Borrowed Warmth
Shhhh.
It was the dead of night, so no warm water came. Watching her whole body shiver, Soyeon pulled her close and stood with her back to the spray, letting the water run over her own skin first so that what reached Yeoreum was already warmed by her body heat.
Surprisingly, that alone felt quite warm. After a little while it even grew too hot, until the few strands of water that still touched her skin felt almost refreshing.
"……"
"…"
Neither of them spoke.
Well — she had no idea what Soyeon was thinking. You could call it communion, maybe, but for her part she simply couldn't find a single word worth saying, and so she kept her mouth shut.
An indescribable feeling settled over her. When she flicked her eyes sideways to look, Soyeon was already watching her with a long, lingering gaze.
She dropped her eyes at once. No — it was just…
It was, quite literally, an emotion she couldn't put into words. That act she had guarded so carefully — no, not carefully so much as shoved aside behind a vague wall of terror and revulsion. Penetration. Sex.
"…"
So. She had had sex. That thing had definitely gone inside her, and if she had been writhing in a pleasure she couldn't refuse, it would have finished inside her too — she had had sex.
"……"
The feeling was strange. Something like regret, something like fear, and in one corner of her mind a sense that at least it was over, mixed with a dozen other things she couldn't name.
"…Unnie."
In a place filled with nothing but the sound of water, Soyeon's voice reached her for the first time in a while. That thing was still standing stiff between them.
"…Y-yes."
She answered softly. Her thoughts were so tangled that she answered without thinking anything at all.
"……Wanna sleep with me tonight?"
Ah. Right. Maybe that was it. Soyeon had already come twice, and she still hadn't managed it even once?
No — if you counted carefully, she had climaxed plenty of times, just never from the actual coupling. She had mostly just been dragged along by the foreign sensation of it.
"…"
"……"
"…Ah, um, y-yes…?"
Even when no answer came, Soyeon waited for hers with quiet patience.
"Just for today. Okay?"
"Ah… I, um, I said I was g-going for a w-walk, so…"
It wasn't that sleeping with Soyeon would be bad. It was just that right now, everything felt bothersome and far away. She wanted to lie down on her own bed — on the mattress her body had at least half-learned — pull the soft blanket over herself, and sleep.
…Of course, the moment she walked into that room, Minseo and Jiwoo would almost certainly keep her up late. Still, if she said she just wanted to sleep comfortably for once tonight — maybe they would cut her some slack.
"…You're going to her?"
Hearing her answer, Soyeon — who had been stroking her back — spoke. She spent a moment wondering who her meant, then realized it was the woman from the security team.
"Ah… n-no. You're right…"
Come to think of it, that was true. She couldn't sleep comfortably either way. She had thought there were two options, when in fact there had only ever been one.
If she went back there…
She could suddenly feel how comfortable her present situation really was. Compared to that place, anywhere else would do.
She had thought she was taking it all in stride, more or less — but her body and mind seemed to disagree.
"……Soyeon…-nim."
"You can drop the formal speech."
An instant answer. Soyeon looked down at her. There was something like certainty in those eyes. It was a sorry thing, really. Whether what had happened between them was mutual or rape, she still didn't love Soyeon that way.
Of course she liked Soyeon as a person. But the moment she tried to picture marriage, a shared life, a traditional household — the first thing that rose up was rejection.
"…H-how are you going to p-protect me…?"
She asked it. For some reason her skin, still smeared with the residue of what had been washed off, felt especially squeaky under the water, and she scratched at it absently.
"Ah, that…? Oh. Hmm."
Maybe Soyeon hadn't expected a question like that.
From Soyeon's point of view, it might have sounded like Yeoreum really had treated sex as a transaction. Something close to: I did it for you, so what are you going to do for me?
"…Unnie, th-the truth is…"
"…"
"I've been thinking about it, and for now, um, we tell everyone we're dating, and then, uh—"
Well. Honestly, she hadn't expected much. Right before sex, a man — or rather, the other brain — tended to think that as long as you got it done, the aftermath hardly mattered.
There was a reason the whole business of selling your body, and the traditional scams that grew out of it, had lasted two thousand years in the world she came from.
For a creature flooding itself with a particular hormone in a particular situation, deciding that the rest could sort itself out later was simply the best it could do.
And besides — as the saying went — could bullying and ostracism really be stopped by a single action, a single word from someone?
If you said be friends from now on, would they answer yes, of course?
What you needed, in the end, was punishment. Put simply: make them think that if they didn't want things to go badly for them, they should at least stop tormenting her.
Would the victim even want to be friends with the people who had hurt her? Just looking at each other with dull eyes, kept carefully apart, would be more than enough.
But isolation was impossible here. Punishment, of course, was impossible too.
She had never thought about this kind of thing before, never been taught it — and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see a way through.
Maybe it would be different once the authority was transferred. No — by then she would be genuinely useless, and the intensity might only get worse.
"…Trash…"
So she muttered it, timidly, toward Soyeon, who was still mumbling unfinished words inside her mouth. Even so, coming this far only to hedge without a clear answer was, setting everything else aside, just a little disappointing.
Not that Soyeon was complete trash (though parts of that were true) — but Soyeon flinched hard at the word.
"I… it was my first time, wasn't it…?"
"……Yeah."
After a long pause, Soyeon answered. There had been a sharp heat, and a little blood — unless the stretching itself had torn something, it had almost certainly been her first.
