A Strategic Love Operation (1)
Watching Cha Eunju begin to tremble with excitement, dark mana seeping from her body, the first thought that crossed my mind was that I needed to calm her down, and fast.
If I couldn't explain things properly here, things would not only get awkward between Cha Eunju and Kim Isabel—there was every chance it could spiral into something far worse.
And if that happened, the day I got the two of them trained as my slaves, getting along nicely enough to serve me together, would be pushed further and further out of reach. Considering all that, letting our current relationship fall apart was obviously not an option.
Which meant I had no choice but to explain myself somehow, so that Cha Eunju wouldn't misunderstand my relationship with Kim Isabel (though "misunderstand" might be generous—what she was imagining was probably exactly right).
"Eunju, calm down. Isabel and I weren't doing anything weird."
"Then... what were you...?"
"Isabel told me she wasn't used to men, so I was just helping her out. Nothing strange was going on."
"...Then why was she naked if you were just 'helping,' Seonho?"
"I figured that getting used to men meant getting hands-on with a man's body. Directly."
"...Liar. If she were really that afraid of men, there's no way she could touch you that shamelessly. Isabel's been lying to me this whole time, hasn't she? Pretending to be scared in front of me, and behind my back she's all over you, so brazenly—"
"Eunju. That's enough."
"......"
Well, she does listen when it counts. All that training must be paying off. Thank goodness for small miracles.
"Don't get worked up—just listen, Eunju. I can explain it in a way you'll understand."
"...How?"
"The reason Isabel can touch my body right now—a man's body—is because of the 'buff' I gave her. Just like when I buff you against monsters, I was casting a buff on Isabel that keeps her from being afraid of men."
"A buff...?"
"You know my ability is a mental-type buff, Eunju. And you know better than anyone just how good my buffs are."
"Oh..."
At the mention of buffs, the dark mana leaking around her quietly retracted, and Cha Eunju's expression shifted into one of dawning comprehension.
Apparently, the words mental-type buff carried a fair amount of persuasive weight. As the person with the most experience being on the receiving end of my buffs, she probably understood their performance better than anyone alive.
"Right, Isabel?"
"...Yes. Just as Mr. Lee Seonho says, I was receiving a buff while undergoing training to get used to men. If I could gradually acclimate to men while buffed, I thought that eventually I'd be able to face them without fear even without the buff..."
Kim Isabel, who had been waiting for me to finish explaining to Cha Eunju, added her own piece only once my words were done—and her corroboration lent the story even more credibility.
Thanks to her calm, measured response, nothing spiraled into confusion or contradiction, and as Cha Eunju listened, her expression smoothed out into one of full understanding. The leaking dark mana withdrew completely.
"I-is that so... I-I didn't... know any of that..."
"I know it looks strange from the outside. Honestly, if I were in your shoes, Eunju, I'd have misunderstood too."
"......"
"But strictly speaking, it's not all that different from the training you and I have been doing all along. The way I gave you 'courage' when monsters scared you too much to hunt—Isabel's just dealing with the same thing, except the thing she's afraid of is men instead of monsters."
"I-is that... so..."
"Isabel doesn't really have any other man she's close to, so I figured it was better for me to help than some stranger."
That much ought to be explanation enough. If it was Cha Eunju doing the listening—and not someone else—she'd take my words at face value and accept them.
After all, she was the one who'd overcome her own weakness through my buffs first, long before Kim Isabel ever did.
"I-I'm sorry, Seonho.... I-I misunderstood, and... I-Isabel, I'm sorry to you too..."
"It's fine. Anyone could've jumped to conclusions. It worked out, so it's all good."
"...I think I was in more than enough of a compromising position to be misunderstood. So please don't feel too guilty about it, Cha Eunju."
"...Okay. B-both of you, I'm sorry..."
And so Cha Eunju's sudden intrusion ended with her apologizing to both Isabel and me.
...Strictly speaking, though, it wasn't really a misunderstanding at all. Cha Eunju had expressed entirely righteous indignation, if you asked me.
With Cha Eunju's arrival throwing the atmosphere into an awkward limbo, Kim Isabel's 'androphobia training' ended up wrapping up right about where I'd gotten a bit of rubbing in.
I'd explained that the training was done under a buff, but even so, there was no way I could let Isabel openly grope my body right in front of Cha Eunju.
Above all, if I let Cha Eunju watch Isabel run her hands all over me firsthand, a misunderstanding that didn't exist would have been born on the spot. Show her training complete with slightly ragged breathing and low, suppressed moans, and even Cha Eunju would see through the whole charade in a heartbeat—there was no doubt Isabel and I were up to something strange.
Suggestion Release
"Hnngh, hyaak—?!"
CRASH!
"Th-then I'll be heading back now...! Th-thank you so much for accompanying me in my training...!"
Screech—thud!
"...You saw that, right?"
"Yeah.... So... it's real, then. A buff that really makes you stop fearing men..."
The moment the buff released, Kim Isabel panicked all over again and kicked up a magnificent racket—but thanks to that very display, the cover story of "training to get used to men while buffed" seemed to have gone down smooth as silk.
And so the morning's training ended in a somewhat anticlimactic state, and since Cha Eunju insisted on staying until my discharge that afternoon, nothing special happened after lunch—we wrapped up with nothing more than 'treatment.'
Net result: thanks to Cha Eunju, I'd squandered one precious opportunity to train Kim Isabel. Even if the cause of it all was her loyalty—showing up on discharge day, of all days, to relieve my lust.
