Coercion and Persuasion (2)
Late evening.
Seon-ah was filling a shopping basket with medicine and daily necessities at the convenience store in front of the university's main gate.
Every weekend left his body covered in bruises from what he did with Yu-rin, so he lived on pain-relief patches, anti-inflammatories, and ointment. Bruises bloomed in every corner of his body, and that meant buying medicine often.
Thinking of the childhood friend who left those marks, he had been angry at first—but now, after being violated again and again, the sheer physical power gap and the absence of any energy left to resist had left him half-resigned.
Remembering the person who had reduced him to this still made him a little angry.
Come to think of it, Yu-rin had been strange today.
Normally she stuck to him all the way until they entered the dormitory, but today she had said she had something urgent that evening and rushed off somewhere.
He had a stretch of time free from watching her mood, yet an uneasy feeling would not leave him. Her behavior was suspicious enough that he wondered whether she might have set a trap again and was watching him from somewhere, just like last time.
He did not want a repeat of what he had suffered over the weekend—but this was time free from having to read Yu-rin's every expression. He could not let this precious window slip away.
He had been thinking about it for a while: in this world, his face was what people called the kind that sells.
Normally Yu-rin clung to him so tightly that other women never got a chance to show interest—but back in elementary, middle, and high school, girls who did not know he was dating Yu-rin would sometimes confess when he was alone. He had always turned them down, saying he was already with someone.
In my past life, the only person who ever confessed to me was my ex-girlfriend—just the one.
When he went out alone, he had been approached more than a few times—asked for his number, or hit with lines like I like you, so… When he refused because he was already seeing someone, a rare few of the truly persistent ones kept pushing to the end—but he always held firm.
Anyway, it seemed his face really did work on women. He only rarely got to feel it, since Yu-rin was always at his side driving other women off.
Being in this situation, he was starting to roughly understand why Yu-rin was so wary of other women. If he had a beautiful girlfriend and guys kept openly hitting on her, he would get angry too. If it happened often enough, he might even develop the same kind of jealous paranoia Yu-rin had.
Thinking about it from the other side, it almost made sense.
A good way to ease Yu-rin's obsession had just occurred to him. Maybe he could turn this around and use it.
Just talking to another woman was enough to touch Yu-rin's reverse scale. So what if he went hard—acted as if he had developed feelings for someone else and could not stay with Yu-rin anymore?
If he were in her shoes, the shock would make him apologize for everything and try to treat his girlfriend better.
When I say I'm breaking up, Yu-rin will be the one clinging to me. Once she realizes I could leave anytime, she'll reflect on what she's done and start treating me better… right?
He did not actually plan to break up—but Yu-rin's obsession was growing stronger by the day, and the way she treated him was already like a living dildo, or an object she could do whatever she wanted with. That had to change.
It was a pretty trashy idea, but he had no other options left. If things kept going this way, the future was certain: either death by overexertion in bed, or locked away in Yu-rin's master bedroom. Trying this to avoid that was worth it.
Hoping their relationship might recover to something somewhat normal, he was thinking through how to pull it off.
That was when Choi Min-ji came walking toward him from up ahead.
What if I use Min-ji for this?
Min-ji was Yu-rin's friend, after all. Yu-rin's wariness of Min-ji as a woman came purely from her obsession with him—but Min-ji did not see him as someone she wanted to date, so she did not think of Yu-rin as a rival.
Who would try to steal their close friend's boyfriend, anyway? They were clearly close friends. She would never do something like that.
First step: get closer to Min-ji.
"Hey, Min-ji."
"Hey, Seon-ah. You've got a lot in that bag, huh?"
He hurriedly hid the bag behind his back so she could not see the contents clearly, and spoke casually.
"Just some snacks. Nothing special."
If he showed her a bag more than half-full of pain patches, anti-inflammatory painkillers, and ointment, it could become a clue that let her figure out what Yu-rin had been doing to his body.
"But you're not with Yu-rin today. Something going on?"
"Yu-rin said she had something urgent and went home first."
"You two are usually stuck together. Must be boring without her."
She was clearly just making conversation.
"Of course it's boring. Min-ji, do you have a minute? There's something I wanted to talk about."
This was the first time she had seen him invite another woman to hang out—her expression showed a flicker of surprise.
"But if Yu-rin sees the two of us together, she'll get mad, won't she?"
"Last time she introduced us so we could get to know each other. It'll be fine. Coffee? Smoothie? My treat."
Truth is, it won't be fine at all. Sorry for using you.
She was a genuinely good person who thought of her friend Yu-rin before even considering his invitation—and the guilt of exploiting that stabbed hard at his conscience.
