Negotiation (4)
Do Yoonchae barged into the bathroom where I was showering, body first, without so much as a heads-up.
For a moment I was struck speechless by the sheer audacity of it — but only for a moment. I hastily turned my back and launched straight into a performance of flustered embarrassment.
"Wh-what are you doing, Yoonsung?! Why would you suddenly walk into the bathroom?!"
"D-did I not just say! That I'd scrub your back, since we're at it anyway!"
"That's exactly what I'm asking — why the sudden —?!"
Frankly, Do Yoonchae's thought process was so transparent it didn't even require guesswork. She was probably using the back-scrubbing as an excuse to press her chest against my body, stoking my desire — hoping I'd lose control and grab her breasts on impulse.
Predicting whatever unpredictable stunt Do Yoonchae might pull was a little tricky, but tracing backward from a specific action to figure out why she'd arrived at that conclusion was comparatively easy.
"U-until now, I've been posing as a man, so there was never a reason to enter the bathroom together, was there. But there's no need for that anymore. You already know I'm not a man — hiding it would be pointless."
"That's different from this, you fool! Man or not, this is — we're a man and a woman…!"
"Wh-why are you so flustered? You've already had your fill of staring at my chest in the dormitory anyway."
Stumbling over her own words in panic, yet lecturing me.
And even then, apparently lacking the courage to show everything — she'd come into the bathroom still wearing pants.
Half-resolved, yet acting with one foot in each camp. How very Do Yoonchae of her.
Still, I was planning to start direct physical contact next week.
Now she was closing the distance on her own while I stood there doing nothing, which made it a little hard to execute my plan from my end.
With her having marched all the way into the bathroom, sending her back out with a refusal had its limits.
It was already too late to refuse on the basis of trust, and a half-measured excuse probably wouldn't persuade her either.
Not that I wanted to declare outright that I had no intention of going there. Nothing would be stupider than cutting off the autopilot conditioning that had already begun rolling with some wishy-washy gesture.
So in a certain sense, things were unfolding the way Do Yoonchae wanted. It just happened to also be the way I wanted.
Whenever Yoonchae's involved, my plans keep drifting away from the original script.
Fortunately, unlike last time, this was drifting in a good direction.
Slow progress could be a mild problem, but fast progress was hardly an issue at all. Especially with Yoonchae, who'd started later than the others — I could afford to move a bit boldly with her.
Hiding all of that scheming deep inside, I carried on talking as if earnestly trying to persuade her.
"I told you I'd keep your secret, Yoonsung. You don't have to go this far…"
"I-I have no idea what you're talking about. I merely came in to spend time with you as a friend. Nothing more, Lee Seonho!"
"……"
"Wh-why are you looking at me like that! I-is it really so strange for dormitory classmates to scrub each other's backs?!"
Honestly speaking, it is a strange thing to do.
Even between men, you'd need to have known each other for years before you'd ever reach the scrub-each-other's-backs stage.
And even then, that's the kind of thing you do at some sprawling public bathhouse — not squeezed two bodies deep into a cramped little bathroom like this. Unless you're gay.
"Haah… fine. Do whatever you want, Yoonsung."
Without voicing a single word of those thoughts, I dutifully turned and offered her my back.
If she was determined to push things further with me all on her own, I had no reason to refuse.
"Haah… fine. Do whatever you want, Yoonsung."
Lee Seonho stared back at her with a look of sheer bewilderment, then turned away, muttering something that sounded like surrender.
Watching him, Do Yoonchae quietly savored her victory.
He's visibly rattled. His plan isn't going the way he intended.
Even as the second-lowest-ranked student in the year, surely he hadn't anticipated her making a move this impulsive.
After all, it was a strategy she'd improvised all of five minutes ago. She'd hesitated at first — but the fear that dawdling might give Lee Seonho time to prepare had pushed her into acting quickly.
The plan: pretend to scrub his back, make natural-feeling physical contact, let her chest brush against him, and use that to stoke Lee Seonho's desire.
It couldn't be called perfect, but for something conceived on the spot, she thought it rather decent. She'd already confirmed the key premise, after all — thanks to her late brother Yoonsung, she knew all too well how obsessively men could fixate on carnal desire.
-Tap.
"……"
The stream of water from the showerhead above Lee Seonho's head cut off, and his body shifted out of the tub, toward the outside.
His profile filled her vision in an instant. Before the thought look away could even form, her eyes had already landed on it.
"……?!"
His cock, standing rigid at the center of Lee Seonho's body, seized her gaze in an instant.
…W-was that thing always that big?
It wasn't her first time seeing it directly. Lee Seonho, in his chronic lack of consideration, had always left the thing on full display in their shared dormitory room.
But most of the glimpses she'd accidentally stolen had been of it hanging limp. She'd almost never seen it in a hardened state like this.
The one time she had, she'd been hidden away, observing from a considerable distance.
