Truth in Wine
When she suddenly shut the door and glared at me, I genuinely thought I was about to get eaten.
That look was, by any measure, the gaze of a predator sizing up its prey. Even knowing it couldn't possibly be true, my body locked up on its own.
I was still nursing the uneasy feeling that she might actually do something to me—right up until the moment she buried her nose in my hand and started nuzzling her head against it.
So it wasn't me she was after. It was the catnip. Feeling the soft brush of her against my palm, I breathed a sigh of relief and cheered inwardly.
That is, until I realized she wasn't reacting at all even when I called her name.
The effect was excellent.
No—let me rephrase. It was excellent far beyond necessity. For a second I wondered if something had gone wrong with her.
"Hoyeon! Hoyeon! What's wrong?! Are you okay?!"
I'd only wanted to put her in a better mood so I could earn her forgiveness afterward. This had never been the plan.
She kept rubbing her head against my hand, showing not the slightest sign of hearing me. I couldn't just touch her carelessly either, so the best I could do was keep calling her name and pray she'd come to her senses.
Whether our hearts connected or not, she finally did respond—but she was in worse shape than I'd expected.
Her eyes were unfocused, her face flushed bright red. She was panting with heated little breaths and staggering as if she couldn't keep her balance.
Even as a polite lie, I couldn't say she was fine.
"…Yeah. I'm fine. Just… feelin' real good…"
Now that I looked, even her pronunciation was slurred. I'd meant for something like this to happen, but not to this extent.
I'd figured it would have an effect similar to alcohol, and in the original work it had only been about that strong, so I'd given it to her lightly as a gift.
This was like I'd handed her some kind of drug. I'd never seen it myself, but I imagined this was what it would look like.
How was I supposed to clean this up?
It would return to normal with time, but whether it was addictive or not was still an unknown. And when I didn't even know how catnip worked on feline beastkin, there didn't seem to be anything I could do.
…The deed was already done. If there was nothing I could do about it, then I should at least properly finish what I'd set out to do.
"…You feel good?"
"…Yeah."
Her reactions were lagging far behind normal. At this rate she looked like she'd just go heh and take whatever I did to her.
But I had zero desire to do anything stupid. No—if anything, I'd have to push her away even if she came at me. She wasn't acting of her own will right now; she was high on the drug. If it were her own will it would be one thing, but this was because of me, so I couldn't touch her.
"…Then… can I take that to mean you like it?"
"Yeah… more…"
So without touching her, I planned to lead Hoyeon into answering. With her personality, she would keep her word even if she said it while not in her right mind.
"Then… Hoyeon."
"Uuuh…?"
I couldn't quite grasp that this girl swaying in front of me, high on catnip, was the key that would decide humanity's future. But whatever her appearance, she was indeed the core. The problem was that this core seemed to be blocking the clear conditions from being met.
"During PE class back then… can you tell me why you got angry?"
I already had a rough guess, but I wanted to be sure. I hated the idea of guessing wrong and being off the mark.
Hoyeon met my eyes, blinked slowly, then spoke in a languid drawl.
"…You… talked to other girls… If you start dating some other girl… I'll get abandoned…"
So it was that after all. Just as I'd feared, her attachment was extremely severe. She was probably terrified of her only friend leaving her.
"Don't worry about that. Even if I dated someone else, I'd never neglect you. I promise."
If that was what she feared, all I needed to do was plant the conviction that I wouldn't leave.
"Don't lie."
…Huh? This wasn't right.
When words different from what I'd expected came out, I looked down at Hoyeon in confusion. At some point she'd stopped nuzzling her head and was looking straight at me.
She was still swaying, and her eyes had completely lost their light so I couldn't even tell what she was seeing—yet somehow I could feel that she was looking right at me.
"You say that… and then the second you look away you'll only look at other girls…"
"I hate that. Look only at me…"
She collapsed onto the floor mid-sentence, so I didn't catch the full thing, but I knew immediately what she was trying to say.
Look only at me.
