All Three Female Knights Chose the Same Night
Wind the clock back three days, and each of their decisions had begun separately. The morning of the eighth day since our dispatch to the knight order — the day of my appointment with Sophie.
The counseling room. Same arrangement as yesterday: two chairs, a small table, and empty space. Nine o'clock sharp — two knocks.
"Come in."
Sophie came in. Her black bob sat as neatly as yesterday. Her silver eyes avoided mine, same as yesterday. The difference was that her hands weren't shaking as much.
"Hello."
Her voice was small. But I heard it. Yesterday, I hadn't.
"Have a seat."
Sophie sat, folding her hands in her lap, fingers clenched around each other. Sixty seconds passed in exactly that posture.
Breaking the silence was my job.
"Yesterday's promise was the back of your hand, thirty seconds, right?"
"...Yes."
"Today it's your palm. One minute."
Sophie lifted her head. Her silver eyes wavered.
"...That's a lot, isn't it."
"You can stop if it gets to be too much. It's not one minute because I'll keep you there — it's only as long as you're all right with, Sophie."
Sophie slowly raised her hand from her lap. Her palm trembled.
I extended my hand over the table, palm up. Sophie laid hers on top of it.
The moment body heat met body heat, Sophie's shoulders flinched once. Her breath went shallow.
...Fuck. Even now, my lower belly gives a tingle. From one woman's palm — a palm she reached out to break through years-buried fear. One bit of warmth lands, and my cock starts stirring on the sly. Hold it together. Move now, and this hand bolts straight back. Breathe it down, deep. What the hell conscience does a bastard that hardens mid-trauma-counseling have to preach with, anyway.
A jolt. My cock pulled taut once.
I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just kept my palm where it was, touching hers.
Ten seconds. Sophie's breathing steadied.
Twenty seconds. For the first time, Sophie looked me in the eye — held it for one second, then her gaze skittered away again.
Thirty seconds.
"...It's all right. Still."
Sophie said it to herself, not to me.
Forty seconds.
I didn't use [Suggestion] here. What Sophie had permitted was the contact time, nothing more, and painting a conclusion of safety over it with my ability sat outside the promise we'd made. What her body was learning, too — that had to come from Sophie's own mouth once the contact ended.
Fifty seconds.
"...It's warm," Sophie said.
Sixty seconds.
"One minute," I said.
Sophie's hand withdrew. Slowly. Not snatched back — simply lowered, of its own accord.
"...I did it."
Sophie studied her own hand. The trembling one. Though it shook far less than yesterday's.
"Ninety seconds tomorrow?"
"...Yes."
Sophie rose. Then stopped, halfway to the door.
"Dohyun."
"Yes."
"...Next week, I'd like to try... my shoulders too. Having them held."
Her silver eyes met mine with resolve in them for the very first time. The first crack splitting four years of fear.
"I'll wait."
Sophie didn't turn away at once. She opened her palm once and closed it again — as if confirming the spot where my warmth had just been.
"And one more promise, please."
"Name it."
"If I say stop, you stop without asking why. And if I don't come back the next day, you don't come looking for me."
A rehearsed sentence. Sophie wasn't trying to erase her fear — she was keeping the right to be afraid in her own hands.
"I promise."
I laid both hands flat on the table where she could see them. A sign that I wouldn't reach for anything.
A little of the tension drained from Sophie's shoulders.
"...Then I'll come again tomorrow."
That one line settled strangely heavy. Footsteps pulled in by an ability and footsteps that come on their own, after checking there's a door to leave by, look identical from the outside. But the one hearing them knows the difference. The latter are far more frightening — and far more worth wanting.
...Fuck. How pathetic, feeling relieved at having handed the choice back. I'm the bastard who designed the choices in the first place.
Sophie nodded and went out.
That Sophie had reached out first was a change no ability could manufacture. I logged a note to myself: do not over-read that choice before the next session.
Same day, afternoon — after lunch on day eight. Karin took me along on a reconnaissance mission.
"There are beast tracks outside the knight order's perimeter. Small ones, so the two of us is plenty. You ought to see the otherworld's wilderness at least once too, Dohyun."
Karin's stated reason was plausible. The real reason lay somewhere else entirely.
We led two horses out toward the perimeter. The September sun stung the skin. Karin's red hair burned redder in the light, her green eyes catching the sun, pale and glassy. Karin was twenty-two, I was twenty-seven, and that distance wasn't something Karin had built — it was something she was closing.
At the mouth of the forest stood a small makeshift tent, forlorn as an abandoned house. The recon base. Karin tied off the horses and slipped inside. I followed.
