Try Seducing Him With Your Body
Game sounds poured in from every direction in the back of the internet cafe.
Being a Sunday afternoon, the place was packed wall to wall. Gunfire, the clash of steel, and the roar of things exploding were converted into digital noise and poured straight into people's ears.
Boom! Boom! Shraaak!
"Yo, yo! I got the ADC! Kill them all right now!"
"Run it down, top! I fucking opened the path!!"
"Woooo! Unstoppable onslaaaught!!"
Voices erupted from every corner of the room. There were the ones cheering a crushing teamfight victory, and the ones cursing after eating a headshot in some FPS. An internet cafe, as a rule, was a girls' paradise. You could hog a high-spec computer as long as you wanted, play games in gorgeous graphics, and laugh and chatter with the friends sitting right next to you. The prices were cheap enough that when friends met up with nothing particular to do, they clocked in at the internet cafe almost on instinct.
And Lee Eun-byul, after meeting up with her friends for the first time in a while, had come along to one.
Lately there hadn't been any 5v5 scrims against the Economics department, so she'd cut back on how often she showed up. But another loser-buys-drinks match had been locked in, which meant they needed to get their coordination back in shape. Especially since they'd lost the last wager match — this time, they really needed the win. Her classmates from the same major were accordingly glued to their monitors, grinding away.
Eun-byul, the team's designated carry, just sat in front of her screen and sighed.
"Haaah."
It wasn't that her lane wasn't going well. It wasn't even that she'd gone a prison-sentence 2/8/4 on Vayne after picking ADC for the first time in a while and sunk into a sulk. The real reason was that things with Lee Se-won hadn't been progressing at all lately.
It had already been six days since she'd apologized to him last Monday. In all that time, they hadn't spent any time together. Time? They hadn't even managed a proper conversation. Their lecture schedules didn't overlap to begin with, and she had the nagging sense that he was actively avoiding her. She'd considered just sending him a KakaoTalk, but a message sent in the middle of a relationship this vaguely defined would only have been awkward, so she dropped the idea almost immediately. Besides, she was the type who preferred talking face to face over texting anyway.
For all those reasons, their relationship hadn't advanced a single step. If anything, it was more awkward now than before. And that was very bad news for Lee Eun-byul. She needed to reel him in and extract a confession, and fast — that was the only way Yu Bo-ram's fifty thousand won would end up in her wallet. Every time she pictured those bills slipping further out of reach, her mood sank. The face printed on them seemed to be shouting that she didn't deserve them.
Damn it. She never should have gotten cocky and taken that bet.
The truth was, she felt a prickle of regret and guilt over how impulsively she'd agreed to it. A confession wager, when you stripped it down, meant using Lee Se-won himself — and she'd only realized that after the fact. The apology she'd given him last Monday had some of that guilt mixed into it. Of course he wouldn't have known, but that was what she'd been carrying when she said she was sorry.
She'd even considered just telling him the truth and calling the whole bet off.
But.
I can't back out either…
The moment she pulled her foot out, she'd owe Yu Bo-ram a hundred thousand won on the spot. They'd agreed that chickening out and running counted as a loss. A hundred thousand won was a lot of money. Especially for someone like her, who burned through cash running around all over the place — she had no confidence she could suddenly eat a hole that size in her wallet.
Which meant she had to see the bet through one way or another… and that was exactly why the total lack of progress right now was driving her up the wall.
"Haaah."
Her focus drifted for a stretch. The character on her monitor spent more and more time lying dead. She got dove in a teamfight, she got picked off shoving a wave, and sometimes she just walked blankly into a spot where vision was clearly lit up and died there too.
"What the hell is this idiot doing!"
"Wow. You were already a feeder, and now you've just gone full single-celled organism."
The game ended in a loss. When your primary damage dealer, the ADC, kept getting picked off, there was no winning. Eventually the friend sitting next to her couldn't take it anymore and snapped.
"Hey, dumbass. Why are you zoning out so hard today?"
Yu Go-un. A friend from the same Physical Education major. She was the type who genuinely loved working out, and it showed — well-developed muscle was her most distinctive feature.
"Just… thinking about someone."
"Someone? That Lee Se-won guy?"
Eun-byul's eyes flew wide open.
"What? How did you know?"
She hadn't told anyone.
"Saw you two heading out for drinks last week. I was just passing by."
"Ah…"
She must have meant the night they'd gone to the izakaya. Fair enough — it had been a busy street in a nightlife district, at an hour when people were out in droves. Running into at least one classmate wasn't that unlikely.
"Man, I was so shocked at the time. Of all people, Lee Se-won actually goes outside and does things."
Eun-byul was still processing that when Go-un said it like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Come to think of it, she knew about Se-won too, and she said it like it was nothing.
A question occurred to her, and she asked.
"How do you even know Se-won-sunbae?"
"What do you mean, how. He's famous. The guy actually ate academic probation."
"Ah…"
That would do it. Getting hit with academic probation wasn't exactly common. But even that didn't quite feel like enough. A person with no presence would get academic probation and just be forgotten. Out of sight, out of people's memories. If his name had spread anyway, despite barely being seen, there had to be some other distinguishing feature.
"And he's hot."
Right on cue, Yu Go-un grinned and supplied the other half. Eun-byul had to agree, privately.
He really is good-looking…
Taste aside, Lee Se-won was objectively handsome. Sharp, well-defined features, balanced proportions, and those broad shoulders. He wasn't especially tall, but he had this strange atmosphere that more than made up for it — something sharp and yet oddly calm. He definitely had the kind of pull that drew people in. The sharp eyes made him look scary enough that most people didn't dare approach, but once you actually talked to him, he didn't quite match the image either.
"So you want to get closer to him?"
Yu Go-un said it while stacking two fingers together. Her left hand formed a round ring; her right index stood straight up. Then she started pumping the left hand with gusto.
Thwap. Thwap.
The sound of flesh slapping flesh rang out as her fingers enacted a miniature sex act. The kind of dirty talk that only became possible when close same-sex friends got together.
Eun-byul nodded, her face awkward.
"Y-yeah… I guess."
She wasn't planning to take it that far, but wanting to get closer was true enough.
"But it's not going as well as you thought?"
Eun-byul nodded again. Fortunately, Yu Go-un was the type to give this kind of topic a reasonably serious answer. Being a lifelong single herself, she was surprisingly well-versed in internet dating techniques. Of course, as was typical of advice from people who'd never dated, a lot of it had no practical use whatsoever. But also as was typical of advice from people who'd never dated, it sounded practical, depending on who was listening.
"Then try showing off your charms a little."
"…Charms?"
And Eun-byul was currently in the process of falling for it. She tilted her head, and Go-un shut down her computer as she went on. They'd been in the internet cafe long enough; it looked like she wanted to head outside.
"You know… the heart-flutter stuff. Looking after him all casual, like it's nothing. Or doing something that'll make a guy's heart skip."
They stood up slowly and stepped out into the downtown streets.
"Or you could just show him your body. That works too."
"…My body?"
Eun-byul tilted her head again. They'd been on a perfectly reasonable track — where did body come from all of a sudden?
Whether Eun-byul had questions or not, Yu Go-un just kept talking, flexing her own muscles as she went.
"Yeah, your body. You wouldn't know this, but guys lose their minds over a good figure too, you know? A body that looks solid enough to lean on. A body that looks like you actually take care of it."
The same way women got turned on looking at a man's body, men had things that made their hearts race when they looked at a woman's. The phrasing was a little off, but the point was sound. Looks were a great way to win someone over, and a body counted as looks.
"So you just casually show it off. We're PE majors — it's not like we've got anything to be ashamed of."
"I mean… true?"
Before she knew it, Eun-byul had absorbed Yu Go-un's logic entirely.
She's not wrong, actually.
Obviously, walking up and going "Look at my body!" would get her flagged as a pervert. But a subtle little appeal seemed fine. Back in school there'd always been a few kids who'd go "whoa, nice body" and try to poke your abs, right? She could approach it with that same energy.
Alright. Let's give it a shot.
Not that she planned to just shove her body in his face out of nowhere. She'd set the mood properly and wait for the right timing. Eun-byul was turning that plan over in her head when Go-un spoke again.
