The Night Before Enrollment (3)
The door burst open.
"Whew~ Thanks for letting me use the bathroom first~."
Han Sora emerged from the bathroom, rubbing her hair with a towel, her guard now completely dissolved. Her wet brown waves, freshly dripping from the bath, struck me as lewd in an entirely different sense from when Cha Eunju had stepped out of my shower back home.
"Ah, y-yeah. Glad it worked out."
"You even cleaned the toilet spotless? Wait—do you actually live with someone? I thought you lived alone."
"N-no, not really...? Just use the hair dryer in the bedroom."
"Pfft, okay."
Han Sora shot me a knowing little smile as I averted my gaze from her freshly-bathed self. By now, she must have filed me away as a safe male friend—not even worth being cautious around.
Which was exactly what I'd been aiming for. Her wariness had to soften as much as possible if I wanted to make any real progress with her tonight.
'Honestly, my odds are about fifty-fifty.'
The plan I'd set up around Han Sora was a fairly simple one: forced to share the single bed in my apartment, because there was only one.
Of course, since the plan relied on her personality—her instinct not to be a burden—I couldn't be one hundred percent certain it would work. In fact, I judged the odds of failure to be greater.
But whatever. This whole event had been staged in the first place to steal the scenario where Seo Woojin, that bastard, shares a room with Han Sora, so even if it fizzled out, no harm done.
"You're not going to wash, Seonho? You went out walking around earlier."
"...Yeah, I suppose I should. The bed's made, so go ahead and sleep first."
"That'd be rude, though—leaving the host to sleep last. Oh! Want me to make you a midnight snack? I'm pretty good at cooking ramyeon."
"You just want to eat some yourself, don't you?"
"...Well, we did walk around a lot today, so I am a little hungry."
I'd given up late-night snacking a while ago because of my workouts with Choi Mari, but at the end of the day, all of that was in service of conquering heroines anyway.
If sharing a single pot of ramyeon could buy me Han Sora's affection, that was motivation enough to lift the snack ban.
"Let's boil one and split it. A whole pack at night is a bit much for one person."
"Okay~! I'll get everything ready~."
"There are eggs and cheese in the fridge, if you want to throw any in."
Saying that with practiced nonchalance, I walked toward the bathroom.
I deliberately hadn't grabbed a change of clothes to bring in with me.
The door clicked shut.
...He's in, then?
Han Sora had watched Lee Seonho slip inside just before the bathroom door closed. A moment later, she heard the sound of running water from within, and began cautiously looking around the apartment, careful not to make it obvious.
"......"
A single man's home—the first she'd ever set foot in.
For Han Sora, who had never once dated in her life, it was a genuinely fascinating space.
She had a childhood friend in Seo Woojin, sure, but she'd never once thought of him as a member of the opposite sex. She'd visited his house plenty of times, but she'd known his parents since she was small, so it had always felt like dropping by a second family's home.
This was the first time she'd entered a house where a boy her own age lived alone, just the two of them—and so Han Sora felt something in her chest flutter unexpectedly.
'If I go rummaging through everything, that'd be rude, right...?'
Back in high school, her girlfriends had told her that guys hid dirty books under their beds, that their computers had hidden folders stuffed full of Japanese actresses, and so on.
It would be a lie to say she wasn't the slightest bit curious. He looked so innocent on the outside—maybe his taste in adult videos was surprisingly depraved? She'd even let her imagination wander down that road once or twice.
But she was the one who had shown up at his door in the middle of the night and imposed on his hospitality. No, she decided, she'd behave herself and not do anything pointless.
Inconveniencing others—especially someone to whom she already owed a debt of the heart—was the one thing Han Sora particularly despised.
...That said, she had no hesitation about poking through places she judged wouldn't cross the line into actual nuisance.
The cabinet swung open.
"Wow, you keep everything so neatly organized in here...."
Ramyeon packets, their bundles already broken open and lined up by flavor in perfect rows. Cans stacked with edges aligned to the millimeter. The ingredients and drinks in the fridge, the dishes in the drawers—everything was arranged with that same immaculate precision. At a glance, the place could have belonged to someone with a full-blown cleaning addiction.
'Is he secretly a germaphobe or something? He never seemed like it before.'
The image of him toiling and rolling in the dirt was seared too deeply into her memory to square with that. She simply filed it away as: he keeps his home tidy, that's all.
And with that thought, Han Sora carefully pulled two different flavors of ramyeon from the cabinet—a spicier one, and a milder one.
'If we're adding egg and cheese, the Seongan Tangmyeon is probably the safer bet. I'll ask Seonho again once he's out of the shower.'
Though honestly, she figured Lee Seonho would be happy with whatever she cooked. It was his ramyeon to begin with, so he presumably liked both.
Still, she thought it better to respect the host's preference—and just as she held the two packets and waited for him to emerge, she heard the bathroom door slide open and footsteps move toward it.
The door swung wide.
'Oh, I guess he's done showering.'
Boys really do wash fast. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since he went in.
Thinking absently of how she herself had even changed clothes inside just a little while ago, Han Sora walked toward the bathroom, ramyeon packets in hand.
"Hey, Seonho. Do you want the Maep Ramyeon or the Seongan Tangmyeon? Which one should I co—"
"......"
