Two Madwomen and the Drunken Manager
I downed a shot of soju in one go, as if shaking off the mental exhaustion from spending an entire day trying to make these two crazy women get along while I suffered alone. “Krrgh—!” The burn in my stomach only made it hurt worse.
“Manager, drinking on an empty stomach without eating anything? Such a manly man♪”
“That’s not a manly man, that’s just an idiot, Calathea.”
What the hell are they saying? I grumbled internally and quickly slapped a thick slab of pork belly onto the grill. What I needed right now wasn’t an argument with these idiots—it was delicious meat.
“Manager, should I grill it for you?”
“No thanks. You can’t cook.”
“Aww… this isn’t really cooking, it’s just putting it on fire, right? I can totally do that♡”
“Absolutely not.”
For some reason, Calathea—who usually refused to lift a finger at home—suddenly rolled up her sleeves and stepped forward. I guarded the tongs with my life regardless. Anyone who thought grilling was that simple was already doomed from the start.
But someone here clearly didn’t agree.
“Manager, I’m offering to grill meat for you after all this time. So hand over the tongs already.”
“…Fine. Give it a try.”
Calathea, now fired up, snatched the tongs from me by force.
“Hmm, the fire on this thing seems… a little weird?”
In the end, after burning several pieces of meat to charcoal, she quietly handed the tongs back to me.
“Ahaha, it’s different from the stove at home… Um, Manager, do you want to take over?”
“Give me the tongs.”
“Out of all the meat I’ve seen in my life, that was the least aesthetically pleasing piece, Calathea. Actually, calling it meat is generous. It was basically charcoal.”
“That’s because your taste is weird! The meat I grilled was so delicious—”
“Don’t eat the burnt part.”
“Eek, my meat!”
I swiftly snatched the pitch-black object before Calathea could put it in her mouth, wrapped it in a napkin, and tossed it into the corner. She really couldn’t go five minutes without causing some kind of accident.
“Hehe…♪ Why does the Manager’s expression keep getting more entertaining?”
“That’s called getting sadder.”
“Isn’t it the same thing?”
I silently poured soju into my glass, gulped it down, poured again, and gulped again. As the alcohol hit my stomach, the worries swirling in my head finally began to quiet.
“Manager, hey… Can I have some of that too?”
“What kind of accident are you trying to cause by drinking? You two stick to cola.”
“But asking us to drink only cola in front of such a feast feels a little cruel, doesn’t it?”
Hmm. She had a point… I almost got naturally convinced before I quickly shook my head. But then—
“Here, Manager♡ I’ll pour for you, so drink this and think about it again.”
“Allow me to pour you one as well.”
“Uh, yeah… Thanks.”
Once I realized how heavenly their service was, I kept drinking the soju they poured for me. Before long, my head started spinning and my mood turned pleasantly fuzzy.
“Hey… what you two are drinking right now… isn’t soju, right…?”
“Huh? No, no. This is just water. Right, Madness?”
“That’s correct, Manager. This is perfectly ordinary water.”
“Yeah… I’ll be the only one drinking alcohol, then…”
If I let these crazy women drink, something terrible would definitely happen. Looking back, bringing them to a place with alcohol in the first place felt questionable, but my stomach had been hurting too much today to care.
“By the way, Madness. You’re pretty good at grilling meat.”
“If you keep calling me by that name, I’ll spit on the meat.”
“Even for you, Madness, that’s a bit too insane—Ah! Manager! She actually spat on it!!”
So noisy. Look, everyone in the restaurant is staring at us because of the commotion. I opened my mouth to stop them, but before I could speak, a perfectly wrapped ssam was shoved straight into it.
“Manager, here’s a ssam for you.”
“And here’s another shot♪”
“Mmph, yeah… thanks…”
Audrey wrapped the ssam with her pale, delicate hands and fed it to me. While I chewed the delicious bundle, Calathea filled my glass with soju and helped me drink. It didn’t feel bad to receive this kind of treatment after always taking care of them. I decided to enjoy the reward a little longer.
While I was blankly chewing away, a bothersome noise started reaching my ears.
“Excuse me…”
“Annoying… get lost…”
It was some kind of irritating sound that was hard to make out. Or maybe I could hear it fine, but my brain just wasn’t processing it properly. As a responsible manager, I tried to assess the situation and lifted my blurry gaze forward.
“Still, we should at least—”
“Head… aesthetics… hole…”
Some men were standing next to our table, and…
“What the hell… are you doing…?”
“Hm? No, no. You don’t need to worry about anything, Manager. We’ve taken care of it.”
“…Really?”
“Manager, have another ssam.”
The moment Calathea’s smiling face gently stroked my cheek with the back of her hand brought me slightly back to my senses, Audrey shoved another freshly wrapped ssam into my mouth. As I chewed, I noticed a black handgun lying on the table.
I told you not to take that out. I frowned, finished the delicious ssam, patted my nicely full stomach, and leaned back. I finally felt like I could breathe again. And I was getting a little sleepy.
“You two… eat… and pay the bill…”
As I blinked my heavy eyelids and slowly pulled out my wallet, my consciousness flickered—and cut off completely.
“Our Manager really is kind of cute, isn’t he?”
“…Even coming from you, I have no choice but to agree.”
Calathea and Audrey leaned back in their chairs, both staring at the soundly sleeping Seong Yohan. Thanks to the delicious meat and alcohol, his usual gloomy expression had melted away considerably. His sharp eyes and rather handsome features were shining for the first time in a while.
