Water Park (2)
“Hey, step on him.”
Chloe kicked at me relentlessly as I lay sprawled on the ground from her slap.
Her merciless blows hammered away at my solar plexus and every other vital spot without mercy.
“Kgh—hold on a second!”
Chloe, you crazy woman, you're actually trying to kill me.
Shock after shock of mana-laden strikes kept landing, and even I had to admit this was going a bit far.
I tried to defend myself, but for some reason my body refused to move the way I wanted.
Was it because that slap had jarred my jaw earlier?
Was it really plausible that a mere hit like that could leave me unable to move?
“Ahh, that's too far, sir! How could you do something like that to me!”
Mmm.
Eva fixed me with a gaze mingling bewilderment and disgust.
Five-colored light shimmered in her eyes.
Palad's Divine Artifact — the weapon that grants wishes — was pinning my feet to the ground.
Enraged that I had groped her chest without permission, she was content to stand by and watch me get pummeled by Chloe.
“Marin, save me⋯.”
Left with no choice, I called for help from my one and only ally here—!
“Chloe, I'll help too.”
Wham!
“Gwah!”
—or I would have, if Marin hadn't joined the coalition tormenting me.
A kick far more powerful than Chloe's sent my mind reeling as I saw stars that didn't belong in the sky.
“Marin, my dear Marin. Why would you⋯.”
“Punishing a criminal. Touching someone's chest without permission is not allowed.”
She denounced my sins one by one, defending Eva as if executing a perfectly legitimate duty.
Rationally speaking, Marin was a hundred percent right, but was it just me, or did those kicks carry a personal grudge?
“It's not like that — I was simply interested in Eva's enormous chest, you see—”
Smack!
“Ugh!”
“Solis, shut up. Don't open your mouth again.”
So that was the correct answer, huh?
It's a size worth being jealous of, I'll grant you, but weren't they treating me a little too harshly?
“Stop it, everyone, please stop!”
In the end Kaya, unable to watch any longer, pulled them off me, and I was finally freed from the beating.
Argh, that hurts!
I'd braced for it, but the places I'd been hit ached like they'd been hammered.
I never expected Marin to jump into the fray too.
“⋯.”
“Is everyone feeling better now?”
“Hmph!”
“Please don't talk to me.”
“Sex offender.”
Their words stabbed into my chest one after another like daggers.
In game terms, I'd picked all the wrong dialogue options and tanked my party's affection levels.
How tragic. Truly tragic.
Of course, even if I could rewind time, I'd still have put my hand right where it was.
“Okay, okay, everyone calm down. We got too heated.”
“Calm down after seeing what he did?! I'll never forgive him, absolutely not!”
“Chloe's a hundred percent right. Call the police.”
A skirmish broke out.
Kaya trying to mediate, Chloe raising her voice, and Marin standing beside her declaring her support.
Kaya fidgeted nervously, though a smile played on her lips.
After all, the swimsuit she'd picked out for Eva had succeeded in seducing me.
She'd confirmed that her sister saw her as a woman, so for her it was an unqualified success.
As for the other two, busy glaring daggers at me — well, I'd just talk my way around it later somehow.
‘But what about Eva?’
More than that, I decided to focus on the person I needed to apologize to first.
No regrets, sure — but asking forgiveness was another matter entirely.
Even if forgiveness never came, an apology was still owed. That was my stance.
Squish.
“Nnh⋯!”
—or it was, until I saw Eva caressing the spot I'd touched, a moan slipping from her lips.
“Uh⋯?”
“⋯.”
Our eyes met.
In the silence that followed — that short yet endless instant — a thousand thoughts raced through my head.
Eva was silent too.
She looked like a thief who'd seen everything there was to see and was about to slip out of the house, only to freeze solid at the sudden appearance of the homeowner.
“Eva, what are you doing? Come on, hurry.”
“Huh? Oh, um⋯.”
Timing her entrance perfectly, Chloe linked arms with Eva and led the dazed girl away.
Not forgetting to throw a taunting glance back at me on the way out.
“Nyeheheh!”
She stuck her tongue out at me in mockery.
Normally I'd have shot her a withered *what an idiot* look, or flipped her the middle finger in retaliation.
‘Eva... don't tell me she felt it? That I touched her?’
But the lascivious expression she'd worn moments ago wouldn't leave my mind, and I just stood there, dazed, watching them walk away.
...
“Eva, over here!”
“Hah, hah, C-Clohe, wait for me!”
After a bit of commotion, we all melted into the reason we'd come here in the first place — playing in the water, together.
We swam in the outdoor pool, popular with everyone from children to the elderly, no exceptions.
“Chloe, you're a good swimmer.”
“People who've been into sports since they were young tend to be good at swimming too. I'm probably that type.”
She glided through the water doing the freestyle stroke like a mermaid of the deep.
