Part 1, Chapter 7 (2)

“Ugh… Th-that’s enough. I can’t take any more.”

[Bear with it. The first time is always painful.]

“No, h-hmm. Th-this is definitely not a moan, hyaat?!”

[…I’m not telling you to hold back your sounds. Rather, it’s better not to hold them back.]

“Just do one thing properly… h-huff. Haah, haah. No, if you suddenly speed up like that?!”

[I’ll finish it quickly so it doesn’t hurt. Hold on tight.]

“Hey, fuck! Hiiit?! S-slowly! It’s too much! It’ll, it’ll get full?! How are you so good at this?!”

[Because I’m a specialist in this field. …I’m putting it in.]

“What? Ah, no! No more, huaaa, haaaang!!”

…

…

…

“It’s over now! You suddenly used too much mana, so you’re exhausted. You’ll be fine after resting for an hour.”

“…My back feels like it’s broken. Let me lie down.”

Seok Harang swayed like a zombie. I picked Harang up and laid them on the beanbag chair as usual. Harang’s face was flushed red, and they were breathing heavily.

“Aren’t you really too much…? How could you just shove such a big thing in…?”

“Well, because this is the fastest way.”

I put the cube into my inner pocket.

“You might not feel it now, but you ignorantly drew upon the spirit’s power too much. I’ve refilled it, so you should be fine now.”

“Yeah… nothing more can go in now…”

Leaving the groaning Harang behind, I opened the refrigerator door. The refrigerator was a mess, as if my last visit had been for nothing.

“Didn’t I tell you to leave the sesame oil outside?”

“…Just eat it, don’t be so picky. Get me some juice.”

“You’re acting like a total master. To a guest.”

“I’m the owner of this house, you beggar.”

I threw the milk carton with a blueberry illustration at Harang with all my might. The milk carton, thrown precisely at their face, fell into an ice net that suddenly appeared in mid-air.

“Thanks, hehe.”

Harang deactivated the ice net, picked up the milk carton, and grinned. I clicked my tongue and lowered my gaze to the bottom of the refrigerator.

“……Canned coffee?”

One shelf of the refrigerator was full of canned coffee. Just in case, I opened the vegetable drawer, and it too was packed with canned coffee. Harang inserted a straw into the milk carton and slurped it down.

“I just can’t drink the coffee they sell at cafes, it’s too bitter. At least that one has sugar, so I can drink it sweet, right? It’s just sugar water.”

“Why isn’t there any strawberry milk?”

“Why would I buy something like that? Just shut up and drink what’s here.”

“…I’m really going to shut that mouth.”

I sighed and took out a can of coffee. Feeling the cold chill on my hand, I subtly moved and collapsed onto the beanbag chair. Harang and I lay together on the large beanbag. Harang showed a displeased expression on their face but didn’t separate their body from mine.

“Yap.”

I placed the canned coffee against Harang’s arm. Thanks to the white oversized t-shirt, their arm was exposed, and the canned coffee touched their skin directly.

Harang showed no change in expression.

“What are you doing? You idiot?”

“……As expected.”

Even with the canned coffee against their arm, Harang didn’t flinch. I confirmed that the mana flowing through their veins had instinctively reacted and opened the canned coffee.

“…What is it?”

Steam rose from the canned coffee. I took a sip of the canned coffee, which had been warmed by my mana.

“Your internal mana instinctively blocked the attack. Knowing it would cause a burn the moment it touched your skin, the mana flowing through your veins immediately acted to maintain your body temperature. It’s an SS-rank characteristic. You could probably live naked on Everest now, couldn’t you?”

“Anyway, that means I can live without air conditioning in the summer, right?”

Harang’s face brightened, and they turned their body towards me. As the daughter of Rusalka, Harang had almost zero flame affinity, meaning every summer must have been hell for them.

In winter, their stamina recovers in the cold, but in summer, they have an unusual constitution where they take dot damage just by breathing in the heat. But now, that won’t happen anymore.

“Come to think of it, we skipped an event.”

“What are you talking about now?”

“The swimsuit event.”

“Pfft!”

Harang spilled the milk they were drinking. I immediately conjured fire and evaporated the milk spilled on the floor.

“Y-you pervert?! Who were you trying to do that to?!”

“…? Oh, don’t misunderstand. I was talking about a vacation. …Look at you? What were you just thinking?”

