Taming Han Sua (4)

"Come in."

A student showing up at this hour couldn't have been hurt in class. More likely the same sort as the cold I'd treated yesterday — someone who'd fretted over whether a thing that minor was worth bothering me for, heard the rumor that I treated colds too, and come creeping in anyway. Illnesses were a little more of a nuisance than wounds you could see at a glance. Still.

If it wasn't going to be a girl pretty enough to covet, I'd rather have some stiff, taciturn boy. I was turning that over with a kindly smile hung on my face for show when—

"Hello!"

"...?"

Yozora stepped into the infirmary in her academy uniform and greeted me in a bright, bubbly tone that didn't suit her in the slightest.

"...Ah. Hello."

What on earth had happened? First thing in the morning, and she'd dragged in Han Sua with a knee scraped open.

A rapid volley of glances carried roughly that much.

I understood, of course. From everything I'd seen since the entrance ceremony, Yozora's plan seemed to start with getting close to Han Sua. But maybe it only struck me as strange because, for the past ten years, the only Yozora I'd known was the one whose words tangled on alcohol. Or maybe I'd simply piled up too much of that grudging fondness in the meantime. Either way, watching her work so hard at playing bright made my mouth itch to tease her. Not that a single word of it left my lips.

It was like running into your older sister on the street on a Friday night — the same woman who drifted around the house in a single tank top like some shambling monster, now done up in flashy clothes and a full face of makeup, just because it was Friday.

In any case, it was a chance to talk with Han Sua, however briefly. A chance to put my hands on her body. And, at the same time, a chance to learn what she liked. The polite smile I'd been wearing turned a little more honest.

From the look of things, she'd simply slipped somewhere on the way to school. Yozora probably hadn't staged this just to fish for praise from me. Still, it was commendable. Next time the chance came, I ought to give her a reward. Threaten her with something along the lines of spreading those photos, and she wouldn't look for a way out — she'd come bounding over, tail whipping back and forth, delighted.

"Are you all right? It looks like it stings."

"I-I can bear it..."

"There was a lot of snow piled up out front. Did you step in some of that? Or was the ground icy?"

"Y-yes..."

As we traded that businesslike small talk, Han Sua hesitated her way over, sat down, and held out her leg while clutching her uniform skirt tight. Photos hadn't prepared me. Up close, they weren't the skinny, bone-thin legs I'd half expected — they had a pleasant amount of flesh on them, nice to look at. A little firmer than Lee Jiyoon's, the ones she'd pressed around me for thigh-sex. Almost exactly Lee Hayun's type.

Well, both of them had abilities that ran on their bodies, so similar builds made sense. I preferred this to something merely skinny, and it suited me just fine.

...Except for one thing that nagged.

"Did you hurt anything besides your knee? If you fell in the street, your palms might be scraped too."

"Ah, yes. My palms... that's right..."

Han Sua. Was she normally the type to stammer this badly?

"Then could I see your palms first? Treating the leg before that feels a little backwards."

"...Yes. Y-yes..."

I took the right hand she tentatively offered and, under the pretense of treatment, carefully touched the wound while calling up the file I'd compiled on her before. The Han Sua I'd researched acted far more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠easygoing. Underneath, she was rather prickly. And, never quite able to shake the air of a conglomerate heiress, she carried a quietly swollen pride. The Han Sua in front of me now was nothing like that.

Easygoing. Prickly. Pride. None of it mattered. She simply seemed to find the act of talking to another person difficult in itself.

Strange. Why was the Han Sua I'd pieced together from interviews so different from the one here? Even if I blamed the interviews — even if the easygoing front had been an act — that didn't explain the prickly self I'd sensed beneath it. Could having Yozora beside her change her this much? People were easily shaped by their surroundings, sure. But no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠matter how I turned it over, this didn't sit right. She'd been glued to that girl for two days. Two days, at most.

So then, why.

"..."

Before I regressed, had something happened to her while she was at the academy? Or had Yozora actually done something to her? A few reasonably plausible hypotheses rolled through my head. But they were only hypotheses. For all I knew, the file I'd gathered was garbage, stuffed with nothing but overreading. At this point, it might be better to simply ask Yozora.

I looked away from Han Sua, who was fidgeting with her eyes lowered, and glanced instead at Yozora — sprawled without a shred of manners on the infirmary bed, rolling this way and that. And then, one line.

But this time Yozora only arched one brow, as if she hadn't caught it at all. Well, that was only natural. I had ten years of practice, so I could more or less parse even Yozora's drunken mumbling — but she had no such practice with me.

...Nothing to be done. I'd made contact with Han Sua this time. Rather than forcing the pace, it seemed wiser to treat her and pick up a rough sense of her preferences along the way. We were at the same academy. I'd be seeing her often enough. Sooner or later, something useful would come along.

"Is the stinging all right?"

"...Yes..."

Beneath the wound sealing shut in an instant, I kept a firm hold on Han Sua's hand, pretending I still had work left, and spread the mana that had entered through her palm to every corner of her body.