…In more ways than one, it was worse than I'd thought. Both the attachment and her reaction to the catnip.
Thinking that if something was wrong I'd carry her straight to the infirmary, I checked briefly—but she'd simply passed out cold. A little relieved, I carefully picked her up and laid her on the bed.
Originally I'd planned to tour the academy with her once her mood had improved, but with things like this there was nothing I could do. Besides, even if nothing was wrong right now, she might show some strange reaction when she woke up, so I couldn't leave either.
That meant I had to stay here quietly until she woke up… though I wasn't sure if that was okay.
…First things first, I needed to deal with the catnip.
If possible, I should never give her catnip again. After tossing it out the window and washing my hands, I decided to wait for her to wake up.
With nothing particular to do, I was looking around her room when my eyes landed on a book on the desk. Unlike the other books scattered about haphazardly, this one had no title, and even the cover material was different—an alien book.
For a moment I hesitated over whether I should look. If it was a diary, it would be a tremendous breach of privacy. But she showed no signs of waking, and more importantly, secrets only she knew might help even a little toward a happy ending, so with a slight sense of guilt I turned the pages.
On the left were writings I assumed she'd written; on the right were writings whose author I couldn't tell. The characters were different to begin with, so I couldn't make them out.
Flipping through the pages without much gain, before long I came to a blank page. Just as I was about to close the book saying there was nothing to be gained, sentences suddenly began writing themselves on the right-hand page.
That alone was astonishing, but what made me freeze in shock was the fact that they were characters I knew.
"Greetings, child."
It was unmistakably Korean.
My head hurt like I'd had a bad dream.
"…Ugh."
So I remembered following Dogeon to the pet supply store and coming back to the dorm… but after that, nothing. I hadn't even been particularly sleepy, so why had I been asleep?
Looking around, I saw a deathly pale Dogeon staring this way.
…What. Why was that guy in my room.
"You… why are you here…?"
"Huh? Why am I here…?"
Answering a question with a question—what kind of attitude was that supposed to be? But he genuinely seemed confused.
"Did you forget what happened?"
No, I really had no idea what he was talking about. I'd just woken up—what was I supposed to have forgotten?
Don't tell me…
"…You didn't do anything weird, did you?!"
While I was sleeping—groping around and stuff! He was a harem protagonist, so he might have. No—more than enough reason to. Setting aside how he'd gotten in, I needed to find out what he'd done first.
Dogeon seemed to roughly figure out why I was reacting like this and was denying it with his whole body.
"…I swear on my life, I absolutely never did anything like that. Friends don't do that kind of thing."
"Right…?"
Yeah. We were friends, so there was no way. My head must have been a little off for a second.
With the biggest question resolved, it was time to check the next thing I was curious about.
"…More importantly, how did you get into my room?"
Dogeon was silent for a while. Just as I was about to ask why he was making me nervous by not answering, he finally spoke.
"The door… was open."
The door was open?
I was about to snap at him for expecting me to believe that, but then I recalled opening Dogeon's locker and opening Dogeon's door. Right—there weren't any locks or anything here.
An academy that took our money and didn't even put locks on the dorms. It wasn't Dogeon who was at fault—it was the academy. I'd almost misunderstood my only friend.
…Even if he was a dumb friend who occasionally took the wrong path. Like eyeing other girls, or being all casual with other people. But he was my friend, so I liked him.
It was around lunchtime, so he must have come to wake me up so we could go eat lunch together. Just like I'd done before. Plus the soundproofing was terrible, so he must have heard me sleeping. I don't snore, but my sleeping habits are pretty bad in various ways.
"Then let's go get lunch."
"Lunch…?"
"…Weren't you here for that?"
Why was he acting so dumb all of a sudden. He looked like his soul had left his body.
"Ah, right. Let's go eat lunch together."
Something seemed a bit different from usual. I wanted to ask if something was wrong, but Dogeon had already gone out of the room.
Well, it was probably nothing. After shoving the uneasy feeling into a corner, I followed after Dogeon with light steps.