The Diuretic Strategy
It hardly needs saying, but sex is a genuinely delightful thing. I find myself almost curious why I only learned that now. Before I became a hunter, I may have had one of the professions closest to sex. Or perhaps it was the profession farthest from it.
Erotic novelist. That was my job. I made a living writing vulgar, filthy copulation into text. I'd watched countless porn videos in the name of faithful description, but I'd never actually had sex myself.
To be precise, I couldn't have sex. Back then I was a man who had been thoroughly washed out of the reproductive race — a complete breeding failure.
If I hadn't obtained this power, I wouldn't have taken a single step forward from those days. In that sense, I love my power dearly. It may well have become the very essence of who I am.
The weekend arrived.
Jisu had barricaded herself in her room for a stretch, and only now, several days later, was she beginning to make tentative appearances in the living room. The psychiatrist had told us not to subject her to any undue stimulation, so we'd all been careful with her. Fortunately, Jisu overcame the trauma with the speed you'd expect of a Dungeon Hunter.
She was a mentally tough woman — the kind who'd already gotten over the death of her only family just as quickly. We all knew she'd dust herself off and get back on her feet before long.
The temporary halt in party hunting was an opportunity for me as well. I needed to use this window to make Lina entirely mine. This was advantageous from a party standpoint, too — once she became my woman, she could grow rapidly through the power of Power of Sex. This was absolutely not for my own selfish desires alone.
How was I supposed to take Lina? I thought back on how things had gone with Sujin and Yeonji.
I got lucky with those two. Especially with Sujin — I had that incredible item, the Succubus's Gift.
Whatever the process, I was confident I could capture a woman once we had sex. I had Power of Sex, after all — an outrageous ability. Any woman who tasted my cock would never be able to leave me. The problem was getting to that point.
If you're having sex, you're already practically lovers. Raping her… the risk is way too high.
I'd already built a pretty good relationship with Lina. Destroying all of that by raping her was a last-resort strategy I needed to keep in reserve.
I couldn't see a crack in her defenses. What I needed at a time like this was, of course, an item.
I'll buy Random Item Coupons. They're only a thousand credits apiece.
I currently had over a hundred thousand credits. Money was meant to be spent at times like this. I immediately bought ten C-Rank Random Item Coupons.
A biscuit that can be eaten anytime, anywhere. It's practically inedible unless soaked in water, but it packs such tremendous calories that a single one can get you through a day.
※ A tragic product that sacrificed all palatability for survival. If you find yourself eating this, you have my condolences.
Fruit wine personally brewed by Tobuerako, a master distiller and dwarf hobbit. Thirty percent alcohol, with a fragrant aroma and a deep flavor, and an exceptionally smooth finish.
※ Excessive drinking is harmful to your health.
An extremely potent diuretic. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, making it easy to administer in secret — in fact, that is precisely what it was designed for. Effects kick in anywhere from ten minutes to one hour depending on the dosage. Excessive consumption can loosen the bladder, so caution is advised.
※ No particular side effects if the proper dosage is observed.
Eight Hard Biscuits, one bizarrely named liquor, and one diuretic. I'd gone through C-Rank coupons and pulled nothing but D-Rank junk. This draw was a complete bust.
Still… a diuretic. Now that's got a certain ring to it.
I made plans to go shopping with Sujin and Lina. The stated purpose was to pick up daily necessities for the Party House, but in truth it was one piece of the plan to fuck Lina.
Just as I had with Sujin, and just as I had with Yeonji, I laid out a strategy for making Lina mine. The first thing I needed to do was get her alone.
"Sorry! Jaeseong. Lina. My parents just said they're in the neighborhood all of a sudden… I'm really sorry, but could you two go without me today?"
Sujin pressed her hands together and apologized like a heroine out of a Japanese manga. The bit about her parents showing up was a lie, of course. She and I had coordinated in advance that she would bow out of the shopping trip. The shopping itself had been arranged from the start so that Lina and I would end up alone.
"Can't be helped. I'll go with the party leader today. That's alright with you?"
Lina tipped her head at a slanted angle and looked up at me. The faint smile on her face felt so much like a provocation that I could barely stand it. I violated her once in my imagination.
I have a feeling this isn't going to stay imaginary.
Lina and I left the Party House together. We took the bus into the city, where the big-box discount store was packed with the usual weekend crowd — busy, but not so jammed you couldn't find room to stand. An ordinary Saturday, all in all.
"So what we need is toilet paper, towels, and some spare underwear, I guess. It adds up more than you'd think. A car would be nice right about now."
"I'm thinking of getting one. With five of us, a full-size SUV would probably be about right. What do you think?"
"I don't know the first thing about cars. I'll leave that to you, party leader."