The result—

This girl. What the hell kind of woman is she?

—was the conclusion I reached.

"Your hand should be fine now, yes?"

"Yes..."

"I'll treat your knee as well. If it feels unpleasant at all, tell me."

"Ah, all right..."

Ears. Armpits. The soft inside of her thighs. Her tongue. The nape of her neck. Her toes. And her ass.

That was why. Exaggerate only a little, and there was hardly a place on her that wasn't an erogenous zone — and yet not a single trace, anywhere, of her ever having worked her own body over.

Why had he stared at me like that just now?

After Han Sua's treatment ended, Yozora walked with her toward Class 1-A, turning over the look Seo Woojin had given her out of nowhere in the middle of it. It had felt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠almost like he was asking, Did you do something to Han Sua? Whether that had been real or just her imagination was secondary. There was only one thing Yozora had actually done, wasn't there? The client had said she liked romance manga, so Yozora had pretended to like them too, then casually slipped her a recommendation for something lewder.

...Thinking it over, she had done something, hadn't she.

Yozora's head bobbed in a quiet nod as she walked. She still had no idea what he'd really been after with that question, though.

Ah — the scrape. Had he suspected I'd bullied Sua into getting hurt?

...Dumbass. If that were it, would she have come to the infirmary with me all buddy-buddy? Idiot.

Ugh...

"...Hm? What is it?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

Han Sua tilted her head beside her, as if she'd caught the small sigh. Yozora beamed at her and kept walking as though nothing were wrong.

Han Sua was pure. Yozora hadn't confirmed just how clean that purity ran, but the girl was pure enough to get flustered and fall over at a single dirty word. So now all she had to do was paint that blank white canvas black, little by little, the color of the night sky. So she'd take an interest in sex. And, as much as possible, in sex where a man held her down.

Only yesterday she'd been too embarrassed to see any reason to look at anything lewd — and yet she'd looked, for the single reason that a friend liked it. Wasn't that incredibly promising? For now, though, she was only a prospect. A pervert in the making. The aptitude was confirmed. All Yozora had to do was raise her with care and offer her up to Seo Woojin.

The client would be satisfied. Han Sua's life would be ruined exactly as ordered. Seo Woojin would be pleased to have one more outlet for that perverted nature of his. That was enough. If Seo Woojin — if Master — was satisfied, that was all that mattered.

First, she ought to leave him a thank-you on KakaoTalk. Thank you for not revealing who I am, Master... rewritten in a snappier, ruder tone, with no manners in it at all. So that whenever he wanted, he could fuck her senseless.

Yozora chatted warmly with Han Sua as they entered the classroom. In the seat directly behind hers, a girl with snow-white hair was slumped over her desk with earphones in. Yozora didn't spare her a glance.

...Somehow, all of Yozora's tastes seemed to lean toward nothing but R-18 romance.

The thought struck Han Sua while she was having lunch with Yozora in the academy cafeteria, as manga recommendations piled up one after another.

"So... that's your recommendation list...?"

"Yep!"

This was probably all because of a single line she'd offered that morning — I read that thing you mentioned before. Getting closer was nice. But if Yozora kept recommending stuff like this, it was hard to know what to do with it.

Han Sua took a small bite of her crisp garlic bread, then went on.

"...Thanks."

She wasn't sure she could read all of it. But she didn't want to see the first friend she'd ever made look dejected. And the fact that Yozora was still the only person she could call a friend was part of it, too.

She'd been put in a group that morning and smashed several training machines to pieces, so why hadn't she made any new friends? Simple. Every member assigned by entrance ranking had been a boy. There was no grander reason than that. Han Sua had spent ninety percent of training in silence, offered nothing more than short, plain lines along the lines of I'll handle that one myself, received a passable evaluation from the instructor, and gone their separate ways. If they'd been girls, she might have at least tried to say something. Boys were still a bit much for her.

Like that infirmary teacher she'd seen early this morning.

"Should we get going? I want to go back to class and sleep a little..."

"Sleepy?"

"Yeah. I usually wake up around three in the afternoon... My days and nights still haven't flipped properly, so I'm dyiiing..."

"Then I think I'll take a walk."

Of course, she knew, roughly, that he was a kind person. She knew perfectly well that he'd treated her with not a trace of ulterior motive. The problem, however, was this. To treat someone, he had to touch their wounds. Wasn't that a little... perverted?

She hadn't said so, but from the moment he touched her hand, she'd been terribly flustered. The only things those hands had ever touched were her parents' hands and a cat's paw pads — and now, for the first time, a man's hand had touched hers. After that, he'd even touched her knee through the run in her stockings. That was, well... somehow, it had felt like losing her... hymen.

"..."

Sua shook her head from side to side, scattering the smoke that had risen in her mind. The infirmary teacher had only treated her. What was she thinking? The one having thoughts like this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was the bigger pervert.

You absolute idiot...