20. The Real Thing (2)
Clatter.
Clink.
While Seo Woojin was off in the kitchen making one noise after another, I came out into the living room, hesitantly fiddling with my hair, and the first thing I did was move Yozora—who had turned the sofa into a bed and slipped off to dreamland—into the bedroom.
You can't just sit there crushing someone's butt while they're asleep. For all I knew, she might wake halfway through and recreate the exact situation from a moment ago.
I'd never carried a person before, but she was tiny and light, so it wasn't particularly hard. I scooped Yozora up as she lay, princess-style, and delivered her to the bed. She clutched my clothes and fussed like a baby, and for a second I wondered, Is she mistaking me for Seo Woojin? I swept her hair gently aside so it wouldn't be pinned uncomfortably under her back, then closed the bedroom door.
"…Ah."
That was when I ran straight into Seo Woojin coming this way. Whatever had him so amused, he'd been smiling the whole time—enough that even I, just looking at him, let a small smile slip without meaning to.
"Huh. You moved Yozora?"
"If she wakes up, there's no telling what she'll do…. …A disaster is definitely coming, at the very least."
"Fair…. She might come barreling in, yelling that today's the day we gorge ourselves to death."
Had he been on the receiving end of that before?
And now that I thought about it, Yozora couldn't have been the only one drinking yesterday. So why was he so perfectly fine?
The questions that surfaced all at once, I buried in my chest for the time being. …I'll pull them out later, around when the conversation dies and things get awkward. Yeah.
Seo Woojin passed me and went to the table in front of the sofa, setting down the things he'd brought one by one. Two hands only go so far, so there wasn't much—but among them was the same orange juice I'd seen earlier.
"Sit first. This'll do for snacks…. I'll just find some soju glasses and bring them."
"…Mm-hm."
"She doesn't seriously not own soju glasses, does she? If she doesn't, we'll just have to drink without them."
Once more, Seo Woojin headed for the kitchen beyond the half-open wall. I stared at his back, then fidgeted my fingers and sat down on the sofa, hesitant.
He'd told me to rest, so resting ought to be fine, right?
In manga, this is the part where you get things ready together with the male lead… and then there's a little skinship….
No. No, that's wrong.
That isn't a close friend of the opposite sex. That's one step past it.
…Which is to say…
it looks like a couple.
Come to think of it, by the time a romance manga's protagonist and heroine pass the midpoint, they still haven't said let's date, and yet they're a couple in everything but name. Looking at this through the feeling of an ordinary guy-friend and girl-friend doesn't quite work. Whether the finer genre is pure love or harem, that's simply how manga with a romance element tends to go.
Haaa…. I don't know.
I'll just do as I was told—sip orange juice and wait for Seo Woojin.
Listening to the creak and squeak of a cabinet opening somewhere far off, I carefully tilted the clear glass brimming with pretty orange light.
And then—
gulp,
gulp.
An orange taste almost identical to before.
"……Mmm…?"
…Something. A finish just a sliver more peculiar than a moment ago, sliding down my throat.
The more I turned it over, the stranger it got.
I'd swallowed every curse in the book, watching Yozora try one bizarre thing after another right beside me… and yet the results, oddly enough, had come out remarkably well.
Holding hands between friends is only natural. These days people hug, too, don't they? Even anal is something people do without being lovers. It isn't like you're fucking her pussy.
That was the pace I'd meant to use, slowly breaking Han Sua in to my tastes. But the paizuri, the fellatio, and the rest that Yozora had demonstrated in the flesh had worked far better.
…So instead of carefully wrecking Han Sua's common sense piece by piece, should I just slap a sheet of steel over my face and say something insane—like, these days the trend among friends is a three-day, zero-night marathon of sweaty animal sex?
"Hoo…."
That, at least, I absolutely could not do.
With that thought, something like thirty minutes passed.
"……."
"……."
Nothing happened.
Naturally—including the paizuri, the fellatio, and the sex—nothing happened.
