My Superior's Body Odor Is Stimulating
Even though I ended up holding the curvaceous married Manager Han in my arms, the first thought that came to mind was pity.
The situation seemed like it had improved, yet it really hadn't.
It was because the belief that a rescue team would arrive soon had been shattered.
The bleak reality that we'd have to survive here from now on, and the crushing sense of isolation from being separated from our families.
Those things were breaking down Manager Han, who had always smiled no matter what happened.
I only felt like I could endure it because I'd lived alone as a man...
The shock and sense of loss for Manager Han, who had already built a family, had to be beyond words.
"It's okay. Cry as much as you want."
I don't know if the manager heard me.
But the arm Han Jia had wrapped around my waist tightened with a little more force.
When I opened my eyes to the rustling sounds, I saw Manager Han sitting with her back turned, rummaging through a bag.
"W-Woojin? You're awake?"
She looked extremely embarrassed, as if yesterday's events had come flooding back.
"Manager. Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes. Thanks to you."
She seemed to have calmed down a bit.
"I'm truly sorry. I started thinking about my children and husband."
"It's fine."
"I already packed bags for the two of you."
"Ah, thank you."
It must have been one of the travel bags from the wreckage.
It probably contained the last of our food and some empty water bottles.
Kang Seoyun was standing a little further away, staring out at the sea.
Was she searching for any sign of a rescue team?
"Do you think... we'll be able to go home?"
Han Jia asked.
"I'm not sure. For now... we have to focus on surviving."
I finished packing the bag and walked over to Seoyun.
She was squatting down, doing something.
I wondered if she was lamenting our situation again like yesterday.
"Water...!"
She whispered.
"?"
"Water.... Come forth, water! Spirit of water."
"What are you doing?"
"Eek!"
The deputy manager jumped up in surprise.
"If becoming a magical girl was your dream, you could've just told me."
"Ugh!! I just thought it would be nice if I could do it too, so I was trying to copy you...."
I never imagined she was imitating me.
Had she really been clutching that empty water bottle and chanting spells this whole time?
"I know how to do it, so why bother?"
"......"
"Or do you dislike it when I act all superior?"
"Ahem. It's not that... I just can't keep relying on you forever, Woojin."
"Hmm. If you don't like it, you can just say so."
"I said it's not like that."
Seoyun snatched the empty bottle and thrust it toward me.
"...Can you teach me the trick?"
"Well. For me, I just see it."
"See what, exactly?"
The pattern that meant 'water'.
I took the bottle and filled it with a gurgling stream of water.
"Shall we go? At least we won't have to worry about dehydration."
"I guess I should give up on that magical girl dream."
Besides, the deputy manager was a bit too old to be called a girl...
Yeah, I definitely shouldn't say that out loud.
"Oh, right. I walked along the coastline a bit because I wanted to get a rough idea of the island's size and shape."
"Did you discover anything?"
"The area we're in corresponds to the southern part of the island."
Seoyun said, holding up her smartphone.
"The latest smartphones have electronic sensors, so the basic compass app still works."
"South coast... So the place we're heading next is the south forest."
"Exactly. Knowing our current location will make it easier to find our way back."
She's sharper than I am?
Well, it was something I'd already figured out.
"On the way back, I'll mark the trees with lipstick. Avoiding getting lost is the most important thing."
Who would've thought cosmetics would prove useful here.
"Sounds like it's right in your field, Deputy Manager."
"I never expected I'd be applying it to tree bark, though."
"But...."
I stared directly at her and asked.
"Are you really okay with going alone with me?"
We had no idea what might happen in the forest.
What if the partner you'd been relying on suddenly turned violent?
In that sense, the risk was far greater for the woman.
She couldn't possibly be unaware of what it meant to enter the woods with the only man on this island.
It bothered me that she would willingly go exploring with me without Manager Han.
Seoyun stared at the ground for a moment as if thinking, then muttered quietly.
"Hmm, well."
I hadn't exactly been expecting the textbook response of "I can trust you, Woojin." but her uncharacteristically vague attitude still bothered me.
This woman usually had a firm conclusion in everything she said.
"────Still, we've been colleagues living together for a month."
Was that all?
It was a more disappointing answer than I'd expected.
To Kang Seoyun, Kim Woojin had always been an incompetent failure.
