Club Activities (3)
"Great work today, everyone~! Nayeon, Seonho, make sure you head back and get some rest~!"
"……Yes, ma'am."
"Thank you for your hard work, Senior Yujin! See you next week!"
After the meal and the club activity—a dungeon exploration to top it off—the day had slipped its way toward early evening before I knew it. As the sun sank slowly over the Academy, Im Yujin stood waving both arms in farewell, and Nayeon and I waved back in kind as we saw her off.
God, the more I look at her, the more she does it for me.
Why was it so damn cute, the way those oversized breasts bounced up and down in defiance of her body's proportions every time she waved her arms? Someday, those breasts needed to be swaying over my cock, too.
By my own assessment, we hadn't made all that much tangible progress today, but I'd at least succeeded in keeping Han Jaewook in check, and that was more than enough to satisfy me. After all, I'd managed to show Im Yujin a side of Han Jaewook she'd probably never witnessed before—his pathetic, sniveling side.
Honestly, setting Han Jaewook aside, there wasn't anyone else worth competing with, so all it would take was for that idiot to trip over his own shoelaces and the board would tilt my way naturally.
Too bad Nayeon didn't get a look at Han Jaewook in full pathetic mode.
It stung that she'd arrived just too late to see the whole show. The sight of him shamelessly shoving himself forward as if he were Im Yujin's boyfriend, only to get soundly slapped down for it—it was so cringe-inducing I'd nearly failed to keep a straight face.
It might even have gone a long way toward shaking Nayeon's feelings for Han Jaewook, and not getting the full mileage out of that opportunity was a little regrettable.
Still, thanks to that moron exiting the stage of his own accord, I seemed to have at least made Nayeon somewhat aware of my presence.
Judging by how I kept catching her sneaking glances my way all day, she's definitely been thinking about that proposal I made her.
The counseling session—my offer to help her win over Han Jaewook if she helped me get closer to Im Yujin. When I'd first floated it, she'd seemed too baffled to react, but after watching me and Yujin together today, her thinking seemed to have shifted considerably.
The thought that I might genuinely steal Im Yujin away from Han Jaewook. And the natural, bubbling hope that she might be the one to fill the vacancy he'd leave behind.
My predictions hadn't been wrong. The moment Im Yujin disappeared and we were left alone, Nayeon cautiously brought up the proposal I'd made before.
"Hey, so, um."
"Yes?"
"…That thing you said before. Explain it to me again."
"The thing I said before… ah, you mean about me going after Senior Yujin?"
"……Yeah."
Her expression was as blank as ever, but there was something like resolve flickering in her eyes.
She'd likely been carrying this one-sided crush for at least six months, maybe as long as a year, so my proposal must have felt like a lifeline. It was easy enough to understand why she'd grown a little impatient.
"Is that offer still good?"
"Of course. If you help me out, Senior Nayeon, I'll find a way to win Yujin over, no matter what it takes. And afterward, I'll do everything I can to keep things moving between you and Han Jaewook, too."
"…How are you planning to win Yujin-unnie over?"
"For now, the same way I have been—sticking close to her interests and letting us get a little closer each time. Then, when the opportunity comes, I'll take her out somewhere, just the two of us, something like a proper date. Honestly, I haven't quite got the feel for it yet, but if I keep at it consistently, something's bound to click."
"…You do seem closer. Yujin-unnie looked different today than she usually does. At lunch earlier, and in the dungeon too."
"Different in a good way, I hope?"
"Yeah."
Going by Nayeon's reaction, all that relentless conversation-steering toward Im Yujin's interests had somehow paid off.
Granted, it seemed to have landed harder with Nayeon than with Im Yujin herself—but since Nayeon was a conquest target too, that was good news either way.
Winning over Nayeon first and then using her to draw Im Yujin's interest wouldn't be a bad play at all. No matter how much of a social butterfly Yujin was, there wasn't a soul besides me who could indulge her otaku streak in full. If I got close to Nayeon and started showing signs of my attention drifting, Im Yujin would grow anxious on her own.
"Then I'll take it that you've decided to help me, Senior Nayeon?"
"…A little. But you can't let Yujin-unnie or Jaewook find out."
"That goes without saying. I'd never ask you to drive a wedge between them directly. There's something else I need from you."
"…Oh?"
Her answers were still flat and expressionless, but there was a strangely relieved note in her voice.
Quietly smiling at the thought that stage one of my Im Yujin–Ma Nayeon campaign could now begin, I walked her through the plan.
"We'll need to flesh out the details a bit… do you happen to have time tomorrow, Senior?"
"…Tomorrow?"
"Yes, tomorrow. If you're free, could you meet me around noon at the Academy's back gate? I'll work out a strategy for making things click with Yujin, and I'll walk you through what you should be doing as well."
"…Can't you just text it to me?"
"There are a few things I need to ask you in person. And what if we leave a paper trail on Cocoatalk and Yujin or Han Jaewook ends up seeing it later?"
