Me, Franc, and Yeoni (2)

Franc had already sensed that I'd made up my mind to tell everything, and since she hadn't known what passed between day one and day four either, she nodded and listened with all she had. The further the story went, the more Noona's eyes began to say she couldn't believe a word of it.

I told her how, the moment I stepped in on the first run, a Low-Rank Variant—a Long-snouted Lean Wolf—had chased me until I leapt from a fifty-meter cliff. How I'd barely swum clear, dragged myself up a tree, hidden, and blacked out. How, the next morning, a one-eyed giant in the shape of a woman had passed right beside the place I was hiding. And how I'd met a colossal mole that was no aberrant at all, and awakened.

"A giant animal that isn't an aberrant... I can't believe it..."

"I could sense Phase Power even then, but that giant mole was definitely an ordinary animal. Not an aberrant."

Doubt creased Noona's face at that. She was shocked to hear the female-formed one-eyed giant and the giant mole had destroyed each other, startled all over again when I said I'd recovered the one-eyed giant aberrant's Phase Stone, and left with nothing to say at all when I told her the stone's Phase Power had been three million, eight hundred and fifty thousand.

3,850,000 TP. On price alone, three hundred and eighty-five billion won. Close to three hundred million dollars.

Noona said she'd save her questions until she'd heard the whole of it, and urged me on.

When I told her I'd met Franc on the seventh day, her eyes lit. When I said Franc had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been that one-eyed giant aberrant, they went glassy. And when I said Franc's soul had seeped into the Phase Stone, she closed them entirely.

I'd told her about the Soul Stone too, because Noona was someone I trusted. Should I have just kept it hidden? ...No. Don't second-guess it.

I looked at Noona, her mouth pressed shut, and went on. How much comfort I'd drawn from Franc after that. How she'd appeared just before my garbage excuse for a mind finally cracked, and become the one thing holding me together. How I'd run into an Imoogi, a Highest-Rank Variant—a vast serpent not yet a dragon. I left out the part where the Imoogi had come sniffing after Franc's Soul Stone. Didn't want to leave a bad impression. I explained, earnestly, how Franc had watched over me and protected me while I fled that thing, but the eyes Noona had closed once never opened again until the story was done.

"...Noona?"

Uneasy, I called to her with care. Her eyes flew open. She looked at me and spoke.

"The Soul Stone. Can I see it?"

"Uh. Yeah."

From the pouch at my neck I carefully drew Franc's Soul Stone—changed now into something like a god's tear—and held it out for Hwayeon. Franc flinched in the same moment, her face tightening as she twisted, but I pretended not to notice.

At a beauty like no jewel this world had ever held, Hwayeon let out a small breath of wonder, nodded, and spoke.

"We'll need something custom-made, a way for you to carry the Soul Stone. A necklace would be all right, wouldn't it?"

Ah...! Was Noona accepting this?

"So she was a person, but she became a spirit, and now she's with you. Is that what you're telling me?"

Huh? Oh. I hadn't told her the most important part.

"Don't misunderstand. Just hear me out."

Noona's brow creased faintly, as if she expected something grave, but she said nothing else and waited. I steadied myself at the sight of her and opened my mouth with care.

Noona's eyes flew wide, and my heart clenched.

"Of course I love you too, Noona. If you asked which of you I love more, I couldn't answer. You're both that precious to me. You and Franc."

Whether she was swallowing anger or not, Noona closed her eyes. Color rose slowly through her face, and the tips of her brows trembled. Her breathing seemed to roughen, little by little.

Of course it did. Confessed to, and confessing, and then on that same day telling her there was another woman he loved—a spirit—besides her. If I were in Hwayeon's place, I'd have swung a slap. A sense of crisis surged up at the shift in her expression, and I hurriedly launched into Franc's past.

"...I see. Those times you moved your mouth without a sound. That was lip-reading."

By the time Franc's story was finished, Hwayeon had a hand pressed to her chest and her face drawn tight, as if both her head and her heart hurt.

"Thanks to Spatial Perception and the Mana Sieve, I can see Franc clearly. She isn't visible to anyone else, so I could have kept hiding her from you too... but I love you both. I don't want to lie to someone I love."

