58. Ranfang (10)
58. Ranfang (10)
"Huh...?"
When had she fallen asleep?
When she came to, it was morning.
"Ah..."
Her lower body was completely soaked.
The blanket, even the bed sheet, were all wet.
'I... I'm twenty-five this year, aren't I?'
Her student ID would say so.
At twenty-five, she'd actually wet the bed.
A wave of shame washed over her, and her face flushed hot.
But the reason her face was flushing was something else entirely.
Obviously, it was because of what had happened last night.
'That man, last night... we did something insane...'
Lanfang got up and checked the door of her dorm room.
The digital lock and even the latch were properly secured.
No one could have entered without breaking it down.
'I felt like I received something really hot inside...'
She lifted her pajamas and felt around—there was something sticky, but no other trace anywhere.
'A dream...?'
No.
Even as she thought that, Lanfang believed that what had happened yesterday couldn't possibly be a dream.
The things that man had done to her, the words he'd said.
She remembered it all vividly.
Especially that moment when he grabbed her head with one hand and held her gaze—it was so intensely imprinted on her mind that she felt she'd never forget it.
'But if it wasn't a dream, then what the hell was it? How could I, while I was asleep...'
Overwhelmed by confusion, Lanfang sank to the floor.
'I... I was raped by that man. My body and heart were toyed with and defiled. Now I have no purity or chastity left...'
What confused her even more was that despite all that, she didn't feel disgusted.
'Why? I don't hate him... I hated him so much, but after being raped, I don't hate him anymore... Am I a weirdo...?'
There was something she didn't know.
—I don't hate him. I don't hate him. I don't hate him. I must not cause him trouble. I like him. I don't hate him. He's a precious person to me. Only he can set me free. I must obey what he says. I don't hate him.
A vow she had repeated to herself over and over in order to entreat Hye-yong.
She remembered everything else, but that one thing wouldn't come back to her.
"Ughh...!"
Lanfang shook her head as if throwing a fit, still collapsed on the floor.
The more she tried to think, the more the events of last night kept coming back to her, making her face burn.
'I'm crazy! That wasn't me. I begged that man I hated so much to touch me, to lick me. I was happy he touched me and I blurted out that I liked him!'
But no matter how much she denied it, the memory remained.
What she had felt when she said those words.
She was certain that if she went back to that moment, she'd do the exact same thing.
'...I have to see him.'
I have to meet him and ask.
'What he did to me...'
BWEE-REEK!
Right on cue, Lanfang's terminal buzzed.
[ Choi Hye-yong : 3:30 PM. After classes, let's meet at Cafe Vivaldi. ]
"..."
Usually, when a summons came, she felt dreadful, but not this time.
In fact, she might have been thinking she wanted to see him—that she had to see him.
'I just have to see him and find out.'
Having sorted out her thoughts, Lanfang's gaze turned to the thoroughly soaked bed sheet.
"Haah."
A sigh escaped her at the thought of having to wash everything.
-
Just as Lanfang had pondered over what happened yesterday, Hye-yong had also worried a great deal.
'If I meet Lanfang, do I immediately confess that it was all me, or do I play dumb...'
It seemed he'd wrapped things up well, but when you really thought about it, what Hye-yong had done was rape.
It was, in Lanfang's mind, her first experience. Once the arousal faded and she thought about it calmly, she might consider it absurd.
'I've decided.'
For now, he'd pretend not to know and be nice to Lanfang starting today.
Of course, it would be weird if a person changed drastically in a day, so he'd have to keep it within reason.
'Right now, Lanfang is in a pretty tough spot, even without me.'
She'd been completely abandoned by her friends from the same country and was alone.
She'd always been near the bottom, but because her mental state had collapsed, she'd neglected her training and even her skills were at their worst.
In this condition, she'd never get into a regular party unless it was some bottom-feeder group, and she'd even have a hard time being called as a mercenary.
'She's completely alone in this facility. Unless she grits her teeth and trains to improve her skills, she'll just keep eating into her Points. Unless she snaps out of it herself, things are only going to get harder.'
Hye-yong wanted to make Lanfang into an ally he could freely shower with help, by making her depend on him.
And the best way to do that, as always...
'The tried-and-true exclusive buff.'
Before she came to her senses and thought she could do anything on her own, he needed to shove an exclusive buff down her throat and make her feel it.
With her stats and proficiency raised by 10 levels each, she'd be wondering what the hell this was.
And if the exclusive buff ever disappeared, the emptiness would be indescribable.
'On top of that, if I use an emotion-manipulating buff to make her feel hollow...'
That would be the icing on the cake.
Moreover, since he'd managed to somewhat resolve Lanfang's resentment and gain some cost out of it, he'd be able to use feeling-buffs more smoothly.
'I'll discuss the details when we meet.'
Hye-yong got up and went to get ready for class.
Tomorrow was June 21st, Saturday.
The weekend.
The weekend was a completely free day with no classes and no fixed raids.
He wanted to raise Lanfang's affection level sufficiently over the weekend.
It was time to build affection rather than be hated.
June 20th (Fri) 3:26 PM
Cafe Vivaldi
Hye-yong came to the cafe surprisingly often when he had time to kill alone.
He especially preferred the partitioned rooms where he could lie down.
There was no better place to lie down, snack, sip on a drink, and read comics or novels.
One particular perk of living as an Awakened was that you didn't have to worry about gaining weight no matter how much you ate.
Of course, if you never exercised and ate all day like Han Geon-hu, you'd still get fat. But as long as you ate and exercised moderately, your body burned off the unnecessary fat on its own.
Since you couldn't see outside from inside the room, he came out five minutes early and waited for Lanfang at the entrance.
When he saw Lanfang walking up with a hesitant, uneasy expression, he felt a natural surge of fondness, but he didn't show it.