What we did instead was talk. A lot. Trying to recall it now, not a single conversation had really stuck. Maybe she'd secretly been pleased that I'd played along with the shoujo-manga talk last time; for no particular reason she kept bringing up Healing-type Transcendents. Past that, Han Sua had a way of ending on one-word answers, so nothing ever stretched beyond light, everyday chatter.
…Ah. There was one thing I remembered, at least.
You were drinking with Yozora yesterday, weren't you.
Just that.
"While I got through half a bottle, she put away nearly five on her own."
"Ohhh~."
And then, as usual, the conversation had died for more than thirty seconds.
It had stuck only because I'd scrambled to invent an excuse that wouldn't leave a glaring hole. Looked at closely, it wasn't anything special. If I ever got tired of the act, I could simply tell her Yozora and I were sex partners, and it wouldn't matter much.
The only reason I go out of my way to say I'm dating Yozora, and keep planting nothing but a kind impression, is exactly one.
Han Sua is a girl you never have to raise the stick for. A mountain of carrots will do.
A girl who has spent twenty years buried under an obscene amount of money, suddenly trying to make a commoner friend at the academy? The reason is painfully obvious.
Han Sua is starved for affection.
Ninety-nine percent, by my reckoning.
What slips easily into an interior like that isn't a sharp blade. It's warm sunlight—the kind that, given even a hairline crack, pours in with almost no effort at all.
I'm only wearing a mask of kindness, and wearing it thoroughly.
"……."
Anyway, if we're still like this after thirty whole minutes, getting as far as sex with Han Sua today might be difficult…. Maybe I should be satisfied with that brief look at her climax earlier. The way her lion ears and tail twitched and trembled while she came was seriously fucking cute, I'll give her that.
"Eat these while you wait. I'll bring the juice."
"Mm…."
For now, I'd watch how things stood until we hit an hour.
I'd been picking at the snacks I'd brought. Once I confirmed Han Sua's glass was empty, I stood. My footsteps drew away from the crunch of shrimp crackers and stopped in front of the refrigerator. I checked once more that she couldn't see me, opened the freezer, and took out a bottle of vodka.
Smirnoff Red.
I don't care for it. Tastes like industrial alcohol to me. But before the regression, Yozora had launched into a passionate rant about how if you keep it in the freezer and drink it the second it comes out, it's seriously fucking incredible. This was that vodka.
Unlike the espresso ones, the blueberry ones, the flavored vodkas, this was orthodoxy itself—colorless and odorless. Which is precisely why it goes with every drink. Mix it into something strongly sweet, and unless you're looking for the alcohol, it becomes extremely hard to taste.
Cut it with tonic water, and it's a vodka tonic. Cut it with tomato juice, and it's a Bloody Mary. If, in Yozora's spirit of mixing liquor with liquor, you pour in Kahlúa, it's a Black Russian.
…And if you mix in orange juice—the drink Yozora loves so much, the one that, if I had to guess, she'd probably been drinking just a moment ago—you get a finished glass of Screwdriver.
The first one I'd given her, just in case, had been ten percent vodka and ninety percent orange juice. From the second glass on, through everything I'd poured across the thirty minutes since, it had been fifteen percent vodka and eighty-five percent orange juice. What I'd give her now was a Screwdriver at twenty percent vodka and eighty percent orange juice.
More liquor had gone in than I'd expected. The taste of alcohol ought to start showing soon. I stirred it with a spoon and took a small sip, but so far it was still, unmistakably, orange juice. Of course, knowing it was alcohol, I could feel the cold, faint burn waiting under the flavor….
"Here."
"Thank youuu…."
"It's just pouring a drink. What's there to thank me for."
"Even sooo…. You still have to say thank youuu…."
Watching Han Sua glug it down without a shred of suspicion, I figured she still hadn't caught on to what the orange juice really was.
"……Phaah…."
…This is a separate matter, but unfortunately, she didn't seem to be all that weak to alcohol. Not the type to collapse with a pathetic little wail off a single can of beer and turn into a living onahole, the way Lee Hayun or Lee Jiyoon would.
