A Conversation of Bodies
"Haaaah…."
I was slumped face-down across my classroom desk, heaving a long sigh, when Tania asked from beside me,
"Eli, is something wrong? You've been sighing nonstop."
"No… it's nothing, really…."
I was just a little tired, and a little disappointed….
I had chased after Yeonha with everything I had when she bolted, screaming that I was a pervert — but the moment she saw me coming, she vanished from sight at a terrifying speed.
I could still hear the shriek she'd let out after glancing back at me and going pale with horror: "Hiiiii!"
Watching that had left a little scratch on my heart….
If she had just glared at me with cold, composed eyes, I might even have enjoyed it — but when she recoiled like that, of course I was going to feel hurt.
In the end, I never achieved my goal of mixing tongues with her, and all that running left me exhausted on top of it.
"It's a shame, but I guess it'll have to wait until next time…."
As long as I wasn't dead, mixing tongues was always an option!
That was when Adele, who had dragged a chair over beside me and was scrolling through her phone while absently stroking my hand, spoke up.
"Elysia. There's been a rather interesting rumor circulating since this morning."
"Hm? What kind of rumor?"
The hand that had been gently caressing mine suddenly tightened, clamping down hard — as if to make sure I couldn't escape.
Huh? Huh? What is this? Bondage play? I'd go along with it if she wanted, but honestly I'm more into being the one who does the tying~.
While I was entertaining that nonsense, Adele finally lifted her eyes from her phone and looked straight into mine.
"This morning, you went into a first-year classroom and asked a first-year you'd never met before to mix tongues with you. Is that true?"
CRACK!
Something shattered beside me. I turned my head to find the phone in Tania's hand crushed into pieces, folded clean in half like an old flip phone.
Aaaah! Wasn't that a brand-new model? If you were going to break it, you could've just given it to me!
A chill ran through me. I lifted my gaze slightly and found Tania staring at me with an expression frozen solid.
Oh dear….
The two beautiful girls sitting on either side of me were watching without so much as a blink!
It was a little embarrassing… but not entirely unpleasant!
"Hehe…."
I gave a small smile and scratched the back of my head with my free left hand — and somehow the air grew even colder.
"I'd like you to explain exactly what happened, Elysia."
"Hm?"
"Eli… mix tongues? With who? Who was it? You said a first-year?"
"Uuh…?"
Why were both of them reacting like this?
Were they worried I might get close to a bad person?
It was true that Hong Yeonha ranked among Eclipse's strongest… but she had only ended up in Eclipse because that was where she was born and raised. Looking at her actions as described in How to Become a Hero, she was really just a pure-hearted young lady who happened to be extremely good at fighting and knew almost nothing about the world.
Which made sense — they'd trained her almost exclusively for combat simply because she had talent.
In How to Become a Hero, she carried out Eclipse's orders diligently enough, but she never acted out of genuine malice. To her, doing what her superiors told her was just common sense.
Besides, this early in the story, her identity as Eclipse's Hongryeon hadn't even been revealed yet.
In other words, Hong Yeonha was just an ordinary Academy student right now — a girl who hadn't actually done anything bad.
Alright! Time to reassure Tania and Adele so they stop worrying.
"Don't worry! She's a good kid!"
"That's not the problem, Eli!"
It wasn't? Then what on earth is the problem!
I was sweating bullets in confusion when Tania helpfully supplied the answer herself.
"M-mixing tongues with someone you've never even met! That's weird!"
Huh? What's weird about that?
To get close to someone you've just met, you need to learn about them. And to learn about them, you naturally have to gather information through conversation.
"Mixing tongues with someone you've just met is completely normal!"
"W-what?"
Tania stared at me with a completely blank expression.
"If you want to get close to someone, mixing tongues with them is the basics!"
"What are you even…."
If Tania had animal ears, they would have been drooping flat against her head by now.
She sagged for a moment — then suddenly shot to her feet and shouted,
"B-but I think you should take things step by step before you get to mixing tongues! A-and also…."
Her face flushed bright red as she fidgeted and mumbled under her breath,
"You still haven't even done it with me yet…."
