The Esteemed Intelligence Officer (4)
"Right, and lately you've been working with that arm bastard... no, that field commander fellow, wasn't it?"
"Yes. But now that you're here, Master, I can serve under you again from this point on—"
"Enough. Keep doing what you were doing."
"What?!"
My words nailed it down—no, I had no intention of working alongside her—and the disappointment on her face was plain to see.
It wasn't that I disliked having an obedient fucktoy at my side, exactly. But now wasn't the time. The moment I started moving around with this bitch tagging along, not only Black Moon but even the heroines I'd gone to such lengths to win over would start asking questions.
Kim Isabel especially, knowing full well that things between me and Yoon Selena were anything but friendly, would question it all the more. Which meant that any meeting with Yoon Selena absolutely had to happen somewhere no other living soul could see us.
"You saw how Jeong Seok-hoon and Jo Jin-hyun operate, so you know this already—my infiltration of the Academy is something even the other executives don't know about. And yet you suddenly start hanging off my arm in the middle of that? It's obvious what kind of suspicion that would draw."
"Ah..."
"Don't do anything that draws eyes. Keep doing things the way you have been. If my identity came out at this point, I'd just be branded a traitor—the bastard who killed Seok-hoon and blew off Jin-hyun's arm."
Granted, at the point where I'd already taken out two of Black Moon's executives, impersonating a brand-new executive was an inherently absurd story.
But judging from the original Lim Soo-hyuk's personality and the way Yoon Selena deferred to her intelligence officer, that particular detail was nothing to worry about.
"Th-that's those bastards' fault! They dared to interfere with and meddle in your work, Master! You've done nothing wrong!"
"I know. I just cleared out some annoying pieces of trash who kept picking fights with my operations, that's all. Once the job I'm running now is finished, I wouldn't care in the slightest that a couple of bastards died or got crippled behind my back, so it doesn't matter."
"As expected of you, Master. You've already thought of everything."
That was Yoon Selena for you—whatever came out of Lim Soo-hyuk's mouth was gospel, worthy of nothing but affirmation.
Now that she'd decided to believe I was Lim Soo-hyuk even once, there was no way she could extract herself from that delusion on her own.
Thank god Lim Soo-hyuk was tall in the original, too.
One of the penalties attached to his ability was that even while wearing 'Human Skin', your height couldn't change.
Which was why the setting stipulated that he could only disguise himself as other tall people. And that was exactly why I could shamelessly pose as Lim Soo-hyuk in front of Yoon Selena right now and have her believe it.
In the original, characters as tall as Lee Seon-ho were few and far between—Lim Soo-hyuk aside.
"Anyway, with this trash body and this trash ability, I've got no way to deal with it if those fools in the organization start pestering me. And since there's still work to be done in this godforsaken body, I don't even have the room to swap into a different skin right now."
"I see..."
"Besides, at the last briefing before I infiltrated, I made it abundantly clear that I would secure Kim Isabel myself and told everyone to stay out of it. Typical band of idiots—can't even get their own hands and feet moving in sync."
"You're right. If you said you'd handle it, Master, they should have simply waited."
"There's no need to feel any sympathy for the bastards who died earlier, either. Whether or not they were following orders from their superiors, if they made a nuisance of themselves in my business, they deserved to die."
"I don't feel the slightest sympathy. Anyone who inconveniences you, Master, obviously deserves to die."
"...Heh. That answer, at least, I like."
"Of course. Who's disciple am I, after all?"
Yoon Selena chuckled along with those words, a smile playing on her lips.
Say what you would, she was one of the work's main characters, and when she smiled, she was genuinely pretty. Her only flaws were that she stood opposed to the main heroine, that her personality was selfish to the bone, and that her attitude toward anyone who wasn't Lim Soo-hyuk was utter garbage.
Which made her all the more useless for anything but a fucktoy—and a bitch you could use as a fucktoy without a single twinge of conscience.
Well, since things have come to this, maybe I'll take a bite out of this bitch today.
With her believing this hard that I was her master, it should be more than doable.
As it happened, the opportunity I'd been lining up with Kim Isabel had gone up in smoke because of this bitch, anyway. The least she could do was take responsibility.
"Yoon Selena."
"Yes?"
"I heard the Recovery Department students get private dorm rooms. Are you living well in yours?"
"...Y-yes! I-I'm living w-well."
"With your personality? I can see it with my own eyes—you've sprawled your crap everywhere and you're living like a pig."
"N-no, I'm not! J-just as you say, Master, I've cleaned up properly and I'm living w—"
"...Knowing your personality, it could be that's just what you claim. I'll have to check for myself."
"What?!"
It wasn't exactly the kind of remark that should have thrown her into such a panic, but Yoon Selena reacted with unmistakable shock.
I'd only prodded at her loosely, but the response suggested she really had been living in a mess. I'd know soon enough, once I saw it myself.
"You're a second-year in the Recovery Department, so you can at least manage Shadow of Holy Light, I assume. Lead the way."
"Y-you really mean to come...?"
"Do I need to say it twice?"
"O-oh light, shadow of the light, conceal this form—"
With just a little pressure applied, Yoon Selena had no choice but to cast Shadow of Holy Light for me.
-Squeeze.
"Hngh—th-then let's depart. You know the concealment breaks if I speak, so—"
-Pinch.
"I-if you already know, then just nod your head, Master. Please stop pinching..."
With my arms wrapped tight around the black-haired priestess from behind, I set my course for the Recovery Department dormitory.
The moment the dormitory door swung open, a faint fragrance of perfume washed over us.
