18. Behind Each Other's Backs (3)
It fell a little short of a day you'd call the best of your life. As a rewarding one, though, it left nothing to be desired.
Even after listening to a recording of me kissing her own sister, Lee Jiyoon still had no thought of pulling her foot back. I'd gotten another clear look at that murky little heart of hers.
That alone was a fine harvest for a day invested — and thanks to Lee Hayun trotting eagerly ahead, insisting she had a place in mind, I'd learned of a perfectly good Western restaurant besides. She said she'd researched it hard on her phone the day before. When I ruffled her hair without thinking, she flushed and scolded me not to treat a noona that way. A bonus.
I hadn't forced any real progress, but it was a day rich in small gains.
Before the regression, I'd never imagined Jiyoon's training would take this shape. But, well. Coaxing someone's clammy, hidden appetite out into the open, one careful step at a time — that was a pleasure all its own.
In my heart of hearts, I wanted to wait until the infirmary was quiet, tuck Jiyoon away somewhere behind the curtain, and let her listen to the wet, pounding mess of me fucking Hayun. I still didn't have solid data on when the place actually went quiet, so that one would have to stay a thought. Just a thought. Give it a month and the rhythm ought to show itself.
So for now, the limit was probably being openly sweet with Hayun right in front of Jiyoon. So she could learn to be honest with that squalid, filthy heart of hers.
Persistent.
Relentless.
…If you measured it purely by efficiency, nothing would be faster than the plan I'd already considered — drinking with the two of them together. But that would be a little dull, wouldn't it? This, too, was entertainment in its own right. Put it the way Jiyoon would, and it was no different from a game. Skipping straight to a tidy little Clear! and moving on would be a shame.
Of course, if Hayun looked entirely unwilling to indulge me, I'd have to play that card anyway. For now things seemed smooth enough that I didn't need to go that far.
A sunshower had passed, and little pools of water had blossomed all over the city streets. Turning the day's gains over in my mind, I let my feet carry me wherever they liked, in a fine mood.
Three in the afternoon. The sun was still blazing, and it felt a little wasteful to eat and simply part ways. What remained of the day — I leisurely considered where the three of us might go to enjoy it. At my ease.
"Oh, right — why'd you buy that T-shirt earlier? I figured you'd hate it, since I've got something just like it."
"…I, I just did."
"Hmm~"
"…"
Beneath the sisters' chatter, drifting along on some trivial subject, an oil-slicked rainbow puddle warped softly under my loafer.
Fine.
I admit it.
I… well. It seems I like dirty things. More precisely, it seems my body likes that sort of thing…
"Haaaaah…"
After nibbling at lunch and drifting back to the bedroom, Han Sua lay on the bed and let out a heavy sigh toward the ceiling. She'd managed, somehow, to deal with the towel crumpled on the floor beside it, soaked through with her fluids. The soiled underwear and pajamas had all gone whoosh into the washer. And the faint trace of dawn still lingering in the room had, by now, been aired out to some degree — to the degree that, unless you were truly determined to sniff for it, you wouldn't particularly notice.
Ugh… Coming back from her shower to find some lewd scent still faintly spread through the bedroom, how flustered she'd been. Fortunately the housekeeper didn't seem to have noticed. But to Han Sua — who had rubbed her clit raw the night before and then, fascinated by the sticky fluid coating her fingers, sniffed at it again and again — it was an all too familiar smell. Even if it hadn't been, her nose was a little sharper than an ordinary person's to begin with.
…Anyway.
She surrendered herself to the bed and stared blankly at the ceiling, her hair not even properly brushed. Lying there, she couldn't be bothered with it getting in her mouth, so she'd only gathered the ends and tied them loose. Softly. What rose in her mind, of course, was the great incident of the night before.
"…"
Masturbation.
She'd gone and learned it…
"…"
Normally, at this hour, she drifted between desk and bed with a manga in hand. Today, for some reason, it simply didn't appeal. She knew the reason far too well to play dumb. She'd discovered something more fun than manga, hadn't she?
"I've seriously lost it…"
Recalling what had happened, Han Sua drummed her heels into the blameless bed. Of course she didn't remember all of it. What remained clear was only the early part; everything after, when she'd done nothing but lap at pleasure, was comparatively hazy. Trailing her fluids down her thighs while she pinched her clit between two fingers and whimpered. Squeezing nipples that had gone stiff even without being touched, as if she were milking them. Even sticking out her spit-slick tongue, trying to lick herself…
…Mm. Right. Roughly that far. That was about as much as she could drag out of memory. But it was more than enough to torment a Han Sua who, until only yesterday, had been pure as could be. And so the blanket over her flapped and flapped for a long while, puffing out dust. In the pale sunlight that had climbed in through the window, white motes drifted.
"…This won't do."
She muttered it between fevered little breaths. Having manga for a hobby was already embarrassing to admit to other people, and a hobby of masturbation? Even now, she ought to find something wholesome enough that she could actually tell someone. Golf, for instance. Or surfing…
No, no. Scratch anything outdoors.
