It Is None of My Concern (1)
"I'm home."
"Oh, welcome back."
Seoyeon slipped off her shoes at the entryway and stepped inside, and Ninomae, who had been sprawled across the living-room sofa, rose to meet her. She gathered herself up in a rustle of fabric, shifted into the empty space, and made room enough for two.
The day was cold, but the apartment was comparatively warm, and perhaps because of that Ninomae had dressed for indoors in an unbalanced combination of shorts and a cardigan. Her posture, her clothes, the ease with which she occupied the place—all of it suggested she had grown quite comfortable living here. Taking a small satisfaction in that, Han Seoyeon sat down at the far end of the sofa.
"What brought you out today?"
"I stopped by the church for a little while. Christmas preparations."
Set beside Protestantism, Catholicism carried a reputation for being stricter, stiffer. That was true to a degree, but it hardly meant every parish church was solemn at every hour of the year. Come Christmas, there was nothing strange about a special event or two—free meals for the community, things of that sort.
"And how did you spend your day, Miss Ninomae?"
"Me? Well... it's a day off, so I spent it loafing. Watching TV, or Etube videos on my phone..."
Put that way, it sounded as if she had idled the day away in pure dissipation. Seoyeon glanced around. The living room was tidier than when she had left, and the kitchen sink, glimpsed at an angle, stood completely empty. For this woman, housework must have been a constant so ordinary it was not worth mentioning. Honestly, Seoyeon was a little impressed.
"Was there anything good on?"
"I just watched whatever anime they put on, in the order it aired."
Boom. As if cued by the words, the top of a building exploded on the anime playing across the television.
"What is happening in that one? Scenery like that is almost nostalgic."
"Nostalgic...? Anyway, the heroine planted a bomb in the building, and she's threatening the police with it. She's not the villain, though. There's a pretty serious reason—Shion?"
"I am listening."
"No, that's not what I—"
She broke off mid-explanation, a faint crease forming between her brows.
"You're staring at my legs so hard it almost stings."
"...I—I apologize."
In principle, the sense that one could "feel a gaze" was little more than a trick of the brain. To see was only this: light struck an object, rebounded, and entered the eye to settle upon the retina. Once that light had already bounced free, whether it then entered someone's eye was no longer a force acting upon the object at all.
And yet nothing gave birth to an anomaly so readily as a belief held in common by a great many people, even a belief founded on illusion. That Ninomae—who had contracted with a demon and been steeped that much deeper in the anomalous—should awaken to such a sense was only to be expected.
...Even setting all of that aside, it would have been stranger not to notice someone staring down at her legs with such absorption from this close.
"You ask me to explain, and then you zone out to admire my legs..."
"No, that is—I had no intention of drawing your attention elsewhere, Miss Ninomae."
She truly had been curious about the anime. She had only failed to resist the temptation flickering at the edge of her vision, and that confession, written plainly across her, made Ninomae's gaze grow sharper still.
"Shion, you are a pervert beyond all hope of saving."
"I am utterly ashamed..."
"Honestly."
Only then did Han Seoyeon tear her eyes away. Ninomae let out a long, deep sigh.
"......"
Hitomi watched her for a moment, then turned onto her side.
If she meant to face inward on the sofa, there was nothing for it but to bring her legs up—and at the end of that motion sat Han Seoyeon.
"Mmf—?!"
Ninomae's calf came to rest across Seoyeon's knees. At the unannounced ambush, Seoyeon's body went faintly rigid.
A head pillowed in her lap would have made for a properly romantic atmosphere, but Seoyeon's tastes, as ever, ran rather further in this direction. Knowing that perfectly well, Ninomae needled her anyway, as if to hide her own embarrassment.
"...Shion? Your thighs are twitching an awful lot."
Twitch, twitch. The muscles of Seoyeon's thighs clenched and released, clenched and released, and her breathing seemed, somehow, to have quickened.
"Also, your eyes are getting kind of scary now..."
"Ah. Um. I apologize."
She averted her gaze, only to keep stealing glances all the same, so the apology carried very little sincerity. Under the stare she could feel upon her feet, Ninomae wiggled her toes.
The two of them remained like that, silent, for a while. Whether a good deal of time had actually passed, or only felt as if it had, neither could have said. The crisis climbing toward its climax on the television no longer registered at all.
Ninomae swallowed. Saliva had pooled in her mouth for no reason, and it bothered her; then she froze, because the sound had come out louder than she expected.
"Shion?"
She opened her mouth carefully after that, looking at once toward Han Seoyeon, whose face was unmistakably that of someone entranced.
What wavered in that gaze was a trace of contempt. Overflowing beyond it, though, was a sense of fullness, and satisfaction dwelt there, unmistakably. It was not the affection and trust ordinarily directed at Ninomae. Nor was it the adoration, or the playfulness, she showed toward Shutang.
Han Seoyeon was demanding her body. A thrill born of that fact crept slowly upward through her.
Because Seoyeon would like this sort of thing. Because repaying even a little of the debt she owed her—or simply doing something a precious person would enjoy—was, of course, a glad thing to do. That was why Ninomae had begun baring her feet.
Or so she had believed. Until now.
Had that really been all there was to it? These days she found herself doubting her own true motives. The tingling that came of offering up her body and making Seoyeon happy—perhaps, without ever realizing it, this was what she had wanted when she chose as she had...
"...If you'd like, you can touch. Just once would be all right..."
