I Knew Foxes Could Bewitch You, But...
Gasp after gasp escaped my lips as I finally tore myself free from Hayeon's arms.
“So? How was my technique? Pretty good, right? Hmm?”
“…Why do you keep doing whatever you want?!”
Granted, her handiwork on my ears had been anything but amateur…! And it had felt good, admittedly…!
“Hmm? Weren't you enjoying it too? Your tail wouldn't stop wagging, you know. It was a real problem for me.”
“It was not!! You… you do realize this is sexual harassment, right?!”
Groping someone's body without permission, pulling them into hugs, messing with their ears as if she owned them.
Even setting aside the fact that we were both the same gender now, this was well past the line of harassment.
“…And you're only saying that now?”
“Wh… what?”
Hayeon looked back at me with an expression of pure disbelief.
“…If you were going to say something like that, you should have said it ages ago.”
………
She'd hit the nail right on the head.
Come to think of it, everything she did to me today….
No. Don't think about it. What I suffered was nothing more than harmless teasing.
…Probably.
“…Hmmm, fine, I get it. For today, I'll stop here.”
“For today…?”
“Yeah. I told you, didn't I? I like you. I've kept it hidden until now… but not anymore~”
Whoosh—
“Hmm? Hehe, don't tell me you're embarrassed~?”
“…Shut up.”
I snapped that back at her and retreated into my room.
Slam—!
I took my frustrations out on the door for no particular reason.
Naturally… no amount of my strength was going to break it down.
Once inside, I immediately burrowed under the covers.
My body was still a little damp, but that was the last thing on my mind right now.
So annoying….
More than her, it was myself that irritated me—myself, who couldn't even manage a proper rejection.
Angry at the me who could neither push her away nor accept her.
…What am I supposed to do with this?
Would I have answered her confession gladly, I wondered, if I were still in my old male body?
That I liked her too.
That my heart had pounded at the sight of her more times than I could count, even back then.
That every moment she closed the distance under the guise of a joke had been almost unbearably stimulating to me.
If my body were whole again, would I have surrendered myself to her touch, drowned in her whispers?
…A pointless hypothetical.
Nothing in this world was more meaningless than dwelling on what might have been.
That was the very first lesson I'd taught my disciples, and a principle I had always lived by.
Because for someone as hopelessly weak as me, looking back for even a second meant instant death.
“But this is one thing I just don't know….”
In all my life, I had never once experienced romance.
As a child, every action I took was pure survival. When my head had grown monstrous, I'd thrashed desperately just to stay alive. And when the struggle for life was finally over, I'd been too busy raising my disciples to even consider such things.
…My head is a mess.
All I'd intended was to yell at Hayeon. How on earth did it end up like this?
And considering everything that had happened to me in a single day….
Whoosh—
I dragged the blanket up over my burning face.
…Stop imagining things.
Sleep seemed like the better option. Yes. By tomorrow, my thoughts would have settled somewhat.
With that resolve, I tried to sleep—but for a long while, the memories of the day kept sleep firmly out of reach.
After Sihyeon had slammed her door shut, Hayeon's face flushed redder than it ever had before.
Crazy, crazy, crazy….
Hayeon was burning up.
When had she last felt heat like this? Since becoming S-Rank, she hadn't registered hot or cold at all.
“Haah… hoo….”
Even a Transcendent couldn't suppress the heat rising from within her own body.
Least of all when it wasn't any external force, but her own emotions, setting her ablaze.
…That was seduction, wasn't it?
The reason Hayeon had ended up in this state was Sihyeon.
It wasn't this bad when I was holding her back at the entryway.
Sihyeon, who had told her not to come into her room, not to come in while she bathed.
Honestly, Hayeon had never planned on doing any of that from the start.
But the moment she'd heard those words, her delusion circuit had kicked into gear of its own accord, and she could barely process what Sihyeon was actually saying to her face.
…Getting me all worked up with words like that.
Don't come in while I'm bathing. Don't come in while I'm sleeping. Really?
