Stripped Bare
"...Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Aside from knocking me out when they grabbed me, they didn't really do much of anything. Just asked a few questions about you, Saran... and told me to call you. Then you happened to show up."
"...That's a relief."
"Yeah. It really is. If they'd actually been dangerous, they would've done something awful the second they snatched me."
"......"
It really had been a dangerous situation. If the villain currently collapsed behind us, trussed up in the same ropes that had bound me, had harbored any genuine malice toward me personally... yeah. That would have been bad. Truly, "lucky" was the only word that fit.
"But what did you even do to this guy before, Saran? For a villain to come looking for revenge like this?"
"Dunno."
"...What?"
"Probably just one of the organizations the Association had me clean up a while back. There've been a lot. Nothing that stands out enough to remember."
"Ah... okay?"
I didn't know the particulars of her work all that well, but thinking about it from my own perspective...
"That's fair, actually. I can barely remember the names of every hero who walks into the Welfare Bureau on a given day. I get what you mean."
It wasn't as if I personally handled people the way I did Batori or Saran. Even just memorizing the heroes who dropped by for a light counseling session was hard enough. Saran had been active for a long time since her debut — of course she wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly which organization this particular villain had belonged to.
I nodded and called it in to the Association. Hauling a villain around ourselves wasn't exactly practical, and even if Saran was a hero, she couldn't just dump someone in prison on her own authority. So we kept him tied up in one spot, and...
"...Do you coat your daggers in venom?"
"Yeah."
"So you can use venom even without sinking your fangs in?"
"I can shoot it, too."
"......"
Saran was in the middle of smearing venom along the edge of her dagger — literally painting it on from the tips of her fangs. Watching her do it, I couldn't help wondering why, if she could manage this, she had bitten down on my arm the last time she needed to use her venom.
And the more I thought about it... that night Batori had been badly drunk, too...
"......"
"Curious?"
"W-well. A little, yeah."
She probably had her reasons. Injecting it through her fangs was just the easier method, I decided, and let it go.
In any case, Saran took that venom-coated dagger and very, very gently began pricking the villain with it — just enough that it wouldn't threaten his life. Most of the spots she chose were around the joints. She was probably using a paralytic toxin to keep him from doing anything if he woke up. Having been on the receiving end of that same paralytic venom before, I understood the logic all too well.
"......"
"Saran? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...It's nothing."
"...?"
We'd filed the report and were waiting. And the whole time, Saran kept glancing at me. It was a look I couldn't quite place — something different from usual, something I didn't have a name for. It wasn't melancholy. It wasn't fondness, either. I just found it puzzling, and after about twenty quiet minutes of that, people from the Association finally arrived.
"Please present your Hero ID for a moment.... And the person beside you is the one who filed the report?"
"Yes. The one in the back is the villain."
"Thank you for your cooperation, Black Viper. Is there anything in particular you'd like to report regarding the takedown?"
"Minor electric-discharge type, roughly. Not sure of the exact output, but he wasn't physically strong. Easy to put down."
"Thank you. And you, the victim? Please give us a brief summary of what happened during the abduction. This is just for confirmation, so keep it light......"
After that, it was a simple investigation. They couldn't just throw him in a cell without due process — they had to cross-check everything against the CCTV footage and handle it properly. Saran and I both knew how this kind of work went, so we cooperated without any fuss.
The alley I'd been walking through, the inside of the convenience store... the evidence was airtight from every angle. Even my call for help to Saran had been captured in detail by my phone's auto-recording. The whole thing wrapped up in a brisk thirty minutes.
"Haaah.... I was trying to leave work early this evening, and it turned into this...."
"...Yeah."
"It's already the middle of the night."
"...Yeah."
It was ten o'clock. Properly late. I'd left the office at what had definitely felt like an early hour, and somehow it had become a pitch-dark night, which was almost funny — but that was just how life went sometimes. And honestly, getting kidnapped and then being back to normal within a few hours was nothing but a blessing. I wasn't even all that angry.
I just... now what?
That was genuinely about all I could think. I'd gotten abducted on my way home from work, and now I was free. I still needed dinner. I still needed to go home and sleep. And tomorrow I had to...
"Saran."
"What?"
"Want to just hang out late tonight?"