I finished, watching her face, and Noona spoke with a calm that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"And what did Miss Evans say?"

Evans? She meant Franc?

"Franc said she'd simply exist at my side. That I should give her up and love you."

"...But you can't give up Miss Evans. And you can't give me up either."

"Yeah..."

I bowed my head at a tone that laid every tangled feeling bare. Noona hesitated a moment, then answered.

"I'm sorry. Give me time to... sort my thoughts."

"Yeah..."

"Don't worry. I won't breathe a word of the Soul Stone, or of Miss Evans, to anyone else. Not even if it kills me."

"Ah. Okay."

Then she took my face and made me lift my head, staring straight into my eyes. An expression I couldn't quite read crossed her face. She smiled, just faintly, and asked,

"By any chance, was this last thing you were hiding the story of Miss Evans and the Soul Stone?"

"Mm-hm."

Noona studied my face once more, then reached out and stroked my hair.

"...I'm glad you haven't changed."

"Huh?"

I've changed plenty, though. Seeing whatever was on my face, Noona smiled with a gentleness that went right through me, stroked one cheek, and pressed a light kiss to the other.

"Right. It wasn't even a question I needed to think about."

Huh? Whether she'd come to some revelation or not, she looked at me with a lightened face, her eyes full of something like resolve. Determination? What?

"I have something Miss Evans doesn't. Even at a glance, she can't introduce herself in front of other people. And beyond that, she can't have a child."

What?!

As if Noona had struck the answer dead center, Franc gave a bitter smile.

"Eughk?!"

With the look of a black panther, she yanked my head in and whispered at my ear.

"I'll let Miss Evans slide. She saved your life more than once, and a benefactor of your life is a benefactor of mine. But if you so much as turn your eyes toward some other bitch..."

"Th-then what?"

She clamped down. Hard.

"Ghk?!"

"I'll tear this off. Understood?"

Nod. Nod. Nod!!

The air had turned on a dime, and Noona's hand seized my—my number-one other self—as if she meant to burst it. I couldn't move a muscle. All I could do was nod for my life.

Aagh! It's—it's tearing off!

"That's too much..."

Collapsed on my side, I glared at Hwayeon with all the resentment I had while she fidgeted with the blanket and played innocent. I hadn't even properly used it yet, and I'd nearly lost the use of it forever!

Hwayeon, who'd been dodging that stare, soon cleared her throat and spoke.

"Ahem! Seoha, you've always been a tender-hearted, peculiar child. It's obvious just from the way you came to me when we were young. I understand you feeling love for Miss Evans in a situation like that."

"Changing the subject."

"...A-anyway! With me beside you, I don't imagine other women will measure up in your eyes. ...They won't, will they?"

She was rambling, but every point of it was true. Pathetic as it sounded, looks alone—there was no one alive who could match Franc or Hwayeon. The pain radiating from the center of my lower body kept me from saying so. I just stared at her, sulking. She looked a little more flustered at that, hesitated, and carefully reached out a hand.

"I-I didn't squeeze that hard... so... it didn't burst, did it?"

"If it had burst, I wouldn't be talking like this."

Embarrassed, Noona laughed awkwardly and patted my hip, gentle and slow.

Thank god. Honestly, I'd braced all the way to the worst case—Hwayeon walking out, Franc's affection cratering, the family turning on me with blame—but Hwayeon had accepted my two-timing, and Franc's affection had held. Franc herself drifted near us, half glad it had ended well, a quarter forlorn, and the last quarter jealousy.

"Thank you, Noona."

"H-huh?"

"For accepting me. And Franc."

"...If it weren't for Miss Evans, you wouldn't have come back alive either. A-and she..."

She mumbled the last of it and trailed off, but I could roughly guess what she'd meant to say.

Because she's a ghost. That was it.

Knock, knock.

At the sound I reached past the door with my senses and found Mom standing there. She had an apron on. About to start on a meal, by the look of it.

Her voice sat a little off from usual. A full octave higher. ...Ghk. The clock already said three!

"I think Mom's getting the wrong idea right now! Her voice is all worked up!"

"M-mm."