This was the first time she'd ever laid eyes on it up close, fully erect — and so, for a moment, pure bewilderment overwhelmed Do Yoonchae.
…And he forced Han Sora to take that thing in her mouth and lick it.
If she failed to handle Lee Seonho properly, he'd surely attempt something similar with her.
The image flashed through her mind, and her thoughts ground to a halt.
If — just hypothetically — Lee Seonho offered to keep her secret in exchange for taking that thing into her mouth… how exactly was she supposed to respond?
The mere thought of it is disgusting. B-but… if it truly meant burying my secret that deep…
Maybe it would be a sacrifice well within the range of what she could bear?
No — but even so, would she really need to go that far? For that matter, was swallowing something that enormous even physically possible in the first place?
Han Sora had managed it, so presumably it wasn't impossible for her either — but whether it was physically feasible was hardly the only question that needed considering…
"Yoonsung. What are you doing?"
"…Uh, uhh?!"
"You said you'd scrub my back. Are you doing it or not?"
"R-right! W-wait just a moment, Lee Seonho!"
Discarding the lewd fantasy that had bloomed in her head, Do Yoonchae hastily grabbed a shower towel and stepped up behind Lee Seonho.
The towel, lathered with body wash, met his back and glided across it in soft circles.
-Shff.
"……"
"……"
-Shff, shff.
"……"
"……"
In the hush, the only sound was the quiet rasp of the shower towel scraping across a man's back.
Having infiltrated the bathroom under the pretext of scrubbing his back, Do Yoonchae was determined to at least do that properly — and so her gaze drifted, almost unconsciously, down the line of Lee Seonho's shoulders and the broad plane of his back.
His shoulders are… wider than I expected.
She'd seen them before, plenty of times — but never from this close.
He was in the Combat Support Department, after all; there'd been no real need for him to forge his body to this degree. Support-track students usually operated from the rear — scouting, coordinating, assisting — rather than fighting on the front line.
Granted, if you asked whether his strength could compare to a typical Physical Enhancement Type, the answer was obviously no. But judged on appearance alone, it was a little hard to believe he belonged to the Combat Support Department at all.
Not that it amounts to much — a guy with a decent shell and nothing underneath.
Just today in class, she'd watched him stall with the professor for ages over whether he could lift a hundred kilograms on the bench press.
After several attempts he'd finally hoisted it, but the whole process had been a painful slog. She knew it was a heavy weight by ordinary civilian standards — but from where she stood, a daughter of the Cheongun Do Clan, it had been a rather pathetic display.
N-no. This is no time to be worrying about that.
What mattered now, above all else, was tempting Lee Seonho into wanting to touch her chest.
Slowly, while pretending to keep scrubbing his back with the towel, Do Yoonchae leaned her body forward.
Asking outright would get her an instant refusal — she knew that. This was likely the only lever capable of pulling a man like Lee Seonho into the orbit of her plan.
-Squish.
"……?!"
"……"
The instant her breasts pressed against his back, Lee Seonho flinched and shuddered.
Watching that reaction, Do Yoonchae felt a quiet certainty bloom in her chest. This method would work. Without a doubt.
-Squish, squish.
"……"
"……"
-Rub, rub.
"…Um, Yoonsung?"
"……"
As casually as if it were a simple accident.
She pretended not to hear him calling her and kept moving, quietly, savoring the sensation of his back pressing against her breasts.
Acting as if nothing were amiss, she rubbed her chest against those shoulders while the hand holding the towel worked over his lower back.
Both their bodies, slicked with soap suds, slid smoothly against each other without the slightest friction.
He… he must understand by now. That keeping my secret in exchange for touching my chest isn't a bad offer.
She never said the words out loud, but she pressed her chest against his back as though that was exactly what she was saying.
All men were the same. Experience this kind of direct physical contact, and they couldn't help but come apart at the seams.
Lee Seonho was surely no different — a man nursing his own filthy designs beneath that polite facade, she reasoned. And so her breasts glided across his back, again and again.
…And there, between their two bodies, her nipple pressed once against the plane of his back, dragging across it in a soft, slow friction.
-Nngh.
"……Hnn?!"
A jolt of mortifying sensation, arriving all at once.
Caught completely off guard, she let the sound escape before she could stop it.
Until that moment the bathroom had been silent save for the scrubbing of the towel — so Do Yoonchae's voice was more than enough to seize the attention of both of them.
"Yoonsung. Um… m-my chest is — it's touching your back…"
"……"
"I-it was an accident, right? I w-won't hold it against you, so let's just rinse off the soap first and —"
"Th-this is where it ends! Y-you can finish washing yourself and come out on your own!"
"W-wait, Yoonsung! You should at least wipe the soap off your chest before you —"
-Bang, SLAM!
And just like that, Do Yoonchae fled from the bathroom, driven out by a tidal wave of her own embarrassment.
"……Pfft."
Left alone in the bathroom, Lee Seonho simply smiled as he watched the space where her retreating back had been.