3. The Studio Apartment
The infirmary was quieter than I had expected, this early in the morning. The reason was simple enough. Not a single student had come looking for me, even as the hour crept toward lunch.
"Hmm."
Was nobody hurt? Or had the school simply not told them yet? Thoughts like that came and went, but none of them felt certain. The principal had said he meant to gather the students all at once and explain things—and now that I considered it, the new term wasn't far off. Rather than do the work twice, he would probably just handle it in a single stroke.
I had told Lee Hayun I would see her ahead of the other students. At this rate, there was no need to go out of my way.
I tipped the chair back and glanced at the clock. Still nine in the morning. Nothing to do. I was wearing a spotless white coat, and otherwise living no differently from the unemployed. Having this much free time before the term began was clearly a perk, and yet it felt like a waste to throw the hours away. Wasn't there something I ought to be doing?
I was stretching, turning a few ideas over, when a welcome sound reached the door.
Knock, knock.
I answered at once.
"Come in."
The same voice I used to catch, back in middle and high school, whenever I happened to pass the infirmary. My title was Health Committee Member—hardly different from a student—but honestly, I still wasn't sure about any of it. By age alone, I might as well have been a teacher.
I was working the ache out of a shoulder gone stiff from sitting when the closed door swung wide. And the person who stepped in from outside—
"Good to meet you. So—you're Student Woojin, aren't you?"
—was a man. An unpleasant one, too, getting familiar with a hello on the very first meeting. Whatever interest had started to stir vanished without a trace.
"That's me. What can I do for you?"
"The principal has been singing your praises. Said a Healing Type Transcendent had come in."
"Ah."
He looked a little old to be a student. Mid-thirties, roughly. Even so, he hadn't dropped the polite speech with me right away, which meant courtesy was a habit worn into his mouth. A solidly built neck, clothes trying a little too hard to look young, and the way he had brought the principal into it—
"You must be a teacher."
"Yes. For now, anyway. Combat is my subject."
"For now? Ah. Then you used to work as a hero."
"That's right. You catch on quick. Half a year? That's about how long I've been off."
"Hmm."
"Strange, though. Most people at least know my face. A-Rank Hero Bulldog…."
"Sorry. I'm terrible at remembering faces."
"Ah, well. When I'm not using my ability, I do just look like a decent fellow."
I didn't want to know, and it wasn't information that did me any good. So a former A-Rank sat immediately beneath the numbered tiers. That was the whole of my impression. I would much rather one of the famous heroines I had seen before the regression dropped by than a man like this.
I was picking my words to send him off when—
"Aigoo…."
"……"
By the time I noticed, he had already claimed some bed or other and settled onto it at his ease.
…Right. He had come to the infirmary because he was a patient.
Nothing for it. I got up from the chair and walked over. Work was work.
"You didn't look it. Are you hurt somewhere?"
"Of course. You didn't think I came all this way just to say hello to a student, did you?"
"Where? I can't see anything."
"Here…. Hah…."
He steadied his breath and rolled up the shirt over that thick forearm, and only then did the wound show itself. A contusion—and a vicious one, gone dark red, swollen enough that it seemed to twitch. I spread my hand to gauge it. The injury more than filled my open palm. At that size, permanent damage to the bone was a real suspicion, and the man had looked perfectly fine while carrying it.
"My fingers have to touch it, so this will hurt a little."
"Please. What kind of hero couldn't endure that much?"
Had a dump truck hit him? Had he tumbled down a three-story stairwell and snapped the arm? I set my hand on that grotesque mass of muscle and set about finishing the job. It varied by the wound, but something like this would take three minutes.
"……"
"……"
The problem was those three minutes. He was a man, and I had kept things pointedly businesslike in case getting friendly meant he would start dropping by the infirmary unannounced. Actually treating him in total silence, though, made every second crawl. One man standing there with another muscular man's forearm in his grip—the picture was a little strange, wasn't it?
"…Ahem."
…I don't think I used to have thoughts like this, back in my villain days.
Reluctantly, I tried to draw the conversation out a little further.
"How did you get hurt? This is a bit much for simply falling down the stairs."
"Ah. I was putting a student through combat practice."
"Combat practice?"
"Yes. It depends on the ability, but the ones built specially for fighting all receive it."
Listening to him, I could roughly pin down the cause of the wound. As a rule, Transcendents with any real dream of becoming heroes put out power on a completely different scale from ordinary ones. Take two flame-affinity Magic Type Transcendents. One might manage nothing more than a little foxfire in the palm, while someone skilled enough to enter Miren Academy could swallow an entire building in flame. The same held for Summoning types, who created strange living things; Evolution types, whose strength grew in the body itself; and Mutation types, who could reshape themselves at will.
"……"
So he ate one hit from a student who was strong as hell.
"Sounds like you lost."
I cleaned the wording up when I said it, of course.
"No. I didn't lose. I am a teacher, you know. And I hold back to match their level when I spar."
"Then the student…"
He answered a little deflated, as if his pride had taken a nick. So he thrashed the kid within an inch of her life, then? I swallowed the rest, and his explanation went on.
"She went down on her own."
"What?"
"She's one of the few students we call in over the break. Decent potential, but her body can't endure it, so she struggles with control."
"……"
"Usually she manages well enough. Today, though, she kept spacing out, as if something were on her mind, and she made a lot of mistakes."
"……"
"I'm fairly sure she broke her ankle…."