"...Huh?"
I decided not to think about it. I'd just take tomorrow off. Getting kidnapped by a villain and then showing up at the office first thing the next morning sounded mentally exhausting, and honestly, I was in a bit of a funk. I'd finally left work a whole five minutes early for once, and I'd gotten abducted for my trouble.
"Would you hang out with me?"
So I just asked. If Saran found it too much of a hassle, I figured I'd go home and kill time with a game for the first time in ages. It was a full-on declaration that I was no-showing work tomorrow.
"...Yeah. Let's."
"Oh..."
Saran didn't say anything more, but she agreed, which I hadn't expected. Given the hour — and the fact that tomorrow was still a weekday — I'd assumed she'd turn me down, and that would have been that. Instead she just nodded, no extra commentary. She really was pretty blunt, but she was secretly kind, you know? She'd helped with the whole Batori situation too, even though it had clearly been a pain.
"So what are we doing?"
"Mm.... I don't know? I just wanted to hang out with you. Is there anything you feel like doing?"
"No."
"Then how about we just go back to my place and loaf around? From here......"
Since we'd come back from the abduction site to the Association building I'd left work from, my apartment was close — a little over ten minutes on foot. This neighborhood was lively enough, but even so, not many places stayed open into the small hours on a weekday. Home just made the most sense.
"Yeah. Let's go."
"Okay."
And Saran didn't object to that either. So we headed for my place.
...Even if we could have gone somewhere else, I wanted to stop by home first. Getting kidnapped on a rainy day had left my clothes — and a few other things — in a state I was not happy about. My favorite coat had rope-scuff marks all over it, and my hat, which I must have dropped while they were hauling me around, had a nice coating of dirt and dust....
That damn kidnapper. If you're going to abduct someone, at least be professional about it.
I wanted to get home as fast as possible and fix this. With that thought, I walked the still-drizzling night streets beside Saran, and before long we were at my studio.
The second we stepped inside, I tossed the hat and coat into the laundry hamper.
And then.
"Saran, do you like tteokbokki?"
"Not really."
"...Hmm. Then what should we order. Uuugh......"
Thanks to the kidnapping, I hadn't had dinner, and given the time, Saran probably hadn't eaten either. I opened the delivery app. I was in a bit of a mood, and I wanted to burn it off with something spicy, so I'd asked about tteokbokki — and her immediate lack of enthusiasm was a little disappointing.
"...No, I can eat it. Order it."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Let's eat."
"Oh... then I'll add sundae on the side for you. You like sundae, right?"
"Yeah. I like it."
"Okay, so sundae... and a fried platter... fried rice we'll... skip today...? And also......"
For some reason, Saran reversed herself and gave me the go-ahead, so I cheerfully started ticking off options, and I couldn't stop the smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. Rainy day, rotten mood — of course it had to be tteokbokki. In my past life I would have gone for gukbap or jjamppong at a time like this... but I was a woman now. And capsaicin, as it turned out, tasted that good.
"Saran, how spicy do you want it? I usually just get the regular spicy, but if you can't handle heat..."
"Let's go spicy."
"Okay."
With the tteokbokki set ordered, I stood back up from my chair. And then, right then and there, I started peeling my clothes off.
"......Huh?"
"Saran, I'm going to wash up. If the tteokbokki gets here first, could you set it out for me?"
"...Ah. Uh... yeah. I'll do that."
"Hehe, thanks. There's a bit of dirt in my hair and on my skin, and I sweated a lot, so I feel disgusting. I appreciate it?"
"......Yeah."
I headed for the bathroom the moment I heard her answer. I was aware I'd stripped rather abruptly, but I still had my underwear on, and we were both girls anyway, right? Back in school, whenever we changed for gym, the other girls would just cover the windows and peel everything off without a second thought. So it shouldn't matter for me either.
Of course, the feeling of showing my body in front of someone else was still... a little embarrassing.
"Hmm."
It'd be fine. I just wanted to get clean as fast as possible. It had already been a damp day from the rain, and I must have been tenser than I realized during the kidnapping, because I'd sweated quite a bit.
"Ah."
Come to think of it, I hadn't grabbed a change of underwear or anything else to put on afterward. But the urge to wash was so strong that I just shoved the thought out of my head.