'This is the kind of moment where it's hard to tell whether she deserves a reward or a punishment.'
Judging by results alone, she deserved punishment. But punishing a good-faith action risks turning a slave into something purely passive—nothing but a hollow shell waiting for orders.
What I wanted was a slave who, the moment her master came home, would be waiting in nothing but a naked apron, come scampering over, and ask whether he'd prefer dinner, a bath—or her. At minimum, a slave capable of that much on her own initiative. So punishment was on hold.
But handing out rewards didn't sit right with me either. Reward someone for nothing in particular and you invite a slave to get uppity and start climbing. She might not be conscious of it yet, but someday she'd have to define our relationship—master and slave—for herself.
'Nothing for it, then. In situations like this, the answer is to give both.'
Conveniently, with my discharge upon us, the constraints of time and place that had hemmed in my relationship with Cha Eunju until now were gone. With a little willpower, we could even spend an entire night together.
With those two shackles removed, what came next was obvious. My plans for Cha Eunju, whose heart had long since crossed over, had been decided ages ago—back in that hospital room.
I was mulling over how to naturally spirit her away to a hotel or my place when she brought it up first.
"U-um, Seonho...?"
"Yeah?"
"Today, um.... I-if your schedule's free, Seonho..."
"......"
"C-could I get a hypnosis training session too? Like Isabel did...?"
...The whole punishment plan is hereby canceled.
How could I possibly punish a slave this desperate to please?
Walking side by side beside Lee Seonho—the person she loved most in the world—Cha Eunju stepped out of the church.
It was the day she'd waited so long for, his discharge. And yet Cha Eunju's mood today was anything but good. Because just moments ago, she had witnessed something: the very first friend she'd made at the academy—excluding Lee Seonho himself—running her hands up and down his back, right under her nose.
'...It can't be helped. Isabel wanted to overcome her androphobia too.'
Just as she herself was too timid to fight at full strength against monsters, her friend had her own weakness, and that deserved respect.
Only days ago, she had struggled with the very same thing. Losing her family to monsters as a child had left her trembling uncontrollably at the sight of even a hologram—fake monsters made of light.
The one who saved her back then was none other than the man walking beside her now. Steadied by his buffs and drilled through relentless training, she could now face holographic monsters with a measure of courage even unbuffed—and with a buff active, she could stand tall before a towering Owlbear and cast her magic without flinching.
What would have become of her if she'd never met him during the written exam? She might well have trembled her way through the practical and flunked the academy entrance exam without catching a single monster.
In that sense, Lee Seonho was her savior—the man who made her worth one full share as a hunter-in-training—and the person she wanted to keep leaning on for a long time to come.
...And also. They were people who had shown each other their most embarrassing places, and touched them, too. He probably couldn't even dream that she knew that.
Which was exactly why it stung a little. Watching a man who was, for all practical purposes, her boyfriend, strip off his clothes and let another woman paw at him.
Even if that woman was her friend Kim Isabel, feeling bad about it was feeling bad about it.
'If he'd just told me in advance, I wouldn't have objected, really...'
If the training had truly been for the sake of curing her friend's androphobia, she wouldn't have stood in the way—even if that meant Lee Seonho's body had to be touched.
It was for Kim Isabel, the first friend she'd made at the academy besides Seonho. And Cha Eunju herself was a comrade who'd once battled the same fear, only for Lee Seonho to lift it from her.
...Granted, even so, she'd have felt a little jealous. But she surely wouldn't have blown up the way she just had.
"......"
Truthfully, she knew. She and Lee Seonho weren't lovers or anything of the sort yet—so he had no obligation to report his every move to her.
If she confessed her feelings to him honestly, they might become an official couple.
No—not might. She was almost certain of it. She'd read his heart with perfect clarity since the day they first met. If she confessed first, he'd surely nod along, overjoyed, practically bouncing.
She knew it in her head. And yet the courage simply wouldn't come. This was exactly when she needed the buff she received from him—Potion of Courage.
But a confession made on the back of a buff might not come across as sincere. It had to be done on her own strength somehow, and she still fell short on courage.
...In the end, it was her own lack of courage that had kept her from becoming Lee Seonho's lover, so she knew full well how irrational this grumbling was.
'Still, I haven't even gotten to yet...'
He'd touched her chest, and she still hadn't so much as laid a hand on his back.
The bare chest and the firm muscles of his back—she should have been the first to see them.
That simmering regret stoked the fires of her jealousy, and Cha Eunju's thoughts grew thoroughly tangled. Tangled enough that a petulant little jab came spilling out of her before she could stop it.
"Hypnosis training?"
"Y-you helped with Isabel's training just now, didn't you. Y-you're not going to tell me you'd do it for her and not for me... right?"
She needed to confirm his feelings, even like this. Otherwise, the anxiety would be unbearable.
It was true that "training" was just a fancy name for fooling around. But a training session was still a training session.
As long as his answer wasn't something like—he'd help Isabel's training but put hers off until later—that was all she needed to know.
And one more thing. Even if Kim Isabel really did have feelings for Lee Seonho.
'If I become Seonho's lover first, then even if Isabel tries to tempt him later, he'll never fall for it...'
So this wasn't, purely and simply, about relieving his lust.
It was about making sure the person she loved never developed strange feelings for another woman. About making him hers alone—the one and only outlet for every ounce of that desire.
This was Cha Eunju's very own strategic love operation.