The Social Butterfly Otaku Club President (3)
‘Guruk?’
‘Kehek….’
The wailing cries of goblins echoed from beyond the cavern. Hiding or running away wasn't exactly impossible, but what Im Yujin had chosen was combat with the goblin pack.
"Hold on. I thought I saw something around here earlier…."
With those words, Yujin pressed herself against the right wall and began scanning her surroundings slowly, as if sweeping her gaze across the darkness. Since I was concentrating on her field of vision rather than my own to observe her technique, a single slightly out-of-place brick caught my eye.
"There it is, just like I thought. See it?"
"Yes, I can see it through your eyes, senior."
"That thing you're looking at right now is probably a detection device for a trap. Looks like a pressure-activated mechanism — and there's a good chance there's a similar device on the floor nearby, not just on the wall."
"So this path is a dead end, then?"
"Not impassable. Usually a trap only works once — after it's been triggered, it's useless."
"Huh? What do you mean…?"
"Eh, you'll see if you just watch."
Playing along with her words while pretending not to understand, I watched a confident smile spread across Yujin's face, her expression growing all the more self-assured. She promptly picked up a pebble from the ground and hurled it with all her might at the goblin pack straight ahead.
-CRACK!!
‘Keheeek!!’
One goblin shrieked as the stone — flying far faster than her small frame would suggest — smacked it square in the forehead.
‘Guruk?!’
‘Kek, kehek!’
Then the other goblins, sensing something was off, came scrambling toward us — toward the spot the pebble had flown from.
‘Gerhuuk!!’
‘Kehek, keheek!!’
Three goblins closing in on me and Im Yujin. Honestly, a pack of goblins was nothing to be scared of at this point, but out of courtesy I at least pretended to hesitate — to satisfy Yujin's personal desire to show off in front of her junior while she was still in her glory days, you see.
"Wh-what do we do, senior? Shouldn't we run?"
"Heh heh. Aaah, no? Just stand there and wait."
"B-but neither of us has abilities that are all that great for fighting inside a dungeon…."
"Our Seonho junior is secretly a scaredy-cat, huh? If you're that scared, want to hide behind your noona and cling to her tight?"
Im Yujin puffed out her chest with a triumphant grin, clearly delighted by my frightened act. Not long after that little exchange, the approaching goblins stepped into the area where the trap device had been installed, and—
-Click.
‘Geuk?’
With the sound of one of them stepping on something in the floor, a dozen-odd arrows suddenly launched from both walls.
-Thwip! Thwip!
‘Gehek?!’
‘Keruk, keheek!!’
The goblins shrieked in panic at the sudden hail of arrows. It was a trap far too powerful to be wasted on a mere three goblins, so naturally, once it had fired, all that remained were the corpses of the three dead goblins.
"See that? What did I tell you? All you have to do is wait."
"…So you did, senior."
Deliberately putting on a dispirited look so she could bask in her smugness to her heart's content, I earned myself some hearty pats on the back from her palm.
"Well, it's your first time, so being flustered is understandable. Using traps to take down monsters isn't a common trick to begin with. Normally, three goblins or so would get handled by the other hunters exploring with you anyway. Right?"
"…I suppose that's how it usually works."
"But that's exactly what I think we shouldn't do. We're all hunters here — there's no reason we should always have to rely on someone else to kill our monsters, is there?
Heck, a monster like a goblin that you'd run into outside a dungeon can be taken down even by an ordinary civilian. So if you're a hunter-in-training — someone who's not an ordinary civilian — you ought to learn at least a trick or two for dealing with monsters inside a dungeon, don't you think?"
"Is that why you made a habit of taking down monsters with traps like this?"
"Yep! The traps a dungeon comes with are completely impartial — they don't care if you're human or monster. No matter how tough a monster's hide gets inside a dungeon, in front of a trap it's one shot for you and one shot for me."
I was wondering where I'd seen this act before, and then I remembered — this was exactly the style of the original story's Ma Nayeon. She hadn't liked depending on her party members either, and she often pulled off these kinds of trap-based monster-hunting tricks.
If she'd learned the trick from Im Yujin, her club senior, everything clicked into place.
"Ah, this is no time to be chatting. Seonho junior, did you bring a dissection knife?"
"…I do always carry one with my gun, just in case."
"Then hurry up and let's harvest the monster materials! You know goblin hearts and brains fetch the highest price, right? We won't get full value since it's from a training dungeon, but still."
"Better than nothing, I suppose."
"That's the spirit! See, you know your stuff. Unlike certain people — Jaewook grumbled from the start, going on about how nobody should have to drench themselves in goblin blood just to earn a few ten-thousand won…."
Suppressing a laugh that nearly burst out at the recurring name of that oblivious idiot, I stepped up beside Im Yujin and set my dissection knife to work — in the hope that once we got close, she'd keep proving useful one way or another. Both as the senior I'd learn scouting skills from in the Combat Support track, and as the senior who'd help out a junior in distress from his lust.
A deep, dark night. A certain room in the female dormitory.
Cha Eunju pulled her blanket close on the bed and curled up into a small ball, listening to the soft, steady breathing of her roommate Han Sora beside her.
‘She's asleep… right?’
Almost certainly. She'd waved her hand in front of the girl's sleeping eyes any number of times to confirm she was out cold.
With that thought, Cha Eunju quietly steadied her breathing and slipped her hand under the blanket. Her fingers slid slowly down beneath her pajamas.
-Squelch.
"Nngh, hahh…."
Her fingers found her crotch, already slightly wet from imagination alone.
She knew she shouldn't be doing this in the dormitory, but her lust had long since passed its limit. Every time she lay down to sleep, the sex she'd had with Lee Seonho in the Old Library a week ago kept surfacing in her mind, over and over.
-Squelch, squelch.
"Hoo, hooo…."
The daring exposure in the Old Library. The courage Seonho had shown in confessing the truth of his ‘Hypnosis Training’ to her. And the intense memory of their first real ‘sex’ — not ‘hypnosis’. Cha Eunju had been masturbating to thoughts of him almost daily as it was, so holding out for a whole week had taken tremendous willpower. The only thing forcing her restraint was the presence of the other girls sharing the same dormitory.
Her pajamas and underwear half-slipped down. The moment her fingers brushed between her slightly parted thighs, her cheeks flushed red and her breathing quickened.
‘Ahh, Seonho….’
Cautiously, but with certainty, she rubbed her clitoris. Cha Eunju was trying to imitate, as closely as she could, the memory of how Lee Seonho had touched her body — imagining as vividly as possible that it was his fingers on her even now.
Each time her fingers moved beneath the blanket, a powerful jolt radiated from that small nub through her entire body.
"Nnn, hah…."
She bit her lip to keep quiet, but faint moans leaked out anyway. Startled by the sound that had slipped out of her, she turned toward her roommate — but thankfully, Han Sora was still sound asleep.
Telling herself she absolutely had to hold in her moans, she slowly resumed her idle hands, seeking release.
-Squelch.
"Nngh, hahh…."
Slowly. A slender hand pushing its way between the small crevice. Even though these were the most familiar fingers in the world — the ones that knew her own body best — somehow the sensation felt desperately lacking.
Lee Seonho's fingers, roughly stirring and rubbing her from inside… they had been, without question, so much thicker and so much more stimulating than this.
‘Seonho…. Hah, hahn….’
Since she couldn't exactly invite him to the dorm room she shared with Sora, Cha Eunju made do, working her fingers as best she could. She thrust and scraped her slender fingers inside herself, recalling the memory of his hand caressing her inner walls. With her other hand, she kneaded her heavy breasts, picturing the way Seonho had flicked and teased her nipples.
Aching for his touch, she tried desperately to reconstruct their sex in her mind — but.
‘This isn't… enough.’
This much stimulation was far, far too weak. There was no memory of Seonho laying her down on the reading room desk and driving into her roughly. No memory of the breath-stealing, slick kisses, the hot breath he'd poured into her mouth. No memory of the thick, musky semen that had filled her to the brim with a man's scent.
She was recalling pleasures that couldn't even be compared to the feeble comfort she was giving herself now. And so Cha Eunju's body, burning with arousal, grew paradoxically more and more dissatisfied.
"Ahh, Seonho…. Nnn, hahh…."
She murmured his name without even thinking, trembling so hard she briefly forgot Han Sora sleeping beside her. It was a night when his face — which she saw every single day since enrolling at the academy — felt especially, painfully dear. And above all, she ached for the sex they'd had in the Old Library's reading room.
-Squish, squish, squish!
"Hnngh…!! Haah, hah, hahh…."
Along with her desperate whispering, her fingers moved a little faster, and the moans spilling from Cha Eunju's mouth mounted little by little. The范围 of the damp fluids spreading beneath the blanket widened, and she could feel the heat of her whole body stoking hotter and hotter.
…But by now, this much stimulation simply couldn't satisfy her at all.
‘This isn't enough anymore….’
Seonho's thick cock, and his rough-yet-gentle caresses. And even beyond that — the tenderness of the man who never forgot his gentlemanly consideration, looking after her right up to the very end. For Cha Eunju, addicted to him after just once, masturbating alone was no longer even a pleasure. It had become nothing more than one of the means by which she recalled Lee Seonho's face.
-Squish….
"Hoo, hooo…."
She drew her slender fingers slowly out, unable to reach orgasm, and let out a short sigh. Her desire still burned fiercely, and her body remained in a state of dissatisfaction practically indistinguishable from before she'd started.
‘Seonho has a free afternoon tomorrow… right?’
He'd told her he was free last week, so surely it would be the same this week. Which meant she could have their ‘Hypnosis Training’ at the Old Library again, just like before.
No — come to think of it, there was no longer any need to bother with the ‘Hypnosis Training’ excuse at all. She could simply ask him to come to the Old Library to fool around, and she'd have no reason to refuse herself. She and Seonho were already dating, after all. …Not that they'd ever officially had that conversation — but they both knew it without needing to say it out loud.
‘Tomorrow, we can do it… right?’
Carrying a week's worth of pent-up lust together with a strange flutter of anticipation, Cha Eunju finally drifted off to sleep.
"Nngh, hahhh…."
…Though her body, inflamed by incomplete pleasure, refused to grant her anything resembling a deep sleep.