A Not-So-Unfair Trade (1)
-Bang!
"...Phewww."
The time was 10:58 PM.
I'd slipped through the Cheonmu Academy dormitory curfew by the skin of my teeth, and I pushed open the door to my dorm room and stepped inside.
"Haah, haah, haah..."
-Thud.
...That was a close call. I almost didn't make it.
Why on earth did the first-year dorms have to be on the fourth floor?
There was a crowd gathered in front of the elevator too, so I'd sprinted up the stairs instead. Being wedged between a bunch of sweaty, smelly dudes on the way up was not an experience I was eager to repeat.
Cheonmu Academy loosened things up slightly on weekends, but on weekdays the dorm management was strict, so breaking curfew carried a fair bit of risk.
Once was just a warning, but from the second time onward came penalty points, and from the third, it even started affecting your grades.
You might ask why dorm life had anything to do with your grades, but at Cheonmu Academy — where everyone lived in the dorms under strict supervision — such a thing was entirely possible.
"...You're late."
"Huh? Oh, yeah."
Do Yoonchae had come up to me at some point while I was sprawled in the entryway catching my breath, and now stood over me with her arms crossed.
I didn't know why, but her oddly stiff expression suggested she had something she wanted to say.
"Ah, Yoonsung."
"What kept you out this late?"
"Oh, you know. This and that."
"......"
No matter what, I wasn't about to flat-out tell a girl this paranoid that I'd been late because I was sleeping with another woman.
Apparently unsatisfied with my answer, Do Yoonchae turned her gaze away, her face still slightly twisted. Then, from her lips came a voice that sounded almost cautious, as if testing the waters.
"Come in. There's something I need to discuss with you."
"Huh?"
"...A discussion about whether or not you can be trusted to keep my secret."
"......"
I hadn't planned on messing with Do Yoonchae tonight, of all things.
Truly, when it came to not moving the way I wanted her to, she was the most troublesome woman I knew.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
"Why are you still in your uniform? Go change into your pajamas."
"...I intended to change after I'd said what I needed to say. If only you hadn't been late in the first place—"
"Then you should've messaged me. I told you, I got held up with something."
"You weren't on the running track or in the gym. Where on earth were you?"
"...Just. Around."
From the look of it, she'd apparently gone wandering all over the place looking for me when I didn't show up.
Going by her behavior alone, it was as if she'd been searching for a lover who'd come home late at night. For whatever reason.
"...Well, never mind. It's not that important."
"If it's not that important, could you go wash up and then tell me?"
"Trying to wriggle your way out of it again, are you? I'm sorry to inform you, but I saw through your tricks long ago."
"Huh?"
"You always dodge conversations with me this way and brush off my proposals. But today, I will not fall for it."
...So what kind of proposal was she planning this time, that she'd been stalling with me standing right here?
By this point, I was getting genuinely a little curious about just how far this girl would be conquered on her own. How much would Do Yoonchae allow herself, once she entered that auto-training state?
"Um, Yoonsung. I'm being really serious here — even if you don't do anything, I have no intention of going around telling people your secret..."
-Tug. Tug-tug.
"...No, really, you don't have to—"
It had been nothing more than a token refusal on my part, but without even listening, Do Yoonchae had already begun unbuttoning her jacket.
Even after the outer jacket was open, her hands didn't stop — one by one, the buttons of her dress shirt came undone, and beneath her clothes, the white of bandages and soft, fair skin gradually revealed themselves.
-Sllk.
"...Hmm."
Hiding her expression as best she could, Do Yoonchae slowly pulled her shirt open on both sides to bare her chest.
...Well, honestly, I should probably say it doesn't get much of a reaction out of me anymore.
The truth was I'd seen what was under those bandages plenty of times by now, so this much was old news.
Plus, having just finished with Yoon Selena right before, my lust was running a little low. ...Not that I'd refuse if she offered herself up so obediently, of course.
"Y-Yoonsung! Wh-what are you doing all of a sudden—"
"...Enough. Look closely, Lee Seonho."
Like I said, I've seen it plenty already.
My silent complaint, of course, went unheard, and she simply went about unwinding the bandages herself, right in front of me, exactly as she'd decided.
The bandages wrapped around Do Yoonchae's chest slowly came loose, and together with her tense expression, her breasts emerged into view.
...Yeah, I take it back about the reaction. Unwrapped and laid bare like this, it's definitely doing something for me.
Seeing the chest revealed as the bandages fell away, my lower half — which had already come twice not long ago — gave a fresh twitch.
It also occurred to me anew: how on earth did she manage to hide those surprisingly sizable breasts every single day?
"...T-Touch them."
"Huh?"
"I-I won't say it twice. Touch them."
"......"
"......"
"......"
"...I-I told you to touch them, Lee Seonho!"
The moment I stayed silent, the girl who'd sworn she wouldn't say it twice promptly spat her own words right back out.
I was still puzzling over how to respond to a reaction that was naive beyond words when Do Yoonchae's frantic voice hurried on.
"I-I'm not proposing that you touch them in exchange for keeping my secret, or anything like that!"
"...Then what are you saying?"
"J-just that it's fine if you touch them. Th-that's all. W-with no reason behind it at all."
...Did this girl eat something weird or what.
No, come to think of it, with Do Yoonchae this was entirely plausible. Given her particular brand of twisted logic, it was entirely possible she was reaching some bizarre conclusion all on her own and convincing herself it was a brilliant strategy.