The setting notes said she had exceptional physical abilities and no sport she couldn't handle — clearly not for nothing.
“Glub glub!”
“Eva!”
“How does a person fall into the water *wearing a tube*?”
Eva, by contrast, couldn't swim to a frankly alarming degree.
Dead drunk — no, wait.
That's an insult to people who actually can't swim.
How to put it... she was the type who would die the instant she touched water?
A cotton candy dissolving in the pond?
To someone like me, for whom floating on water is second nature, she looked less like a human being and more like some other creature entirely.
“Sis still can't exercise to save her life, even after attending the academy.”
“It's not that I never trained. My magic practice was enough to get me through the academy just fine.”
“I know, I was just muttering to myself, feeling all nostalgic at the sight of my sister after so long.”
Kaya showed not the slightest intention of swimming; she stretched out on a sunbed her guard had brought over and watched us play.
She'd even put on sunglasses, sunbathing under the pouring sunlight — apparently using surveillance as an excuse to enjoy herself to the fullest.
“Solis, look, look. Eva sank again.”
“She's using too much force. That's why she's going straight down.”
“Weird. Swimming is easy.”
Marin couldn't swim either, but she wasn't quite that bad.
She could float on the water, and she could paddle.
Splish splash!
“Look, Solis, I float good.”
Look at her, working those paddles right in front of me even now.
Cute. So cute.
“Marin, uh, that's not quite how you do it.”
“It's not?”
Granted, it was the doggy paddle favored by people with zero relationship to swimming — but for her, it was more than enough.
WHOOSH!
“Whoa—!”
“What—what was that! A wave out of nowhere!”
She moved with a speed that would make competitive swimmers eat her wake.
Swimming depends on technique, sure, but stamina has to back it up too.
A powerhouse like her, technique be damned, was carving through the water at a pace that slapped professional swimmers across the face.
“Keep your legs straight out, don't bend them at all. The key is to relax your body as much as you can and glide forward.”
“Hard.”
“I'll teach you step by step.”
But I was an inveterate busybody, and I couldn't just sit and watch her comical dog-paddle, so I decided to correct her form.
Keeping the body horizontal came first, so I held her and guided her into floating on the water.
I planted in her the reassurance that you could stay afloat without paddling furiously, then held her body steady to help her maintain the posture all the way through.
“Solis.”
“What is it, Marin?”
“Your hands. Lecherous.”
As she said, my hands were resting on Marin's chest and her nether regions.
Her thighs or arms would have worked just as well — but instead, I chose hands brimming with selfish desire, caressing her soft skin.
“If you don't like it, say so. I'll let go.”
“It's fine. Don't care.”
Marin was expressionless as ever.
She showed not a hint of displeasure.
“In exchange, come closer.”
Marin wrapped her arm around my neck and pulled me toward her.
Mwah.
The sensation of lips against my cheek.
Then she pressed herself tightly against my side and gazed up at me with glistening, dewy eyes.
It was just water clinging to her from our dip in the pool — and yet somehow, she looked as if she were drenched in something far more sentimental.
“I'm counting on you tonight, too.”
“If that's what you want, then I'll deliver.”
I could do it all day, every day, so I nodded vigorously and resumed the posture training I'd so briefly abandoned.
...
Time slipped by in the blink of an eye.
Before I knew it, the sun had set and night was drawing near.
“Hanging out after so long is exhausting too.”
I rubbed my stiff neck and looked over the spot where the crowds had drained away.
Closing time was approaching, and everyone was busily packing up their things.
The other girls had headed in early to wash up.
Before joining them, I'd tested just how fast this mana-powered body of mine could swim.
The pool was too small for a proper test, though.
Maybe next time I should head out to the open sea?
‘I should head in too, I suppose.’
They say women take forever washing up, but making the whole party wait on my personal business would be poor manners, so I hurried toward the shower house.
Squelch, squelch!
That was when it happened.
When I heard a strange sound.
‘Just my imagination⋯, right?’
It sounded exactly like someone masturbating, no matter how you sliced it — but I ignored it.
This was a public place.
Right next to the showers people came and went from.
Even if the crowds had thinned with closing time approaching, surely nobody would be bold enough to do that out in the open like this⋯.
Squelch, squelch!
“Hnngg—!”
Well, there is one. Someone bold enough to do it right by the shower house, no less.
‘Judging by the sound, it's over that way?’
Unless they were a world-class exhibitionist pervert, nobody could have nerves like that.
Now then, shall we have a look at their face?
No risk of catching an eyeful I'd regret — I could hear a young woman's delicate voice rising through the whimpering moans.
I peeked my head out ever so slightly, fixing my gaze on a shadowed corner of the shower building, and there—
“⋯Eva?”
“Hyah⋯?”
I found Eva, rubbing her crotch with her fingers, soaking her nether lips wet and glistening.
