Part 1 - Fake Leash(1)
Part 1 - Fake Leash(1)
In our Korean Literature department, there exists an absolute sanctuary that can never be defied.
Cha Do-hee, a true monster who has never once missed the top spot in the department with a perfect 4.5 GPA.
Being the apple of the professors' eyes is a given, and she is always the untouchable center of every major academic event in the department.
You can't fully explain her just by the fact that her grades are excellent.
Because the aura she exudes feels like a massive ice wall that ordinary students dare not approach.
Always standing with her spine straight, possessing cool, perfect, and delicate features, and always wearing a crisp, wrinkle-free white blouse and slacks.
And eyes in which not even a speck of emotional fluctuation toward others can be found.
Her classmates and underclassmen revered her, but at the same time, harbored a deep fear of her.
No one dared to approach her and make silly jokes, and she, in turn, didn't waste her precious time trying to socialize with anyone.
That aloof and arrogant attitude, combined with her overwhelming intellectual ability, perfectly established an inviolable territory within the department.
And the underclassman whom she keeps by her side—or to be precise, whom she uses as the most convenient errand boy—is none other than me, Jung Yeon-woo.
How did my precious college life get twisted so miserably? The prelude to this terrible and unequal master-servant relationship was probably during a group project for a required major course.
It was all my fault for letting Do-hee-sunbae, who happened to be in my group, hear about my naive and passionate ambition to become a competent planner or editor in the publishing industry after graduation.
On the surface, she put forward a very plausible and benevolent justification of "practical experience for a cherished underclassman."
But the reality was nothing more than the exploitation of free labor to satisfy her obsessive perfectionism.
Researching materials for papers, proofreading typos, correcting spacing and grammar, organizing vast bibliographies, and even adjusting the font kerning and line spacing of presentation PPTs pixel by pixel.
I had to become Do-hee-sunbae's hands and feet, sacrificing my golden college evenings and weekends entirely.
Rebellion? Against that Cha Do-hee?
If I got on the bad side of the department's power player and the professors' absolute favorite student, it was obvious how my future—especially my major GPA and graduation thesis—would be miserably crushed.
I was miserably conforming to the life of a thorough subordinate, swallowing curses a thousand, ten thousand times only in my heart.
Today was another continuation of the same tedious overtime. It was well past 10 PM, and in the empty club room, only the sound of the dilapidated air conditioner rattling and struggling to run echoed emptily.
On the desk, printed copies of the presentation paper that Do-hee-sunbae was to submit for the academic festival the day after tomorrow were scattered messily, and in front of my eyes, a mountain of proofreading sheets marked with red pen was piled up.
After wrestling with black text for three hours, my eyeballs felt so dry and stiff they felt like they were going to pop out. Just as I was about to collapse onto the cold desk while rubbing my stiff neck.
Deureureuk, the sound of the club room's old sliding door opening, and Do-hee-sunbae, who had been on the phone with the teaching assistant in the hallway, poked her head in.
"Yeon-woo-ya."
A voice that was, as always, cool and low, with no emotional highs or lows.
I reflexively straightened my hunched back and stood up. I was no different from Pavlov's dog, wagging its tail reflexively at its master's call.
"Yes, Sunbae-nim."
"I think I need to go to the department office for a moment. The teaching assistant said there are documents that need to be signed urgently. Can you finish checking the Hangul file I left open on my laptop? Check if the typo correction for the second paragraph of page 3 is finished, and if there are no issues, save it to my cloud file."
"Ah, yes. Understood. Go ahead."
Sunbae nodded lightly, then closed the door and disappeared from my sight.
Ttokak, ttokak. Only after the sound of her heels fading away completely did I let out a deep sigh that felt like it would collapse the earth, and stood up from my seat.
"Seriously, a human with no blood or tears. A junior is working his bones off until late at night, and she won't even buy me a warm coffee. Not even a vicious corporate owner would be like this."
