Chapter 298 - Chapter 296: Episode 296
Lee Ji-eun slowly strokes my face.
Her touch is strangely, intensely affectionate.
"When I first thought you were dead...♡ I cried so much, you know?"
Her face moves closer, inch by agonizing inch,
until our eyes are almost touching.
If our noses and foreheads hadn't bumped into each other,
stopping her advance,
she definitely would have pressed her eyes against mine for an eye-kiss.
Her sky-blue eyes. They've become prettier, deeper than before.
It's like looking into a vast blue sky, yet it feels murky.
Like a sky choked with thick, heavy clouds.
"I cried until I was dehydrated...♡ I cried until Gina-eonni, whom I once loved...♡ told me to stop...♡
I was so stressed out because of you...♡ Hehe...♡ Hihi...♡ My hair started falling out...♡ I even got patches of hair loss...♡
I lived like a wreck because of you...♡ I just wanted to die...♡ Hehe...♡ Lick... Chu... Slurp...♡"
Lee Ji-eun slowly tastes my eyes and ears with her wet, soft tongue, licking them like a snail crawling across my skin.
As if I were the most adorable thing in the world, she kisses my cheek, then pries my lips apart with her tongue to explore the inside of my mouth.
It's a depressing story,
but because she's telling it with a beaming, vacant smile and an adorable tone,
the sheer surrealism of it makes my skin crawl.
It's even more terrifying coming from Lee Ji-eun.
If her madness felt like an act before, this feels like the real deal.
"It's like... an abyss of terror you aren't meant to witness...?"
It feels like I've stumbled upon some horrific entity from another dimension, something straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.
"...I-is that so?"
I find myself using polite speech, and it comes naturally.
It's not the forced politeness from when she threatened to punch me in the gut earlier;
this is just pure, unadulterated fear.
"So, you see...♡ I prayed to God and the Devil...♡ To save you...♡"
'What the hell? Did she sell her soul or something? Is that why she's become this terrifying?'
"But there was no response...♡ Maybe...♡ Now that I think about it...♡ Was it because you weren't actually dead...?"
"......."
"But I didn't know that, so I prayed to the heavens and the earth...♡ To save you.... Heh.... Hehehe.... Hehehehe.... Huhu...."
A cold, ruthless chill suddenly emanates from her tone, replacing the warmth from just a moment ago.
Her expression shifts into an icy mask that seems to curse and mock the world, devoid of even a shred of love.
Lee Ji-eun's face, which had been looking at me so lovingly just a few seconds ago,
has now become a cold, emotionless mask that looks at me like a lab specimen, completely devoid of affection.
"And I made a condition. If you came back to life..., I said I wouldn't bully you at all....
But it felt like my wish wasn't being granted, so I said next time, I wouldn't even show my face.
I said I didn't care if you hated me and I never saw you again, as long as you were saved, I wouldn't appear before you.
In my whole life, that was the first time I'd ever prayed so helplessly for something, betting everything I had on someone else.
Even when I loved Gina-eonni, it didn't feel like this. Maybe this is what real 'love' is?"
"...? Ah, so does that mean you won't bully me from now on...?
...Or, wait. Does that mean you're not going to see me anymore...?"
I asked with a 0.01% chance of hope.
Lee Ji-eun instantly flares her killing intent, glaring at me.
"...Huck! ...Heuk!"
My heart stops for a second.
I'm not joking; my heart actually stopped for about a second or two.
Wow..., so this is what it feels like when your heart stops.
When your heart stops, you really can't do anything and just die....
It was a very short time,
but feeling the sensation of dying helplessly because my heart stopped was terrifying.
Fuck.
Lee Ji-eun..., just how strong have you become?
Was your killing intent enough to actually give me a heart attack?
Or..., can the others do this too...? Have they just been going easy on me because they think I'm cute?
Somehow..., just looking at them, I feel like Ahn Seo-yeon and Park Hye-ji would obviously know how to do it....
Hmm..., I feel like Jung Su-yeon and Kim Ji-na could do it too.... Wow..., they've been going really easy on me....
"I won't bully you from now on...? I'll let you go...?
No. Listen to the end of what I have to say. You sex slave slut."
"......."
Lee Ji-eun suddenly shouts as if she were offended.
Did she develop some kind of anger management disorder while I was gone?
"But no matter how much I prayed, you didn't come back to life.
So I changed the content of my wish. Because that's how negotiations and contracts work.
I changed the terms, so that if you came back to life..., I'd bully you until you wanted to die so fucking bad.
Like I was going to die the next day, I'd use all my strength to bully you every single day.
...But then, you really came back to life. ...Is this what God wanted?
