How to Talk to Boys (5)
It went without saying, of course, that letting Han Sua into the house didn't mean I could jump straight into anything.
The reason was simple enough.
First, I had to get her to relax.
Why? You don't even have to go as far as people. When you bring a tiny kitten home from the pet shop, isn't that what everyone does?
If you want to tame something to your will, a comfortable atmosphere comes before anything else. Priority zero.
Ordinary everyday conversation. Lightly taking her hand. Going a step further into a sweet, innocent kiss, or a perverted one. Stripping off that baggy mocha sweatshirt Han Sua wore with not the slightest thought of dressing up. Peeling away those pitch-black leggings that, for all her lack of effort, had every man who passed glancing at least once. Sticky caresses meant for nothing but getting her wet. Even condomless sex, pounding away to my heart's content beside an already unconscious Yozora.
All of that came later.
Right now was the time to keep the mask of the kind health teacher firmly in place.
"Hm-hm..."
Whether I was thinking any of that or not, Yozora hummed a little tune through her nose as she headed for the kitchen.
She'd said she was going to fetch orange juice. I shot her a sidelong glance, then spoke to Han Sua, who was standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room.
"The bottles. You cleaned all of those up?"
"...Y-yeah. No, I mean... yeah..."
A faint trace of alcohol still drifted through the house. Slipping back into the casual speech I used to use, I sat down first, well away from Han Sua.
For now, keeping this much distance was probably for the best. Taming someone isn't about me approaching them. It's about making them come to me.
If I got ahead of myself, closed in on Han Sua, and ruined the whole thing — just imagining it was irritating enough, wasn't it?
They don't say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step for nothing.
One step: "accidentally" running into Han Sua at the bookstore. Two steps: becoming friends, however awkward. Three steps: going to her place and talking for a long time. And here was a chance to leap the thousand miles still left in a single bound — if I blew this opportunity through my own mistake, I'd want to bite my tongue off.
So I sat by the armrest of the sofa and fiddled with my phone, pretending I wasn't particularly interested.
Contrary to my expectation that she'd take the far end, Han Sua settled into a spot that was neither close nor far. Just the right distance for Yozora to squeeze in between us.
Probably because of what I'd said a moment ago about having a girlfriend...
The subtly cute little calculation drew a quiet laugh out of me before I knew it.
"Must've been rough. This one lives in a permanent mess... From the look of things, you even did some cleaning."
I tossed out a topic that might lighten the mood, and Han Sua opened her mouth as if to answer.
Faster than she could get a word out, an irritable voice came from the kitchen.
"I do not!"
What do you mean, you don't. I know exactly what that place of yours looked like right up until you turned thirty. It wasn't once or twice I hauled your drunk, passed-out ass all the way home...
My gaze drifted toward the yowling from the kitchen, but only for a moment.
"...Um."
Han Sua's voice, from where she sat beside me, reached me softly.
"What?"
"Can I... ask you just one thing I'm curious about?"
"Go ahead. Long as it's not something weird, it's fine."
"...How did you and Yozora meet?"
I was genuinely glad she'd spoken first — only she'd come carrying a question that was a little awkward to answer.
"Ah. How we met."
"Yeah."
"...Nothing special, really."
"Still, I... I'm curious."
"...This is a friend thing too? Like, how you became friends, that sort of thing?"
"...Yeah."
"Alright. Well then..."
For a second I'd thought she might ask about dick size, given what Yozora had said earlier, but... so it started from there.
I did want to talk with her as much as I could. Of all things, though, how I'd met Yozora. I couldn't tell her the truth, so I had no choice but to scribble together a little novel in my head.
"So... the first time I saw her was around Sinchon."
"Sinchon...?"
"Yeah."
The first meeting at The Company's hideout became the front of the Hyundai Department Store in Sinchon. The liquor-slave arrangement — dragged out and tortured — got repackaged as clinking beer cans together in front of a convenience store on a chilly night.
I'd worried there might be some inconsistency, but judging by Han Sua's reaction, it didn't seem that way. By the time I finished, all she'd given me was the grave attention of someone studying.
...The atmosphere felt a little off, somehow.
Just as my relationship with Yozora was being rewritten into that of an extremely ordinary couple, Yozora came toward us, gulping down the orange juice she'd poured into a cup.
I'd thought she meant to offer each of the guests a glass. Apparently she'd meant to drink it all herself.
"...Sua-chan......"
"Ah, yeah."
Then, letting out a phaah of breath that still smelled of alcohol, she said one thing.
"You said you wanted to make friends, didn't you..."
"...Y-yeah..."
To Han Sua, nodding obediently, Yozora's slurred voice was tossed.
"I don't know about anything else, but making a guy friend is super, super easy, you know...?"
"R-really?"
"Yeah. You've got big boobs, so if you just let the boys feel them up as much as they want, a guy friend or whatever is..."
"Aah, whyyy!!"
Seduce men with your chest.
Having offered roughly that advice, Yozora was seized by Seo Woojin and started taking flick after flick to the forehead.
...Watching her sit on his thigh and rub her forehead back and forth against his palm, it was like looking at some oversized doll. Of course, for an ordinary doll, this one reeked far too much of alcohol.
"You like boobs too, don't you!!"
"Is that the same thing?"
"You're the one who spat between my boobs last time and stuck your dick in and just— ow...!"
