The Kiss That Happened by Accident
As I walked along the street where the sunset was fading, I found myself lost in thought.
It had been when, exactly?
The moment Casher and that guy had started their relationship.
‘Was I played like a sucker?’
No.
From the very beginning, she might have always classed me as her “good friend” long ago.
That good friend, though, had simply overstepped the mark and gone beyond what was appropriate.
It was just my own delusion and flattery, so the pain had to be borne alone.
“…You bad girl.”
Even as my head screamed that, an unwilling resentment toward my childhood friend began to bubble up.
I knew I was pathetic.
Yet, across both my past and present lives, she was the first person I had ever truly liked.
“Fuck…”
I couldn’t control the emptiness and sadness.
‘Rejection really hurts like hell.’
In my previous life, no matter how many movies, dramas, or even love songs I watched, I never felt the same pain.
Now I understood.
The childhood friend I had loved for so long, now wearing the mask of a scoundrel who stole a man’s pure heart, must have been the source of that agony.
The irony was that even so, the thought of her kept haunting me, and I couldn’t shake off the lingering attachment.
‘That’s why people who’ve been rejected fall apart.’
When reason and emotion don’t match, a person can’t stay sane.
I was broken too.
I had blindly stepped forward, yet I didn’t know where I was heading, and when I suddenly stopped, I realized I was on a strange street.
‘What should I do?’
Even asking myself, no satisfactory answer came.
Rejection was new to me, so I didn’t know how to handle it.
As I stood quietly in a corner of the alley like a screen for a moment, someone approached.
“…Dorn?”
A familiar voice reached me, and a bandaged woman stepped closer.
“…Nadia?”
“Y-yeah, it’s a coincidence… Meeting here…”
The girl I had matched with for five days, Casher, was the one I had been paired with in a competition.
She recognized me and approached, then hesitated for a second.
“…Is something wrong?”
“Ah.”
Only then did I realize that the shy Nadia was the one asking first, meaning my face must look terrible.
Thinking about it, I asked her.
“Time okay?”
“Huh? Why suddenly ask about time…”
“Because I wanted to have a drink with you.”
***
It was the first time after my reincarnation that I entered a bar.
Today, I probably couldn’t endure this pain without drinking.
Fortunately, Nadia had come along, so I didn’t have to fill the glass alone in a shameful manner.
“Here, Nadia. Take a drink.”
“I don’t know how to drink…”
“Just drink.”
There was no method to drinking.
Facing each other at the table, I filled the glass and raised it in a toast, then downed it.
The house special fruit wine was sweet and went down smoothly.
“How is it? Good, right?”
“Yeah. Tastes better than I expected. But Dorn…”
“Today I’ll pay for everything! Drink as much as you want! Order whatever food you like!”
To Nadia, who seemed about to say something, I forced a cheerful voice and refilled the glass.
Honestly, I had wanted to talk about what happened today and get comforted, but sober, I didn’t think it would come out of my mouth.
“…”
Nadia didn’t ask further and followed me, gulping down the first drink she had ever had.
We ordered a variety of side dishes.
Since we had come to a nearby place, surprisingly both the food and alcohol were good.
After how long at the bar?
“Huuu…”
Through the bandages, Nadia’s eyes were hazy.
“Dorn, I feel strange…”
“Why? Stomach not feeling well?”
“No. Just feeling… light and floaty… Is this intoxication?”
“Looks like it.”
“Hehe… So that’s it.”
Nadia flashed a meaningless, silly smile.
She then extended the glass toward me again.
“More♡”
I shook my head.
“You should stop now.”
“Why… I was told to drink as much as I wanted…”
Nadia shook the glass I was holding and made a tantrum.
The shy side she had shown until now contrasted with this overflowing of cuteness, which was unimaginable.
‘She’s adorable, but…’
She was really drunk.
Even though the bandages on her face had come loose and were hanging down, she still didn’t notice.
It was barely the end of one bottle, and she was right before passing out.
She was a truly vicious drinker.
I was on the verge of starting to tell her about the rejection I couldn’t hear through my blurred eyes without crying, when…
“Let’s go.”
When I reluctantly said we should leave, Nadia was still sitting there quietly.
“I’m fine… I haven’t even had enough.”
“No, you’ve had enough. You’re really drunk.”
“I don’t want to… I want to drink more. Dorn said I could drink as much as I wanted…”
The conversation was looping.
“Why are you already leaving… I’m really fine… I can drink more…!”
Nadia, who had been stubbornly resisting, suddenly clung to my arm and started whimpering and sobbing.
I was flustered because the usually obedient girl had become this way.
The girl who didn’t seem like she would do such a thing had a bottomless pit.
Thinking I had to get her home before she lost her mind completely, I negotiated with her.
“Fine. I’ll let you drink more. But we go home.”
“Where’s home? Our house?”
“Yeah, your house. It’s more convenient for you to drink there.”
“……Okay.”
Only then did Nadia agree.
I went to the owner and asked for just one bottle of the fruit wine I had just drunk.
“Here it is.”
“Here, Nadia. Here’s the alcohol.”