Ninomae's breath trembled faintly as she said it, and Seoyeon's gaze changed as well, into something carrying a stronger feeling.
"I-is that all right?"
"W-well, it's not exactly some forbidden place, is it?"
"...That is true, is it not?"
It was a lie. Between the two people in this room, at least, it was precisely a forbidden place. That much was a shared understanding.
"Then... excuse me."
Breaking another brief silence, Seoyeon moved her hand in earnest. At the touch approaching slowly but surely, Ninomae curled her toes. But how far could toes attached to a foot get, trying to flee on their own? Extremity of the body or not, it did not take long before bare skin met bare skin.
"......"
"......"
In a silence where only the sound of their breathing flickered, Seoyeon gave her a soft, testing poke. The second time, a little bolder. And after that, she tried wrapping both hands around the foot and squeezing, gently.
Through the softness of the skin drifted a faint scent of peach—the body wash Ninomae favored. From their short time living together, Seoyeon had already learned that on days off, when Ninomae did not go out, she usually preferred to loaf about and bathe in the evening. That she had washed ahead of time, at an hour when she ordinarily would not have yet... perhaps she had been planning this since before Seoyeon came home.
"Hnn, wait... that tickles..."
She must have put too much strength into her hands without thinking, occupied as she was with the flush rising in Ninomae's face. Ninomae flinched.
"Ah—pfft! I said it tickles. Nnh, okay, that's enough!"
The hands kneading her foot, however, did not stop. Ninomae endured for a while on laughter and a heated voice, and in the end drew her legs in and pulled her foot free of Seoyeon's grip.
Thump.
"...Huh?"
More precisely, it would be fairer to say that she tried. Or that she half succeeded.
"Shi... Shion?"
Before Ninomae could fully withdraw her left foot, Seoyeon had caught her by the ankle again.
"......"
Seoyeon said nothing, mouth closed. But just as Seoyeon had looked at her face, Ninomae looked into those eyes.
What dwelt in them was unmistakable sadism.
There was no need, at this late date, to pause and reconsider at length the fact that the person called Han Seoyeon was, curiously enough, a particularly vile viewer of the torment-Shutang camp.
"Hyah—?!"
With the index finger of her other hand, she stroked slowly up the sole of Ninomae's foot, starting at the heel and brushing lightly all the way to the toes. That alone sent a jolt through Ninomae's whole body. Thinking back on it, she was quite the ticklish type; she had simply forgotten, having had no occasion since childhood to be tickled by someone who truly meant it.
"Hic—hhhnn! S-stop...! Kh—"
After toying with her a few times using only that one finger, Seoyeon forcibly spread the toes that had curled in reflex and tickled lightly beneath them. Each time, Ninomae's body answered violently. She tried to wrench the foot free by force, and thrashed the leg that had not been caught, but she was pinned down at once. There was no world in which a civilian, hardly able to put any strength into her limbs, could win a grapple against an Apostle.
"Hyaak, kh, kuhh...! Wait, khhnn! Hah... just a second—hhnnn?!"
Then Seoyeon raised her nails and began to rake the soft sole with all five fingers, and Ninomae quite literally came undone, twisting at the waist and flopping like a fish hauled from the water.
"Hehk... hih?! Please, hhk, just let me rest a—hahp?!"
Unfortunately, no matter how desperately she struggled, her opponent granted her no mercy. In those sanpaku eyes, so like the usual ones, Ninomae caught the faint color of excitement.
Her breath grew shorter and shorter. Her chest heaved up and down with it, and a dizzy sensation rose all the way to the crown of her head.
"Nnh—Kan..."
"...Huh?"
And at last, Ninomae's endurance reached its limit.
Green Hide
"Ghk—?!"
In the instant she thought she glimpsed a black grimoire at the corner of her vision, Seoyeon's body left the ground. Ninomae, her flesh reinforced by magecraft, had wrung out what strength remained to her and flung her.
"...Miss Ninomae?"
"Uuu..."
Seoyeon turned a half-rotation in midair, landed without harm, and only then looked closely at Ninomae's face.
Ah. Um. I may have gone a little too far.
A mouth trembling with exhaustion from holding an expression that might have been laughter or the verge of tears. Eyes brimming. Saliva that had escaped, trailing down her cheek and along her chin. At the sight, Han Seoyeon felt—if only a little—a pang of guilt...
"......"
...or was about to, when she became aware of the strange pounding in her own chest. Turning over the impulsive thing she had just done, she had the distinct thought that she had gone and opened an entirely new frontier of sadism.
Meanwhile Ninomae whimpered, turned her exhausted body, and buried her face in the sofa. The ear visible through her hair was bright red.
"...Shion, I hate you."
She muttered it in a voice that nearly disappeared. It was cute.
"......"
"Ahem... I—I apologize."
Even so, an apology was in order. This time, even she had to admit she had gone somewhat too far.
"...Actually... I don't hate you. That was a lie."
But what came back was not an answer to the apology. It was a retraction of her own words. Having said so, Mary pressed her face even harder into the sofa—whether because she was worried Seoyeon might have been hurt, or because it bothered her to have said something that did not match her true feelings.
"Kh! Whichever it is, I cannot endure how cute you are...!"
"H-huh?! Cute—what on earth are you—"
Ninomae jerked her head up in alarm... and, finding Han Seoyeon streaming a nosebleed, could not finish the sentence.
"D-did throwing you just now hurt you?"
"No. I simply became too excited."
"Ugh, I worried for nothing and came out the loser! ...Here. A tissue."