Our conversation didn't last long. Lina liked things concise and clear, in a way that wasn't particularly feminine, and that personality came through in her speech without any filter. Once the topic ran dry, the words simply stopped.
Maybe I should push the approach a little.
The first thing I wanted to settle was how we addressed each other. There was a lingering distance in the way Lina called me "party leader." We were going to be living under the same roof, skin against skin — that kind of distance wasn't doing anyone any favors.
"Lina. I've been wanting to say this for a while — shall we drop the formalities?"
I'd tried this once before and gotten shut down. If I remembered right, it had been the day we took the Dungeon Hunter exam at the Hunter Association.
Lina let out a small laugh and gave me a sly, knowing smile with her eyes. Cool Lina transformed, in an instant, into sultry Lina. For someone so small and dainty, she had a way of radiating sex appeal. Her pussy would surely taste incredible.
"The formalities? I'm fine with how things are. Don't tell me, party leader… you want me to call you oppa?"
"Of course I do. Hearing a cute girl like you call me oppa is every man's dream, isn't it?"
"Heh. Fair enough. Well, if that's what you want, I don't mind. So I should call you Jaeseong oppa, then?"
"That's right. We're going to be seeing a lot of each other. No need to keep things stiff."
"Is that so? Alright. Jaeseong oppa. Satisfied now?"
Satisfied. Deeply, thoroughly, magnificently satisfied. I felt the kind of contentment that came with achieving a lifelong goal. I almost reached out and stroked her hair without thinking. However much closer we'd grown emotionally, that kind of skinship was still a self-defeating move.
We did the shopping. The bags came out to two large boxes, and we carried one each. Both of us being Dungeon Hunters, the physical work was nothing.
"It's already past one. Want to grab something to eat here before we head back?"
I let the formal speech drop with her, naturally, as if it had always been that way.
"Sure. There's a food court downstairs. Let's go there."
We ordered pizza and pasta at the basement food court. The food was decent enough. We demolished lunch in thirty minutes — I had a healthy appetite, and so did Lina. Hunters tend to.
"My mouth's bored. Let's grab coffee for the walk."
I ordered two Americanos at a café. Lina liked coffee. Living in the same Party House, you picked up that much.
The pager in my hand buzzed. The coffee was ready. I stood up.
"I'll grab the coffee."
I slipped the diuretic into Lina's cup. I'd already calculated the dosage and the time-to-onset using Sujin as a test subject. Whether as a side effect of that or not, Sujin had lately been gushing love juices like she was pissing herself — which, frankly, wasn't a downside. Wait. Come to think of it, had Sujin always been that much of a squirter?
I handed Lina her coffee. We walked with the cups in our hands, and when we passed a place selling jelly donuts I bought a few. I really loved those donuts.
Coffee and donuts in hand, we boarded the bus together. It was roomy. We took the very back seat, side by side.
"Whew. It's been about four hours. Lunch ate up a lot of time. I wonder if the girls are going to get jealous."
"Jealous?"
"Yeah. Oppa, you're in that kind of relationship with those two, aren't you? Doing that every night."
A faint color rose in Lina's cheeks as she went on.
"I can hear you doing it all the way in my room. I don't want to stick my nose in anyone's private business, but I'd appreciate it if you kept the volume down a little."
"Sorry, sorry. Sujin and Yeonji just react so well, you know?"
I didn't dodge her comment. I met it head-on. I could push a little further here.
Over the course of shopping and eating, the distance between Lina and me had closed by a conspicuous amount. The space between two people tends to collapse all at once around a single turning point, and for the two of us, today's shopping trip had been that turning point.
"They scream like that? You're not hitting them or anything, are you?"
Lina looked at me through half-lidded eyes. There wasn't any real accusation in her tone.
"Well, I do hit them. I take my thing and I hit Sujin's thing, and Yeonji's."
"Nnh…!"
She whipped her head away.
"You're filthy! You don't say things like that in front of a girl."
"Haha. That so? Sorry, sorry."
"You don't sound sorry at all."
She said that, but she didn't seem all that displeased. Proof that we'd gotten closer. We'd reached the point where she could let a dirty joke like that slide with a generous pass.
It should be kicking in around now.
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was carrying herself as usual, but I could see a faint stiffness in her cheeks. And then, as luck would have it, the bus lurched hard. The driver had slammed on the brakes.
"Eek!"
A cute little sound jumped out of Lina's mouth. A voice with not one percent of her usual cool in it — nothing like her at all.
"Whoa! Sorry about that. A car cut in front of me all of a sudden."
The driver apologized, but neither Lina nor I was listening. She had both hands clenched into fists, stacked on her knees, her eyes squeezed shut. The jolt seemed to have put a crack in the fortress-like seal she'd been keeping on her bladder.
I spoke with a perfectly innocent expression.
"You okay? You don't look so good."