Boobs? Spat? And sticking a dick... in there...
Ah... I get it. That thing. The thing only girls with big chests can do... Anyway, that. I'd seen it a few times in manga. At the end they always shoot their se...men on the girl's face or into her mouth, or cum so much it overflows across her cleavage, stretching sticky between her spread breasts... Anyway. That.
Exactly the kind of sex fantasy boys would like.
...So when it's just the two of them, they even do things like that. Then of course they have sex, too. They must. Whispering sweetly, Master, Master. Until her womb is stuffed full, just like in the manga, spurt... spurt...
...Don't they say things like, please impregnate me with Master's seed? They do that a lot in manga...
"If you're going to talk nonsense, go inside and sleep. You look sleepy."
"I'm not sleepy at all... The alcohol's all worn off, too......"
"Worn off, my ass. You were staggering a little even when you walked over with the orange juice."
"That was because the juice was heavy, I couldn't help it... I can't lift anything heavier than a spoon."
"......Hey. Stop getting in the way and go to sleep."
"No. I'm not sleeping...!"
Seo Woojin glanced my way for a moment, then whispered to Yozora, quiet enough that I could barely catch it. Yozora whined at him and pressed her forehead in, rubbing.
I watched the two of them blankly, and slowly turned over what Yozora had just said.
"......"
If I let boys touch my chest, I could make friends. ...Because, unexpectedly, it had been a pretty plausible thing to say.
Anyway, Yozora is dating the health teacher.
In other words, a relationship far closer than just friends. Could the advice of a Yozora capable of creating even that kind of bond really be completely useless?
Let me think. Boys like girls' breasts.
So I show them a little of my cleavage. Letting them touch directly, the way Yozora said, would be too perverted.
↓
I become popular with boys who like breasts.
↓
I make lots and lots of guy friends.
↓
Hansol Group stock up five hundred times! Domestic market-cap rankings: conquered!
The logic, too, was perfect. What my parents wanted from me was probably something along these lines as well.
"......Haa..."
But showing them just a little cleavage. Was that a resolution I could spit out so easily?
Even walking around with it hidden tight under my clothes, every time people's eyes poured over me I felt like I could die of shame — so how was I supposed to show them even a little? Did that make any sense?
And to begin with, I didn't own a single piece of clothing that vulgar. My closet was full of nothing but the drab sweatshirts and shirts I was wearing now. Of course I'd planned to live my whole life in clothes like these...
If Yozora was right, maybe I ought to buy at least one sexy outfit as a last resort, just in case... Wasn't there some other way? Something as sexy as breasts, but not particularly embarrassing...
I fiddled pointlessly at my chest, worrying as I listened to the noisy argument.
"Hey, hey."
"......?"
Yozora, who had somehow planted her butt right beside me, poked my waist with a fingertip. Looking at Seo Woojin letting out a sigh, it seemed Yozora had won. What they'd been competing over, I couldn't really say.
"What does Sua-chan thiiink...?"
"...Huh? About what?"
"You know, what I said earlier. ...Seducing guys with your boobs."
"...Ah."
Seo Woojin's slightly crooked gaze, looking a little angry, and Yozora's dopey grin, her bangs all crumpled — both turned toward me.
...Ah. Had they left the judgment to me? Because they couldn't reach a conclusion between themselves...
Well. Honestly speaking, it didn't seem that wrong. No — rather, I was starting to think it was right. But it was too embarrassing to say out loud in front of a boy.
So I—
"...I-I don't think it's... a weird thing to say, exactly..."
"Right?"
Meaning for her to pass it along, I whispered it into Yozora's ear, hush-hush. If I wasn't careful I might get branded a pervert, so I agreed, but mixed in as skeptical a feeling as I could manage. With this, I should be safe...
"See! Sua-chan thinks it's fine too, you idiot!"
"W-wait......!"
...Or so I thought.
It had been a completely useless effort. Yozora, smiling all bewitching as if it were some ability of hers, immediately spilled everything to her boyfriend. And with useless exaggeration piled on top.
"Um..., I..., ...that's, I-I did agree, but, uh..."
"Heheheh... She says making a guy friend is a done deal as long as you've just got big, pretty boobs......"
I knew full well she was drunk, but what on earth was she doing? What if he decided I was some vulgar pervert and said he wouldn't be friends with me anymore... seriously...
Even now — it was a little late, but even now I ought to deny I'd ever said that. Maybe because I was so flustered, instead of a logical rebuttal, only a stupid voice came stammering out.
Then.
"I won, so I get to do whatever I want, right? We promised, didn't we?"
"......Ha."
Whether I'd missed it or not, an exchange I couldn't follow passed between the two of them.
"Here, Sua-chan."
"...Huh?"
"Watch closely, okay? There's one more thing I want to teach you..."
"......"
"Boys, you see...... They do like boobs a whole lot, buuut..."
Yozora lightly climbed onto the thigh of Seo Woojin, whose expression had creased faintly.
"...they really like kissing, too?"
"...That's enough. Get down."
"Don't wannaaa."
In front of me, briefly dazed — as if this were the most natural thing in the world, with great familiarity — she pulled Seo Woojin's hand up onto her chest, laid her lips over his, and started mixing tongues.
Slick.
Slick.
Letting him touch her chest. And... kissing, too, as a way to make a guy friend — along with that somewhat bewildering claim.