Cleanup (3)

"Hnnngh... Ho-yeon... hngh."

The video was devastating.

Of all people, Elise — masturbating while moaning my name. I had never even imagined it. The whole thing was so far outside anything I'd prepared for that I didn't know how to react.

"...This isn't photoshopped, right?"

I already knew it wasn't. I asked anyway, because it still refused to feel real.

"Y-yes. Haaah..."

Squelch, squelch—

Scarlet's body shuddered as Liliana's tail ravished her. Lewd sounds spilled from the video and from the room at the same time, overlapping in a way that was almost surreal.

"But why...?"

Why would Elise masturbate calling my name? No matter how I turned it over, it didn't add up.

"It's only natural for a female to go after a capable, handsome male."

"Hngh, haah. Aaahng♡"

Liliana said it while she kept tormenting Scarlet.

"Uh..."

That wasn't really the problem. Fine — grant that a woman's instincts work that way. Elise was different. She wasn't a heroine who would fall for a face.

She did have a setting that made her take an interest in capable men, sure... but jumping from that to moaning my name with her hand between her legs was a hell of a leap. Several steps had been skipped.

Which meant something had happened between us that I didn't know about.

"What could have triggered this..."

I turned it over while I looked at Scarlet, who was sprawled on her back like a dog with her belly bared and her tongue hanging out, and tried to reconstruct how Elise had ended up like this.

You can never pin down a single clean reason someone falls for another person. Still, Elise and I had been through more than a few incidents together.

The biggest one, in my judgment, was the massage.

She was probably out there right now, hunting desperately for a mana masseur. But no mana masseur ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stimulated the mana circuits the way I did. She'd be contacting me soon enough.

And while I'd been working on her, I had used my mana to feed her little pulses of pleasure. Maybe she simply couldn't forget that.

"Scarlet. Did Elise only say my name?"

I couldn't be sure on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠massage theory alone. I needed more.

Elise's masturbation video ran well over two hours. Watching a beautiful woman touch herself was pleasant enough on its own, but sitting through the entire thing felt like a waste of time.

"Hngh — sh-she said Baek A-young and Rumi too. Hnnh."

"Baek A-young, Rumi..."

That was new.

Why would other heroines' names come out of Elise's mouth?

Elise masturbated while calling Baek A-young, Rumi, and me...

There had only been one time all four of us were together.

"Was it the Survival exam?"

There had been moments during every Survival exam when Elise's condition had been... off. Looking back now, it was strange.

When I had sex with Baek A-young, Elise had volunteered to keep watch herself and taken the Verdant Veil that could erase her presence. And when I woke her after having sex with Rumi at night, her face had looked utterly exhausted.

Even when I came back from secretly sleeping with Rumi, I remembered thinking the barrier was unusually solid — and afterward she had managed to punch a small hole through mine.

And every one of those times, her sexual appetite had seemed higher than usual.

Then, once the exam was over, she was masturbating while moaning my name, Baek A-young's, and Rumi's.

At the time I'd been too focused on the exam and the massages to think about it. But even the things you can write off as coincidence become inevitability when they pile up high enough.

"Did she... watch me having sex?"

This world had originally been an eroge. In the source material the heroines were hopeless perverts who would go along with just about any kind of play. Depending on how the protagonist behaved during their routes, their personalities shifted.

For all I knew, Elise had developed a voyeurism fetish without my ever noticing.

"I'll need to... test this."

But handing Scarlet a video of myself without thinking it through could be dangerous. There was a small chance my guess was wrong. I could suddenly find myself with a weakness hanging over my head.

"Hngh, haah... Ho-yeon. Aaahng... me too... hnnh."

Watching Elise call my name like that in the video, it didn't seem likely. But you never really knew.

"Hnghk...! Hnnh. Hnnngh. Khh!"

"Scout. Feel good?"

"Hahk, ohgohk..."

Scarlet was staining the floor with her juices while Liliana worked her over. Liliana looked like she was having the time of her life. Scarlet was convulsing with her eyes rolled back. She was still answering, though, so she was alive.

It wasn't even 3D porn, but the moans rolling through the room in surround sound were getting me a little worked up too.

"How about here?"

"Haah, yes. Aah..."

"Liliana. Come here."

"Hmm?"

Liliana, who had been toying with Scarlet's breasts, trotted over at my call.

"Do me too."

"Ahh. Yes, Master."

She kept thrusting her tail into Scarlet's pussy even as she used her mouth to drag my zipper down. I switched on the video recording function on my smartwatch.

Liliana grunted and tugged my underwear down with her mouth, fished me out — then jumped at the notification chime and looked up.

"W-what is that, Master?"

"Don't worry about it. I just felt like trying it."

"I-it's a little embarrassing..."

"Suck it already."

"Ugh... haah."

She squeezed her eyes shut, covered her face with her fingers, and took my cock into her mouth. Warmth closed around me, wet and close.

