128. My Buff is a Drug
Hye-yong ignored Kwon Jin-ah's screams as he kept kneading her legs.
'Kid must be in a lot of pain.'
Given her condition, she had every right to be.
But what could he do? The muscles were all knotted up like this.
Hye-yong, now a professional masseur thanks to his Proficiency Buff, knew that leaving them alone would only make things worse.
He had to work them loose at least once.
'Lowering the Massage Proficiency level and adding a Pain Reduction buff feels a bit off too....'
Still, she'd feel refreshed afterward.
"Just bear it a little longer."
"Y-yes, yeeehehehes...."
She answered, but she had no confidence.
'Even if he tells me to bear it....'
So far, she'd been clenching her teeth and keeping her mouth shut, but the more he touched her, the more her whole body felt like it was melting into mush and oozing away. She could barely control herself anymore.
Hye-yong's hands moved up to her thighs.
'Hah—even there!'
Kggk, kggk, kggk!
"Whoa, this side's no joke either. What do you even do with yourself normally?"
"Tr-training, I train...!!"
"It's good to work hard, but take a break sometimes. You'll wreck your body."
He'd always treated her well, but today, the Captain was especially strange.
Hearing him speak with such gentle concern while watching him so diligently massage her legs... something stirred inside her heart.
Kggk, kggk.
By now, it was starting to feel downright spine-tingling.
'Aah, I don't even know anymore!'
To hide her burning face, Kwon Jin-ah grabbed the pillow she'd been resting on and hugged it to her face.
She buried her face in it so hard she could barely breathe, letting out muffled groans.
Kggk, kggk.
"Hwaah."
Squish, squish!
"Anh-huuuh...."
The pillow blocked some of the sound, but not all of it.
'Somehow the sounds are kind of lewd.'
Was it just his imagination?
Hye-yong slid his hands under her thighs, right where they met the bed, and carefully massaged that area too.
"Ah-uuuh, aaah, l-let's take a little break...."
"Okay. Exactly one minute."
He'd just finished working out the knots in her legs anyway, so Hye-yong readily agreed to the break.
'Fhu-wah.'
Kwon Jin-ah finally had a moment to catch her breath.
'What in the world...?'
She finally had the mental space to figure out what was happening to her.
She slowly retraced her memories from earlier.
'My sensation was clearly dulled, but the moment the Captain touched me, it suddenly got incredibly sensitive.'
When she first came to her senses on the bed, Kwon Jin-ah had been more than a little panicked.
Because aside from her right arm, she'd felt no sensation at all in her limbs.
She could still move them, but there was no sense of touch — a bizarre phenomenon where even pinching hard produced no pain.
It had naturally interfered with her daily life.
She'd been suddenly terrified that holding a sword might be too much now, but she'd decided not to tell Hye-yong.
The Choi Hye-yong she knew, the Captain, would obviously blame himself to an unbearable degree if he learned this had happened to her while fighting an evil spirit.
So she'd endured it alone. Then, relieved that her sensation was gradually returning over time, she'd casually let it slip to Seong Yu-ran, who'd been staying by her side — and that was the source of the trouble.
Seong Yu-ran had spent nearly two hours kneading her arms and legs, and as if that weren't enough, at some point she'd apparently exchanged messenger contacts and called Hye-yong over to keep watch beside her.
She'd hidden it precisely because she didn't want to cause worry, but now all that effort was for nothing.
She'd been sulking for a while, and only after eating an apple that Hye-yong personally peeled for her was she starting to feel better.
But then Hye-yong had suddenly volunteered to give her a massage.
He'd pressed forward with an attitude that brooked no refusal, so before she could even think of resisting, he'd been touching her legs all over.
After that, it had all passed like a storm. She felt incredibly good, her legs felt more comfortable than ever, and her dulled sensation had completely returned.
'The Captain... the Captain had a solution for times like this all along.'
Slowly piecing the situation together, Kwon Jin-ah realized how stupid she'd been.
Something so easily fixable, and she'd been tormenting herself alone just because she didn't want to talk about it.
If anything like this happened in the future, she should have told the Captain first.
'Let's reflect on this, Kwon Jin-ah....'
After a short moment of self-reflection, her thoughts naturally turned to Hye-yong.
'As always, I keep thinking this, but the Captain really is amazing. When a problem comes up, he always has a method. The ability to calmly solve any situation without panicking... it's truly admirable.'
Right around when she'd gotten to that thought, Hye-yong's voice rang out.
"One minute's up. Let's start again, shall we?"
"Ah."
The time was already up!?