“…”
Nadia took the bottle and stared at it silently for a moment, then started whining again.
“This one is small. Is there no bigger one?”
“Is there a bottle larger than this?”
“Please wait a moment.”
The shop owner went to the back room and brought out a large bottle that looked to be around two liters.
“Since you like drinking, this should be enough.”
“Pack some side dishes too, Dorn. There’s plenty left.”
“Uh… sure.”
Even in her drunken state, she had vitality.
If we married, she would manage the household well.
“Hehe, I like big ones♡”
Nadia hugged the large bottle tightly and stepped out of the shop unsteadily.
“Ehehe, how rough…”
I immediately ran over and supported her from the side.
Since I had no choice, her chest touched my arm.
Soggy!
“…”
Because of the large breasts that seemed to have sucked up all the nutrients, the alcohol suddenly cleared her head.
“Nadia, where’s your house?”
“Umm… turn right at the end of the alley…”
Nadia gave me directions slowly in a clear voice.
Following the guidance of a drunk navigator, after walking around, a familiar building came into view.
‘This is the place from back then, right?’
It was the run-down building I had seen while looking for a room on the day of the entrance ceremony.
At the time, I had wondered who would live in a place like this.
I never imagined it was Nadia who lived here.
Suddenly, the memory came to mind: I had said she had to work today.
I had thought something similar back then, and it seemed plausible that she was facing financial difficulties.
“Nadia, is this the right place?”
“Yeah, this is our house.”
Nadia, happy that I had come to her house, grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.
Surprisingly, despite the exterior, the inside of the building was surprisingly clean.
It was a corridor-style one-room apartment, and Nadia’s room was at the very end on the left.
“Here it is.”
When Nadia unlocked the door with her key, the cute interior was revealed.
It was a 1.5-room setup with the kitchen and living room combined and the bedroom separate.
On a personal level, it might have been wider than my boarding house.
“The room is pretty big, huh?”
“Because the rent is cheap, it’s easy to live in~”
Nadia said with her intoxicated voice, laughing.
I nodded and placed the side dishes from the takeaway on the table.
“I’ll go now. Don’t drink too much.”
Since I had brought her home, I wanted to leave, but Nadia suddenly grabbed my arm again.
“Where?”
“No, I want to go home too…”
“Don’t go, okay? Let’s drink more together…”
With a pitiful voice, she held my arm.
My heart dropped.
Was it the alcohol?
She was pretty anyway, but looking up at me from below, her face made my chest flutter.
“…Fine. Let’s drink together.”
Yeah. After all, I hadn’t planned to die from drinking today.
Nadia’s expression brightened, and she pulled out a chair from the table and tapped it.
“Sit here!”
We sat facing each other again and started drinking.
The buzz was higher because the already half-drunk taste was combined with alcohol.
The strange thing was that Nadia, who I thought was already completely drunk, kept matching my pace.
“You’re not forcing yourself to drink, right?”
“Gengcha~”
It was really weird.
Her tongue was slightly twisted, so she was clearly not in a good state, yet the alcohol kept going down.
Maybe the “I’m fine” at the bar earlier wasn’t just words.
“Dorn, should I pour you another drink?”
“There’s still some left.”
“Then give me one more.”
“…”
As we passed the glass back and forth, I eventually became heavily drunk, and the story I had been holding inside finally spilled out.
“Actually, something like this happened today…”
I told her about what had happened that day in a self-deprecating voice.
Explaining everything made it longer, but in summary, it was that my childhood friend, whom I had liked since childhood, was seen kissing another man.
Even as I spoke, my chest ached.
“I really liked her a lot… The fact that she liked me back was all my misunderstanding.”
“…”
Nadia, who had been listening quietly for a while, suddenly looked straight into my eyes and asked.
“How did those two kiss?”
“Why suddenly ask that?”
I asked her why she asked such a random question, and she just said she was curious.
Honestly, I didn’t want to remember it again, but since I was quite drunk, I followed Nadia’s request and slowly described what I had seen back then.
“At first, that guy and Casher were hugging…”
“How were they hugging?”
“How… It was just normal…”
“I don’t know. Show me directly.”
Before I could answer, Nadia got up from the chair and stood next to the table.
“Dorn, come here too.”
Why is she suddenly acting like this?
Nadia’s atmosphere had changed again.
“Quickly.”
“Eh…”
“Do the same thing as what you saw earlier?”
“Ah, okay.”
In a firm voice, I unconsciously did as she said.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and gently hugged her small body.
Slam.
‘Whoa…’
A soft, full-bodied softness filled the embrace, and a faint body scent brushed against my nose.
“So soft…”
“…”
When I lowered my gaze slightly, Nadia was looking up at me with a blushing face.
“Next…”
“Here—”
Nadia repeated Casher’s actions from that memory as if they were coming from my mouth.
She slightly lifted her chin, gently closed her eyes.
From the slightly parted pink, moist lips came a breath, waiting for something.
I couldn’t resist the bold temptation.
Chup—
The lips touched carefully.
It was the first kiss that happened by accident.