Chapter 56
The year and a half I've spent living as Han Taeyang after transmigrating into this world was the most densely packed year and a half of my life—even compared with the much longer life I had lived in my previous existence.
Do you know what impressed me most out of everything I had seen and experienced during that time?
The existence of Awakened people, who should have been nothing more than products of imagination or fiction in my previous life? Monsters from beyond other dimensions, crossing over through dungeons and gates?
Of course, those were undoubtedly wondrous features of this otherworldly realm that could not help but inspire awe.
“My girlfriend—I mean, Chae-eun. Could you sleep with her for me, Han Taeyang?”
“…….”
But if I had to pick just one thing, it would probably be the screw-loose male leads of this world.
It was the small coffee shop on the outskirts of the academy that I had visited last month with Baek Seol-ah among others.
Since it had fewer customers than the franchise cafés in the center of campus, it was the perfect place for having conversations that would be troublesome if overheard, and I paused for a moment while lifting my coffee cup─.
“Hmm……”
That lasted only a moment. Soon, I merely raised one eyebrow without any notable change in expression or violent reaction.
It would be a lie to say I hadn't been shaken at all. But it wasn't enough to leave me utterly dumbfounded.
In truth, the first incident of this sort had been the most absurd, and after experiencing something similar twice, one inevitably developed a certain degree of resistance, whether one liked it or not.
‘I wonder whether the entire world is insane, or whether they somehow crammed every lunatic like these two into the same academy.’
I leisurely sipped my coffee and glared at another male lead from the original novel, who had recited almost exactly what Lee Hyeonseong had once said to me.
His remarkably calm and composed attitude only made Jeong Jaeha grow flustered and ask me back.
“W-what? You didn't say anything, and that's it? You're taking it much more calmly than I expected.”
“Hmm. No, well, it's possible.”
“Just so we're clear, I'm not bringing this up as a joke, either.”
Compared with how calmly I took it, he seemed extremely tense. Apparently burning with anxiety, he downed his iced coffee in one gulp.
Then he set down the cup and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve before continuing.
“Phew. You probably have no idea how long I agonized over bringing this up. Really, truly, I went back and forth and tormented myself countless times……. I only made up my mind the day before yesterday and called you here.”
I nodded repeatedly and answered him.
“I see. You must have agonized over it a lot.”
“Hmm. Still, I want you to understand this. I'm absolutely not making this request because of some bizarre sexual appetite like Lee Hyeonseong, that bastard.”
“I see. Unlike Hyeonseong, you absolutely aren't doing this because of some abnormal sexual appetite.”
“……”
But after I responded twice in almost the same tone, Jeong Jaeha seemed to notice something strange in my attitude and made a sour expression.
He soon lifted his head and looked at me, his lips twitching with a hint of irritation at the look in my eyes that inspired absolutely no trust.
“Hey, I really……”
Had he perhaps begun reflecting on himself? Before long, Jeong Jaeha wore an expression of belated reality hitting him, let out a short sigh, and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“……No. That's not it. Yeah, if I were in your position, I wouldn't readily believe whatever I said, either. I understand. Ha, damn it. That fucking Lee Hyeonseong.”
Then, apparently blaming his close friend for setting such a terrible precedent, he began cursing him.
Lee Hyeonseong would have been hurt if he had heard, but the only people here were Jeong Jaeha and me. Naturally, I had no intention of doing anything but joining in those curses─.
If I were to add one more listener, perhaps it would be the café owner sitting at the counter some distance away.
I glanced in that direction and saw the beautiful female owner making a somewhat peculiar expression.
The shop was so quiet and empty that she must have heard our conversation loud and clear.
And since I had visited before with Baek Seol-ah as well, I suspected she probably remembered this entire dizzying saga.
“Ah.”
“Mm.”
Timing was a truly strange thing. After all, in this brief instant, our eyes had met again.
I lowered my head awkwardly first, and the female owner reluctantly let out a hollow laugh.
Soon, she lightly nodded just as I had, which I took to be a silent signal that she would not go around telling anyone about this.
After all, wasn't this an academy where young men and women in their early twenties—the most vigorous age of their lives—gathered?
Considering that this place had a reputation as a secluded café well suited to secret conversations, well.
I imagined that, over the course of running the shop, the owner had watched countless morning dramas of every imaginable kind firsthand.
So perhaps netorase play was not actually a big deal. Maybe it was even a fairly common occurrence that she saw from time to time……?
I cautiously considered that possibility and looked meaningfully into the female owner's eyes, hoping to obtain her agreement.
Shake-shake-
‘Ah, so that's not what you think.’
Sadly, even my telepathic link was rejected. Somehow, I seemed to have managed to get the telepathy through to her, but.
At her firm shake of the head, I smacked my lips and turned my head away again.
And so I returned to the main subject—in other words, my conversation with Jeong Jaeha, which was the purpose of today's meeting.
“This is a rather long story, but it started when Chae-eun and I first shared a bed──.”
“Keep it short. Just get to the point.”
“──Ah, okay. Sure.”
The instant I saw him about to waste time on a pointless preamble, I cut him off with military precision.
After I diligently cut away his tangents, Jeong Jaeha's story had been considerably shortened. To summarize it:
“So, in the end……. Your stamina is so pathetic that you can't even properly fulfill your role as a man, meaning you can't handle Ryu Chae-eun every night?”
“No, what did you take my story for?!”
At least to me, that looked exactly like the correct answer, but Jeong Jaeha, the person in question, immediately denied my neat and concise summary.
Bang! Perhaps he still had enough pride as a man to feel wounded, because he slammed the table and stood up.
“Student, if you damage the table, you'll have to pay for it.”
“……Ah, yes. I'm sorry.”
The female owner's brief remark quickly subdued him, and he sat back down in his original place.
Regardless, Jeong Jaeha glared sharply at me and repeated himself once more.
“I told you, it's not a problem with my stamina! It's just, just……. Chae-eun's sex drive is absurdly, ridiculously abnormal.”
“Mm. Guys who can't satisfy their girlfriends often make excuses like that.”
“No, I'm serious……!”
When I delivered a dry retort in an attitude that made it clear I did not believe him at all, Jeong Jaeha thumped his own chest repeatedly and protested as though he were genuinely aggrieved.
“Hey, you blond tanned bastard. How desperate do you think I had to be to come ask you for this? How desperate would I have to be to bring up something like this?”
“I'm Han Taeyang, you idiot.”
“Is that important right now? Ha, whatever. Please, just listen seriously for once. My entire relationship is at stake here.”
My expression remained bored, but Jeong Jaeha even began to look almost ready to cry as he sighed.
Then he continued in an urgent voice, as if to prove that he was truly in a desperate predicament.
I had only deliberately needled him once, and I had known from the beginning that his attitude was not fake, so from that point on, I listened quietly.
Unlike Lee Hyeonseong's request, which had been driven by nothing but pure abnormal lust, Jeong Jaeha's expression looked far too miserable.
“……Honestly, I can't claim I was exceptionally potent, but at least I performed about as well as the average guy my age. Even so, she says she isn't satisfied and that it's still nowhere near enough, then climbs back on top of me. What am I supposed to do?”
“Mm.”
“As you know, Chae-eun only just became an adult this year. I don't know whether that's why she's even worse, but her sex drive genuinely never decreases. I've gotten to the point of worrying that I might die from sex at this age…….”
If someone else heard this, they might simply call him a crazy bastard complaining despite being blessed with unbelievable good fortune.
And understandably so. The girl Jeong Jaeha was describing as a vicious succubus draining him dry was hardly some ordinary young woman.
It was Ryu Chae-eun. One of the five heroines of the original novel, and, by any ordinary standard or logic, one of the most beautiful girls in the entire setting.
Moreover, even if she was only a year younger, she was unquestionably the unchallenged youngest among the main cast, to the point that she carried symbolic significance as well.
No wonder the readers of the original novel hated Jeong Jaeha more than the other male leads in particular.
They called him a one-of-a-kind cradle robber who had made a younger beauty his girlfriend while she was still underage.
‘Honestly, if it weren't for that face of his, I would have given him a hard knuckle to the forehead long ago.’
Young, youthful, beautiful, and cute. She overflowed with sexual appeal to such an extent that merely listing it all made one's mouth ache.
I imagined that if the other men at the academy heard Jeong Jaeha saying this, they would have a fit.
Even someone fairly close to Jeong Jaeha would have trouble suppressing the urge to hang him in the town square.
After all, bragging about one's girlfriend in front of peers of the same age was hardly a minor crime.
They might even gang up on him, shouting that he had no right to say such things when he was the bastard who could legally fuck ‘that’ Ryu Chae-eun, and that he was unforgivable.
Perhaps I might have been passing nearby, peeked over to see what was going on, and stomped on him a few times simply because I was bored.
Anyway.
“Yeah, I understand what you're saying.”
I bit into the handmade sandwich I had ordered in advance, expecting the conversation to run long.