Inside the tent. Cramped. Karin turned around all at once.
"Dohyun."
"Yes."
"There's something I've been thinking about, ever since treatment ended yesterday."
Her green eyes were level with mine. Not avoiding anything.
"...What is it?"
"A kiss."
Karin said it without winding a single loop around it.
"...I've never done it before. I don't know what it's like. But I want to try. With you, Dohyun."
Not a question. A declaration.
Fucking direct. Shit. This woman is a weapon.
"...May I?"
"Yes. Only as much as you want, Karin."
Karin rose onto her toes. A hundred sixty-five centimeters only reaches my lips on tiptoe. She gripped my shoulders with both hands. The grip was far too strong. She couldn't find her balance.
...Her grip aches my shoulders, so why is the one downstairs reacting first? The moment the weight of a twenty-two-year-old swordswoman hanging off her tiptoes pressed against my chest, my cock lifted its head without asking. Fucking hot. Hold it. If my pants swell now, the girl who scraped together the courage for her first kiss sees that before anything else. Push it down, deep. That'd be a bigger disaster than a bad kiss.
A throb. It stiffened once.
Karin's lips touched mine.
It was a headbutt. I mean it — an actual headbutt. A collision more than a kiss. Karin's nose cracked into mine, her lips landed at the wrong angle, and she pulled away inside a second.
"...Ah." Karin grabbed her nose.
"...It hurts."
I tried not to laugh. Fuck, I genuinely tried.
"Karin."
"Yes."
"You tilt your head a little. Come in head-on and you collide. And drop the tension from your shoulders."
"...Ah."
Karin rose onto her toes again. This time with her head tilted slightly. Shoulders loose.
The second attempt was no collision. Lips met lips. Not smooth — trembling. The tremble of a twenty-two-year-old kissing for the very first time.
Five seconds.
Karin pulled back. Her green eyes were brimming over.
"...There. Done." Said to herself.
"...Next time I'll be better at it. I just need to practice," I said. "You're a learner, Karin."
"Yes. Because I'm a learner."
Karin had said before that she still remembered her first kiss on the front lines. This time she made it plain that fear had nothing to do with it — she wanted to do it again of her own will.
Day nine. Evening. Eva asked to speak with me alone after the dining hall cleared out. Follow-up treatment had already passed to Erica, so this meeting wasn't a session — but Eva still chose the desk in her own room as the place, and left the door open.
The room was immaculate — tidied the way a twenty-six-year-old female knight's room would be. On the desk sat a cloth for tending her sword, a sealed bottle of wine, and two glasses of water.
Eva picked up the wine bottle, then set it back down.
"No alcohol for me tonight. Our memories need to match tomorrow, too."
"What is this about?"
"Karin suggested that the three of us go to your room together. She said it would be safer with the two of us there than with Sophie alone."
Karin's suggestion came from goodwill, but safety alone couldn't stand in for Sophie's choice. So Eva wanted to settle her own answer before the three of them gathered.
"Is that what you want, Eva?"
"At first, the thought of protecting Sophie came first. But if I went for that reason alone, I'd just end up playing the smiling commander again."
"Then you don't have to go."
"Hearing you say that — strange as it sounds, now I can see my own heart."
Eva wrapped both hands around her water glass.
"I want to get close to you too. Not permitted because Karin or Sophie happens to be there — even if the two of them dropped out midway, my choice would remain. Only, I don't want to hide my own discomfort for the sake of looking after someone."
"You'll have to state that condition to the others, too."
"I will. I'll tell them not to wave it off as 'she's fine' just because I'm smiling. And that Sophie being slower doesn't obligate me to wait, and my being faster doesn't obligate Sophie to keep up."
For her stop phrase, Eva had chosen "I don't want to smile." It meant: don't read the moment her smile disappears as danger.
"And my ability?"
"I don't like anything that blankets the whole room or binds all three of us at once. If it's needed, each of us picks her own phrase, and I'll have Erica check on my condition the next day."
Eva's decision had begun as the role of guarding Sophie, but it didn't end there. Only after naming her own desire and her own limits separately did she agree to the proposal of all three together.
"The three of us will talk again tomorrow. If even one of us says no then, this time it's off."
"I'll wait on the same terms."
Instead of thanking me, Eva clinked her water glass against mine. Her way of keeping gratitude from piling up like a price on the relationship.
Day ten. Lunch. The knight order's dining hall — and today the three of them came together.
Karin, Eva, Sophie. Three female knights. Three trays.
