. Your son is asking, is he not?"

Whenever an unfamiliar word appeared or a passage failed to make sense, I harped on it relentlessly.

Pressed down by my heavy-handed patriarchal logic—and perhaps still reeling from the memory of her thoroughly thrashed backside—the Mother NPC bit her trembling lip and, in the end, could not defy me.

"The separation of men and women means… hah, the distinction between husband and wife…."

Twisting with shame all the while, she nonetheless unraveled each and every concept for me exactly as I demanded, one by one, step by careful step. And so the progress bar climbed—slowly, but surely.

Separation of men and women. Reverence for elders. The Three Bonds and Five Virtues.

I absorbed it all, one hammer-blow at a time—a collection of hopelessly antiquated, boomer-brain doctrines that would get you buried alive on the spot if you so much as muttered them in modern society.

Truth be told, the era's notions of "reverence for elders" and "separation of men and women" operated on an entirely different axis from the common sense I'd grown up with.

One must not so much as tread upon an elder's shadow. A teacher's word is as the will of heaven, not to be contradicted by so much as a syllable. A woman is a man's appendage, bound to absolute obedience.

These were suffocating, extreme ideas—ones even the genuine article, the actual geezers of that era, would likely struggle to swallow. But I nodded along in silence, cramming every last one of those doctrines into my skull.

After all, I had exactly one place in mind to use them.

Just how many days slipped by in that cramped little sarangbang, I couldn't say.

Ring—!

A dazzling golden message bloomed before my eyes.

"Haah… finally done."

The instant I let out my sigh of relief, the Mother NPC in her jade skirt watching me warily, the sarangbang steeped in the scent of ink and mortar—all of it washed away like pigment dissolving in water.

I'd wallowed in that virtual space for days on end, yet barely ten-odd minutes seemed to have passed in the real world.

"Ugh… my neck's killing me."

Rubbing my stiff nape, I rose from my seat. Lodged grotesquely vivid in my mind was that rotten, crumbling corpus of Neo-Confucian knowledge.

And on top of that—

Even a bonus like this, huh.

A laugh escaped me as I studied the translucent system window floating in the air.

A reunion in another setting, eh. Well—true, that wasn't a chest you'd want to see just once and walk away from….

Having made the right impression this time, the next round of education would likely go much smoother too.

I set my regret aside and turned my focus to the single most important task before me.

System. Open Choi Ahyoung's student record.

At my command, the window for Ahyoung's academic file unfurled. Without hesitation, I pressed the [Free Behavioral Correction] button pulsing at the bottom of the screen.

The input field blinked. Reaching into my head for the Neo-Confucian doctrine still lodged there, I began scrawling characters into the empty air as though pounding a keyboard.

Even by my own standards, it was a spectacularly antiquated, boomer-brained screed—but it fit the system's requirements to the letter.

"There we go."

Like with the senior, it would take upwards of a week for the correction to properly root itself in her head—but even so, this was plenty to work with.

Watching her, ever so slowly and against her own will, begin bowing her head before me—that would have its own charm, I figured.

Everything in its own time, step by step.

Just thinking about the look on that brat's face tomorrow evening already had my blood humming.

The next day. Tuesday, 5:50 PM.

I rode the elevator up and pressed the doorbell, and before long the front door swung open.

"Oh, Teacher, you're here!"

The one who opened the door was, of course, Ahyoung's mother.

Today she wore a thin beige knit dress that clung to every curve of her body.

With each movement, the line of her sculpted hips and the swelling silhouette of her ample chest made themselves blatantly obvious beneath the trailing hem. It was a strangely sensual outfit for lounging around the house, but she seemed entirely unbothered, greeting me with a bright, breezy smile.

"I'm here. And how is Ahyoung? Is she preparing for the lesson?"

"Ugh, don't even get me started. She came stumbling in late last night after hanging out with her friends, and she's still dead to the world. I just barely managed to drag her out of bed…."

The mother rubbed her cheek with a helpless look. Her daughter—a college entrance exam retaker, no less—had come home past midnight after guzzling booze in Hongdae, yet her attitude carried less serious anger or worry than the mild exasperation of someone dealing with a bothersome piece of luggage.

"No trouble at all. As I mentioned yesterday, today we start simply with getting her seated at the desk."

"You truly are the only answer, Teacher. I'll be in the living ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠room, so go on in and make yourself at home."

With her well-wishes at my back, I approached Ahyoung's firmly shut door. I skipped the knock—decorum would only buy me an irritated string of informal retorts anyway.

Click.

The moment I pushed the door open, the stale air that rolled over me made my brow furrow of its own accord.