Solution or not, she was not ready to receive Hye-yong's massage again right now.
'I know it's to treat me, but it's scary! My body doesn't feel like my own, and I keep making weird sounds....'
It definitely wasn't an unpleasant feeling.
It was closer to something incredibly good.
And that was exactly why it frightened her.
It was a kind of pleasure she'd never experienced before, one she couldn't identify — which made it even worse.
"Alright, this time it's the feet."
Th-the feet!?
The Captain was going to touch her feet?
"I'll do both feet at once so we can wrap this up as fast as possible."
Both feet at the same time!!?
Kwon Jin-ah was aghast at this in more ways than one.
Three feelings tangled together wildly inside her head.
The anticipation that that incredible feeling would come again.
The sense of transgression that her respected Captain was touching her dirty feet.
And the sense of crisis — that if the Captain massaged her feet right now, she wouldn't be able to hold back the groans that would come bursting out anymore.
A shiver ran through her. Goosebumps rose, her hair stood on end, and sweat beaded on her palms.
'Not the feet, the feet are dangerous!'
She didn't know why they were dangerous.
That judgment had come from her instincts.
"This is where it's most knotted up."
"C-Captain! I'll handle my feet—."
Kwon Jin-ah cried out urgently, but Hye-yong's thumb was already pressed against the center of her sole.
Kggggk—!
"Heheeeek!"
Kwon Jin-ah flipped over right then and there.
A bizarre sensation—ticklish yet somehow cool and scratching, hot yet quickly familiar as warmth seeped in—resonated from her sole in waves.
Kggk, kggk, kggk!
Hye-yong's hands pressed into every part of her soles with just the right force.
"Hek! Ah-hik! Eu-hyahh!!"
Each time, Kwon Jin-ah let out adorable cries as she writhed, twisting her hips.
'A voice in pain, and it sounds this lewd. No one's listening from outside, right?'
Well, it was a hospital, so it'd be better soundproofed than the dorm.
Reassured, Hye-yong kept kneading her feet.
'They say the soles correspond to all the internal organs.'
He didn't know if that was bullshit or not, but now that he was buffed up and touching them, it sort of seemed accurate.
'The effective foot massage technique is... stroking the sole upward toward the heart.'
Kggk, swish.
Following the knowledge the buff supplied, Hye-yong pressed firmly into Kwon Jin-ah's sole and stroked upward.
"Ah, no! No! Not there, not thereee...!"
Swish, swish!
His fingers ruthlessly ravaged her soles.
"C-Captain! Stop... it's weird, it feels weirrrd...!"
Apparently, a surprising number of people have their feet as an erogenous zone.
Scientifically proven — a fairly common erogenous zone, they say.
The part of the brain that governs genital pleasure and the part that governs tactile sensation in the toes and soles are situated practically right next to each other, so having your feet licked or touched is no different from receiving sexual caresses.
And Kwon Jin-ah was the type to be especially sensitive when her soles were stimulated.
A fact even Kwon Jin-ah herself hadn't known, but she was being forcibly made aware of it by the magic-like touch of someone under a Massage Proficiency Buff at level 21.
"Your feet don't hurt as much, right? Pressing here feels good, doesn't it?"
"Hyaht—!"
"I'll give your toes a proper massage too."
Swish....
'N-not the toes!'
Knead, knead....
'Ah-uuu-ah.'
Kggk!
"Hiyang!"
Kwon Jin-ah couldn't hold her voice in at all anymore.
By that point, even Hye-yong couldn't help but be suspicious.
'Why does she seem like she's getting off?'
It wasn't like he was doing sexual touches — getting aroused from a foot massage of all things, though?
She'd definitely feel good, but this much?
If he'd had a Caress Proficiency buff at the same level, he might have understood, but he didn't, so he was left uncertain.
'I'll figure it out if I keep touching her.'
Hye-yong picked up the pace, massaging her soles and toes harder and faster.
"Hik! Heuk, ah-heut, he-heut, eu-hik!"
The reaction was incredibly intense.
Hye-yong stopped the massage right around then.
"He-eu, he-yeuk, eueu...."
Watching her stare at the ceiling with hazy eyes, making strange sounds — it was clear.
This had gone far, far past the level of simply feeling good from a massage.
'Is cranking the Massage level insanely high maybe a little dangerous?'
This might actually turn out to be useful....
'Come to think of it, my own legs are a bit stiff.'
Hye-yong stretched out his leg for a moment and tried massaging it.
"Hrgh."
Just lightly touching a knotted spot sent something crawling up through him, making his whole body stiffen. His hand pulled away on its own.
