Basic Self-Defense (2)
Basic Self-Defense was the only class this semester that I and Kim Isabel took together, just the two of us. And of course, I'd engineered that situation deliberately.
For one thing, the only girls around me who even qualified to take the class were Cha Eunju and Kim Isabel.
The course had been designed for hunter hopefuls who weren't Physical Enhancement Types — training so they wouldn't get overwhelmed if a physical scuffle ever broke out. Escaping from a grapple with a goblin-like humanoid monster, or a villain, that sort of thing.
Enhancement types, who could shrug off brawls with ordinary humans or monsters through raw strength alone, took a different class with similar content.
'In theory, there was a chance Cha Eunju would have taken it with us, too.'
Regrettably, Cha Eunju had failed to register in time — and so a class where I'd be alone with Kim Isabel all semester was born.
Well, it was a popular elective, but not a required one. Besides, the only reason Cha Eunju had tried to sign up in the first place was that her eyes rolled back into her head when she heard I'd be taking it alone with Kim Isabel.
Taking it with the two of them would have been fun in its own way, I suppose, but it would have made the process of conquering Kim Isabel considerably more annoying.
"Isabel, you've got Basic Self-Defense this morning too, right? Let's go together."
"Ah, yes."
After breakfast with the group chat members, Kim Isabel and I naturally peeled off to head to class.
With Succubus Heart active on her, she had no trouble answering me despite my being a man — but even setting that aside, there was something strangely, overwhelming sensual about her today.
-Squeeze.
"S-So, um, I was wondering — what exactly do they teach in Basic Self-Defense? I'm, I'm curious."
Pretending to ask me a question while casually pressing up against my right side, doing her best to show off her enormous chest.
Sure, the Suggestion I'd given her came bundled with a side effect of sexual desire toward men — but even so, this behavior was a bold departure from the Kim Isabel of the past.
Before, her androphobia had completely cancelled out my Suggestion. Now, the Suggestion had gained a clear upper hand over the phobia.
What remained was pure lust for me — which meant that, so long as no one else was watching, she could get this bold.
"Y-yeah, me too. It's my first time with it, so I'm curious. But Isabel, you're getting a little close…."
"A-ah! D-do you think we'll learn break-falls and things like that?! Or, or maybe…!"
Naturally, I still had to keep up my act as the 'innocent one,' so I needed to blush and stammer without catching on.
Still, the sight of Kim Isabel frantically changing the subject — terrified I might tell her to back off — was awfully cute. The expression hiding behind that veil was probably even cuter.
'Wasn't the condition for showing her what's under the veil something like "someone she can trust completely"?'
I had a feeling that day wasn't far off.
Possibly even before this semester ended.
"Basic Self-Defense will be conducted in pairs of two. Partners will remain fixed until the end of the semester, so choose carefully."
The moment the professor finished speaking, the classroom erupted into a murmur — to the point where one cluster of students was openly buzzing around someone standing right beside me.
I didn't need to turn my head to know where all those stares were pointed.
Kim Isabel.
She stood there quietly as always, face hidden behind her white veil — yet that was more than enough to draw every eye in the room.
The silhouette revealed beneath her ankle-length white habit was extraordinarily voluptuous. Any red-blooded man's gaze would inevitably drift to Isabel's enormous chest or that soft-looking ass of hers.
That was exactly why she wore the veil in the first place. If she showed her face on top of that figure, the suffocating flood of male attention would be more than she could bear.
"You have thirty minutes from now. Pick your partners and start warming up. If you'd rather rest, rest."
With a bored expression that clearly said he had no intention of getting involved in whatever romantic drama unfolded during partner selection, the professor vanished somewhere.
With the only person capable of controlling this space gone, what happened next was obvious without even watching.
"Hey, um, want to pair up with me?"
"I'm pretty confident with physical stuff. I'll make sure you don't get hurt during practice."
"You're Isabel, right? We met at the entrance ceremony. Remember me?"
…Shameless bastards, every one of them.
Even with me standing right beside her, they had zero qualms about hitting on her. Was I just not registering as competition?
Well, to be fair, if someone of Seo Woojin's or Do Yoonchae's caliber had been standing there, these guys wouldn't have dared swoop in so openly. They'd know they'd lose the fight for her attention before it even started.
Right now, it was just some unremarkable guy standing next to her, so of course they'd shove their faces in without shame.
'Honestly, I'd have done the same in their shoes.'
With a body like Kim Isabel's, veil or no veil, she was worth shooting your shot at least once.
More than anything, the Basic Self-Defense class about to begin was built on techniques that fundamentally required physical contact — and no one could avoid being conscious of that fact.
Under the pretext of training, a hand could drift onto a chest, a stomach, a thigh — and if you "accidentally" groped a breast or grabbed a handful of ass in the process, well, it would be hard for anyone to call you out on it. Most of the men swarming Isabel right now were fully aware of that.
If the buff weren't in play, a crowd of men descending on her like this would have been enough to send her into a full-blown panic. But Kim Isabel didn't flinch.
"I'm sorry, but please pair up with someone else."
"That's very kind of you, thank you for asking."
"I'm not sure. I'm not very good at remembering faces…."
Calm as ever, courteous honorifics for everyone.
