Gym (2)
Gym (2)
This was not the time to be staring at A-ra's swaying chest.
I needed to build muscle as fast as possible,
to gain the strength to stand up to A-ra.
"Hoooh...! Let's pedal again.."
By twisting my whole body as I pedaled,
I could work not just my lower body, but my upper body at the same time.
Truly killing two birds with one stone.
"Hnngg... I won't let you go~"
On top of that, moving to the rhythm of the music made it fun too.
It felt like I only understood why older men go crazy for aerobics or rhythmic gymnastics
after I started exercising myself.
So women were the same when it came to moving their bodies to a rhythm.
A-ra was also walking at a fast pace to the rhythm of the music.
Though, maybe because of the rhythm, A-ra wasn't doing the powerful walking motion she had just moments ago;
she was stepping forward one foot at a time with a disciplined, steady stride like a model on a runway.
Maintaining a posture like that for a long time seemed like exercise in itself...
*
An hour had passed since I started on the bike.
It might be nothing to people who exercise regularly,
but for my frail body, which had terrible stamina from lack of exercise, it was definitely too much.
My top was already soaked with sweat, and there was a slight pain in my thighs and ankles.
Still, since it wasn't a severe pain but more of a slight tingling sensation,
I wanted to gradually increase the exercise bit by bit to strengthen my muscles.
"Hooooh....."
I got off the bike, wiped the sweat from my hands on my pants with a swipe,
and climbed onto the treadmill next to the one A-ra was powerfully sprinting on.
A-ra had been running with very powerful arm movements for a while now.
So humans really could do that, huh.
I thought it was definitely possible to run at that speed on solid ground,
but isn't running on a treadmill a little different?
"Noona, how about we do something else soon?
Running too much will hurt your knees."
No matter how much of an exercise monster A-ra was,
her cartilage probably wasn't several times thicker.
A person's body has parts that can recover and parts that can't,
so it was best to live as carefully as possible.
"Hm? I haven't run that much."
She was running so hard her voice was hoarse,
but A-ra seemed to hear my voice just fine.
When I spoke, she slowly reduced her speed for safety
and stood on the treadmill.
"'Haven't run that much' my foot. Can't you see this?"
She'd run for an hour at speed 10, so she'd covered 10 kilometers.
If someone told me to run that, I'd already be buried somewhere in the ground.
As I pointed at the speedometer and the running time,
A-ra looked at where I was pointing and tilted her head.
"Euuung? That's barely anything. Once Noona starts, I can easily do two hours."
Saying that, A-ra smiled nonchalantly, wiped her sweat with a towel,
and got down from the treadmill.
She only turned her attention to me now,
and as she did, she gave a slight smile.
I worked out hard too, you know.
But A-ra's expression was different from what I expected.
I thought she'd smile, saying I worked hard, but she had a slight, wry, almost blank expression.
"Seong-hwan-a, don't tell me you were on the bike for a whole hour?"
"Yeah? It felt refreshing to sweat, so..."
"Noona told you. That weak guys like you get into a lot of accidents on exercise machines."
A-ra, who cut me off mid-sentence,
started scolding me with a serious face, saying I had no sense of caution.
She said I should wear something like an undershirt so nothing showed through.
When I nodded my head slightly, A-ra let out a big sigh.
"This is exactly why Noona didn't want to send you to the gym alone."
"That was because of other women..."
"That's part of it, but it's also because I can't even begin to imagine what kind of accident might happen
if you suddenly collapsed while exercising and got hurt. You know what I mean, right?"
"Yes..."
It seemed A-ra was looking out for me in many ways.
Indeed, every time I collapsed, it was after doing something physically difficult.
When was the most recent time I collapsed...
Was it during the very first PE class in my first year of high school?
I remembered the incident where we ran a few laps around the field as a warm-up,
and I suddenly collapsed, causing the female students to panic and carry me to the nurse's office.
Huh?
I felt that sense of dissonance I had felt recently once again.
It was clear that I had that memory,
but it felt flat and one-dimensional rather than three-dimensional.
It felt like I was missing something very important.
Anyway, that wasn't the problem right now.
