Repayment
Day four of my hospital stay. Thursday. Once again, I was lying in my room.
Bright bouquets sat arranged around my bed — flowers Nam Da-eun had bought. As if showing up every single day since visitation had been allowed weren't enough, today she had come in with an armful of them.
"This one was the cheapest and had the most flowers in it."
The bouquet she held out to me was baby's breath.
"...Uh, thanks."
She really didn't need to pinch pennies quite that hard. Still, I had to admit the room looked a lot cheerier for it. Rose baskets and sprays of baby's breath were everywhere.
"Where'd you even get the money for all this?"
Nam Da-eun was hardly rolling in it, and yet she had bought a small garden's worth of flowers.
"Scarlet gave it to me. I told her I was fine, but she just kept handing it over, so I didn't have a choice."
"Hmm..."
Well, that tracked. A kid with no money saying she was going to buy flowers — of course Scarlet would do that. Kind to a fault, that one.
"Anyway, thanks. The room's a lot brighter now."
I was going to slip out again later anyway, but receiving a gift still felt good.
"I'll get going, then. Take care."
Even when she came to visit, Nam Da-eun always left almost as soon as she'd confirmed I was all right. Not that I minded. I was grateful she came at all.
"So you like this kind of thing."
I looked over the rose basket and the baby's breath she had left behind and clicked my tongue. She didn't exactly give off a bright, flowery impression — the fact that she liked flowers was oddly endearing.
I let my gaze drift from the flowers to my smartwatch.
A message from Elise, sent last night. About time, honestly. We had a mana massage contract, and yet I'd only actually given her one session. The terms were that I came when she called, so it wasn't as though I'd been slacking — but still.
A knock at the door.
"Patient Lee Ho-yeon. A visitor named Elise is here to see you."
"Yes. Please send her up."
Nam Da-eun had barely left before Elise arrived. Finally. I wondered what she wanted to talk about. I rolled my shoulders loose and waited for her to come up.
"...So I came after all."
Elise drew a long breath in front of Ho-yeon's hospital room. In her entire life, she had never been the one to seek someone out first — and now here she was, paying a hospital visit. To a man, no less.
"It's because of the contract. Yes. The contract."
The massage contract she had signed with Ho-yeon. She had given him the same terms as the top therapists in the industry, so the contract fee alone had been considerable. The problem was Sebas Chan, who tracked her every movement around the clock. Finding a window to meet Ho-yeon had been nearly impossible. Now that Sebas Chan was on vacation, she finally had a chance to receive the massage — and of course Ho-yeon had to be hospitalized.
Should I just tell Dad?
A mana massage meant leaving her bare body in the hands of a young man. If her father ever found out, the entire guild would be turned on its head — which was precisely why she hadn't said a word. But if things kept going like this, she might not have a choice.
Her first priority was treatment. Nothing mattered more than that.
I'll think about it a little longer.
Elise shook her head, swept the stray thoughts aside, and knocked on the door.
"Yes. Come in."
She opened the door onto a bed ringed with bright flowers — and there, among them, was Ho-yeon.
"...It's been a while."
Surrounded by blossoms, Ho-yeon looked like an angel who had drifted in from another world. Perhaps because it had been so long, she couldn't quite get used to his face.
"Yeah. Thanks for coming to visit."
"No. I came because of the contract, too. Sorry for bringing up work while you're in the hospital."
Elise set the fruit she had bought as a gift on the table and sat down. The bed Ho-yeon was lying in — she had never seen it in person, and yet it was familiar. She had watched it often enough in Scarlet's videos.
She swallowed.
Seeing with her own eyes the bed she had always watched while touching herself at night, she felt a heat start to rise through her body.
"I was waiting for you to get in touch, but with things the way they are right now..."
Ho-yeon lifted his arm a little. The hospital gown hung from it without any strength, and that alone told her everything about his condition.
"I heard you can't use mana at all. Is that true?"
"Yeah. A massage would be tough, too."
"Expected recovery time?"
"Uh... hard to say? Probably about a week, give or take."
Ho-yeon looked down at his own arm. His condition was clearly better than it had been on the first day. At this rate, he figured full recovery would take about a week.
"A week..."
The time Elise had been given was a week as well. If Ho-yeon hadn't recovered by then, she would be staring down another wait with no end in sight.
I can't let that happen.
Talking to him had made it clear. She couldn't wait any longer. As it was, the nights she spent touching herself were only growing longer, and it was all Ho-yeon's fault. One mana massage, she was certain, would cut straight through this suffocating restlessness. His hands during the massage had given her a rush of heat and pleasure she could never reach on her own, and she still had not been able to forget that touch.
"...All right. I'll contact you once you've recovered."
This wasn't going to be the last massage anyway. She couldn't keep waiting around for the next time Sebas Chan happened to be gone.
That's right... this is a medical treatment.
Elise made up her mind. The moment Sebas Chan's vacation ended, she would call Ho-yeon to her house. She would have to introduce the mana massage therapist she had found herself, after all.
Conversation finished, Elise stepped out of the hospital room.
But what am I supposed to tell him?
If she walked in with a cadet she had once had investigated and introduced him as her massage therapist, she could only imagine the look on Sebas Chan's face. Turning over how she was going to talk him around, Elise came out into the hospital lobby.
The lobby housed a handful of shops — a café, a toast place, and others. At the flower shop, Elise spotted a familiar face.
...Nam Da-eun?
Nam Da-eun was holding a bouquet, talking with the owner. Roses and baby's breath. Judging by the owner's strained expression, she had been making herself quite a nuisance.
