A Suspicious Video Has Arrived
Thinking about it rationally...
What exactly was the point of filming lewd videos of your former party members and sending them straight to the party leader?
I crumpled the tissue wad beside the desk, tossed it into the trash, and mulled it over.
"...Are they bragging?"
Bragging was fine. People posted that kind of thing on SNS all the time and felt good about it. But shooting actual sex tapes and mailing them over? That felt like crossing a line.
It just didn't make common sense.
Of course, if both parties were into it, I could almost understand. If they shared some special mutual fetish, then as an outsider I was just supposed to mind my own business and accept it.
Still, there was always the "what if." Just in case, I picked up my phone and called the party members myself.
If this turns out to be something illegal...
I'd report it to the police immediately. If that wasn't enough, I was fully prepared to storm over and grab someone by the collar myself. Well—my spirits would do the grabbing for me, but the principle stood.
The phone rang.
"There it is."
I checked the caller. First up—predictably—was Nari.
"Hello?"
[Uungh...♡ Y-you can hear meeeeee...♥]
"............"
Mm-hmm. A voice with both ear canals wide open while the lower one was clearly clamped shut. The kind of voice you only get when someone's being pinned down by a big, thick Black anaconda of a cock.
I let out a silent sigh and asked her straight.
"A video of you and your boyfriend fucking just landed in my account mail. You know anything about that?"
[...S-sorry♡ S-Sun... hnn... haaah...!]
"...Just tell me it wasn't filmed against your will."
[Uungh... it's not like that...♡ Nothing forced about it at aaaall...♡♡]
"............"
Describe the feelings of a former party leader forced to listen to his comrade's slutty moans for an entire phone call.
Whatever else, the side of my ribs felt ice-cold.
And of all the things I had to see...
Maybe it was because she was a Warrior. All those years of armor and tight clothes compressing everything meant that once the clothes came off, the body underneath was ridiculous. Add in her Black boyfriend's equally ridiculous physique, and the whole thing looked like something straight out of the rawest Western AV. Shocking on multiple levels.
"Anyway, I'm hanging up under the assumption this was consensual."
[Mmph..... smooch.... fwp. Hnnngh...♡]
"Also, I can hear every single thrust the whole time we're talking, so maybe be more careful somewhere else."
[...Hweh?]
A completely blank, dazed sound at the end of the moan. Did she seriously think she'd been hiding it?
Actually, knowing her, she might have.
Nari's always been kind of a pure-hearted airhead.
That denseness had helped us a lot in the past, but once she fell in love it apparently made her completely blind to everything else.
I called the other three as well. Each of them had their own version of consent.
[I am merely following the Lord's will.]
[Ah... he sent that to you? I knew the bastard had a filthy personality, but...]
[...Delete it. And if you bother the 'Hero,' I'll kill you too.]
"Well, well."
They all said they wanted it, so what was I supposed to do?
[234.avi]
"I'll keep it for now."
I decided to store the file. You never know when something like that might come in handy later.
A-Class Party 『NTR』.
A party that had climbed steadily from E-Class all the way to A-Class. Sure, each member's individual effort had played a part in that growth...
"So in the end... you really disbanded?"
"It just kind of ended up that way."
...but the support of Yoo Hyewon, second daughter of the Yuseong Group, had been enormous. Whenever we were drowning in funding problems or equipment shortages she quietly backed us. She sifted through the flood of requests and picked out the high-quality ones we could actually handle. She took over the mountain of administrative work I couldn't manage alone. In every real sense she was the hidden MVP of the NTR Party.
"Haaah... That's exactly why I kept telling you over and over. Change the name from NTR Party to NTL Party."
A party follows its name, I said it so many times...
I scratched the back of my head and laughed off Hyewon's sulky complaint.
"What can you do? They chose their own future. I don't have the right to say anything about it."
"You were together for ten years. Doesn't it even feel bittersweet?"
"Everyone just had different goals."
"Different goals... When you put it like that I can't argue, but..."
Hyewon scrunched her eyes and let out a frustrated groan, the look of someone who simply could not understand.
She was probably thinking something like this:
"You thought it was a harem party built around me, didn't you?"
"...Wasn't it?"
"It wasn't exactly not that, but..."
It had been, once. Not anymore.
"I got rejected a few times back then, and later on I just started seeing them more as comrades than as potential romantic partners."
"For someone who claims that, you were awfully close."
Close enough to make other people jealous.
"Jealous? Jealous of what?"
"...Did you hear that?"
"Ah, was that thinking out loud? Sorry. This thing keeps picking stuff up whether I want it to or not."
I lifted a hand and gently stroked the little swirl of Wind hovering near my ear. The breeze coiled around my fingers, tickled my skin in a pleased way, then vanished.
"...It's all because of you, oppa."
