Yandere, Pure Love — My Busty, Clingy Menhera Mommy of a Guardian Angel (3)
I thrashed my way out of the dream-haze.
My head spun tight and wild, and the dizziness wouldn't let go. Sleep still had me drunk. I wasn't even in any state to judge whether I ought to wake or not. With no awareness that I needed to wake at all, I only flailed and tossed at the border between the two, as hard as I could.
And then, before I knew it, that senseless feeling had deepened past the point of being unpleasant.
"...!"
Only then did I jolt to my senses.
Three seconds, exactly. For that long I sat there blank and stupid, unable to grasp the situation. It did not take long to realize those three seconds were the only peace I was going to get.
The laughter leaking in through the flimsy window had already vanished. Nothing remained of the world but deep darkness and stars stitched unusually bright, pouring their light down over this place. In the dark and the quiet I was nothing more than an audience waiting for the curtain to rise—or something even less than that—as I struggled to retrace the confusion of everything that had just happened.
"...An angel."
Without question, the first thing to surface was the angel. It surfaced first, and in truth there wasn't anything else particularly worth thinking about.
Angel... angel...
Was she really an angel?
I called up the smile that had already seared itself into my mind as a burning afterimage.
Hee... hebehh—
Mouth split wide, soft tongue lolling out, that laugh scattering a thoroughly harmful kind of goosebumps. If I hadn't seen it—if all I'd seen was the endlessly benevolent smile from before—I wouldn't have had a single objection to her being a real angel.
A woman who had appeared in my room out of nowhere, pouring sex appeal from every inch of her body, throwing a full menhera fit, and shutting me inside her wings. A woman whose face had been pretty and frightening in the way it looked ready to knock back, in one swallow, a Percocet scored in some back alley and two Xanax from a hospital prescription.
Maybe it had been a dream.
...Even thinking that, I found myself looking around anyway. It could be a dream. It could also be real. It had been vivid enough for that. For the record, merely making up my mind to turn my head required me to renew the resolve about five times.
It was too dark to see well, but I didn't turn on the light. If I actually meant to find something, turning on the light would obviously have been the more rational choice. I didn't do it. Because, deep down, I was afraid. Afraid she might be there.
Of course it wasn't that I disliked her.
I'm pretty, aren't I?
A cute little emoticon popped into my head unbidden. Right. She was insanely pretty... so I absolutely did not dislike her. It was just... being shut inside a pair of wings at first meeting, my mind going hazy in an instant because I'd gotten drunk on some scent. That kind of experience... definitely hadn't been pleasant. So for the time being I decided to be wary. Just a little. Only a little. We could at least manage a conversation.
And so, still inside that dark field of vision, I tried to find her.
...Should I just turn on the light?
That inner voice kept creeping back to echo in my ear. I knew perfectly well this was a futile thing to do. Turning the light off wouldn't make an angel who was there disappear, and turning it on wouldn't summon an angel who wasn't. ...Even so, I didn't turn it on. I only waited for my eyes to grow used to the dark.
A little time passed. Bit by bit my eyes adapted, until the pitch-black backdrop at least took on the outline of a deep navy. Tense all over again, I looked first around the bed.
"...."
The spot beside where I had just been lying. Then the lower left of the bed, the middle, the right once more. I searched every corner my eyes could reach, and she was nowhere in sight.
Where I lived was a studio apartment. A low-ceilinged studio in a multi-family building, at that. It was roomier and nicer than I'd expected, but it was still only a studio. Sweeping a space this small in an instant wasn't difficult, and noticing anything different in it was even less so. So the result of chasing every corner with my eyes was—
Just my ordinary room, with the dark settled over it.
That was the result. Not so much as the first letter of angel. Not even a single feather from those pure-white wings.
"Ha... figures."
Had it been a dream? ...It didn't make sense otherwise. Only then did the sense of reality that had vanished seem to find its place again. Right. Think of it that way, and every piece of the situation clicked into place. I had fallen asleep in the middle of character chat. It had only been a dream. I'd been so tired and so depressed that even falling asleep itself hadn't stayed in my memory.
It fit. It was even quite rational, quite clean. ...It fit. It fit. That was how it was supposed to be.
So why. Why was something inside me ringing the alarm like a mad thing, insisting it absolutely could not have been just a dream? Longing for that fatally attractive face of hers?