Pouting my lips, I approached Sunbae's seat with grumbling steps. As if to perfectly represent her obsessive personality, her desk was always neatly organized without a single speck of dust.
A snow-white laptop, a fountain pen placed neatly at an angle, and a white teacup containing the Lady Grey tea that Sunbae enjoys drinking like water.
The subtle citrus scent rising from it mixed with the musty, old paper smell of the club room, creating a strange sense of dissonance.
I carefully pulled out the chair and sat down, running my finger over the touchpad that was dead black because the screensaver was on. As I lightly touched the touchpad, the screen lit up brightly.
And the next moment, the scene that unfolded before my eyes completely paralyzed my reason for a moment.
"......Huh?"
I rubbed my eyes hard. Instead of the Hangul file for the presentation paper that should have been there, an unexpected, shocking webpage was plastered right there.
The author-only serialization screen of 'Novelpia,' the web novel serialization platform that is too familiar to any web novel reader.
A massive shock, as if my heart had plummeted, struck my whole body.
It couldn't be, right? That Cha Do-hee? That ice-cold human who usually boasted of high-class intellect while discussing the sorrows of modern literature accesses this kind of subculture platform?
No, just being a reader would be shocking enough to stop my brain, but the screen displayed now was clearly a novel writing window where she was writing and editing directly.
On the left, the setting book tab was openly displayed, and the cursor was blinking in the middle of a sentence.
Without realizing it, I held my breath and leaned my face close to the monitor screen. Even the title of the novel written at the very top of the scrollbar made the back of my head tingle.
[The Academy's Yandere Saintess Imprisons the Villainess]
"Crazy...."
A curse word popped out of my mouth. Yandere? Saintess? Villainess? Imprisonment? And it's a 19+ yuri story?
The very fact that Do-hee-sunbae's noble mind was filled with such stimulating clichés caused a serious cognitive dissonance.
What kind of lewd fantasies had she been living with, with that bloodless, cool face? Did she write this kind of hardcore stuff every night under the glow of the monitor?
With trembling hands, I slowly scrolled down. The minimal moral reason that one shouldn't steal someone else's secrets had long been completely devoured by the giant monster called curiosity.
The main text that Sunbae had been writing while repeatedly editing until just a moment ago began to bombard my eyes nakedly.
— "Aah, hng... Saintess-nim, not there, please...!"
— The Saintess's hot fingers dug mercilessly between the Villainess's white thighs. She shed tears from extreme shame, yet her waist twitched at the gradually rising sense of immorality. The Saintess grabbed the Villainess's chin and forced her to look up, smiling coldly.
— "You say you hate it with your mouth, but you're so wet down there. Why don't you be honest?"
"......Ha."
I gasped. My own face seemed to flush instantly at the overly explicit situational description.
However, that immense shock and embarrassment lasted only for a moment.
My sharp occupational disease as a sophomore in the Korean Literature department, a deep-rooted web novel otaku, and an aspiring competent future publishing editor began to activate slowly.
As my pounding heart calmed down a little, I began to see the objective quality of the writing itself, moving past the shock of the content.
The sentences themselves were very smooth. The clean, concise writing style, rich vocabulary, and literary metaphors describing the characters' psychology were also top-notch.
It was indeed an overwhelming writing ability worthy of the top student. However, when viewed from the genre characteristics of a 19+ web novel, this piece had a fatal flaw.
"What is this... It's fucking stiff."
I muttered to myself without realizing it.
That was it. Sunbae's writing wore a flashy and high-class shell, but the tension and sexiness in the important 19+ scenes that readers expect the most were tragically lacking.
Vivid physical details—the rough breathing when the protagonist feels pleasure, the trajectory of sweat drops, the sticky sensation when skin touches skin, the smell of disheveled hair—were completely absent.
It was an extremely artificial and dry description, as if someone who had never experienced sex in reality had squeezed it out based on theoretical knowledge learned only from books.
'You say you hate it with your mouth, but you're so wet down there?'
I chewed on the line I had just read in my head and let out a hollow laugh.
