Night Play (2)
I took Yurin's hand.
A fierce, crushing grip took over before I could even realize it. Don't let the female in front of you get away. Consume her completely. She belongs to me. My instincts were screaming with feral conviction. My body had cast off the fragile veneer of humanity, regressing into a primordial beast. It felt entirely natural, as inevitable as the laws of nature itself. Besides, wasn't this girl begging for it too? There wasn't a single reason on earth to refuse—
I yanked Yurin toward me. My dazed mind didn't bother consulting conscious thought; it simply obeyed the physical mandates of flesh and blood. Her body yielded with ridiculous ease, sliding effortlessly against mine. The petite frame of a woman against my fingertips felt intensely, agonizingly vivid. The air was still thick with that sickly-sweet fragrance, and my head burned as if on fire.
"Hahaha… Do you really like it that much?"
Cradled in my embrace, she merely offered an easygoing, brazen smile. …Wait, was she really just smiling? Somehow, it felt like mockery. There wasn't even a trace of shyness on her face. That brazen demeanor rubbed me the wrong way. Gayeon had definitely been much more embarrassed than this—
A sharp throb spiked through my temples. Just thinking about Gayeon brought a searing headache.
"Then let's start with a little taste test…."
Before I could process her words, she cupped my face with both hands and closed the distance.
Her soft, luscious tongue tangled greedily with mine. There was an intoxicating dissonance in the way she moved—hesitant yet ravenous all at once, as though an innocent virgin and a shameless temptress had been melted into a single being.
"Mmh…."
She swallowed a shallow gasp, then drew back slightly as if catching her breath. Unable to wait, I lunged forward this time, devouring her crimson lips anew.
When our lips finally parted, a glistening silver thread stretched between them.
"Mm! Not bad at all," she murmured with delighted satisfaction after a brief pause.
Any trivial second thoughts evaporated instantly. Doubts, hesitations, human morality—none of that mattered right now. The only thing that held sway was the absolute rule of the wild.
"Well? Did I… get you all excited?" she asked in a sultry, lilting purr.
Every single gesture she made was downright bewitching, driving my primal urges into absolute overdrive. There were no brakes left. My head continued to burn with feverish heat.
"You know what? I'm… pretty worked up myself," she whispered directly into my ear.
At that, an overwhelming surge of lust erupted from deep within my gut. It was impossible to hold back any longer.
"Eek!"
She let out a cute, breathless squeak, though that knowing smile never left her lips. In a flash, our positions reversed. Our status shifted. My mindset flipped. I pinned her beneath me, clamping both of her wrists firmly to the ground. A drop of saliva spilled from the corner of my mouth, dampening her porcelain neck. She pulled a teasing, troubled face for a fraction of a second before her lips silently shaped three deliberate syllables: You. Can. Go.
Permission had been granted. There wasn't a single obstacle left to make me hesitate. Releasing my hold on her wrists, I reached out toward her exposed curves. Could I really do this? I hadn't had a single drop of alcohol, yet I felt utterly intoxicated.
—Throb.
The headache struck again, unbidden, dragging up an unforgettable memory. My first time with Gayeon. …The moment that dreamlike bliss ended, she had unilaterally discarded me. That had happened only a handful of hours ago. Not even a full day had passed.
Just inches before touching her body, my hand stopped of its own accord. I hadn't consciously commanded it. It was simply the trauma still haunting every corner of my psyche, halting the mindless advance of pure instinct. Perhaps to her eyes, that sudden hesitation looked dreadfully unconvincing.
"There's nothing to worry about. I'm nothing like the girl who threw you away, okay? Come on, look into my eyes." Her gaze flashed with an uncanny, bewitching light. "You should consider this an honor. I didn't actually plan on going all the way, you know."
Screeech—
A piercing ring of static screamed through my skull. My vision warped and blurred. Sounds turned hollow and muffled, drowned out entirely by the cloying, sharp sweetness stinging my nostrils. Where was I drifting? I had completely lost all sense of who and what I was, feeling like a ship whose anchor had been severed on a boundless ocean. My surroundings spun uncontrollably—round and round, sometimes gently, sometimes violently. Having lost its compass, the vessel was drifting straight toward forbidden waters.
"Ha Seojin, what is it that you truly want right now? Surrender everything that makes you who you are to me."
And this girl, who was nothing more than a complete stranger, harbored not the slightest intention of steering me back.
Suddenly, my heart thundered with a violent, concussive beat.
It was completely different from anything I had felt up to this moment. The blood in my veins boiled in absolute frenzy. As if finally drawing its first breath of life into this world, it tore through my cardiovascular system, roaring out from my heart to race through every capillary. The primal surge showed no sign of slowing down.
"Wait, what?! This isn't supposed to happen!"
Panicking, the girl fluttered her hands frantically, realizing something had gone catastrophically off course. After countless furious cycles of circulation, the tempest finally quieted. The body left behind was overflowing with a terrifying vigor I had never experienced before. A natural euphoria washed over me—distinct from the saccharine haze of a sweet dream. My head cleared with crystalline clarity, and my train of thought snapped back to reality.
