Want to Come to the Library With Me? (2)
The lunch hour was drawing to a close.
Cha Eunju walked quietly at Lee Seonho's side, heading for the 'library'—the very place she had been the one to suggest. Not that it was a library in any real sense. It was the abandoned Old Library, long out of use, and the purpose of their visit had been impure from the start. Every step they took along the grounds of Cheonmu Academy made her heart beat faster and faster.
Just remembering what had happened only a week ago was enough to set her whole body burning.
Because that was, officially speaking, my and Seonho's 'first time'…
That day. In the Reading Room of the Old Library, she had shared her first act of lovemaking with Lee Seonho, their hearts finally in agreement.
To be sure, they had been together a few times while she was 'hypnotized.' But officially, what they'd done that day counted as their first proper time together.
Everything before that had been sex she'd had while 'pretending to be hypnotized' for Seonho's sake. At least, that was what Seonho believed, so she had to keep playing along with it.
…Though, come to think of it, setting the site of your first time in the Academy's secret Reading Room did have a kind of romance to it.
They say the popular kids at the Academy just screw around wherever they want…. Th-then I guess I've sort of done something almost-popular-kid-ish too….
Hugging that thought to herself, she stole a furtive glance up at Lee Seonho.
He was holding her hand, a hint of nervousness written across his face as they made their way to the Old Library. She could read it in that expression—he wanted her just as much as she wanted him—and the realization made Cha Eunju's heart flutter all over again.
W-will he do it the same way as last time? N-no, knowing Seonho, he might be a little bolder, if only for the sake of my training….
Last time, to help build up her 'courage,' he'd started things off by having her strip bare with confidence right there in the Reading Room.
Thinking back on it, this time he might push her to do something even bolder. He might, say, order her to undress right then and there—not in the Reading Room, but in the middle of the library stacks.
But Seonho will be there, so maybe even that much would be all right….
…It frightened her a little, but if Seonho was beside her, she felt like she could manage anything.
Thanks to doing whatever Seonho told her, she had gotten into Cheonmu Academy in the first place—and she'd helped take down terrorists at Neverland, too.
On top of that, the spellbook he'd given her on their last visit to the Old Library turned out to be an advanced grimoire of dark magic, the kind that was nearly impossible to find these days. With the school of dark magic all but extinct, it had been exactly what she needed.
For all these reasons, Cha Eunju's trust in Lee Seonho ran deeper than anyone else's, and by now she was prepared to follow whatever he asked of her.
Creeeak.
“……”
“……”
The Old Library, visited by no one.
The two of them pushed the door open carefully and slipped inside, swallowed by the desolate stillness of the place.
Thankfully, there was no sign of anyone else. The floors showed traces of cleaning, as though someone had continued to tend to the space faithfully, but beyond that, all that greeted them was the familiar hush.
Cha Eunju swallowed hard and, moving as naturally as she could, followed Lee Seonho toward the Reading Room.
“……”
“……”
Once inside, they could see the faint traces that remained of what the two of them had done here together.
The patch of floor that was conspicuously cleaner than the rest—scrubbed clean with dark magic after it had been soiled by her climax—and the Reading Room desk where she had lain down and taken him. The sight of them brought that day from a week ago vividly back before her eyes.
“W-we're here, Eunju.”
“Y-yeah…. So we have….”
The two of them looked at each other instinctively, then met each other's eyes over awkward smiles.
When she saw the tension and anticipation brimming in his gaze, Cha Eunju's hand drifted toward her own collar.
U-undressing comes first, right…?
You had to get undressed one way or another if you were going to have sex.
But she had never once undressed in front of him without his instruction before, so a small hesitation was only natural.
And so, with her hand resting on her collar, uncertain what to do, the first words that reached Cha Eunju's ears were—
“Um, Eunju?”
“Yeah.”
“I was wondering… really wondering, and I wanted to ask you something….”
“…Yeah?”
“If you're okay with it…. Could we, um, do it in a 'hypnotized' state today?”
“……H-hypnotized… state?”
It was a request for her to fall under his 'hypnosis' before they were together.
…Or more precisely, a request for her to pretend to fall under his hypnosis.
“If you're okay with it…. Could we, um, do it in a 'hypnotized' state today?”
“……H-hypnotized… state?”
The moment I brought up 'hypnosis,' her eyes wavered with what looked like a flicker of panic. She clearly hadn't expected the word to come out of my mouth again, and her gaze darted around, flustered and restless.
Of course she's thrown off. As far as she knows, last week she finally 'graduated' from 'hypnosis training.'
She'd probably been buzzing with the thought that from now on, she could be with me without going through the trouble of pretending to be hypnotized.
That they could share something genuine, confirm each other's feelings, without any pretext of training.
It felt a little cruel to say to Cha Eunju, who had likely come here expecting exactly that—but the fact remained that Suggestion: Hypnosis was an element I simply couldn't leave out of her conditioning.
Whether I use it or not changes the pace of training dramatically.
