How Does Brother Namgung Know About the Milker…?
After enduring the twins of the Ice Palace’s brutal milking modifications, Im Seowol had blacked out. The next day he woke from his faint, received a half-hearted send-off from the sisters, and barely managed to drag himself back to the dormitory.
“Ugh… a-already…?”
Barely half a day had passed since the twins had milked him before he fainted, yet the moment he arrived at the dorm his chest was already swelling again. Every step sent a liquid, sloshing sensation through him.
“Wh… what do I do…?”
A light panic seized him. He cast his mind back to the conversation he had shared with the twins after waking.
“My, my… who would have thought your body would take to it so well…”
“Hnnngh…♡”
Seol Yuhwa lightly palpated Im Seowol’s chest the moment he regained consciousness. Watching him moan, she wore a peculiar little smile.
“Seowol-nim, the compatibility between your body and the medicine is far better than we expected. It’s only been six shichen since the last milking, yet you’re already past the middle of ordinary breasts—A to B cup.”
“Hah… hurry… put them back the way they were…♡”
Im Seowol clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t let out any beast-like “ohoooh—” sounds and urged the twins to restore his chest. The sisters only answered with expressions that said they were delighted beyond measure.
“Sorry. It’s not like we ever researched a way to reverse it. Still, don’t worry too much. Breasts enlarged by the Femboy Breast Development Promoter II have unmatched elasticity.”
“That’s right. Once you milk them completely dry they won’t be flat, but they’ll shrink a fair bit.”
“Heehee. Even after you empty them, half a shichen later they’ll swell back up to small ordinary breasts again. But depending on how hard you work, you can get a little temporary relief, so it’s fine, right?”
“Kh… irresponsible…!”
Im Seowol flushed crimson with rage at their words, yet of course his fury did not so much as ruffle a single hair of the Ice Palace twin sisters.
“Hmm, I like that lively look. Shall we milk you until you faint again?”
“Or would you prefer a drug that locks your chest size permanently at explosive breasts—about an M-cup?”
“Ah, that sounds good. It’s been ages since we tried the ‘make a femboy dairy cow’ routine.”
“U… uuu…”
Revealing their true colors, the twins smiled coldly while radiating the distinctive chill of North Sea Ice Palace martial arts. For Im Seowol—who was at best a studious honor student—the display was more than enough to drown him in terror.
“P-please… young ladies… how am I supposed to live with breasts like these…?”
Terrified yet still clinging to a shred of hope, Im Seowol half-knelt and clung to them. Just as they had once soothed him on the bed, the twins each took a side and gently wrapped their arms around his shoulders.
“Seowol-nim, did you really think we intended to harm you…? That hurts our feelings.”
“Right, right. …Here, look at this!”
Seol Yuhee, chiming in with her sister, handed Im Seowol a peculiar half-sphere device connected to something that looked like a water bottle.
“It’s a milker.”
“Pardon…?”
Seeing that he still didn’t understand, the twins smiled brightly.
“Use this to milk yourself and store it. We’ll buy it from you.”
“Six nyang of copper coins per hop—180 ml! Depending on quality we might even pay more! Amazing, right? Way more expensive than cow’s milk, sheep’s milk, or mare’s milk!”
“Haa…”
Finished with the recollection, Im Seowol held the milker the twins had gifted him and stared at it. Inside his private dorm room, without his knowledge, a rather large silver metal box had been placed. Oddly enough, when opened it released a stream of cold air—some kind of magical artifact.
“….”
Before his chest swelled any further, he would have to milk himself.
“Ugh…”
Kindly—of course that was sarcasm—an instruction manual had been included with the milker. Following it, Im Seowol pressed the half-sphere funnel against his breast.
“…Hnn…”
According to the manual, if he now squeezed the handle, pressure would extract the milk and the expressed fluid would collect in the bottle attached to the funnel. Before pressing, he recalled the final exchange he had shared with the twins when they saw him off.
“Whether it’s yang energy or food, you must take good care of yourself.”
The twins had insisted on escorting him and then suddenly started spouting random advice.
“Yeees…?”
“Listen carefully to Yuhwa. Secreting milk means your body is using up that much nutrition. Whether before or after milking, you’ll get ridiculously hungry. Your appetite will increase.”
“Is that true…?”
The more information the twins gave him, the more Im Seowol’s expression went blank, as if his soul had left his body. Watching him, Seol Yuhwa hugged him and patted his back the way one soothes a baby.
“It’s actually a benefit. You can eat as many delicious things as you want without gaining weight, and when you milk yourself you even earn money. Ah, instead of food you can also take in yang energy. The more yang energy you absorb, the better the quality of the milk, and more importantly your body will start craving it first.”