I stroked the head of my good little succubus, who did whatever I told her no matter how embarrassed she was.

"Schlick... slurp. Mwah."

I'd gotten plenty of blowjobs before, but watching the scene through the camera instead of looking at it directly felt like watching porn. It was a surprisingly fresh experience.

"Liliana. Throw in some dirty talk too. Like in a porn video."

It was already pretty good. But if I wanted one hundred percent customer satisfaction, I needed a perfect tape.

"I'll enjoy eating Master's cock..."

"Dirtier."

"Please pump a huge load of Master's cum into my mouth... slurp."

"Not bad. Hoo."

Liliana bobbed her head hard, like she wanted to finish quickly out of sheer embarrassment. The way she wrapped around me felt as good as it always did.

I stroked her hair and turned over the real problem: how to get this video to Elise without it looking like I'd sent it on purpose.

The Student Council President's office at Victoria Academy.

For a president's office it was almost austere — no excess decoration, just a clean, modest workspace. This was Mun Su-rin's territory. Most of Victoria Academy's business was handled from this room.

She was finishing the aftermath of the terrorist attack.

"Hmmm... that's about done."

Yesterday's attack had wrecked the rest she'd planned for the festival period, and she'd been forced into an all-nighter. She had meant to see Lee Ho-yeon yesterday or today. The attack had put a stop to that.

Even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so, years of practiced efficiency let her clear the paperwork in a single day.

"Gill Stephen's interrogation goes to the assigned interrogator... restoration mages hired. Casualties processed. Okay."

The executive captured yesterday was Gill Stephen, an executive of Pandemic. She had been informed that Lee Ho-yeon had personally taken him on-site.

"That's Ho-yeon for you..."

According to the magic professors who had been at the scene, it was an attack large enough that there would have been thousands of casualties if Lee Ho-yeon hadn't been there. A reward would have to be issued as soon as the Celestial Festival ended. That much was obvious.

But people had a habit of believing only what they saw with their own eyes. And there were always those who resented the image of a "genius." There were people who trusted neither the press nor the government.

So in one corner, a strange story had started to circulate. A rumor that the Academy was covering up Lee Ho-yeon's mistakes.

It was an absurd claim — the kind of thing you dismissed as the noise of a few pieces of trash. The scale of it, though, was unusually large. They had even built their own website to operate from. A site called The Truth Lee Ho-yeon Is Hiding.

"Someone's trying to keep Ho-yeon in check..."

A group was systematically stirring public opinion. They were seeding cleverly fabricated evidence everywhere, winding up people naive enough to believe it.

Their reach still wasn't large enough to warrant a real response. Crowds like that only got louder when you paid attention to them. The Academy had decided, for now, to ignore them.

"Haa... I just hope Ho-yeon doesn't get shaken up over nothing."

She sipped her coffee, worrying over a boy who seemed to get pulled into a new incident every other day, and logged onto Everyday.

The top post was still about the attack. Underneath it, the usual chatter had already climbed back onto the recommended list.

"Haa..."

A photo of her walking around just a few hours ago was already up. Mun Su-rin let out a long breath.

The truth was, she was in no position to be worrying about Ho-yeon. The paparazzi had multiplied to the point she could feel them on her skin.

In the original story, this was around when overwork and the psychological grind of the cameras would have started to crack her. Ho-yeon had expected her to start coming apart right about now.

The Mun Su-rin of this world, however, had a defense mechanism he had never accounted for.

She backed out of the thread and typed Lee Ho-yeon into the search bar. A few junk posts later, she found the one she wanted.

Mun Su-rin saved Ho-yeon's photos one by one, skimmed the commenters tearing into each other, and closed the thread.

Seeing people ship the two of them had lifted her mood for a moment. Then the knowledge that looking at these pictures was a crime — something she understood better than anyone — settled back over her.

One of the shots was of Ho-yeon in class, chin propped on his hand. He was being hunted by candid cameras just as constantly as she was.

"Haa... Who am I to get angry about this."

She was sitting there saving someone else's stolen photos of him. How was she supposed to condemn the people who did the same to her?

She blamed herself, and still she couldn't delete them. Work had been so relentless that she barely got to see him. She had put him on the student council, but in the PR department, which meant they hardly crossed paths. Slotting in personnel who hadn't originally belonged there had made that unavoidable.

"It can't be helped... Yeah. It can't be helped, right?"

She finished saving the pictures and switched on her recorder.

As student council president, she never knew what kind of scandal she might get dragged into, so she kept a recorder running through every conversation. The ones with Ho-yeon, of course, she kept separately.

Static crackled.

"Hoo..."

Mun Su-rin rested, listening to his voice.

"I'm sorry, Ho-yeon. But you play around with other girls besides me. I'm the only one who only has you..."

"Yeah... it's sweet."

She took a sip of coffee and sent him a message.

Mun Su-rin's mind was growing steadier in a direction Lee Ho-yeon had never once anticipated.