In a room that hadn't seen a single breath of ventilation, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heavy scent of expensive shampoo mingled faintly with cheap perfume and the lingering alcohol of last night.

The state of the room was exactly as I'd seen in her diary. No—worse, actually, thanks to her having ransacked the closet yesterday while getting ready to go out.

Jeans and crop tops lay strewn across the floor like shed snakeskins, and the vanity was littered with open foundation compacts and lipsticks rolling every which way.

And on the bed—

Choi Ahyoung lay sprawled on her stomach, blanket half kicked away, peering down at her smartphone. She'd apparently just woken up.

"……."

Sensing a presence, she snapped her head around. Beneath a mop of tangled yellow hair, the round, makeup-free eyes of her bare face glared up at me, sharp as blades.

"Ah—jeez, you scared me. You come in without even knocking? Seriously rude, teach."

Informal speech and open hostility, straight off the bat. This was Choi Ahyoung at one hundred percent purity—before the physical effects of [Free Behavioral Correction] had manifested at all.

Instead of rising to her provocation, I leisurely dragged out the chair at the desk and dropped into it.

"You're the one who skips the manners first, so why should I bother with mine?"

"What?"

"And I distinctly heard through your mother that the lesson was at six today. Lying in bed looking like that at this hour—which part of that is polite, exactly?"

At my rebuttal, Ahyoung let out a hollow laugh. Irritably, she pushed herself up and leaned her back against the headboard.

"Ha, this is actually ridiculous. My condition is absolute garbage today, okay? I pushed myself too hard partying yesterday and my head feels like it's splitting. So no lesson today. Go out there and tell my mom yourself."

A textbook move. Weaponizing her own apathy and shamelessness to wear the tutor down until he gave up—classic cunning avoidance.

But I simply crossed my arms and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sank deep into the backrest.

"Why would I?"

"Huh?"

"Why would I go out there and tell your mom anything? I sit here for two hours and fifty grand lands in my account. That's it."

Ahyoung's round eyes flickered, if only slightly. Pressed down under my thoroughly capitalistic mindset, she seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

"…You're seriously planning to just moonlight this? Didn't I tell you before? I'll snitch everything to my mom."

"Go ahead. You know what your mom said to me earlier? She told me she doesn't care if my grades improve—as long as I just spend two hours in this room with you. Whether you lie in bed on your phone or sleep the whole time, it's all the same to me. The money comes in either way."

Casting one indifferent sweep of my eyes over her face, I pulled out my smartphone.

"So stop worrying about me and do whatever you were doing. I've got webtoons to catch up on."

"No, this teacher is seriously—"

Ahyoung sprang up from the bed, and stomping barefoot across the floor, marched right up in front of the chair where I sat.

"Hey."

Standing close enough that I could smell her, she planted her hands on her hips and glared down at me.

"Do you have any idea how unbearable you are? Where on earth did you pick up an attitude like that to be tutoring—"

The instant she was about to fire off the rest—

"Where on earth did you pick up such… urk."

Ahyoung's brow creased in a flash.

She cut her own sentence off mid-word and coughed awkwardly, as though a fishbone had lodged itself in her throat.

"Ahem, ahem! No, I mean, what I'm saying is… you—or, uh, teach…."

From the mouth of a girl who, mere seconds ago, had been flinging "hey" and "you" around with crisp impunity, the honorifics suddenly began tangling into knots. A flicker of bewilderment crossed her eyes—the expression of someone who couldn't understand why she'd just started stammering.

Oh-ho.

I rejoiced inwardly.

It was an infinitesimal change, but there was no doubt about it: the Confucian Hierarchy implanted deep in her subconscious had just brushed against something in the student's unconscious mind. Perhaps the very act of spitting informal speech at a teacher had stirred in her a guilt, a resistance, that she herself couldn't explain.

"What's the matter? You were mid-sentence. Or—could it be you've finally realized you shouldn't be talking to your teacher like that?"

Feigning ignorance, I tilted my head and looked up at her. Ahyoung flushed red and ground her lip between her teeth.

"N-no I haven't! I don't know anything! God, you're so annoying!"

She whirled around and stomped back to the bed, yanked the blanket up over her head, and curled into a ball, not moving so much as an inch.

"I'll wake you in two hours. Sleep tight."

I addressed the blanket lump in a flat voice, then genuinely fixed my gaze on my phone screen.

There was no need to force her into the chair from day one. Making her aware that I was the teacher—that alone was enough for today.

Staring fixedly past my phone at the small, restless shifts of the blanket, I smiled quietly to myself.

Let's see whether you're sitting in that chair within a few days. Just once.