A Distance Where You Can Feel Her Heartbeat
It was true that Suyeon and Seoha had wanted to dress her in a skirt, but it was also true that they'd meant every word of the compliments.
Above all, that fresh, flustered innocence of hers was something that would fade away someday — which made it all the more impossible to let slip by.
While Seoha was still wrangling a friend who remained decidedly out of her right mind, Suyeon hurriedly packed the clothes into a shopping bag and made a proposal.
"Should we walk around a bit?"
Maybe it was the short skirt.
Her gait was hopelessly awkward, and it clearly needed practice.
"W-walk? Like this?"
But Yeoncheong wanted nothing more than to duck into the nearest hole and hide. She'd fallen head over heels for the sweet talk and put the thing on, only to be reunited with her runaway common sense the moment they stepped outside where people could see.
"What do you mean, like this? You look nothing but pretty."
"Uuu..."
She could do nothing but fidget under Seoha's praise, and for a long while at that. Noticing that her hands were still clamped down on the hem of the skirt, Suyeon licked her lips.
"Aww, what, worried someone might see your panties?"
"Hey!"
Had someone actually heard that? Yeoncheong's blue eyes darted frantically around the area. When she swung a fist in retaliation, Suyeon raised the shopping bag as a shield and pressed on.
"No need to be shy about it now. You never wear safety shorts anyway, and you show it off just fine."
"That's because they're stuffy! I wasn't showing it off, it was an accident!"
Correcting her friend's statement, Yeoncheong muttered under her breath.
"...And it's people other than you two looking that's the problem..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing, forget it. Do whatever you want."
At that half-resigned permission, the two just assumed she was grumbling. Suyeon grinned slyly and looped her arm through one of Yeoncheong's, and Seoha, who had been quietly watching, claimed the empty arm on the other side.
Under a warm sun that carried the breath of spring, the three girls clung together and strolled down the street as if winter still lingered.
"Haha! Yeoncheong, you waddle like a baby."
"Shut up."
The truth was, she was being dragged along at their pace — but she took each step as carefully as she possibly could, terrified that any widening of her stride might send the skirt flaring upward.
Window-shopping with their flustered friend in tow, then lunch at a cozy little restaurant — they'd been having a wonderfully full day when an unforeseen problem reared its head.
Namely: the outfit the two of them had personally selected for Yeoncheong.
Dressing her up at just the right moment had been all well and good, but... it seemed a miniskirt and bowling didn't mix. On top of having to change the itinerary they'd so carefully planned for their athletically inclined friend—
"Ah, cold! Jeez..."
—the biggest problem was the handful of shameless gazes around them slowly lifting at the sound of her voice. Had she been so wary of people's eyes out on the street, only to let her guard slip the moment delicious food landed in front of her? She'd already tossed off the cardigan, grumbling that it kept getting in the way, and the sight of her wiping a droplet of water off her chest with a careless hand was more than a little eye-catching.
"...The top's so thin that this lands right on bare skin."
A loud soliloquy, delivered as if meant to be heard. It was aimed at the two girls who'd put her in these clothes, but a voice can't be sent like a text message to just one recipient — so it only made the people nearby sneak another glance or two.
They hadn't worked hard to dress her prettily just for the eyes of strangers whose names they didn't even know. This was something they had accomplished after several rounds of trial and error themselves. At the very least, today, they didn't want to share her.
"Yeoncheong, eat fast. We're going somewhere else."
"Huh? Wh-what? You said you wanted to take our time eating?"
"I changed my mind."
A possessiveness neither of them was fully aware of. A voice that had gone just a touch stiff without their meaning it to, hurrying Yeoncheong along.
Beneath the dark tabletop, two glowing screens. To decide their next destination, the two sets of fingers worked busily away.
Karaoke, an escape room cafe, the comic cafe, even the screen baseball center they'd visited once before — there was no shortage of places to play without worrying about anyone's eyes. The most important thing, though, was what Yeoncheong herself wanted. Suyeon and Seoha loved her either way, but if possible, they wanted somewhere everyone could enjoy.
So when they asked if she had a preference among the candidates, Yeoncheong draped her cardigan over her shoulders and pursed her lips in thought.
"Hmm... the comic cafe doesn't look bad."
It was somewhere she'd never been, so that felt fresh, too. And after walking for a while, it seemed like just the right place to rest and wet the throat a little.
"Fine. Let's go there."
"Follow us. We already scouted it out."
And it came with private rooms, after all — which made it a perfect fit for Suyeon and Seoha's conditions as well.
Since they'd just eaten, they ordered only drinks, listened to the staff explain how the place worked, and took a vibrating pager.
"Ooh. So many books."
From famous titles she'd at least heard of to obscure ones she'd never encountered, the shelves lining every corner were stuffed full of manga. What to read? Humming to herself as she deliberated for a moment, Yeoncheong picked up a well-known basketball series.
She'd read a bit of it back when she was still a boy, but like any manga that floated around a classroom, whole volumes had been missing here and there — so she resolved to read it properly this time around.
"I'll read this one."
The first to choose her manga, Yeoncheong slipped straight into an empty room. Having marked exactly which room she'd gone into, Seoha grabbed something that looked reasonable and followed her in. She didn't really know manga anyway, and she had a different objective in mind. Suyeon, equally clueless on the subject, hugged a series she'd at least heard of to her chest and was the last to dive in.
"Seriously... why do you two keep crawling into this cramped little space?"
To Yeoncheong, I'll read this one had meant let's enjoy our own picks and meet up after — and the two intrusions left her visibly flustered. She'd wedged a cushion underneath herself and gotten comfortable, and now she pulled her ridden-up skirt back down and straightened herself out.
"Couples do it in one room all the time. Shouldn't we do the same?"