I raised my hand like tongs, grabbed Seok Harang’s cheek, and shook it. As if they were embarrassed, they stammered without saying anything special, then pouted their lips.

“Then you should have said that from the beginning.”

“My original intention was to gauge your reaction, anyway. By the way…”

I carefully scanned Harang’s body. Although their physique wasn’t very visible through the oversized t-shirt, a mere piece of cloth couldn’t block my mana’s x-ray vision.

While Cheon Gaeul is undoubtedly the top in heroine physique, Seok Harang’s slender figure is exquisite. Especially their lower body-

“Hey. What are you looking at?”

“Your chest.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. It’s a good thing your mother’s genes didn’t work. Otherwise, your chest would have become the Gimhae Plains.”

I habitually climbed onto Seok Harang’s body. Seok Harang was lying on the beanbag, and I was on top of them, facing each other. I rested my head between Harang’s mounds. It was definitely less mature, probably because it was 5 years before the original story, but with a little more care, there was a possibility it could grow even larger than in the original-

Thump, thump, thump.

“……Seok Harang-nim?”

“D-don’t talk to me…”

Were they flustered by our sudden embrace, or embarrassed by my face looking up at them? Harang’s heart was thumping incredibly loudly. I rested my chin on Harang’s sternum and sighed.

“…They’re doing this again. Didn’t I tell you not to thump so much?”

“Then don’t suddenly do this!”

“You never know when or where someone might launch a surprise attack like this, do you? Puhuhu. Or is our Seolhwa Princess…”

I pushed off the beanbag, lifted my body slightly, and met Harang’s eyes. We were close enough for our breaths to touch, and Harang’s ragged breathing tickled my neck.

“Were you such an easy woman that you’d fall for anyone, even for the enemy who killed your father?”

“…….”

Harang’s thumping heart began to slow down. Harang’s flushed cheeks gradually lost their color, and their pupils, which had been shaking as if from an earthquake, settled down.

Thwack! Harang grabbed my shoulders and flipped me over. The beanbag shifted to one side, and my body was overturned, but I obediently followed Harang’s lead and lay on the floor.

The position changed. Harang pinned me underneath and took a mount position. Harang looked down at me with a cold face that seemed to drip with chill.

“As expected, I can’t see you in a good light.”

“Of course. Don’t forget. You mustn’t fall for me.”

“…….”

Harang glared at me. I didn’t avert my gaze and looked up at Harang directly.

They glared at each other in silence for several minutes. I gradually grew curious. By this point, they should have been saying things like, ‘What bullshit, you crazy bastard,’ and throwing me off, but I was still restrained by Harang, my wrists held.

‘What the. What’s wrong with them? Scary.’

Could they have frozen like this? Was my warning not to fall for me so shocking that they stiffened up while standing? Just as I was wiggling my toes, fidgeting,

Whoosh. Harang embraced me directly. I was thrown into confusion by Harang’s sudden action.

“Ha, Harang-ssi?”

“You don’t know that, do you?”

Harang whispered into my ear in a voice that sounded like they were about to laugh or cry.

“Since I became SS-rank, I’ve gotten better at reading emotions, haven’t I? Where are you trying to lie, you damn brat?”

“……Ah!”

I’m an idiot. I quickly escaped the restraint and changed my body into my monstrous human form-

Drip. A tear fell from Harang’s eye. The transparent liquid brushed past my eye and flowed down my temple.

“Why do you keep trying to make yourself a sinner?”

“……No. You’re mistaken right now. That’s all a misunderstanding-“

“Misunderstanding my ass. You’re the only one who doesn’t know your heart is thumping here.”

Harang pressed on my heart. I could feel Harang’s chill through my clothes. I squeezed my eyes shut then opened them. In Harang’s eyes, my pupils were burning with blue flames.

“Take your hand off.”

“Answer me clearly first. Otherwise, I’ll…”

Harang created an ice spear with a glance. Its tip was sharpened so keenly it looked like it could pierce a throat at any moment.

“I’ll die, Seongju or not.”

The ice spear was aimed at Harang’s throat. Like Harang, I could also read emotions to some extent from the opponent’s mana.

Harang was serious.

“……It’s going to be a rather long story.”

I hadn’t intended to talk, but I ended up talking.

* * *

“……Is that so?”

“That’s how it is.”

I reached behind Harang and patted their back. Fortunately, Harang had withdrawn the ice spear, but they were quite shaken emotionally.

