Getting Used to Pleasure
"First, um… how should I put this. Getting used to pleasure?"
"…! N-no way. I'm not doing that!"
"No, well. It doesn't have to be like that. It's more about the mindset. Hmm."
"…"
Getting used to something like that.
If you really thought about it, it was the kind of training where a heterosexual person was forced to become homosexual — a taboo among taboos so grotesque that just imagining it made your skin crawl. Of course every fiber of resistance in me was screaming itself hoarse, reduced to nothing but raw, ragged choking sounds.
"For example, you can use sexual desire to dull that rejection."
"…"
"Are you going to keep looking at me like that? Here. Look."
Despite telling me to look, Minseo closed the distance in an instant and pressed her lips to mine. I startled and tried to push her away for a moment — then realized she wasn't doing anything else. She simply crushed me against her in a hold tight enough to break me and kissed me, soft and slow. The memory of what had happened with Soyeon flickered through me and left a brief, hollow ache —
"Mmh. Chup…"
And somehow the kiss kept going, stretching longer and longer. Long enough that the silence around us — Jiu staring blankly from the side, the two of us locked together — started to feel awkward.
"Hah, heup…!"
"…Heh."
When the need for air finally overrode any concern for the seal of our mouths and I parted my lips to drag in a breath, Minseo laughed quietly. The low sound of it against my ear felt strangely out of place.
She locked her arms around my waist hard enough that the absence of cracking bone almost felt wrong, stroked my hair with careful fingers — then her hand drifted down, not to my chest, not lower still, but to my lower belly.
"Hnh…!"
"Ah, heh. Sorry. Cold?"
I flinched at the temperature. She pulled back just long enough to say it, then claimed my mouth again, tongue sliding against mine…
— Press.
"Mmph…?!"
"Pwah. Well? It buzzed, didn't it? Heh!"
It had.
For a second I wondered if I'd been worked over somehow. The sheer fluency with which she touched another person's body, the speed with which she caught reactions only the person being touched could know — it felt like proof of an enormous gap in experience. The same cold dread you'd feel realizing the girlfriend your friend just brought home had already been through dozens of relationships.
"Again, then."
The shame of having my own sensations exposed left my mouth working soundlessly, and her face was already coming back in. This time her hands settled on either side of my face, palms against my cheeks.
It made me feel as if my entire head had been claimed by Minseo. The sense that the skull holding the brain that did my thinking had been seized whole naturally bled into the sense that my whole body had been seized with it.
"……"
Without meaning to, I clenched my fists and stretched my arms straight down at my sides. And the truly shocking part was the thought that rose with it — satisfaction, and the wish that she would hold me even tighter —
"Hieup?! Heup, mmph…?!"
The fact that I had felt that toward an intersex person — toward the gender I still more readily called futanari — shattered the lazy rhythm of the kiss. My body jerked hard.
"Heh. Look here. Look at me. You have to meet my eyes. If you don't, I'm going to come on your face when we sleep tonight."
"…Th-that's…"
"Again. Hah."
This time it was the same devouring kind of kiss as before. Minseo's head tilted left and right with predatory ease while the palm at the small of my back pulled me flush against her, and her tongue began mapping every corner of my mouth.
Bzzz. A vibration longer and deeper than anything I'd felt before climbed up from below. Both of Minseo's hands were locked on my back — one roughly where a bra hook would sit, the other at the small of my spine.
Bzzz. Bzz.
A sudden urge to pee hit me. My lower belly kept thrumming.
Obviously it wasn't an orgasm. It wasn't even the pleasure that comes before one — it was literally just a buzzing, nothing more. I wondered if I needed to use the bathroom, but the sensation was nothing like bladder pressure. Maybe my body was simply misreading a signal from a neighboring place.
Her tongue kept tormenting mine. Circling, stroking up and down, pressing hard, over and over. That rough, textured feel of it.
"Heup, eh…"
"…Heh! Aha…! See? You're not hating it that much. More accurately — you start to forget? Something like that."
Minseo pulled her head back. Her chest was so much fuller than mine that my upper body was arched backward, our lower halves still pressed snugly together. And then that buzz again…
"…?"
"Right?"
"…!!"
Something was pressing firmly into my lower belly. A blunt-ended club of a thing, pushing just hard enough not to hurt. I recognized what it was almost immediately — and exactly where it was pressing.
Directly above the uterus. The organ I'd barely had any chance to confirm even existed since ending up in this body.
"…Kyaaah…?!"
Minseo, smiling at me with genuine delight, made no move to stop my instinctive scramble backward. She simply let go as if it were the most natural thing in the world. So I stumbled back once, twice — and the silhouette of that thing stood out with terrible clarity.
"Heh! Ah, this might be too easy. Back on Earth this would've meant a five-o'clock curfew, no questions asked."
"……"
Jiu, who had been watching us from the side — or rather, whose presence I only remembered now, having forgotten it entirely while lost in the kiss — quietly nodded as well. Strangely, my gaze kept drifting not to her face but to the chest the cast seemed to emphasize more than usual.
"…Ugh, uuu…!"
My face detonated. Because Minseo's eyes felt like they were boring straight through my clothes to the place between my legs that had already started to get a little wet.
The next morning.
Of course, twenty-plus years of living as a man meant a single sticky kiss was never going to send me tumbling into some kind of female corruption. The idea that a person could change that easily was, if anything, its own kind of humiliating insult.
Even wearing a woman's body, I was still a man. The fact that I found Dahyeon attractive was proof enough of that.