Then what could she actually do…
After a moment's thought, Han Sua groped around for her phone. Looking up a new, wholesome hobby — something that wasn't manga, and wasn't masturbation — was all well and good, but she'd realized she had no idea what other people actually did with their time. Asking Yozora wouldn't help; she liked manga too. And calling the infirmary teacher was out of the question. The casual speech she forced out was still a little awkward, so there was no way she could hold a smooth conversation. At a time like this, of course—
"…What. Where's my phone…"
The internet.
Since she'd started living on her own, Han Sua's internet use had shot up, and with it a blind faith in the internet — a faith not unlike that of a primitive man who had just discovered fire. Search something like hobby recommendations and all sorts of things would come spilling out. Pick one decent option from the list, swap it in for masturbation, and that would be that. For a plan thrown together on the spot, it was reasonably convincing.
And so she spent a long while rummaging through everywhere the phone wasn't, absent from the spot where she usually left it. Belatedly remembering that she'd fallen asleep last night after only the barest cleanup, Han Sua pushed herself up and checked under the pillow.
…Of course. It had been hiding here. Perhaps because it had been enduring under the pillow for so long, it was like a piping-hot roasted sweet potato. At least the battery seemed to have some charge left. Flopping back down, she turned on the warmed phone.
"…"
The climax of the dirty manga she'd been reading yesterday etched itself, clear as anything, into Han Sua's amber eyes.
"Ah, seriously…!"
She couldn't exactly hurl the thing just because she was annoyed. She hadn't opened it to look at that. She'd really only meant to search for something. Stealing glances at a female body filthy with semen and an enormous cock glazed in fluids, she jabbed furiously at the X. Right — she'd masturbated to that scene until she was exhausted and fallen asleep. Seeing it brought it back. Ugh…
Anyway, that was useless information now. What she needed was a hobby far more wholesome than something that vulgar and shameful. She was going to find—
"…"
…before she found one. Just one thing. The little question that had just occurred to her. She'd search that, just that, and then.
Yeah.
"…"
Han Sua pressed her lips tight, pulled the blanket up over her face for no good reason, and tapped at the screen from inside it.
"…"
Really. Really. Really.
I swear it to the heavens. Sweaw it. No — if there is a god, I swear to that god. Anyway, I'll stake everything I have to stake. I'm just curious. There is no other motive.
To use a slightly difficult phrase, it was a kind of intellectual curiosity. They'd tugged her tail a little and bitten it, and it had felt good? That didn't make any sense. Not by any ordinary standard. If that were how it worked, then what — you run into a lion somewhere in Africa, yank its tail hard, and it goes limp and collapses? Insane.
Therefore this search was absolutely not being done because she had some other motive. She only wanted to confirm whether she was the strange one, or whether everyone was like this.
…Or so she told herself, bringing the rationalization to a reasonably satisfying close. Han Sua opened the eyes she'd been squeezing shut and looked at the results.
Mm.
What's "clinging" supposed to mean?
Anyway. This was not normal. The first title still had room to branch off in several directions, but weren't the second and third far too blatant? They'd even stuck the words Mutation-type girlfriend in front of cosplay. It was clearly that sort of thing, so she pretended she hadn't seen it and scrolled past.
"…F-for now…"
Number two: out. Number three: on hold. Han Sua gave number one — the post looking for a Mutation-type girl — a light tap. Just in case, she lifted the blanket, peeked at the bedroom door, then pulled it back over herself and began to read, heart hammering.
To sum it up, the post went roughly like this.
The date on it was a year ago. She wasn't sure whether that counted as a lot, but the views had long since passed two hundred thousand and were looking toward three hundred thousand.
"…"
Well… wouldn't most men obviously dislike it?
…Or not? Even now, years after Transcendents had appeared, manga still drew girls with cat ears, so maybe there was an audience for it after all. Anyway, the woman who'd written the post was struggling with something much like Han Sua. The difference was that she was agonizing over whether she could confess those desires to her boyfriend.
Under the blanket, Han Sua let out a sigh of relief. Whew. She'd thought feeling anything with a tail was absurd, but it seemed it wasn't quite so unusual a preference after all. The perverts were another matter, of course. She felt vaguely, vaguely comforted. Pressing a hand to her chest, she went looking at the comments. Maybe women with similar tastes had left some?
"…Eek…"
But.
All three had a great many presses on what looked like a button with a thumbs-up. A recommend button, maybe? The fur's a bit much comment was narrowly ahead of the other two, but the ratios were almost no different.
…The title was clearly Is there a Mutation-type girl out there? and yet every comment seemed to be from a man. Women's comments… she didn't particularly see any. Well, whatever. It was a shame there were no other women's opinions, but if she kept searching, they'd turn up. There were men who liked that sort of thing, and men who didn't. That was enough.
"Then next, Mutation-type heat… …Eh? A noona and her little brother…? …Hk…"
And so began Han Sua's internet journey, all of four hours long. The search for a new hobby had already been wiped, pitch-black, from her mind.
"A Room Cafe?"
"Yeah. They've got board games, game consoles, and a karaoke machine — the kind Noona likes."
"…Mmm. I've never actually been to one."
"It's my first time too. But come on, when would a guy ever go alone?"
"True…"
"Anyway, want to go? It's an awkward time to split up now."
"Sure. Then, well… Oh, Jiyoon. You coming?"
"…Do what you want."