The Scent of a Friend I Like
"So... would you like to wash up at my place before we go?"
It was Seoha's hesitant offer. She certainly hadn't meant anything by it, but the remark left more than enough room for misunderstanding, and Yeoncheong flinched.
"No, it's fine. I'll just wash at home..."
She tried to decline tactfully — it would be rude to show up at someone's house in this state — but...
"Seriously!?"
Her refusal was completely drowned out by Suyeon's excited voice.
A rich friend's house, complete with a personal chauffeur, that no one had ever visited before. Like a cat that couldn't simply walk past a fish shop, curiosity-buzzing Suyeon couldn't just let her friend's offer slide.
At the sparkle in her eyes, Seoha immediately reached for her phone.
"Of course. It's a quick drive. I'll call the chauffeur now."
With no chance for anyone to talk her out of it, the destination was decided.
A little while later — perhaps the house really wasn't that far — the familiar black sedan pulled up in front of them.
"Get in, quick."
"I feel a little... awkward getting in like this."
Unlike Suyeon, who only needed a towel spread on the seat, Yeoncheong's back was a mess too — a single towel wouldn't be nearly enough to cover it.
Feeling guilty about getting into a pristine car in this condition, she was fidgeting at the door when Seoha forcibly pushed her inside.
"You can ride a bus or a taxi or the subway, can't you? So get in."
Seoha climbed in after her, and the luxury sedan pulled away toward the house on its smooth suspension.
"Whoa..."
"..."
Yeoncheong and Suyeon, led inside by Seoha after bowing apologetically to the chauffeur again and again, were left speechless with astonishment.
The house had looked enormous from the outside, but stepping inside made its scale hit them bodily, in full.
"Guest slippers... ah, here they are."
As if guests were a rarity who had almost never come — Seoha rummaged around the shoe rack and held out a pair of slippers.
"Wow... you wear slippers at home too? Don't tell me this is the marble floor I've only heard about in rumors?"
"The house we lived in before was like that. This one isn't."
Suyeon planted herself at the entrance and peered around in every direction. Surrounded by things she'd never seen before, no matter where she looked, her head and eyes didn't know when to rest.
It felt less like envy and more like pure, honest wonder, so Seoha hid a smile and gave her friend's back a gentle push.
"I'll let you look around slowly later. Ma'am?"
"Yes, Young Miss."
At her call, a woman who appeared to be the housekeeper emerged from deeper inside.
"Did you hear that, Yeoncheong? Young Miss! She said Young Miss!"
"Hey, keep it down."
The kind of address you'd only hear in a drama sent Suyeon bouncing on her toes with excitement. She made an effort to whisper, but apparently not enough of one, because Seoha cleared her throat for no reason at all.
"Ahem... ahem. Please show my friends to the bathroom. And please wash the clothes they're wearing."
At Seoha's flushed face, the housekeeper's lips twitched — she clearly had a comment ready — but she read the room and simply gave a small bow.
Seoha said she'd bring clothes for them to change into and headed upstairs first.
"Please follow me, young ladies."
Yeoncheong and Suyeon were then escorted along by the housekeeper, and when they learned the house had no fewer than three bathrooms, Yeoncheong breathed a sigh of relief — at least they wouldn't have to wash together.
"Aw~ you won't wash with me?"
"Obviously not."
"So disappointing~"
Suyeon, of course, was deeply disappointed about that.
Deeply.
Steam curled thickly through the shower stall. The rush of cascading water gradually faded, and a freshly washed, bare-skinned Yeoncheong stepped out.
She'd expected a rich household's bathroom to be something special, but the one she'd used had nothing remarkable about it beyond the enclosed shower stall built to keep the water from splashing everywhere.
"Phew... still, this is nice~"
Any lingering guilt about barging uninvited into someone else's home melted away like snow the moment the warm water rinsed her grimy body clean.
Had they not brought her clothes yet? She was dabbing at her damp body with the towel and poking around the room when—
"Done already?"
