Are You a Pervert?
After we left the dungeon, we returned to Kyle's room—no, to our room.
By the time we reached the guild, the strength had come back into my legs, and I told Kyle I would walk up myself.
"You planning to go up without a coat?"
Under that thinly veiled threat, I went still and let him carry me back to the room. Countless guild members watched us pass—watched me folded into Kyle's arms.
"Ugh..."
I was so mortified I could barely keep my head on straight. I was a man. And I was being subjected to a so-called princess carry.
Kyle deposited me on the bed, my burning face still hidden in my hands, and disappeared into the bathroom to shower. I lay there trying to wait the embarrassment out.
"Ah!"
The memory hit me all at once—the swarm of reporters outside the dungeon, cameras going off in every direction. By now, pictures of me in Kyle's arms would be everywhere.
I snatched up my phone and opened the news tab. A fresh article sat right at the top.
Aaaagh!!
Love in the air? Love in the air?!
I stared at the headline in horror. My legs had given out and my partner had helped me. That was all. How in the world was that "love in the air"?
The reporter had clearly forced Kyle and me into a couple narrative just to chase clicks. People shouldn't be seeing this kind of fabricated garbage. Sensationalizing everything just to drive up the numbers...
Cursing the writer under my breath, I glanced at the view count sitting beside the headline.
Posted 37 minutes ago
Views: 134,536
What?
It had barely been up, and the views had already blown past a hundred thousand. That meant more than a hundred thousand people had already seen this.
With trembling fingers, I tapped the headline and read the article in full.
"I looked like that?"
The article was a write-up of today's raid, with a photo attached at the end. In it, a girl was folded into a man's arms, her face pressed into his chest.
To anyone else, it would have looked like a shy young woman hiding her face against the man she liked—fresh, tender, almost sweet.
That's not what it was!!
The photo had just been taken at a weird angle. The reporter had to have edited it for clicks. I scrolled down out of habit and checked the comments.
Comments: 3,894
I couldn't breathe. Why had that many people already left comments? I sighed and started scrolling.
That was the first comment I saw.
They look good together? Who? Kyle and me?
Being shipped with a man was already infuriating enough without someone saying we looked good together. This commenter had clearly fallen for the reporter's malicious editing. I moved on to the next one.
That's not true!!
I couldn't help shouting at the screen. Living for it? What a horrible thing to say.
Yes, I was fond of him—but only as a person. Seeing me embarrassed and deciding I was in love? This commenter was clearly unwell.
A normal comment, finally. Someone who understood that my legs had given out after a raid that ran an hour and a half longer than usual, and that Kyle had simply helped me. It was almost satisfying, watching a stranger say exactly what I would have said—until my conscience gave a nasty little twinge.
A brutal fight... that's not what it was...
The commenter seemed to think my legs had given out because of intense combat. Intense was the right word. I would never forget it as long as I lived.
Out in the open, on Kyle's orders, I had bared my underwear and my stomach. I should have stopped it. I hadn't been able to. The atmosphere had been too strange, too thick to refuse.
The memory made my body tremble in a way I didn't like. My breath shortened. The air around me seemed to grow warmer. I told myself it was nothing and scrolled faster.
Aaaagh, that's not it!!!
"What's not it?"
Kyle's voice came from behind me. I turned around.
He had just finished showering. A towel was slung around his hips and nothing else, and he was toweling off his wet hair. It was the first time I had ever seen his bare upper body, and my mind went completely white. I had been carried against that?
"You don't need to know!!"
I shouted at him out of sheer flustered embarrassment and fled into the bathroom.
Warm water spilled down over my body. I showered and let my thoughts drift back to the article.
It's fine. I don't need to care about this.
Hunters were treated like celebrities. People were obsessed with them—which meant Kyle, the man who held the title of strongest, was the biggest celebrity of them all. Reporters wrote articles after every single raid, feeding the enormous crowd that hung on his every move.
And that man had been seen carrying a woman. More precisely, carrying me—someone who happened to have a woman's body. That was all it took for the world to decide we were a couple.
People would spin an entire love story out of the lightest physical contact. The truth didn't matter. They simply enjoyed deciding we were together. They wanted to imagine what would happen if we were. There was no malice in it. They just wanted to watch their favorite celebrity fall in love.
So there was no reason to let an article like that, or reactions like those, get under my skin.
Only worry about what I tell you.
Right. Kyle was the only one I needed to care about.
How do I actually feel about him?
The moment my thoughts settled on Kyle, the question surfaced on its own. When he had first touched my chest, I had recoiled. Letting someone touch you there was something that happened between lovers. That was what I had believed.
