Me, Franc, and Yeoni (1)
It was a little past twelve-twenty when I got home, and not one of them had touched lunch. The whole family was waiting on me.
"Son!"
"Seoha!"
The instant Hwayeon and I opened the door and stepped inside, Mom and Sis came flying, caught hold of me, and brimmed over with tears.
"You didn't get punished or anything? It ended all right?"
"Y-yeah."
I tried to answer, but neither of them was interested in listening. They seized my arms and dragged me into the living room, and pulled along by those hands I sat down on the wool carpet. Only then did Sis press me to explain properly.
"Looking at your face, nothing bad happened, right? Right? You're fine?"
"It won't go as far as an international tribunal. A substantial fine, and a few months' ban on entering the Phase World, written up on paper. That'll be the whole of it."
Hwayeon, a step behind us into the living room, answered in my place and sat on the sofa. Franc peeked between Mom and Sis, who had claimed the spots on either side of me, then settled primly at Hwayeon's side, knees together.
"Oh, thank goodness. I was so worried they'd haul you before an international court."
"I told you over and over it wouldn't blow up into that..."
Hwayeon muttered it, looking at them as if she couldn't believe her ears. Something mischievous sparked in me at the sight. I grinned and nodded.
"The committee members started pulling dirty tricks halfway through, which pissed me off, but in the end Yeoni and the person from the government handled it."
Hwayeon jolted at the name. Color flooded her face, and she turned her head away.
Mom and Sis stared, blank, looking from Hwayeon—red to the ears, face averted—to me, grinning like an idiot, and then they spoke as one.
"Yeoni?"
Even Dad had lifted his eyes from his book to stare at me. The outcome of the hearing hadn't shocked him half as hard as this.
I chuckled, wicked, and added the rest.
"Yeoni confessed she likes me, so she's going to be my girl."
At that artless bombshell, Hwayeon went pink all the way to her ears and down her neck, and buried her face in both hands. Not that the women of this house were the type to take the hint and change the subject.
"Yeoni~?"
"Hwayeon?"
The two madams latched on at either side of her and pried her hands off her face by force.
She could have held them off for as long as she liked if she'd set her mind to it, but maybe she'd let the strength go on purpose. Either way, Hwayeon revealed a face gone soft as a boiled tomato to the entire family. The look of someone who had given up entirely was pitiful, and cute.
"Come, come. Tell Mom exactly what happened!"
"Mm-hm. Tell your sister-in-law, okay?!"
Whoa. Lasers were about to shoot out of Mom's eyes. The two of them went at Hwayeon in a state of pure delight, as if they had never been worried about me at all.
Dad let out a breath and gave me a look of gruff approval. An unexpected candidate for daughter-in-law had turned up, and he seemed pleased about it.
So, offering Hwayeon my condolences in advance, I figured I'd go change. I had things to say to Franc, too.
"I'll go change and be back."
"Aah?! S-Seoha..."
Ah. For her to beg for help with a face that desperate... sorry. When Mom and Sis teamed up, even I couldn't handle them.
I left Hwayeon despairing at the betrayal and slipped out of the living room at a quick pace.
Back in my room I stripped off the school uniform in a hurry and pulled on brown cotton pants and a gray long-sleeve shirt, and Franc came in through the door.
She'd been wearing a faintly expectant look. Seeing I'd already changed, she drooped—then caught my eye, swapped faces in a flash, and broke into a sheepish little laugh.
Franc was quietly a pervert too, I swear.
I focused Phase Power into my arm through the Mana Sieve, took her hand, and led her to the bed to sit. At the sudden shift in me, a question mark all but popped up over her head, and she perched on the edge without protest.
I sat her down and sat facing her, staring straight at her face, and Franc tilted her head a little, plainly wondering what I was doing.
I gathered the Mana Sieve into my eyes until a corona of blue light ringed my irises. Franc met my gaze, and color rose slowly across her face.
"Seoha? Have you something you wish to say?"
"Yeah. I do."
Out in the living room, Mom and Sis had Hwayeon cornered and were raining questions on her, and they were not being kind. Dad was pretending otherwise—eyes on his book, ears locked on every word of the assault. I could tell. They'd be at it for half an hour at least. Time enough to talk to Franc.
Hwayeon's eyes were already full. I felt a little sorry for her and wanted to help, but unpleasant things get easier once you just get them done.