Thus, while pretending on the surface to seriously consider Jeong Jaeha's story, I enjoyed the taste of its fillings.
Butter-scented white bread, crisp bacon cooked just right, crunchy salad and tomatoes, and a special sauce.
Need I say more about that combination of flavors?
The owner of this shop made the menu exceptionally well. Even apart from its geopolitical value(?), there was a reason the academy's people in the know frequented it.
Around when I had reached that thought, I swallowed the food I had been chewing and continued.
“Even so, did you really have to come ask me to sleep with Ryu Chae-eun for you? Can't you just put up with being worn out every now and then? Is it really that serious?”
This was what made me doubtful. It was not that I disbelieved Jeong Jaeha; my curiosity simply came from a natural question.
Ryu Chae-eun having an abnormal sex drive and stamina, and Jeong Jaeha being unilaterally drained whenever they spent time together as a couple?
That could certainly happen. Perhaps the man was simply hopelessly inadequate, but…….
At least I was well aware that Ryu Chae-eun's sex drive was extraordinary.
In the sex scenes that had now become merely a possibility, she was the girl who felt endlessly contradictory pleasure even while being sexually tormented by the original Han Taeyang.
And in the final arc, after her conditioning had been completed 100 percent, she was an exceedingly lewd girl who climbed on top of Han Taeyang, rolled her hips, and panted.
The fact that her spirit never broke until the very end had been rather admirable from a reader's perspective.
But in the end, hadn't she resented Han Taeyang and continued to love Jeong Jaeha, while her body still gave in?
That was how strong her sex drive was, and how easily she surrendered to it as well. That was Ryu Chae-eun.
Because the memorable plot swerve in Part Two had been so striking, I still remembered its details vividly.
But……
“You don't need to ask me to relieve Ryu Chae-eun's sex drive for you.”
“……Mm.”
The original novel was the original novel, and now was now. The worldline had changed, so there was no longer any reason to follow the original story's sex scenes.
As proof, there was me, who had suppressed Han Taeyang's instincts, and Seo Ahyun, who no longer loved Kim Minjun and had decided to cleanly let go of her feelings.
I would neither abduct nor imprison Ryu Chae-eun. Just as I had done all along.
That meant she and Jeong Jaeha could continue their devoted romance together until the end.
“Of course, Han Taeyang, you're right. You are right, but……. Haa.”
That is, unless they created cracks in their relationship themselves.
Jeong Jaeha soon sighed with a troubled expression, rubbed the corners of his eyes, and continued.
“To start with, the first reason is that this is a more serious problem than you think. It's a problem that I'm exhausted to the point of feeling like I'm going to die every night, but……”
“But?”
“……It's also a problem that Chae-eun's sexual frustration keeps building. Recently, we even had a really big fight. She looked, well, really worn out.”
I raised one eyebrow and folded my arms, while Jeong Jaeha's gaze gradually grew more pained.
“I know this is crazy. But still, rather than letting Chae-eun hold it in until both her body and heart drift away from me……. I want to find some kind of solution, no matter what.”
He pressed down hard on his chest, apparently suffering terribly from the fact that he had to make such a request with his own mouth.
It was certainly a more normal(?) reaction than Lee Hyeonseong, who had been nothing but excited from the beginning.
Even so, Jeong Jaeha continued speaking as though he firmly believed this decision was ultimately the right one.
“Han Taeyang, you're already having sex with Baek Seol-ah from time to time. I only thought of this plan after hearing about the two of you back then.”
“……”
“And seeing as the rumor of Lee Hyeonseong's netorase fetish or whatever still hasn't gotten out, you seem to be more tight-lipped than I expected.”
Jeong Jaeha soon looked at me with determined eyes, bit down firmly on his lips, and bowed politely to me.
“Please! Han Taeyang. I could never bring up something like this with the other guys. I can't guarantee that even someone close to me would be trustworthy about something this sensitive. You're the best person to ask.”
“……Hmm, that's true.”
I leaned back in my chair and stroked my chin for a moment. What Jeong Jaeha said was certainly true.
It was crazy, but for this particular matter, was there really anyone else he could trust as much as me?
Of course, if the other male students were functioning normally below the waist and had no girlfriends, they would never outright refuse Jeong Jaeha's proposal.
They would be baffled at first, but in the end, they would accept it after deciding they had nothing to lose—just as I had once done with Baek Seol-ah.
Ryu Chae-eun was that captivating a girl, and there would be a whole truckload of bastards who would gladly welcome even a single night in bed with her.
