Chapter 9

Doing it five times in a single night meant it must have been pretty good. Since he’d tasted his fill until his belly was ready to burst, there was no way Morae hadn’t enjoyed it either.

Yet the question was whether that was enough to make him want to stay in the West Sea Legion.

Did it feel so good that he felt like trying to woo Morae? It had been good, but was it the kind of pleasure that made him curious about other women?

Thinking about it coolly, he had gained experience with women and might decide to head off to the Downtown Workshop just to try out various other women. Or perhaps somewhere else with other attractive women.

There were over twenty women at the Downtown Workshop who wanted Pado’s attention. She wanted to say they were all young, pretty, etc… but honestly, she didn’t know that much about them. It was just a gathering of people with similar goals, so their looks and personalities varied widely. Word had it that some had high standards and zero dating experience at all.

Besides, aren’t there people in this world who would choose to sleep with ten ordinary women rather than date a single beauty?

Especially when it was completely ambiguous whether or not you could even date that single person in the first place.

So, despite rolling around with him all night, absolutely nothing had been resolved. Just having good sex wasn’t enough to gauge Pado’s future direction. He hadn’t dropped a single clue.

They say you only know a food’s taste once you’ve tried it, so maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t popped his cherry after all.

If she hadn’t, the shame of his reputation for chasing women’s skirts might have made him ignore the scout offer from the Downtown Workshop out of sheer pride.

Morae chewed over every possible regret as she glanced sideways at Pado walking behind her.

Dispatched to the inland with Morae by the commander’s orders, Pado silently followed right behind her.

He spoke only when strictly necessary and maintained a proper distance from Morae. If the gap looked like it was closing, he slowed his pace; if it looked like it was widening, he moved a bit faster.

Just by looking at his face, she couldn’t figure out what Pado was thinking.

He didn’t act embarrassed, he wasn’t visibly uncomfortable, and he wasn’t fussing over it either. Nor did he look like he was scheming for a chance to make a move.

A quiet silence hung between the two of them.

She had boastfully yelled that once they did it, he’d fall for her and come crawling at her feet, but she knew well enough that worldly affairs didn’t work that easily. How infuriating.

“…”

“…”

Still, it seemed the experience of seeing her naked, biting, and tasting her had left quite a deep impression.

It had been half a year since Pado was brought in as a new recruit and they began working together. This was the first time they had spent over two hours together with so little to say.

Through a faint mist hovering near their ankles, a river came into sight. It was the signal that the waterfall mentioned by her father was just around the corner.

Once they arrived at the waterfall, they would be busy analyzing water components, surveying surrounding terrain and ecology. There wouldn’t be a single second of leisure for a thousand years. Making up her mind, Morae opened her mouth.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

The first words spoken in two hours overlapped. Bad luck or good luck. The two of them glanced sideways at each other.

“You go first.”

“You say it.”

Their words overlapped again.

“It’s not a big deal, but—”

“It’s not really a big deal, but—”

When their words overlapped three times, a chuckle slipped out despite the stiff atmosphere. What’s more, the words they were about to say were strikingly similar.

“You first.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

Morae yielded her turn before their words could overlap yet again. Knowing that he, too, had been trying to speak to her made her heart feel a little lighter.

“Watch your step. I heard there are big water snakes around.”

However, the words that followed next didn’t overlap with what Morae was about to say by even an iota, and a water snake lunged out of the river, bit Morae, and dragged her back into the water.

Morae, who had been bitten by a water snake and dragged into the river, returned alive. Soaked from head to toe, Morae roughly hurled the severed water snake onto dry land. The snake’s carcass, as thick as Morae’s torso, thrashed about.

“You could have mentioned that a bit sooner!”

“I didn’t think a snake would come out of the water. You alright?”

“You could have shown that kind of concern sooner, too! You already took care of it anyway!”

“Good job. You’ve got skills.”

“I’m so annoyed—! It stings—!”

Morae wrung the water from her entire body while glaring at Pado, who was watching her like he was taking in a circus show.

Thanks to using her abilities when she was bitten, she didn’t sustain any physical wounds, but being dragged into the river left her completely soaked. The river water, carrying a strong alkaline concentration, melted away the outer layer of her skin, making it smart and sting. Thanks to being a physically sturdy Hunter, it wasn’t a major issue, but her clothes felt slightly corroded as well.

Pado opened a single capsule, and a large ball of water appeared in midair. Morae stepped inside the water droplet without a moment’s hesitation.

The water droplet, composed of highly acidic water, neutralized the basic substances on her skin. An air bubble formed right where her face was, making it easy to breathe.

The water droplet spun round and round like a washing machine before smoothly detaching from Morae’s body. The remaining moisture on her long hair and clothes also gathered drop by drop, swirling into a vortex before flying off into the air.

All thanks to Pado manipulating the water. His water-manipulation ability had high versatility and was remarkably convenient.

Because he couldn’t control it with microscopic precision, a moderate amount of moisture remained, but there was no helping that. As Morae wrung out the water from her skirt, Pado apologized.

“My bad.”

“Fine. It was a water snake attack, so it’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t bring your panties.”

“…”

“You left them in my room. If I’d brought them, you’d have a pair to change into.”

“Good grief! I don’t need them.”

Morae was mortified, never expecting to hear Pado apologize for forgetting to bring her panties.

Right here? All of a sudden?

Not that anyone would want to hear something like that from anyone. Not that you’d ever hear talk like this anywhere else… Every time she heard the word “panties,” her heart pounded as if she’d just heard something she shouldn’t have.

