I Didn't Want to Wake Up from the Dream
I hated waking from yet another emotional dream inside the erotic game. Ghosts, spirits—it didn't matter. I had thought countless times that I would rather remain trapped in this dream forever than return to the real world.
Yet no matter how desperately I wished otherwise, the smartphone alarm always buzzed and vibrated, dragging Jo Ayoung back to reality.
That was why the bed she woke up in was always drenched in sweat and tears.
At least, it had been that way until recently.
“Mmm…”
Jo Ayoung slowly opened her eyes.
Her disheveled hair spilled messily over her shoulders, and her still-sleepy gaze blurred the outlines of everything around her.
Even so, she reached for her smartphone with some effort and let a faint smile touch her lips.
It was a message from her boyfriend, Lee Hajun.
“…Hehehe.”
The moment she saw it, the fatigue and lethargy that usually clung to her seemed to fly away. She wanted to rush out of the house and see him right away.
So Ayoung quickly got out of bed and began to slip off her pajamas, the ones printed with a cute rabbit character.
“…Haa.”
She hadn’t had a nightmare this time, yet her clothes were still damp with faint stains.
Embarrassed, she hurriedly stuffed her pajamas and underwear into the laundry basket and stepped into the shower.
“Mmm-hmm~.”
Humming cheerfully under the pleasant stream of water, Ayoung washed her hair first, then moved her hands lower. She carefully cleaned her neck, armpits, breasts, and the stomach and legs partially hidden beneath them.
Afterward, wrapped in nothing but a light towel, she stepped out.
“Ugh…”
When she reached for the underwear she had set out earlier, the set she had bought to accommodate her enlarged breasts and hips felt slightly tight again.
“It grew again…”
In the past, Jo Ayoung would have sighed at a body that only seemed to swell in pointless places. But now—
…No. It’s pretty.
She remembered how Lee Hajun, who rarely showed his emotions, had been visibly flustered when he saw her figure. Suddenly it didn’t feel like a flaw at all.
So she applied lotion with meticulous care, checked herself in the mirror, and decided that this look would definitely please him.
Lately she had been spending more time with Harin, and the amount of physical affection from Hajun had decreased. That fact had left her quietly dissatisfied.
It would be nice if he touched me a little outside like he used to…
While entertaining such shameless thoughts, Ayoung wondered if there was a good way to fix it. Soon enough, a decent idea came to her.
Hajun stares at my thighs a lot…
He probably thought he was being sneaky, but Ayoung had always been sensitive to other people’s gazes. She had noticed long ago.
She decided to use that attention to her advantage and roll her skirt up just enough to invite his touch.
Ugh… that’s way too lewd.
The clothes already hugged her tightly; adding a slightly rolled-up skirt made it obvious she had dressed with intent. Still—
Even so…
The thought of Hajun looking at her and being happy made it hard to feel bad about it.
Once she was ready, Ayoung tapped out a message to him on her phone, then slowly slipped on her shoes.
I wonder if Harin is all right, though…?
After yesterday’s gym class she had stayed face-down at her desk the whole time. She really had looked unwell.
Only now did Ayoung begin to worry about her best friend.
Every time I watched the oblivious protagonist in a harem story, I had the same thought: why didn’t that idiot just accept the heroines who clearly liked him instead of pretending not to notice?
Now that I was living the experience myself, I understood it wasn’t stupidity driving his behavior. On the contrary, it was precisely because he was smart that he cut off problems before they could start.
‘Tell me your wish… since the loser has to grant it.’
I wasn’t completely ignorant of what she had meant by pulling those words out of the metal cabinet.
I wasn’t some fool who had never dated a girl before. When a woman looked at me with a flushed face and slightly unfocused eyes and said something like that, only an idiot could miss the meaning.
If I hadn’t already been dating Ayoung, I might have thanked her and taken the offer without hesitation. After all, Lee Harin was an attractive woman in her own right. Her face was beautiful, and the figure I had once thought modest was far softer and more substantial than I had imagined.
So I instinctively started to reach for her—
…Hajun.
The moment Jo Ayoung’s face rose in my mind, I froze.
……
Lee Harin had squeezed her eyes shut at my movement. When nothing happened, she opened them again and asked, voice trembling.
“…Why? Why not?”
I answered her with the most cowardly possible reply.
“I haven’t decided on the wish yet…”
If I truly cared about Ayoung, I should have pushed her away completely. If I was going to reach for Harin, I should have done it without hesitation. Instead I had done neither, simply postponing the choice.
“…I see.”
Thanks to that half-measure, the connection between Harin and me hadn’t been completely severed, but I still remembered the strange look on her face as she left the cabinet.
I didn’t know. In a normal world, was it really right to let go of a beauty I would never have had the chance to even look at?
Regret began to surge—until I heard her voice.
“…Hajun.”
The moment I saw Ayoung running toward me from a distance, my heart changed. She was the one who had first accepted my feelings. Therefore, my heart belonged only to her.
A line that sounded like it belonged in a movie filled with the clink of chains came to mind. I ran straight to her.
“Ayoung…”
And pulled her into my arms.
“H-Hajun?”
She seemed startled at first, but soon relaxed and accepted the embrace, speaking in her usual gentle tone.
“…Did something happen?”
I shook my head.
“…No.”
After letting her go, I took her hand like always and we began walking down the alley. Ayoung, who looked unusually cheerful, started telling me all kinds of things.
“…It’s finally club experience day, isn’t it?”
Just as she said, the club application forms had been sorted and delivered to every department yesterday. Today was the chance for students to try out their chosen clubs. If it didn’t feel right, they could still switch. Without this trial period, some students would suffer through the wrong club before begging to change. This was the school’s way of preventing that.
“Yeah. I hope there are lots of interesting people.”
Even though I already knew exactly who would be in the Counseling Club we were joining, I pretended ignorance.
Ayoung thought for a moment, then asked me with a bright smile.
“…Oh, right! Harin decided to join the same club as us, didn’t she?”
The question pierced somewhere inside my chest. I stuttered.
“Y-yeah. Yesterday I told her that if we were in different clubs, our dismissal times would be different… so I asked if she wanted to change.”
“…I see.”
Since nothing in my answer seemed strange, Ayoung simply nodded.
“…Harin looked like she was in pain.”
The sudden remark caught me off guard.
“…Did she?”
I barely managed a reply.
“Yeah. After gym class yesterday she stayed face-down at her desk the whole time. We hardly talked.”
I had no idea what to say. In the end I just forced a smile and nodded.
Ayoung stared at me, then tilted her head.
“But… weren’t you in the same gym class as her, Hajun?”
“……”
Cold sweat began to run down my back. I hadn’t done anything wrong—yet here I was.
“…Nothing happened, right?”
I hesitated at her question before answering carefully.
“N-no, nothing?”
The situation had completely flipped. Normally I would tease her and she would stutter and blush. Now every word from her left me squirming.
“…Really?”
Ayoung looked at me with an unreadable expression. Just as anxiety made me open my mouth to say something—
“That…”
“I understand.”
She smiled as if nothing was wrong and squeezed my hand again.
“Because I trust you, Hajun.”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes.