The Saint's Whisper
Once the lecture began in earnest, all information about Arsia — the exotic woman who had so suddenly joined our class — dried up completely.
Even so, throughout the lesson, gazes kept drifting toward her without pause.
In the eyes of the men watching her, love had settled at first sight, and among the women too there were dangerous ones whose faces flushed red.
At the same time, curiosity about Arsia shimmered in every one of those gazes.
After all, the professor had explained nothing beyond the bare fact that she was an exchange student who had come from abroad to study.
But the sight of Ryeonhwa seated beside me, pressing her lips together and glancing at Arsia with anxious little flickers of her eyes, gave me a vague inkling that Arsia was a person connected to the Order.
In truth, I was also struggling to hide an inner restlessness and unease, for two reasons.
The first was the fear that if this woman Arsia truly had ties to the Order, trouble might arise were she to cross paths with Jia — the demon at this university. And the second was…
"Hello there?"
When the lecture ended, Arsia, who had been sitting on my other side, brushed her long silver hair — falling to her waist — back over the shell of her ear and greeted me with a bright, tinkling voice.
Her azure eyes and gentle, lovely face held both the innocence of a girl and a mature depth of living that seemed steeped into her very being.
Arsia, possessing both of those facets at once, wore a serene smile the whole time — the kind that made you feel good just looking at it.
"Ah… hello?"
Flustered by the unexpected greeting from a foreigner who seemed older than me, I returned it awkwardly, caught off guard.
I had no idea why she had chosen to sit beside me, but honestly speaking, I hadn't been able to focus on the lecture at all, thanks to her intense presence and the pleasant scent of citrus that drifted over from her all class long.
"May I ask your name?"
Arsia spoke Korean as fluently as a local, and her voice — clear as jade beads rolling across a tray — seeped into my chest with a warmth like sunlight.
"…I'm Yoon Dohyun."
Unable to gauge the distance to this woman who looked my age or perhaps a little older, I answered stiffly.
Even mid-conversation, the eyes of the students in the lecture hall fixed on Arsia and me were uncomfortably persistent.
And I could sense, without being told, that Ryeonhwa beside me was rolling her eyes this way and that, anxiously eavesdropping on our exchange.
When Arsia saw how frozen I was, she smiled more deeply and sent me a gaze brimming with goodwill — and my heart pounded hard.
"Could you perhaps show me around the university?"
"Wh… what?"
I was dumbfounded.
Not just me — Ryeonhwa, listening beside us, looked startled too.
"Do you… not want to?"
When I hesitated, at a loss, Arsia seemed to interpret it the other way; her face clouded over and that lovely smile guttered out.
Her neatly lined lashes drooped downward, showing a trace of sadness.
The sight of a pitiable woman, wounded as it were — the kind that stirs a man's protective instinct — made me feel as though I had committed some great sin, and the words shot out of me reflexively, bypassing reason entirely.
"Ah… I'll show you around!"
"Oh, thank you!"
Permission granted, Arsia beamed like a child, as if she'd been waiting for exactly that, her sunlit smile restored.
Unable to contain her joy, she clasped my hand tightly in hers, and my face flared hot in an instant.
Her flawless, porcelain-white skin drew near, and the citrus scent grew richer still, tickling the tip of my nose and setting my heart aflutter.
I told myself that this friendly skinship toward a total stranger was simply because she was a foreigner — even as the feel of her silk-smooth skin transmitted itself through our joined hands.
"Then I'll come too…"
"Yes, I'll be in both your care."
When Ryeonhwa scrambled up from her seat and said it, Arsia graciously accepted.
Watching the two of them converse smoothly, without even a formal introduction like the fumbling one I'd managed, I confirmed it once more: they clearly already knew each other.
As the three of us rose together and moved to leave the lecture hall, countless gazes came pouring down on us.
And those very gazes brought back the question I'd been too flustered to think of earlier.
Why me, out of all these students?
Just because I happened to be sitting next to her?
Besides, she was being so intimate despite our never having met… ah… could it be…
If Arsia was one of the Order's people, then given what Ryeonhwa had told me before we entered the lecture hall, she might well have something to say to me.
I couldn't guess exactly what it was, but if she had requested a campus tour as a way to escape the eyes of everyone around us, it made sense.
"Dohyun, the weather here in Korea is wonderful, isn't it? There's such life in the students' faces too. I wonder if it's because this is a space where those who have only just come of age prepare for their future?"
Once we stepped outside the building, Arsia walked alongside me and spoke with a friendliness, as if we were old friends reunited after years apart.
The extreme honorific — the way she attached '-nim' to my name — felt off to me, but I chalked it up to her being a foreigner and let it pass without comment.
"Is it? All I ever see is everyone looking worn to the bone over their assignments…"
Once I'd begun to guess her intentions, I regained some of my composure and played up one of my better qualities — my easygoing smoothness.
Perhaps the beauty Jia had given me had hardened my nerve; with my cool restored, my heart fluttering over her had settled somewhat too.
"Heh heh, one can't always enjoy one's studies, can one? Still… I do envy you, being able to do things with people your own age…"
Arsia covered her mouth with her hand and laughed demurely, then gazed up at the blue sky, clearer today than it had been in ages, a wistful expression settling over her face.
Within that expression was a depth of something profound that a man like me could never hope to fathom.