“You don’t need them? You’re going to sit around in wet panties? Or go commando? Brave of you.”

“I’ll handle it myself, so mind your own business.”

Morae snapped sharply, debating whether or not to shove her hand inside her skirt. Since even her panties were soaked clear through, she was wondering what to do.

Her face grew slightly hot. She wasn’t innocent enough to blush over mere underwear talk, but whenever she spoke with Pado, her self-control inexplicably fell apart.

“Talking about panties out in the open like this…”

“I kept thinking about it. There were too many people at home, so it was hard to return them. Should I wash them and give them back?”

“I don’t need them.”

Her use of “don’t need them” this time around was much more forgiving.

Pado had called the room he was currently using “home.”

The fact that a new recruit like him referred to his temporary quarters as home felt strangely satisfying. Didn’t that sound like he felt a sense of belonging to the legion? Humming a little tune, Morae shook the water from her hair. Water droplets slid gently off her long locks.

“Keep them. You can leave them in your room.”

“What am I supposed to use those for?”

“Play with them by yourself, maybe?”

“How do you even play with them?”

Hearing such a naive question left Morae completely speechless. The feeling when dirty talk falls completely flat was far more embarrassing than she’d imagined.

To think Pado would throw out a joke he didn’t even understand right away. Wouldn’t this make it seem like she was the lewder one?

With her eyes wide open and stammering incoherently, Pado only then figured out what she meant.

His eyes widened as well, then he narrowed them as if he found it utterly absurd.

“You’re saying things that sound pretty desperate for some action. Are you craving it after finally tasting it?”

Pado’s hand landed on Morae’s waist. His fingers roamed over her wet clothes before aiming for the hem of her skirt.

“Want me to slip it in while you’re still wet?”

His index finger lifted the hem of her skirt and poked playfully at her soft thigh. Refusing to lose, Morae poked him right in the chest.

“I’m just generously treating you because you were obviously dying for it. Look at you jumping right on the opportunity the second you catch an opening. You’re craving it.”

“I only just lost my virginity not too long ago, so I’m completely crazy about women.”

She felt uneasy because she had no idea how much of his teasing banter was genuine.
Up until two days ago, he had acted all aloof like he had no interest in women, but the moment they got onto the bed, he had clung to her like a beast.

However, one thing was certain. Pado wanted to sleep with her one more time. If she told him he could put it in, he’d try to do it without hesitation. That meant she had a fighting chance.

Suppressing her unease, Morae twirled her finger in the air.

“I’m genuinely worried you’re going to make a stupid choice blinded by lust. The Downtown Workshop is a no-go. You don’t even know what it’s like over there.”

“I know that over twenty people are interested in me.”

When Morae frowned, Pado offered a faint smile. It wasn’t sharp like it had been in the past; it was an attitude that found Morae’s jealousy rather cunning and cute.

“That might be true, but those twenty people don’t just like you. The people over there are all like that, too. Get it?”

Morae knew this because she had once received a scout offer in passing. It wasn’t really a proper organization, but more like a social club among women with similar inclinations.
There were two conditions for joining. First, advocate for non-exclusive polyamory. Second, dream of a grand romance.

To put it simply, it gathered women who would rather share a handsome third-generation chaebol among several people than become the sole wife of an ordinary man, or women who wished for a blazing, passionate love, even if it only lasted a moment.

“Everyone eating from the same rice pot is sharing bedsheets with each other.”

Consequently, they shared one another. Men and women alike.

The handful of men remaining at the Downtown Workshop were nothing more than kept men pandering to women’s moods to be loved, men lording over women like bosses, or drudges silently doing chores for them.

Since “a man who draws interest from over twenty people” was the recruitment condition, all three types had slept with multiple women. While some women didn’t overlap, quite a few did. That was why the Downtown Workshop was no pushovers.

If you strolled in after hearing only the recruitment pitch of “Let’s have long-lasting sex with us,” you’d get burned badly. No one short of a hardcore polyamorist could endure it.

When she brought up the typical agonizing dilemmas faced by men and women drawn to the people of the Downtown Workshop, Pado’s expression duly clouded over. Looking disgusted as he imagined the complications of a tight-knit community where everyone passed each other around, he wore a grimace.

Seizing the moment, Morae pressed on with her slander.

“And the moment they find a better guy, they’ll toss you aside like a worn-out shoe. It’s not even like every single one of them is insanely attractive enough to make it worth it.”

She knew she was grasping at unfair straws. In the first place, she only knew the faces of three or four people among the Downtown Workshop members.

The sheer unpleasantness of other people trying to lay claim to a man she had scouted first kept her from saying anything nice.

“You can tell just by how they try to launch a physical assault right off the bat. It just means they have no other redeeming qualities. For all you know, their taste in men is rock-bottom, too.”

Morae detested them.

It wasn’t as if she had despised them from the start. Back then—no, until just a few days ago, right before hearing about this—she couldn’t have cared less about the Downtown Workshop.

She didn’t care which men those women were dying to strip, and she had zero interest if someone got blinded by carnal desire and headed over there. She figured women who craved men and men who wanted to throw themselves into that kind of hodgepodge could do as they pleased.

A polyamorous relationship was something Morae couldn’t wrap her head around, but as long as they were happy among themselves, wasn’t that all that mattered? Even if they slept with 100 or 1,000 people, it was someone else’s story.

Yet show interest in Yu Pado? That changed everything.

The moment they did, the Downtown Workshop transformed from a harmless stranger into a band of brigands coveting the gemstone she had set her eyes on.