Chapter 27 – Yoowol’s Season 

“…It’s not the time we agreed upon yet.”

I had been dragged inside the room by Han Yoowol.

After being caught by her, I was very taken aback.

Yoowol clearly told me to come to her room before bedtime.

Dinnertime.

A brief conversation with Shin Haeil.

There were still two hours left before I went to bed, so it wasn’t time to sleep yet.

Perhaps she understood my flabbergasted expression, she nodded.

“That is certainly true, it can be considered a bit early.”

“Right? It’s a little early to go to bed, isn’t it?”

Yeah, even she has to admit it. 

When I saw that she noticed that she was in the wrong, I walked towards the door.

…I wanna get out of here.

Being alone with her made me queasy.

Unlike the other villains, I had a different impression of Han Yoowol.

Hm, what should I say? 

A villain was a villain, but Han Yoowol was Han Yoowol.

She was very different from typical criminals.

…I do not like this.

Han Yoowol always acted according to her whims. If she was not having fun, she was not interested.

She was a villain more unhinged than ordinary villains.

I’d encountered her more than anyone else in V. AGE, but I hadn’t the slightest clue what she was thinking right now.

Just like now.

Click.

“…Excuse me?”

“What is it, Sijoon? Is the door perhaps locked?”

Yes, it won’t open. Yoowol.

It seemed like she locked the room once she put me in here.

I tried hard to turn the handle, but it showed no sign of opening.

How did she lock it…?

Even though I looked around the door, but I didn’t see any button to unlock it.

In other words… 

It meant I couldn’t leave this room.

Taking light steps, Yoowol approached me who was standing in front of the locked door.

She smiled at me as if to tell me to give up, then said, “Why don’t you stop now, and take a seat there.”

In her hand were the supplements I asked for and the stamina-recovery pills.

Yeah, let’s just get that then leave.

I plopped down on the wine-colored sofa.

“…It’s nice.”

It was softer than the sofa in the library, and the plushness of the seat felt different as well.

This sofa was likely more luxurious than the sofa in the study.

No, don’t be fooled.

I almost gave in by how comfortable the sofa was.

Was this what she was aiming for?

Quickly snapping out of it, I asked her, “So, what’s your reason for calling me here?”

“Reason…”

Yoowol sat across from me with the medications on top of her desk.

If you sent me this kind of invitation, there must be a good reason.

However, she kept brooding for quite a while.

…Could it be that she just called me?

Without any reason, but to do me a favor?

That’s highly not likely.

Considering how she attached a condition saying, “Please come to my room in the evening,” when I asked her for a favor, there was something she definitely wanted from me.

Her cherry lips soon opened.

“Do you want to sleep with me?”

“…What?”

A shocking remark.

When I heard the words that came out of Yoowol’s mouth, it was the first time in my life where I doubted my ears.

Even if she was older than me, such words should not be directed towards an academy cadet.

Unable to get over the shock, I asked her, “Have you perhaps lost your mind? What’s this talk about sleeping together…”

“Oh my, you’re going overboard. I didn’t mean it in the way you’re thinking.”

Then what?

It was just the two of us at night with the door locked, which left the next step to this situation.

Was I the weird one for misunderstanding?

Or was she the weird one for causing the misunderstanding?

Obviously, I came to the conclusion that Yoowol was the weird one.

As I looked at her with an uncomfortable eye, she gave an explanation with a smile.

“I want to sleep. The thing where you lie on a bed and sleep. Do you understand?”

“But why do you want to sleep together with me?”

“…”

Han Yoowol did not say a word, but responded with a smile.

If you want to sleep, you can sleep by yourself, can’t you?

What in the world was she thinking?

She held the meds out to me as if to tell me to take them.

I accepted it and left it by the locked door, so I wouldn’t forget to take them on my way out. Then I went back to the sofa.

”As you requested, your nutritional supplements and stamina recovery pill. I’ve brought them for you. Can you find any other kidnapper so kind in this world? I don’t believe you can.”

“…Thank you.”

Considering my kidnapping circumstances, it was true that my conditions were good. It was also right of me to give her my gratitude.

I would’ve been really grateful if she didn’t kidnap me in the first place, but at least I haven’t been killed.

It didn’t feel like she had any intent on killing me.

Whether Yoowol was a villain or not, it was right for me to thank her as a human being.

By the way…

Do I have to thank her with my body?

Sleeping next to Han Yoowol.

However hard I wrack my brain, it was an act that should not be done.

”Now then. Shall we head to bed a little early tonight?”

As for me, the option to choose did not exist.

Even before I had come in, Yoowol had been wearing a white one-piece dress.

She looked ready to turn in for the night.

“Then, good night. Don’t dream about me.”

“Where are you going, Sijoon? When there is a wide bed here.”

My immediate attempt at lying on the soft sofa failed due to Yoowol’s interception.

There was pure-white bed on one side of the room.

Yoowol grabbed and pulled my hand as she put me there.

“Agh.”

Or would it be more accurate to say that she threw me there?

Anyway, I couldn’t even budge, and it seemed like I was fated to sleep on her bed.

Of all the things, I had to choose the Fate of a Playboy…

Fate was something that compelled things to flow.

It was a system created where even if the player always goes down the same route in V. AGE, they wouldn’t get bored. The episodes weren’t passive events that occurred only when a certain amount of time had passed, but fate was proactively in play, changing lives.

The reason why I was entangled with the villains like this was due to the “Fate of a Villain”.

Since I became Yoo Hayeon’s childhood friend, I became caught up with her fate, “Fate of the S-Rank’s Childhood Friend.”

