Teamwork and Strategy (1)
After the meet-up with the friends from our group chat, Do Yoonchae's wariness toward me had eased up a little.
At first, she'd regarded me as nothing more than a suspicious presence who'd walked into her dorm room, whereas now... I'd say we'd become roughly the kind of awkward acquaintances who could stand to be in the same space without too much discomfort. Honestly, the fact that she no longer considered me someone to be thrown out of the dorm was more than enough. I'd never expected to pry open the heart of Do Yoonchae—a girl who'd been betrayed by her own family time and again since childhood—in the first place.
"Hmm, hmm-hmm."
If one thing had changed compared to before, it was how often she now sat there with her smartphone glued to her hand, smiling to herself.
Whenever I snuck a glance over her shoulder, she was almost always scrolling happily through our group chat, where I and the heroines had all gathered. It must have been a kind of joy she'd never once experienced in her life. For Do Yoonchae, who had lived nearly her entire existence in the shadow of Do Yoon-sung, to make real friends for the first time—an obvious reaction, really, if you thought about it.
Though judging by how she's the quietest one in the chat because she never knows what to say, she's kind of cute too.
Underneath that cold exterior, Do Yoonchae was secretly not so different from Cha Eunju. If I could just break through that initial wall of suspicion, turning her into a woman as hopelessly dependent as Eunju afterward wouldn't be impossible at all.
"Ah, Yoonsung."
"Hm? Hmm..."
"Do Yoonsung?"
"...Wh-what? Why are you calling me all of a sudden?"
She still gave off that guarded air, but compared to before, there was a slight softening in her gaze and her tone. We were already taking two classes together, which gave me more than enough pretext to strike up a conversation, so I casually gestured toward the dorm door and coaxed her along.
"You haven't done your Kinesiology assignment yet, have you? I'm heading out now to log my running record. Want to come with?"
"...I-I suppose. I was going to ask you about it anyway."
"Great. There's also a senior I've been wanting to introduce you to, so let's go together."
"...A senior? How long have you even been enrolled that you already have seniors you know?"
"I ran into her by chance outside the Academy before admission. Come on, hurry up and change into your training clothes."
"I... I'll change in the bathroom. I'd rather not have to look at this unremarkable male body any more than necessary in daily life."
"Sure, suit yourself."
...The fact that the original Seo Woojin spent two whole years failing to notice Do Yoonchae was a woman despite her openly doing stuff like this—honestly, that bastard was something else.
While I watched Do Yoonchae dart into the bathroom clutching her training clothes, I changed at my own leisurely pace.
The moment we stepped out onto the Academy's athletic track, a familiar pink ponytail caught my eye.
Seeing Choi Marie in her running gear and skin-tight pink tights again today, that ever-present urge naturally surged up inside me, just like always.
"You're late, junior? Getting in the habit of making your senior wait, are we?"
"Sorry, Marie-sunbae. I had Kinesiology class this afternoon and I was a little worn out, so I ran behind."
"Ah, that class? Yeah, that professor really is exhausting. Wait, you're in the Support Department though—why do you even need to take it?"
"I failed my course registration, so I signed up for it as a substitute elective. Regretted it the moment the first class ended."
"Pfft, Professor Shin Youngjoo is a bit of a madman, true. But if you stick with that class for a year or so, it'll definitely pay off? When it comes to conditioning, he really does know how to teach. Most of what I've taught you, I learned from him myself."
"...I have to endure this for over a full semester?"
"You're free to quit if you hate it, but you'll regret it, I'm telling you. Besides, where was all this weakness back when you begged me to whip you into shape, huh, Seonho?"
"I don't recall ever begging for anything, for the record."
"Why you—there you go with the lip again!"
-Twist!
And so today, once again, Choi Marie set up the situation to put me in a headlock, and I savored the sensation of her right breast pressing against my face.
As a bonus, I grabbed her waist and rubbed against her while feigning panicked struggles. We were getting closer and closer to outright skinship with no pretense of man and student left at all.
Unlike the other heroines, who'd each had their defining events, Choi Marie and I had no particular catalyst between us—but we had built something arguably better: a perfectly established senior-junior friendship where we could talk to each other without holding anything back.
"Honestly, you'll just nod along to whatever your senior tells you to... hm?"
"Ah, no, I was just joking! Of course I'll do whatever Marie-sunbae tells me to!"
"...Ah. Right. Who's this, though? A friend of yours, Seonho?"
"Not exactly a friend... just my roommate."
"......I see?"
Choi Marie shifted her gaze to Do Yoonchae, who had been quietly observing our conversation. Unlike with me, Do Yoonchae answered in clipped, stiff tones—and something about that seemed to rub Choi Marie the wrong way, because she fixed Do Yoonchae with an oddly pointed look.
"A roommate who also takes classes with me. We're in Kinesiology together this term, too."
"Hmm, really? So why did you bring him along today?"
"He needs to log the assignment Professor Shin Youngjoo gave us. He told us to run 10km every day and measure our times until next week's class."
"Oh, right, I remember. That thing where you install the running-route tracker app and log your runs?"
"Yes. Except word is that last year a lot of students had someone else log their runs and turn in the assignments for them, so this year he's making us verify each other's records. So I figured I'd take care of it while running with you, and brought him along for that."
