Chapter 49
Chapter 49
The former Matsuda Department Store had a lot of rooms. That was only natural, the place was originally built to be a department store, after all.
Of course, if you only considered its use as a department store, it might actually feel small. The building itself was only two stories high. Because it only had two floors, the ceilings were very high and the floor area was generously proportioned, but compared to modern department stores, no, even compared to other department stores from the early 20th century when it was built, it wasn't that large.
I found out later when I looked up the building's history, but apparently, this department store wasn't meant for the general public. It operated as a sort of luxury goods and art specialty hall, importing expensive items to sell to high-ranking Japanese officials, Joseon nobility, and foreign royalty visiting Joseon at the time.
That's why its layout is a bit different from a typical modern department store.
Ordinary department stores need to draw huge crowds and so they sit prominently on street corners, rising four or five stories upward. By contrast, this mansion was built in the shape of an inverted, wide uppercase Pi (Π), set in the middle of a spacious plot with a large garden.
The interior is lavish, and there are several large, open spaces where weddings and other events were apparently held during its heyday.
Now, most of those rooms are empty, and only a few spaces are actually used.
That was how it was. Apart from the areas the staff used for their work, the only place in this mansion that really deserved to be called a 'room' was the one I used.
The place had been set up to confine Ye Sa-ra in the first place, so no one had bothered putting furniture in the other rooms.
Thankfully, there were spare blankets. The problem was that all those spare blankets were ones Ye Sa-ra used to 'cover herself with,' not ones meant to be spread on the floor.
Furthermore, since the building was originally a department store, the floors were cold marble. Pretty to look at, but laying a blanket down on top of them to sleep on posed many issues. At least they hadn't gone to the extreme of wearing shoes indoors like in some Western-style houses, but if you didn't wear slippers, walking on the bare floor was basically the same as going barefoot.
Still, it wasn't that late at night yet. If I hurried, it wasn't impossible to get some proper blankets, but—
"Why bother?"
Hearing me say I had to find some blankets, Shin So-hee spoke up with an expression that said, what's there to worry about?
"The bed is huge. Is there really a need to sleep on the floor?"
"......What?"
When I asked again, not quite believing my ears, Shin So-hee looked straight at me and said,
"I mean, the bed is that big. Is there any reason to decide that some of us sleep on the floor and some of us sleep on the bed?"
I looked at my bed, which Shin So-hee was pointing at.
......It's spacious, all right. Honestly, it was an unbelievably huge bed for just me to use. Not the size of a single bed you'd find in an ordinary home or a studio apartment, but a truly massive bed fit for a princess in a fantasy film.
Yeah, I'd wondered why they made it so big when only I use it. It probably doesn't even match standard bed dimensions. Maybe it was custom-ordered just to keep the proportions right in such a ludicrously large room. Well, I shouldn't be surprised at the way they spend money when they remodelled a department store into a place to live.
Not that it isn't funny to be surprised at this point.......I guess I just didn't think about it because it fit the room's proportions so perfectly.
Anyway, yes. The bed was big. Maybe the four of us could even line up and lie down together. Of the four of us here, no one could really be called 'tall' except for Shin So-hee.
But.
"Still, wouldn't it be too cramped for four people to lie down?"
Even if it was a non-standard bed, it was probably designed with a maximum of two people, or maybe a couple and a child, three at most, in mind. What kind of pervert would make a bed specifically for four high school girls, who are just about done growing, to pile into all at once?
"I'm in favor of what So-hee said."
Ha-neul, who had been looking around my room with her mouth slightly agape, rejected my objection.
"We're the ones who decided to camp out here without asking. We can't cause any more trouble now that we're here. If the four of us sleep in one bed, we won't even need to pull out extra blankets."
Four people sleeping in a bed aside, if four were lined up together and covered by only one blanket, wouldn't the person on the very end inevitably get pushed out from under it?
"Right? That's what I'm saying."
Shin So-hee grinned brightly, agreeing with Ha-neul's words.
Weren't you two just fighting for some reason I couldn't figure out a moment ago?
Seeing the two of them suddenly acting so chummy, I felt a momentary flash of bewilderment.
"I-I think that's good too. Since we came without any notice......."
No, I said it makes me uncomfortable.
I couldn't exactly say that to their faces when they were being so considerate of me.
Alright, to be honest, the moment they suggested sleeping in the same bed, I did unintentionally get my hopes up for a second. Even if it wouldn't lead to, well, that sort of thing...... you know? Those little fantasies you have sometimes during your teenage years... and well, not just then.
Shin So-hee has an amazing figure, obvious at a single glance. Not that Lee Su-a's figure is bad. Her chest size might differ a bit from Shin So-hee's, but her height is similar to mine, which actually made the proportional differences stand out more. Ha-neul is the same. She isn't as overtly large as the other two, but because of that moderate size, her overall body balance is excellent. She really looked worthy of being the protagonist of a dating sim, I had to say.
......And besides, when it comes to looks, all three are beyond anything I could properly rate. They're all stunningly beautiful. Two were originally heroines who were romance targets, and one was the female protagonist. Each had a face with its own distinct charm, so making comparisons was nonsense.
And now, I'd be snuggled up with those three in the same bed? Isn't that the kind of sensational event that wouldn't even appear in the wildest adolescent dream?
But that's exactly the problem.
If that sensational event actually happened in reality, could I keep control of myself?
......Well, whatever. Even if I couldn't control myself in Ye Sa-ra's body, I'd probably be subdued immediately.
Even leaving aside that moving my body was scary, the question was whether I could actually fall asleep properly wedged between the three of them.
