Covert Observation (1)
In a dark corner of the Training Grounds, Do Yoonchae crouched in silence, watching the two of them.
Lee Seonho and Han Sora's training, conducted with their bodies pressed close, front to back. He would hold the bow with her, adjust the position of her arms and waist, guiding her until she could feel the shot for herself.
Whatever her rational mind understood about training, a tangle of complicated emotions kept rising unbidden in Yoonchae's chest.
A man and a woman clinging together like that... it seems a little bold for something called training.
But the moment they moved into serious shooting, both of them genuinely seemed to throw themselves into it. Granted, the surface area of their bodily contact was on the generous side, but she couldn't deny that it was, in its own way, an efficient form of instruction.
Seonho's hands would slide from Han Sora's waist up along her side, or his lower body would press against hers front-to-back to a degree that felt excessive. There was something subtly unnecessary in his movements, yes, but Yoonchae didn't dwell on it much. Ever since the holographic monsters appeared, the two of them hadn't spoken a single word that wasn't about the training itself.
And since Han Sora is following along so obediently... maybe it really is just training after all.
It never once occurred to Yoonchae that Han Sora was obeying so meekly because she was merely pretending to be hypnotized. She had no idea that Seonho had put a suggestion on her at all, much less that his "hypnosis" was something a little different from hypnosis in the ordinary sense.
All she could see was Lee Seonho assisting the training with perhaps too much enthusiasm, and Han Sora following along with perhaps too little resistance.
After roughly two hours of observation, boredom had begun to creep in.
...Was I overreacting?
At least in the current atmosphere, it didn't look as though Seonho was about to strip away her weakness in front of Han Sora. The expressions the two occasionally wore were those of people absorbed in their drills — nothing about their physical contact suggested any other intent.
Yoonchae had been cautiously entertaining the thought that it might be a little hasty to dismiss Seonho's promise to keep her secret as an outright lie.
"Mmh— hnnngh?!"
"...?"
At the sudden, faintly obscene sound of Han Sora's voice, Yoonchae's focus snapped back to the pair.
"Mmh, hhh... hnnng..."
"A-aaagh! S-sorry!!"
"......"
Mid-fall, Seonho's hands had seized Han Sora's chest firmly from behind, and Han Sora — flustered by his reaction — let slip a sound that was unmistakably a moan.
To any observer, the situation was transparently sexual harassment. He hastily apologized and pulled his hands away, but she had seen it clearly. The way his hands had squeezed Han Sora's chest hard, once, twice, before letting go.
Don't tell me... has that Lee Seonho been helping with Han Sora's training with this in mind from the very beginning?
If so, everything snapped into place. It would explain why he went so far as to burn his own personal time helping someone else train.
It fit neatly with her own conviction that no favor comes without a price. Whether a woman's chest was worth that much was hard for her to fathom, but then, her own late brother had been pathologically obsessed with lewd pursuits too.
Mulling this over, she turned her attention back to their conversation — and this time, words she could scarcely believe tickled her ears.
"I-I'm sorry...! I, I moved too fast earlier, it was an accident..."
"Ah, i-it's fine. I-I'm hypnotized anyway, so it d-doesn't really bother me."
...Hypnosis?
Hypnosis — surely they didn't mean the thing she was thinking of.
Don't tell me he'd been using hypnosis under the pretext of training to control Han Sora's body this whole time?
And yet, judged against what Yoonchae was actually seeing, Han Sora's behavior was a little strange for it.
She doesn't look hypnotized at all, really...
The habit of averting her eyes when she had nothing to say, the flushed face, the stammering that betrayed her fluster. To anyone watching, she seemed no different from her usual self — hardly the picture of someone under hypnosis. It was almost as if she weren't hypnotized, but acting the part of someone who was.
Was it genuinely hypnosis, then? Or was Yoonchae's own guess right — that Han Sora was simply playing along, pretending to be under his spell?
And if it was the latter — for what purpose? Why would she let even an act of outright molestation like that slide without a word of complaint?
She was lost in these thoughts when, all at once, there came the sound of a metal buckle coming undone, and Seonho's uniform trousers slid down around his ankles.
Wh-what is he doing?!
Lee Seonho, abruptly dropping his pants in a shooting lane of the Training Grounds. And beneath his clothes, revealed for anyone to see — drawers. Panties.
And through that fabric, unmistakable even at this distance, a sense of heavy... weight.
Sharing a dorm room with him, Yoonchae had caught involuntary glimpses of it more times than she cared to count, and now her mind conjured it up without permission.
Wh-what is he playing at?! Why is he suddenly taking off his—
-swish!
"?!?!?!"
As if dropping his trousers weren't already impossible to process, he now peeled off even his underwear and bared himself completely.
At an act she could not begin to comprehend, Yoonchae's thoughts tangled into knots in an instant.
Wh-what?! Why is that guy stripping down to nothing all of a sud—
His erection stood rigid and upright, presented squarely toward Han Sora across from him.
And Han Sora, confronted with the sight of it, gazed at his member with astonishing composure. She averted her eyes as if embarrassed, then — perhaps out of curiosity — let her gaze drift back to it, and then flushed red, her breath coming a little faster.
