“See, you should’ve paced yourself…”
With a sigh escaping me naturally, I was already outside the bar, supporting Go Yujin, who had, as they say, completely lost her mind.
Go Yujin’s house was a luxury home nearby.
There was no live-in caretaker, and she lived alone; occasionally, relatives would visit to check on her. I didn’t live far from Go Yujin myself, so I planned to drop her off along the way and call it a day.
“Hehe, I feel nice…”
Go Yujin began to hum as if talking in her sleep. It sounded like an old idol song from years past. I walked on, listening to her drunken humming, when she suddenly opened her mouth.
“You know… I liked… watching people die. But… I regretted it so much, it was so… disgusting… I hated it, okay?”
Go Yujin was continuing the conversation we’d had near the end of the mission.
It seemed to have weighed on her mind after all.
“So that’s why you left the battlefield?”
“Because I… started wanting to kill people.”
I could see now why she had fled as if running away. Her emotions had become twisted. Wasn’t this what it meant to be consumed by power?
But it wasn’t as if she only fought monsters.
The battlefield wasn’t simply the Gate front lines.
Literally, Awakened who lost control of their emotions and were stained by madness were a dime a dozen, and conflicts of interest between nations were fierce.
Local wars broke out now and then over territorial disputes and claims to new Gates.
Black Mages were sent to such battlefields with unusual frequency.
Their power was formidable and cruel, excellent for turning the tide, and even if a powerful Black Mage didn’t see action on the front lines, they were useful assets to keep in reserve when problems arose.
Naturally, the government loved using the loophole of pinning all responsibility on a single individual, and in truth, being expelled or otherwise exploited through such methods was common.
*Though they guaranteed enormous vested interests, the constant buck-passing and shirking of responsibility was also one of the things that made you sick of it.*
In fact, many Black Mages experienced such ordeals, took a hefty payout, and retired.
But the critical issue was that even after retiring, mental fatigue and emotional instability often drove them back to the battlefield or caused incidents. To deal with them, the government would send requests to people like us.
It was a cycle of washing blood with blood.
*For now, Miss Yujin hasn’t received such requests, but eventually, she won’t be able to avoid them.*
Even now, a steady stream of elimination requests came in.
Many thought it wrong for the government to do such things, but conversely, only the government could handle them—a paradox. People would pretend ignorance even when they knew, or act due to subtle pressure if they didn’t.
Justice had crumbled before power; it was a world where might made right.
The current government was maintained thanks to the continued concentration of authority that had been granted to those who gained early power to carry out operations.
In times of upheaval, funneling strength to those who could solve problems was only natural, but conversely, there were circumstances where that had been the desired outcome. Regardless of right or wrong, I viewed it as the natural order.
“I did the right thing, didn’t I…?”
“You did. You did well. So sleep now.”
“Hehe… Okay!”
Go Yujin buried her face in my shoulder with a bright, innocent expression.
After that, I headed to her house, opened the door, and made my way to her bedroom.
I channeled mana and used a Psychokinesis spell to lay her down on the bed.
Perhaps because I’d gone straight to the bar after finishing work, I was still in my work clothes.
Even though Go Yujin said she’d used Clean magic on herself already, perhaps out of some needless compulsion, I immediately released mana and used Clean magic on her body.
“Hnng…!”
When the mana swept over her entire body, I couldn’t help but panic upon seeing Go Yujin let out a light moan.
*…Seems she has sensitive skin.*
There were people who flinched just from mana touching their bodies. I figured Go Yujin was one of them.
Since Clean magic used mana to wash away foreign substances and bodily secretions from the skin, it involved relatively strong mana contact.
Now I understood why she had refused, and realizing she had endured it all this time without a word out of embarrassment, guilt rose within me.
With the thought that I should be more careful next time, I turned to leave the room.
“…Don’t go.”
I turned at the voice to see Go Yujin, eyes open, staring at me.
Her face was deeply flushed, and it was clearly an abnormal situation. I looked at her and spoke.
“Rest. Tomorrow will be busy too.”
“…Do you hate me?”
“I like you. But this isn’t right.”
I might be a pathetic fool who couldn’t take what was handed to him, but she was my superior, the company president. That alone was enough to make laying a hand on her unthinkable.
She was certainly an attractive woman.
She was renowned for her beauty, and her figure was so extraordinary that she could hardly be seen as an ordinary person.
*Objectively speaking, refusing her would seem like a miracle…*
But I had no interest in taking advantage of a woman who was completely plastered.
Rather than become a despicable man who preyed on her in an emotional moment, I took a step back.
But as if she had read my thoughts, Go Yujin rose, and despite her staggering, she released her mana.
In an instant, the mana flooding the room slammed shut the door I had been about to open. I reached out and pulled on it, but the manipulation and density of the mana were so precise and powerful that one wouldn’t have thought it came from a drunk person; dispelling it would take time.
*So the First Generation didn’t earn their reputation for nothing…*
When I met the eyes of the staggering Go Yujin, I saw a gaze filled with inexplicable madness and spoke cautiously.
“You’ll regret this.”