"If you collapsed at the gym, and by chance there was no one around,
or if some weird person was around and something bad happened to you... No... let's not think about this."
"Noona..."
A-ra cut herself off while speaking.
It seemed she had imagined something unpleasant.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were worrying that much."
I apologized honestly.
I had apparently been thinking too simply.
I thought she was just being overprotective because it was a dangerous world,
but every single thing she thought was correct and made perfect sense.
If I collapsed on an indoor bike or a treadmill,
what might happen was so horrifying I didn't even want to imagine it.
No, I thought that me getting hurt was something that could happen.
What truly saddened me was that A-ra might blame herself or grieve over my injury.
A-ra shedding tears and blaming herself for something that wasn't her fault at all.
It made my stomach ache for no reason.
Come to think of it, A-ra had shown a similar reaction during the sasaeng incident.
"You understand how Noona feels, right?"
"I won't come secretly without telling you anymore."
"Right. Later, when your stamina improves and you don't collapse anymore, you can work hard then.
Slow and safe is better than fast and dangerous."
"Okay."
When I obediently agreed, A-ra stroked my head.
Maybe because the motion caused her to move, A-ra's healthy sweat scent wafted over.
The smell of sweat, which wasn't unpleasant at all but rather strangely addictive,
felt like the coziness of a protective shield safely enveloping me.
***
Because my clothes were soaked enough to be see-through,
we decided to end the workout there for today.
We headed back to the locker room, I threw my sweat-soaked gym clothes into the collection bin,
and, once naked, went into the bathhouse.
Unlike the gym, there were quite a few people here.
There was a leisurely older rich man, and a student who looked about my age.
And some noisy little kids,
along with a few girls who seemed to have followed their dad in.
Kids being noisy was apparently the same, whether boys or girls.
Even in this gender-reversed world, that part didn't seem to be any different.
Come to think of it, didn't they say recently that kids over age 5 (international age) can't enter?
I remember seeing it on the news, but I don't recall the details.
I picked up a scrub towel, went in front of a showerhead, and washed my body clean.
It was common sense to wash yourself thoroughly before entering the bath.
"Aaah... so refreshing..."
As I made a noise entering the bath, the older men sitting there laughed.
I guess I let my inner old man show too much.
Giving a bitter smile, I sat in a corner and surrendered my body to the hot water.
About six minutes passed.
The kids who had been noisily chatting in the other bath
slowly walked over, as if they intended to come into this bath.
Still, seeing that they didn't run in the bathhouse,
it seemed they weren't completely stupid.
"Ah, hot... ho...!!"
The boy who was about to enter briefly dipped his foot in,
and then beat a hasty retreat.
It was because this was the Magma Bath,
the hottest of the hot baths, which boasted an entry barrier too high for baby skin to tolerate.
A laugh escaped me.
So much for being a boy. He couldn't even handle this little bit of heat.
I smirked. What a wimp.
As I was giggling to myself, one of the little kids came over and started glancing at me.
No, he had been glancing.
At first he was sneaking glances, but now he was openly and blatantly staring.
"Oh!? I, I saw this hyung on Qtube!"
It seemed he was a prospective viewer who had seen my Qtube channel before.
In the spirit of fan service, I looked at the child and gave a small smile.
But my feelings didn't get through to him.
"Hyung, you're a super famous Qtuber, right!"
"Yeah... I'm a super famous Qtuber."
I felt drained, but I nodded my head and affirmed it.
Even if I looked like this, I was a Qtuber boasting 7 million subscribers.
"Then, by any chance, do you know Sans?!"
"...Sans? What's that?"
The only Sans I knew was the 'Lotte Sans' cookie.
Since he'd brought up Qtube, Sans was probably a channel name
or one of those famous memes.
When I shook my head, indicating I didn't know,
the little boys, noisy as ever but who'd fallen quiet for a moment, gathered around me.
"I'm jealous... I'm jealous of that memory circuit that hasn't experienced Sans yet."
"You've lost half of your life..."
"Try it when you get home. You probably won't regret it."
The kids, who had been so innocent just moments ago,
had become so serious that it gave me a slight chill.
Just what on earth was Sans?
Could it be some kind of slang I didn't know about?