Wait. Roses and baby's breath...
Those were the flowers that had been in Ho-yeon's room just now. Was she on her way to see him?
Elise watched her for a moment, then started over slowly. From the beginning, Nam Da-eun had been the Iris Guild's top recruitment target among the first-year cadets — before Ho-yeon had appeared, at least. Until now, grades and pride had made approaching her difficult. But thanks to Ho-yeon, treatment for Elise's mana disorder had become a real possibility, and once she stopped clinging so tightly to her scores, she had found a little room to breathe.
They say the contract is airtight, but... I've never actually spoken to her myself.
The strength of Nam Da-eun's bond with the Buyer Guild was famous in the industry. Every guild that had tried to poach her had failed. Still, making a recruitment offer cost her nothing, and some things you simply couldn't know until you tried.
Elise cleared her throat, walked up to Nam Da-eun, and spoke in a deliberately friendly voice. When it came to official business, Elise always gave it everything she had.
"Da-eun. Buying flowers?"
Nam Da-eun, for her part, had finished her visit and was on her way out of the hospital when she spotted the flower shop. She had gone in looking for something cost-effective — flowers Ho-yeon would like. Flowers were the only gift she knew how to give.
She was in the middle of comparing prices when a very pretty voice spoke up behind her.
"Da-eun. Buying flowers?"
She turned around. Elise was looking at her with a bright, easy smile.
"Yeah. I'm buying flowers."
She had no idea why Elise was talking to her, but she answered anyway. It had been a long time since she had spoken to another girl in their class. While Da-hee was being held, she had deliberately avoided conversation; aside from Ho-yeon, she had barely spoken to any of the other cadets at all.
"What's the dilemma? I know a bit about flowers. I'll help."
"This one's 2,500 won a stem and that one's 2,450, but this one has slightly bigger blooms, so I was trying to decide."
Elise's mouth opened and closed. The way this girl thought about flowers was nothing like her own.
"...Usually with a bouquet you look at things like color harmony. You don't break it down by the price per stem."
"Oh. I didn't know that."
Nam Da-eun nodded as though she had just uncovered some great truth. Elise frowned for a moment.
She's a peculiar one.
She had only meant to bring up recruitment, but now she was genuinely curious whether the flowers in Ho-yeon's room had really come from Nam Da-eun.
"Were you the one who put those bouquets in Ho-yeon's room?"
"Yeah."
"Ah... are you interested in him?"
Elise's investigation had turned up no sign of Nam Da-eun among Ho-yeon's women. But already bringing him flowers and leaving again meant she had been visiting more than once. That didn't sound like an ordinary friendship. Was he trying to add even more girls?
"No. I just needed to show my gratitude."
"...Is that so? I was only wondering. As a fellow woman, I'd advise you to keep your distance from Ho-yeon. That guy is a total... no. Never mind."
Elise hoped the girl blinking back at her would not get swept up in Ho-yeon's wandering eye. Too many women would only make things uncomfortable later.
...Uncomfortable for whom, exactly?
She didn't know why. She only felt that it had to be said.
"You're close with him, though."
Nam Da-eun paid Elise's warning no mind at all. Womanizer or not, Ho-yeon was her benefactor.
"I-I don't have a choice — there's business involved...! Ah, right. Are you interested in the Iris Guild, by any chance?"
Caught off guard, Elise floundered for a second before remembering what she had come over here to do in the first place. Recruitment.
"Hmm..."
Nam Da-eun drew the sound out. Honestly, she had no intention of joining a guild. The Buyer Guild had left her with nothing but bad memories, and right now the only thing she really wanted was to do something for Ho-yeon.
"I'll think about it."
Even so — this was the first time she had talked this long with another girl who might be a friend, and she didn't want to end the conversation on a no. For Nam Da-eun, the day was something of a milestone.
"Good. I'll give you my number, so feel free to contact me anytime."
"Thanks."
For the first time, a girl's number appeared on Nam Da-eun's smartwatch. It didn't show on her face, but she was glad.
"Then... haah... one last thing. You absolutely must not get close to Ho-yeon."
Elise had been about to leave, but something still snagged in her chest. Nam Da-eun standing there blankly with that bouquet in her arms looked ready to go trotting straight back to him.
That can't happen. It just can't...
Elise glanced around, then sidled in close and whispered against Nam Da-eun's ear.
"That Ho-yeon guy is seriously, insanely into women. There's a rumor the ones he's been with aren't just one or two. When you're looking at a man, that's the kind of thing you have to watch for. You know?"
With that, Elise walked out of the flower shop.
"Why did I do that. Ah, damn it..."
The regret hit her immediately. Sticking her nose into someone else's business like that went against her nature. All the way home, Elise turned it over, trying to understand why she had done it. No answer came. She still didn't know what that feeling was.
Back at the flower shop, Nam Da-eun stood where Elise had left her and thought it through in silence.
Ho-yeon is into women. And he forms relationships with a lot of them.
If he formed a lot of relationships with women, you could also say that he liked forming those relationships.
He likes forming relationships with women.
Nam Da-eun lowered her gaze to her own chest. Not enormous, but large enough to get in the way when she swung a sword.
I am a woman.
[Ho-yeon likes forming relationships with women.]
[I am a woman.]
= [Ho-yeon will like forming a relationship with me.]
The three-step logic locked into place in Nam Da-eun's mind.
"...So I could repay him that way."
She looked down at her own body and nodded.