“Just… maybe leaving would be more regrettable…?”
“That’s rather blunt.”
“Anyway… you’re my oppa, aren’t you?”
“Ha, so you’re throwing away even the pretense of being my boss?”
“I’m your oppa, that’s all…”
No matter how I looked at it, she didn’t feel completely drunk. It was more like she was using her intoxication to steer the situation.
I let out a sigh and spoke.
“I can’t take responsibility.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then open the door.”
“I’ll take responsibility… then is it fine?”
That wasn’t what I meant.
“This is getting troublesome.”
Flustered, it felt like the conversation had gone off track.
Go Yujin smiled, and the mana she released in that instant concentrated in one place, binding me in seconds.
The sensation was Paralysis.
As if proving she was indeed a Black Mage, Go Yujin had naturally used a curse spell. I didn’t know what she intended to do by paralyzing me, but I had no intention of accepting it passively.
I released my own mana, quickly read the mana pattern of the Paralyze she was manipulating, reversed the calculation, and dispelled it.
But it seemed this hadn’t been her true aim.
Go Yujin closed the distance in an instant and rushed into my arms. Given my relative lack of physical ability, there was no way to shake off the physically inclined Go Yujin.
With a thud, Go Yujin wrapped her arms around my waist and clung to me, looking up intently.
“Got you… hehe.”
Looking at her like this, she was truly a lovely woman, but I had no idea why she was going this far.
So, prompted by a sudden thought, I asked.
“It’s because of the Clean spell, isn’t it?”
“Hoo… think about it. Every day… every day, it felt like being caressed… how could I endure that…?”
This was something I had seriously messed up.
I let out a sigh and answered.
“I’ll be careful from now on. Please let me off?”
“I don’t want to.”
I was being reeled in. That’s what it felt like, but if it was a woman like Go Yujin doing the hooking, you could practically call it a successful life.
I scratched my head and eventually nodded.
At that, she sprang up and spoke.
“It’s my first time. You have to take responsibility, right?”
“Let’s do just one thing.”
“What?”
“Casual speech or honorifics.”
“I don’t want to.”
Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the bed.
Was it simply fate that it would end up like this?
Or was it the doing of that wretched Clean spell of mine?
Whatever the case, three months after joining this company, trouble had broken out with the president.
After that, I was led by Go Yujin’s actions toward the bed, and before long, I looked up to see her lightly tossing off her clothes and was left speechless.
I had known she had been active on the battlefield for a long time, but there were quite a few scars remaining all over her body.
“Does it bother you?”
She looked down at me with a deeply flushed face. If by “bother” she meant her body, I gave my answer by shaking my head.
I carefully reached up, ran my fingers over the scars on her arms and body, and asked.
“It must have hurt.”
“I didn’t even know it hurt back then. Can you feel something like that when you’re excited?”
Go Yujin was speaking quite coherently, so I asked outright.
“Were you pretending to be drunk?”
“I was drunk. Even now… but perhaps because I’m excited, my mind has become quite clear.”
An interesting story.
I raised my upper body to face her, and as our gazes met, Go Yujin’s face reddened even further.
“I never thought it would develop this far.”
“If you don’t want to, we don’t have to.”
Go Yujin was in her underwear, and because she looked ready to pull back at any moment, I said it wasn’t that I didn’t want to and continued.
“Tomorrow, when you sober up completely, you might regret this.”
“I’ve experienced so many things on the battlefield. I’m sure it’s the same for you. It was a time when everyone easily permitted everything because we might die tomorrow.”
As Go Yujin said, all sorts of incidents had occurred.
From deviants who formed sexual relations without a care for others, to those who entered battle fully erect while half-naked, to people openly relieving themselves on the roadside regardless of who was watching—all sorts of things happened.
I, too, had relieved myself during battle when intense fighting dragged on for too long.
Bodily functions were truly vexing, but it couldn’t be helped.
Perhaps that was why I had become so obsessed with Clean magic.
“At first, I thought everyone was crazy, and I couldn’t understand them. But before I knew it, I understood them and followed suit.”
“But the current situation isn’t the same as that, is it?”
“Seongchan, is it ‘fuck’?”
“Shouldn’t you ask if it’s the T-word?”
“It’s not, though?”
I burst into a hollow laugh at the absurdity, and she, too, smiled.
Then she suddenly stretched out both arms, wrapped them around my nape, and brought her face in close.
Her breath was thick with alcohol.
She definitely seemed drunk.
I couldn’t understand how an Awakened could get this intoxicated, but in this moment, whether I was crossing a line, or whether there was room to maneuver as she had suggested, remained to be seen.
*Well, there must be plenty of bastards who’d call the company president a lucky son of a bitch…*
A sweet fragrance penetrated my breath, and along with her body scent entering my nose, I felt the smooth, plump sensation covering my lips and a cute tongue slipping in.
I was now resigned to letting come what may, and I, too, lightly wrapped my arms around her and deepened the kiss.
Before long, it progressed from savoring one another to an act of raw greed. Without either of us leading, we began caressing each other’s bodies, stoking the flames.