A Talisman for Later
"I've already told them. If they start harassing you too much, just drop my name. Got it?"
"Y-yes..."
"And if it feels like it's getting really bad, you can tell the others too. You don't have to just grit your teeth and take it while thinking all kinds of weird things. You know that, right?"
"O-okay..."
Soyeon kept hold of my forearm, saying it over and over as if she could plant the certainty into me by sheer repetition. But if you asked whether any of it actually worked—
Well. If I spoke up right now, would something actually get punished? And what would that punishment even be? Skipping one meal?
Sure, maybe they'd make someone go hungry for a day... but wouldn't that just backfire?
There was a reason they separated victims from perpetrators. Put a gun-toting attacker in a courtroom across from their victim and tell the victim to speak freely—would they even open their mouth?
Anyway. I nodded and headed back to my room. The moment I mentioned I had plans with Minseo and Jiwoo, Soyeon's expression went stiff.
Anyone watching would think she was a completely different person from those two. Even though the urge to screw me was exactly the same. Hell—she could have at least confessed first.
How much weight was I supposed to give this sudden show of concern from someone who'd shoved their dick at me from the start?
I pressed my lips to Soyeon's cheek when she asked for a kiss, then went back to my room.
Sniping at her in my head didn't change anything, and by now this kind of thing barely registered. Taking that thing inside still hurt, but everything else I could more or less endure.
"Ah."
When I opened the door, Jiwoo turned her head toward me and made that little sound.
"Hello. Hehe."
"Ah— y-yes..."
The moment I answered, she quietly stretched both arms out in front of her. It looked, somehow, like she was copying Minseo...?
"...What?"
I asked. Jiwoo dipped her head a little, still unable to meet my eyes, and spread her arms wider—
"C-come here..."
she said.
"Ah... ah..."
Well. I walked over slowly. It wasn't that she'd never been this blatant before the way Minseo was—if you really tallied the physical contact, Jiwoo's had probably gone deeper.
How had that happened again? Ah. Right. Because of that ridiculous demand of hers. A dry little laugh slipped out of me.
I stepped in close, turned my back, and carefully lowered myself onto her lap, hips easing down. Of course the small of my back met that thing pulsing like a second heartbeat.
"......"
"...R-right now is n-no good. If people come by, wh-what do we do..."
Obviously. Wandering around in the middle of the afternoon, when people were still freely moving about, covered in cum would definitely be a problem.
"Ah— no. Just... l-like this..."
Acting shy while committing a crime. Anyone watching would think we were actually dating.
"..."
A hand slipped under my clothes. Unlike Minseo's, it was stiff and clumsy, the touch so awkward it almost hurt. Even being generous, you couldn't call it skilled. I huffed a quiet laugh.
From the receiving end, it was genuinely funny—watching a hand that couldn't even get a bra off properly fumble around under my shirt.
So I caught her wrist and set her palm flat on my chest.
Like a newborn animal set down beside its mother. The second her hand made contact it started kneading, like a wire that had just gotten power.
"Nnh."
There was none of Minseo's softness. Just pure, literal groping—hands that kept moving as if something useful might fall out of the motion.
Then a hand shoved roughly into my underwear, fingers hunting for my entrance like there was a pleasure center at the tip of each one—
"W-wait."
I grabbed her wrist.
"Ah— yes? S-sorry—"
"I'm not wet. It h-hurts..."
"...Ah."
Only then did the finger that had been pressing hard, trying to punch straight through, start stroking the whole mound in slow, sweeping passes. So I just shut my mouth and let my body go with the touch.
It wasn't like I could get away anyway. If I could scrape even a little pleasure out of that awkward motion, that was already a win, wasn't it?
If it had been Yujin, she would have shoved straight in and used whatever slick came out from damage control as lube. So this was better, in a way.
I left her to it. Letting her touch me wasn't going to wear anything out.