"Oh, what is that statue, Dohyun?"
Abruptly, Arsia pointed at a statue in the university plaza and asked me with a face as innocent as a girl's.
"Ah, that one is…"
As I answered with what I knew, Arsia flounced around the campus like a child, the hem of her snow-white long dress — hem drifting up to reveal her ankles — fluttering behind her.
Trailing after her, Ryeonhwa and I both felt the atmosphere gradually soften under her warmth.
She closed the distance between us in an instant, to the point it was hard to believe we'd only just met, while putting the heart at ease — her sociability had to be innate.
Ryeonhwa, who had been following quietly like a bodyguard with her eyes scanning the surroundings, also loosened up as she watched Arsia flit about the campus, until even she was gazing at the innocent foreigner with an expression of fondness.
And so Ryeonhwa and I, like parents with a child, spent a while guiding that guileless woman with her grown-up appearance.
"Dohyun… there's something I'd like to talk with you about. Alone…"
As we entered a deserted alleyway on the outskirts of the university, Arsia suddenly spoke, her words trailing off suggestively.
When her sidelong glance met Ryeonhwa's behind me, Ryeonhwa gave a small nod of understanding and withdrew.
Thinking, so it's finally come, I scanned our surroundings with a tense face — but between the buildings, the alley showed no one but Arsia and me.
"Have you heard from Ryeonhwa about who I am?"
Arsia asked carefully, her hands clasped behind her back.
With her arms hidden away, everything was on display, and at her center rose two prominent hills.
The V-neck of her patternless, pale-sky-blue silk blouse — smooth as satin — revealed her chest just faintly, while concealing it chastely to the exact right line.
That modest way of dressing, which hid beauty and thereby only tormented the eye more, stirred both excitement and guilt in me.
That was how noble the presence before me was — so dignified that merely harboring impure thoughts about her felt like a sin.
Just as befitted the name of saint that Ryeonhwa had used.
"I didn't hear it outright, but I've guessed that you're someone from the Order connected to Ryeonhwa. And I've guessed that's why you called me aside — that you have something to say about it."
Gulp.
As I stared at her with a tense face, not knowing what she would say, Arsia answered instead with a sudden smile and closed the distance to me with light, silent steps.
"Mm…"
"There's no need to be so tense, Dohyun. I only wished to convey my gratitude to you on behalf of the Order — and to see with my own eyes what kind of person you are. I originally intended to visit quietly, out of discretion, but I changed my mind partway through, and so here I am, dropping in on you like this."
Arsia laid her hand on my chest, looking up at me through the slight difference in our heights.
With her drawn so close, her ample bosom was conspicuously visible, and her pale pink lips glistened.
As though appraising the very existence that was me, Arsia's raised hand stroked smoothly, gently over my chest.
Even as I berated myself — that if this felt like seduction, the fault lay in my own filthy mind — I could not dam the tide of arousal that kept rising in me.
"You really were… just as I heard. So strong… and so admirable…"
Strong?
Admirable?
As Arsia blushed shyly and let her hand glide down my chest, I reddened in turn, struck by puzzlement.
From her noble looks and bearing alone, I could tell Arsia held some considerable standing within the Order.
Had I done something great enough that a person of her rank would come to see me herself?
Something that would merit her expressing such favor toward me like this?
Then why was she seducing me right now… no, that's not it, she isn't seducing me… hmm…
"Are you… feeling nervous?"
When Arsia's flawless, lovely hand stopped its stroking and came to rest over my sternum, my heart beat even more furiously.
Thud!! Thud!!…
The pounding was loud enough to ring in my own ears — there was no way the woman with her hand pressed to my chest couldn't feel it.
"Your heart is beating so hard… Dohyun, are you all right…?"
As she asked, she drew even closer to me, as if in concern.
"Ah—"
The moment I instinctively tried to back away, she seized my wrist and refused to let me escape.
Press…
Chest against chest, with the gap between us closed.
The moment I felt that soft, pleasant warmth, my head went dizzy for an instant.
"Dohyun… why are you…"
Swoo…
While my consciousness drifted hazy, Arsia — now close enough that her breath touched me — sent me a puzzled look.
"Has your cock grown hard?"
Only at that question, asked with a carefree smile, did I realize: I had stiffened, and was nudging insistently, again and again, against the gap between the legs of the woman pressed tight against me.
"Ah… th-that's…!!"
"You're aroused because of me, aren't you? Oh, you poor thing… I'll take care of it for you."
As unbearable embarrassment washed over me, Arsia stroked my cheek tenderly, as if it were nothing at all, and wore a benevolent smile — the kind that seemed it could embrace all of creation.
Swoo…
The moment puzzlement crept in at that loaded phrase — take care of it — she silently dipped her head, brought her lips to my ear, and whispered with warmth spilling into every word.
"O my lord, my god — for your sake, who are my everything, I shall offer this body of mine to relieve you of your lustful desire."
The words made no sense to me — and yet the bewitching whisper tickled my ear, and my whole body shuddered before I knew it.
At that decadent whisper, a pure saint tempting a man like an incubus, my hardness grew stiffer still.
Arsia slowly drew her head back, as if to let the moment linger, and met my eyes with those blue ones of hers.
Across the face I met was spread a sticky, female smile — the kind of smile that made you think of a demon.