What was that if not an invitation, no matter how you looked at it? Why would anyone even say that in the first place…?
Sihyeon had repeated it any number of times, but to Hayeon's ears, it sounded suspiciously like please do.
Of course… it wasn't.
“…Well, fair enough.”
She knew better than anyone that Sihyeon wasn't the type to invite such things.
Which was exactly why she hadn't snuck in with stealth arts, or used clairvoyance-type Taoist arts to peek, as she might have.
But seriously, if she walks out looking like that… who on earth is supposed to hold back?
A loose, oversized white tee that hung like she'd never bothered to dry it properly, damp in patches—and nothing on the bottom half.
Worse, she hadn't even put on a bra, so every inch of Sihyeon's skin showed through the soaked fabric.
And then there was the way she'd jumped in surprise the instant she saw her.
………Oh.
She'd had so many things she wanted to say, but the words circling her skull were far too vulgar to speak aloud.
Touching her now… that would be crossing a line, right?
Y-yeah, obviously it would!
The truth was, she'd wanted to touch her. More than at any moment before, she had craved Sihyeon's body.
But because she loved her, she would never do the things Sihyeon hated.
With that thought she'd barely smothered the seething desire—only for Sihyeon to return from changing clothes wearing a single pair of dolphin shorts.
…Does she not own a mirror?
Her top was showing off an absolutely devastating amount, and she'd come back having changed into… pants? Tiny dolphin shorts, at that, like a proper girl?
All right, fine. Even that, she could forgive.
It wasn't the first or second time she'd seen Sihyeon's upper body exposed. Granted, those had been special circumstances… and Sihyeon had been a man, back then.
I'll dry your hair for you!
But the real problem came when she'd offered to dry Sihyeon's hair.
Truthfully, the drying itself took one second.
But the sight of that slightly damp nape, and her back just as soaked through as the front, had been laid utterly bare before her eyes.
…You're telling me that's not seduction? Showing me a back like that?
She has no self-awareness at all, or she's genuinely doing this on purpose—I honestly couldn't tell.
She'd been spellbound by that tantalizing figure before coming to her senses and pretending to still be drying her hair.
Then… I should dry your ears next, right?
She'd said it without thinking much of it.
Sihyeon had mentioned plenty of times that if the ears aren't cleaned after a shower, it gets uncomfortable.
It was just supposed to be a little service—skinship with a practical excuse.
Sihyeon had refused, but Hayeon knew it wasn't a refusal born of any real dislike.
And so, the instant she'd pressed her wad of cotton into Sihyeon's ear…
Ahh…!
An outrageously stimulating sound.
A moan she had never once heard from Sihyeon before.
…I didn't expect a reaction like that.
She truly hadn't. She'd assumed it would stop at a light tickling of the ears, but Sihyeon's reaction had blown far past anything she'd imagined.
In that moment, the desire she'd been barely reining in had broken loose entirely.
She'd pinned Sihyeon with her arm and meticulously, tenderly, wiped out the inside of those ears.
Sihyeon had clearly been feeling good—flinching and squirming over and over.
Letting slip one sweet, melting sound after another, each one a jolt straight to Hayeon's nerves.
“…I almost couldn't stop myself.”
At the insane, explosive peak of her desire, she'd nearly run her hands over Sihyeon's body without meaning to.
Hands heavy with want, nearly exploring every inch of her—
—all those tantalizing things glimpsed through the soaked fabric.
…If I had, she really would have hated me, wouldn't she?
The only reason her behavior tonight was tolerated at all was that she'd just barely, narrowly avoided crossing the line.
That razor-thin line whose edge even Sihyeon herself couldn't quite define.
If she lost control of it and did as she pleased, Sihyeon would push her away completely, forever.
“…Haah. She was always defenseless, even as a man, but it's gotten so much worse since she became a woman.”
If anything, the old male Sihyeon had guarded himself far more thoroughly.
Sure, back then it had all been in jest where now it was deadly serious—but still, Sihyeon's female form left her defenses shockingly thin.
And the way she acts, too, all of it….