Just remembering the poses Ha-neul and I ended up in during class today would make it hard to sleep.
"So? All three of us agree?"
As I sank into contemplation by myself, Shin So-hee asked, as if to hurry me along.
.......
Oh, whatever.
When they put it that way, I had no real grounds to refuse anymore. They didn't think it was weird, so if I was the only one thinking it was weird, that would actually make it weird.
Come to think of it, when I went to a vacation rental or something with a bunch of friends, we'd just sprawl out all over and sleep just fine. Going over to a friend's house in a big group and sleeping wherever... The only reason I was reacting this way was because the bed was the only place to lie down here. No matter how many blankets you lay out, a marble floor is still a marble floor.
The moment I nodded, all three of them, including Shin So-hee, smiled brightly.
......This is the right choice, isn't it?
......Yeah, probably?
*
"By the way, what should we do? It's a bit boring to just sit here gathered together and do nothing, right?"
True to her role as the one who first suggested they sleep over at the mansion, Shin So-hee asked that.
"It's a long time until we sleep. It's not even 8 yet. Wanna order something to eat?"
"Ah, then I'll call the maid and—"
"No, we already mooched dinner off you earlier."
Shin So-hee neatly shot down my suggestion.
"At the very least, a late-night snack should be on us. And honestly, aren't we still a little full to eat anything right away? Even if they are staff, isn't it a bit much to make them do something after 6 PM? They're regular people who should be off work by then."
She was right on every point. It was about the time when work was wrapping up and it was time to rest, so it would be a bit inconsiderate to call someone over just because we felt like a snack.
......But they were already thinking about a late-night snack? Exactly what time were they planning to sleep? No matter how I looked at it, it didn't seem like Shin So-hee just wanted to crash here since we were already here. She was clearly planning to have a good time and make a whole night of it.
Was she that fond of this group? Or was she just the type who often stayed over at other friends' houses and hung out? It didn't seem like an out-of-character thing for her either way, so I couldn't quite tell.
"Ah, should we order some fried chicken then?"
Ha-neul said.
"Sounds good. Since we'll have to wait a while for delivery, we can wash up in the meantime."
Lee Su-a nodded silently.
Fried chicken, fried chicken... Now that I thought about it, I didn't think I'd eaten any proper fried chicken since coming here. Strictly speaking, the only thing was the chicken patty inside the chicken burger I ate last time when I followed Shin So-hee on that 'commoner food' tour.
Fried chicken's great. Ideally, I'd like an ice-cold beer with it too...... but that's impossible at my current age. Besides, who knows what kind of chaos would break out if I drank alcohol in Ye Sa-ra's body.
I made a mental note to be careful when I became a university student and quietly listened to the three of them talk. They were discussing the menu, debating the merits of different sides that came with it. Well, with chicken, as long as you don't order from a truly awful place, it's never bad. So I decided to just leave it to the three of them and sit quietly.
Just then,
"Ah, right. You go wash up first."
Ha-neul must have noticed me sitting there blankly and said that.
"Uh, you sure?"
When I said that, all three of them nodded at the same time.
"Yeah. It's your house, after all."
Hearing Lee Su-a say that, I hesitantly got to my feet. "Oh, then... I'll go wash up first...?"
Even as I said it, something felt off. No, not so much from what they did, as...
Yeah, I was feeling a strange dissonance at being told to go wash up first by a girl. It was a phrase I never normally heard.
.......
Ha, I'm really something else.
Reacting like that to such a totally innocuous comment... what am I, some teenage boy going through puberty?
I let out a long breath, and my mind eased up a bit. Right, we're friends, so it's a remark with no ulterior motive. They just yielded the order for washing up because I'm the host.
What kind of weird imagination have I been having all by myself?
"Got it. I'll go wash up first, then."
I said that with a considerably lighter heart and stood up fully. The three of them showed me a smile. A bright smile that seemed to hold no hidden intentions whatsoever.
*
Click.
The bathroom door attached to the room closed. The three remaining people held their breath and strained their ears for a moment.
A silent space so quiet you wouldn't believe three people were in it; the sound of breathing itself couldn't be heard.
In that space, a moment later, they heard the rushing sound of water cascading down.
And the moment that sound was heard, the first one to leap straight up from her seat was Shin So-hee.
She hopped off the bed where she'd been sitting, strode straight over to the wardrobe, and yanked the door open.
"Hey, without even asking...!"
As Yu Ha-neul cried out, flustered by Shin So-hee's sudden action, Shin So-hee looked back at her, slightly furrowing her brow as she spoke.
"Didn't I say earlier? I was planning on borrowing some clothes."
Hearing that, Yu Ha-neul's and Lee Su-a's jaws dropped.
Shin So-hee nonchalantly began picking through the hanging clothes in the wardrobe.
"Hmm, there aren't as many types of clothes as I thought."
"......!"
And then, Yu Ha-neul belatedly remembered the shopping trip she'd gone on with Sara last Saturday.
Not those clothes......! An alarm blared inside Yu Ha-neul's head.
Yu Ha-neul shot to her feet, hopping off the bed just as Shin So-hee had done a moment before.
"I'm borrowing some too!"
That was right.
Yu Ha-neul had declared she'd borrow underwear too when she came into this house.
Shin So-hee's eyes narrowed, but Yu Ha-neul didn't care in the slightest. Despite the height difference, she showed no sign of being intimidated.
The two people's gazes clashed in midair.
Lee Su-a, who had been watching the two of them with a dumbfounded expression, could have sworn she saw actual sparks flying between their locked eyes.