No matter how high Cha Eunju's affection for me ran, introducing a new position or act required explaining and persuading her every single time.
But while she was under Suggestion: Hypnosis, that whole process could be skipped. I could simply order her to do as I pleased, and afterward frame it as an after-the-fact report. That was more than enough.
Under Suggestion: Hypnosis, she'd accept anything I did with open arms, and since the emotions from the session lingered even after the suggestion wore off, she'd naturally come away with the mistaken belief that she hadn't actually disliked any of it.
“…Yeah. In a hypnotized state.”
“……”
I could feel how unsettled she was, but I had no choice but to press forward. Once I got past this hurdle, I'd never need to ask permission at every step of her training again.
Meeting her hesitant eyes quietly, I spoke to her in the manner of a man carefully confessing an embarrassing truth.
“There's something I haven't been able to tell you, Eunju. The truth is… I have a few embarrassing tastes.”
“…E-embarrassing… tastes?”
“……Yeah.”
I put on a hesitating, faltering expression and dangled her curiosity in front of her without ever quite feeding it—letting her imagination run wild enough to fill in the blanks herself. I only let her know that I had a fetish, never what it was. And once I judged that her curiosity and her resolve had both taken root in her heart, I went on carefully.
“But it's a little… it's something that would be hard to ask of you while you're sober.”
“I-I'm fine with it! Wh-whatever your tastes are, Seonho, I don't think they're weird or anything….”
“…I'm sorry. I'm grateful you'd say that, but I still can't bring myself to. It's not that I don't trust you—I just can't work up the courage right now.”
“I-I see…. Well, then I guess it can't be helped, yeah….”
I had deliberately emphasized the 'courage' part. There was no excuse in the world Cha Eunju could sympathize with more readily than a lack of courage.
Said this way, the girl who had trained so hard to gain courage for my sake would want all the more to grant whatever I asked.
“Pretty pathetic, huh? Here I am, after helping you train to find your own courage, and I can't even manage mine.”
“D-don't say that! Ev-everyone has things they want to keep hidden! I-I wouldn't pry either, if it's something you're embarrassed about, Seonho….”
“…Right. Thank you, Eunju.”
“Y-yeah….”
In the faintly awkward silence, Cha Eunju's eyes rolled this way and that. She was so transparently racking her brain for something, anything, to comfort me with, even in a situation like this.
…Not that the best way to comfort me had ever been with her head. It was with her body.
“So, about what I said earlier—about wanting to do it in a 'hypnotized' state….”
“Y-yeah….”
“If you don't want to, I'm not going to force you or anything. Even for you, agreeing to indulge some personal craving of mine when you don't even know what it is—that'd be a little scary.”
“……”
“I just wanted to talk about it. You're the only one I'd want to open up to, even a little.”
Pretend not to pressure her while constructing a situation she couldn't refuse. Treat Cha Eunju like someone 'special,' and let her conscience do the rest of the work.
As though declining this request meant forfeiting her one chance to become special to me.
And in the middle of all this, her curiosity about what my actual fetish really was would no doubt be blooming right alongside her guilt.
Cha Eunju had received Suggestion: Hypnosis from me more times than anyone, so she also knew perfectly well that memories remained intact even while hypnotized.
The fact that simply 'pretending to be hypnotized' would let her learn my shameful little fetish was, all things considered, a condition that was pretty hard to turn down.
Besides, she had said with her own mouth just now that she wouldn't find any taste of mine weird. If she wanted to stand by her word, she had to accept my request without even knowing what my fetish was.
“Let's just do it normally today. I wasn't really planning to force my tastes on you either, Eunju….”
“I-I'll do it! The hypnosis!”
“…Huh?”
“I-if you're too embarrassed to say it out loud, Seonho, then all I have to do is just do it while I'm hypnotized, right?! Th-that's it, isn't it, Seonho?!”
“…Are you sure? You don't have to push yourself just to look nice for me.”
“I-I'm not doing it to look nice! I-it's just, if it's really something you like, Seonho…. th-then I like it too….”
“……”
“I won't even ask what your embarrassing taste is…. S-so if you really want to, then just… doing it while I'm under 'hypnosis' is….”
Whoosh—!
“M-mmph?!”
I wrapped both arms around Cha Eunju as she stood there, her face tight with nerves, offering to fall under my hypnosis for me.
Half of what I felt was for show. But the other half was genuine.
However much I had steered her into saying those words, the fact remained that she had made this decision on the strength of her trust in me alone—and that moved me, just a little.
“Mmph… S-Seonho…?”
“…Thank you, Eunju. There really is no one but you.”
“……”
“Thank you for saying that, Eunju. You really are the best.”
“Y-yeah. I-I'm the best…. Mm, mmh….”
It was an obvious platitude that anyone could see straight through, yet she squirmed happily there in my arms, beaming at barely more than that. If all you heard was her snickering, the sound was gloom itself—but since the base model was a pretty girl, even this side of her was unbearably cute.