"Over here."
"Y-yes..."
They entered a two-person cafe room and sat facing each other.
Hye-yong speared a piece of the cake he'd pre-ordered with a fork, popped it into his mouth, and chewed as he observed Lanfang's state.
'She looks like she has a lot she wants to say.'
Of course, he had no intention of letting her say all of it.
Hye-yong washed away the sweetness with a sip of Americano and spoke first.
"Why don't you eat something too? Just order for yourself."
"Ah, um, I-I'm fine..."
"Yeah? Then don't."
He waited a moment, then spoke again.
"About you."
"Y-yes!?"
"Are you going to keep living like this?"
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"Whenever I say come, you come. When I say go, you go. Can't even say no. Are you going to live your whole life like that?"
These words hit her right in the gut, and the already flustered Lanfang dropped her head so low her face was barely visible.
"...I don't know."
"If you keep going like this, you'll get expelled."
—She flinched!
Because he'd been so blunt, Lanfang's sagging shoulders jerked up and trembled slightly.
"You've been abandoned by the only party you were in, you're low on points, and I heard you've barely trained lately. Your skills must be in the gutter."
"Ah..."
Lanfang let out a sigh tinged with sorrow, as if he'd hit every nail on the head.
Hye-yong continued in a calm, even tone.
"Do you think there's a party that'll take you like this? With your grades at rock bottom, it's even hard to work as a mercenary. Your points are dwindling. You need to earn, but you don't know where. You must be in a lot of trouble."
"P-please stop..."
It was plain to see that Lanfang was extremely distressed.
She'd clearly come to ask about what had happened last night, but instead she was being bludgeoned with hard truths, so it was understandable.
She probably didn't want to think about it either.
Her situation, a predicament she couldn't overcome alone.
Because she was running away, she wasn't even doing the one solution: training.
"Can you afford to be expelled that easily? Didn't you come here giving up seven years? There must be a reason a Chinese person like you came all the way to Korea to enroll here."
"..."
He was right.
The thought was so horrifying that she'd been averting her eyes from it, but now she had no choice but to face it.
If she got expelled from here, where would she go?
This wasn't her home country; it was a foreign land.
For now, she had the Academy as a nest, but if she was kicked out, she'd immediately have to find a place to live, earn money, and fill her stomach.
But doing what?
She was an Awakened, but in this ambiguous state, it was hard to do Awakened work in Korea.
In the end, go back to her home country and return to her family's arms?
'...I can't do that.'
All tuition was waived on the condition that she underwent the synchronization procedure.
But Lanfang had to pay for the plane ticket to Korea herself.
Her already poor family, and the tribe that was essentially family, had scraped together money they didn't have to buy her ticket.
They never said to repay them, but it was a debt nonetheless.
She had to succeed, go back, and repay them.
The biggest debt in Lanfang's heart...
If she lingered without any progress and got expelled without achieving anything, she'd truly have no face to show anyone.
Not only would she feel guilty, but she wouldn't be able to live in her original home anymore.
As someone who called herself an Awakened, received everyone's expectations, and went abroad, if she returned having accomplished nothing, they might not say it to her face, but they'd surely resent her.
And that resentment was more likely to be directed at her parents than at Lanfang herself.
She couldn't bear the thought of witnessing that.
She was someone who absolutely had to achieve at least an ordinary level of success.
'But, but...'
The fear of being isolated in this foreign land without a single acquaintance and the lethargy from falling completely behind everyone else were truly terrifying.
Even with that desperation, whenever she tried to do something, lethargy floated through her mind and erased the thought that she needed to grit her teeth and push forward.
The thought that nothing she did would work occupied most of her will, and she'd long since become like a paper doll that moved wherever the wind blew.
Listening to that man's words was unbearably painful.
Anxiety seemed to be tightening around her heart.
'...Looks like she's really anxious. There must be some reason she absolutely has to avoid expulsion. That's good for me.'
Watching Lanfang with her head deeply bowed, clutching the fabric around her heart, Hye-yong gauged the timing to speak again.
Haa, haa.
Lanfang steadied her breathing, as if shortness of breath had set in from mental stress.
Hye-yong spoke again.
"Looks like you're in trouble. Expulsion, especially."
Lanfang's head slowly lowered and then came back up.
"Do you have a specific plan? A plan to avoid getting expelled and graduate from this facility normally. Even grade retention is a problem, right?"
He'd heard from Han Geon-hu and looked into it, and apparently quite a number of people ended up repeating a grade in this facility.
From first year to second year, you advanced just by passing time. But to move from second to third year, you needed a minimum grade of C-rank, and to graduate from third year, B-rank.
If your grades were lacking, you repeated the year.
You started over from the second year.
If you repeated twice, unlike when your rank dropped twice in a row, they didn't give you any leeway; it was unconditional expulsion.
In effect, they'd made it so only students who were at least B-rank could graduate without repeating.
It sounded like 'If you have no talent, get out and die,' but the real world was far more brutal than this.
"N-no..."
Lanfang, stammering, was on the verge of tears.
"Then what will you do? Are you just going to wait for the misfortune that's coming?"
"I don't know. I really don't know! I have nothing left, I don't know what I should do! Without anyone by my side, all alone, I just can't...!"
Her voice grew stronger and more impassioned.
'Now is the time.'
Hye-yong decided to say what she most wanted to hear.
"I'll help you."
"...Huh?"
"I'll party up with you."
And with that, he cast the buff he'd prepared.
[ Assassin's Stigma ]
Strength stat +10 levels
Agility stat +10 levels
Dagger Proficiency +14 levels
Rian Pang Exclusive
Lanfang's eyes, upon confirming the buff's effects, widened like never before.