A Fox's Ears Are Not to Be Touched
I-I'll... take care of it... myself...
After sending Arang and Yeongwol off, Hayeon wrapped her arms around me from behind.
"Mmm... now, what should I do with this adorable baby fox?"
"...I am not a baby fox or anything like it. Let go of me."
I had to pry her off, and fast. If I let this go on any longer, she'd drag me off into some strange current again.
"Aren't you being awfully prickly?"
"That's what happens when you hug me without asking...!"
This time, I actually pushed her away with my hands. Of course, Hayeon wasn't the type to budge from a mere push, but she released her arms obediently enough.
"Tch— isn't that a little cold of you?"
"...I keep telling you, stop hugging me whenever you feel like it!"
"But I just want to hug you so badly?"
She smiled then — not her usual playful grin, but a smile with eyes curved in something dangerously alluring.
...So this is what they call... seduction?
Just a mouth curving slightly less, just a hint of laughter in her eyes — and somehow she became that beautiful.
No. At this rate, I'm done for...!
That smile had nearly made me fall for her without realizing it.
"...It's evening now. You should head home."
I had to get her out of here somehow. If I stayed with her any longer, I wasn't sure I could resist whatever that was.
"Hm? But I don't have a home?"
"...Huh?"
Wait, what was that supposed to mean?
"You... had a place until three months ago, didn't you...?"
"Yeah, I did... but while I was away, a Gate opened up right on top of it? So I even got compensation money!"
She flashed double V-signs with both hands, waving them as if this were some great achievement.
"Sooo~ I'm going to live here!"
"...How did the conversation end up there?"
"Hm... or would you rather watch me shiver my way through a winter night out in the cold?"
She pouted her lips, putting on an exaggerated sulk.
Weren't you the one who walked away unscathed after being hit with absolute zero...?
Hayeon had once been frozen solid head to toe by an enraged Spirit of the Bitter Cold.
As far as I remembered, it hadn't hurt her at all.
At most... she sneezed once?
That had been right after she first made S-Rank — so now, as a Transcendent, an absolute-zero deep freeze probably couldn't touch her even slightly.
"You don't even feel the cold anyway."
"Hm? No, I very much do! Why do you think I'm wearing all these layers?"
Her outfit was a hanbok top over tailored slacks, with a formal jacket draped over her shoulders.
"...Ordinary people can't get around in this weather dressed like that."
"Exactly — and that makes it cold out there in this outfit. Which is why I need to stay next to our warm, toasty Sihyeon."
...The woman could argue like water flowing downhill.
"Haaah... fine."
"Fufu, I knew if anyone would listen to me, it'd be you, Sihyeon!"
"...In exchange, you sleep in your own room."
Hayeon had stayed over at my place often enough that a room for her existed in its own right.
And since this house had once served as our guildhall, the loft-style layout made it plenty spacious.
Granted, "guildhall" was a generous word for a place four people had barely scraped together a loan to buy back in the day.
...Still, it's far too big for me to live in alone.
A cramped house would be one thing, but living together under a roof this size... probably wouldn't hurt.
"......"
"...Hayeon?"
But Hayeon didn't answer.
She wasn't looking me in the eye.
To be precise, she was looking at me — just not at my eyes.
"You're going to sleep in your own room... right?"
"......"
"Right...?"
"......"
No answer. She just kept drinking me in, gaze roaming over my whole body.
"Wh-what's wrong with you...?"
Her look sent a faint chill down my spine. It wasn't that she frightened me — the problem was where that gaze of hers was traveling.
Back in the day, I'd have assumed she was plotting some prank — uncertain but harmless. Now I had no idea what she might actually do to me.
"Oh, it's nothing! Just... fufu..."
"...Don't make that creepy face."
Just what kind of laugh was that smile supposed to be?
...I didn't particularly want to find out.
After dinner, bedtime arrived at last.
"...I told you earlier, but don't come into my room. And don't come in while I'm washing up, either."
She'd never actually barged in on me in the bath before, but something about tonight made me feel I had to warn her.
"Tch..."
"...You were thinking about it, weren't you?"
"Hmm... n...o?"
The way her words chopped off at the end was suspicious, but having said it out loud, she'd at least stay out.
...At least she's good about listening when it counts.
So I stepped into the bathroom and undressed.
In the mirror, a small girl's figure stared back at me.
"Haaah..."
I was so used to it by now that the reflection felt like the person I'd always been.
...Not that I can go back anymore.
Of course, that didn't mean I intended to stop my research. Originally, I'd planned to ask Hayeon to undo it — but she'd already insisted she couldn't.
Shaaaa—
Warm water wrapped around my body, steam curling up through the bathroom air.
...Washing up is more of a chore than I expected.
Maybe because my hair had grown so long, the time it took had ballooned dramatically. My body's surface area had shrunk, yes, but the hair more than made up for it.
I did try cutting it once...
"Mom!! Absolutely not! If you do, I'll die of sadness, I swear!"
...Arang's fierce opposition had put a stop to that before the scissors ever touched a strand.
"...A bob-length cut would be fine, though?"
The irony was that Arang, the very person who'd forbidden me to cut it, wore her own hair extremely short — nearly a full pixie cut. With that kind of length, why exactly was my hair off-limits?
I worked up a lather with shampoo and rinsed it out. The suds that burrowed deep into my hair took a veritable eternity of rinsing before the last of them finally washed away.
Washing my body and brushing my teeth, on the other hand, took hardly any time at all. With less surface area there was little ground to cover, and my tail had shrunk too, making it easier to clean.
...My ears got smaller, too.
Getting water inside them while showering was unavoidable, but it used to be easy to shake it back out. Now that they'd shrunk, cleaning deep inside had become genuinely difficult.