Entertainment was hard to come by in this world. In the quiet of the room, Jiwoo kept kneading and pawing at my body, and even after a long stretch of time she didn't seem to get bored—she just kept going—
until she started pressing herself tighter and tighter against me.
It was pure instinct. The thing had been left alone for a while, after all. It was already touching me—and maybe that made it worse, made the frustration burn hotter.
"...Y-Yeoreum-nim..."
The remarkable part was that it didn't tip straight into sex. My claim over my own body was already so thin that even if she'd forced it, there wouldn't have been much I could do beyond asking her to lock the door first.
"Nn— nnh..."
I felt like I was being shoved forward. Just from the force of that thing alone. The sensation clashed so hard with the sweet, distinctly feminine scent at my back that my brain lit up with question marks.
"There's, um..."
"..."
"Y-you're going out for a few days now..."
Every time Jiwoo opened her mouth, hot breath brushed the nape of my neck. Which meant her face was buried against the back of my neck.
"Hih...!"
"S-so..."
"......"
Well. Looking at her, dodging this was going to be hard, wasn't it?
I'd been resting a lot lately, and whether she'd been reading my mood or Soyeon's, she hadn't done anything. She'd even resorted to masturbating, for god's sake.
Even so—right now was dangerous. If Soyeon or someone walked in and she used I haven't been able to as an excuse, what then?
So I muttered, small.
"...L-later. Tonight. T-tonight..."
At the same time she pressed flush against me, and I could feel that heartbeat straight through.
It was basically a massage. The thing kept digging into the erector muscles along my lower back. What was she, a monkey?
Jiwoo wasn't part of the group heading for the escape line. She was still a recent patient, after all. For similar reasons, the woman whose wrist had been severed and reattached wasn't going either, and Minseo had decided to stay behind as well.
The unusually second meeting of the evening was just an announcement about who would be departing.
Most of them had volunteered, but there were a few who made no secret of how much they hated the idea. The medical team especially.
It made sense. The more people got hurt, the more the ones who saw those wounds first would start craving a healthy body of their own.
People who'd been sick once were the ones who took care of their health. Anyone who'd stood on the front lines—anyone who'd fixed Minseo's ruined arm—would naturally be afraid.
"..."
"Ah, hehe... It'll be fine, though. Th-there are a lot of us going, and if it really doesn't work out we can just turn back..."
Jiwoo's voice bounced off the tile in soft, scattered echoes.
"I-is that so..."
Honestly, just thinking about that long, long march filled me with nothing but dread... but I didn't let it show. I was the one with the least to do on the walk.
No scouting the surroundings or anything—just put one foot in front of the other. If I looked scared on top of that, I couldn't imagine anything more irritating to the rest of them.
I flicked my eyes sideways and accidentally met Jiwoo's. Inside, I screamed.
We weren't having sex or anything. Had Jiwoo suddenly come to her senses and gone back to being a rational human being?
As if.
I was someone who'd never dated. Jiwoo—whether she'd dated or not, I had no idea, but she was definitely hopelessly awkward.
Which meant I was the one who had to take the lead. That was almost natural, in a way. At the end of the day, Jiwoo was in a kind of... guest position. Someone trying to use my body.
I didn't want to think of myself as a whore collecting fees, so maybe it was better to frame us as a hopelessly slow couple who just couldn't get anywhere.
It was obvious without looking. Jiwoo was terrified of me making a face and running. Of me suddenly shouting that I hated this whole arrangement and bolting.
You could see it in her eyes—her head full of nothing but is it okay to reach out right now?
...We weren't going to live here forever. My immediate goal was just to get back to the room and lie down on the bed.
And the second I thought that far, my brow twitched at the reminder that I'd have to wash again—in cold water, no less—but there was nothing for it.
I moved. The moment I lifted my hips even a little, Jiwoo flinched hard. It was almost cute. With just clothes on and that one place covered, she still looked like a pretty girl.
"...Are you going to do it with your clothes on...?"