"I'll take an iced americano. Let's head to a café first."
"Just let me drop this stuff off at the dorm. Wait a second."
He left his things in his room and went to the café with Min-ji.
Min-ji started chatting about this and that, creating an easy atmosphere for conversation. Then she carefully asked about the main point.
"So you said you had something you wanted to talk about. What is it?"
"I want to get Yu-rin a gift, but I don't really know what girls like, so I was hoping you'd help me pick something out."
That was a lie. He already knew Yu-rin's tastes perfectly. He was the one who bought her birthday presents every year—and her parents' birthdays, and their wedding anniversary. Of course he knew.
"Haven't you two been dating for fifteen years? It's a little surprising you don't know what to get her."
"I always used to ask my mom and pick based on that. But honestly, there's a generation gap, right? I figured asking a friend our age would be better."
Min-ji showed a thoughtful expression for a moment, then spoke as if she had found the answer.
"Why not just call your mom again like last time?"
"Honestly, I used to go shopping with her in person and pick things out together. Over the phone, it's hard for me to choose."
He looked at her with an expression that said he was asking something difficult.
"So… would you come shopping with me?"
In the end, she turned him down.
Asking her to go shopping out of nowhere—they were not longtime acquaintances, just people who had been introduced once. Min-ji was close with Yu-rin, not with him. Knowing Yu-rin well, she must have worried that getting caught shopping with him would damage their friendship—so she refused right away.
When they left the café, it had gotten quite dark outside.
The café sat at the entrance to the mountain behind the university—far from downtown, with almost no buildings nearby, so it was a quiet, sparsely populated spot. But the peaceful atmosphere and the view while the sun was up meant it had a fair number of regulars. Right now, in the dark, the mood was a little eerie.
"Seon-ah, I'll walk you to the main gate."
Min-ji—the kindhearted, well-adjusted social butterfly of their year, the most popular person among their classmates—was offering to escort him.
Every time he was treated with the careful protectiveness usually reserved for women in his past life, it felt strange. Was this what they called gestalt collapse? The gender reversal created a gap between his past-life memories and his current life, shifting the way he perceived the world. He felt it most strongly during sex with Yu-rin.
Am I going to end up with a split personality at this rate?
Even if that were true, spinning useless thoughts would not change anything. Keeping his plan on track was more important.
"Min-ji, are you sure you can't? You're literally the only girl friend I have. Just for a little bit. Really."
This time she seemed more shaken—the silence stretched longer than before.
"Like I said earlier, no. I don't want to do something Yu-rin might hate. I'd feel bad."
It did not seem like a complete failure yet.
Looks like I still have a little room left to work with.
Still, for today, he would settle for shaking her resolve this much.
After coming home that night, Min-ji found herself slightly regretting turning Seon-ah down.
Among the girls in their department, Seon-ah was a frequent topic of conversation. Setting aside that he was Yu-rin's boyfriend—he was good-looking, a strong student, had a personality as easygoing as any girl's, and even showed the kind of good manners where the man was the one looking out for the woman.
Once, at a drinking party without Yu-rin or Seon-ah, a senior had joked that Yu-rin must have been a space hero who saved not just a country but a whole planet in a past life.
She was starting to roughly understand why Yu-rin was so obsessed.
He often seemed so defenseless it made you wonder if he had been raised like a girl. On hot days, undoing way too many shirt buttons was standard—and one day he had even shown up to school in short shorts and a single thin T-shirt so sheer his nipples stood out clearly. At drinking parties early in the semester, he did not even seem to realize what could happen to a grown man who passed out alone at a gathering—he would try to go by himself. Yu-rin had stepped in more than a few times because she could not stand watching it.
Her level of guarding him against other women was excessive, sure—but actually following him to every drinking party to protect her man was not an easy thing to do. If Yu-rin had not come to the same university with him, Seon-ah would probably have been snapped up by some girl in the department by now. Without Yu-rin, his defenselessness was just that extreme.
At the same time, the earnest way he had asked her earlier—and learning that she was his only female friend—had put thoughts in her head that she really should not be having.
What if she went shopping with him like he wanted, got a little closer, started something, kept it going… and if Yu-rin ended up going to the military first, maybe she would have a chance? Thoughts a friend should never entertain.
For someone like Seon-ah, it was almost worth the gamble. But that was the kind of thing only human scum would do, and it went against her nature.
Unless Seon-ah broke up with Yu-rin and confessed to me… maybe then.
As long as he was still Yu-rin's boyfriend, she could not casually make a move.