"...It takes way too long from shower to actually sleeping."
Drying my hair, the insides of my ears, and my tail — all of it added up.
Tap—
Once the shower was done, I patted myself down roughly with a towel, then pulled on my underwear and an oversized white T-shirt. My hair was still damp, so the shirt got a little wet, but it was nothing a change of clothes couldn't fix.
...If it weren't for Arang, I wouldn't even own underwear like this.
There had been no women's underwear in my house at all before she started buying it.
I wrung the water out of my hair with the towel and padded out to the living room.
Now I just need to dry my hair, and—
"...Huh?"
"......Oh."
Right. I'd forgotten.
The instant I saw Hayeon in the living room, I yelped and bolted back into the bathroom.
...God, I'm an idiot.
For one shining moment, I had genuinely forgotten that Hayeon was in my house. With no guests ever hanging around this late, my mind had wandered off mid-shower and taken the memory with it.
"There are better things to forget...!"
I'd always prided myself on a decent memory — apparently not.
"Hmm~? Why are you running away?"
I'd rushed inside without even closing the door, and Hayeon had already followed me to the bathroom entrance, watching me with an amused tilt of her head.
"Wh-when did you even get here?!"
"How long does it take to walk from the living room to here?"
...Fair point. The bathroom sat just a short hallway away.
"Hmm... I shouldn't... touch you right now, should I?"
"Of-of course you shouldn't!"
"Pffht... just kidding. Come on out, I'll dry your hair for you."
With that, she laughed and turned back toward the living room.
...Sh-she's really not going to do anything?
Judging by everything she'd pulled today, I'd fully expected more teasing — some kind of follow-up attack.
I checked the mirror, toweled my hair a little drier, and stopped by the bedroom on the way out to pull on a pair of short shorts.
...Arang bought these too, and honestly, they're about as revealing as wearing nothing but underwear.
Shark pants... was that it? Some garment named after a sea creature with "pants" tacked onto the end.
Well... not that it matters.
When I emerged into the living room, dressed down to the last layer, Hayeon beamed and beckoned me over.
"Come here! I'll dry your hair for you!"
Hayeon, equipped with her usual mischievous smile.
"...You promise it's just the hair?"
After everything she'd shown me today, even that smile had become something to be doubted.
"Aww, I don't pull that stuff for occasions like this."
"...I'll believe you."
Drying my hair was honestly an ordeal, so Arang often took over the job when she was around. Having Hayeon help out surely couldn't hurt.
"Okay, sit right here!"
She patted the floor directly in front of her.
I sat down obediently where she'd indicated.
"Mmm, you smell nice? Very~ feminine scent."
"...Arang picked it out."
"HmMM... is that so?"
She couldn't have cared less either way, clearly.
"...Just dry it. Nothing weird."
"Hmm... fine."
...And earlier you said you weren't going to do anything.
She did look a little wistful about it...
Wrrrrm—!
The hair dryer roared to life with a coarse whine.
"Your hair is seriously so soft."
"Is it?"
Warm air spread through my hair, down every strand.
...This feels nice.
Maybe it was the dead of winter, but the warmth felt especially good like this.
It is nicer when someone else does it...
About three minutes of nothing but the drone of the hair dryer later,
Wrrm—
Hayeon switched it off.
"Already done?"
"Mmhm, I blew off most of the moisture with my Taoist arts before I started."
...There's a handy art like that?
For that matter, I was pretty sure I'd never even heard of Taoist arts in that category.
Well. She was Hayeon. If anyone could whip up an art at that level with her eyes closed, it was her.
"Now then... your ears next, right?"
"Huh? Ah, no, I can do those myse—"
"I used to do this for you back when you were a man sometimes. Why are you getting shy about it?"
"Th-that was because I was sick!"
Back when I was frequently bedridden, she'd come nurse me — and often clean out the inside of my ears while she was at it.
When I'd try to crawl into bed without drying off after a shower, she'd nag me and wipe my ears out for me.
...Back then, I thought she just cared about a teammate's health.
Now that I knew how she truly felt, even those old memories made me oddly embarrassed.
I tried to spring to my feet — and was stopped dead by the arm snaked around my waist.
"Ah-ah, no escaping now?"
"Th-this—"
I struggled against her grasp however I could,
Shloop—
and before I knew it, a puff of cotton in her hand had burrowed deep into my ear.
"Ahh—!"
The cotton swab plunging into the depths of my ear knocked the words right out of my mouth.
What came out instead was a strange, completely unnecessary little moan.
"...I wasn't expecting a reaction like that."
Apparently my response delighted her, because her voice sounded distinctly pleased.
Swish— swish—
The cotton churned around inside my ear, following every movement of her hand. Yet it was all terribly soft and slow, gentle as anything, wiping me out with painstaking care.
"...St-stop."
"Hmm...? If you don't clean them properly, you'll get an ear infection~"
"I-I said... I'll do it... mnh... myself..."
Ear cleaning was never supposed to feel this good, was it? Or was it just because someone else was doing it?
Still... back then it never felt... mnh... like this...
Had becoming a woman made every sensory nerve in my body that much more sensitive?
My body flinched and squirmed all on its own.
"Hehe~ seems like this spot's got a lot of water in it~"
"Th-that's not..."
I tried desperately to resist, but escaping from her embrace was next to impossible.
Starting from my ears, pleasure burrowed its way through my whole body — a ticklish, electric sensation that set every nerve endings alight.
"Can you... hold still for me?"
"Ah... mnh... please..."
And so, held captive in her arms, I couldn't get away for the longest time — sinking, for a very long while, deeper and deeper into a thick, spreading haze of pleasure.