"I already asked her. Told her to come with me. But she dug her heels in and insisted on getting treated the ordinary way…."
"Then I'll ask her myself—not as a teacher, as the Health Committee Member. It's not drugs. What the hell kind of excuse is that?"
Did the man just sweat a lot? Cold sweat beaded on him as he explained, and I followed along behind.
Once we left the main building and passed the gym, what came into view was a single enormous structure, simple as a cube. From what I had heard, it was the building they called the training center. The moment I stepped inside, a room with a startlingly high ceiling greeted me, and so did a scene so bare it might as well have been empty. None of it concerned me just then, so I took the corridor off to the side and went looking for an infirmary first.
I walked with my head turning this way and that, and before long I found the green cross. The principal had told me there would be times I was too busy treating people, so he meant to leave a few infirmaries in place. I shoved that irrelevant scrap of the future out of my head and stepped inside.
"…Eek……."
"……"
And there she was—Lee Hayun, sitting on a bed and fiddling with a crutch.
She really was bright. Bright enough that I kept wanting to tease her.
I took the infirmary teacher's lukewarm greeting in stride and walked toward her, one slow step at a time.
"What are you doing?"
"H-huh? What do you mean, what am I doing? …Me?"
"I heard you got hurt."
"Uuuuhm……."
She set the crutch down meekly, without a sound, but there was no hiding the foot wound tight in bandages over a splint. Even when she belatedly squirmed up onto the infirmary bed and tried to drag the blanket over herself, it was the same. I stepped in close, caught the blanket at her feet, and drew it up—only for the foot I had just seen to poke right back out. She let out a tiny shriek and tried to fold the leg in, but the ankle had swollen so thick that it didn't mean a thing. She looked like a rabbit thrashing to get away from a hunter.
"It's not like I said I was going to charge you. So why are you holed up in here?"
"…That's…. Um…."
I knew the reason perfectly well. She was embarrassed about last night. Even so, I just wanted to tease her.
"Does it heal faster like this? Noona?"
"Hey—stop tapping it…! What am I supposed to do if the anesthetic wears off…."
I asked while rapping the hard cast, and Lee Hayun clumsily cupped the ankle in both hands. I looked down at her and let out a sigh.
"Hold still. I'll treat you."
"……"
Hidden under the blanket with nothing showing but her jet-black hair, Lee Hayun nodded so faintly I almost missed it. It had been the same this morning, when I had all but forced a hangover remedy on her and left. Being alone with me embarrassed her. Getting treated, though—she didn't seem to mind that. She was a woman who needed more looking after than she let on.
"From now on, you come find me. No exceptions."
"……"
"Unless it's an emergency, I'll treat you before anyone else, Noona."
That way I can lock the door and do something indecent in here, and nobody will ever know.
I swallowed the thought and sat down right beside her, hip flush to the mattress. The bed creaked. Lee Hayun flinched and drew her legs in. I caught her ankle as it slowly tried to escape, and spoke.
"Does it hurt when I touch it?"
"…N-no. The anesthetic hasn't worn off, so I'm okay…."
"Then hold your ankle out, like last time. All the way."
I gave the order with my hand already resting on the tightly wound bandage, and Lee Hayun's pale leg rose, hesitating, up onto me. Maybe it was all the training—a good-looking leg, with just the right softness on it. If this had been my own infirmary, I would have touched her a little at a time and watched how she reacted. Unfortunately two pairs of eyes were on us, so that looked difficult. Well. There would be a next time. Judging by the state of her, she would be hurt again soon enough.
I shifted my posture, flicked her calf once—lightly, just to mess with her—and then, grinning, started setting the ankle right.
Fortunately it hadn't broken badly. The injury was shallow, which was why they had only put a half-cast on it. I hadn't even tried particularly hard, and fixing it completely still took less than a minute—about the same as when I had healed the injury she picked up on the street last time.
If the patient in front of me had been anyone else, we might have parted on a pleasant note right there. But she had tried to run from me and gotten caught, and sending her off after nothing but a kind little treatment felt like a waste.
…Come to think of it. After what had happened yesterday, there was a chance she had played with herself alone last night.
"……"
The treatment was already finished, and still Lee Hayun waited quietly, the blanket pulled all the way up to her forehead. I looked at her for a moment, then pushed my mana out farther and let it run through every part of her body. The places she touched often when she masturbated. The places on her that were the most sensitive, which she herself didn't know, and so never touched. All of them….
…….
……?
"……U-um."
"Yes."
"When is it over…?"
"It's over. Almost."
"Th-then why do you keep touching my ankle…?"
"I said almost. I haven't finished the last of it."
"Uuu…."
"Just a moment."
I murmured it, and looked a little closer at the part that felt off. Nothing else had changed much. The erogenous zones Lee Hayun still hadn't found were untouched, and the places she had broken in so thoroughly on her own, from touching them so often, were only a little further along than last time.
Except for one thing. The thigh I had felt up for a moment last night, while our tongues were tangled, had grown far more sensitive than when I checked it before. Which meant that the moment I went home, she had masturbated while touching that thigh—and the fact of it was a little funny.
"…Ow…. Nn, hnn…."
"All done, Noona."
"Okay…. Hey…! Quit hitting me…!"
I sent a few more flicks into the defenseless white of Lee Hayun's calf. Lightly. Enough to leave a scatter of marks that said she was mine.
Smack. Smack.