3. The Studio Apartment (4)
The squeak, squeak from the direction of the sink only held my attention for a moment.
I left Lee Hayun to her earnest little performance and started shifting things around near her. Standing at her side, I opened a kitchen cabinet and slid a Lock & Lock container inside. I lined the seasonings up in a neat row beside the dish soap. I tossed the towels we'd just bought onto the washer and the drying rack right behind her.
Just enough to keep nagging at her nerves. The kitchen was narrow, so we brushed—lightly, lightly—again and again.
"……Ahem. Ahem…."
I left her a little room. I didn't force myself on her. As you can see, her reactions were far too entertaining for that.
The moment she heard my footsteps, the hand scrubbing the frying pan would freeze. When I passed directly behind her, her shoulders went rigid. When I finished moving everything and slipped back out, she let a sigh of relief escape loud enough for me to hear. Then, as if she hadn't a thought in her head, she started humming in a trembling voice.
It was more fun than I'd expected.
Hmm. If I deliberately never touched her, all the way to the end, would she really just go home like this?
I was a little curious.
The stray thought didn't last. Once the place was more or less in order, I stepped right up beside Lee Hayun and spoke.
"Noona. When are you going to be done with that?"
"…Huh? Oh. This. Uh. I just have to splash some vinegar on it and boil it for a minute…."
"It's nothing, then. I was worried it would take forever."
"……."
"So once that's finished, you can head out. I can handle the rest myself."
"I-I came to help. Just rest a minute. I'll do it."
"It's fine. This isn't hard. Once that's done, you really can go."
"……."
She glanced at me, those deep-green eyes glinting, then went back to scrubbing the pan with a squeak. Somehow her hands had grown much slower than a moment ago.
Did she actually think that looked natural?
Very Lee Hayun of her.
…Which is why I keep wanting to play with her. Like a toy.
"Noona."
"…What."
"You didn't come into my place thinking something weird, did you?"
No clang followed.
Instead the face that had been puffing into a sulk since earlier snapped toward me in a fluster. She must have believed this was a perfect plan—one Seo Woojin would absolutely never see through.
…Her intelligence isn't even at a puppy's level.
"You really were, weren't you? Thinking something weird."
"Wh-what are you talking about? Y-you're the one who did the weird thing first, so this is…!"
"I did?"
"L-last night…! We were drinking beer, and then, um…."
"Ah. The kiss."
"……."
The moment I set last night on the table as if it were nothing, Lee Hayun's expression went blank. Then her cheeks and ears flushed red at a startling speed.
I always think it, but her reactions are fun. If any of the villains I'd toyed with had been a woman like this, I would have kept her intact and savored her for a long time. A shame I only met her now.
I was weighing whether to push her like this all the way to the bed, or leave her an opening and tease her a little longer, when—
"……?"
Lee Hayun, who had been scrubbing the pan so diligently, squirmed away from me. The ponytail that always swung bright and lively in front of me wavered now, cautious and shy, dyed through with her embarrassment.
"Where are you going, Noona."
"P-proper distance."
"What?"
"Keep a proper distance…!! Three steps. Don't come any closer than that."
"And how am I supposed to keep that distance in a studio."
"Anyway…! Get out of the kitchen, now…!!"
She fled the kitchen and shouted it from a safe distance.
I'm no expert in psychology, but toying with villains as practice—before I ever got around to fucking heroes—taught me a few things. One of them: when a woman suddenly throws a baseless tantrum, it usually means, buried inside it, I lose.
A prejudice, maybe. But every woman I've met was like that. Even when I already knew every sensitive spot on her body. Even after my fingers alone had soaked the sheets in her cunt until we'd had to move somewhere else again and again. Even while her hole was still fluttering open and shut from minutes spent drowned in climax, she'd insist she hadn't come once—that she'd won the bet. I'd seen that sort of thing far too many times.
Hmm. She's probably just embarrassed about last night, and that's why she's acting like this.
I let a breath out through my nose and did as she said, stepping out of the kitchen. It was only a passing mood. Humoring her for a moment didn't matter. She was the kind of woman who was fun to play with in the first place.
Like a villain about to be taken in by a hero, I walked with both hands lifted lightly to either side, as if I had no intention of resisting. She looked me up and down—me, slipped back into the villain—and began to retreat, slow step by slow step, as if she really meant to keep those three paces.
"……?"
Now that I looked, her position was a little suspicious. If she kept backing up from there, what waited behind her was….
"Is this all right?"
"…Mm. It's fine, so just wait a second. It'll be over soo—"
I kept closing the distance, watching where she stood.
"…Hey. Seo Woojin."
"Yes."
"I told you to keep a proper distance. Three steps. So don't come any closer from— …ah?"
Her foot caught the bed. She went down in a soft collapse, and I stepped in to match her.
One step. One step. One step. Slowly.
"…Ah…."
"……."
If Lee Hayun had gotten up off the bed right then, she could have escaped without anything happening. But the Evolutionary Transcendent, who used her body far better than any ordinary person, only lay there on the mattress, dazed.
…She must have stood in front of the bed on purpose, aiming for exactly this. Or maybe she'd simply gotten excited and made a clumsy mistake.
Didn't matter. However we'd gotten here, I'd brought her to the bed.
"Noona. What are you doing?"
"……."
