Don't Make Me Say It Twice
Fortunately we never ran into any wild animals, and managed to find a relatively open, level stretch of ground to walk.
The word we still wouldn't sit right in my mouth. No matter how I turned it over, my treatment amounted to little more than luggage that happened to be able to move under its own power.
And if you really thought about it, that wasn't even wrong. Finding the path, setting the direction — whatever happened, all I ever did was rest.
Without my biometric code they might never have known what was going on at all, let alone been able to follow.
"Ugh...!"
My foot slipped.
I'd driven myself to the absolute limit of my stamina for far too long, and for an instant the strength simply drained out of my ankle.
As my balance collapsed and my body tipped forward, hands found both my shoulders and my chest — one pulling, one pushing — and set me upright again.
"Ah— th-thank y-you..."
"Listen to that voice. Haa."
I was relieved the expected rough words never came. Relieved, too, that no one got hurt catching me.
When I turned to thank them, even Hyebin — who'd looked so composed — was sweating quite a bit.
Security, hacking... people in those fields carried a stereotype of never leaving their rooms and never exercising. Factoring that in, I honestly thought she was impressive.
Had it been a requirement for boarding this ship...? Then again, my body was far too weak for that to hold true.
"What time is it. Hoo. Three? Hngh. Then we should start walking while just matching the direction, haa. Let's take a look."
Hyebin said.
Everyone looked worn out, but I was struggling especially hard.
"Hegh. Hegh... hegh..."
The sun hadn't set — hadn't even touched the horizon — so from my perspective as the one doing the walking, I still had something close to infinite hours left ahead of me.
Still, time did pass...
Honestly it had been a continuous agony that felt like it would kill me, but enduring and enduring until it finally passed was something I was grateful for.
And so another two hours.
I didn't know why the sun set faster in the mountains — I vaguely thought it wasn't simply "because the mountains are high and block it" — but the surroundings gradually darkened until the insides of shadowed places could no longer be seen.
Unlike the way they'd spent the whole day — spread out, walking only to match direction — people now found a relatively flat spot beneath a cliff that couldn't really be called large, and began setting up camp.
I didn't know if they'd trained to find places like this... but if I'd dropped naked into the wilderness, I might have slept here too. Fairly cozy terrain.
Still, calling it the second time, I got the tent up relatively quickly — and the moment I did, the strength left my legs.
"Relatively" was by my standards, of course, so people were already sitting around chatting. I was glad I hadn't shown that pathetic display in front of them.
"Hoo, hoooo..."
Ziiing. The tent's slack tightened with its characteristic mechanical whine and vanished, and finally I could rest a little.
The people a short distance away had all taken off their shoes, so I did the same.
My whole body was soaked in sweat. Even moving a little roughly made the hair stuck to my skin annoying —
My socks were completely soaked through.
"...Sniff."
Habit, I guess. I sniffed them.
"What are you doing?"
"Kyaaak...?!"
Just being startled filled my whole body with so much tension I got muscle pain from it.
It was a more desirable attitude than wandering around not knowing you smelled, but sniffing the socks I'd just taken off wasn't exactly something I wanted to put on display.
Fortunately they didn't smell... but embarrassing was still embarrassing.
When I turned my head, my eyes met Yujin's as she smiled at me.
With a smile like a modern person who'd scrolled infinitely down a feed and found a video of a cute little animal performing tricks, she took another step closer and sat beside me.
The ground was stone, so she plopped down without much sense of caution —
"Do they smell? Heh."
"Euk...! They don't...!"
"Ah, that's fucking hilarious. Give them here."
"...! Ah, n-no...! Wh-what—"
"Heh."
When I hid the socks behind me and stuffed them hard into my back pants pocket, Yujin came closer again and pulled them out — not right away; first she groped my ass a little, then pulled them free.
"If you don't want your feet to rot, you should hang these up, right? By the way, didn't Hyebin say earlier? Don't make me say things twice?"
My mouth fell open in disbelief. If it were someone who normally took care of me, maybe.
How was I supposed to readily believe someone who acted like they spent every night thinking about how to bully me most effectively so the rumors would spread?
Whether she knew I was thinking that or not, Yujin paid no mind to my expression, fixed the socks to a bag set up like a tripod, and looked at me.
"Ah. I'm tired. You're going in, right? Come in with me."
"...What? The t-tent is..."
"Ah. I'm tired. You're going in, right? Come in with me... Heh. Twice. Take off your clothes."
"..."
What choice did I have. I obediently headed for the tent. Opening the door, moaning at the scream of muscles that had no mouth to scream with, awkwardly stuffing my upper body inside —
She shoved my ass hard with her foot. Thanks to that I lost my balance, and she threw her body on top of me.
"Euk..."
I could at least be glad she wasn't doing this tomorrow. If it were tomorrow, when delayed-onset muscle soreness was guaranteed, I probably would have screamed in pure agony.
For now, well. It wasn't to the point where external stimuli felt painful.
"......"
I almost asked her to move without thinking.
...Even if it hadn't been very effective lately, the method of surviving was still valid.
If I showed dislike again here for no reason, Yujin would definitely think she'd got me good and torment me. Bullying was originally something done to see the other person's reaction.
I didn't want to walk around naked in the wilderness under everyone's eyes.
So I shut my mouth, and when I averted my eyes from the woman stubbornly straddling me and looked roughly somewhere in the tent, Yujin giggled and rubbed her body against me, then grabbed my arm and lifted it.
