Thy Rod and Thy Staff (3)
Shaaaa.
Lukewarm water spilled from the showerhead and soaked her hair. When she drew her fingertips lightly through it, black strands slipped between her fingers with a soft rustle, heavier now for having drunk their fill.
For a while Han Seoyeon simply stood there, blankly taking the warm water in. All that met her eyes was the showerhead, source of the downpour—and its shape was nothing like the one she knew.
Of course it wasn't. The bathroom she was washing in was not her own. It was Ninomae Hitomi's.
Having somehow ended up helping with Ninomae's horror-game stream, Han Seoyeon had found herself a guest for the night. The cause was a truly adorable one: she was scared to sleep alone. Recalling that almost childlike side of her, Seoyeon smiled faintly.
"Miss Shion! I'll leave a change of clothes in the basket."
"Ah, yes. Understood."
Still washing her hair, she offered a suitable reply to the voice drifting in from the changing room. Soapy water ran down and tickled her cheek.
After the shampoo, she squeezed body wash onto a shower puff. Peach, the same as the shampoo. The products themselves were different, of course, so in truth there was a subtle difference in the scent.
Come to think of it, this was what Miss Ninomae usually smelled like. The thought surfaced on its own. Whatever gap remained between this and the scent she knew had to be Ninomae's own natural smell.
...This is getting kind of perverted.
A sudden stab of shame made her drop the thought. Making a fuss over how someone else smelled really was a little perverted, wasn't it? She found herself mildly resenting her own keen nose. With a heavy sigh, she hurriedly began soaping herself down, rushing now that the scent had lodged in her awareness.
A short while later, rinsed off in a rush and toweled dry, Han Seoyeon stepped out into the changing room.
In the basket lay clean white underwear, the creases of its folds so sharp it looked as though it had never been worn. The design was the sort a convenience store might sell, and yet she hadn't heard Ninomae go out. The sensible conclusion was that she had bought it ahead of time, already assuming Seoyeon would stay the night.
Once the underwear was on, her eyes moved to the next garments: a loose shirt and a pair of shorts. These were probably Ninomae's own. There was some difference in their heights, but given that Ninomae wore generously cut sizes on account of one overwhelmingly particular part of her figure, they might actually run large on Seoyeon.
...Is peach your favorite, Miss Ninomae?
After the shampoo and the body wash, even the scent rising off the clothes was much the same. She would hardly have handed over clothes she'd been wearing without washing them, so it had to be the fabric softener. For no good reason at all, she drew the shirt up to her face and breathed in, then let out a small sigh. Honestly. What was she doing?
"Mmm... it's bigger than I thought?"
When she came out in the clothes she'd been given, the living room lights were off. She stepped into the one room still lit and found Ninomae there, spreading out the bedding. Ninomae's eyes traveled up and down her, and out came just that murmur.
"You're tall, Miss Shion, so I thought it would fit exactly, or come up a little short... I really must have gained quite a lot..."
"...I couldn't say. Aside from your chest."
Seoyeon prided herself on a fairly sharp eye, but since meeting her she had no memory of noticing any change in the size of any other part of her body.
"No. Not just there. My sides, my thighs—I've quietly put on a little extra..."
"If you'd said that in front of other women, you'd have had stones thrown at you. It doesn't seem to be a change that shows through your clothes, at least, so you needn't worry."
"R-really?"
A little color returned to Ninomae's face.
"That aside, there's no need for you to sleep on the floor either, Miss Ninomae... no. There was never a bed to begin with."
"Mm-hmm. I'm the type who sleeps on the floor."
She had put the question into words at the sight of the futons laid out side by side, only to realize a moment later that the room had no bed at all. Looking back, she didn't think she had seen one the last time she had stopped by briefly, either.
"Um... if the floor's uncomfortable, would you rather sleep on the sofa in the living room?"
"No. This is nothing. And if I went out and slept alone in the living room, you'd be in real trouble, Miss Ninomae."
"Nn... right."
The only reason Seoyeon had gone out of her way to stay the night was Ninomae's fear. Sleep apart, and the whole thing would mean nothing.
"Anyway, I'll go wash up quickly too."
"Yes. All right."
And as if they were changing shifts, Ninomae left the room.
Alone in the bedroom, Han Seoyeon crossed the floor barefoot and dropped onto the bedding. Two pillows. Two futons. The one that still held Ninomae's scent thickly was the one she usually used, which meant this freshly taken-out futon was Seoyeon's—
No. Get off the subject of her scent...!
She shook her head before the thought could finish. The smell had been nagging at her strangely for some time now. She drew in a deep breath as if to settle herself—ah, that smells nice... damn it, what am I doing—and then quietly let herself drop onto her own futon.
She had only been waiting a little while when the sound of a hair dryer began to drift through the half-open door. Remarkably fast. Fast enough to match Seoyeon, who had hurried out because washing at someone else's house had left her oddly self-conscious—or even faster. The drying itself was short, too. Ninomae's hair was a bob, granted, but it was not short the way a man's was.
The question answered itself the moment she came scurrying into the bedroom, written plain across her face. Hair still damp, Ninomae breathed out a sigh of relief.
"...Did you get scared, by any chance, washing up alone?"
"Ehehe......"
