Lick
— Rattle.
“Phew...”
I finished applying ointment to the teacher’s scraped knees, laid her down on the bed, and stepped outside.
Even while I was treating her, a handful of classic rom-com clichés had nearly detonated, but somehow I managed to wrap everything up without incident and escape.
Haa... Do all girls just naturally smell that good...?
The sweet, head-fogging scent I’d caught from the teacher inside the nurse’s office still clung to me, scrambling my thoughts.
— ♬♪~
The preliminary bell for fifth period rang at the exact moment I reached the back door of Class A, Year 1.
Whew. Time to head in.
— Bang.
I flung the classroom’s back door open, doing my best to look casual and confident.
“...”
“...”
“...”
For a second I could have sworn the temperature inside had plummeted to twenty below zero.
From the rear of the room—right around my seat—a bizarre black-cloud aura was pouring out like a living thing.
At the epicenter of that storm stood three beautiful girls, planted firmly in place.
“Oh my...? Our hero has arrived?”
Han Seo-ah spoke first.
She was perched on a desk, cracking her knuckles one by one while aiming a bone-chilling smile straight at me.
Murderous intent swam openly in her orange eyes.
“Uh, uh... Seo-ah. I’m ba—”
“Had a real sweet time in the nurse’s office, huh? Even tossed your blazer and came back half-undressed? Huh?!”
— CRACK!
Seo-ah slammed her fist onto my desk. The thunderous impact sounded like it might split the wood in half.
I take back calling her a gorilla.
From today on, you’re Godzilla.
“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea! Soup spilled on the teacher’s skirt, so I just covered her up!”
“Oh-ho~ So you covered her skirt, did you?”
This time Cha Si-a strolled forward with her arms crossed.
Her signature sweet vanilla scent washed over me, but the crescent curve of her eyes held zero warmth.
“I thought our Si-woo was just a softie on the outside, but you’re a real player. I knew the second you walked down the hallway with your arms locked around the fallen teacher’s waist. So what did you two get up to all alone in the nurse’s office? Hmm? Be honest with Noona.”
“I treated her! Disinfectant, bandage, done!!”
“Hmm~ Just disinfectant~? Just a bandage~? Or did our Si-woo give her a little ‘injection’ while he was at it~?”
Si-a poked my chest with one finger and whispered the last part in a sultry murmur.
This crazy gyaru bitch...!
Does she not realize that last line is pure sexual harassment?!
I was still backing away when—
— Wriggle.
Something heavy and warm suddenly squished itself between my legs.
“Meoww...”
“Hiek?!”
Looking down, I found Lee Eun-ha latched onto my leg like a cicada, sniffing me with her nose buried against my pants.
What the hell—when did this crazy cat even get here?! Is the classroom floor her personal respawn point or something?!
“Smell... mixed. Doesn’t smell like Si-woo...”
Eun-ha looked up at me through half-lidded, sleepy eyes.
“Uh, huh? Smell?”
“My pillow... smells like another woman. Sweet and strong—an adult woman’s scent.”
She gripped the hem of my shirt tight and muttered in a voice thick with complaint.
“Gross. This is my personal cat tower... Who said you could go rubbing other people’s scents on someone else’s furniture without permission.”
Then she suddenly popped up onto her tiptoes and shoved her face straight toward my nape.
“Hey! What are you doing!!”
— Lick.
“Hgak?!”
A shriek tore out of me that no self-respecting man should ever produce.
Eun-ha’s small, lukewarm tongue had just dragged lightly across the side of my neck.
“Meoww... I put my spit on you. So now you’re mine again.”
“Y-you crazy bitch!! What the hell did you just do!!!”
Seo-ah recoiled in pure horror, grabbed Eun-ha by the scruff, and yanked her away.
Si-a’s jaw dropped; she let out a hollow laugh.
“Whoa, fuck... This girl’s not your average crazy bitch. Marking territory like that?”
“Get off him right now, you thieving cat brat!! Si-woo is my childhood friend!!”
“Ownership is first-come, first-served. The cat tower is mine.”
...It had started all over again.
The same suffocating, insane triangular formation that had been tormenting me all morning.
The stares from the surrounding guys had gone past jealousy into a toxic cocktail of awe and murderous intent, all aimed at me.
“Whoa... Even in anime, if you build a harem this blatantly on the first day of school, people call the author a lunatic... But that Si-woo guy is for real...”