And yet I had let him. The decision had been impulsive, but I had still made it.
Did that mean I had thought of Kyle as a lover? No. That was impossible. I was a man. There was no way I could look at him that way.
I liked Kyle too. Just not as a man likes a woman—as one person likes another. How could I not? He was my savior. That was why I had allowed it. His hands on my chest. Every humiliating thing he asked of me. Kyle liked me, so if I did as he asked, he would be happy. And if he was happy, I was happy too.
I liked Kyle as a person, not as a lover. The moment I settled on that conclusion, something in my chest went tight and heavy.
If I weren't a man...
"Hah?"
What was I thinking? Why would I think that? I needed to get out of here.
I shut off the thought and shut off the water. The stream slowed to a drip, then stopped. I stepped out toward the sink, and the mirror was waiting.
Slightly unfocused eyes. Flushed lips parted around a shallow breath. Wet hair clinging to skin. A woman of almost indecent beauty stared back at me from the glass, and I swallowed hard without meaning to.
Scattered across that snow-white body were marks of red. On a blank canvas of pale flesh, Kyle had left his traces. Both breasts bloomed with reddish flowers, and my left nipple was swollen a raw, angry pink.
"Hh..."
The sight dragged the memory back—Kyle pinching that nipple between his thumb and forefinger, twisting the fragile peak however he pleased. It had hurt. It had been overwhelming. Overwhelming enough to drown out the situation, the shame, everything else.
I could still feel it. The instant he pinched down, every nerve spread across my chest had rushed to a single point. Even after he let go, those gathered nerves had refused to disperse. I became hyperaware of it, terrified it might be touched—and because I was aware, it grew more sensitive still. Sensitive enough that the brush of fabric made my whole body flinch.
"Hnh..."
Just thinking about it pulled the sensation back into my left nipple. A faint ache lingered there, the aftershock of being pinched so hard. It stood stiff and peaked between the swollen red of the areola, radiating a presence that all but begged to be touched.
Set against the well-behaved right nipple, the contrast was strangely obscene. The left side still carrying his mark, the right side untouched. The change his hands had worked on my body, visible at a glance.
"Hah... I'm such an idiot."
I muttered a small, helpless grievance at the man who had done this to me, then pulled on my underwear and pajamas and left the bathroom. I did not notice I had forgotten the bra.
"You're back?"
Kyle greeted Sera the way he always did when she came out of the shower. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in comfortable clothes.
"Nnh."
The moment she saw his face, Sera turned her head away. She ducked her flushed face and tapped at the floor with the tip of her toe. Kyle welcomed the reaction. More and more, she seemed to be recognizing him as a man. The way she hid her face at every turn for fear of looking ugly. The way she said that if he was happy, she was happy too. They were the reactions of a young girl falling in love. Sera simply didn't know it.
Satisfied, Kyle let his gaze travel slowly down her body.
Hm?
As his eyes followed the line of her throat, the two hills of her chest came into view. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts were laid bare beneath the thin fabric of her pajamas, nipples standing out atop those full, rounded swells—the left one in particular, straining against her sleep shirt as if it meant to punch through the cloth.
"Hah."
The place he had touched and the place he had not. Seeing the difference with his own eyes, Kyle scrapped his plan to let Sera sleep in peace tonight. The urge to torment her right then and there surged all the way to the top of his skull.
"Sera.... you're not wearing a bra."
"???"
Sera startled as if she genuinely hadn't noticed. She crossed both arms over her chest a second later. She had no idea that the gesture only fed the cruelty in him.
"Were you trying to show me? What a pervert."
He said it to shame her, and he watched it land.
"I-I'm not!!"
She denied it hard, as if the accusation were unthinkable. Kyle did not stop.
"Then why is your left nipple hard? Did showing it off turn you on?"
"E-excited? There's no way that's—!!"
"You're not wearing a bra and your nipples are showing. How are you not a pervert?"
"I'm not!!"
She was so flustered she could do nothing but deny him, over and over. Kyle smiled.
"Is that so? Then come here."
The words were soft. The smile was not.
"I'll... go put a bra on."
Sera hung her head as the shame crashed over her, and barely managed to get the words out. She would go put one on. That was what she said.
"You said you're not a pervert even without a bra. Let's just sleep like this. What's the problem?"
He did not allow it. He asked the question in a voice so reasonable it almost sounded kind, as if he were simply agreeing with her—and Sera realized she had walked into a trap.
"...Still..."
She tried to say she would put one on anyway.
"Are you a pervert?"
"..."
At those words, Sera had no choice but to walk silently toward the bed.