“…Yang energy? What do you mean…?”
This time Seol Yuhee approached and gave his shoulder a few encouraging pats.
“What else? Semen. Once you drink it yourself you’ll feel the difference. …Anyway, that’s all the advice we have.”
“We’ll send a cold-storage box to the dorm where Seowol-nim is staying so you can temporarily keep the milk. It should keep for at least ten days, so you absolutely have to sell it to us, okay…?”
“Cheonju is hot, so don’t store it just anywhere. Expensive milk spoils in two days. …Good. See you next time—?”
From ancient times, milk—more precisely, animal milk—had been an extremely precious food because refrigeration technology was lacking. Yet right after the Emperor began his reforms, cold-storage techniques transmitted from across the sea in the Americas had lowered the status of animal milk in the Central Plains to the point that even commoners with decent income could occasionally afford it.
That fact dealt a severe blow to the North Sea Ice Palace’s revenue. On the markets of Beijing, Nanjing, Kaifeng, and Lin’an, the Ice Palace’s stock price recorded an endless freefall of more than seventy percent over three full years. What saved the North Sea Ice Palace from the brink of sudden bankruptcy was precisely the strategy devised by the twin sisters Seol Yuhwa and Seol Yuhee: milking and selling the breast milk of people who were not pregnant.
The milk of beauties—more accurately, female slaves kidnapped by steppe nomads—fetched prices proportional to their looks. The milk of beautiful boys… that is, femboys, commanded an astronomical price. Why was femboy milk more expensive? Because loving beautiful youths was a refined taste of the upper classes that had been recorded since the dawn of civilization, East and West alike. In a way it was only natural.
The price differentiation according to quality was also extremely strict: the closer one was to just coming of age—around twenty—the higher the price, and of course appearance caused the price to diverge wildly as well. Im Seowol’s milk, belonging to a youth in his early twenties whose beauty was fine enough for the young master of the Namgung clan to choose personally, was scheduled to be sold only in small quantities, with a portrait of Im Seowol attached, to suitably high-class clients in order to control the market price. Naturally the pittance paid to Im Seowol himself would differ by tens or even hundreds of times from the actual selling price.
“Eheheh, develop femboy breasts, milk them, and make money. I want to stay in the Imperial Academy forever—”
“Haa… I want to go back to the Ice Palace. I miss my children. It’s already been six years of transferring from one Imperial Academy to another across the regions.”
Lying sprawled on the bed and grinning foolishly in a way that failed to live up to her face value, Seol Yuhee was answered by Seol Yuhwa, who heaved a deep sigh while thinking of the Ice Palace concubines she herself had trained.
“But you don’t like having to go around selling milk to rich aunties and uncles either, right?”
“Well, that’s true…”
Indeed. Compared to tramping all over the Central Plains until blisters formed on their feet distributing milk, or having to smile and pitch to the wealthy and the nobility even when they hated it, the work the twins were doing was pure honey… no, a divine posting. Even the Ice Palace Lord, who had reversed aging to maintain a beautiful appearance yet was still —(redacted for confidentiality)— years old, had secretly summoned the twins and dropped the bombshell, “Can’t I do that job instead…? Would you two like to be Ice Palace Lord?”
“Haa… fine. Let’s just work. Come to think of it, that one… Son Jieun, was it? The child has outstanding looks and is only in her early twenties. Yet she seems to need quite a lot of money because she’s locking her lover in a secret room and supporting them…”
Seol Yuhwa picked up a document and slowly read it aloud. Seol Yuhee snapped her fingers.
“Ah— the one Young Master Namgung developed himself? At a glance both body and mind already look completely corrupted into a female. If we just explain honestly and say we’ll pay, won’t that be enough?”
“I know that much. But I don’t know whether Young Master Namgung has completely released her or is still watching…”
Young Master Namgung’s wealth alone already overwhelmed the Ice Palace, and he also had the absolute power of the Grand Eunuch Baek Sojin behind him, so even the twins had to tread carefully. The principle of non-interference between officials and martial artists? Nowadays everyone pretended not to notice; it was a dead letter.
“Hmm… then Maeng Harang should be in contact with the young master, so let’s write a letter and have Maeng Harang deliver it to him.”
“I was going to do that anyway. Yuhee, since we don’t know what Maeng Harang might demand, think up a few suitable answers.”
“Okay, then you write the letter first.”
Having decided their course of action, the twins divided the work as always and began. The busy day of working martial artists, forever chased by time, was racing onward once more.