But the content beneath that polite tone was cold and resolute — so bluntly worded it practically screamed I already have someone in mind, so stop pestering me.
A few of the men were perceptive enough to back off at that alone… but then, not everyone in the world is sharp enough to take a hint when it's handed to them politely.
"Come on, just pair up with me. I'm a better catch than any of these guys."
"W-well, I don't really know you, so maybe we could get to know each other first…"
"Then who are you pairing with? Look, I'm not an enhancement type, but I train regularly. If anything dangerous happens, I can take the hit for you—"
Persistent bastards.
It was quite the spectacle, watching these simple-minded creatures — brains apparently wired directly to their dicks — come charging at Kim Isabel the moment hands-on training was announced. Isabel was no doubt objectively registering every one of those lecherous stares currently aimed at her.
And the harder these bastards threw themselves at her, the more her feelings for me swelled inside her heart.
Unlike them, I'd built a genuine friendship with Kim Isabel long before this class ever existed. I was the one who had steadily, deliberately cultivated a relationship with her — before any of this training even started.
And in Kim Isabel's current position, the only man in the world she could trust was me.
"I'm sorry, but I've been planning to pair with Seonho from the very beginning."
Kim Isabel shut them all down with a tone that made it crystal clear none of them had ever been on her radar.
Her face was hidden, true — but this was a girl who had, in front of everyone, been rubbing her chest against my arm all morning. They got the message well enough.
"You'll be my Basic Self-Defense partner, won't you, Seonho?"
"U-uh, yeah… Though, um, maybe you should ease up on the… excessive contact… a little…."
"Once the class actually starts, this much won't even register, will it? Don't worry about it so much, Seonho."
Playing the innocent while pressing her body against me more boldly than ever — that was Kim Isabel for you.
The men who'd failed to win her over finally slunk off to pair up with whatever other girls remained.
"What? You said no to me earlier, and now it's fine?"
"Sorry, I already promised Jieun."
"Why would I pair with you? I can see your sleazy intentions from a mile away."
With the first wave of chaos settled, the ones left without a partner of the opposite sex ended up grudgingly paired off with each other, man and man.
Serves them right. If you're going to covet what belongs to someone else, at least read the room first.
Paired with Kim Isabel, two hours into the endless Basic Self-Defense class.
Our partner training grew bolder and bolder with each passing hour, the skinship escalating steadily beneath the surface of the exercises.
So natural, so unhesitating, that no one would ever have guessed she was a girl with crippling androphobia.
"Haah… hnn…"
"Ahem. Ahem…"
Kim Isabel gazed at me while letting faint, aroused breaths slip out from beneath her veil.
This was the cumulative result of every bit of physical contact generated by our break-fall training.
On paper it was nothing more than dropping your body to the mat — but the process was bound to produce contact. When helping a fallen partner back to their feet, hands found their way to less-than-appropriate places more often than not.
And Isabel had been on the receiving end of quite a few 'accidental' gropes of her chest and rear over the course of it — so naturally, she'd ended up in exactly this state.
…Not that I was the only one doing the touching, mind you.
"I-I'm sorry, Seonho…! Th-that just now was really an accident…!"
"I-it's fine. I, um, I made plenty of mistakes with you today too. It happens…"
The fact that she felt the need to specify that that one had been a genuine accident was, in effect, a confession that everything up to that point had been quite deliberate.
Just as her words implied, my hand hadn't been the only one wandering. Isabel was resting her palm on my chest, or gripping and kneading my thigh, just as often as I'd found her chest or ass.
The excuse of "physical contact during self-defense training" was a golden opportunity to touch each other's bodies to our hearts' content — and to be touched in return.
…After a while, we'd graduated to levels of skinship bold enough to raise eyebrows.
-Squish.
"Hnn…!"
"…Ah! Hnnn?! S-sorry, Seonho! I didn't do it on purpose, I swear…!! Nn, nnngh…!!"
Kim Isabel had actually grabbed my cock like a handlebar to haul herself up off the mat.
She'd pulled her hand away with a voice that sounded genuinely flustered — but the sensation of her grip lingered on my cock with vivid clarity. Just like the last time she'd touched it back at my place.
'That was probably unconscious — a slip brought on by Succubus Heart.'
I kept myself restrained in my own way, but the desires born from the Suggestion couldn't be suppressed entirely.
Especially as the body tires, the instinctual urges grow harder and harder to hold back.
Besides, everyone else was pacing themselves through the training — while Isabel and I alone threw ourselves into every drill with full intensity. Deliberately targeting that exact weakness, of course.
Honestly, if even one of us had said, 'Let's take a short break,' the whole fever would have cooled on the spot. The moment your head clears, you can look back coolly and realize just how embarrassing the things you've been doing really are.
…Which is exactly why we couldn't afford to stop. If we wanted to keep this "natural" skinship flowing between us for as long as possible.
"Don't worry about it. It's, uh, it's not like it's the first time, right?"
"……I-I… suppose… that's true…?"
"Let's keep training. This time I'll be the one falling, so check my form from your end, Isabel."
"Y-yes…"
And so the two of us traded lines that amounted to little more than 'I'll get to touch you next round' as the break-fall drills carried on.
Between us, an atmosphere was ripening — one more than ripe enough for bringing up the subject of 'androphobia training.'