“I’m sorry. But I want you to know this: Eun Yuha came up with that idea because she was genuinely worried about you.”

“I know. That’s why it’s even more annoying.”

Harang seemed to have no energy to get up, so they just collapsed onto me, their body overlapping mine. Harang’s knees pressed between my thighs.

“The fact that both of you did such a thing because you were genuinely worried about me, it’s just absurd right now. Didn’t you completely play with my feelings?”

“…If it weren’t for Miss Eun Yuha, Gwanggeom would be in their grave right now. Originally, I was just going to kill Gwanggeom cleanly.”

“Is that something someone who killed another’s father should say? Honestly. You’re here taking Yuha’s side.”

“Otherwise, you might kill Eun Yuha.”

Although my mistake revealed the secret deal with Eun Yuha, I didn’t want Seok Harang to become enemies with Eun Yuha. Emotionally, I wanted to kneel and apologize.

“Ah, don’t do that. I’d be even more embarrassed.”

“…Ah, damn it, in human form, you can read everything about me. Move. I’m going to change into my monstrous human form right now.”

“I don’t wanna? I dooon’t wanna? If you don’t like it, you become SS-rank in that state too. Hehehe.”

I had nothing to say. I had momentarily forgotten that the maximum output for human form was S+. Perhaps the root cause was all the headaches I’d had because of Rusalka.

“Oh, then I can kill you right now, can’t I?”

“……”

“Heh. Look at you getting nervous. I won’t kill you. I won’t kill Yuha either, and I won’t say anything to… teacher.”

“…? Then what?”

Harang’s expression hardened.

“Seongju. That bastard messing around in the darkness is the root of all evil, isn’t he? We have to catch that guy.”

“……The Whisperer in Darkness.”

“Same difference.”

Harang snickered. My heart felt a little lighter too. But now, how do I explain this to Eun Yuha? When you think about it, it was my mistake that this person found out-

Flick! Seok Harang flicked my forehead with their finger. It didn’t hurt, but it stung.

“……What are you doing right now?”

“Because it felt like you were digging your own grave again. And it seems like you’re curious how I knew.”

“…Alright. How did you figure it out just by reading my emotions? That Gwanggeom is alive? That doesn’t make sense logically. I can’t understand it. Never.”

“Look at this then.”

Harang put their hand behind my neck. Then they lay down beside me and brought up a screen on their smartwatch.

“…Hero Community? Why this?”

“Just watch.”

Harang connected to a site they had already visited. Soon, a video began playing, showing a large, bespectacled man passionately speaking, breathing heavily.

[Professor Do-nim, so you’re saying that this ‘Masked Swordsman’ is the deceased Gwanggeom?]

[Of course! According to my theory, all six other attributes, excluding the fire attribute, show a 99% match with Gwanggeom’s previous mana patterns! Unless it’s a doppelganger, something like this can’t happen! I stake my honor on it! This person is Gwanggeom!]

Beep. Harang played the next video. I barely swallowed the curses that threatened to escape.

Juang, Juang. On a cliff, a figure clad entirely in black was intercepting West Sea weapons, wielding a sword of light. It seemed to have been filmed from quite a distance, as the excited breathing of the cameraman was clearly audible in the video.

[Wow! Isn’t that Gwanggeom-nim?! Their skills are exactly the same!]

The video then disappeared with static. But a black screen continued to play. It was a script Harang had scraped from the video.

“This isn’t the only one.”

[Hello, this is Hitka from Tenshi TV! Tush Tush! In this episode, I’ll be reviewing the unidentified Black Knight of the Korean Peninsula, where Moby Dick appeared. To get straight to the point, my analysis indicates that this superpowered individual is Gwanggeom, the S-rank Korean hero who was said to be dead…….]

“…….”

“I scraped it before the video got deleted. Hehe. Wow, you’re easily fooled. I just probed a bit and made your heart thump, and your true feelings came right out, didn’t they? Hey, say something.”

I felt hollow.

“That’s impossible. I got found out by something like this?”

“I did try not to show it much.”

Harang poked my side and grinned.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know? Huh? Did you think I wouldn’t feel it when the distance from Haeundae to that island isn’t even 1km? Huh, huh? Hehehe.”

“If you went down to Busan, you should have just kept quiet, why did you have to step forward and get found out…?”

Harang raised their index finger, shook it left and right, and clicked their tongue. They were so annoying I wanted to burn their bangs off.

