Elena's Resolve (2): Bitch System?
I couldn't sleep.
Elena dropped off first at three in the morning, and I lay staring at the ceiling, sunk in thought. Four o'clock. Five. A loop of thought — was this an effect of [Common Sense Alteration], or the real thing? The same question repeating without end.
Fuck. Perfect.
So this is what suspicion is. When a woman says she loves you, an ordinary man gets happy. I analyze. That's how I'm broken — and knowing it's wrong doesn't mean I can fix it.
Five twenty.
Elena stirred. The first signs of waking — her brow creased, her lips fluttering.
Her eyes opened. Violet. In the dawn light they looked even deeper.
"...You didn't sleep?"
Caught.
"A little."
"Liar."
Elena sat up. The sheet slid down to her waist, baring her upper body, and dawn light settled across her shoulders.
...Fuck. One sheet slips down and my cock is the first to offer greetings. The bastard who spent all night glaring at the ceiling asking whether her love was real or fake — one bare shoulder, and heat coils low in his gut and hardens. Press it down. Hard. A so-called analyst in heat before sunrise — clinical diagnosis: hopeless loser. And the cock-brained part of me already remembers the deepest spot inside this woman, the place where I dumped every drop of my seed last night, standing stiff and aching since dawn, begging to be let back in.
"What were you thinking about?"
"What you said."
"That I love you?"
"Yes."
"Any regrets?"
"No. I was analyzing."
"...Analyzing?"
"I told you. Occupational hazard."
Elena laughed like I was hopeless. But her eyes were soft.
"Kang Do-hyun. You receive a love confession and spend the whole night analyzing it?"
"...Yes."
"You're insane."
"I hear that a lot."
I meant it. I really do hear it a lot. Probably the most frequent verdict anyone has passed on me in my life. Insane. A diagnosis so goddamn accurate there was nothing to say in rebuttal.
Elena climbed on top of me. The sheet fell away. The two of us bare, under the dawn light.
"Enough analysis."
"..."
"Just feel."
A kiss. A morning kiss, different from the night's. Soft, slow, warm. Lips still rough with sleep — and that was exactly what made it real.
"I want you."
"It's morning."
"Mornings are better. Night is impulse. Morning is choice."
A logical woman. Down to the bone.
"Elena."
"What?"
"This time... I want to connect properly."
"Properly?"
"[Bitch System]. One of my magics. When we're connected deeply enough... our memories flow into each other."
Elena's eyes turned serious.
"You'd see my memories?"
"Yes. And mine could flow into you as well."
"..."
Three breaths. Decision time.
"All right."
"It could be dangerous..."
"I said all right."
A queen's decisiveness. Once her mind was made up, she never looked back.
"On one condition."
"What is it?"
"You show me yours too. Fair is fair."
"...Understood."
I was afraid. Of my memories. Earth. Grad school. My father. Everything from before the summoning.
But... it was fair. Demanding everything from Elena while hiding myself would be cowardice. The old me would never have taken this deal — asymmetric information is power. And yet in front of this woman, that principle kept collapsing. It annoyed me, and honestly, I didn't hate it.
"Let's begin."
Connection.
[Bitch System] was practically the ultimate skill of Level 3 — the complete mutual opening of consciousness while in physical contact. Where [Memory Reading] was a one-way read, [Bitch System] was a two-way stream.
Doing it required... deep contact. Physical and emotional.
In other words, it worked best when activated during sex.
Elena straddled me. The same position as before. But this time was different — the spell went to work.
The moment I entered her... [Bitch System] activated.
"...!!"
The two of us went rigid at the same instant.
The world changed.
...Elena's memories came flowing.
The first memory.
Young Elena. Seven years old, princess of a southern grand duchy — a golden-haired girl racing through the garden, laughing, gathered into her father's arms.
"Daddy, when I grow up, I'm going to be a knight!"
"A princess can't be a knight."
"Why not?"
"Because those are the rules."
Rules. The word that had governed Elena's life. A princess's rules. A queen's rules. A woman's rules.
It felt fucking incredible. Peering into the deepest place in this woman. Professionally, it was data. As a human being... it was sad as fuck.
The second memory.
Fifteen years old. The arranged marriage announced to her.
"You will wed Prince Callandel."
"Is he a good man?"
"Whether he is good or bad is irrelevant. You will be a queen."
Fifteen-year-old Elena cried. At night. Face buried in her pillow. Without a sound.
The third memory.
Eighteen. The wedding. Lavish — the whole kingdom celebrating. But the bride's eyes weren't smiling. Callandel stood beside her, still in his healthy years. Handsome. But his eyes... hollow. This wasn't a marriage he'd chosen either.
The wedding night. Awkward. Callandel clumsy. When it was over, he turned his back without a word.
"...Good night."
There was no answer.
The fourth memory.
Nineteen. Lizette's birth. Callandel's face at the instant the child came into the world.
"Not a son?"
