Tutorial (3). #09. Tutorial
Yoo Dahui’s eyes were puffy and swollen from outside. She was crying over something so trivial that I had to wonder if our relationship had really deteriorated that much.
I could barely understand the emotional line she was showing, but we had only just reached Floor 0, and the only person I had been able to meet and cheer up was her. I finally understood.
“Come in.”
I led Yoo Dahui, standing in the guesthouse hallway, into my room. She entered clutching a crinkling envelope, sipping noisily. Her face flickered with every emotion. She must have been just as confused as I was. If she had pushed me so hard, she had to have been one hundred percent certain about it—until the scar changed everything overnight.
“Thanks for the black magic…!”
While I waited for her, I finally realized the black magic had been the source of the scar. The prank I had played with it earlier had drained my life force, leaving behind these creepy marks that fooled everyone.
Yoo Dahui dumped out fifteen bottles of soju from the envelope and slammed them down. Fifteen. In one go. I wasn’t a complete lightweight, but two people knocking back fifteen was a bit much, right?
Her eyes asked the question for her.
Yoo Dahui muttered, “I’ll drink it… I won’t be able to talk without alcohol…”
“Hm?”
She looked utterly defeated, and my heart ached. We had been so close—living together, sharing everything—yet this was necessary. This was the step needed to remove all suspicion so that Kim Jin-woo, not the mask-wearing bastard, could have sex with her.
Even skin-to-skin, suspicion might sprout again, but that was none of my concern. If I had worried about that, I wouldn’t have worn the mask and raped her either. I would have simply approached slowly and won her over.
Of course, if I had acted normally, I wouldn’t have been able to stop her from getting close to other men or from sliding into this guesthouse room. I was doing my absolute best to make Yoo Dahui mine.
Because of her personality, she was consumed with distrust of men thanks to the mask-wearing bastard. She couldn’t trust anyone who looked like me—even more so.
Yet she stayed with me. Maybe because I was too suspicious. She watched, analyzed. ‘Huh? Does that mean there’s no reason to stay together anymore…?’
Looking at her now, it didn’t seem so. No matter how clueless I was, I could tell those eyes weren’t ordinary. If we weren’t in the Tower of Struggle but in the outside modern world, these would be the signals worth probing.
Yoo Dahui shot me a glance and cracked open a bottle. The pop of the lid and the chug that followed happened almost at the same time. She gulped down an entire bottle in one go.
“Hey!”
“I-I’ll drink, but if I don’t get drunk I won’t be able to say anything…”
“…You’re going to regress, right? Just spill it if you’re going to regress.”
“Regress… no. Absolutely not. How could I regress…? I hurt you, and how could I just run away alone…?”
Her voice trembled, wet with tears, her eyes glistening. What the hell? Why was she flying straight past that line? The moment I saw it, I felt like I should have stripped my pants on the spot. The room was thick with something that made me want to do exactly that.
Yoo Dahui’s clothes floated in an oddly erotic way too…
This wasn’t about sex. It was about laying the groundwork for the future so the theory that the mask-wearer was Kim Jin-woo would be re-examined and I would still survive.
I had no interest in sex today. Even if Yoo Dahui approached first, I would never harden my cock.
“Let’s drink together. Don’t drink alone. Haa…”
To be honest, one of Yoo Dahui’s bottles was almost like two of my glasses. The person who always survived until the end in bars was always her. The fact that she bought the soju meant she was going to feed it to me.
Why feed it to me? If she truly wanted an honest conversation, shouldn’t she have stopped drinking?
“…You brought glasses too. What are you mumbling about alone?”
Yoo Dahui set out the glasses with perfect timing, her face wet and brazen.
She’s definitely working on me now. She didn’t just show up. She’s starting the design for her own sake.
“The snacks…”
“I forgot. This will do…”
Yoo Dahui silently slid a few pink poop-shaped candies across the table.
I nearly choked. Crazy.
“I’ll go get some soup too.”
“Ah. I’ll bring it. Just wait here.”