She had felt it, after all. That the membrane was still there had been strange enough on its own.
"I n-never even properly g-gave permission."
"…Sorry."
She muttered it for no good reason. If she stopped talking, she felt like something inside her would swell and burst.
"Still, if we just say we're together, people will be a little more careful. Okay? So—"
"…N-no."
"Hm?"
"I d-don't want to d-date—"
"……"
She had almost made a mistake. For a second she had deluded herself into thinking she was some beloved protagonist out of a movie.
"I mean, um, th-that. A-announcing it — I d-don't want that."
"Ah. That. Hoo… good. Then how about sticking close to me from now on?"
She hurried to add the correction, and Soyeon pulled her into another tight hug as she asked.
"We can learn everything together from the start. I mean, it's not that you're not helpful… are you going to keep cleaning?"
She probably should. It wasn't important work, exactly, but if no one took it on, things would gradually get dirtier.
"…Y-yes…"
"Okay. Then I'll talk to the security team. From now on, finish cleaning and study with me. Yeah. That'll be nice. Heh. Right?"
"…"
Was that even possible? The security team did call her over for the common good — that much was true. And thanks to them, even if not right now, they still had hot water…
…She didn't know.
She still didn't want to think about anything, so she just nodded roughly.
After that they scrubbed themselves clean one more time (Soyeon washed her), and she fled back to her room. From what, she couldn't say.
"……"
Sss. Just turning the doorknob ninety degrees took forever. Fortunately, she managed to open the door without a sound.
A dark room, filled with the steady, settled breathing that only comes from people who are deeply asleep.
With the security team's help she had finally managed to kill the night-light completely, so the space in front of her was nothing but black. Dark adaptation was useless — even a primitive night-vision set wouldn't have shown a thing in this perfect dark.
The terminal—
"…"
Only then did she remember that Haebin still had her terminal. To say she had forgotten to get it back was one thing; whether Haebin would have given it back even if she had asked was another question entirely.
In the end, maybe because it was a little different from a phone, she was only now realizing she didn't have it on her. Considering modern people who couldn't even take a shit without their phones, it was almost impressive.
So she groped her way forward.
Something she had thought would be completely useless — she swept her hands through the empty air in a zigzag and eventually managed to crack the back of her hand against the bed frame.
However dark it was, she still had a rough map of the room in her head.
Carefully, she reached out. Her hand found what was probably a shoulder, and in a very small, very quiet voice she called Dahyeon's name.
"Da… Dahyeon-nim…"
Even at a whisper, the body under her hand flinched—
"Ah. Mmm…"
—and Dahyeon woke almost at once, clearly a little startled, from the feel of it.
"…I-it's me. H-Han Yeoreum…"
"……"
Groping. A rather large hand landed squarely on her chest in an instant and she jumped, but she knew it wasn't deliberate, so she didn't react.
"Sorry…"
Startled again, Dahyeon offered a small apology, then — using the chest as a reference point — reached for her shoulder and pulled her onto the bed.
For some reason, this was where she had wanted to sleep. She didn't know how this world looked at virginity, but either way, she had just lost something precious, hadn't she?
She just wanted to be comfortable. Going to the security team was out of the question. Tomorrow they might harass her even more relentlessly — but then again, they would harass her either way.
As for Minseo and Jiwoo…
They were relatively close, and from a certain angle you could even call them friends, but right now she simply didn't want to see them.
If they somehow sniffed it out with that uncanny instinct of theirs, she would be stuck filming Sex Season Two with no way out…
So she climbed slowly onto the bed. Even though what she was doing was clearly an imposition, Dahyeon invited her in without a single complaint — and something soft and warm unfurled in her chest.
Once she was lying down, Dahyeon drew the blanket up over her shoulders, lifted her head, and surrendered half the pillow.
She felt closer to this person, more grateful, than to the one she had just shared her body with. It wasn't that she felt no guilt toward Soyeon…
But thinking that way would only tangle her head further, so she forced the thoughts empty. She filled the space with half-remembered song lyrics and other small evasions.
Dahyeon groped along her body as if checking that she was properly settled, then pulled her into a firm embrace.
Whether it was a kind of tax, or simply the way you dote on a cute little sister, she didn't know — but Dahyeon liked sleeping with her held tight.
And honestly, she had missed that hug with her whole heart.
She fell asleep in those warm arms just like that. Tomorrow's problems could wait for tomorrow. Without a single worry. As if nothing at all had happened.
The meeting was hell. A few people who were especially on edge that day argued that if they were going to ration meals, they might as well go over there and at least bring back some food — and while they were at it, split the group in two and send her out to a point fifty kilometers between Escape Pod 1 and their current location, approaching from both sides.
Soyeon refused, of course. The stated reason was that halving the available labor force right in the middle of ongoing expansion work was impossible; the unstated reason was to protect her.
Even so, Soyeon was only sitting in a temporary post. Not so much a leader as the MC of a broadcast program.
The discussion dragged on. If Soyeon had even a producer's level of authority, she might have shut it down — but once a conversation that had been postponed for days finally burst open, everyone piled on with their own two cents—
And the security team, relatively free of any stake in the argument — or more precisely, that woman from security whose name she still couldn't remember no matter how hard she tried — kept staring at her the whole time.
As if she already knew exactly what had happened last night…