Knock
"……Hey."
It was morning, the warm sunlight spilling in through the window.
"……Get up already."
Rarely enough, a voice like a whisper reached me first thing in the morning.
I usually woke to my alarm, so almost no one ever came to rouse me from my love of sleeping in. Hearing someone else's voice before I even opened my eyes was a strange novelty.
And it was a girl's voice, at that.
Come to think of it, something similar had happened just a few days ago.
"Lee Kang-yeon! Get up!"
"……Uh, huh?"
That voice calling my name…… Yoo Jae-min?
I peeled open my heavy eyelids and looked toward the sound. Jae-min was standing beside my bed.
……Whenever this brat had a reason to wake me, her default stance was to climb on top of me and pin me down. Waking me this quietly was completely out of character. What was going on?
On top of that, instead of her usual hoodie she was wearing a turtleneck and shorts.
Was she going somewhere?
That was the half-asleep, half-baked thought running through my head when our eyes met. She whipped her head away and muttered,
"……Put some clothes on first."
"……Ah."
The sense of wrongness I'd been feeling since I woke up was the bare emptiness below my waist.
The moment I realized I wasn't wearing any underwear, yesterday's memories came flooding back through my mind like a panorama.
The noise through the wall. The knock. Masturbation. The handjob. Passing out. Sumata……
……Well. What a night that was.
I looked at her again. Her face was flushed, and she refused to meet my eyes.
……I'd let it slide yesterday, but was it really that?
"Hey, did you maybe……"
"Breakfast is almost ready, so just hurry up and wash already!"
She cut me off, dumping out her words in a rush that was practically a shout, then left the room without so much as a glance back.
Last night, in that final moment, when I'd leaned in and whispered into her ear like I was delivering a verdict—
I had clearly felt her react not to the physical stimulation of my movements, but to the meaning carried in that single line of my voice.
That had to mean what I thought it meant, right?
……Should I go out there naked and drop into a full dogeza apology for doing whatever I wanted?
While that thought whipped through my head like a storm, I looked around.
My underwear wasn't covering my crotch—it was crumpled on the floor right next to where Jae-min had just been standing. My dick and the bedsheets were crusted with every kind of dried fluid, as if still hinting at last night's heat.
Thinking back to how I'd fallen asleep, I'd been holding her, and my cock had still been nestled between her thighs.
Yeah. Even if my guess was wrong, she'd definitely figured everything out.
But breakfast?
What was going on with a girl who'd never so much as boiled her own instant ramen in this house?
It wasn't like turning into a woman had suddenly made her lifelong dream becoming a perfect housewife or anything.
I picked up the phone from my bedside and checked the time.
9:42 a.m.
Yeah, I'd slept in after going to bed so late last night.
Maybe she'd gotten hungry and, since I wasn't getting up, decided to make something herself.
To be fair, I was usually the one who woke up first, made breakfast, and then went to wake her.
Whatever Jae-min's real intentions were, I decided to go wash up.
I roughly pulled on the underwear I'd thrown off yesterday and opened the door into the living room.
Before heading into the bathroom, I glanced toward the kitchen. Jae-min's back was visible in front of a frying pan on the stove, looking like she was fretting over something.
And beyond her, the smell of hot oil and eggs cooking through.
"Fried eggs?"
"Yeah. Just go wash already."
Fried eggs weren't a hard dish, so even she should be able to manage without any real trouble.
I watched her for a moment as she stood there with a spatula in one hand, fussing and fretting, then set my worries aside and headed for the bathroom.
I looked down at the plates set on the table.
Two fully cooked fried eggs in front of each of us.
……Judging by how uneven the yolks looked on two of the four, she'd originally been aiming for sunny-side up.
I didn't know how they'd broken, but maybe she'd cooked the rest all the way through to hide the failures.
Eggs were delicious boiled, baked, or fried, so it wasn't really a failure either way.
"……What's with that look?"
Ah. My thoughts must have shown on my face.
"Nothing. Thanks for the food."
I answered that way and reached for the ketchup.
For the record, I was the type who ate fried eggs with ketchup on them.
"……"
A pale hand shot out and snagged the ketchup bottle right out from under me.
Apparently my answer hadn't sat well with her. Without so much as looking my way, she started dumping ketchup all over her own eggs.
No, that was way too much.
"You put soy sauce on eggs."
"……It's my business."
She took a sulky bite, but I could see her face scrunch up at the taste of eggs completely buried under ketchup.