Between the sheer audacity of it — past shameless and squarely into shameless-with-pride — Yeoncheong found herself with nothing to say, and Seoha, taking the silence as assent, squirmed around looking for a comfortable position as well. There was no chance to protest the friend using her body as furniture at will.
"That's right. Besides, there are three of us — we more than fit."
Suyeon, arriving a beat late, rested the pager on Yeoncheong's stomach and laid herself down too. One of them pillowed on her chest, the other settling her head on her stomach atop the pager... Yeoncheong couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to.
When she demanded whether they really had to use her body as a cushion, the answer that came back was a suggestion that she switch spots if she was uncomfortable. So Yeoncheong opened the manga she'd brought and resigned herself. It tickled, sure, but the arrangement was already settled and it wasn't actually uncomfortable — and she didn't have the gall to lie down on a friend's stomach herself.
Three people crammed into one tiny room should have been uncomfortable, but with the first one down using Yeoncheong as her cushion, the arrangement actually struck a decent balance — and the three of them each sank into their own worlds.
Unlike the two friends savoring their first read-through, Yeoncheong skimmed past the parts she knew and finished quickly, then pursed her lips.
"Hey, get up. I need another book."
"Already?"
"If I get up, you two have to get up too. Just tell me which book it is and I'll have someone bring it."
She hadn't thought it through earlier. Like stacked blocks, they'd settled neatly one atop another — so for Yeoncheong at the bottom to get up would take a truly bothersome series of maneuvers. And nobody wanted a commotion over getting up.
"Should I just bring a whole stack, then?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
In the end, after handing over the finished volume and sending Suyeon off — Yeoncheong suddenly remembered the pager, still sensing something resting on her stomach.
"Come to think of it, when are our drinks coming out?"
"It looked pretty crowded because of the holiday. Probably because of that?"
Setting her book down for a moment, Seoha turned on her side and swiped the pager. Then, holding it to Yeoncheong's stomach like a stethoscope, she moved it around here and there, and Yeoncheong squirmed against the tickle and tilted her head.
"What are you doing?"
"An experiment, if you insist on calling it that. We've waited long enough — it should be about time..."
The moment Seoha pressed the pager firmly into her stomach and hushed her—
Bzzz. Bzzzz.
The pager began to buzz, summoning them to collect their finished drinks.
"Hah—!"
At the same time. Locked onto her lower abdomen with pinpoint accuracy, the vibrating buzz tore an involuntary moan out of Yeoncheong—
"Oh my."
Seoha's eyes went round; even she hadn't expected a reaction this strong.
Bzz-bzz.
As the pager urged them to hurry up and collect the drinks, she clapped a hand over her mouth and was just managing the situation when—
"What on earth are you two doing in here?"
Tossing her manga inside and sticking her head through the doorway, Suyeon — uncharacteristically — launched into a scolding.
"You could hear it from outside! The staff member was giving us weird looks! I'll go get them, so keep it quiet."
Calming her face, flushed red with embarrassment, Suyeon snatched the pager from Seoha's hand, her footsteps fading into the distance.
"Yeon Seoha..."
"Sorry. I didn't know you'd react that intensely. Really, I'm sorry."
Something about how if you apologize first, it becomes hard to blame the other person.
Yeoncheong concluded the punishment by delivering a forehead flick.
Meanwhile—
"You perverts..."
To defrost the icy glare of Suyeon returning with the drinks, the two of them sweated through a full explanation of how it had all come to pass.
Anyway...
After that blush-inducing accident(?), they plunged back into their manga worlds.
Having been reduced to a cushion proper, Yeoncheong simply lay there reading her books one after another. When she finished one, Suyeon brought the next; when she grew thirsty, Seoha slipped a straw between her lips — her payment for lending out her body as furniture.
"Ah."
When she opened her mouth as before, Seoha rose slightly and reached for the cup resting on the little table. The drink inside sloshed, nearly drained. Pressing the straw deep between the ice cubes, she held it out.
"There's barely anything left. Suck it dry."
Yeoncheong pulled hard on the straw as advised—
"Oh. Yeoncheong's stomach is making noises."
—and lying with her head pillowed on that stomach, Suyeon caught the sound loud and clear.
"Cough... cough...! Wh-what did you say?"
"I was wondering what that sound was. Turns out it happens every time you drink."
"Are you... why are you listening to that so intently?"
Perhaps because of the fact that her stomach had been making noises even its owner had never heard before, Yeoncheong squirmed and forcibly repositioned Suyeon's head. Leaving behind her grumbling friend — this is fun though, why? — Seoha, having heard the exchange, seemed to remember something and stirred as well.
Were they seriously treating her like furniture? Just as Yeoncheong opened her mouth to ask whether anyone had a right to be this free and easy on top of somebody else's chest—
"I can hear your heartbeat."
Finding just the right spot and pressing her ear to it, Seoha smiled softly.
She'd seen her profile up close plenty of times, but facing her head-on like this was a rare treat. Marveling anew at the delicate features gathered so neatly on that small face, she quietly admired her friend's beauty.
"Ooh, it's speeding up a little."
Seoha, now providing live commentary, lifted her head slightly to meet Yeoncheong's eyes, as if to check on something. Was it because she was staring so hard at her face? A needless prickle of nerves ran through her. Noticing that faint tremor, her friend's lips curled.
"It's not nerves, surely. Could it be...?"
"Why are you two so obsessed with the sounds coming out of other people's bodies?"
Face burning, Yeoncheong reached out to peel her friends off, shaking her head.
Where do you think you're touching? Are you perverts or what?
Watching them giggle and roughhouse so innocently was a lovely sight and all...
But it's only ever the two of them doing that...
Present in the same room, yet stranded on her own little island, Suyeon stuck out her lips in a pout.