A Little Change of Thought
At the very least, I'd cleaned the floor thoroughly. It had come from my own body, so it didn't feel all that filthy — and if someone was going to feel that way about it, better that the person who felt it be the one to clean it up, right?
Even if that meant I ended up a little late for my promise with Minseo...
Still, I wasn't particularly worried. I had my isekai reincarnation special privilege cheat, after all.
"S-sorry I'm late...!"
"Oh. What about food?"
"Ah! Th-the, the security team p-people brought some for me, so..."
Minseo looked at me with a vaguely puzzled expression, then came right over, pulled me into a hard embrace, and pressed her lips to mine —
"Keh—!"
—only to spit onto the floor without the slightest regard for cleanliness. Maybe some of the smell had still been lingering.
My toiletries were back in my room, after all. Still, a toothbrush was a consumable, so she'd lent me one, and I'd brushed carefully and washed my face. I thought that would have been enough.
"Cough. Ah, shit. What the hell. Yeoreum — what did you do in there—"
"...Huh?"
"......Never mind. Haa..."
The question still sat in her throat, but her mouth stopped short of finishing it, hanging open on nothing but an unspoken exclamation mark, until Minseo finally just sighed.
"W-why..."
"...Come here."
She sat on the edge of the bed, was quiet for a moment, then said that. Both arms stretched forward, marking out the space where I was supposed to fit — the same as always.
So I went and sat. I turned my back to her and sat down.
"...Hah."
As usual, almost out of habit, Minseo slipped a hand up under my top. She kneaded my chest like it was some kind of sedative.
Then her free hand worked its way into my pants. Underwear might as well not have existed; she pushed past it and started kneading the soft mound there.
"...Nnh."
"What."
"I-it's, a little sore... But I'm f-fine."
I answered carefully. At least for today, I hoped she'd go a bit gentler down there.
It had taken a lot of damage, after all. Just last night — early this morning, really — I'd taken something like that.
"Huh."
"......"
Ah. When I turned around and looked up, I could finally see her — Jiwoo, sitting on the top bunk, staring down at me with a blank expression.
How had I missed her when I came in? Maybe she'd been lying under the covers when I first walked through the door.
"Ah, hello. Hehe..."
"...Something feels, uh..."
"Tell me later. ...Hmm. So you're sleeping with Soyeon tonight?"
"Yes. Ehehe... S-sorry. I, I already made plans... T-tomorrow instead..."
"Ah, whatever. Doesn't matter. Mmm..."
Knead, knead. My chest was neither a cicada magnet nor a fidget toy...
"Mmmmm..."
Minseo drew out a long, faintly playful hum. Then she took hold of my shoulders and gave a light push, telling me without words to turn and sit facing her.
Same as always. I folded my legs, turned my body, let one leg pass over hers, then stretched it out again and sat.
Our faces were close. Minseo pulled me in hard. My chest felt heavy, like my ribs were being pressed in.
"Want a kiss?"
"Uh, yes...?"
"You like it. Hmm. Right?"
Minseo smiled. A genuine smile from a beautiful woman that close — wasn't that a little hard on the heart?
Before I could even answer, she kissed me. It wasn't the kind of kiss that tried to devour me. Her lips touched mine softly and waited until I opened my mouth —
—and even then her tongue didn't shove its way in. It found mine carefully and tangled with it. There was a wordless sense of relief in it. It was warm.
The feel of a tongue was always pleasant. My body warmed a little.
Had I gone mad? I checked myself. I hadn't. I'd just changed my way of thinking a little.
Aside from Dahyeon, who was at least neutral enough that if I showed up late at night asking to sleep together she'd just go along with it — I had no one on my side. Not in some distant future. Beyond that, not in a multiverse, not down some road not taken. In a completely different world...
I couldn't understand why I still had to be chained to the past, still had to suffer for it.
No mom. No dad. No friends I'd been close with. No familiar room of my own. No system that delivered packages to your door the same day if you clicked a few buttons. No good fried chicken, no pizza, no jokbal, no gukbap, no ramyeon.
Not even police, firefighters, schools, libraries, or cafés. That was the world I was in. Today someone's wrist had been cut off. A few days ago Minseo's ankle and Jiwoo's arm had been twisted the wrong way.
Before long it would be a world where you only got two meals a day. Sometimes even that wouldn't be enough and it'd drop to one — and there would be days when you simply went hungry.
No TV. No internet. No communities I used to visit. No webtoons. There were some saved videos, but they were full of people I didn't know.
No private room, either. That might come later, sure, but still...
Anyway. I could keep from going mad. At some point a survival game from my memories had come to mind.
More of a management game, really. Even in a world where the only futures waiting if you didn't hold out were catastrophic ones where everyone died, people still went insane.
I never understood that. Sure, it was necessary for game difficulty — but shouldn't there have been more realistic reasons for going mad?
They were the entirety of the human race, and they lost it just because they had to sleep somewhere a little cold. Did that make any sense?
So I could keep from going mad. This place was too hard for madness.
I'd just changed my way of thinking a little. In a world with no police, no firefighters, no law, no internet, and no acquaintances who'd be shocked by the sight of me — what had I been wrapping myself up so tightly for all that time? I hadn't even wrapped myself properly. I was already halfway to being public property.
So, if it was going to happen anyway, I at least hoped it wouldn't be rape.
Even if on the inside they were thinking I've worked this hard to fuck this girl, I'm not stopping here — on the outside, I wanted them to at least pretend to worry about me, to say something like if it hurts too much, we can stop...
I wanted at least that much. From everyone here.
Click. I shut off the water. The stream that had been pouring out withered and stopped in an instant.