"What kind of 1988 era is she living in to still be writing such stale lines? Do you think Novelpia readers these days get turned on by such artificial sentences? She has zero grasp of the trends."
At that moment, a dizzying thrill struck my brain. It was a pure form of power.
That high-and-mighty Cha Do-hee, who always looked down on me like dust under her feet or eraser shavings, and crushed my spirit with her suffocating perfection.
That Sunbae who hogged the professors' praise and acted all noble and haughty by herself. She was actually struggling in front of the monitor every night writing this kind of third-rate hardcore yuri smut.
Even the descriptions were so amateurish and shoddy because she had no practical experience!
I couldn't control the corners of my mouth that were leaking into a smirk. A thrilling pleasure climbing up my spine made the fine hairs all over my body stand on end.
It was a historic moment where the most fatal and shameful weakness hidden beneath her perfect and solid shell fell entirely into my hands.
With this pathetic and audacious secret, I felt like I could pay back all the humiliation and sorrow I had suffered so far and completely hold her leash.
Deureureuk.
At that moment, there was the sound of the club room's sliding door opening.
"Yeon-woo-ya. Did you finish checking the typos?"
A voice that was, as always, dry and cool, as if emotions had been castrated.
If it were the usual me, I would have flinched at that voice, hurriedly stood up from my seat, and bowed at a 90-degree angle, but the current me was different.
Like a tyrant holding absolute power, I didn't turn off the screen or minimize the window, but leaned back in the chair, spun around leisurely, and faced Sunbae.
Sunbae standing at the door was, as always, a perfect figure without any disarray. Her black hair tied up neatly, her shirt that didn't tolerate even a wrinkle.
She was looking down at me like a pawn on a chessboard that she was good at using, as usual. At least, until she discovered the laptop screen shining brightly behind my back.
"Sunbae."
When I called her with my chin lifted in a somewhat cheeky and relaxed tone, rather than my usual cowed voice, Sunbae's brow furrowed slightly.
An expression of displeasure flashed, as if a puppy dared to bark at a tiger. And her gaze passed over my face and headed to the monitor screen behind my back.
"......!"
At that moment, I witnessed the most thrilling scene of my entire life that I would never forget.
The sight of that arrogant and perfect Cha Do-hee's solid expression shattering as if a giant rock had flown in and struck it.
Sunbae's cool eyes widened in disbelief, and her cheeks and neck, which were always pale to the point of whiteness, flushed bright red as if they had been burned in an instant.
She almost dropped the smartphone and document folder she was holding, but barely managed to clutch them with her fingertips.
Her chest, which was always calm and steady, began to heave roughly, and her breathing began to falter.
"You, you right now...."
Sunbae's voice trembled.
I was so amused by that dramatic reaction that I almost laughed out loud. I stood up leisurely from my seat and pointed at the laptop screen with my finger, flicking it.
"Ah, you told me to check for typos, so I looked, but this window was open instead of the Hangul file? [The Academy's Yandere Saintess Imprisons the Villainess], right? The title itself is very stimulating and trendy. I guess it's a Yandere Saintess setting?"
"Shut up."
Sunbae rushed over and roughly slammed the monitor shut. Tak! A sharp friction sound cut through the quiet silence.
Sunbae was hugging the laptop tightly to her chest, trembling slightly like a criminal who had been caught at the scene of a murder case that should never be discovered.
The ice-cold spirit and charisma she usually exuded had evaporated into thin air.
"Sunbae, were you a Novelpia author? Wow, I really never imagined that our department's top student would be serializing this kind of hardcore yuri smut."
I deliberately widened my eyes exaggeratedly and scraped at Sunbae's insides.
Sunbae bit her lower lip so hard that blood wouldn't flow, glaring at me. The faint moisture of shame gathered in the corners of her eyes. Intense anger at wanting to tear me to death right now.
But at the same time, an overwhelming humiliation of having her most secret and base flaw exposed was swirling like a typhoon in her eyes.
