The Grade Announcement
"Why don't you wait for him in something sexy? He'd get so worked up he'd pin you to the bed, wouldn't he?"
"Wouldn't that be a little too obvious?"
While Lee Ho-yeon was off sparring with Nam Da-eun, Liliana and Scarlet sat in the room putting their heads together, determined to lock him down for good.
"Hmmm… you're right. I hate obvious."
"What if you showed Ho-yeon a side of yourself he doesn't usually see?"
Liliana tipped her head, actually listening for once.
"A side he doesn't usually see?"
"Yes. You're bright and full of mischief, Miss Liliana, so you show him something different. A more serious side, for instance. Or a thoughtful, considerate one."
"Ohh… that's pretty good? Brainstorming with you really is the best, Scout."
"Thank… you—hhk… nn."
Stroke, stroke. Liliana ran her tail along Scarlet's sex. It was her idea of a compliment.
"I-I should get going. I still have an assignment from Ho-yeon to take care of. I'll leave the rest to you, Miss Liliana."
"Got it. When are you coming tomorrow?"
"Mm… I'll be here after lunch."
Liliana withdrew her tail. Only then did Scarlet gather her clothes and start dressing, piece by piece.
"Okaaay. See you tomorrow, Scout."
"Yes. Please take care."
A soft tap — and Scarlet stuck herself to the ceiling, then shot out of the room in a rushing whisper of air.
"I thought I told her not to do that. Old habits really do die hard."
Liliana shook her head, dropped onto the sofa, and closed her eyes to think.
"A different side… a side he doesn't usually see…?"
The idea had come out of her talk with Scarlet, but turning it into something she could actually do, alone, was another matter entirely.
That was when she remembered the stationery Ho-yeon had given her — a letter that could reach her mother in Hell. He'd handed it over so she could ask about the Demon King, but she had left it sitting on the desk and forgotten about it for days.
"Should I ask Mom?"
Her mother never had much that was kind to say about her father, but every so often she would dress up and go out, and Liliana had always suspected she was meeting someone. Even if she wasn't, her mother somehow seemed to know everything. Except for the way she nagged whenever Liliana sat down to game, she had been a perfect mom.
"Yeah. When you don't know, you ask your mom."
Liliana picked up a pen and began to write, asking her mother how to seduce a man.
The girls' dormitory at Victoria Academy.
Rumi lay face-down on her bed with her head buried in the pillow, letting out a long, muffled groan.
"Nngh… is this too perverted? But I want to…"
She had tried to message Ho-yeon more than once, typing a line and deleting it, typing another and deleting that too, before finally giving up and collapsing onto the mattress. After a while she woke her smartwatch and started again.
"I-I can't send this. There's no way…"
In the beginning, she and Ho-yeon had gone to a motel twice. After that, though, it had always been a bathroom, or the club room, or some other cramped, stolen place. That had been good too — but sometimes she just wanted to do it properly, comfortably, on a real bed.
Even so. I can't send a message like this.
She shook her head at herself — and then her lower belly gave a dull, insistent throb, as if her womb were aching for his cock. A shiver ran through her from head to toe.
"Hah… I don't care anymore."
Telling herself the embarrassment would only last a second, Rumi hit send. The smart thing would have been to ease in with small talk and slip the request in at the right moment, but Rumi had neither the gift of gab nor the faintest idea how to do that.
That was when Lucy came out of the bathroom, tipped her head at the sight of her sister, and wandered over.
"Rumi, what're you doing?"
"I-I was just sending a text. You scared me, Lucy."
Rumi jumped and killed the smartwatch display in a hurry.
"Ahh… who to?"
"Uh… just someone I know."
"Gotcha~."
Lucy stretched out beside her as if it were nothing and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
The only person Rumi would text like that is Lee Ho-yeon.
Rumi didn't have many friends. The only person she could message that comfortably was him. So why hide it from her own sister? Lucy never hid anything from Rumi.
The same uneasy feeling settled over her again.
I finished sparring with Nam Da-eun and left the training hall. After washing off in the showers attached to the facility, I got dressed and checked my smartwatch. A few messages were waiting.
"Huh? Out of nowhere?"
No buildup, no context, just the request itself. It caught me off guard — but I wasn't complaining. It wasn't as if I was losing anything by it.
I sent Rumi a yes and opened the next message.
"Oh… Professor Lim Sol. No — Lim Sol noona…"
A capable woman really was something else. Hearing her state, flat-out, that she would not let any of this blow back on me was more reassuring than I wanted to admit.
I checked to see if Baek A-young had messaged me separately, since she was apparently helping too. She hadn't.
I decided to go check on her myself. Originally I'd planned to wait her out — let her be the one who couldn't take it anymore and came to me, and then I'd make my move. But there was a chance she'd just sit there stewing until something in her cracked, and I didn't like that risk.
And Min Yeji… I really was going to have to meet her at least once. Not that I had any intention of joining a guild, so there wasn't much to talk about. Still. I could hear her terms, at least.
I turned all of that over in my head as I walked, and before I knew it I was back at the dorm.
A soft chime sounded as I stepped inside. Scarlet had already gone; Liliana was the only one on the sofa.
"I'm back. What're you up to?"
"Mmngh. Just finished streaming. Taking a break."
"Yeah? Have you eaten?"
"Nope. I was waiting for you."
"I'm starving. Let's eat. Chicken?"
We'd had sandwiches for lunch, so dinner ought to be something she actually liked.
"It's fine. Get whatever you want."