"..."
"...Heup."
"Kyaak...!!"
The instant I accidentally met her eyes for a split second, Yujin buried her face in my armpit.
It was easy to overlook, but one of the human body's vital spots — having someone else's face touch there, a physiological scream I couldn't hold back came bursting out.
"Heuuup..."
"D-don't sniff...!"
I shouted that. I was still wearing that compression wear, so that place was definitely soaked through with sweat.
I hadn't particularly felt that my body smelled. And I knew that kind of behavior was sexually consumable enough...!
But what if it really did smell...!
Feeling proxy shame for a future that hadn't come — where severe body odor would make even the teasing stop and her face go serious — I pushed Yujin's forehead with my palm —
If I'd had that kind of strength in the first place, I would have walked another kilometer.
The reason people could pick a camping spot, set up tents, and gather in twos and threes to chat was because my pathetic stamina had hit its limit and we had no choice but to rest.
"Eu, euu...!"
"Heh! It really doesn't smell. It smells sexy. Bitch smell. Are you putting out pheromones?"
"Ha, stop—!"
Yujin opened her mouth as if she'd fully enjoyed the scent — or fragrance, or whatever, the body odor — so I tried to open my mouth again.
Then my body went stiff. Something soft and warm had brushed across my armpit.
My body was already half public property. If you painted every place that had been touched — ass, breasts, thighs, calves, forearms — you'd have to dunk me in the paint can.
Even so.
Sometimes there were things that called up a deeper revulsion than mere sexual harassment...
"...What... are you...?"
"Ah."
......
"Heat."
Ah, no. An experience I absolutely never wanted to think about again.
When I hadn't gone back to my room and spent a long time with Soyeon or Ms. Dahyun and the security team...
I didn't want to recall the situation, so roughly: my underwear. Jiu. Those two things. I stopped the recollection quickly there.
Anyway it had been a shocking situation, so then as now my body went completely stiff. If it were just lusting after my body, I could hate it moderately and move on —
But something humid and dark was calling up an instinctive rejection.
"Heh...! Salty."
"Eu, euaa......"
I couldn't even raise my voice. A revulsion like seeing a black oval stuck to the wall the moment I'd felt safe in my own space swept through my body and put every muscle into a state of tension.
"Eu, euu..."
"...Puhat...! Ahaha...!"
Yujin laughed. I took back the thought that it was unpleasant because I couldn't feel sexual desire. The sexual desire I hadn't seen wasn't invisible — it was so huge it had covered my entire field of vision.
Her tongue touched again. A soft, squishy mass of muscle sticky-swept across my armpit...
A slippery sensation, more like seafood laid on top of me than a bug.
How was I supposed to endure this. Tears came.
What is love? As a lifelong single and inexperienced person, I could divide it into a few simple stages.
Holding hands. Interlocking fingers. Touch. Kiss. Sex.
...Weird? But interpersonal exchange and such — I only vaguely felt it when watching pure romance stories; ultimately I thought it was a series of acts that went through those processes.
Above all, the evidence was unfolding right before my eyes. If licking a sweat-soaked armpit after walking all day counted as a kiss, then what came next.
"Ah, it hu-hurts, I'm telling you it's hard...!"
"Totally fine. You must've sweated a ton here too, right?"
A position with my two lying legs up on her shoulders. A position where what came next was obvious.
I was blocking between my legs with both hands.
Paying no mind, Yujin kissed the backs of those hands and brought her tongue to them.
"...!"
Goosebumps rose. I couldn't understand why she was suddenly doing this. Until now it hadn't been this kind of thing — much more mechanical movements, hadn't it?
Until now, rather than expressing humid sexual desire... it had felt more recreational.
My head became a complete mess. More than any moment in my life, with absolute conviction — if I had been a different me who wasn't "me," this was a moment shocking enough that I would have chosen death.
"Heuuu..."
Of course, thinking of when she'd confessed to me, I wasn't unaware that she still had feelings for me...
"Ha, stop it... why are you d-doing this...!"
It was too bizarre.
Besides, Yujin was a woman. I couldn't love her with all my heart, but if things had been normal, at least then I would have been prepared to feel sufficient pleasure.
Betrayal and revulsion doubled.
"Why~. You seduced me first."
"Wh-when—!"
"While walking you made sexy, heup. Sounds. Heh! Aeu. When are you gonna move your hands, eub?"
Yujin was pushing her tongue between my fingers. The raised pores had no intention of settling.
The sensation of that thing wriggling between my fingers was as disgusting as putting a leech thrashing in salt on my palm.
"Eu, eu...!"
Even so I couldn't move them.
If it were simply caressing that place of mine with her mouth — well, if it was Yujin who was a woman, it might not have been bad.
But the world was wide, and the underworld of criminals you couldn't know was far wider than the sunny side.
I didn't know what she might do. No, setting that aside, just burying her nose and sniffing might kill me with shame.
Because I'd sweated. All day. The deepest place on a human body was soaked in sweat — how was I supposed to show that.
"Move your hands."
"Euu...!"
"Heh. No choice then."
Feeling that sensation on my fingers made me clench even harder, unable to move them, and Yujin pulled her mouth away and said that.
...And lowered her aim a little more.
"...!!! I moved— I moved them, kehuk...! I moved them! I moved them...!!"
I said that urgently, raising my hands in surrender. The mangled, leaking pronunciation didn't matter at all.