"Suddenly?"
"Anyway, I don't care anymore."
"That's sudden too."
She stood up and half-heartedly tried to smooth things over. Since the power dynamic of employer and employee was crystal clear, I just bowed my head a little and went along with it.
"So. You called me today because of the 'contract,' right?"
"You know me well. You already agreed to cover the penalty fee, remember?"
"Hey, let's get the wording straight. In exchange for the penalty, I agreed to stay on."
"From the company's point of view it's the same thing."
In terms of human resources, it's identical, you know?
"Simply put, it means pay with your body."
"...Watching too much porn doesn't make your chest grow, you know?"
There was a certain statistic from neighboring Japan: a study of women's breast sizes. Based on the observation that the capital region clustered around A-cups while rural areas ran C–D, the conclusion was that women who slept early, rose early, and lived healthy lives ended up with larger chests.
So what about the chest size of Yoo Hyewon, second daughter of the Yuseong Group, who spent every night in cutthroat political warfare and all-nighters?
"Ah, right—yours already grew as much as it was ever going to. My bad."
"Ugh... That's not the point right now!"
AA-cups. Proof that even the floor has a basement. At least she had some height going for her, but considering she'd once cross-dressed as a man to infiltrate and get hired at a company, there really wasn't much left to say.
"Forget it. I'm already married to the company."
"Surprising. The Yuseong Group never set up any matchmaking meetings for you?"
"I wasn't completely against the idea, but I've got a criminal record, so..."
"Ah."
It vaguely came back to me. Something that happened while she was fighting with the youngest of the Yuseong Group, right?
"Still on bad terms?"
"Let's just call it a mutually hostile relationship."
"At least you're not pointing knives at each other. That's something."
"It actually feels more like we are pointing knives at each other, which is why we don't fight."
Corporate expansion. Political marriages. The whole spectacular mess that followed.
"...I have no idea how we got this far off-topic, so let's get back to the main point."
The conversation had wandered completely. Hyewon cleared her throat and finally explained what she wanted me to do.
"First, oppa, you'll be joining my company as a mercenary."
"Mercenary? Not joining a party?"
"If it were a D-Class or even a C-Class party, maybe. But forcing an A-Class into an existing A-Class party could actually poison the group dynamics."
"Ah... yeah, that makes sense."
An A-Class party was an elite unit. Cramming one more person in by force could easily create overload. Temporary support for a weak spot was one thing; full-time membership was another.
"Here's the employment contract. Ah—before you sign, I'll go through each clause one by one."
Hyewon pulled the documents from her bag and walked me through them.
"Work as a mercenary. You can be dispatched to various places, and every dispatch comes with additional performance bonuses... Ah, this part's important, so pay attention."
If you accept a request and then cancel it without a valid reason, you pay a penalty equal to ten times the fee. You know this is the absolute basics, right?
"Yeah. Anything else different?"
"Compared to the previous contract, nothing major has changed."
Overall there were no poisonous clauses. It wasn't all that different from the old agreement. The only real problem was that my salary had been cut cleanly in half just because the party disbanded. Wasn't that going a little too far, Hyewon?
"When you were a party there was a clause requiring you to clear designated dungeons every cycle, remember? Once the party dissolved, that clause disappeared with it."
"Even so, half is still pretty brutal, isn't it?"
"The amount we could pay before was possible because of the materials and clear results you kept bringing in. Right now those 'side revenues' simply don't exist."
"When you put it like that I can't really argue, but..."
It still felt like too steep a cut. Don't tell me she was skimming—
"You're not actually suspecting me of pocketing the difference, are you?"
"Yeah."
"Could you at least pretend to deny it even if it's empty words?"
"I'm not the type who can say empty words."
Besides, I was a Spirit Contractor. Spirit Contractors couldn't casually lie. Lies piled up as karma on the soul and disrupted communion with the spirits. I'd rather shut my mouth completely than ever tell a lie.
"Haaaah. I'll say it again—I'm not skimming anything. In exchange, your actions become freer, and if you put in the effort the performance bonuses alone could let you earn even more than before."
"For example?"
"An example? Well... hmm..."
Hyewon thought for a moment, then pulled out a tablet as if something had just occurred to her.
"We're expanding the training facilities soon. How about working there as an instructor?"
"Instructor? I've never taught anyone before..."
"Just share basic combat know-how, spirit utilization techniques, that sort of thing."
"And you're just going to casually strip-mine my trade secrets? That puts me in a tough spot."
"But the performance bonus is right there, isn't it?"
"Do I look like the kind of guy who'd sell his life for money?"
If she really saw me that way—
"The figure is roughly this much."
"Kim Sunwoo, instructor. Looking forward to working with you."
"Looking forward to working with you starting tomorrow!"
Hell yes. The number of digits was just completely different.