Or was it the Devil? Well..., it doesn't matter. The important thing is that you came back to life."
"......???"
'No, this crazy bitch? What kind of bullshit is that?'
I almost scream that out loud.
"I try to keep my promises whenever I can.
Even if I play word games or plot schemes and conspiracies.
Even if I look like this, I'm my mother's daughter, you know?
Ah, you know my mom, right? The chaebol group chairman.
My mom always tells me: we are merchants.
The core of a merchant is credit. You have to keep your word."
"......."
"So I'm going to keep my promise.
Even if it's a promise I made to myself, I have to keep it.
Or who knows? Maybe God really liked the condition I set,
and saved you and sent you to me...?"
She's a woman overflowing with a terrifyingly self-centered worldview and narcissism.
Is this what they call a narcissist? I heard on YouTube recently that you should avoid narcissists....
And I once read in a book.
That a narcissist—the embodiment of self-love—actually stems from deep, terrible self-loathing.
Perhaps it's a chaotic tendency born of extreme duality.
Yeah. This is Lee Ji-eun.
A crazy bitch.
Hard to pin down, chaos itself.
'...Yeah. That's you, alright. Because you're a Chaos character.'
I had defined Lee Ji-eun as a Chaos character a long time ago.
Because in the game world, there was no one whose personality fit a Chaos character as well as Lee Ji-eun.
Actually, that Sword Energy she used when she cut off my limbs.
That transparent-colored Sword Energy is a non-attribute attack that only appears when a Chaos character is well-raised.
I already roughly knew this information.
That if Lee Ji-eun was raised well, she would evolve into a character capable of Chaos-attribute or non-attribute attacks.
'I understand now why Chaos characters are late-game targets, and why if you meet them early and get close, you get pushed around, exhausted, and if you're not careful, you're fucked....'
I think I got too involved with Lee Ji-eun from the beginning.
Like a broken thread, it's tangled and knotted, and it feels like it's already too late to break away.
I should have been vigilant, quickly identified that she was a Chaos character, and kept my distance....
"Slurp♡ Smacking♡ Lick...♡ What are you thinking about so hard?"
Lee Ji-eun brings her soft lips to mine and asks while sharing a deep kiss with her tongue.
Right now, she's looking at me with eyes that are incredibly loving again.
Her face, seen up close, has become more beautiful and prettier than before.
The way she asks what I'm thinking with a coy look is the definition of a beautiful girl, so any man would find her cute.
'...Her breasts have gotten bigger, too....'
Seeing the enlarged mass of her breasts occupying her mid-section, I can feel her increase in ability.
In this gender-reversed hunter eroge world, the girls' beauty increases as their skills improve....
It seems Lee Ji-eun's increase in strength is reflected in her larger cup size and overall appearance.
'Now she's as pretty as Ahn Seo-yeon, Ahn Min-seo, Kim Ji-na, and Jung Su-yeon. It's changed from the Four Heavenly Kings to the Top 5.'
If I were to rank beauty at school...,
the President and the Dormitory Warden come to mind too....
Strangely, whenever I try to think of them, it's like there's static in my head, and I can't focus.
It feels like something is controlling my brain and blocking access. What is this? Is it just my imagination....
"Hey♡ I asked what you're thinking about? Huh?"
"...Ah, no. ...It's just that you seem to have gotten prettier, ah, I mean, ...Master. ...You seem to have gotten prettier."
"Bullshit. If you lie to me, I'll beat you until you're on the verge of death, okay? You're just saying that to make me let my guard down, aren't you?"
Lee Ji-eun gets offended and angry again.
Her expression turns cold, and I feel like if she had a knife, she'd cut off my limbs again.
This bitch.
She must have really developed an anger management disorder or some kind of mental illness.
Or maybe, dialing it down a notch, hysteria or PTSD?
Maybe she thinks I'm trying to deceive her, so she's about to fly off the handle and get angry.
Seeing her even clench her fist slightly, it looks like she's really about to belly-punch me.
I urgently needed to let her know that what I said was the truth.
"...No, it's not. It—it's the truth.... Your, your breasts have gotten bigger..., your face and body have improved, your, your skin has become cleaner and smoother.... Your, your lips are softer too.... Ah, that's not to say they weren't soft before..., but they're somehow more plump, soft, and pleasant.... Really..., it's the truth.... I'm not lying, really...."
Lee Ji-eun's lips twitch slightly, and then a smile gradually appears on her face,
and her cheeks flush red.
Looking at Lee Ji-eun's clenched fist from a moment ago,
the strength has drained from it, and her open hand is now stealthily moving toward her crotch, touching near her pussy bit by bit.
Lee Ji-eun is grinning and masturbating.
"Hng♡"