Somewhere He Doesn't Know
Leo watched the human they called Iceman all but flee the examination room, her eyes locked on his back until the very last possible moment. Only when the door slammed shut with a heavy thud did she let out a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness.
Her heart was hammering.
She'd come within a hair's breadth of falling for her little sister's scheme and doing something unspeakable to him.
Still, I kind of wanted to see— no. I didn't want to see. I wanted to see him, but not like that.
Even before he'd taken off his shirt — from the moment he'd first walked into the examination room — she had been forcibly holding her heart in check, terrified he might hear it. Now it resumed its pumping in earnest, flooding her whole body with oxygen once more. A sigh of relief slipped out between her expressionless features.
Blocked by Leo's frame and left stretching her hands pitifully after Iceman, her twin sister Nemea spoke up with clear displeasure at the sound of that heartbeat.
"What a waste... You were disappointed too, sis. So why'd you stop me?"
"..."
Confronted by Nemea's interrogation — with her own pounding heart offered up as evidence — Leo held her silence and tried to act as if nothing were wrong, scrubbing every feeling about the human who'd just left from her mind.
But just as being told not to think of an elephant only fills your head with elephants, memories and feelings about the man called Iceman came flooding in all the more, and Leo's face slowly turned red.
He smiled at me again today... He greeted me with that bright smile, and he even gave me a gift.
When he'd come into the examination room, he'd not only beamed at her but lamented that he hadn't been able to bring her any plum syrup. Leo had sighed a little herself, inwardly. She'd never gone around advertising it, but she loved sour things, and homemade plum syrup that he'd pickled with his own hands? The disappointment had been every bit as large as the anticipation.
Then he'd handed her the insect repellent, and in that instant the disappointment melted away like snow. Joy rushed in to take its place, so fierce that Leo had to physically restrain herself from hopping up and down on the spot.
A gift... for someone as uselessly huge as me...
And somehow he'd even known she liked the scent of catnip. She'd slathered the repellent all over her body right there in front of him.
"Heheh."
"?"
Having more or less pieced the situation together, Nemea flashed a sly crescent-eyed smile and latched onto her twin sister, who was giving off the same pleasant scent as the human man.
"...Get... off...!"
"Oh, you hopeless dork! You like him that much and you can't even say thank you!"
"...I... did. I said it this time."
"I bet you mumbled it so quietly he could barely hear a word! Because you were embarrassed!"
She knew?!
How did she even know?
Leo's body gave a small twitch at Nemea's words, which had seen right through her. The human man called Iceman probably thought Leo was simply taciturn and stern by nature, and that her silence was a wordless warning not to do anything improper to her little sister. The reality was very different from what he imagined.
"If you're grateful, say you're grateful! If you're happy, say you're happy! Just say it! You keep acting like such a wallflower that Iceman keeps misunderstanding you!"
The truth was, she had been happy. So happy that when she tried to put it into words, her face burned too hot and she couldn't meet his eyes, so she'd expressed it through actions instead of speech. And yet she'd been misunderstood again.
Leo's shoulders slumped as she muttered.
"...I'm... this big. Huge, for a lioness... I'm used to... being misunderstood."
"Ah — I just poked your trauma without meaning to?!"
Among lion beastkin, the ideal female was a small-framed one like her little sister Nemea — a body easy to pin beneath a male. Being twins, Leo was no less attractive than Nemea, but unlike her sister she had always been called taciturn, reliable, or imposing rather than cute. And above all, her frame was larger than most males, which invited all kinds of unwanted misunderstandings.
Until now she had pretended not to care. But to be misunderstood by the man she'd set her heart on... The first person who had ever given her a gift, who had even smiled at her — and she had been misunderstood by him!
Aahh, sis is shrinking smaller and smaller...!!
Nemea desperately tried to soothe her sister, who had gone from a sturdy lioness to a crumpled housecat.
"B-but you got a gift! He gave you a gift! He even gave you this nice perfume! That means he doesn't have zero feelings for you!"
"...This is repellent. He said it was insect repellent."
"A-ahh?!"
Catnip — the plant that feline animals called catnip. Humans often used it as a repellent, but among feline beastkin like Leo and Nemea, products made from it were typically used to signal romantic interest in the opposite sex.
A cultural difference, of all things!
Then why didn't I get a gift!
Why am I the only one without a present!
She'd been making aggressive appeals — sexual harassment, really — of her romantic interest in him this whole time!
What do I do? What should I do?
Without a thought for her own karma, Nemea felt a spike of jealousy toward her sister, who had received a gift all by herself. At the same time she rolled her eyes this way and that, trying to figure out how to turn this crumpled housecat back into the imposing lioness she usually was. Then she clenched both fists where Leo couldn't see and muttered inwardly.