Yoo Dahui bolted out like the place was on fire. She was faster than ever. When she left the room, I caught a glimpse of her in those ridiculously short shorts. Those milky thighs and that ass… I couldn’t look away.
She returned with a bowl that was far too fancy for the guesthouse.
“The inn owner gave me this…”
Cheap soup, but it steamed beautifully. Okay. Hot, cheap, and easy to eat beat expensive greasy dishes any day. But no matter how well she played the hostess, she still couldn’t beat Yoo Dahui.
“…Anything else you remember?”
“Nothing specific.”
“Really? Then what do you remember right now?”
“Right now… I pulled out the intense memories from the previous loops.”p>
The troll fight, the battle with the anchovy, seeing Baek Seon-woo…
“You know so much…”
Yoo Dahui muttered that while gulping her drink. If she kept drinking like that, she was going to hit the floor. Three to one. Her three glasses to my one. That was the ratio she needed to survive.
“You know I’m a regressor, right?”
“I don’t believe it, but roughly?”
By the time the third bottle was empty, Yoo Dahui finally spoke. “Thinking about it, it makes sense. She adapted too fast. She moved like she already knew everything.”
“Yeah… But the only thing I’ve felt being stuck on Floor 0 is that you know me better than I know myself… That’s why today…”
That was the clue. The bastard who acted like he already knew everything might be a regressor. That was why she had gone all-out today.
“I’m really sorry about today. Because of something bad that happened to me, there was no choice…”
“Hey. Stop drinking.”
“I can’t say this without alcohol.”
Yoo Dahui sighed deeply and gulped again. She was trying to drink until she passed out? No way. She would never get drunk. Eventually she managed to finish ten bottles. Her face was flushed bright red, but her real drunkenness was probably just a light buzz.
Still, she revved up her engine like she was about to speak. Something worse than regression?
“S-So… I’m curious why you suspected me.”
“I’m curious. In my memories, you looked like you had known me for a long time. But in reality I only saw you for three or four days.”
“Haa…”
Yoo Dahui furrowed her brows, as if trying to dredge up bad memories. “Even if you have it in your memory, I… I once tried to fuck you.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember the exact date. It was when we went to a meat restaurant together. You said something about an older sister you knew.”
Ah. So that’s what she’s talking about? She had been raped by the mask-wearer. This sentence wasn’t just a line. It was the fuel that moved her, the motivation that made her strong. It was also the broken part that held up her twisted personality.
Telling me about that painful, shameful past was her way of trying to glue our cracked relationship back together.
“I was raped by a stranger I didn’t know. Ah…”
“You were wearing a mask, so I didn’t know your face, but the body type, voice, smell… it was similar to you. That’s why I suspected you.”
I pretended I couldn’t continue talking, my face showing genuine sympathy. I had done the deed, but hearing it from the victim directly gave me a strange feeling. I forced my cock down that was trying to rise.
“I’m sorry for suspecting you. I’m really sorry. I would have been hurt too if I were you. I couldn’t do that to you. Not even to you.”
“…If that happened, there’s nothing I can do. Those scars are nothing compared to that.”
“No! No, it’s not!”
Seeing me about to pull off my shirt in pain, Yoo Dahui jolted and stopped me. She grabbed my hand and poured out sincere apologies one after another.
“I’m sorry for hurting you. I only thought about myself. I never considered how much you suffered beside me…”
She had bought the soju to reveal her own weakness. The design, the work—none of it mattered.
“It’s fine now. No need to apologize. Just drink and go.”
“No…”
“Ah. Don’t cut it off. Drink this quickly and leave.”
I pushed a glass toward her. There was still plenty left. At that moment, Yoo Dahui took the glass I had handed her and said, “…Drink it… and then just go…?”
“Huh…?”
Her gaze was not ordinary. My cock twitched on its own, sending a signal. Her cheeks were flushed with moisture, her emotions thick with a sultry atmosphere. Not subtle—her thighs and calves and ankles were openly displayed.
I tilted the glass without a word. The corner of Yoo Dahui’s mouth lifted slightly. Was I imagining it?