"...Pfft."
No.
"..."
...If I'm being honest. It had been too real. Enormously, staggeringly vivid. So vivid I simply could not believe it was a dream. And there was one more thing I had to think about, seriously.
Even in an ordinary dream—do you feel, down to the last detail, that whole sequence, smell and touch included, even the process of your mind going hazy? If the answer was no, then what were all those perfectly clear sensations sitting in my memory?
A soft citrus still circled in my nose—mandarin, lime, that whole family—the same warm scent that had drifted off her. The chest that had pressed against me, hot and flush, still made that spot burn just from remembering it. No matter how I looked at it, something was wrong.
"Nnngh..."
"Hoo..."
I laid a hand over my chest to soothe the confusion and breathed out. With the slow settling of my chest, the dizziness inside seemed at last to drain outward. Of course the dizziness immediately burrowed back into the empty space, as if to ask when it had ever left.
"..."
But the truth was, there was something more important right now than arguing over whether this situation was reality or a dream.
Wait. There's something more important than doubting whether what I just went through was a dream or real?
Yeah. There was.
...
...I had to pee.
I pushed myself up from where I'd been perched on the edge of the bed.
"Ngh... hup."
The moment I got up, the urge that had been simmering since earlier grew even stronger. I had to get to the bathroom. Fast. So I tried to take a step on my newly risen legs.
"...!"
Thud.
Huh. My body lurched. With no warning whatsoever. I didn't even make three steps. Thank god this was a studio. If it hadn't been, I would have pitched straight down onto the floor. Startled as I was, I still managed a burst of reflex and caught the wall.
"Ngh..."
...My arm struck the cold wall hard enough to hurt. ...And from the impact, I nearly leaked. I swear I didn't. I really didn't.
Trying to calm my startled heart, I stayed leaned against the wall like that for a moment. The wall under my arm was quite cold, and soon that cold spread through my whole body in an instant. But the sensation of my entire body going chill was not simply the physical temperature of the wall.
That stagger just now. A feeling far too familiar, and sickeningly so. It was similar to the way my legs had given out on their own under her scent. No—because it was the same, I couldn't help the goosebumps that rose.
"...What..."
If I had woken from a dream, that staggering sensation should by all rights have been gone. But... if it was happening now. Don't tell me it hadn't been a dream...?!
I jolted and, still slanted against the wall, looked around. But just as a moment ago, I couldn't find a thing.
"...What the hell is going on."
I flinched. ...A little fear, and, set off by it, a need to pee I could no longer hold.
"First... q-quick..."
Muttering desperately to myself, I braced on the wall and got up. And I thought. Why had I collapsed all of a sudden? Was she still beside me? No—I'd looked everywhere, and she hadn't been there. ...Or, supposing it really had been a dream. Dreams often reflect the state of reality, don't they.
Maybe I was just that drained, out here in real life.
I'm staggering even now, so was a dream like that only natural?
Hm. It's a holiday. Instead of doing something stupid like dumping all my money into character chat, I ought to order myself something good to eat later—thinking that, I made my way toward the bathroom.
When I opened the bathroom door, the first thing I felt was air laced with a damp, faintly fishy smell of water. The moment fresh air riding in through the vent settled into my lungs, the dizziness that had been tormenting me since earlier seemed to ease a little. And... the citrus-family scent that had kept lingering in my nose seemed to be slowly draining away as well.
"Hnnn..."
So, making a mockery of how desperately I'd needed to pee, I stopped for a moment and breathed in the fresh air drifting from the bathroom.
But. The more I did, the more something—
"This is weird."
An ominous intuition began, slowly, to swallow me. What reason did my nose have to smell like citrus right now? It was Chuseok, the great harvest holiday, and I hadn't suddenly eaten some foreign dish soaked in lemon, and it was still too early to haul a crate of tangerines into the apartment. The perfume I used on my bedding and the freshener in the bathroom were both a long way from that family of scents.
And I didn't know why. Why... every time I breathed the fresh air, the consciousness that had gone dizzy in the dream from the citrus drifting off her was, little by little... clearing...
"...!"
The instant that fresh air let my reason understand that this situation was perfectly, completely wrong, I felt my whole body lock. Slowly. Very slowly. I lifted my staggering head and looked at the bathroom mirror I hadn't been conscious of until now.