I told her, silently, to hang in there, and turned to Franc.
"What do you think of me?"
"Pardon?"
"Do you really want me dating Hwayeon?"
"Ah, that is..."
Had she thought I was about to bring up the six-hundred-billion-won fine, and what happened at the hearing?
The thought alone turned my stomach, so I let it go. Better to tell myself that money was never going to reach my hands in the first place. And the Union... someday, I figured, I'd get my chance to pay them back.
Anyway. I asked Franc, who looked faintly thrown.
"Glancing at Hwayeon, teasing her, letting the air go strange—that was my fault. But every time, you weren't angry, and you weren't sulking. You looked like you were rooting for me. I like you, Franc. If you weren't beside me now, the emptiness might actually drive me out of my mind. But I don't feel precious to you, and I'm scared. Scared you'll keep this distance, and then abandon me and leave."
Saying it out loud, the feeling caught up with me, and my chest started to ache.
When my expression darkened, Franc flailed and waved her hands.
"What?! No! I have no one but you, Seoha! Passing on... honestly, I did think of it at first, but not anymore, not at all! Just being at your side is enough to make me happy!"
The moment she said passing on, my heart dropped. Then, at the promise that she had no intention of leaving, I let out a breath of relief—and reading what that promise actually meant, I sank.
She'd said my confession made her happy, and still she had no intention of accepting my love.
"I, I..."
She must have felt her thoughts being read. Her brow tightened, those sad, downturned brows drawing in, and she seemed to be agonizing over how to persuade me without leaving a wound.
"Every time you look like that, it feels like you're trying to put distance between us, and it makes me angry. And sad..."
Franc was quiet.
"Part of me is greedy enough to want both of you. You and Hwayeon. But another part of me knows this isn't right, and I'm a mess because of it. This is two-timing."
"Seoha..."
"This morning, in the limousine. I complimented her without thinking much of it, and when Hwayeon reacted well, you pushed me to hurry up and confess, didn't you?"
"...Yes."
"The second I saw that, I got angry, and my head got so tangled that I confessed to her out of spite. I had no idea she'd been thinking of me that much. Hearing what she said, I even felt like confessing in a fit of anger had been a mistake... but there was also a part of me that was glad. Glad to learn Hwayeon liked me too."
Franc fidgeted with her fingers, her face so complicated I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I was a mess myself, my chest stopped up tight, and I couldn't get the words out cleanly.
"If that's what you want, I'll kneel in front of Hwayeon, apologize, and take the confession back. Franc, do you really..."
"Please, do not. Seoha, that you love me makes me happy enough to weep. But you are human. A person is meant to love a person. That is the way of things."
"But I—"
"And if Miss Hwayeon is rejected by you again this time, the wound will be so deep she may never get back up!"
"But I love you, Franc!!"
Her cutting me off made something surge, and at Franc—no different from the first time I'd confessed—I shot to my feet and shouted before I knew it.
"Ah—!"
Right on that timing, I faintly heard Mom and Sis cheering out beyond the door. Franc worried the shout might have carried, then, at the distant ruckus of Mom and Siha, her face eased, and she spoke.
"Seoha... I am a spirit. I have no body. There is nothing I can do for you..."
The frustration felt like it would blow my chest apart.
Nothing she could do for me?! Just having Franc beside me had been more comfort than I knew how to measure!!
I couldn't hold the anger down. Through the Mana Sieve I'd finally gotten a feel for, I poured Phase Power across the whole front of my body and threw myself on her.
"Kyaa?!"
"Nothing you've done for me?"
"Ngh..."
Wrists caught, pinned beneath me, Franc panicked and tried to push me off. But Franc has no physical strength to begin with.
I raised her resisting hands, pinned them above her head, looked straight into those azure eyes, and said it.
"Yesterday afternoon. Who was it that took me all the way down her throat?"
"Nn—!"
"Even setting aside the part where you made me feel good—if the Franc who held me together when I was barely keeping hold of my mind says a thing like that, then what does that make me?"
"Auu. Seohaaa..."
Pinned under me, face red, she squirmed and then turned her head away. Watching her, flushed all the way to her ears, the sadness came in this time, until it felt like it had taken both my eyes.
"You're an idiot, Franc..."
I let go of the hands restraining her arms and buried my face in the fullness of her breasts.
"Seoha..."
"I'm going to date Hwayeon. For real. Seriously."