"……? Tania…."
When I called her name softly, she slowly lifted her head from the floor and looked at me with shimmering, watery eyes.
"We've already mixed tongues so many times."
Behind me, Adele and every student sitting quietly in the classroom jolted in unison. Was something going on?
Tania, too, had frozen with her eyes wide open.
"Wh… what do you mean by that, Eli?"
So I explained my logic to her — the flawless reasoning that holding a conversation was no different from mixing tongues!
"……."
But Tania didn't seem to agree.
"Eli……."
She just looked at me with a complicated expression, murmuring my name.
No matter how many times I reexamined it, though, logically speaking, having a conversation was no different from mixing tongues!
With any other issue I might have let it go… but on this point, even if the other person was Tania, I had no intention of backing do—!
"Elysia."
"……Yes?"
I slowly turned toward the ice-cold voice behind me — and found Adele smiling radiantly for some reason.
Squeeeeeze.
"Adele… my hand hurts a little…."
"Elysia."
"Uuh…?"
"Elysia."
"…I'm sorry."
In the end, Adele and Tania scolded me into a complete mess for a long, long time.
Never again, they said, was I to present my private delusions as if they were common sense….
It was the first time Adele had ever smacked me on the back. A love-smack, overflowing with affection….
It had to be — otherwise there was no way something that should have hurt could have felt so pleasant…!
Surely that touch had carried the wish that I would be happy, that I would grow up well without going astray.
Therefore, this was… a conversation of the body……!
Huff… huff….
A young woman collapsed onto a bench a short distance from the Academy, her whole body soaked in sweat as if she had been running for a long time.
Hong Yeonha caught her breath, eyes half-lidded, and replayed what had just happened.
"And what business did you have with Yeonha…?"
"I'm going to mix tongues with you!"
Inside her head, the words she'd heard earlier looped on endless repeat: "I'm going to mix tongues with you! I'm going to mix tongues with you! I'm going to mix tongues with you!"
When she first felt that gaze and turned to meet those eyes, she had been briefly startled to recognize the person from her previous mission….
But beyond thinking the woman was pretty — and that she looked a lot like her mother — she hadn't felt much of anything.
And then that woman had suddenly declared she was going to mix tongues with her.
"What even is that woman…."
From the moment she was born, she had been raised not by her parents but by the boss of an organization, calling that woman Mother and following her without question.
Because of that, she had never even known the faces of the parents who gave birth to her. She had spent her entire life inside a closed organization, under the boss's love and constant surveillance.
After making all sorts of promises, she had finally been granted permission to enroll in the Academy for the first time… and then a woman who looked exactly like the boss had appeared out of nowhere and made a declaration like that.
"M-mixing tongues means that… that thing, right? A kiss…."
Aside from a handful of basic subjects, nearly all of her time had been spent in training.
But of course, she did have a hobby she pursued in secret, out of Mother's sight.
Her hobby was writing novels.
It had started out of simple curiosity.
The female butler who looked after her often read books, and one day, while the butler was away, she had opened one out of idle curiosity.
The first thing she read had been full of bare skin and intense… stimulating content, and the startled butler had come running to snatch the book away.
But after that, her interest in novels had been piqued. She had threatened — no, asked — the butler to let her read all kinds of stories.
And among them, her favorite genre was romance!
Reading them made her chest tingle and left her feeling a little floaty, and she loved that feeling….
So she had started wanting to write a story like that herself.
Lately, she had been getting up in secret every night after everyone else was asleep to write — a sweet romance between a handsome prince and a reincarnated princess. She had even posted it online and was getting a pretty good response….
But today's incident had shaken her worldview just a little.
"D-do girls normally kiss each other too…?"
Mother would occasionally press a light kiss to her forehead when she had done well….
"But that isn't a real kiss… is it?"
She kept trying to deny that such a thing could exist — and then, before she knew it, she was jotting down the scene floating through her mind in the little notebook she always carried for organizing story ideas.
A scene of the heroine mixing tongues, sticky and lingering, with a woman who looked exactly like her mother….
The words that woman had spoken earlier had been far too stimulating for her.