I shot upright and whispered it, and Hwayeon's flushed face went awkward. I wondered why, then caught on, and looked at the blanket she was using to hide her lower half. A petty sadism tried to well up. The grudge of my twin bells, nearly torn off and burst, rising fresh...

"Uh, yeah, we're hungry! We'll be right out!"

She answered in a voice that couldn't hold its delight and walked off toward the kitchen. I listened to her going and looked at Hwayeon. She clutched the blanket tight and stared back, uneasy.

"...What are you looking at?"

I didn't answer. I just gazed at her, steady, and Hwayeon grew restless, unable to shake it. I went to her and set both hands on her shoulders.

She flinched.

The warmth of her through her clothes seemed to lift my own with it. The outer corners of her eyes had lowered, and she looked up at me like a small bird, and desire started to boil.

"I should stop calling you Noona."

"Nnh."

Seeing her so lost for what to do only made the desire harder to hold. I couldn't pluck the flower here and now. But a k-kiss would be all right, wouldn't it? We'd already done it once. I held Hwayeon's eyes and brought my face in, and those obsidian irises, darting this way and that, were soon hidden behind her lids.

A soft kiss.

"Mmn."

When my lips met hers, the shoulders under my hands twitched. The feeling seemed to stir the beast in me. I pushed my tongue between her faintly trembling lips, and her even teeth parted just a little as her tongue came shyly out to meet me.

Uuugh... Earlier I'd cursed those romance novels for calling a first kiss the taste of heaven. I was going to have to take that back. It wasn't heaven. It was fresh, sweet plum! Plum, of all things—how could saliva taste like plum? It was plum. No question. I wasn't imagining it.

I tapped her tongue with the tip of mine and drew back, and hers followed fearlessly into my mouth. I caught that plump pink flesh lightly between my front teeth. She flinched and tried to pull it back, but I bit a little harder and held it fast. I'd bitten harder than I meant to, without thinking, and Hwayeon showed no sign of pain. And my teeth had been pushed back, as if I'd bitten into a bundle of rubber bands. Was this the body of a B-ClassPhysical Reinforcement ability user?

When I let go, the tongue retreated home for a moment, then boldly pushed in even deeper. The bite from before seemed to have felt good, if anything. So I bit her the same way again, and Hwayeon's thighs drew together.

"Haa, hnnn... mmmph."

Chewing gently on her tongue, tasting that plum-sweet saliva in wet little sounds, I could tell she was growing more and more aroused. Spatial Perception feeding me her reactions in real time was a gift. Put it to use, and I figured I could please her without much trouble at all.

More to the point—we were dating now, so her chest, touching it, would be... all right. Right?

I let the hands on her shoulders slide down and brushed the back of one lightly against her chest. Hwayeon's startled hands flew up to cover it. I soothed her, moved those hands aside, and applied pressure as carefully as if I were handling thin glasswork.

A soft, heavy give.

"...!!"

Th-this was the real feel of a breast?! Soft enough that I could hardly believe two layers—blouse and bra—stood in the way. Soft... ah, forget it! Insanely soft! Not a scrap of muscle in it, just plush and yielding and wobbling-soft. This was the best.

"Mmph!"

Worked up over a real breast, I bit down hard on Hwayeon's tongue without meaning to. A metallic tang that could only have been her blood touched the tip of my tongue, and her shoulders drew in. Startled, I tried to pull away on instinct, but she caught the movement and wrapped both arms around my neck, refusing to let me go.

Did Hwayeon have a masochistic streak in her too? Why was it that the moment I hurt her, her body rolled so obscenely? Without Spatial Perception I wouldn't have known that either. Checking her face a beat too late, I saw she wasn't exactly pleading from the pain, and the wound my teeth had opened had already regenerated clean. Relief moved through me. I pulled my panic together. And then I set about ravishing her.

"Heh heh. Pain feels good for you, doesn't it, Hwayeon? Little masochist."

"Nnh?! N-no I'm not!"

"Sure you're not. I can feel your nipples standing up against my palm, right through the clothes."

"Hnn, this is—!"

I covered the lips that tried to deny it and stopped her from speaking. I wasn't going to believe her anyway. The proof was the honey spilling from the passage where life is born, soaking her crotch. The panties she wore were already wet through, useless at their job. I was worked up enough from the kiss and from the breast losing its shape in my hand, and confirming the state of her lower half made my cock stand until it couldn't have gotten any harder.