There was also the “Fate of a Playboy” where I unintentionally drew women to me like a magnet and failed to settle with one woman.

It was a combination of “The Fate of a Villain” and “The Fate of a Playboy”.

It certainly looked like I won’t have a smooth death.

“…Do as you please, I’ll just be sleeping.”

“You should’ve said that from the start. Wasting energy for nothing… Aren’t you tired?”

I’m not sure what was so amusing but Yoowol chuckled and smiled. 

What she felt towards me was probably one of hunger and interest. 

I was just grateful that her actions were not out of love.

Yoowol’s wide and fluffy bed.

Although it was still too early, for someone like me who was always lacking in stamina and tired, I could fall asleep if I willed myself to.

Well-tucked in on one side of the bed, the moment I was about to fall asleep…

“The night is still long, Sijoon.”

Snuggle.

Yoowol cuddled up to my side, her distinctive scent which smelled like wine tickled my nose senses.

Yeah, I knew this would happen. There was no way she would allow me to fall asleep easily.

“It’s been a while since we talked, why don’t we have a chat? It’s a rare opportunity to have a conversation with someone like me, you know?”

“What else do you want to talk about?”

“Hmm…like your MBTI and stuff about you?”

On the outside, Han Yoowol looked like she was in her early 20s. But on the inside, she was a lot older than she appeared. But seeing as how she knew about MBTI, it seemed she was keeping up with the times.

“Like the Truth game, let’s take turns asking what we’re curious about each other. Let’s start with you, Sijoon.”

The Truth Game.

It was a game where you had to answer the other’s question truthfully.

There were a lot of things I was curious about Yoowol, so I thought it was a good game to kill time.

For starters, I wanted to ask her what the promised day was.

“A week later, on the promised day. What is going to happen that day?”

“The world will be thrown into chaos. Much more than this recent kidnapping case.”

“…”

There was cold air emitting from Yoowol who was lying beside me.

In a week, the Black Dawn members and her were supposedly going to cause an incident.

And the person they needed there was me.

It felt uncomfortable.

I felt uneasy, but now I had to quickly answer her question.

“The childhood friend from before. Yoo Hayeon, was it? What kind of relationship do you have with her? Are you lovers? Engaged to be?”

“…We’re just childhood friends. We grew up together since we were young. A friend.”

“Hmm, is that so? From that expression… It seems like you’re the only one who thinks that way. “

“…?”

I got a reply from her which made no sense.

More importantly, I never imagined Hayeon’s name would come out of her mouth.

Why was she curious about Hayeon?

That was information unknown to me.

Yoowol clung onto me even more as she murmured to herself.

“Childhood friends with that child… Won’t it be really fun later on? To think the past ties would align like this…”

“…What are you talking about?”

”It’s nothing, I’m just mumbling, mumbling to myself.”

Yoowol moved on with a smile, her eyes crinkling into a crescent moon. 

Come to think of it, why did Han Yoowol become a villain?

A thought suddenly crossed my mind.

I’ve seen Han Yoowol several times in V. AGE, but I didn’t know a single thing about why she turned into a villain.

Yoowol appeared like a comet, committing a series of crimes.

Under the pretext of the game, I asked her how she became a villain.

But she wore a wry smile and dodged answering.

 ***

After a certain amount of time had passed, much of their curiosity had been fulfilled through their questions and answers.

Sijoon, who had his guard up around Yoowol, fell asleep, unable to overcome his drowsiness.

Yoowol stared at the sleeping boy’s face.

”It’s been a while since I had fun.”

The fun of getting to know a person.

She didn’t believe she’d ever feel that way after joining the Black Dawn, but it seemed she had deluded herself.

Han Sijoon.

The request from the association which she stepped all over on.

The sprout’s childhood friend.

He had no power to protect himself, yet he possessed the pride and hero’s mentality unbefitting of him.

Just when she thought she knew one thing about him, she saw two new sides to him.

He was quite the charming kid who brought up the nostalgia of her past, allowing her to reminisce on it.

She stroked Sijoon’s hair as he took weary breaths in his sleep.

“…Am I not attractive?”

In general, when a man and woman were on the same bed together, it was only natural for something to happen. However, no matter how much Yoowol clung to him, Sijoon didn’t seem to even perceive her as a woman.

“I was going to kill him if he had so much as laid a fingertip on me. He’s much cuter than I expected.”

She liked the way he acted.

He had a pure mentality which could not be dyed black.

There was also a person like that in the Black Dawn, but Han Sijoon was even more special.

“He’s just like how I used to be.”

It had been a long time since the girl who once dreamed of becoming a hero had fallen to the darkness. She plunged to the point where she couldn’t see the light again, and the moonlight, which shone only at night, was her only hope.

Yoowol was able to briefly appreciate the light from the past due to Sijoon. 

Unlike me, will he be able to last?

With light exists a shadow.

Han Sijoon.

And Yoo Hayeon.

Having lost her purpose in life ever since she got her revenge in the past…

She, who lived solely for amusement, looked forward to seeing that end on whether they could handle the shadows or not…

“Child of miracles, Han Sijoon. Will you get in our way like you did back then?”

The child of miracles, one who exhibited extraordinary abilities.

It hadn’t been long since she found out that the boy was Han Sijoon.

Within their organization, only she and Shin Haeil knew about Sijoon’s identity.

“When that time comes, what should I do with you?”

Yoowol combed the black strands of Sijoon’s hair.

She recalled the memories of what her older brother did for her and placed her lips on his forehead.

She continued to do that even as the moon moved.

It had happened in the past.

From her past.