His first words. He never looked at his daughter's face. Never asked how the mother was.
The moment the light drained out of Elena's eyes — the moment the last of her hope for this man died.
But she looked down at the baby in her arms.
"It's all right. Mama's here. Mama will give you everything."
Lizette. Golden hair. Violet eyes. A child who took after her mother.
The fifth memory.
Twenty-eight. The year she took full control of state affairs. Callandel abandoned the palace for three months on a hunting pretext. In that time Elena persuaded the council and reformed the tax system. The kingdom's revenue rose thirty percent. Callandel came home and managed a single remark.
"Well done."
Well done.
Twenty years given, and what came back was "well done."
The sixth memory.
Thirty-two. The year Callandel stopped coming to Elena's chambers. Impotence. The shame of not rising before his queen. He would walk to her door and turn back. Elena, listening on the far side of the door. Will he come? Won't he?
The footsteps fade.
Three years. Every single night, a woman listening to footsteps fading away.
Tears came.
My tears.
Inside Elena's memories... I was crying.
"Do-hyun?"
Elena's voice, from reality. Distant. Across the river of memory.
"You're crying?"
"...No."
"Liar."
...My memories flowed into Elena.
I tried to hold them back... but [Bitch System] was mutual. There was no stopping it.
And that was the most fucked-up part of all. My whole method has been to strip everyone else bare while never showing a thing of my own. Right now, that wasn't an option. It felt like being flayed. My body had already been naked for a while — this was naked in a different sense.
The first memory.
Young Do-hyun. Five years old. Seoul. Holding his mother's hand on the apartment balcony, watching the stars.
"Mom, why do the stars twinkle?"
"I don't know. You find out when you're big."
His mother's laugh.
The second memory.
Twelve. His father's funeral. A car accident. Out of nowhere. Mom didn't cry — not in front of him. A strong woman.
"Do-hyun, Mom's here."
The same words as Elena's. Mom's here.
The third memory.
Twenty. Admitted to clinical psychology. Grad school. A professor asked.
"Why clinical psychology?"
"I want to fix people's minds."
"And you think they can be fixed?"
"I don't know. But I want to try."
The fourth memory.
Twenty-five. His first counseling practicum. A patient with depression. A woman in her fifties. A husband's affair. A history of suicide attempts. Three months of counseling; she had seemed, little by little, to be getting better. In the fourth month, the contact stopped. In the fifth month came the notification of her death.
Do-hyun sat in the empty counseling room. One hour. Two. Able to do nothing at all.
The fifth memory.
Twenty-seven. Moments before the summoning. The grad school lab. He'd fallen asleep writing his thesis. When he opened his eyes... another world.
The rivers of memory converged.
Elena's loneliness and mine — our different losses came crashing in all at once. The sensations of the real world receded, and two lives overlapped like sheets of transparent film. I saw Elena, kept from attending the Grand Duke of the South's funeral; Elena saw me, twelve years old, having lost my father and unable to cry.
"Do-hyun... you can cry."
What I'd been bracing against gave way at those words. For the first time since coming to this world, I wept without a sound. There wasn't a gap left to flee into analysis through. Elena wept too, watching my mother's hand and the empty counseling room inside my memories.
And then a scene that belonged to neither of us forced its way between the flow of memories.
An audience chamber of pure darkness.
A black chair with no crown set upon it.
Thirteen thin lines carved beneath the backrest. The first was already red. The instant we looked at the chair together, the second began slowly reddening as well.
In the mirror behind the chair, there was no face. Only a hand in a black glove was reflected on the glass.
[When two people accept each other's memories, the second door opens.]
The scene severed.
"Did you... see that just now?"
"The chair with no crown. Thirteen lines."
Elena's body froze.
"It's the same as my nightmare."
It wasn't my memory, and it wasn't Elena's. Someone had been watching from outside as my power joined human minds together, and had pushed through an image disguised as memory. The second line lighting up meant the connection itself had satisfied someone's condition.
Without breaking the connection, we combed through each other's memories once more. Elena's arranged marriage and my summoning, her resolve to protect Lizette and my guilt over leaving my mother alone — they lay folded over each other in matching shapes. That sameness was a comfort. But the black chair we had just seen left open the possibility that even that comfort had been designed by someone.
As the resonance deepened, Elena's perspective flowed through, sharp and clear this time.
Her wariness at the first interview. The small relief that had formed at the second. The sentence I had planted at the third.
'Before this man, I don't have to be the queen.'
Elena had watched, from that day on, the ten days of me calculating the spacing of touches and questions to grind her resistance down. She also knew now that even the moment she had first called for me had come only after Stage 3 of [Common Sense Alteration] had settled in.
Anger rose. It was the natural reaction. Dressing manipulation up in a pretty word like "permission" did not erase the violation. Even if I had opened the door, the door had always been Elena's.
But apart from the anger, what she felt now also existed.
'Even the words "I love you" were not a script you wrote for me.'
Elena's thought arrived like a written sentence.
