How to Talk to Men (3)
Over the drone of the vacuum, Han Sua — holding one for the first time in her life — wore the faint ghost of a smile.
"Whew..."
How to use a vacuum cleaner. To think the thing she'd looked up before enrollment, afraid of being treated like some kind of weirdo, would actually come in handy here.
"Good thing I looked it up..."
It was her first time, so she'd gone at it with painstaking care, and somehow a full hour had already slipped past. She dumped another clump of long hair into the trash and glanced over at Yozora, who had at some point curled up on the sofa and was dozing in soft little purrs.
She had a rough idea of how she'd ended up playing maid for Yozora. This weekend Yozora had been drinking with the infirmary teacher; they'd probably spent the whole night enjoying themselves, parted on good terms — and then, right at that moment, Sua had gotten in touch. The worst possible timing. Which was how she'd been hauled out here in a daze and was now cleaning for all she was worth.
"Ugh..."
Sigh. Yozora. Do you feel good when someone touches your tail, too? She'd only come to ask that one thing. But looking at Yozora, melted into a boneless puddle on the sofa, she figured it would have to wait.
Han Sua undid the hair she'd tied back tight for cleaning and let it fall loose. She gathered just the tips of that brown hair, tied them off, and headed for the sofa where Yozora lay. Even if Yozora was dead to the world, saying goodbye before you left was the decent thing for a friend to do. These days people even greeted cute little pets and asked how they were; you couldn't just ignore a person because she'd flattened into a pancake.
"Yozora. I'm heading out, okay?"
"You're goooing...?"
"Yeah. Tomorrow's a weekday, so quit drinking."
"Whyyy...?"
Why? Hadn't she already explained the reason? Was Yozora too drunk to have heard? But what that drawn-out whyyy was pointing at turned out to be something Sua had said even earlier.
"Where are you goooing...... You just got here..."
"Ah. I don't think I'll be able to have a real conversation with you today."
"I caaaan..."
She could have softened it with some excuse about being tired, but social grace was still beyond Han Sua, and so the words came out exactly as they were. In the middle of that, Yozora — who until a moment ago had been rubbing her cheek into the sofa — shot upright and sat properly. The red imprint the cushion had pressed into her cheek vanished behind a slide of black hair. What showed instead, through half-lidded eyes, were red irises, and those alluring, gleaming red eyes met Han Sua's.
"Three plus four is seven."
"......"
"Nine times six is fifty-four."
"......"
"Twenty-three times eighty-one is one thousand eight hundred sixty-three..."
"...R-right, right. You're fine. Our Yozora is perfectly fine..."
"Hehe... You said I'm fiiine..."
Well. What had slipped out from beneath those eyes was nothing more than a mumbled round of elementary-school arithmetic. Haa... So after playing maid, it's kindergarten teacher next? Good job, good job — cooing over her, Han Sua worked hard to haul up the corners of a mouth that usually sat in a flat line.
...The first two are right. Is the last one actually 1,863? The trivial curiosity surfaced and drifted away just as quickly. She'd probably just thrown it out there.
"Anyway......! Come closer, over heeere......"
Yozora, sitting half cross-legged on the sofa, patted the space in front of her. The meaning was clear enough: don't just stand way over there — come sit. It felt uncomfortably like being groped by some drunk middle-aged man. ...No. The person in front of me is just sweetly tipsy Yozora. Maybe she wanted to talk about what they'd discussed over KakaoTalk? Han Sua did as Yozora wanted, without much worry.
"...I'm here. There."
"Hyah......"
"...?!"
That expectation was betrayed in an instant. Yozora reached for Han Sua's breasts with a hand so sly that extremely wouldn't cover it no matter how many times you stacked the word.
What the hell? She tells me to sit in front of her, and then suddenly my chest? Is this why she called me over?
Han Sua could only blink, over and over, with no time even to scream. The moment she managed to gather herself and leaned back, Yozora's body pitched forward in the direction her outstretched hands were reaching.
"Mmph..."
"Wh-what are you doing?! Out of nowhere?"
"...Pwah.... What do you mean, what...... I was gonna squish-squish your boobs......"
"No, I... I mean, that is what I asked, but..."
What was she even supposed to call this? Shameless? Honest? Or, failing that, perverted? ...Right. Alcohol. So this is how terrifying alcohol can be. Judging by her condition, expecting anything like an adult, intellectual conversation from Yozora was a lost cause. Simple communication was probably the limit. Clutching her chest in her arms, Han Sua fled in a flash all the way to the armrest on the far side of the sofa. As the ancestors had said: if you meet a mad dog, do not bravely stand and fight — wisely get out of the way.
"Yozora, let's see each other at the academy tomorr—"
"Hold on, hold ooon...... Where are you goooing.... I'm right here in front of you......"
But what were you supposed to do when that mad dog came after you grinning?