“I also thought it wasn’t him at first. But then I had doubts. My gut feeling was 99% sure, but a dead person can’t come back to life, can they? But then…”

“Dullahans, damn it.”

“Hehehe. Even the dead Pine Tree Unit heroes revived at Gwanak Station and then died, so I wondered if it was possible. I’ve been collecting data until today and browsing communities all night just to mess with you. But honestly, what could I believe? Still, somehow, I wanted to ask you.”

“You guessed this by intuition? Are you crazy? Tell me honestly. You must have heard it somewhere, right? Did Eun Yuha tell you?”

“…As if. Would she tell me just to get beaten to death by me? Wow, becoming SS-rank really changes your world. You’d win the lottery instantly, wouldn’t you? Hehe. Hey. People are making a big fuss, pitting you and me against each other, but it seems I won, didn’t I?”

I picked Harang up and threw them onto the beanbag chair. Harang let out a scream mixed with laughter as they sank into the beanbag, and I immediately climbed on top of them, meeting Harang’s eyes. A flicker of tension crossed Harang’s eyes.

“……Huh? W-what are you? Why suddenly so-“

“Partial monsterification.”

I pointed to the arm that was gripping Harang’s two hands. From the joint down to the fingertips, it had changed into the arm of a monstrous human. Harang tried to pull up mana to escape my grasp, but it was useless.

“I can’t reach maximum output, but SS-rank is easy enough.”

“…….”

Harang lost their will to fight. I smiled victoriously and released their wrists. Then I ran my hand through Harang’s messy hair.

“Don’t mess around.”

“……Gulp.”

Harang swallowed and nodded. I pulled and released Harang’s cheek like a chapssal-tteok with my gauntlet, then got up.

“So, since I’ve been found out anyway, let’s make it clear. Are you going to meet Gwanggeom?”

“……Not yet, I guess.”

Harang pressed their palm against the cheek I had grabbed, rubbing it in a circle.

“I don’t know what to say even if I meet them. Now that I know everything, it’s hard to call them ‘teacher’ like before.”

“…Well, there are plenty of opportunities. If you want, just tell me. I’ll arrange a meeting.”

“Oh my, how veeery thankf-“

Harang smiled, lifting one corner of their mouth. I returned the smile.

“It’s almost lunchtime, so let’s go eat.”

“Really? Ah, this time I’m paying. I earned a ton of Cores this time, you know? Hehehe, you’d be surprised if you knew how much I have in my possession.”

“Yes, yes. Treat me to a meal to celebrate becoming SS-rank. And treat me again at the cafe afterward.”

“…….”

I finished preparing to go out by changing Harang’s clothes with mana. Outside, the clouds had already cleared, and bright sunlight was shining.

“Ah, but now that I think about it, I’m pissed off. Who are you to sell someone else’s father to Yuha, huh? Is Gwanggeom some kind of object?”

“E-Eun Yuha bought him, you know! She’s an accomplice, you know?!”

“You must have seduced her, and that innocent unni-ya fell completely for it. Come here. You’re dead by my hand today.”

“Ha, that fox, innocent? That’s absurd. And no learning ability, kyaaak?! My, my chest?!”

“Hehehe, you touched me, so I can touch you too, right?! Wow, so these are all mana pouches, huh? You have a ridiculously lot of mana… Ah, damn it, that’s even more infuriating!”

“St-stop?! My body is-” [Stop it!!]

I was genuinely angry. Harang’s two hands stroked the front of my monstrous human form’s breastplate.

“Tsk. This is quite… something.”

Even after I changed into my monstrous human form, they tried to grope my chest.

For that moment, I was truly scared. I instinctively poked Harang’s weak spot.

“Hiiit?! Th-there?!”

[I know where all your erogenous zones are.]

“Y-y-you pervert?! Alright, let’s go at it! Hey! Don’t be a coward and just change your hands like before! If you win, I’ll do whatever you want! Anything!”

[Oh ho. You just said ‘anything,’ didn’t you?!]

I don’t know how much time passed with all the wrestling and tumbling. In the end, we were both huffing and puffing, and our appearances were too disheveled to go out, so we decided to order delivery food.

I was so annoyed that I poured the sauce over it.

“Yaaaaaaahhhhhh?!?!”

“Hmph. I poured it because I knew you preferred dipping.”

After the meal, we immediately entered round two.

As expected, Fire types couldn’t beat Water type attacks.