"Miss Hwayeon has loved you truly, for a long time. Anyone else, I could not accept. But if it is Miss Hwayeon, then I do not mind."
...Huh?
I was working my head hard, trying to understand the feeling hidden under those words, when Franc lifted a hand and stroked my hair.
"Well... no matter what anyone says, I was the one who received your first confession, was I not?"
"Mm."
"So if you reckon it properly, I am your pri... your primary wife! So until I have a body, I shall go on in this position. So I will accept all of you, with understanding and with love. So, in the spirit of entrusting you to Miss Hwayeon..."
Even Franc seemed to find what she was saying strange. She laughed awkwardly, then, as if to cover it, fumbled over my face and stroked it.
"If it is you, Seoha, I believe you will not cast me aside, even if you give your heart to Miss Hwayeon."
"Cast you aside?! Don't even think something that ridiculous!"
I snapped at the absurdity of it, and maybe that counted in my favor, because Franc smiled radiantly and hugged my head tight.
"Miss Hwayeon will be a great help to you. So do not push her away. You must love her, too... as much as you love me?"
...Haaah.
I sighed, unable to bear it, and Franc's face went briefly anxious. In that look, I caught her heart.
Franc was anxious too. She was afraid that if she tried to keep my love all to herself and came up short, I would leave. She had no body, so if she went up against Hwayeon she would lose—that defeated feeling was in it as well. That was why she was trying, on purpose, to take the second's place.
How much must that hurt.
They say women are possessive by nature, and hungry to keep what they own. Especially with a lover, it shows... or so I'd read online, anyway. And Franc, giving up even that greed, resolving to step back of her own accord... how much must that hurt.
There was something I had to show her, in answer to a heart like that.
"Franc. Wait here."
"Yes?"
I couldn't hide the set of my face as I went out to the living room.
"Call me sister-in-law too, okay? Okay?"
"Nnn... Siha, please, stop..."
"You have no idea how long Mom has wished for a daughter-in-law like Yeoni~ Come now, won't you try calling me Mom? Hmm? Hmm?"
Hwayeon had nothing to say.
It was a wreck. She looked ready to drop dead of sheer embarrassment, her face half in tears, her body shaken this way and that between Mom's hands and Siha's.
Even if I'd been a woman, I would have found this unbearable. Thank god Dad was watching from a step away. If he'd piled on, Hwayeon might actually have fainted.
"Hold on. Mom, Sis, step aside a second. I'm taking Yeoni."
"Uuunn..."
I held my hand out to Hwayeon, face red. She hesitated, then took it, and looked at me with resentment—why are you only helping now.
"Oh, honestly, son~ Mom was in the middle of a conversation~!"
"Where are you taking Hwayeon? What are you planning to do with her?"
Mom and Sis were having the time of their lives, and it only made Hwayeon's face crumple further. Leave the pair of them like this, squealing with delight, and they would absolutely eavesdrop. I warned them.
"If you sneak around and listen in, I won't let it go. I'm telling you now."
Before they could say anything weird, I meant to grab her hand and get to my room, but her legs seemed to have given out—she swayed—so I just picked her up in a princess carry.
She went rigid against me.
Another cheer burst from Mom and Sis behind us. I ignored it, got back to my room, and kicked the door shut.
Once we were inside, Hwayeon's tension seemed even higher than it had been in the living room. Eyes squeezed shut like a baby bird, both hands clutched to her chest, trembling finely—it was pitiful to watch.
I took in that sight in silence for a moment, then set her gently on the bed. Her eyes opened a crack. She gave me a look tangled with more feelings than I could count, then squeezed them shut again and let the strength drain out of her body.
Her long, slender legs went slack, and the high-waisted flare skirt rolled up over her thighs. Above the black bands of her stockings, a pale strip of bare thigh showed, and past it a glimpse of slinky black lace and the soft, full mound beneath.
Seeing it through Spatial Perception and seeing it with my own two eyes... was the difference really this big? People say a real view and a photograph never give you the same feeling. Turns out that's true.
Anyway, the set of her—as if she were telling me to do whatever I wanted—made me swallow. But that wasn't why I'd brought her. And if she was misunderstanding, she was misunderstanding badly. What was I supposed to do with this?
I turned to Franc, who was watching in a daze, looking troubled. She broke into a sudden laugh, pumped a cute little fist, and said,
"Seoha, just kiss her!"