The second it left my mouth I regretted how crude—how blunt—it sounded.
"Nnh—"
Sure enough, I'd hit something.
I waited while Jiwoo rummaged around and pulled something from her pants pocket. Then the object in her grip caught the soft light and showed itself clearly—
"......!"
Heat flooded my face like someone had set it on fire, racing all the way down my throat. I jerked backward. It wasn't shame, exactly—some other feeling entirely—and even with my mouth hanging open I couldn't form a single sentence.
In her hand was a condom.
"Ah— th-that, it's weird, right? I-I wasn't really planning to use it either, I just thought it was interesting that something like this even existed, I mean I knew about them, I just—oh right, I read somewhere once that ancient superstition said carrying one as a kind of talisman was good luck, so—"
Whether she'd been testing the waters or not, Jiwoo's words tangled into a long, flustered mess. Her face was as red as mine.
Unlike me, though, she seemed to be feeling pure, unmistakable shame.
A condom, of all things. Had development in this particular area just... stalled? Not some sperm-laser-removal device—just a rubber condom.
Was I... glad? If I had to say, yes, I was glad.
After more than a hundred years and a whole world full of that insane intersex biology, finding something familiar. Of course, the fact that the familiar thing was a condom was a little disappointing.
That was the first reaction. The second was pure irritation at the gesture itself.
"...Th-this..."
"I'm sorry...! Y-you don't need it, of course you don't! Ah! I didn't mean we shouldn't use one, I meant there wouldn't be a reason to—!"
What did she take me for, a girl who just did whatever she was asked? Well—I was, but even so, did the attitude have to be like this? After all that chaos of getting me used to a dick, she was just going to shove a condom at me out of nowhere?
And if you really thought about it, the whole reason she'd been fretting over that back then was because she'd been taking advantage of how mentally unstable I was. The resentment climbed past the limit.
"..."
Of course I couldn't say any of that out loud. She was one of the key people keeping a colony-wide campaign of let's just kill that useless bitch Han Yeoreum from ever getting started.
"...J-just... hurry up and d-do it so we can go..."
I muttered, finally getting my startled heart under control after seeing the condom.
Even after that reaction, Jiwoo showed no sign of moving—still planted on her ass right where she was.
Swallowing the shame of being rejected and still determined to use my body somehow. What else was I supposed to do?
I stood and stepped in front of her. When I snatched the condom still in her hand, she looked up with a flicker of hope—but I had no intention of using it, so I just shoved it into my pocket.
Then I pushed her arms down from where she'd been holding them across her chest, made her spread her legs, crouched in front of her—
and took it.
Ghk. Ekh. Hek. Khehk—
She asked me to swallow all of it, but I didn't get a vote. Not with her hand locked on the back of my neck like that, pulling me down.
With her own cum surging back up through my nose and mouth, the thing swelling again inside me no longer needed any extra lube.
"Hah... hahh..."
"Ugh— ugh. Ugh...!"
Full sex was still out of the question no matter how I looked at it, so I hoped she'd be satisfied with just putting it between my thighs.
"Y-Yeoreum-nim..."
"..."
I didn't answer. She already knew I was too wrung out to talk back.
"S-so... don't get hurt. Be careful... and come back safe."
"...Pff."
We were both naked now, completely spent in a way we hadn't been earlier. The shower was full of steam and the smell of cum, different from before.
So saying something like that at a moment like this...
...Well. A brain locked in a dark cave would figure it had just successfully finished a reproductive act, wouldn't it.
"You covered me in c-cum and now you're saying that. Hah. R-ridiculous."
So I said it.
I'd meant it as something to toss out in the hollow, spent quiet after even a half-sex, but Jiwoo seemed to take it differently—her face went a little stiff.
"...Ah— did I s-say something wrong...?"
"......M-maybe just one more time, if it's—"
"No...!"
I bolted for the room. I'd have to come back and shower anyway, so it only made things more awkward—but I ran all the same.