And at the disheveled scene that spread out before her eyes, Yoon Selena's face flushed crimson on the spot.
"...And this is what you call living well?"
Her master's voice, sounding from behind her.
"N-no. This is... j-just today, it's..."
Excuses came spilling out of her on reflex, even though she'd had no intention of showing her master such a pathetic, half-baked defense. She'd planned to tidy up at her leisure after meeting him and returning—never had she imagined she'd end up showing him the dormitory in this state.
"Ah—s-sit anywhere you like, Master! I-I'll clean it all up right now—"
She hurriedly began sweeping up the clothes scattered around the room.
Garments she'd been agonizing over whether to wear right up until a moment ago. Half-open cosmetics sprawled across her vanity. And as she frantically scooped up the clothes in her line of sight, one particular item, with a conspicuous bit of decoration on it, caught her eye.
"...!"
A pair of black panties trimmed with rather daring lace.
And the moment Yoon Selena realized that the person standing on those panties was Lee Seon-ho, a scream tore itself out of her mouth.
"KYAAAAAK?!"
Accompanied by a scream fit for a schoolgirl, Yoon Selena snatched the underwear up off the floor in a frenzy.
"Seeing you keep your underwear tidy—my, what a diligent life you've been leading."
At her master's voice, sneering down at her with a crooked smile, a surge of emotion welled up in Yoon Selena's chest.
"I-I really don't leave it like this normally, I swear! Th-this is because Master summoned me, and I was deliberating over what to wear when—"
"The underwear too?"
"..."
"...Honestly. Not an ounce of composure in you."
Why was it that every time she saw her master for the first time in so long, all she got was scolding like this?
She'd needlessly delayed herself picking out clothes to change into, the outfit she'd dressed up so carefully in had earned her not a word of praise but a lecture, and then she'd been caught with her dormitory a mess and gotten scolded again.
Today, by every measure, was a disastrous day where nothing went right. ...Except for the fact that she had been granted an audience with the master she'd yearned after for so long.
"Well, if that's the mood my disciple bitch is in, I feel a bit better myself. There was actually something I was planning to put you to, come to think of it."
"Yes?"
"It's been a while since I last wore a man's skin, and I'm having a devil of a time adjusting. Particularly since this Lee Seon-ho fellow's original body is... troublesome, in a number of ways."
"...Tr-troublesome, you say? In what way?"
"His cock's too big."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"His cock is too big. Did you not understand what I said?"
"..."
She understood the words themselves, certainly.
But separate from understanding them, Yoon Selena failed to grasp them. Because it hadn't occurred to her for even a second why her master would suddenly be speaking about such a sensitive part of his own anatomy.
"Honestly. Such an oblivious bitch."
"..."
"You don't even know that a man's cock size is proportional to his lust? And here I thought you were no blushing virgin."
"His... lust?"
"That's right, girl. Your lust, you bitch."
Her master's complaint that it had been a while since he'd last been a man, and it was inconvenient.
And then, specifically naming the size of his cock, even mentioning his lust on top of it.
Yoon Selena might have been a virgin, but her perceptiveness was second to none—and at last, she understood what was being said.
Her master's new body was troubling him on account of his lust, and he was telling her to relieve it for him.
"Ah, th-that... is what you meant..."
Of course, understanding it and being mortified by it were entirely separate matters, and Yoon Selena's face went red all over again.
Wh-what do I do...? My master is suffering, so of course I ought to relieve him, shouldn't I?
Yoon Selena was prepared to do anything for her master's sake—but now that it came down to possibly performing something truly lewd, she faltered, just slightly.
Simply being intimate with her true master was, naturally, no problem at all.
But being intimate with this body—the body called 'Lee Seon-ho' that her master was currently wearing—aroused a flicker of aversion she couldn't quite suppress.
And anyway, the one inside is Master, and Master is Master no matter what form he takes...
Whether he wore his original body or the skin of another, whether man or woman, old man or young child—did any of that really matter?
By that measure, being neither woman nor elder, 'that appearance' might even count as one of the better options.
...Perhaps, just perhaps, those words were Master's final gift—an opportunity for her to atone for her own failings.
I've done nothing but get in the way of Master's operations all this time...
However unintentional it may have been, he must surely have been disappointed in her.
So even if only to make amends for that failure, she had to satisfy him, whatever it took.
"If you won't, then forget it. A disciple who's useless even for this—"
"I-I'll do it, Master! If-if it's torment from your lust, then I'll relieve it for you!"
"If you have to force yourself, I have no need of it. Stop. There are plenty of bitches who'll spread their legs whether you do or not."
"N-no! I-I'll do it! Please let it be me, Master...!"
Only when she saw her master turning away, name-dropping other women, did Yoon Selena finally understand. This wasn't about her serving her master—this was an opportunity she had been granted to attend to him.
Only belatedly did she grasp her master's true kindness, offering his beloved disciple—reunited after so long—the chance to redeem her mistakes. Deliberately, she pressed her chest against Lee Seon-ho, flaunting her assets as a woman.
"Y-you may use me as you please, Master... I-if you wish it, I could even offer you my virginity..."
"You insane bitch. If you did that and lost your awakened ability, how exactly do you plan on working from now on? And what makes your pathetic virginity so valuable that you sit there boasting about what you'll 'give' me?"
"Hnn... hnnh..."
Even with words that harsh, he worried for his disciple's awakened ability right down to the finest detail—that, too, was so perfectly her master.
Dreaming not even the faintest dream that Lee Seon-ho was impersonating her master, Yoon Selena continued to shower him with her hopelessly misplaced affection.