Now that he'd experienced it himself, he understood.
This thing was dangerous.
It clearly felt like the knots were melting away and felt good—but it was also the kind of sensation that made you want to escape.
And Hye-yong had even been massaging over her clothes, yet it was like this.
'If it feels like this and you keep kneading, it's no wonder she'd react like that.'
Still, wasn't good just... good?
Having figured out the situation, Hye-yong kneaded Kwon Jin-ah's feet a bit more assertively.
He had to do it anyway, right?
"Hr-hik—!"
Once again, Kwon Jin-ah's not-a-scream scream echoed through the hospital room.
-
"Hah, hah— hah...."
Kwon Jin-ah, now completely and utterly cooked with a totally blank expression, gasped for breath.
It wasn't like he'd touched her chest or her private parts. She'd just gotten a leg massage and was reacting like that. A bit of mischief had seized Hye-yong, and on top of her legs, he'd even massaged her waist and her ears — leaving Kwon Jin-ah now in a state where she was practically about to pass out.
"That should do for now."
"Th-thank youuu, Cap-tainnn...."
Hye-yong smirked as he watched Kwon Jin-ah speak, moaning in distress as if wracked with a fever.
'Ah, honestly, that was such a turn-on I got hard.'
He hadn't touched any explicitly sexual spots, but being alone in a room with a girl who flinched and let out moans every time he touched her... it was hard not to get excited.
'I've got Lanfang and Park Yuri around, so jerking off alone feels a bit pathetic. Should I spend tonight with Lanfang?'
Yeah, as a reward for her hard work during that whole Virus mess.
And it was about time to let Ahn Se-rin stew a bit longer and then contact her, too.
"You really were incredibly knotted up. I've worked most of it loose, so don't abuse your body anymore. Just loosen up properly."
"Yeh-heh...."
"How's your sensation?"
Kwon Jin-ah swallowed once and steadied her voice.
"It f-feels like it's almost all back... thanks to you, Captain."
"Then I'll get going. I've got things I need to do too."
"Yes, Captain... I can be alone now."
"Alright, see you next time. I'll give you another massage then."
Hye-yong turned and walked out of the room.
'H-he left, right?'
The spot where Hye-yong had stood.
Left alone, Kwon Jin-ah stared hard at the door for nearly 30 seconds, in case he might suddenly come back.
And after that, she checked the thing that had been nagging at her this whole time.
Her hospital pants, and inside her underwear....
Squelch—.
'Ugh, it's... wet...!'
She'd felt the dampness and had wondered—and sure enough, her private area was wet with a sticky fluid.
It definitely wasn't sweat.
What was the point of denying it?
This was feminine arousal fluid....
She'd gotten sexually excited, so her body had secreted it in preparation to receive a man.
In complete contrast to how incredibly refreshed her body felt, her mind was now infinitely complicated.
'What the hell am I doing, Kwon Jin-ah....'
'Why is this place wet.'
'Did I get turned on being touched by the Captain?'
'The Captain purely gave me a massage to restore my sensation, and I got off on it.'
'I'm seriously out of my mind....'
Kwon Jin-ah internally lashed herself.
Right when she'd finally gained Hye-yong's trust, if he caught her in such a pathetic state, he'd definitely despise her.
He might not show it outwardly, but he'd clearly think she was some weird girl who'd crossed the line of commander and subordinate.
'But still....'
There was a reason it had turned out this way.
Her mind might think that, but her body didn't know how to deny it.
Even now, the places where Hye-yong's hands had passed still throbbed as if the heat remained.
In a way completely different from pain.
Her ears especially were still hot when she touched them.
— Massaging the ears is good for blood circulation too.
When he'd said that and gently touched her ears, she'd honestly felt like her face was going to explode.
'Every spot the Captain's hands touched still has this prickly, tingling feeling left behind....'
The sensation in her arms and legs had all returned.
In fact, it felt like she'd become far more sensitive than before.
Her body's fatigue had been completely erased by Hye-yong's massage.
Lying drowsily on the bed, she was left with only one remaining urge.
An ambiguously simmering sexual desire.
She wasn't cold or hot.
She wasn't sleepy or hungry.
Of the three great desires that make up a human being, the only one left to her was lust.
She couldn't think of anything else.
Her hand slid back into her pants.
Rubbing the wet spot felt good.
It was the sensation her body wanted most right now.
'Eung, th-this... I shouldn't be doing this....'
Kwon Jin-ah pulled the blanket over herself.
Right now, it felt like she couldn't calm down unless she did this.
While she kept fidgeting beneath the blanket, short, cute moans occasionally leaked out.