"...Uh. Uhh."
His naked body, appearing at a moment she could never have anticipated, froze her brain on the spot.
Water-damp hair. A lean, sinewy build she'd never noticed beneath his clothes.
And there, caught by a gaze that had accidentally dropped downward... that thing.
It took her about two full seconds to register what she was looking at. Only when she saw Lee Seonho carefully shielding his lower half with the towel he'd been using to dry his hair did Han Sora snap back to her senses, clapping her hands over her eyes.
"I-I'm sorry...! I—I thought you'd come out dressed...!"
"I-I forgot too. I just thought I was showering at my own place, like always, and didn't think."
Han Sora covered her face with the two ramyeon packets in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut—but the scene was far too vivid to simply forget.
The first man's naked form she had ever beheld, family aside. And it wasn't even a stranger's body—it belonged to someone she knew.
Her mind, insufficiently jolted out of the moment, replayed it with ever-greater clarity every time she closed her eyes.
"I-I'll go get dressed first. U-um, the Seongan Tangmyeon is fine!"
"Y-yeah... okay."
The easy comfort from moments ago had evaporated entirely; the air between them turned awkward in an instant.
...For the first time in her life, her mother's scolding—don't be such a klutz, drilled into her ears until it stuck—actually carried real weight for Han Sora.
'Cute. Getting that flustered over a single glimpse of a naked man.'
This was a girl who, just minutes ago, had joked boldly about making me hand over my underwear—and yet look at her now, over one look at a man's body.
Han Sora's reaction was even more innocent than I'd anticipated, and it took real effort to keep from laughing. Her scarlet face, desperately stammering out apologies, was quite the sight too.
I hadn't expected her to come all the way to the bathroom just to ask which ramyeon to pick, but thanks to that, I got to imprint my body on her eyes all the more naturally.
I'd stepped out ostensibly drying my hair—meaning that from the collarbones down, I'd exposed every inch of my bare skin with nothing covering it at all.
'It was brief, but she'll remember this for sure. That under these clothes, I'm in pretty decent shape.'
Working out with Choi Mari had built up a respectable layer of muscle, and as for my cock—I'd always had plenty of confidence there.
Of course, even with all this muscle, my raw physical ability still fell short of Han Sora's.
In this world, the strength of a body is determined less by trained muscle than by whether you possess an awakened ability. Muscle only matters as a tiebreaker when abilities are roughly equal.
But this wasn't a world where masculinity was measured purely by strength, either. A well-built body appeals to men and women alike, always has.
Flashing my cock was admittedly closer to a gamble, but judging by that reaction, I'd definitely made the right call in showing it.
"Sh-should I put an egg in the ramyeon, Seonho?"
"Y-yeah. If you can, I'd like it not beaten... poached in whole, maybe...?"
"A-and the cheese...?"
"...On top, at the end. Just a little...."
Ever since she'd laid eyes on my naked body, Han Sora kept tripping over her words and stealing glances at my face.
For an untouched virgin with no experience of men, it must have been quite the shock. She was, after all, treating the sight of my body as her own fault—so a fair amount of guilt would be mixed in there too.
For my part, I was matching her beat for beat, playing the embarrassed, apologetic victim. If I acted too composed here, everything I'd built up in front of her—the image of a naive, harmless boy—would be shaved away in an instant, that much was obvious.
This had to stay at the level of an innocent mishap between two friends of opposite sexes. The mood of mutual mortification had to be preserved.
"H-here you go...."
"Ah, thanks...."
Before I knew it, a steaming bowl of ramyeon sat in front of me.
I'd asked for the egg poached whole, but it had somehow come out beaten—the telltale sign of how rattled she'd been. Not that I minded; I simply preferred it the other way.
"T-thank you for the meal~."
"...Thanks, Sora."
Han Sora kept sneaking looks at me with an awkward smile, finding it difficult to bring up what had just happened.
Into the silence, the slurping of two people eating ramyeon echoed several times over, until I—the nominal 'victim,' after all—ventured to carefully address the 'accident' that had just occurred.
"Sorry. When I shower at home, I never bother bringing clothes in ahead of time. I forgot you were here and just showered like always—I was planning to head straight to my room."
"No, no. You're the host—it's completely natural to do that. I-if anything, I should've been more careful. I'm sorry...."
"...I'm the one who should apologize. For showing you something weird for no reason."
"I-it didn't seem that weird, though...?"
"...Huh?"
"I-I mean, th-that's just how guys are, all of them—ah, no wait, that's not what I meant, I—anyway, um, yeah...!"
"...Right. I get what you're saying. Totally understood, so don't worry about it."
"......I'm, I'm really sorry. I truly wasn't trying to look. I swear."
"I know. I'm well aware there's no way you'd do something like that on purpose."
Because in the first place, she hadn't looked—she'd been shown. Even if she hadn't wandered up to the bathroom door, I'd have found some way to give her at least one viewing.
By wandering the apartment half-naked for a while. Or by feigning a fall angled so her gaze had no choice but to snap toward me, complete with a loud yelp to draw her eyes.
"......"
Slurp.
"......"
Slurp.
After their awkward apologies had traded back and forth several times, the two of them fell quiet once more.
Nothing but the sound of my and Han Sora's slurping filled the silent apartment.