For example... the theory that the moment I started touching her chest, I'd be unable to overcome my desire and pounce on her.
"Come on, hurry up! Y-you want to touch them too, don't you, Lee Seonho?!"
"No, not particularly, no."
"D-don't say such ridiculous things, Lee Seonho! I-I know perfectly well that men are all obsessed with breasts! O-or is it that I fall short of your standards of attractiveness?!"
"N-no...! I-it's not that you lack a-anything, Yoonsung, if anything you're actually pretty cute, so..."
"Th-then touch them already! I-I have no ulterior motive whatsoever, so just touch them!"
Saying it that suspiciously was itself a declaration that she had an ulterior motive.
...But well, I didn't see how touching them would cost me anything right now.
I was still hesitating, mulling over the convenient justification that had just sprouted up for putting my hands on Do Yoonchae's chest, when yet another flustered proposal tumbled out of her mouth.
"I-if my staring makes you uncomfortable, then..."
"Yeah?"
"...... Y-you can put me under 'hypnosis' and touch them."
"...... What?"
Even for me, this particular statement from Do Yoonchae threw me off balance.
I had never once mentioned to her the existence of that buff I called 'hypnosis.'
Sure, I'd demonstrated the use of hypnosis before — but that had only been from a considerable distance away, her observing me and Han Sora from afar.
'Could she have really deduced from just that, that I was using something like "hypnosis"?'
With a personality whose imagination could leap this way and that on nothing but her own fantasies, Do Yoonchae really might have arrived at exactly that conclusion.
And having spent so many years living in the shadow of Do Yoonsung since childhood, she'd have at least some skill in reading other people.
"S-so you were using some kind of hypnosis after all. You sleazy bastard..."
She'd caught the momentary flicker of emotion on my face, and her expression was now one of certainty.
Yeah, fine — I'll admit her eye for that sort of thing. With instincts that sharp, no wonder she'd appointed herself Seo Woojin's rival in the original story.
Since it had come to this, I quickly judged that hiding anything from Do Yoonchae was impossible, put on a deliberate performance of the guilty thief flinching at his own shadow, and carefully asked back.
"D-did Sora tell you?"
"...Is that what matters? What matters is that you, Lee Seonho, have been using hypnosis on Han Sora and doing strange things to her."
"N-no, that's..."
"Of course, since you hold a weakness of mine as well, I have no intention of spreading this fact around openly. So long as my being a woman remains hidden, I have no interest in whatever goes on between you and Han Sora."
"......"
"B-but even for you, Lee Seonho, it would be inconvenient to have it known that you've been hypnotizing Han Sora and doing indecent things to her all this time. Am I wrong?"
"......Yeah, th-that's right."
For now, I played the part of a man caught by his weakness and listened quietly to what she had to say. I was curious, after all, to see just how far she'd go if left alone.
If she tried to turn the tables and blackmail me with the information she had... I'd need to have a plan for that too, after all.
"So what you're saying is — in exchange for me turning a blind eye to what you do with Han Sora, you keep my secret?"
"...That was what I considered saying at first, but even I could see that would be far too unfair."
"Huh?"
"The moment my weakness is exposed, it means expulsion from the Academy, and banishment from my family besides — a crime of the gravest order. And if the death of Do Yoonsung, my late older brother, were ever properly brought to light from beneath the surface, the Cheongun Do Clan would be mired in scandal inside and out for quite some time."
"......"
"Compared to that, the worst that could come of me telling Han Sora about your behavior would be a suspension at most, or things turning sour between the two of you... no, if Han Sora herself chose to look the other way, perhaps nothing would happen at all."
"......"
"S-so I have no intention of blackmailing you with this. It simply wouldn't be fair."
...Yeah, got it. I now fully understood that you, Do Yoonchae, are an even bigger pushover than I imagined.
She could easily have just leveraged weakness against weakness and threatened me outright, yet she's probably the only person alive who'd insist on debating which party's secret was worth more.
Worse, in the middle of explaining herself, she'd casually blurted out both the secret that Do Yoonsung was her own brother and the internal affairs of the Cheongun Do Clan. At this point, it was genuinely awe-inspiring, in every sense of the word.
"A-anyway, here's my point! If you put me under 'hypnosis,' the way you do with Han Sora, then whether you touch my chest while I'm under or not, I would know nothing about it!"
"...I mean, sure? That's kind of the point of hypnosis."
"E-exactly! So if you touch me while I'm hypnotized and then claim, as you always do, that you 'didn't touch me,' I would have no way of knowing otherwise!"
"I wasn't really planning on..."
"In other words, this would be entirely separate from that 'contract' where I let you touch my chest in exchange for keeping my secret. D-don't you agree, Lee Seonho?!"
"......"
Honestly, at this point I wasn't even sure where to begin poking holes in any of it.
I couldn't tell exactly how much she knew about my Suggestion: Hypnosis, either — how could she possibly be so confident, telling me to hypnotize her herself?
That said, it wasn't a bad thing, per se, that a situation had just presented itself where I could use Suggestion: Hypnosis without needing any elaborate buildup on my end...
"H-hurry up and hypnotize me already! A-and then touch my chest, or don't, whichever!"
...I give up.
What on earth is going on inside this airhead's head? I genuinely, sincerely do not know.