…Though maybe that wasn't because she'd become a woman, but because Hayeon herself had confessed.
“…Maybe I should wash up too.”
After dwelling on Sihyeon for so long, Hayeon finally steadied herself and headed for the bathroom to shower.
She stripped off her clothes and washed herself under the warm water.
…It's been a while since I had a bath like this.
For a long stretch, she hadn't properly washed at all. Before coming here she'd kept herself clean with Taoist arts, but these past three months she hadn't even done that.
Hayeon's eyes fell on the green symbol resting over her chest.
Not large, but shaped like roots—thin tendrils branching delicately outward.
“…Damn World Tree.”
Vmmm—
At her words, the symbol gave off a faint glow.
“What do you want me to say? Because of you, I nearly got myself hated by Sihyeon.”
At that, the symbol quivered no more.
Shhhhh—
Hayeon turned on the water and let the warmth cascade over her body.
Water trailing down along the curves of her chest.
She watched it for a moment, and thought.
…I wonder if Sihyeon will grow up someday too?
…And if so, would she end up even more stunning than me?
A matured appearance, a generous chest and alluring hips, a seductive figure. Not the fragile, birdlike chirp of a voice she had now, but the smooth, honeyed voice of a grown, seductive woman.
And in that form, with her, the two of them…
“If it came to that, then, mm… ngh…. Ah… damn it….”
Drip—
Her nose was bleeding.
“…Heh heh.”
Perhaps because she'd indulged in far too many fantasies—this was the first nosebleed she'd had since becoming a Transcendent.
Once her shower was over, Hayeon dug out the spare clothes she'd brought from her own house and got dressed.
…I really should swing by my place and collect my full collection sometime.
The claim that her house had been destroyed was nothing but a convenient fake excuse to squat in this one.
Sihyeon surely knew that too, and had simply gone along with her tune.
“…She said not to come into her room.”
But as long as they weren't actually sleeping together, that was fine, wasn't it?
Just watching over her couldn't hurt, could it?
Before the question had even fully formed in her mind, Hayeon was already standing in front of Sihyeon's door.
………
From inside came the soft rhythm of steady breathing.
Having confirmed that Sihyeon was asleep, Hayeon reached for the door.
Passage to the Beyond (S-Rank)
For spatial movement, a skill beats Taoist arts any day.
Slipping into the room with her own arts would have been easy enough, but nothing came close to this for entering in total silence.
It was originally a skill for slipping through dimensional rifts, you know.
And now it had been demoted to a tool for sneaking into people's bedrooms.
“…Hmm.”
Stepping into the room, she found Sihyeon buried under her blankets with a furrowed brow, her whole face scrunched up in sleep.
…Wait, did I get the wrong room?
The air inside was thick with Sihyeon's scent.
A faint trace of chemicals, the shampoo she'd smelled earlier, and that soft floral body scent Hayeon had known since forever.
She said it happened after some experiment went wrong, back in the day.
But somehow… tonight, that flower-sweet scent felt impossibly lewd.
No… that's just me, still wound up from those filthy fantasies earlier.
Tap—
…?
Without warning, Sihyeon's hand closed around hers.
Sh-she's awake?
Her hand, caught at the exact moment her senses had gone dull, drowned in strange fantasies. If Sihyeon realized she was here, there would be hell to pay.
………
But thankfully, Sihyeon didn't seem to have woken.
Hayeon relaxed, and was just about to gently peel the hand away—
“…Hehe.”
What dream could she be having? A faint smile bloomed across Sihyeon's sleeping face.
……………
For one instant, Hayeon's thoughts stopped dead.
No—they were racing faster than they ever had, but she stopped them. Deliberately. Forcefully.
Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist.
She slid her hand free, opened the portal once more, and slipped back out to the living room.
“Whew… haaah… whew….”
The ragged breath she'd barely managed to hold in came flooding out.
“I knew foxes could bewitch you, but… that one was straight-up cheating….”
Collapsed right there on the spot, Hayeon's face burned redder than it ever had in her life.