"Hahp. Hnnn. Mmph, haah!"

Kneading breasts so large my two hands could barely contain them, keeping up the deep kiss, I heard her spill moan after moan sweet enough to melt an ear. I wanted to lay her down like this, slip a hand under her clothes, and touch bare skin. And with that, the want to drive my other self into her petals grew lush and wild. I wanted to cross the line. I wanted to plant my flag in Hwayeon.

But the whole family was gathered in this house. The people in the living room and the kitchen were the only reason my reason was barely holding, and I didn't know how long it would last. Breasts really were something, though. I'd sneered at that internet post about a guy who got over being angry at light speed once his girlfriend let him touch her chest. I'd been a damn moron. I'd buried my whole body in giant Franc's breasts, and felt her spirit-form breasts with my arms and my back and my chest, but flesh and blood was unquestionably the best. Part of that was probably because holding Phase Power in one place with the Mana Sieve had kept me from giving my senses over completely. Still.

As I touched her, the thin sky-blue blouse and the bra beyond it started to frustrate me, so I seized the soft flesh in my hand roughly with the power of Mana Mode, and Hwayeon's breast warped in my grip as if it might burst.

"Haa... ahn."

She threw her head back, panting, leaking little nasal sounds between breaths. She definitely had at least some masochistic bent in her, the kind that could take pleasure from pain. I was kneading her breast hard enough to engorge it and biting her tongue between my teeth, and she still wasn't feeling it as pain. Any more of this and I wouldn't be able to hold out either. My reason flickered like an incandescent bulb. It felt as if I'd lose the thread any second and just take her.

"Haah, haah. Seoha... Mmn, Seoha... nnh!"

But Hwayeon already seemed half gone. Breathing hard, face flushed, sweating, a few strands of hair stuck to her forehead and her cheeks, she started clinging to me like a puppy. I held her tight and looked down, and through the bow of her arched back the sweat-damp thin blouse was showing her bra and the skin beneath. Below that, a black lace bra strap. Undo it, and those small, cute nipples standing stiff would greet me.

Leaning into me had crumpled the blanket that covered her from the waist down and shoved it toward her feet. And then I saw it. The place where she'd been sitting was soaked through, as if someone had spilled water there.

...Ugh. I really have to stop. Any further and it'll genuinely be too much.

"Hoooo."

"Hyaahn?"

Feeling the limit of my patience, I took her shoulders and pushed her back. Flushed, a single tear clinging to the corner of her eye, she wore a pitiful look that asked why I was stopping.

"I-I can barely hold it either. Any more and I might just take you like this. Let's stop here."

"Haaa. I-I'm fiiine..."

And with that, she tried to strip my clothes off with both hands!

Fine or not, Dad is right there in the living room! My sister and Mom are in the kitchen!

I grabbed both her hands in a hurry and tried to stop her, and I couldn't hold her by strength. She was too strong. Then Acceleration Mode—that wouldn't work either?! I couldn't stop her. I couldn't make her stop!

Nooo!!

"Seohaaahn..."

I'd felt the signs that something like this might happen and ignored them. Was this the price? I caught her hand as it seized the hem of my shirt and whispered, desperate.

"No, no! The family's right outside! Get a hold of yourself!"

As if she couldn't hear me, Hwayeon forced me down by strength, climbed on top of me, and ripped my shirt off with brutal force.

"Whoa?!"

The cool air of early spring hit my skin, and my mind snapped clear. Dangerous. This was genuinely dangerous. When I struggled for all I was worth, she brought her lips to my neck and sucked, hard and long. At the stinging I hunched my neck in.

Kkh—what was she doing. A hickey?!

"Stop leaving a hickey! This is going to be a real disaster!"

Panicking, I pounded on her shoulders and tried to push her off. It felt like shoving a boulder the size of a house. She didn't budge.

"Heh heh heh... Seoha... my beloved Seohaa..."

"Huk?!"

N-no! Not the pants!! Hwayeon had lost her mind. I grabbed the pants her hands were trying to drag down and desperately thought of a plan.