...What?
"You're spreading spit on her!"
Spit? She did not get to say that with a face that pure!
I was thrown. But Hwayeon was trembling like the tension might actually blow her apart, and I thought I had to do something, somehow.
...Th-this was Franc's suggestion, so.
I approached carefully and brought my face close to hers. Hwayeon must have sensed it. She flinched and started to pant, and tears were trying to gather at the corners of her tightly shut eyes.
I watched her for a moment, then pressed a light kiss to her forehead. She twitched and hunched her shoulders. It struck me as cute. I laughed inwardly, kissed the straight bridge of her nose, and brushed a kiss across her upper lip, and the body that had been vibrating like a vibrator began, little by little, to settle.
As the trembling eased, her lips parted slightly. I took the opening and covered her mouth with mine.
"Mm—! ...mmm... nn..."
A soft smack. Then a longer one, wet.
"Hhh... hnnn."
Kissing Hwayeon like this, I remembered the romance novels she used to describe—the ones that insisted a first kiss tasted like heaven.
Heaven, my ass.
...Still, it felt good. Warm, and moist, and soft... and the fact that I was locked in a back-and-forth kiss with a beauty like Hwayeon was winding my head up, too.
That was when Spatial Perception caught two uninvited guests pressed to my door, ears cocked.
I told them not to eavesdrop!
Hwayeon was deep in the kiss. Pull away all of a sudden and it would hurt her, so...
"Mmmnn..."
We licked at each other's tongues and caught at each other's lips, a deep kiss that ran thirty seconds, and when I drew back, Hwayeon's trembling had stopped completely.
Instead she looked at me with tears in her eyes, wistful and aching.
"Just a second."
I whispered it softly at her ear. It must have tickled; she shrank in on herself a little, and the sight was seriously bad for my heart. I looked for a moment into those black eyes, wet and shining like a fawn's... then darted to the door and yanked it open. Mom and Sis, leaning on it to listen, spilled into the room.
"Eek!"
"Mom—!"
"...Mom. Sis."
"O-oh my~?"
"Ehehe. Seoha, so, um, you know."
Judging by Sis's reaction, she hadn't caught on that I'd kissed Hwayeon. What was wrong with her radar? Had being next to Mom canceled it out?
Arms folded, I looked with cold eyes at Mom, pinned under Sis, and Sis, sprawled on top of her. The two of them grinned, bashful and embarrassed, and bolted for the living room.
They wouldn't be back. Probably.
I shut the door and turned, and in that short time Hwayeon had pulled my blanket up over her head and hidden like a turtle.
Franc, giggling beside her like a sheltered maiden, was one thing. Hwayeon hiding like a turtle was cute enough to kill me.
Hwayeon especially. A cold city woman showing a face like that—the contrast was downright criminal. It was funny, and the fact that she could be this embarrassed was funny too, so I laughed without a sound, and Franc laughed with me, drifting in a slow circle around the bed.
"Miss Hwayeon is cuter than she looks."
"I didn't expect her to be this cute either."
Cute was cute. I still had something I needed to do. I meant to tell Hwayeon about Franc and leave the verdict in her hands.
This was two-timing, no way around it. Hide Franc, and Hwayeon would never know, and if I thought about her heart, hiding it was the obvious choice... and yet. This was the least my conscience would allow.
I won't say there was no selfishness in it, choosing this so I could live with myself. I was prepared to pay—Hwayeon dumping me, obviously, and getting the hell beaten out of me besides. ...The kiss had been me grabbing a little selfish pleasure beforehand... ahem!
Franc, who'd been giggling, seemed to realize what I meant to do. She looked at me with worry in her face.
"Seoha... you do not have to. If only you say nothing..."
"Then the price is your pain. And it means deceiving Hwayeon, too. I don't... want that."
It wasn't that Franc was some saint, kind as an angel, happily accepting a situation like this. Of course she was hurting. If she weren't, she never would have said she'd take it with understanding and with love.
That was why I'd decided to speak. Leave a thing like this buried and it only rots and festers, and hurts everyone. And if it ever came to light, it would blow like a backdraft through a burning room—one sudden roar—and Franc, Hwayeon, and I would all suffer enough to wish we were dead.
If that was the alternative, better to bring it out now.
I drew close to the bed, and Hwayeon, hidden in the blanket, flinched. I stroked the blanket over where her head was and whispered.