Beyond lacking ability, he showed zero motivation to do anything on his own.
Since he was just a contract worker, she hadn't expected him to handle everything perfectly from day one.
"Kim Woojin, are you listening?"
"Huh? Ah, yes."
She'd known from his very first day that he had poor concentration and no desire to learn.
But even then, he should have had some awareness that he was burdening others. Instead, he was strangely relaxed about it.
Kang Seoyun had thought of Kim Woojin as a selfish human being who only caused problems for everyone else.
The label of incompetent failure had come after that.
Rather than slapping labels like failure or incompetent on someone...
"I'll handle the difficult tasks, so just don't drag me down and follow along!"
That was Kang Seoyun's style of leadership.
But no matter how much you tried to help from the side, you couldn't teach someone who had no intention of learning.
"Why didn't you follow the method I taught you? Explain it to me, Kim Woojin."
"I'm sorry."
"I didn't ask for an apology. I asked for an explanation."
"This way seemed more efficient, so..."
"Efficient? Hah. Who told you to come up with something like that?"
"I'm sorry."
There were those eyes again.
Eyes that said he'd just bow his head and pretend to be sorry no matter what she said.
He wasn't actually reflecting at all.
If that's what he wanted, she'd just give him tasks befitting an incompetent failure.
"Go bring all the luggage from downstairs."
"By myself?"
"Did you not hear me? What are you waiting for? Hurry up."
"Yes."
Still, having a man around to use as a servant did have its uses.
But he was truly someone she didn't want to get close to.
A selfish human being. Trash who didn't know how to do anything for others.
Kang Seoyun believed her judgment was flawless.
Even if she considered what kind of situation she might end up in later,
if someone had made her pick a coworker to be stranded with on a deserted island as a joke, she wouldn't have chosen Kim Woojin even by chance.
To the always passionate Kang Seoyun, Kim Woojin was an inexplicable mass of discomfort.
'He's someone I'll never have to see again anyway.'
After a month of his unchanging attitude, Seoyun had grown sick of it and completely given up on any expectations.
The conclusions she reached like this had never changed in her life.
Because when Kang Seoyun analyzed and evaluated people, her judgment was rarely wrong or off the mark.
However───
"Are you okay?! Deputy Manager!"
Everything had been turned upside down.
In that truly terrifying moment, someone had held her in his arms and comforted her.
It had been Kim Woojin.
As the plane shook violently and passengers' screams filled the air, Kang Seoyun—who had always prided herself on being smart—couldn't make any decisions or take any action.
In that hellish chaos, only one person───
The Kim Woojin she had looked down on as incompetent and selfish had snatched an oxygen mask and pressed it to her face.
"!"
Kang Seoyun had been utterly shocked.
How fickle the human heart was.
People would badmouth you behind your back after ten good deeds if you failed them just once. She'd seen many new female employees do exactly that.
And no matter how much she had brought it on herself, after a month of treating him badly, it would be natural for him to hold a grudge.
Yet in that critical moment, he had chosen her over his own life.
That choice didn't make sense to Seoyun.
The selfish person she had labeled a failure had acted altruistically in a life-or-death situation.
When the prideful Seoyun put on the oxygen mask, her dominant emotion wasn't fear of death but regret.
'I was wrong. I was wrong about him.'
This person's true nature wasn't evil.
Why hadn't she seen it?
If she could survive and start over, if she could go back to a month ago, she would be kinder───
And then the world tore apart.
──────
When she regained consciousness, Kim Woojin was lying collapsed near the shore.
"Kim Woojin! Wake up. Kim Woojin!"
Was he dead? Had he saved her at the cost of his own life?
The thought that she owed him her life made Seoyun dizzy.
Just as she was about to try giving him mouth-to-mouth...
"Cough! Cough!"
He spat out water and sat up.
'Thank goodness. Really.'
────Time returned to the present.
He was asking her,
"Are you really okay with going alone with me?"
It was an unexpected question.
She knew Woojin was more playful than he seemed, but she also knew he wasn't the type of man who would use violence against a woman.
She had naturally trusted him.
She hadn't expected him to worry about her position.
'He's more considerate than I thought.'
Every side of Woojin she'd seen since coming to this deserted island was new to her.
His playfulness, his refusal to bow to authority, and how much more helpful he was in this crisis than expected.