It wasn't a system that stored a set amount of hot water in a heated tank, so the hot water cut off clean and I finished in cold — but still. I was satisfied that I'd at least started with something warm.
"H-hh..."
My body shivered. People could die of hypothermia from getting caught in the rain even in the middle of summer, after all.
I hurried to dry myself off and towel my hair. The thought that long hair was inconvenient crossed my mind. Would I ever get to cut it? Come to think of it, I didn't think I'd ever seen anyone here get a haircut.
Maybe they just sat around indoors like monkeys, cutting each other's hair.
"...Heh..."
A laugh slipped out for no reason. The image of monkeys grooming each other had floated up. It wasn't funny — but I laughed anyway. Wasn't it kind of funny?
I checked the time. Fortunately, I'd gotten my terminal back.
It was late enough that anyone who was going to sleep would already be asleep, which meant it was time to head to Soyeon's room.
In my heart I desperately wanted to go to Dahyeon's room instead. But a promise was a promise.
Knock knock—
When I rapped with my fist, small voices and the sound of footsteps came from inside.
Then the door burst open, and Soyeon looked at me with a smile so full of pure delight it was almost overflowing, and pulled me in.
"You're here?"
"Y-yes."
It was late, just as she'd said. Most of the others in the room were either on the verge of sleep or lying down watching something on their terminals.
"Tired?"
Soyeon asked. Even as she held me tight and steered us toward the bed, I could feel the hardness of that thing pressing somewhere against my body.
Well. I'd decided not to care about that anymore.
We climbed into bed, lay facing each other, shared the same pillow, and met each other's eyes.
"..."
"...Hh."
Soyeon hugged me so hard it felt like she might break me. She rubbed her face here and there, as if taking in the scent of my body.
"You had a hard day."
Soyeon said. She probably already knew. That I'd been dragged around like a dog.
"...I-it was, just, just like that."
"...Yeah. I see. Sorry."
There wasn't really anything for her to be sorry about.
"Mm. Ah, Yeoreum. This is still just something I've been thinking about, but."
"Yes."
"Should we go to the other escape ship?"
"...Huh?"
The word came out blank. It was just so sudden. The way she said it almost sounded like she was proposing we run away together.
"No — if our food situation is like this, theirs has to be the same, right? And if I assume the worst, I keep thinking there might not be a next chance."
...
"Is, is that so...?"
"Well, I don't know for sure. Still."
Soyeon's hand was resting lightly against my hip. Did she want to touch it?
"I keep thinking it might be better to go while we still have the chance. The mood around here hasn't been great lately either, so having one big mission like that wouldn't be a bad— hh."
While she was talking, her hand had been hovering uncertainly over my hip, so I took it and pressed it firmly against my ass. Soyeon grinned.
Then, without any pretense of subtlety, she kneaded and stroked and squeezed with open satisfaction.
"Anyway. I keep getting the feeling things can't be going well over there either. It's not that far, and if even one person with acting authority was still alive, they definitely would have found us by now."
"..."
A difficult conversation.
"So we probably have to assume the worst. Well... I don't like thinking about it, but maybe only a few of them survived, or..."
In short: if they still couldn't contact us at this stage of development, then they were almost certainly dealing with the same food shortage we were.
Same warehouse, after all. The same food, stocked in the same quantities. If their side had failed to set up cultivation facilities — they might have already lost their chance forever.
And more than that, if even one person was still alive over there, it would mean the authority had been properly transferred.
...Authority — more precisely, either recover the Passkey, or, if they were all dead, bring back the untouched food supplies.
It didn't sound like there was any real downside.
"...Mm. Let me think on it a bit more. We've still got time. Fifty kilometers isn't that long a trip."
Hup. Finished talking, Soyeon pulled me in even harder. From the moment she'd started groping my ass, I could already tell that the thing pressing insistently into my stomach — hard enough it felt like it wanted me to throw up — was quite thoroughly erect...
"..."
"..."
Silence settled again. Her lips were twitching, like there was something she wanted to say.
And in a situation like this, I already knew what that something was.
So I reached out. I slid my hand into Soyeon's pants. The sensation of putting your hand inside someone else's pants was truly strange. The moment I got past the elastic waistband, I could feel the hot shaft.
"Ah, wait—"
"Hehe."
I took a firm hold of the head. Stroking it dry like this would hurt a lot, of course. So I just kneaded it — like clay in my palm — then ran my fingertips a little more gently along the shaft.
"Ah, ngh. W-wait a second."
"...Pfft...!"
Wait a second? Wasn't that supposed to be my line? It felt like a line I was very familiar with.
"Um, Yeoreum unnie...!"
"Shhh. Everyone'll wake up."
I whispered it. And I felt that thing throb hard in response.
It was such an easy thing to read. A feeling I'd never gotten from all the things I'd done with Jiwoo trying to get used to this. Come to think of it, those two were ultimately just people working hard to fuck me too, weren't they.
...I missed Dahyeon.
"Does it feel good?"
I asked Soyeon. Unfortunately, the person in front of me was Soyeon, so I just focused on that face. As for what my hand was doing... I'd just think of it as roughly dildo-level.
I didn't really need to check how aroused she was. When my hand went back to the head, I could already feel the sticky fluid.
"Heh."
"Wait...! U-unnie. Wait. You're pushing too—"
"Hurry up and come. In my hand."
Soyeon was about to say something boring. So for the first time in a very long while, I cut someone off mid-sentence. The last time I'd done that was probably during elementary school class meetings, so it really had been a long time.
The thing in my hand pulsed hard. Maybe just kneading it wasn't enough stimulation — Soyeon pushed her hips forward, trying to press herself flush against my body.
"...Or do you want to go to the shower?"
I asked.