"Yeoni. I have something to say. It's important."
She flinched. Flinced again.
Hm? The reaction was off, so I scanned her body—and every time I used the pet name, her thighs pressed together. And there...
I swallowed.
"...It's important, so you have to listen."
Hwayeon was curled up with her face buried in her arms, red all the way to her ears. She seemed deeply embarrassed—embarrassed enough to want to die. Which was probably why she wouldn't answer.
Part of me wanted to whip the blanket up and see her looking ashamed, but that would only count against me now. I pushed the urge down, patted the blanket over her back with a gentle hand, and spoke softly.
"Yeoni, you're not going to listen to me?"
She flinched, hard.
Ah. Her body went faintly rigid. She'd tipped, just barely, over the edge. Her inner walls clenched, and the slick seeping from her began to soak the panties pressed against her sex. The fabric was thin. In a blink it bloomed a wet spot the size of a quarter, and then the fluid started falling from that spot in slow, separate drops.
Don't tell me this was her fetish. Being forcibly taken by a man weaker than she was... something like that? Or were her ears an erogenous zone, and whispering undid her?
I was thrown, but I put on a calm face and opened my mouth again.
"It really is important. I want you to listen, Hwayeon, and decide. I'm saying this prepared to take a slap from you."
If I kept using the pet name, she might never settle, so I switched back, and it seemed to work. The blanket began to shift, little by little. At last her head emerged—hair a mess, face deeply flushed, breath rough and undone.
Slowly, she pushed herself up and sat in a neat, knees-together pose, the way a girl sits.
Her clothes were creased all over with wrinkles, her face flushed, her hair mussed and fluffy, and her eyes, faintly wet, couldn't look at me. They stayed on the floor.
Why did even this undone version of her look pretty?
She hadn't thrown the blanket off completely. She was hiding everything below her waist, so she knew her own state. Even so, the wetness kept sliding down, darkening the lower part of the black lace, and a damp mark was spreading on the sheet where it touched. Did she not realize I'd be the one seeing that later?
...She probably didn't have the room left to think about later.
I took out a handkerchief and dabbed lightly at the corners of her eyes.
She didn't speak.
The ice queen had melted clean away. What sat in front of me looked like a girl at the start of spring.
Seeing her hair in a wreck, I reached out, caught the hair tie that was already half undone, and pulled it free. Hair like black silk poured down in a waterfall.
"Beautiful."
My throat felt dry for some reason. I swallowed and combed the tangled hair into order with my fingers, and she closed her eyes and quietly accepted the touch.
...Seen like this, she had a charm entirely different from Franc's. I felt it all over again.
Light came in through the window and lay across her, and the fine dust drifting in it caught the sun like splinters of light, turning slowly in the air around her.
I sat in front of her and took in that face—lovely as something a god had carved—and Franc drifted to my side. She studied Hwayeon, eyes half-lowered and gaze cast down like a statue of the Virgin, and let out a small, wondering breath.
"Oh... she really is beautiful. I think she may be even lovelier than the First Madam."
Franc was no less beautiful herself, for the record.
"...stop looking..."
"Hm?"
"Stop looking..."
Ah. Had I stared that blankly?
"Come on. Whenever you're out, people stare, don't they? That's because you're beautiful. If you don't want to be looked at, you're the one who ought to wear a mask. Telling someone not to look at a face like that is basically torture."
"Hnn—!"
At the honest words that had slipped out of me, her brows drew tight, she bit her lower lip, and her body trembled.
...Whoa. She's flooding. Thighs shivering, spilling like that—she'd gone over again. Coming from my words alone. I couldn't begin to guess how much she loved me.
Maybe she'd only been swept up in the mood. Still, it moved me.
But shame, self-loathing, and despair were plain on Hwayeon's face, and if I left her like this she really would cry. Ah, the self-loathing was getting worse. Her eyes were filling up! I needed to get to the point, fast.
She looked ready to overflow, so I pulled several tissues and handed them over, and she dabbed at her tears. I waited while she wiped her eyes, then spoke.
"Listen. I told you about spirits before, didn't I?"
"...Yeah."
"I haven't told Mom, or Dad, or Sis about this yet."
So she'd have a chance to settle, I started from the beginning—everything I'd been through since entering the Phase World.
If she listened long enough, she'd calm down. Surely.