"I'm fine with Woojin. I wouldn't want to go with any other man."
The words rose in her throat.
Seoyun's lips parted slightly.
She couldn't bring herself to say it honestly.
"Hmm, well."
After everything she'd put him through, suddenly acting nice would be too obvious.
It would be like a pet that only started following after getting food.
For that reason, Kang Seoyun couldn't open up about her true feelings.
"────Still, we've been colleagues who've lived together for a month."
Current situation: it's fucking hot.
The island seemed to sit on the border between tropical and subtropical climates.
Thanks to that, the temperature difference between day and night was mild. It didn't get deadly cold at night, but entering the dense jungle with its thick vegetation created a perfect storm.
The combination of warm temperatures and murderous humidity completed the experience of a steaming sauna from hell.
"Hoo... huu."
Deputy Manager Kang Seoyun was sweating buckets too.
She'd taken off her jacket long ago, and her white dress shirt was completely soaked, making the black, ornate lace of her bra clearly visible underneath.
It definitely wasn't underwear meant to be shown off.
You could see the way the deputy manager's full breasts jiggled with every movement.
She had to be aware of it too. Pointing it out would probably just get me yelled at, right?
"Look for something, will you? Stop standing there like an idiot."
The correct answer was that I'd get yelled at either way.
The sensitive deputy manager was like a pufferfish with all its spikes fully extended.
She even had those plump, round things attached to her chest...
Her ability to steal my gaze is no joke.
Were the deputy manager's breasts always this big......
They looked so soft and squishy.
The deputy manager knew exactly what she looked like right now, but with survival being the top priority, she seemed to be trying her best not to think about it.
I couldn't even imagine the stress she must be feeling. A woman who worked in the beauty industry, forced to tolerate looking so disheveled.
"We've already gone through two tubes of lipstick to get this far and there's still nothing... This is driving me insane."
Seoyun, who had been holding it in, finally let her frustration spill out.
"There are so many of these damn plants everywhere. Would it kill them to have some food too..."
"I know, right."
Before we left, we'd made solid plans for finding our way, and I'd felt pretty optimistic.
That optimism had been completely misplaced.
What could two amateurs possibly learn by stumbling around in the jungle?
"Now that I think about it, in a documentary I saw, if you peel back tree bark like this, larvae come out."
"So what?"
"What do you mean, so what? It's an excellent source of protein..."
"Ugh, blegh."
Seoyun immediately covered her mouth.
"I have a weak stomach, so please don't."
"......"
"I'll consider it when we're actually on the verge of death."
By then, we probably wouldn't have the energy to catch any plump larvae anyway....
"Could you eat them, Woojin?"
"Well, if it's to survive, I'd have to."
"That's disgusting...."
She said that, but I didn't want to eat raw larvae either.
That's why we were both eagerly digging into the calorie supplement cookies from the bag.
"These are all gone now too."
"There weren't that many to begin with."
"......Sigh."
By the way, no matter how much I tried to ignore it, there was a certain scent coming from Kang Seoyun.
It wasn't the faint perfume she usually wore.
How should I describe it...
It was her body scent.
She'd been sweating nonstop without any chance to shower, so of course she smelled, but strangely, I didn't find it unpleasant.
Seoyun's natural scent was mysteriously arousing—an addictive smell.
Would it be too crude to call it the scent of a female?
But as if reacting to Seoyun's body odor, I could feel strength gradually building in my lower body.
Ironically, when a man's body entered survival crisis mode, his sexual urges actually increased.
Leave behind your seed before you die!!
It was as if every cell in my body was squeezing out every last drop of libido.
And with the deputy manager—who was radiating that scent—right beside me, I was being stimulated in a completely different way.
"...Smell..."
"What?!"
I'd muttered it without thinking.
Seoyun flinched violently at the word "smell" and made the most flustered expression I'd ever seen on her face.
It was the face of someone whose secret they desperately didn't want discovered had just been exposed.
She immediately took a defensive stance.
To an adult woman, being told she "smells" might be a death sentence.
"I think I smell fruit coming from over there."
I quickly changed the subject.
"Where?"
Ugh, I'm screwed.
If I didn't find something, I was going to get my ass kicked.
How the hell was I supposed to tell her I'd gotten excited from her strong body odor.
"This way."
I took the lead as if I actually knew what I was doing.