I'd thought this before, but whether it was a defense mechanism from growing up so small, she tended to react aggressively to outside stimuli and got sulky easily.
Then again, she got over it just as fast—a few words and she was fine again—so it wasn't a bad personality, really.
Even when she had complaints, she never bottled them up and let them fester.
"So why'd you suddenly decide to make breakfast?"
"……I've been making you do all the dishes without ever helping, so I figured I should at least do this much today."
Even as she said it, Jae-min kept trying not to meet my eyes, like she was hiding her embarrassment.
Had she come to her senses and felt bad?
I appreciated the thought, but a girl who couldn't cook was more helpful just sitting still.
"Cooking from someone who doesn't know the first letter of the word is a little……"
"Hey!"
"Just do the dishes like usual. That's plenty. What's with the sudden overachieving?"
"……Fuck it. Do whatever you want."
Jae-min hunched her shoulders and started poking at her eggs with her chopsticks.
Was she really going to eat all that ketchup without wiping any of it off?
She really did pick the weirdest hills to die on.
"How's your body feeling now?"
"Fine."
Jae-min answered like it was nothing.
Was it really?
She said that, but she'd been wearing that same sulky expression this whole time, so I wasn't sure how honest she was being.
"You sure you're actually fine? You forgot about the dishes and spent the whole day doing nothing but that."
"Hey! ……Fuck, every time I left my room it felt like I'd gotten up mid-shit!"
"You crazy brat, don't say shit like that with that face."
She finally gets a beautiful girl's face and she's going past "fuck" straight into talking about shit.
Was she actually insane?
"And……"
"Huh?"
Jae-min looked my way, and our eyes met.
A wavering gaze that seemed full of grievance.
What did that mean?
She stared at me in silence for a moment, then flushed red and looked away.
"……The, the smell……"
"Smell?"
"When I come out of my room, there's a smell……"
"Huh? What smell?"
"……The smell of you jerking off, that smell is everywhere, you fucking bastard!"
Jae-min squeezed her eyes shut and shouted like something had snapped inside her.
"You give me shit, but you were jerking off like several times a day too! Every time I came out of my room to eat, the smell of your cum was fucking everywhere!"
"……Uh, yeah."
"Fuck, every time I smelled it…… every single time I…… fuck……"
"R-right."
"……It got a little better after I washed, but then I'd leave the bathroom to go back to my room and that smell would hit me again and I'd be like fuck……"
"Hmm……"
I'd always aired the place out, but maybe it hadn't been enough.
And it was still like that even after she'd washed?
I was pretty sure I'd only ever come out to wash late at night after she was asleep—and in the living room, not even my own room.
Was her sense of smell that sharp?
No, that wasn't the real issue. What she was saying basically meant that the smell of cum made her go into heat.
What kind of erotic manga nonsense was this?
"So, if I'm not misunderstanding…… you're saying the smell of cum turns you on?"
"……Fuck."
"Then, even now?"
"……It's a little better now."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Yesterday's "treatment"?
Calling it treatment was a stretch, but maybe that act had helped.
"Fuck, I'm not masturbating anymore."
What the hell was this crazy girl saying all of a sudden?
"Going nofap?"
"It happened because I was masturbating, so if I just don't do it in the first place, problem solved. Perfect logic, right?"
"……Sure. I'll root for you."
How many days was this pervert's nofap declaration going to last?
From the way she talked, it sounded like the heat from smelling cum had gotten a little better—not that it had zero effect.
Had she even managed nofap back when she was a guy and none of this mattered?
And there was one more problem.
"Then what about handjobs for me?"
"……You…… you fucking bastard! I remember all of it, you know!"
Bang!
Her face scarlet, she shouted, shoved back from the table, and bolted into her room.
Judging by how she nearly slammed the door off its hinges on the way in, she was pretty pissed.
Looks like I'd be doing the breakfast dishes myself.
Yeah, that aside—so she had been awake after all.
……When exactly had she woken up?
Probably when I didn't stop even while she was climaxing?
That was around when she'd started gripping my arm like she was trying to endure the pleasure.
She'd twisted her hips trying to get away, too.
But if she remembered, why hadn't she gotten angry at me?
Judging by what she'd said at the end, maybe she'd thought of it as a substitute for a handjob.
So handjobs were off the table, then?
Honestly, I'd been looking forward to it. Handjobs……
I was disappointed—but the opportunity came back faster than I expected.
Knock knock.
That night, she came looking for me again.
She hadn't even lasted a single day.
"……Help me."