'But neither can I prove that all of it is purely my own feeling. I won't force the two into one and call it love. What we leave here from now on, I will choose myself.'
She would not hand me her body, her power, or her future. She would wield the queen's authority herself, for the kingdom's sake; political alliance would be negotiated when necessary; and access to her memory and her mind would require her separate consent, every single time.
That choice was not a declaration of ownership. It was the declaration of someone who had seen through the manipulation and reclaimed her own sovereignty.
I never got the answer I'd hunted for all night. Elena's love contained both the influence I had built and the feelings she was choosing anew, and the ratio between them could not be measured. Only one conclusion stood clear: from this point on, her choices were not to be deceived.
And the black chair.
The second of the thirteen lines had lit.
While we analyzed whether our feelings were real or false, some nameless presence was already opening the next door. The thought ran along the nape of my neck, colder than the tears.
The resonance weakened. The mingled memories drifted slowly back to their own places.
Consciousness returned.
Elena lay collapsed over me. Ragged breath. A body soaked with sweat. A trembling hand held my cheek.
"I saw it."
"...Yes."
"Your world. Your life. All of it."
"And I saw yours."
"You cried. Because of me?"
"Because of you, Elena. And... because of myself."
"..."
Elena kissed my forehead. Gently.
"Strange magic. [Bitch System], you called it?"
"Yes."
"I want to do it again."
"It's dangerous. If our consciousness merges completely..."
"Even dangerous is fine. If it's with you."
Did this woman simply not know fear? No... she was a woman who stood on top of her fear. She had lived twenty years that way.
"You should rest now."
"No."
"Elena."
"Once more."
"...We just did?"
"Once more. Without the [Bitch System]. Just... the two of us."
Just the two of us.
No magic. No shared memories. Just a man and a woman.
"As you wish."
This time, with no resonance, we came together slowly, face to face.
Having seen each other's memories, even the act of holding hands felt different from before. I thought of the girl informed of her arranged marriage at fifteen, and of the twenty years a queen had spent holding a kingdom upright. Elena, too, knew now the loss that lived in my hands.
"Why are you being so careful?"
"Because you're precious."
Elena's eyes went damp.
"With Callandel, it was always duty. I was a tool for the succession."
"Not anymore."
"Then don't use me as a tool either."
She told me she knew of my plan to bring down the king, and of my calculations to make use of her power.
"If we're allies, then we share information. Don't use my name, or my mind, without my consent. I won't be exploited in exchange for love."
"Understood."
"Don't just answer. Remember it."
Still holding Elena's hand, I said it.
"I love you."
The words I had failed to say last night. I couldn't prove how much of the feeling had been shaped by manipulation. But I refused to use uncertainty as an excuse to dodge the responsibility of this moment too.
"I love you, Elena. Which is why I won't treat you as a component of my plans ever again."
Elena studied my face for a long while, then nodded.
"You're late."
"I'm sorry."
"But I heard it. That's enough."
Without our powers, checking nothing but each other's answers, we drew close again. The distance between a queen and a court mage, between a man of Earth and a man of this world, did not disappear — but at least we stopped hiding it.
After a time, Elena leaned against my shoulder. With no resonance at all, our breathing slowed into the same rhythm.
Through the rest of the night, we kept repeating the same cycle — resting, then talking.
"Do you miss food from your world?"
"I miss ramyeon."
"What's ramyeon?"
"A dish of noodles in hot broth."
"Find the ingredients, then make it for me."
A conversation that leaked from the kingdom's fate and the black chair into ramyeon felt strangely good. Because for the first time since coming to this world, I had someone with whom to make a trivial promise.
As dawn drew near, Elena closed her eyes.
"When you wake in the morning, deal with the black chair first."
"Yes."
"And the promise you made today as well."
"I won't forget."
The analysis paused for a while. All that remained was body heat and the even sound of breathing.
Dawn was staining the window.
I felt it half-asleep. Elena's breathing. Steady. Deep sleep — no insomnia for her. A queen at peace, held in my arm, still linked to me, still with what I'd left pooled deep inside her.
Protect this woman.
The analysis, the strategy, the plans... set them all aside, for now.
Protect this woman.
Funny, isn't it. A bastard who crawled into the palace to use people as tools, now vowing to protect the tool. I couldn't tell where the plan had first gone off the rails. No — I knew, and I was pretending not to. Same as always.
"Do-hyun. Without you, I'll fall apart."
Elena murmured it at the edge of sleep. Sleep-talk, or truth?
"I won't be the one to break you, Elena."
I tightened my arm around her.
The light of dawn wrapped around the two of us.
The night was over, and morning was on its way.
Before the sun had fully risen, Clara reported in a low voice from outside the closed door.
"Your Majesty. There has been a change in the black tablet in your private vault. The seal remains intact, but the second line has turned red."
Elena and I opened our eyes at the same time.
A memory only the two of us had seen had left its mark inside the queen's vault.