"…"
"…Let's wrap the meeting here for now. Well. Those of you who've already washed know this, but the hot water's running, so…"
"……"
"I checked just now and, uh, water consumption is climbing a little steeply, but let's keep washing through today. It's not at a critical level yet. Going forward, though, I was thinking we only run hot water before meetings and starting sixty minutes before lights-out. We can't exactly go pouring it out freely. Unless someone's drawing a full bath, maybe…"
Everyone nodded at Soyeon's words. It was a reasonable proposal — though the fact that everyone's skin was already gleaming probably meant the hot water had melted more than a few hardened hearts as well.
"…"
Soyeon kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. We hadn't exchanged a single word since that incident, and I had no idea how I was even supposed to look at her face.
"…Anyway. Yeah. Let's give it our best today too. Meeting adjourned."
A scatter of "good work"s rose up, and people started getting to their feet and filing out of the room. The quiet space erupted into noise in seconds.
"…Uh, Yeoreum—"
"Ah. Administrator~!"
"Y-yes…?"
Soyeon had been watching people trickle out one by one. She let out a small sigh and was just about to call me when a voice cut in — one of the women from the security team.
"What are you doing today?"
"Ah, n-nothing in particular…"
"Then come with me. Today's the day we punch straight through that Passkey."
She was roughly my build. A woman who hadn't said a single word to me until now — and I suspected that after yesterday, whatever wall she'd kept up inside had crumbled in the wrong direction.
It wasn't quite the incomplete, half-formed bullying of schoolkids. More like… a kind of mental harassment, if I had to name it.
Not that I had any right to complain if they did harass me. I just… wished they wouldn't.
For a moment I pictured myself after enough of yesterday's absurd exercises that the rejection finally vanished. What would this woman do if I yanked her by the wrist instead, dragged her into a shower stall or somewhere like it, and serviced her the way you'd take someone?
"…"
It didn't seem like it would be all that bad, honestly.
Of course, the number of mental barriers standing between me and actually doing that was beyond counting.
Either way, I was pulled along. On the way out I twisted my head to look back. Soyeon was watching me with a thoroughly ambiguous expression.
Probably not far from the look I'd worn yesterday. But well. Unless Soyeon actually stopped me, I had no right of refusal.
Maybe once today's work was done and I had a free moment, I should go find her. Between yesterday's chocolate and the look on her face now, it didn't seem like she was holding any real grudge.
If anything, she looked more like a puppy that knew it had done something wrong.
I dipped my head in a quick bow and followed the woman out.
Quantum computers had existed in our world too.
So a shield built on a far more advanced Earth for the sole purpose of stopping intrusion was never going to be something a few laptops could crack in an environment this starved of resources.
The security team had only tried because they were riding high on earlier results.
Which meant today's work was short. Surrounded by people again, listening to this and that, enduring the relatively tame skinship of pinched cheeks and fingers caught and wiggled —
And eventually it was out into the corridor. Today, for the record, they'd mostly teased me about getting caught watching porn on the terminal.
"…"
Soyeon.
Should I go see her? There was still a little time before lunch, so instead of heading for the Control Room I chose my room first.
I hadn't managed to wash that morning thanks to Minseo's interference, and if I soaked in hot water for a while it would land me right around mealtime…
I made my way carefully to the room. Cleaning could wait until after food.
Just having a few things to do made the day feel busier, and that almost lifted my mood — until I remembered the schedule served no one but myself, offered no help to anyone, and the gloom settled back in.
…Even so. Repairing things with Soyeon felt like it might be genuinely important in a place this closed-off.
Turning those thoughts over — especially what I should even say first when I faced her — I arrived at the door almost before I noticed.
I opened it and stepped inside to find Jiu sitting on Hyejin's bed, sorting through luggage. She was working one-handed, just barely managing to get the bag open and stack things neatly inside.
For the record, Hyejin had come back late last night — later than we'd fallen asleep. From what I'd heard, the rush of people diving for hot water the moment it was announced had forced her to practically tear the entire plumbing system apart and rebuild it.
Which was why she'd skipped the meeting entirely and was currently face-down on the lower bunk with her head buried, performing something adjacent to on-duty sleep.
"Ah, Ad— Administrator…"
Jiu beamed at me, then dropped her voice to a careful whisper as she called my title.
I bowed my head quietly in return and went to my spot, peeling off the garment that sat somewhere between a knit and a sweatshirt layered over my T-shirt, then gathering fresh underwear and socks —
"…Are you going to wash up?"
The question came from behind me.
"Ah— y-yes… I, uh, couldn't wash this morning, so…"
Don't wash, she'd said. Even thinking about it again, it was absurd.
I had a momentary urge to snap that not washing and the disappearance of that rejection had absolutely nothing to do with each other — but raising my voice next to someone who'd worked until dawn and collapsed from exhaustion was more than I could manage.
"…Want to wash together?"
"W-what…?"
"N-no, Minseo told me I had to go with you, so…"
…What was she thinking this time. No matter how much warm water loosened the tension in my body, I wasn't suddenly going to fall in love with that.
Yesterday had taught me that desire, unlike when I'd been male, needed a comfortable setting and the right atmosphere… but even so, there had to be limits.
"…Th-that's…"
More than anything, I'd just wanted to melt into the heat in peace. I didn't want that kind of training invading even a moment like this — and while I hung there, unable to refuse or accept —
"Nnngh……"
A faintly irritable sound, the kind only someone whose sleep has been disturbed can make, as Hyejin groped for the blanket and dragged it all the way over her head.
I clapped a hand over my mouth in pure panic, terrified we'd woken her, and stared at Jiu.
"…Let's go outside first and, uh, talk. Just a second?"
Jiu carefully climbed down from the upper bunk and collected underwear and a towel from her locker.
Somehow it already felt like she'd reached a conclusion before she'd even asked.
It was almost unnervingly smooth. Like watching a boyfriend casually grab a condom first thing —
My head throbbed.