“Aww, look at you sleeping so well, our baby♪”
Calathea gently stroked Yohan’s cheek with the back of her hand, a soft smile on her lips. It was subtly different from the mischievous smile she usually wore when teasing her manager, but unfortunately, the drunk and unconscious Seong Yohan couldn’t see it.
“Alright… Then shall we have some real hero-and-heroine time♬”
“You plan to drink more here?”
“Well, what else? Should we take the Manager to a hotel and fuck him? Or be good little girls and quietly go back to the dorm to sleep?”
Audrey glanced at the sleeping Yohan’s face and the line of his neck visible above his collar, then silently downed another shot of soju.
“Yeah, yeah. Drink up while the Manager isn’t watching so you won’t regret it later. …There are too many eyes on us though. I’d rather go somewhere with a private room.”
“I agree. To be honest, I was starting to get annoyed too.”
“Sorry… it’s because of me…”
“…What do you mean by that?”
Calathea fidgeted with her hands, looking genuinely apologetic, and spoke carefully.
“Guys keep coming over because they’re looking at me. No matter how pretty I am, hitting on someone at a meat restaurant is just wrong, don’t you think?”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but those men were coming for my beauty.”
“Ahaha♪ Sorry, but may I ask what kind of man would find any charm in an ice block like you?”
“……….”
“……….”
Audrey engaged in a silent staring contest with Calathea before downing another shot and curling her lips into a smile.
“…I wasn’t going to say this, but back at the movie theater, the Manager seemed really scared. He held my hand so tightly. I felt so bad for him that I had no choice but to hold his hand back.”
“Oh, really…?”
“This is an undeniable fact.”
Watching Audrey smile triumphantly, Calathea covered her mouth with a hand, looking quite pitiful.
“I see… But what should I do? I feel bad. The truth is, at that time, the Manager’s other hand was touching my thigh.”
“…What did you say?”
“Maybe he thought I wouldn’t notice in the dark, but he slid his hand between my thighs and openly caressed the inner flesh. He even tried to touch deeper, so I had no choice but to beg him to please stop…”
“Liar.”
“Oh my, this is an ‘undeniable fact’♡”
Another silence followed. Audrey glared at Calathea while downing a shot. Calathea glared back while picking up a piece of meat with her chopsticks.
“At the escape room café, the Manager kept stealing glances at my legs.”
“Did he? I had no idea♡ He was drooling while staring at my ass the whole time, so I was too embarrassed to notice anything else.”
“…Could you please stop making things up, Calathea.”
“You’re the one making things up because you don’t want to lose, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“Neither am I.”
When Audrey frowned and opened her mouth to speak again, Calathea smiled meaningfully and raised her index finger.
“Then how about this… Instead of fighting noisily here, why don’t we take the Manager to a hotel right now and find out?”
“Find out what, exactly?”
“We’ll see whose body the Manager gets more excited by. That way we’ll know who the truly hot woman is, right?”
“…Are you seriously suggesting we force ourselves on a drunk person?”
“Aww, I didn’t say it like that. It’s just… non-consensual consensual sex♪”
“Calathea, you really are…”
As Audrey’s face hardened at the aesthetically unacceptable suggestion, Calathea provocatively leaned across the table with a smile.
“You really won’t do it? Well, that’s fine. I’ll enjoy him all by myself then. Honestly, I’m already so excited to see the Manager’s face the day after he gets fucked like a dog by me♡”
“……Calathea.”
Watching Audrey grind her teeth and reach for the handgun on the table, Calathea simply kept smiling calmly and tilted her head forward as if inviting her to shoot.
But instead of grabbing the gun, Audrey slowly withdrew the hand that had reached for it.
“…So you’re not going to pick up the gun after all?”
“If this is another provocation…”
“You’ve been strangely well-behaved lately. It’s not like you, Madness.”
Seeing Audrey suddenly go silent as if struck where it hurt, Calathea chuckled and sat back down, as if she had expected it.
“If you were the type to become this docile so easily, you wouldn’t have been called ‘Madness’ in the first place. You’re clearly suppressing your madness because you desperately want something from the Manager. I wonder what that could be…?”
“…I’ll refrain from commenting on such nonsense.”
Audrey averted her gaze and closed her mouth, but Calathea simply shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“Whatever. I wasn’t that curious about the answer anyway. It’s just… things are about to get even more fun.”
She stared at the outer coat Seong Yohan had put on her and smiled mysteriously once again.
“…It already seems plenty fun, though.”
“Ugh, my head feels like it’s going to split open.”
With a pounding headache that felt like someone had hammered my skull, I forced my heavy eyelids open. A blurry ceiling came into view, and I slowly registered the sensation of a soft bed supporting my body. I was definitely at the pork belly restaurant just a moment ago…
This is the dorm… No, a hotel?
“Hehe, hehehe…♪”
The bitter taste of alcohol lingered in my mouth. My throbbing head and unresponsive body made it hard to come to my senses. From somewhere beyond, I could faintly hear the sound of water pouring down and someone humming cheerfully.
Realizing how dry my mouth was, I thought it would be nice if someone brought me some water. At that exact moment—
“Manager, you’re awake…♪”
“―――?!”
The moment Calathea’s playful voice called my name, someone slowly began crawling onto the bed.