"Jung Yeon-woo. You... just try saying it anywhere. I won't let you get away with it."
"If I say it? What are you going to do to me, Sunbae?"
I stepped closer to Sunbae with an attitude I would never have dared to imagine normally. Sunbae flinched and stepped back.
That high-nosed Cha Do-hee was backing away to avoid me. A thrilling electric shock climbed from my toes to the top of my head.
The thrill of the moment when the relationship between the master and the servant, which seemed eternal, was perfectly reversed. I wanted to hold and shake this sweet power a little more and trample her miserably.
"Rest assured. I won't be petty and spray screenshots in the department group chat, or tell the professors, 'Our top student's taste is this dirty.'"
"......What do you want."
Sunbae asked, suppressed, in a voice that sounded like she had resigned herself to everything, but was still sharp-edged.
With my arms crossed, I scanned Sunbae's flushed face and trembling eyes up and down stickily. And I rolled the painful impression I felt while reading the writing earlier on the tip of my tongue.
"It's not like I want money or anything big from you. It's just, as someone who dreams of being a future editor, it's such a pity. About your writing."
"What?"
"The sentences are unnecessarily high-quality and flashy, but the important 19+ scenes where readers should get turned on are too shoddy. Be honest. Sunbae, you've never properly slept with anyone, right? The smell of virginity is too strong in your writing. The descriptions are so superficial that they don't resonate at all."
At my provocative and explicit language, Sunbae's face twisted this time beyond shame into extreme mortification.
For a perfectionist with strong pride, the evaluation that the writing she worked so hard on was shoddy—and hearing that from a pathetic underclassman she had ignored as being far below her—must have been a more painful blow than any threat or violence.
"You... what do you know to babble like that."
"Why wouldn't I know? Those forced and artificial lines of yours, or the stiff physical descriptions—if you serialize them as they are, you'll get cursed at by readers and your view count will hit rock bottom in a few days."
I stepped close again to Sunbae, who was frozen like a statue while hugging the laptop. A distance so close that our breathing would tangle, which would never have happened normally.
The faint sweat scent oozing from Sunbae's flushed neck and the subtle Lady Grey scent she enjoys drinking mixed and grazed the tip of my nose dizzyingly.
I put my lips close to Sunbae's ear and whispered low like a snake.
"So, I'm going to help you."
"......Help me?"
"Yes. I'll become the direct editor for your writing. From overall plot planning to feedback on the detailed descriptions of the most important scenes, everything. You just have to follow what I say and revise the writing based on the vivid sensations I let you feel in practice. How about it? You can perfectly protect the top student's face, and the quality of the writing will improve dramatically. It's killing two birds with one stone, right?"
It was a clear mockery.
The manifestation of a shallow and disgusting sadism to trample and dominate her meager pride by manipulating the Sunbae, who usually treated me like gum on a trash can, to my liking.
I had no doubt that I had perfectly grasped control of the situation and put a leash on that arrogant beast.
Sunbae didn't speak for a long time.
Only her long eyelashes, trembling while her gaze was directed at the floor, represented the fierce conflict that must have been taking place inside her.
Shame and humiliation, and the lingering attachment as a writer who wants to save her writing somehow.
Eventually, Sunbae raised her head very slowly.
"......Do as you please."
A weak voice of Sunbae, tinged with deep resignation.
Sunbae avoided my gaze, biting her lower lip until it bled as if she were ashamed. It was the appearance of a herbivore that had completely surrendered and exposed its belly.
"Good. Then, come to my studio apartment starting tomorrow night. Because we need to start the first practical feedback very intensely. Don't be late."
I turned around, smiling broadly, intoxicated by the victory that was bursting out. My heart was pumping like crazy at the fact that I had finally brought that aloof and annoying Cha Do-hee to her knees.
However, I did not see it in the end. The corners of her mouth, which had been trembling with shame, curling up in a chillingly elegant arc, like a predator looking at a stupid, plump prey that had walked into its spiderweb on its own.