"…Good point."
The moment the words can't get caught left my mouth, she nodded in immediate understanding.
Because if they ever did find out, the distance between her and Han Jaewook would only grow, plain as day. For someone as stability-minded as her, there was no reason to willingly take on that kind of risk.
Which was exactly why she'd accepted my weekend invitation without registering it as a date at all. Well, it wasn't surprising she hadn't caught on—the only man who'd ever orbited an outsider like her was Han Jaewook, and he had no interest in her whatsoever.
"Then I'll see you at noon tomorrow, in front of the Cheonmu Academy back gate, Senior. Since someone might spot us, try to come in something other than your Academy uniform if you can."
"Alright, got it."
Meekly accepting even the dress code I'd assigned her, Nayeon turned toward the dormitories.
After sending that naive girl back to the female dormitory, I immediately pulled up my Cocoatalk.
Min Ye-won should have replied by now—the appointed hour wasn't far off.
Opening the message window with that expectation, I found her reply waiting, laced with irritation as predicted.
And I could have sworn I treated her reasonably well during our last training session, yet the brat still hadn't lost her habit of talking back to her master.
I'll just have to re-educate her when we meet tonight.
It wasn't as if I was short on training methods, after all.
If a naked collar-walk hadn't drilled the lesson into her properly, then today I'd simply have to break her in with something a little more certain.
It was late morning, the sun already well past its peak.
Min Ye-won stirred from her bed, her hair a bird's nest, and pushed herself upright with a dazed expression.
"Haaaahhh, mmm…."
On free days like today, or on weekends, she always rose late, dragging her feet until well past a civilized hour. She'd only started attending the Hunter Academy in earnest, after all, and the fatigue had been quietly piling up.
Not that she'd ever lived diligently before enrolling at the Academy, mind you.
Laziness was simply in her nature, so on holidays like this one, Min Ye-won inevitably got her day started at a slug's pace.
"I'm hungry…."
Without even bothering to tame her tangled hair, she shuffled into the kitchen and set a pot of water boiling for ramyeon.
Back when she'd been flush with money, she'd ordered delivery food without restraint and burned through cash like water, but lately this was how she scraped most of her meals together.
Because most of the savings in her account had been confiscated by Lee Seonho. Technically it had never been her money to begin with, but to Ye-won herself, it was theft all the same.
And since she wasn't the type to take on a part-time job just because it suited her circumstances, she was perpetually broke.
Slurp.
"Mmm, mmh…."
That said, making do with what she had, or doing without when she had nothing—that was simply Min Ye-won's way of life.
Muddling through within her means was one of her few redeeming virtues, and so she sat down to a haphazardly prepared late lunch, phone in hand.
"Ah, fucking hell…."
The curse burst out of her reflexively the instant she saw the Cocoatalk messages that had arrived that morning.
A short Cocoatalk message from Lee Seonho, along with a single photograph.
Even though the photo was of herself, the disgust rose in her throat on pure instinct. And for good reason—in the picture, she stood naked and trembling, desperately covering her body with her arms.
Worse, she was collared, in an outdoor park in the dead of night. The memory of that day, two weeks ago, came rushing back whether she wanted it or not.
"That son of a bitch…."
She resented being summoned under the pretense of dinner, but why in God's name did he have to attach this photo?
It was a threat, plain and simple—one that might as well have said refuse, and this goes public. And in truth, the reason he hoarded all her humiliating photos was precisely so he could hold her "weakness" in the palm of his hand.
Thanks to a single, catastrophic mistake, every means of resisting Lee Seonho had been stripped from her, leaving her with no option but to answer his summons.
"What's he planning this time… haah…."
When he'd stripped her naked in that public park, she'd genuinely thought she was losing her mind.
It had been cold, degrading, and above all, the constant dread of being discovered at any moment had driven her half-mad.
Fortunately, Lee Seonho's quick thinking in the moment they'd nearly been caught had carried them through safely—but even so, whenever that scene replayed in her head, her whole body shivered uncontrollably.
I hate this… I really hate this…
About four hours remained until the appointed time. Subtract the time to shower, get ready, and travel to the meeting spot, and maybe two hours were left, at best.
With her appetite utterly destroyed, she forced the rest of the ramyeon down her throat and even finished off a bowl of rice, then quietly began turning over ways to dodge her appointment with Lee Seonho.
What do I do? Should I say I have an assignment today? Tell him my group project meets today? Or say I'm on my period…?
She carefully weighed several excuses in her head, but ultimately shook her head and gave up. No excuse was going to fly—not when Lee Seonho had firmly decided to summon her.
And so, with a heart full of conflict, Min Ye-won cautiously typed out her reply in his Cocoatalk window.
Lee Seonho had covered every bill so far, but she made a point of stating it outright anyway.
…If she was going to be degraded regardless, she figured she might as well eat something expensive on his dime.