"Kyaa...!?!!"
"...Hehe. How cute."
Two hands resting on my shoulders, and above them two enormous... mounds. And above those, a yellow bob and yellow eyes. Making a mockery of how desperately I had convinced myself, up to this very moment, that it was a dream, the angel was there.
Azael. She had set her hands lightly on my shoulders and followed me by floating, tucked the whole time into my blind spot. But... the real problem was something else.
A little leak.
"...!"
From the shock—truly, pitifully—I released what is ordinarily recognized as yellow. A waste product that every human being must, as a matter of course, expel, which is not strange in the least and is, if anything, perfectly natural. ...I had pissed myself.
"......."
Shaaaa—
Water poured from the showerhead in a rush. ...I had no idea why that sound displeased me so much.
Fuck. Seriously. Ah... Fuck....
I don't like swearing. Right now I couldn't help it. Tears welled and leaked out in little spurts, drop by drop.
"...M-Mother... understands... Truly... truly, I'm sorry."
Crouched in front of my knees like a rabbit, diligently bobbing her head back and forth—Azael. From the description alone it might sound strange, but she was only holding the showerhead and carefully rinsing my crotch with water, and I had both hands on my T-shirt, lifting it just a little above my waist. The picture of a mother washing a little child who had made a mistake... except that was only a scene I had read in old classic literature, and I had never had parents, so an experience like this was endlessly unfamiliar.
And so it was twice as humiliating. Seriously, kill me, somebody save me. A few more tears seeped out. I felt my fingers, clenched in the hem of the shirt, tighten a little more. Had a cotton T-shirt ever been that heavy? My shoulders were trembling. Really, truly trembling. ...To be cold about it, of course it wasn't the shirt. I was just... so fucking mortified.
I'd pissed myself from the shock, and the moment a trickle of yellow dripped from my pants, even the angel's bewitching smile had gone awkward, and now here I was, held up by her and having the mess washed off me. ...If this situation wasn't mortifying, then from that point on I would have stopped being human.
"...Nngh..."
The sound left my mouth on its own. Azael's reddened ears gave a little twitch, but she seemed not to want to make this any harder on me, and only went on rinsing me in silence. The touch, too... was a touch with nothing but the intent to wash me, a long way from anything lewd. ...The corner of her mouth, when I looked, was trembling past the point of endurance. But the effort was so valiant that I decided to let it slide.
I turned my head from the crown of Azael's head, which I had been staring at all this time, and tried to sneak glances at the mirror. Obviously I was not the sort of hero who, in a situation like this, could manage to look into a mirror on purpose. But her face had a talent for calling up even courage I didn't have. Looks that drew the eye even now—they had to be a gift from God. ...She was an angel, so was that not a metaphor? Had God actually sent her down?
No. What was I saying. I tried to take it calmly, and of course the rejection rose anyway.
Click.
Having washed me with great care, she set her hand to the shower valve and shut it off.
"Come along, now."
Somehow she knew where it was. She took the towel that had been folded neatly on the shelf and held it out to me. I had been sure she would throw a fit about drying me herself.
...She really was an icon of benevolence, wasn't she. An angel. Of course, looking at the things she had shown me... there was some distance between her and the word benevolent. ...It was true she had confined me and made that strange scent bloom. But it was also true that I had put a few steps of distance between us.
...Once I finished gaslighting myself along those lines, she somehow seemed praiseworthy. As for scaring me into wetting myself... she had apologized over and over, so for now I decided to set that aside. For now, it was reward time. And the reward I could give her, for being like that...
"...P-please dry me."
Not taking the towel. Only saying it to her, shyly. ...This was mutual aid, wasn't it. Two birds with one stone. We both wanted it, so refusing would just make me the fool. ...Right. The truth was, I had liked those soft, delicate hands of hers from the moment she took the showerhead and started washing me.
I curled in on myself, embarrassed at having said it. But—
"...Truly...?!"
The instant I saw her smile brighten, I could relax.
"...Of course."
At my answer, she flushed with joy and worked her lips, overcome. ...Cute. She was such a baby about it—surely it was all right to call her cute?
Separate from the negative feelings I'd had, I wanted to talk to her. I had made up my mind.