I'd barely taken my seat when Karin sat down precisely at my side. Eva next to her. Sophie across from Karin — which put her diagonal from me.
"Tomorrow evening," Sophie said suddenly.
My spoon stopped.
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow evening. May the three of us come to your room, Dohyun?"
Silver eyes, aimed straight at me. Trembling — but straight.
Other knights in the hall may well have heard. Sophie didn't care. She had no margin left to care with. She must have spent days steeling herself just to push this one sentence past her lips.
Karin cut in. "I was the one who suggested it. Yesterday. To Sophie and Eva."
"Suggested?"
"...The three of us should go to Dohyun together. Then Sophie will be all right too. — Something like that."
Eva added, "...And I said it was a good idea."
Sophie took over. "...For four years, men terrified me. If someone came up behind me, I wanted to draw my blade. But your hands, Dohyun — yesterday and today both — didn't frighten me at all."
"..."
"...I want to climb over the wall. With the three of us together, I think I can."
As she finished, Sophie took Karin's hand. Karin held it back. Eva, beside them, laid a hand on Sophie's shoulder.
Three female knights. One knot.
I didn't nod right away.
"I won't answer the knot. This afternoon I'll ask each of you the same question, separately — where none of you can see the others' answers."
Karin opened her mouth, then closed it again. Eva nodded as though she'd expected this, and Sophie slowly unclasped the hands she'd been holding.
"If someone says no, does she alone step out, or is the whole thing cancelled?" Sophie asked.
"That, too, is for the three of you to decide — in a way where the one who steps out carries no guilt."
"If one person steps out, I'd want to put all of it off this time. And ask again next time with a different arrangement."
Eva gave her view. Karin thought that if the choice was individual, whoever remained could go ahead; Sophie said the condition of all three being together was itself what mattered today. They didn't agree.
In the end, for this proposal and this one only, they settled on: one withdrawal, and everything is postponed. The same rule would not carry over automatically to whatever came next.
Then, for the first time, Sophie looked me straight in the eye. Three seconds. Yesterday had been one. Progress.
"...Thank you," Sophie said, then turned her gaze to her tray and began slowly cutting her bread. Her hands weren't shaking.
That afternoon, in three separate rooms, the three of them received the same questionnaire.
[If the other two were to leave midway, would you still wish to remain in the same room as Dohyun?]
[If it ends with conversation alone and no physical contact, is that acceptable?]
[Is any part of this motivated by wanting to prove today's treatment has worked?]
[To what extent do you permit mental interference?]
On the first question, Karin wrote "I'd choose again in the moment," Eva wrote "I want to stay, but confirm it again," and Sophie wrote "only while we're together, for now." The answers didn't match. On the rest, Karin permitted light safety phrases, Eva permitted only her own phrase, and Sophie attached a condition: she would edit any phrase herself before it was applied.
Even after the answers were laid open to one another that evening, no one told Sophie to answer the way Karin or Eva had. All three signed, each leaving a blank — a space to withdraw that would stay open until midday the next day.
By sunset of the eleventh day, the withdrawal boxes on all three sheets were still empty. Only then did I give my answer: I would wait.
Day eleven. Eleven at night.
My room held one large bed, three chairs, water and towels — and the stop signals, written out in each of their own words.
Karin — two taps on her shoulder: stop, immediately.
Eva — saying "I don't want to smile": a break, no questions asked.
Sophie — an open palm shown: everyone takes one step back.
The alcohol was gone. The lamp sat within reach, adjustable to whatever brightness the three of them wanted. Between the bed and the door stood no furniture at all — nothing that might make the exit feel barred.
The ability-use log was left blank. Before any phrase was actually applied, each of them would sign her own box again — and if even one person didn't want it, it would not be used on her. I hadn't begun from the premise that the ability was necessary for safety in the first place.
Contraception and health checks were finished in advance. We hadn't fixed how far the night would go — but so that mood could never stand in for a decision, we'd confirmed the possible outcomes first.
When the three said they would come together, I confirmed three separate times that they could each choose to come alone. All three answered that watching over one another was safer.
At eleven o'clock sharp, three knocks rang out.
I opened the door on Karin, Eva, and Sophie standing in a line. Their nervous faces weren't the same — but their hands were linked.
Sophie, at the very back, stepped in last and locked the door with her own hand.
"...Tonight, I wanted to be the one to close it."
The key stayed clenched in Sophie's hand. Locking it wasn't about trapping anyone inside. It was a choice to keep the eyes outside from getting in.
"You can open it again anytime."
"I know. That's the only reason I could close it."
The three female knights' shared choice had begun.