Seoha opened the door and poked her head in. There hadn't been so much as a knock, so Yeoncheong jolted in shock and scurried back into the shower stall, shielding herself with the towel.
"Wh-what are you doing!? How did you get in?"
"...You didn't lock the door?"
Back when she'd been a boy, she'd lived alone with her father, and after becoming a girl she'd lived on her own. The concept of locking the bathroom door simply did not exist in Yeoncheong's world.
"Ah..."
A belated realization, and an even later, short sigh. Seoha snorted into her hand.
"I came to bring you clothes."
Explaining her reason as if to say relax, Seoha set the clothes on the shelf — and Yeoncheong expected her to turn and leave. Instead, without turning around, she stared straight at her.
Could she actually see anything? The stall was veiled in white steam, and Yeoncheong had the towel pressed over herself. There was no way she could see.
And yet her friend kept gazing at her for a long moment, then slowly stepped closer.
Caught off guard by the wholly unexpected situation, Yeoncheong gripped the stall's handle and stopped her.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
"So? My shampoo's nice, isn't it?"
"Your shampoo...?"
Blue eyes darted down toward her own hair. And in that opening, her friend closed the distance in a stride and stroked Yeoncheong's hair.
So carefully, as if it might crumble at the slightest squeeze — the way one might handle a fragile jewel.
"Don't tell me you didn't notice?"
Seoha, eyes closed as she savored the fragrance, lifted her head. Following that small movement, a lock of black hair slid out of the stall and brushed against Yeoncheong's shoulder. Her whole body flinched, and the towel draped over her chest slipped down a little.
After a furtive glance at that, Seoha turned away.
"You don't know where my room is, right? I'll be waiting outside, so hurry up and get dressed."
She might barge back in again. After a brief pause to gauge the situation, Yeoncheong cautiously emerged from the stall, and with no telling when the door might swing open, threw on her clothes haphazardly and stepped outside.
Seoha, leaning against the door, gave her a look up and down.
"How is it? Do the clothes fit?"
"Yeah."
A plain black t-shirt with ordinary comfortable pants. Seoha had probably chosen them oversized on purpose — they were incredibly comfortable, and judging by the feel of the fabric, expensive too.
"Good. Let's head to my room."
Seoha smiled back at Yeoncheong's contented expression and led the way to her room, which turned out to be not far from the bathroom at all.
She could have just told her how to get there. But Yeoncheong shuffled along, following the room's owner as she beckoned her in.
Seoha hurriedly tidied the desk, her lips quivering.
"Suyeon's using the bathtub in her bathroom, so it looks like she'll take a while. I got sweaty too, so I'll wash up quickly and come back. Wait here a moment."
But Yeoncheong barely heard a word of it.
Come to think of it, counting today, this was only the second time she'd ever been in a girl's room since visiting Suyeon's place. And even then she'd left right away, so it was no exaggeration to call this the first.
When that fact dawned on her, Yeoncheong couldn't find anywhere to put her eyes and ducked her head.
"Hm? Make yourself comfortable."
The room's owner sat her, standing stiff in the middle of the room, down onto the bed. But even under the hands pressing her shoulders down, Yeoncheong couldn't manage to rise, only fidgeting where she sat.
"Um... this is my second time in a girl's room? Or my first...? Either way, I'm a little nervous."
At her friend speaking in a rigid, ramrod-straight posture, Seoha tilted her head.
"Hm? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Seoha abruptly cut herself off and walked toward the closet.
"Maybe it's natural for you to feel nervous in a friend's room for the first time, but I'm the one who let a friend I like into my private space without even a second to prepare."
With her back turned, pulling clothes from the closet, she finished the rest. At this unfamiliar side of her — stranger than the room itself — Yeoncheong lifted her head.
"Are you... embarrassed?"
Thud.
"I'm going to go wash up."
