An Angel, Wild with Jealousy, Hungers for Affection
Arang sank onto the plush bed and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Haa... Keeping everyone satisfied is harder than it looks."
It wasn't that he found the present situation repulsive, or even that he disliked it. He had simply felt his heart seize when he realized things were no longer running perfectly according to plan.
I've got some lifespan to spare, sure. That doesn't mean I can afford to get careless.
At the very least, he had to match this world's maximum lifespan, didn't he? And to do that, he couldn't let an opportunity that had rolled right into his lap slip through his fingers.
Tomorrow I'll get her number on the side, and from there I'll suggest we start meeting alone.
Once a mutual rapport existed, seeing someone privately was easy. The trouble was everything that came before that rapport — and with a Hero like her, it was trouble doubled.
Heroes never know when they're going to die, so they try not to get attached.
If they died, the people they'd grown close to would be left behind in unbearable pain. Not every Hero was like that, of course, but to Arang's eye Reshi seemed steeped in exactly that tendency. Then again, watching her get along with Yuyeong, maybe he was wrong. It was only a hunch.
For tonight, I should just rest.
He wasn't particularly tired, but if he meant to keep his routine, he had no choice but to sleep. He stripped quickly and stepped into the bathroom, and he had only just sunk his body into the wide tub when—
A clunk.
"...?"
The front door opened. Footsteps drew nearer. Then a creak, and someone pushed open the bathroom door and came in.
"...Yuyeong?"
"......"
It was Yuyeong. She had entered wrapped in a white robe, despite the fact that her own room most certainly had a bathroom of its own.
"May I ask why you've come in? I'm quite sure that room has a bathroom just like this one."
"...Th-that's..."
She had walked in boldly enough, yet the moment Arang addressed her she started twirling the ends of her hair, hemming and hawing.
"Um... I mean... that is..."
She went on hesitating for a long while, unable to get a single real sentence out.
"Haa..."
At last Arang, unable to watch any longer, rose straight out of the tub and went to her. Water sloshed and dripped. He approached with nothing on below the waist, and her eyes began to shake violently. He stopped directly in front of her and looked down.
"Yuyeong. If you're going to barge in like this, you have to say something."
Frustration edged his voice a little cold. The sound brushed her ear, and Yuyeong flinched, drawing back.
"Nnh..."
"Are you planning to just stand there and not talk?"
The frustration kept swelling, and he was a breath away from actual irritation when she finally spoke.
"...I was jealous."
"...?"
"I saw you spending time with Reshi, and I envied her. I was jealous. I wanted so badly to be the one standing there, and then..."
Her voice wavered on the edge of tears, and through it Arang understood — why she had come here now, and why she was saying any of this.
"I just got so jealous... I wanted you to look only at me. I know someone like me isn't enough, and I still couldn't stop thinking I wanted you to look only at me..."
The woman from the original story was gone. That cold version of her had vanished entirely. In this world, the one Arang had stepped into, she was nothing more than a fragile woman who had fallen in love.
At first he had trained her only so he could live. But the longer time went on, the more that relationship shifted — from something vertical into something level.
Proof, in the end, that I'm just not cut out for training anyone.
He could put on a temporarily cruel, rough face when they were having sex, or when the training happened in bed. In ordinary life, he had come to see all too clearly, that was impossible.
The one mercy is that the goddess set the bar for training generously.
Even without forging a completely vertical bond afterward, his lifespan was never taken from him. That had to be the goddess cutting him a certain amount of slack.
At times like this, I'm grateful. Even if she's the one who shoved me into this place to begin with.
Arang stroked Yuyeong's hair lightly and drew her carefully into his arms.
"I'm sorry. For making you jealous. For letting you get hurt."
Training or not, he had neglected her far too much. He had treated her like a fish already caught, left her alone, and taken no care of her at all. This was plainly his own failure.
Held against him, Yuyeong felt her way along his back with both arms and only just managed to embrace him.
"Then... then..."
She nuzzled her face into his chest for a long while before lifting her head to look up at him.
"Could you look only at me tonight?"
"......"