The only problem was that, as Jeong Jaeha had said, there was no guarantee those guys would actually keep the secret.
‘I can't say it doesn't make sense.’
That resolved all the things I had found puzzling. I stared at Jeong Jaeha and thought for a moment.
Now all that remained was my decision…….
In truth, that decision was an exceedingly obvious one. Wasn't it?
Hadn't I already vaguely guessed what Jeong Jaeha was after in the first place?
I had no evidence, but I had possessed a powerful hunch—almost instinctive in nature—that perhaps this was the case.
I did not know whether causality existed in this world as well, but─. If it did, it would somehow try to entangle me with the heroines.
In the end, I had come here willingly despite having some idea of Jeong Jaeha's intentions.
It would be fair to say that my answer had already been decided at that point.
‘I have no reason to refuse.’
I gave a short nod and spoke to Jeong Jaeha, who was still bowing his head to me.
“Well, then, for now.”
“……?”
Even so, it was difficult to keep watching a classmate behave so excessively politely, so I pulled my chair back, signaling that it was time to get up.
Soon, Jeong Jaeha cautiously raised his eyes to look up at me, and I let out a faint chuckle.
“Want to go see her? Strike while the iron's hot. I wouldn't mind doing it tonight.”
“……!”
“Let's meet with Ryu Chae-eun, the three of us.”
Whatever the case, shouldn't I talk to the person involved as well?
As it happened, I had only just met Ryu Chae-eun yesterday while preparing for the practical exam.
Yet, at least on the surface, I had not sensed anything particularly strange. She had merely been the same condescending brat she always was.
It was certainly surprising that, despite having the same thoughts Jeong Jaeha had described, she had treated me no differently from usual.
I had never imagined that green-haired little brat might have a talent for acting.
In any case, whatever.
“S-so you're saying you'll accept my request, Han Taeyang? Really?”
“Then we must be going, right? Why ask when you already know?”
“N-no, I mean, yes. Still, I'm flustered because you accepted so readily, and now that the tension is setting in late, I…….”
Jeong Jaeha awkwardly stood up and repeatedly asked me to confirm my intentions, then showed a complicated expression blending gratitude and tension.
After returning the coffee cups and sandwich plate, he and I left the café with the owner's supportive thumbs-up behind us.
“……Ah, come to think of it, Jeong Jaeha.”
“Huh, what?”
I turned to Jeong Jaeha after belatedly remembering one thing.
I spoke with an utterly incredulous expression.
“Don't tell me that, after coming to ask me to satisfy your girlfriend for you because of your stamina problem, you were also the guy who asked Baek Seol-ah for a handjob last time?”
“……Ah.”
“This guy's insane too.”
Perhaps that had hit him in a particularly sore spot. Jeong Jaeha flinched and broke into a cold sweat. It seemed even he felt guilty about it.
Of course, that lasted only a moment. When I let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it, he hurriedly waved his hands and made excuses.
“Ah, no. It's just, how should I put it? It was daytime then, and I don't do it with Chae-eun every single day, you know? I mean, right?”
“What do you mean, ‘right’?”
Of course, that did not come close to convincing me. I snorted and looked away from him.
“Don't ever go around calling Lee Hyeonseong a pervert. Honestly, from my perspective, you two are equally messed up. Your tastes are just different.”
“Hey, that's not fair……! Hyeonseong really is crazy, while I have a reason!”
“Yeah, no.”
“And honestly, if there was even a chance I could get one handjob from Baek Seol-ah, how could I resist? Ask the other guys. If you ask ten people, eleven of them will eagerly say yes!”
On the way toward the women's dormitory, Jeong Jaeha doggedly followed me and piled on one ridiculous excuse after another.
At least that last statement made me pause for a moment.
‘If you ask ten people, eleven of them will eagerly accept, huh…….’
Well, certainly.
That was true.
If ten people were approached with such a proposal, even I—who would have been nosing around nearby to see what was happening—might have been tempted to join in. It wasn't entirely wrong.
I turned back to Jeong Jaeha once more, let out a faint laugh, and added just one more comment.
“So, after throwing away your pride and begging like that, did you at least get the handjob in return?”
“……!!”
“As I recall, she only looked at you with silent contempt. Tough luck, Jaeha.”
Then, leaving Jeong Jaeha frozen stiff with a ‘Crack’, I strode ahead.
It might have been a little cruel, but well.
A man who had only lost without gaining anything was incredibly easy to deal with.
Don't go acting up for no reason anymore, Jeong Jaeha.