True as it was, being called out on it seemed to embarrass her, and Ninomae awkwardly looked away. Still, she was a woman; shouldn't she look after her hair properly? Seoyeon thought as much, then gave a wry smile at how frightened she must have been to do this.
One day ought to be fine.
Once she was asleep, a healing prayer would sort it out somehow. Probably.
"Um, shall I turn the light off?"
"Yes."
Seoyeon tipped her chin to say she could do as she liked. Ninomae flicked the switch and bolted for her futon, so hastily that her footsteps thudded. Even turning off the light frightened her that much. Timid, certainly, Seoyeon thought, and lay down under her own covers.
"...Miss Ninomae."
A brief silence passed before Han Seoyeon quietly spoke.
"Today's game must have been especially frightening."
The breathing right beside her was peaceful. Too peaceful, as if she were deliberately drawing each breath as calmly as she possibly could.
"Actually, I'm really weak to horror. Movies or games, once I've seen one I can't sleep properly for days."
Seoyeon had been about to answer that she already knew horror was her weak point, just from watching Shutang's streams. The words that followed closed her mouth again. Unlike her usual brightness, the voice carried a trace of frailty.
"Even when I do fall asleep, I always have a nightmare partway through and wake up. So for a while I just live soaked through with exhaustion."
"...It's that bad?"
People like that certainly existed. The number was probably not so very small. But that Ninomae might be one of them was something she could never have imagined.
"So asking me to stay here tonight wasn't because today's game was especially scary, and you thought your dreams would be rough..."
"I feel like this for days every time I play a horror game. If anything, today might be on the milder side."
"And someone like that volunteered to stream horror games?"
She could never have imagined it. It hadn't been some penalty forced on her. She had chosen the games herself, on nothing more than the thought that they would make for a fun stream—and in that way Mary Tepes had broadcast no fewer than five horror games over the course of about half a year. She had never once considered that someone who suffered for days at the least after watching anything horror would have played so many of her own accord.
In the unlit dark, Han Seoyeon looked at the silhouette of Ninomae Hitomi. Perhaps her devotion to streaming ran far deeper than Seoyeon had thought. Chasing the pleasure of a broadcast while enduring nightmares was not, however she turned it over, something an ordinary strength of will could manage.
"Miss Ninomae."
And so she called her name, low.
"What is it?"
Still lying down, Ninomae quietly turned only her head this way. Her eyes could not have adjusted to the dark yet; without quite meaning to, she was probably trying to meet her gaze.
"I'll stay with you when you sleep."
"Uh... huh? You're already doing that, though?"
"I mean the next time you play a horror game, as well."
Whether she would go so far as to appear on the stream was another matter, but afterward, at the very least, she would. Seoyeon rolled onto her side as well, facing her, and went on.
"Not only the night itself. Until you can sleep easily again, let's talk on the phone at night. I won't be right there beside you, but if you can hear someone's voice, it ought to be a little easier to fall asleep."
"Why would you go that far?"
"You wouldn't listen even if I tried to stop you, would you?"
The moment it felt as though it had been a while since her last horror game, Ninomae would surely pull out a new one. Personal taste aside, as a streamer her chemistry with horror was simply too good, and she herself was surely aware of it. If she were the sort to stop just because Seoyeon told her to, she would have quit the moment the nightmares began.
"...Is it because you like Shutang?"
Why go this far? To that question, Ninomae carefully offered her own guess.
"Well. Now that I think it through, that is part of it, yes. Now that I know this, it'll be hard to simply enjoy Shutang's horror streams the way I used to, with nothing else on my mind."
Mary Tepes's horror broadcasts were watched, of course, for the particular pleasure of seeing her frightened and trembling—but even that had its limits. Learn that the streamer was suffering a fear so severe she could not sleep properly for days, and more than a few viewers would feel the weight of it, and find they could no longer enjoy the streams as they once had.
"Then why?"
But there had been something slightly off in the way Han Seoyeon had said it. To say that such a reason was not absent was, in the end, to say that the heart of it lay somewhere else.
"Uh......"
At the question, Han Seoyeon hesitated. Not out of any worry over whether it was all right to say. If anything, it was closer to wondering whether there was any need to explain a thing like this at all.
"If a precious friend were tormented by nightmares for days on end, of course I'd worry."
But Ninomae was asking for an answer, and so in the end she had no choice but to give that perfectly obvious reason. Putting something so self-evident into words left her feeling foolishly self-conscious all the same.
"......"
"...Miss Ninomae?"
The embarrassment seemed to be mutual. Ninomae squirmed beneath the futon, then rolled sharply onto her side, as if to get away from her.
"Um... is it all right to sleep facing that way? You're not scared, are you?"
Worrying about her even now? Ninomae worked her lips, hardly a voice coming out of them.
"......"
Facing a stretch of room where no one was—where the closet was, no less—did feel a little eerie. She could sense Seoyeon behind her, so it was not a terrible fear. Still.
Before long, lying as she was, Ninomae quietly extended only her right hand behind her back.
"C-could you... hold my hand?"
"...Yes. As long as you'd like."
Whether that had truly been fear, or the doing of something else.
A moment later there was warmth, and the feel of a hand rather large for a woman's, and yet soft enough all the same. Around that gentle heat, Ninomae Hitomi closed her fingers, just a little tightly.
Somehow, even with the certainty that she would have no nightmare tonight, it still seemed she would sleep only fitfully.