"I won't try to have you all to myself every day. Just... remind me, once in a while, that I belong to you. I know your vessel is far too vast for me to monopolize, Master."
She was yielding past the very limit of what she could bear — crushing instinct and honest feeling alike, and acting for the sake of the master she loved. At the sight of it, Arang smiled.
"As much as you want. I won't abandon you. I'll love you and cherish you for the rest of my life. And that stays true no matter who else I happen to be holding."
He meant it. This was the moment the pure-love streak at the root of him broke the surface.
"Then... shall we get in together? I wanted to try washing with you, just once..."
"As much as you want."
He agreed at once. She cast off the white robe and bared her lush body, and like that the two of them lay back in the wide tub. Yuyeong tucked herself into Arang's arms so neatly that she looked like a joey nestled in its mother's pouch.
"...It's warm. It feels nice. And it smells good, too."
"This place uses water steeped with mana. I had them prepare it so it'd carry a lavender scent, so of course it's pleasant."
Little by little, the warmth ripened the mood between them. Arang and Yuyeong passed the time talking of this and that. Stay in the water long enough and fingers and toes ought to prune, but these two were Hunters. Their bodies outstripped an ordinary human's, and nothing of the sort happened.
"Haa... hoo..."
After a long while nestled against him, Yuyeong carefully turned her head to look at Arang.
"What's wrong?"
He tilted his head at her, meeting a gaze that offered no words at all. She only watched him in silence.
...Ah.
In an instant he caught the desire held in Yuyeong's eyes. Most of it was joy and happiness — but faintly, unmistakably, there was sexual hunger. Lust.
So it comes to this after all.
Somehow the whole arc kept playing out exactly the same way, beginning to end. Keep releasing movies like that and even a studio would go under.
"Yuyeong."
"...Yes."
He let his voice go soft and lowered his head a little.
"If you want it, you know what you have to do, don't you?"
"......"
"Of course, if you don't want that, we could do it the ordinary way... but I think it's a little late for ordinary."
From the moment his words reached her, her body began to tremble. Fierce training, and all the rough sex since, had left their mark in her flesh. She had grown into the habit of craving it rough. Tastes that had once been ordinary were already badly twisted. Unless it was the rough sex of those moments, her ruined appetite could no longer be sated at all.
"Haa... nnh..."
Yuyeong flinched, then pressed herself against him. Both arms wound around the back of his neck; her breasts flattened softly as they rubbed his chest, and she set her teeth lightly into the nape of his neck.
"Like last time... please be rough with me. Dominate me. My body can't be satisfied by anything else anymore..."
Rough. Dominate. A body that cannot be satisfied.
Not one of those was a phrase that came easily between ordinary lovers. They belonged less to lovers than to something nearer a master and his female. Even so, Arang answered her willingly.
"If that's what you want, as much as you like."
He had already sworn to spend this night on her — to do it exactly as she wished.
"Ah, ngh... Doing it in the water... feels strange..."
"First time for me in the water, too."
Arang kept her gathered in his arms and moved only his fingers, working them this way and that. Yuyeong's legs were spread, and even as his right hand tormented her submerged pussy she offered no resistance at all. His left hand kneaded her heavy breasts without mercy and scraped a nipple now and then with the edge of a nail, and she only flinched, letting a brief moan slip out, never once voicing a complaint.
In the end she couldn't endure it. Like an animal grinding its teeth, she began to nip lightly at his thick arm and hold on.
"Doing it in warm water isn't bad. The only downside is I can't tell whether you're getting properly wet."
On a bed he would have noticed her slick flowing long ago. Under the water, he had no sense of it whatsoever.
"How many times have you come?"
He had no choice but to ask — a question that, for a woman, was shame itself.
"F-five times..."
She murmured it in a voice that shrank in on itself, not displeased in the least, and ducked her head as if she were only a little embarrassed.
"Then come five more times, and we'll soap up."
"Yes..."
Water slapped and churned. The fingers sunk beneath the surface set busily to work again.
"Hnngh...♥"
The time it took her to reach those five climaxes was all of fifteen minutes.