"Heh. So you really are a girl after all."
Thump.
Yu Go-un planted a hand on Eun-byul's shoulder, smiling with genuine warmth. Something about it was weirdly irritating, and Eun-byul's face twisted.
"What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden."
She was a lifelong single herself — why was she making that face like she was watching her kid grow up?
"No, I just thought you were a lesbian. I mean, come on. You barely ever talk about guys, and even when you luck into a confession you act like you couldn't care less. I figured you just weren't interested in men."
"Ah…"
That's because they're not my type.
She answered that one in her head.
"Huh?"
That was when it happened. A guy's voice called out from the other side of the street. Eun-byul turned her head and saw a boy with a cute face lighting up with recognition.
Han Ho-cheol.
A guy in the same Economics department as Lee Se-won — someone she'd gotten acquainted with after getting dragged out a few times thanks to Yu Bo-ram. There were other friends behind him, so he must have spotted her while they were wandering around downtown. The moment he saw her, Ho-cheol came jogging over, looking delighted.
"Eun-byul~ Long time no see~!"
A low voice laced with falsetto brushed her ear. He piled on the aegyo as he talked to her.
"Whaat~ You came out to play with your friends too?"
A gaze full of goodwill settled on her. The smile hanging on Ho-cheol's lips moved like it was trying to charm her. A bright, fresh feeling spread faintly through the air around them. At the sight of him laying on the cute act so casually, faint smiles tugged at the mouths of her PE-major friends. The kind of "boy" you wanted to protect had always worked on "girls." And sure enough, Ho-cheol's bright, refreshing energy was landing just fine with her rough PE friends.
Eun-byul just gave a wry smile.
"Haha, yeah…"
Right. This feeling. This was exactly the feeling that wasn't her type. Most of the guys who'd confessed to her over the years had this same energy — a little shyness loaded in, aegyo mixed through, appealing to their own cuteness to trigger a "girl's" protective instinct and maternal streak. It might have worked on other people. It did not work on Lee Eun-byul. If anything, guys like this just made her uncomfortable. Wouldn't he just lie there all shy in bed, too?
"Seeing you like this is making me really happy. This is fate, right? Wanna hang out together?"
She was still thinking that when Ho-cheol opened his mouth again, pointing at the friends behind him. There were just as many guys in his group as there were in hers. Instantly, Eun-byul's friends' eyes lit up. For a bunch of red-blooded women in their twenties, a chance to go out and have fun with the opposite sex was not something you turned down. Sharp looks stabbed into Eun-byul. Yu Go-un's — the lifelong single — was the most oppressive of the lot. Refusing felt like it might get her killed. Physically.
I honestly don't want to.
She'd rather just keep hanging out comfortably with her own friends than stiffly make small talk with a bunch of guys she had zero interest in. Eun-byul wanted to say no, but there was no refusing in an atmosphere like this. She had no choice but to nod.
"Yes!"
"I'll go grab the others!"
Ho-cheol turned back toward his group for a moment. Watching him go, Eun-byul found herself thinking of Se-won-sunbae.
Stuff like this really does make that sunbae easier to be around.
The relationship was awkward, sure — but once they actually sat down and talked, there wasn't anything particularly awkward about it. Unlike other guys, he didn't put on much of an act, and his personality seemed pretty easygoing. The comfortable atmosphere she'd felt hadn't come from Se-won alone, then. Getting stuck with the entire bar tab last time had pissed her off a little, but enough time had passed that she'd forgotten about that too.
Anyway, she liked him. That was her honest feeling. It hadn't developed as far as actually wanting to date him, though. Dating someone meant you might end up in bed together someday, and she had no intention of revealing her sexual tastes. That would be too embarrassing.
Ah, what's the point of thinking about it.
She wiped the impossible scenario out of her head. Right now, the thing she needed to be thinking about was how to squeeze fifty thousand won out of Yu Bo-ram.
"So where shall we start?"
"I'm fine with anywhere, oppa."
Falling in behind the group that had already started chatting, Eun-byul went back to laying out her plan.