"...Whatever. Do as you like. I'm only here to watch you, anyway."
Huh. That reaction was a little... delicate.
I'd brought her along thinking that as fellow blunt, physical-enhancement types, the two of them would get along—but Choi Marie's response was noticeably lukewarm. It was almost as if she were saying she only had attention to spare for me, Do Yoonchae present or not.
Do Yoonchae, for her part, seemed to pick up on some of it too, from Choi Marie's behavior, and looked faintly awkward.
Choi Marie didn't know Do Yoonchae was a woman, of course—but separately from that, she seemed mildly put out at having our time together interrupted.
After all, she'd been making subtle romantic appeals to me lately, little by little. I couldn't say I knew exactly what had triggered it.
Maybe it was that, despite a month of knowing each other, I was a man who had never once pawed at her—which paradoxically made me attractive to her. I couldn't say for certain.
"Anyway, let me introduce you. This is my roommate, Do Yoonsung. I said he's not a friend, but we share two classes, so he's basically a friend in practice. Right?"
"......Yeah."
"And this is Choi Marie-sunbae. She's a second-year in the Shield Department. For reference, she and I got close about a month ago when we ran into each other outside the Academy by chance—she helped me out when I first started working out."
"...Nice to meet you, Choi Marie-sunbae."
"Yeah, good to meet you too, Yoonsung."
Do Yoonchae, naturally awkward with people as she was, and Choi Marie, addressing her with a distinctly different warmth than she used with me—deliberately, it seemed, keeping her at arm's length.
This was pure speculation, but it felt like Choi Marie was making a show of it for my benefit. Like she was declaring, in her own way, that unlike the easy intimacy she had with me, she intended to keep a firm distance from this particular man.
Well, I suppose if you put me and Do Yoonchae side by side, he's obviously the more handsome and popular type in any ordinary estimation. Only in terms of looks, granted, but still.
"He kind of looks like a charity-case monk, doesn't he? This is the guy you room with, Seonho?"
"Yep. Handsome, right?"
"...Eh. Not really my type."
For her to say something like that right to my face—she really must have feelings for me.
Or maybe she was just sucking up to me because she still hadn't achieved whatever her goal was. Either way, the biggest reason Choi Marie was training me like this was to secure a physically capable Support Department junior to bring along to Teamwork and Strategy.
I felt no particular aversion to that. She was, after all, moving in ways that benefited me too.
"So, Seonho—how are you planning to measure the times? One person running at a time?"
"A 10km run takes about an hour. Rather than that, wouldn't it be better to run together and measure?"
"...Wouldn't thirty minutes be plenty?"
"That's physical-enhancement-type math. I'm a mental type—I can't run it that fast."
"...Fine. So I just start thirty minutes after you?"
"No need to go that far—it's a circular track anyway, so you can just time it to when you finish—"
-Snap!
As Do Yoonchae and I were opening the apps linked to our electronic student IDs and discussing how to measure our records, Choi Marie's two hands appeared over ours, then vanished just as quickly.
"I'll measure for the both of you, so just get running."
"...I asked Seonho to do it."
"So? If it's about preventing fraud, having a neutral third party measure is better anyway, isn't it? If there's a problem later, I'll take it up with Professor Shin Youngjoo personally. He knows me."
"......"
"Come on, let's just do what Marie-sunbae says. You'd find it a little distracting to run and worry about timing anyway, Yoonsung."
"...Fine."
Do Yoonchae wore a visibly displeased expression, and Choi Marie, likewise, looked less than thrilled herself.
In that moment, the cautious thought crept in that maybe it was still a bit too early to be putting these two together.
...Well, things will improve step by step. They need to get along before tomorrow's class regardless.
There were three heroines enrolled in the Teamwork and Strategy class Choi Marie had so insistently told me to take. Do Yoonchae and Han Sora both attended the same class, just like Choi Marie.
If I wanted to form a team of four, I needed them all acquainted before the first session at all costs. That was why I'd deliberately brought Do Yoonchae here to meet Choi Marie, accepting a certain amount of risk to do it.
Granted, it seemed they'd only learned each other's faces while their relationship turned subtly sour—but that was something only time could fix.
...And so began the full-scale 10km running-record training session.
"Push off harder with those legs, Seonho! Your stride's all gone limp!"
"Haa—su, sunbae... y-you said you'd only be timing us..."
"Every second you spend arguing is a stride you're not running! Are you just going to keep losing to your own roommate?!"
"Haaah, he's, he's a physical-enhancement type, haaah, I'm, I'm a mental type..."
"No excuses! You can do it, Seonho! Drive those legs!"
"Hah, hah, haaaah...!!"
Do Yoonchae, running nearly two full laps ahead of me on the track, and Choi Marie, verbally whipping me forward with the utterly unreasonable demand that I catch up to her.
...Vowing to myself that someday I'd seize both of their backsides in my hands and knead them to my heart's content, I dragged my exhausted body back to the dorm yet again today.
And then, the next day—the first lecture of Teamwork and Strategy.
"Ah."
"Ah."
From the lips of the two women who found themselves face to face in the same lecture hall, a pair of startled exclamations escaped in perfect unison.