...That was absolutely not the reaction of someone who claimed to be hypnotized. Which meant Han Sora was accepting Seonho's behavior of her own free will.
Could the two of them... be dating?
Nothing about their outward behavior suggested it, but the possibility wasn't impossible. If that were the case, she could at least partly understand how that Combat Support boy had managed to place second from the bottom of the entire entrance exam.
Maybe this had been their private time all along, disguised as archery practice. In which case she was the one barging in on an absurd misunderstanding, needlessly interfering with the two of them.
That reaction he gave when I offered him my body — maybe it just meant I wasn't his type.
If his taste ran toward someone like Han Sora, her own figure sat a fair distance from it.
Her hair was cut short, nothing like Han Sora's long, flowing locks, and her personality was nothing like that soft-spoken gentleness. Physically, she only came close to matching her after wrapping her chest in compression bandages, layer upon layer.
At the very least, this doesn't seem to be a gathering held for the sake of sharing my secret.
She didn't feel she'd wasted her time, though. The one question that had gnawed at her — why Seonho had rejected the price she'd offered — was now, at least, answered.
Having reached that conclusion, Yoonchae no longer needed to keep watching the pair. If she stayed any longer, all she'd witness was the two of them coupling — and that was hardly the information she'd come for.
Back when Do Yoon-sung had been forever dragging women into his rooms to roll around with them, Yoonchae had always fled the vicinity in disgust. There was no profit in etching an ugly spectacle into her memory, and she was just rising to leave when—
"Sorry, Sora. I'll finish up quick, so just bear with me a little longer."
"...I-I'm fine, so take your time. I'm hypnotized anyway, so I can wait as long as you need."
"......"
On the very verge of departure, Yoonchae caught the exchange between them — and sensed something far too awkward to belong to lovers.
...For now, I should observe a little longer.
Quietly, she resettled herself and resumed watching the two of them.
...It was absolutely, positively not curiosity about watching a man masturbate that made her stay.
Watching Do Yoonchae rise briefly from her corner of the Training Grounds only to crouch back down, I exhaled a small sigh of relief inside.
Thank god. She's not actually leaving.
When she'd suddenly made to walk out of the shooting lane, I'd been caught off guard for a moment. Though she did settle back into position after overhearing my conversation with Han Sora.
I couldn't quite tell what had driven her toward the exit. Simple instinctive aversion to watching two people have sex, perhaps?
Thinking it might come to that, I had deliberately phrased my words in a way that didn't frame it as 'a sexual act between a man and a woman' — and since she sat back down, that guess was probably right. Either way, Yoonchae taking her place again was good news for me.
At least stay long enough to see the fellatio through.
Only then would she learn, for later, exactly what method I intended to use to keep her bound to my secret back in the dorm room.
With that in mind, I swung my freed cock openly before Han Sora's eyes. Just like last time — a quick detour before we returned our focus to training.
-rub, rub.
"Hoooo, hah..."
"......"
The process of pumping myself in front of her while letting out slightly theatrical groans.
It was adorable how Han Sora, all while acting the part of the hypnotized girl, kept her eyes locked shamelessly on my cock.
Her face had gone even redder than it had been when my member had ground against her rear a little while ago, and still she couldn't tear her gaze from it.
So that the girl across from me could observe in better detail, I shuffled a few steps closer to Han Sora and stroked myself for several minutes.
-rub, rub.
"Hoo... hhh, hoooo..."
Not forgetting, of course, to exhale deliberately labored, exhausted-sounding breaths.
No matter how much I pumped, there was no sign of me finishing — only a growing weariness — and Han Sora's expression gradually shifted into visible perplexity.
"S-Seonho? D-do you... want me to help with anything?"
In the end, a little faster than last session — Han Sora couldn't hold back and offered her assistance.
As expected of Han Sora. Once she learns something, she puts it to good use.
She'd learned in our last session that showing me her breasts helped my masturbation. A girl with her aptitude for absorption wasn't about to let that knowledge go to waste this time.
It was a line she was going to cross on her own even if I said nothing, so I'd simply waited with patience. It wasn't like it was actual sex — controlling the exact moment I came while masturbating was hardly difficult.
"In that case, Sora..."
"......"
"Sorry to ask, but... could you show me your chest?"
"My, my chest? Okay. I'll show you."
Perhaps because she'd been through it once already, Han Sora nodded and answered far more smoothly than before.
The zipper sang, her training jacket peeled away, and the pink bra hidden beneath came into view.
-click, slip.
"...hh, hhm."
A faintly tense sound escaped her the instant the bra's hooks came undone, and once again the flimsy little thing that had nothing left to restrain slid limply to the floor.
"H-here, Seonho. Do it looking at these."
"There we go. Thanks, Sora."
Apparently deciding that her chest was now hers to show whenever I pleased, Han Sora presented her bare breasts to me even as she blushed.
"......"
And there, from her corner of the Training Grounds, Do Yoonchae went on watching us — me with my cock bared, and Han Sora with her breasts offered — in what she no doubt told herself was still observation.