It wasn't exact, but the cups were large, and if I added up everything she'd drunk so far, it came to a little short of one bottle of soju…. At most her contextless giggling had increased, and her pronunciation had started to drag the way Yozora's did. That was all. So she was only now pleasantly, moderately drunk.
"The juice is so tasty…."
"Is it?"
"Yeah…. At first I didn't get it when you said it was expensive…. Now I kind of get it…."
"I still don't, really."
"Reallyyy…? Ah, never mind. Maybe you wouldn't…. I only started feeling it around my fourth glass toooo…. Like, oh, this is expensive juice…."
"……."
A minute ago she'd been going on about how to make a natural smile, how to speak clearly when you talk to someone you aren't close to. And now it was juice.
I want to be having a filthy conversation with you….
Still, it was a conversation about juice, in its own way. Handle it right, and I might be able to steer her into drinking more. Then, borrowing the buzz, we might become a little closer as friends.
"Want to try a sip…? I think it's 'cause you only pour it for me and never drink any yourself…."
"…All right. Just one mouthful, then."
It was right as Han Sua lifted the glass and held it out toward me.
"……Eh."
Most cold glasses are wet, and slippery for it. Pass a little elementary-school science and you know why: water vapor in the air condenses on the glass. So she should have gripped it properly. Somehow, though, her hold looked precarious.
"…What do I……."
She spilled every drop.
On me.
More precisely, on my crotch.
"S-sorry…. Are you okay…? Um, the cup was slippery…."
"…Don't worry about it. It's not even hot. More importantly, are there wet wipes or tissues around there?"
"W-wait…. Tissues…. tissues…."
Han Sua, you idiot.
What kind of disgrace is this in front of a friend. I wasn't even drunk the way Yozora was. I was just in a good mood from talking with Woojin, and acting like I'd been drinking…. The one who actually drank is Woojin, right beside me….
Aaaaah.
Why did I do that. Seriously…. If I'd just held the cup a little closer to my palm, none of this would've happened.
"…If you can't find tissues, you don't have to. I can just take a shower."
"E-even so…. Ah, found them! Wet wipes!"
I stopped Seo Woojin before he could go shower, grabbed the wet wipes, and stepped in front of him. …He seemed, somehow, to have been smiling. His head was lowered a little, though, so I might have seen it wrong.
"It's fine. I'll shower. I'll shower."
"My heart isn't fine…!"
"Then just give those to me. I'll wipe it myself."
"No. I don't think my heart will settle unless I wipe it myself…."
"I'm really fine…."
"You just stay still…."
Bickering, I knelt in front of Seo Woojin's legs.
Unlike when he'd been receiving that paizuri from Yozora, he had them clamped tight, as if he absolutely refused to let me see. Why was he acting like this? The… the cock… I'd just seen it, so he shouldn't be that embarrassed. Was it because Yozora wasn't beside us now….
I pulled out several wet wipes, lifted his thigh a little, and set to work undoing his belt.
"……."
"……."
Click, tick, zzzip, clatter. I worked the belt loose through that strange resistance of his, neither quite stopping me nor quite not, and when he said he'd clearly asked for tissues, I answered that I knew and strained to peel his pants off. …Until, in the end, Seo Woojin gave in first and lifted his hips a little.
"I clearly asked you for tissues."
"I know."
"…Ah…?"
"……."
And so, because I had even pulled off the underwear soaked through with orange juice—
"Um, this… why…."
…just like a moment ago, when Yozora had been slurping on it; just like when it would be lapped and licked by me—that rigidly erect cock…… until it was set right before my eyes.
"…Thinking you'd be the one touching it, I got embarrassed."
"…Ah, th-that, um…."
…A cock whose male musk had grown far thicker than before, because it still hadn't been washed. This time, without Yozora. With only the two of us—
"I'll wipe it. Give me the tissues."
"N-no…! I already saw it earlier, so it's fiiine…. It's fine…. …Haaa…."
—until it was set right before my eyes.