Never showing her face to the very end, Seoha left the room, picking up the clothes she'd dropped along the way.
She'd hit the nail squarely on the head, it seemed.
After the flustered owner of the room hurried out, Yeoncheong popped up and made for the desk.
Seoha had told her to make herself at home, but in the spacious room, the bed, desk, closet, and storage cabinets were everything there was — the desk was the only place she could explore with any ease of mind.
She really does study hard...
So this was how the top student in the whole school did it. Reference books and workbooks packed in tight, and the sticky notes plastered across every corner of the desk were crammed with reminders of tasks she mustn't forget.
On top of that, had she been studying all this time even with club activities? More books, freshly cleared away just recently, were stacked in the corner.
I could never keep up with that...
Was she strict with no one but herself? It was almost baffling — she studied this hard, and yet she'd told Yeoncheong that she was doing her best.
The only thing was, it didn't quite smell like someone lived here. There wasn't a single trace of a hobby of Seoha's own, nothing that spoke of her tastes. Like her first impression after the transfer, it was the desk of an ideal model student, as if drawn straight out of a picture.
Remembering how embarrassed she'd acted earlier, Yeoncheong briefly poked around to see if she'd hidden anything away, but came up empty-handed and returned to the bed.
Then her gaze landed on the large closet. Just as her friends had snooped around her house, she could have peeked inside — but perhaps because of all the years she'd lived as a man, that felt like one step too far.
Sigh... nothing to do.
Flop.
In the end, the very most Yeoncheong could manage was lying down on the bed and staring blankly at the ceiling.
That was when an unfamiliar flower-like scent rose up from beneath her pressed-down hair, and before she knew it, she'd lifted it to her nose.
So the shampoo I used today was Seoha's.
It being so close to her room, that bathroom was probably the one Seoha used every day. No wonder she'd been oddly embarrassed about washing there — Yeoncheong buried her face in the blanket, and then...
A scent from her friend's own body, incomparable to any shampoo, tickled the tip of her nose.
Startled, Yeoncheong bolted upright and glanced around nervously for no reason. But there was no one in the empty room to say anything, and she laid herself back down on the bed as if nothing had happened.
In a room that bore no scent of its occupant, she'd found one small spot that smelled of her friend's life. Maybe it was the comfort of the familiar found in an unfamiliar space — before she knew it, she was sniffing at the air.
It smells really nice...
It must have been the fabric softener on the blankets. Yeoncheong squirmed across the covers, chasing the fresh scent.
"Ah..."
And then she realized where the fragrance was actually coming from — her own clothes. Or rather, her friend's clothes that she was wearing right now.
Seoha seemed embarrassed about having let a friend she liked into her private space, but the same went for Yeoncheong. Seoha's room. The desk Seoha used. The bed Seoha slept in. The clothes Seoha wore. Even the shampoo Seoha used.
In a room hemmed in on every side by the belongings of the friend she liked, Yeoncheong must, for a brief moment, have gone out of her mind. Because if she were sane, she would never have tugged up the collar of the shirt she was wearing and brought it to her nose.
Seoha hadn't handed her worn clothes, so naturally the characteristic scent of fabric softener was the first thing to greet her nose. But her body, which had already memorized her friend's scent from the blanket, filtered out everything except the fragrance it had wanted to find in there.
Beneath the shirt hiked all the way up, a freshly washed, porcelain-pale belly came into view.
Sniff, sniff.
Rubbing her thighs together, savoring the feel of the fabric that had touched Seoha's skin, sprawled out on the bed and soaking in the scent that filled the air around her — and that was when—
"Whew~ Yeoncheong! Must be a rich people thing — the bathtub here is insane! The bubbles just come out on their ow—...n?"
She'd certainly gotten the full enjoyment out of it. Suyeon walked in proudly recounting her adventures in the bathroom, and their eyes met.
It wasn't her house. It wasn't even her room.
But locking the door. That damn unlocked door was the problem, as always.