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded, shoving myself away from Han Yurin in an instant.
It was the only logical question. I had known she was suspicious from the start. Even so, I had tagged along and enjoyed myself. While it was true I had rationalized that falling into a trap would just be an unavoidable accident… now that things had actually reached this point, I couldn't just sweep it under the rug. It was almost comical that a traumatic flashback to my first time was what snapped me out of it. What a pathetic display.
"You figured it out, huh…? *Sigh*, it would've been so much nicer if you'd just made this easy." Yurin muttered with genuine regret. I hadn't expected her to admit it outright. It seemed the urban rumors Hyunwoo mentioned were true after all.
"Besides, asking who I am? That's what this big sis wants to ask you!"
Yurin puffed out her cheeks in indignant frustration. By all accounts, everything should have ended just now. Yet an utterly impossible anomaly had occurred, an unforeseen variable completely derailing her entire design. At this rate, she wouldn't even survive the night. She had to replenish her energy reserves by any means necessary. Was there really no other way?
"Tsk." She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
"Are you keeping quiet too? Claiming you're different from her, but you're just the exact same." I shook my head in disgust. It wasn't my first kiss, but it still felt tainted. "Pah. So the rumors were real—you seduce wounded guys like me and turn them into invalids. Just how many men have you led on with that body of yours?"
I wasn't interested in being someone's recycled prey.
"You were my very first, for your information!" Yurin snapped back, visibly offended.
Oh.
"Really? Well, thanks for that. Honestly, the kiss felt great."
"Then there's no reason for you to refuse sleeping with me, is there? You just said you liked it!" Yurin pressed, looking thoroughly baffled.
To be fair, she had a point. It did feel amazing. Who in their right mind would dislike it? A part of me was practically dying to do it. She was the textbook definition of an ideal gyaru; rejecting her seemed downright insane. She was sitting right there within arm's reach, and the sole drawback holding me back had just been debunked. Even if it meant spending a few months in a hospital bed afterward, in a twisted sense, it might have been a bargain. However—
"Yeah, but… you don't actually like me."
There was no love in it. And I was sick to death of unwanted farewells.
Yurin's expression instantly froze over with icy stillness. Her sudden chill was almost terrifying.
"Liar. What a blatant lie. You're lying to me, Seojin."
She had sifted through his memories. She had heard them directly from his lips. The very fact that her Mystic Eyes of Charm had taken hold meant he craved affection. Therefore, it should have worked flawlessly. It was fundamentally impossible to break free from her enthrallment over an excuse like that. Whether she actually harbored feelings for him was entirely beside the point.
'I was just about to reach the deepest core of his soul when something pushed back…'
Ha Seojin. Just what on earth were you?
"Uh, can I still touch your boobs right now?" I blurted out, breaking the tension with sheer nonsense.
Was this guy for real?
"Tough luck! My chest was a limited-time offer, sweetie—"
Further conversation was meaningless. If he insisted on resisting, she would simply claim him by brute force.
Riiip—!
The concealed wings broke free from her back. Sprouting from between her shoulder blades, a pair of leathery bat wings snapped wide open. Two curved horns jutted from her forehead, and a slender tail tipped with a sharp heart whipped into the air. Most striking of all was her countenance. Her skin had turned past pale into a ghostly, porcelain white, radiating an ominous, predatory aura. Her attire shifted right along with her—the mundane clothes vanished, replaced in an instant by an ornate, gothic-style dress.
Her appearance was unmistakable. She was, quite literally, a demon straight out of mythology.
"…That's amazing," I breathed out in quiet awe.
Holy crap… As if being a gyaru with maternal vibes wasn't enough, she had the succubus archetype stacked on top of it? Now I regretted not copping a feel earlier even more. Maybe I shouldn't have turned her down after all. If that mess with Gayeon hadn't just gone down, I might have gladly rolled with it. Well, even then, I probably wouldn't have gone all the way.
"Try and run, Ha Seojin. Come on, let's keep playing our little Night Play—"
Time to stop daydreaming. Regrets could wait for later. The immediate priority was getting the hell out of here.
I spun on my heels and bolted without looking back.
BOOM—!
A sphere of pitch-black energy tore through the air right past my ear, blasting shattered chunks of asphalt across the street. Absolutely savage. A split-second later, and I would've lost a leg. Honestly, managing to evade her at all felt like a miracle.
My body hadn't felt like my own for several minutes now. Strength surged through every limb; I felt like I could run endlessly without tiring. I had no idea what caused it, but from the exact moment Han Yurin did something to my body, whatever dormant monstrosity slept inside me had awakened.
Fortunately, she didn't seem overwhelmingly powerful in raw combat. In terms of foot speed, I probably had the upper hand. As long as she didn't take to the skies, she wouldn't easily catch me. In the end, judging by her bag of tricks, she was fundamentally a succubus. An entity specializing in entrapping victims with illusions to harvest life essence wasn't built for prolonged physical brawls. In a direct head-on clash, I might actually stand a chance. Even so, getting pinned down would mean game over.
Keeping my legs churning, I sprinted through the dark city streets.