She'd had several seconds to run and still froze exactly as she was, so my hands came down naturally on either side of her—as if I were mounted over her like an animal, missionary, and driving into her.
A hard squeeze.
"Is this why you walked into your junior's studio with a face of iron?"
"……."
Above cheeks gone red, the deep-green eyes that had been forced aside flicked up at me once, then slid away without a word. If she'd simply denied it—said she'd never thought anything of the sort, that it was a misunderstanding—I would have had nothing left to say.
Honest in the strangest places.
Foolish.
"Helping me out like some dating sim, stacking affection points."
"……."
Gulp. Gulp. She couldn't answer at all. Only the line of her throat kept moving.
Foolish.
"Offering to help with packing that would've taken ten minutes at most, like you were doing me a favor."
"……."
I knew all of it. That she felt a certain fondness for me, the one who had saved her once. That she was very much preoccupied with the brief thing that had happened last night. That when I'd circled an arm around her waist, curious about her state, she had accepted it without any real resistance.
All of it.
So I got a little greedier.
"……."
"……."
I set my forehead against her round one with a soft tap and looked down at her. She tilted her head a fraction, lips working, and still couldn't quite turn fully away—every so often her eyes lifted to mine.
What are you trying to do?
She sent me that look even though she had to know.
Get off me. Now.
She sent me that look even though she could have pushed me away herself.
I leaned in a little closer and pressed a light kiss to her lips.
It wasn't the sticky kiss from last night. Just a light press of mouths. Touch, and part—the phrase suited it well. Even that much made her reaction a shade richer.
For one thing, the brow she had been knitting had gone remarkably soft. The look full of questions was a bonus. Her eyelids blinked, as if she were trying to replay what had just been done to her, and in the end her hand rose briefly to her lips. Tap, tap—the way she touched them looked exactly like someone doubting whether she had dreamed it.
So I caught the wrist that had just been touching her mouth, pinned it to the bed, and went on kissing her.
Startled, she flinched, and her wrist twitched. That was all. If she had truly wanted to shake me off, she could have shoved me away at once. More than that—she could have subdued me and placed me under arrest. Lee Hayun only closed her eyes, ears flushed red, and accepted the kiss.
When I tried to twine our tongues the way I had last night, she startled, then carefully tried to tangle hers with mine anyway. She didn't know how she was supposed to move. She just licked and licked, as if doing that alone would be enough. A foolish motion.
Cute, because it was her. But why did kissing her make a hollow laugh want to slip out?
I had no choice. Like last night, I let a flood of my saliva pour into her mouth. I could almost hear her swallowing it down without a word of complaint. Gulp, gulp.
"……Haa…."
When I drew my lips away, hard breathing spilled from her mouth, as if she had been holding it the whole time. A sticky thread stretched between our lips, and her quickened breath shifted the air, just a little.
The pan drying by the sink was nowhere in my thoughts. All that filled my head was how far I needed to break Lee Hayun in today.
"Mm… nnh…."
Wondering if she had changed her mind, I overlapped our lips again. The result was the same. She took the kiss with awkward tongue-work, swallowed hard at the saliva I fed her, and simply let it continue.
So, sharing breath with Lee Hayun as she began to cling obediently, I took the breast that rose in a modest swell beneath her hoodie into my hand.
…Was she the type who looked flat when dressed? Or was it only because, except when she was soaked in the rain, she always wore clothes like this? A chest far more obscene in size than I had expected filled my grip. Press down with my fingers, and it felt as if the flesh could easily swallow a whole joint of them.
…If she had allowed a kiss this far, checking a little further ought to be fine.
I caught the hem of her hoodie from below her stomach and pulled it off. She yielded without resistance. Undoing the buttons of the academy uniform beneath, hauling up the pitch-black T-shirt—the same. In a moment Lee Hayun was exposed down to a pure-white bra that matched her panties, and even when I flicked the front clasp open she was too busy drinking my spit to notice.
…Well. One of her sensitive spots was her throat. Swallowing something seemed to feel good.
Even when I flicked the cherry-pink nipples, already beginning to harden, with a fingertip. Even when I filled my hand with a breast and squeezed, savoring the softness. Instead of telling me to stop, she only stiffened her nipples until they stood rigid.
She'd be swallowing plenty of something hard later, though.
"……Haa…. Is this really all right? Won't Jiyun say something to you?"
"……Haa… ha…. …I just have to pretend it isn't happening when she's around…."
She had given up on denying it.
"It's only natural for an older sister to get a boyfriend before her little sister. I've been confessed to plenty of times, you know? I only turned them all down because of my part-time job, and because I was looking after Jiyun…."
She muttered things no one had even asked, and then the Lee Hayun who had been pressing in for kisses with a dazed look suddenly stopped moving.
A phone call? I didn't feel a vibration, or hear a ringtone.
Why all of a sudden….
I waited, trying to remember where I had stuffed the condoms, and Lee Hayun carefully cleared her throat.
"…Ahem. Um, Woojin."
"Yes. Noona."
"N-Noona will make you feel good."
"What?"
With that she squirmed quickly out of my arms, knelt on the bed, and patted the mattress—as if she meant to offer me her lap for a pillow.
Which was, extremely….
"…H-hurry. Lie down here."
"……."
It didn't suit her.
Strange.
That isn't your taste.