"?"
Had this lunatic succubus eaten something she shouldn't have? Why the sudden good-girl act?
"That's not like you. Come on, we're getting chicken."
"What's 'like me'? I've always been like this."
"…?"
Had she hit puberty?
I put a hand on her forehead.
"No fever, at least…"
"I'm fine. Let's just eat. You pick the menu, Ho-yeon."
At this hour she should have been screeching for fried chicken at the top of her lungs. The fact that she kept this up was starting to make me suspicious. The fact that she didn't even react when I put my hand on her forehead was weirder still.
Affection:93(+1.2)
Libido:92
Appetite:45
Fatigue:35
"…"
What on earth had gotten into her?
"Alright then. Sashimi."
"Nnk…"
Sashimi was the one thing Liliana hated most. She'd never had anything fresh while she was living in Hell, and she swore she simply could not eat it.
"What, you don't like it?"
"N-no… sashimi's great. Let's order it. Ahem."
Still not breaking, huh.
"Sashimi it is, then~."
"Y-yeah…"
Her face fell in real time. I laughed on the inside and kept threatening to put the order through. I had no idea what this was about, but if she was going to hand me material like this, I was going to use it.
Of course, the second this little act of hers ended she was going to lose her mind, so while my mouth talked sashimi, my hands ordered chicken.
Monday.
The long weekend was finally over, and it was time to go back to the Academy. Exams were done. The festival was done. For a while, at least, Victoria Academy would settle back into its ordinary rhythm.
I, of course, would not be settling into anything. I had far too much to do.
"I'm heading out. Hold down the fort."
"Kay. Have a good day~."
Liliana's little concept had lasted exactly one day. The moment the delivery turned out to be chicken instead of sashimi, she had thrown her arms around me and wailed her thanks. I'd checked her status window at the time.
What exactly had she been talking to her mother about? I'd told her to ask whether the Demon King was still around. She hadn't gone and wasted the question on something stupid… right? She couldn't possibly be dumb enough to throw away a chance that only came once a month.
I left the dorm and started walking toward Class A. The way people kept glancing at me as I passed was more than a little oppressive. I was used to being stared at, honestly — but over the weekend the noise around my name had gotten so loud that I wasn't exaggerating when I said every single person on the path was looking at me. Being used to attention and having a few hundred pairs of eyes on you at once were not the same thing.
"Wooow~. Look at you, Mr. Famous. Lee Ho-yeon."
A voice I hadn't heard in a while slid in from my left.
"Yeah, well. Things just kind of ended up that way."
I turned my head. Kim Young-han had fallen into step beside me.
"The way you drag incidents around with you, someone who didn't know better would think you were a comic-book protagonist."
"Ugh. If you came here to give me a hard time, go away. I'm tired."
"I just came to walk with you. Grades come out today, so cheer up. It's the day Victoria Academy's history gets rewritten, you know."
"What the hell are you talking about now."
I could never tell where this kid picked up the weird information he was always spouting. Unlike him, I didn't have a network that fed me that kind of thing.
"Hmmm~. Judging by that reaction, you really don't know."
"I don't have connections like you do."
"More like you don't have the interest. Anyway, noted. Let's just get to class."
The two of us made useless small talk all the way to Class A, and the moment we stepped into the classroom we split toward our own groups, as if we'd rehearsed it. An unspoken rule between me and Kim Young-han.
Lucy and Rumi were sitting at the far end. Even after a few days apart, it was genuinely good to see them.
"Hey."
"Hi hi. Ho-yeon, you feeling okay?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Good morning, Hoyeon."
"Morning."
I sat down between them like it was the most natural thing in the world — and found a letter waiting on my desk.
"What's this?"
I turned it over front and back. No name, no mark, nothing.
"It was already here when we sat down. It looked like it was for you, so we left it."
"Hm."
Cadets could sit wherever they wanted, but in practice the seats never changed. People sat with their friends, and nobody had a reason to move. So yes — this was almost certainly for me.
I opened it.
Lee Ho-yeon.
Please come up to the rooftop alone during lunch.
"Well, damn. It really is for me."
But why the rooftop? They weren't planning something weird, were they?
"Let me see, what's it say?"
"It's a secret. Secret."
"Tch."
"Lucy. You shouldn't look at other people's letters."
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. You think I'd actually try to read that?"
Her face said otherwise, for the record.
Anyway. Whatever this was, I'd find out at lunch. Rooftop it was.
The front door slid open.
"A long break agrees with all of you. You're looking well."
Professor Kim Jin-hyeok stepped into the classroom. The man was always a blank-faced slab of slicked-back hair, but today he looked genuinely worn down. Cleaning up after the terrorist attack, no doubt.
"Hah. No particular announcements today. We'll put out a proper notice regarding the attack in due course, and as for the malicious rumors circulating about certain cadets, the Academy will gather the facts and deal with them thoroughly. And the thing you've all been waiting for — grade announcements — will be at lunch."
"Uuugh…"
"Mom's going to kill me."
The room filled with the sound of cadets dying on the spot. I glanced toward the corner, where Nam Da-eun was sitting.
Affection:56
Libido:19
Appetite:42
Fatigue:26
On the surface she was as expressionless as ever, but I'd looked at that face enough times now that I could almost read it. If you paid attention, the corner of her mouth was tipped up, just slightly — the same look she'd had when I handed her that wallet. That was her good-mood face.
I hope lunch gets here already.
I wanted the grades posted. And I wanted to know who had called me to the roof.