If that's how it is... time for drastic measures...!
Honestly, it was frustrating. Nemea spoke to Leo as if a brilliant idea had just occurred to her.
"Honestly, isn't it about time you figured it out? That you can't win someone's love that way. What male is going to say he likes a lioness who talks to him all stiff and never even gets a proper answer — who can't even say thank you when she's grateful?"
"Nh...?"
Leo's body twitched again. This time, unlike before, it was a large movement laced with a hint of anger. Nemea felt a twinge of anxiety at her sister's reaction, but she still drew a sly curve across her lips.
"You know you can't win Iceman's love by just waiting for him to notice someday. If you keep glaring at him from behind like that, his misunderstandings about you are only going to get worse. If that's how it's going to be, you might as well just give—"
"...I won't... give up."
As if she would ever give up.
From the very first time he'd come in for an examination with Nemea, he had greeted her with that bright hello, and she had lost her heart to him. The trigger had been so simple, and the feeling called love had arrived so suddenly, that even as Leo recognized it as love she had also wondered whether it was just a simple misunderstanding — gratitude toward someone who had shown her kindness — and she had spent time carefully checking her own heart.
For three whole years.
And now she was supposed to give this up? This love?
The problem was that it took too long...!!
She wasn't an idiot. Three years just to confirm her own feelings?
And she just confirmed it, didn't she. She didn't even know until I told her to give up. The moment I said give up, she became sure of her own heart...!
Nemea, who had spent those three years watching her twin pine away right beside her, felt a cold sweat as Leo's fierce gaze bored into her.
"But what are you going to do about it now? Over the past three years, the misunderstandings about you have piled up nice and thick. To Iceman, you're just a taciturn lioness — nothing more, nothing less."
"...Ngh."
Choosing a male to mate with for life was a serious matter, so she had been cautious... too cautious...!
Leo crumpled again. But Nemea had already anticipated this reaction. She approached her sister with a sly smile and whispered.
"So here's what I'm thinking... how about you and I share that male?"
"...Are you out of your mind?"
Leo's golden eyes began to blaze with fire once more. But Nemea had expected this too, and she just kept grinning.
"...The two of us sisters... sharing one male?"
"Honestly, you think this is a dead end too, don't you. And we're lionesses — what's wrong with sharing the same male? Lioness sisters sharing one male isn't even unusual. Besides, what male is more attractive to a lioness than a player?"
"...I... I don't want to... dirty Iceman."
Other females would be one thing, but together with her twin sister, Nemea...
The moment Leo imagined herself pinning a naked Iceman to the bed alongside an equally naked Nemea, her face flushed scarlet. Taking this as a sign that her sister was coming around, Nemea pressed on with even more confidence.
"That's exactly why you can't keep doing this! While you're sitting here, other females who have feelings for him just like you are already making their move!"
"...Nh?!"
Something about that must have struck a nerve, because Leo's whole body jerked hard. Nemea coiled around her like the serpent urging Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, wrapping her body around Leo's as she spoke.
"Come on, let's be honest. When I said other females were making their move, you got turned on, didn't you? No — even before I said that, you were secretly thinking you wanted to take him. Wanted to devour him, didn't you?"
"...Yeah."
When he had stared blankly into space and pulled up his shirt, exposing that pale stomach and chest, her heart had pounded so hard that if Nemea hadn't been there, she would have tackled him to the floor on the spot. Leo nodded and confessed, and Nemea, now certain her sister had come around, went on.
"I have a method."
"...A method?"
"Yeah. You saw how Iceman's behavior got a little weird earlier, right? We use that."
That uncharacteristically vacant look in his eyes. The way you couldn't tell what he was looking at, as if he were intoxicated by something. Could they induce that reaction themselves? And then do unspeakable things to him in that state?
...I shouldn't.
Guilt made her heart pound, and she knew it was something she shouldn't do. But perhaps because she wanted a reward for the feelings she had bottled up in her chest for three years, Leo found herself nodding and listening to what Nemea had to say.
"With this method, we make Iceman into our male — yours and mine. We get him so addicted to our bodies that eventually he'll be licking our pussies like a whore. Other females might latch onto him too, but that can't be helped. So? Are we doing this or not?"
"...We can... make him do that much?"
"See, you pretend you're not, but you're actually super dirty-minded! Lioness blood doesn't lie."
There would be an opportunity in a few days. At Nemea's words, spoken with something like certainty, Leo's throat bobbed as she swallowed the saliva that had pooled in her mouth.
As if she could already see the once-in-a-lifetime chance that would come her way in just a few days.