"D-don't come in here! Yozora, what are you even trying to do, grabbing my chest...?! Yours are big too...!"
"That's obviously...... ...hmm.... obviously...? Huh.... why was that again......"
"What do you even..."
"...Well, it doesn't matter, does it...?"
"It does matter...!"
"Mm.... I wanna touch..."
"Don't!"
Han Sua tried to draw a line with a trembling foot so Yozora couldn't come any closer. Despite that resistance, Yozora came on slowly, reeking of alcohol, and crossed it anyway.
This isn't going to work. At this rate she was definitely going to get groped all over by a completely wasted Yozora and thoroughly defiled. To keep these breasts from being reduced to a squishy mochi toy, lukewarm resistance wasn't enough. She needed drastic measures.
And that was RUN.
Better not stick around next to a Yozora reeking of booze and get subjected to something weird. Meet her after she sobers up...!
"I'm sorry...!"
"Mmyep..."
Han Sua flung a sofa cushion at the Yozora wriggling toward her, then let her ears and tail out the way she did in practical classes at the academy. She had to at least make it out of the building before Yozora could follow. Dawdle her way out and there was a real chance of getting caught. The elevator was risky now, too; the emergency stairs would be much faster, so that was the way to go. Honestly, she doubted Yozora would go that far — but there was no harm in taking it seriously.
Steeling herself, Han Sua used the moment Yozora was rubbing her face where the cushion had hit and bolted for the door—
"......?"
—and in the middle of getting out, she looked up at the man standing outside and let her mouth fall open, stupidly.
Seo Woojin. The academy's infirmary teacher, and Yozora's master, was standing right there.
If I were being precise, I cared more about hips than breasts, but I answered that it was more or less true.
Around then, I more or less caught on to what this "gift" Yozora had talked about actually was. Her getting close to Han Sua wasn't because she had some grand scheme to keep Sua from graduating. It was so she could sit right beside her and cram bad things into her, one by one. Make a "gift" that way, and offer it up to me.
All sorts of typo-riddled messages popped up, then vanished one by one. She was probably deleting, one at a time, the things she still thought she shouldn't tell me. Not that it mattered. Whatever she'd been thinking was already laid completely bare. Airheaded, on top of it. Hard to believe this was the same drunk who'd been so busy making a nuisance of herself every single day.
Ah — of course the latter hadn't changed. The drunk part, I mean. The point was the former. Unlike before, she didn't particularly feel like a nuisance. Back then every single word had irritated me, but now even the same kind of behavior just looked cute. So this was why a person's impression mattered. Looking at the actions alone, they weren't all that different from how she'd behaved before the regression — and yet just learning one thing about Yozora's true nature had changed my view this much. Absurd, wasn't it?
The problem, though.
"......"
This "gift" project Yozora had prepared because she wanted to be doted on by me (I wasn't sure of the exact reason, but probably) — honestly, it wasn't a gift I liked.
Hmm.
That was when Yozora casually floated the subject of "teaching her to masturbate." That was exactly the part I didn't like.
That was just her saying she was going to turn Han Sua into Yozora Mk. II.
Teaching an innocent girl bad things one by one is the fun part — why are you stealing that from me, you crazy bitch. I couldn't actually send that, so I just told her not to. But a minute passed, then five, and there was no sign of a reply. The little 1 beside the message had vanished the instant I sent it, so she'd clearly read it — and still nothing.
Well, obvious. She'd either crashed from exhaustion, or Han Sua, who was supposed to arrive any minute, had shown up and she didn't have time to text. And so, in the end, Han Sua — innocent, and without a single friend — would probably do whatever her one and only friend Yozora told her to. Meekly. All of it.
"Haa..."
Why did she have to do things no one asked for and make trouble for people? If she was going to apply herself, she should've stuck to dragging her out to a bookstore, like last time. I let out a long sigh and started getting dressed at once.
Time passed. I ran into Han Sua at the door of Yozora's place.
"...Teach— no, Seo Woojin..."
Just one thing. From Han Sua's point of view, wasn't it a little strange that I — nothing more than an ordinary infirmary teacher — knew the address of Yozora's home? I was only now, of all moments, having this perfectly obvious thought.
"......"
"......"
For now I'd claim I lived next door, then slip the tenant in 701 a bit of cash and ask them to move out. That ought to cover it. For something this urgent, the petty scheming was turning over nicely. All that remained was not running into the person from 701 at an awkward moment. I was just about to open my mouth.
"Oh, Woojiiin......"
From behind Han Sua, frozen at the sight of me, Yozora came walking out, slow and unhurried. And fell straight into my arms. The woman who usually went on and on about hating me, about wanting to kill me, had her face flushed red, as if something had struck her. Today, of all days, she was terribly affectionate.
Tight.
Of all times.
In front of Han Sua.
"Ehehe... Woojiiin... Our Woojin with the huge dick..."
"...D-dick..."
"......"
I'm fucked.