"Haaahn, ahnn. S-Seohaa. My... my lower belly, it's hot... haaahn."

Or I tried to. The moment ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I saw a streak of her fluids running down a snow-white thigh between the skirt hiked to her waist, my mind went white.

"Ah, nngh. Hnnaaahn!"

And then, at her grinding herself against my thigh, my vision flashed as if someone had dumped cold water over me, and my reason came back. If this kept up, the family outside the door would catch everything. The time to stop her with words, or with anything ordinary, had passed. I couldn't stop her the normal way. Then—

"Franc, Franc! Shock Noona with electricity!"

When no answer came from the only savior I had in this, I turned my head, and lost the power of speech at what was in front of me. I had no idea when she'd drawn so close, but a shallow valley of faintly curling golden grass was right under my nose, and I watched the brook spilling from it run down along a thigh. Realizing that even my only ally had lost her mind in the moment I was about to be reverse-raped, I nearly burst into tears.

"...Fraaaanc! Please! The electricity, hurry!"

I held on with every scrap of strength I had, shouting as Noona's hands grew stronger, and only then did Franc startle and begin to fluster.

"There's no time to fluster! Shock Hwayeon!"

I was already running the Mana Sieve at full power!

"I'm running the Mana Sieve, kkh?! So just—hah, hurry!"

Meeting my stubborn resistance, Noona's hands gave up on dragging the pants off and tried to slip inside my underwear instead. Whoa. That gave me chills. I'd come to love Hwayeon, but this was a bit much. Her other hand was already under my shirt, stroking my chest, but just holding the last line of defense was more than I could manage. There was nothing I could do. Franc, thoroughly flustered at the sight of that hand trying to get into my pants, seemed to decide this wouldn't do and seized the hips of Hwayeon where she sprawled on top of me. At that, I drove Phase Power through my skin as hard as the Mana Sieve would allow.

"Kyaaaahn!!"

"Hngh—!"

The instant Franc seized her hips and called the current up, pain fierce enough to flash fire across my eyes swept through me. But because I had the Mana Sieve running, it was nothing next to the Imoogi's lightning, which ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd taken with no defense at all. No worse than a static shock while changing clothes. Hwayeon, on the other hand—whether the current flowing from her hips had been turned into pleasure—stretched her toes straight, clenched inside, her walls tightening, and shuddered through her lower body.

"Hik, hahik, hnnnghhh."

I forgot my own pain and stared, blank, at Noona locked rigid, head thrown all the way back, lost in the feeling. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Then a hot, wet sensation spreading across my thigh made me look down. The thigh pressed to her sex was soaking through. Honey had burst from inside her petals and was streaming past panties that could no longer do their job.

"...Hit, hii, hiiii..."

Eyes rolled back, tongue stuck straight out, drool at the corner of her mouth, Hwayeon spilled a volume of fluids on another scale entirely from a man's release. She cried in a thin sound like a flute, and in the end collapsed in a heap on top of me. Pfft. Pssht. The way she trembled in bursts and sprayed from that small opening like a water gun was something else. Had the shock, driven into a body already burning and a mind wound past its limit, pinned her to a pleasure that wasn't normal? For several seconds she shook and sprayed from the little opening that led toward a nursery, and then, as if she'd lost consciousness completely, she went limp without so much as a twitch.

That had been genuinely dangerous. A little later and my TP would have hit empty, and I'd have been finished.

"Hah. Hah."

Her trembling voice came through from beyond the door, but I'd just scraped past the moment my chastity would have been gone, and the relief was so complete that I answered on a sigh, hardly thinking.

"Uh, it's nothing. It's over. I'll be out soon."

"Yeah."

...Aaah. This is bad. What do I do.

Only then did the seriousness of it hit me. I looked over Hwayeon, sprawled on top of me and breathing in ragged little gasps, and was relieved to see nothing wrong with her body. But if my sister or Mom saw my pant legs soaked through with Hwayeon's fluids, or the sheet and the blanket ruined by everything she'd poured out at her peak, they weren't going to let it go.

She asked while looking over my body here and there, worried, it seemed, that the current had gone through me. Somehow that gaze seemed to carry a private appetite. ...I had to be imagining it. Yeah. Definitely imagining it.