“That bastard might get stabbed on the way home today. Why? Because I’m the one who’s gonna do it, fuck.”
The murmurs hit my ears, but escaping this mad slaughterhouse ASAP was the only priority.
“L-let go for now! We should sit down first! The preliminary bell already rang!!”
I thrashed free of the three girls’ assault and barely managed to drop into my window seat.
My head was throbbing.
Is this how exhausting it is when a harem story becomes reality?
How the hell do the protagonists live through this every single day and still walk around laughing?
I was rubbing my forehead and letting out a deep sigh when—
— Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
A strangely grating sound reached me.
Looking ahead to the far-left front-row seat, I saw the back of Ice Princess Cha Ga-eun.
Just like earlier, she had her noise-canceling earphones on, fifth-period textbook open, taking notes.
Except... this was past the level of note-taking.
— Snap.
The sound of a pencil lead digging into the paper until it broke cleanly reached all the way to my seat.
Ga-eun irritably set the broken pencil down, pulled out a fresh mechanical pencil, and began furiously scraping it across the page like she was trying to murder the paper.
Her pure-white nape wasn’t its usual pale shade—it carried a faint flush of red.
What the... What’s with her?
I remembered how she’d snapped at me in the hallway earlier, calling me a “horny bastard.”
Could it be... that she simply can’t stand the sight of a bug-like high-school boy like me charming every girl in the vicinity?
That was when—
— Whip.
Cha Ga-eun suddenly set her pencil down and snapped her head around to stare straight at me.
“...!”
My breath locked in my throat.
Her cold blue-tinged eyes collided with mine in midair.
That gaze was different from the simple disdain I’d seen in the cafeteria.
It was the look of someone staring at a filthy lump of garbage—no, something even more complicated and twisted than that.
Her eyes flicked once over my disheveled shirt and the nape Eun-ha had just licked, then one corner of her mouth twisted upward.
The word she mouthed was crystal clear.
“...Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
What, did I commit a crime or something? Helping Teacher Ji-hye and taking her to the nurse’s office is that unforgivable?!
And that cat licking my neck was force majeure I never saw coming!
Injustice surged up my throat, but there was no way to explain myself.
If I approached that Ice Princess she’d just say something like, “Don’t talk to me—you’ll get your trash stench on me.”
— Rattle!
Thankfully, at that insanely perfect timing, the fifth-period English teacher walked in carrying his textbook.
“Alright, everyone take your seats. I know you’re excited since it’s the first day, but we still have class.”
At that, Seo-ah muttered, “Heh heh... See you later,” and plopped into the seat next to me. Si-a smacked her lips and returned to her own desk.
Eun-ha flopped face-down on the desk in front of me and went right back to baking toast.
Only then did I let out a real sigh of relief and sink deep into my chair.
Haa... Finally I can breathe a little.
But the English teacher at the blackboard paused mid-reach for the chalk and tilted his head in my direction.
“You there in the very back by the window. Student Han Si-woo?”
“Yes? Ah, yes.”
“What’s with just the shirt and no blazer? Dress-code violations on day one are a problem. And why does your shirt look like that, too.”
In an instant every gaze in the classroom locked onto me again.
I looked down at my shirt in a panic.
From supporting the teacher earlier, a couple of buttons had come undone, flashing a strip of chest muscle, and a faint red lipstick mark was smeared across the right collar.
What’s with this lipstick mark... Did it get there when I was holding the teacher up earlier...?!
“Uh... Th-that... S-some soup splashed on my blazer...!”
I mumbled vaguely, cold sweat pouring down my back.
At my excuse, Seo-ah’s eyes began to gleam murderously again, while Ga-eun in the front row simply shook her head and fixed her stare on the blackboard.
“Hmm... Is that so? Well, alright for now. Open your books. Since it’s the first day, class’ll be light, so don’t go falling asleep. Everyone got it?”
“Yeees~”
The teacher brushed it off casually, but the strange tension in the classroom refused to fade.
A lazy spring breeze drifted in through the window, yet the cold sweat running down my spine wouldn’t dry.
Fuck.
I thought once my looks changed and I became popular, a comfortable, sweet youth life would just unfold on its own.
Reality, however, was the middle of an extreme harem survival game with landmines planted in every direction.
And I had absolutely zero fucking clue what the clear conditions for this game even were.