133) Chapter 20. Because I Hate Villains! (2)
Every night without fail, Soi and Chae-yi would cling to me in the same bed, but the way they did it changed a little every day.
It was never exactly the same position. No matter what, they always wrapped my arms around them, but sometimes Soi and Chae-yi’s bodies would end up positioned higher than my face, which made things awkward, while other times they’d practically melt into me as though I were hugging them tightly.
Sometimes they didn’t even bother wrapping my arms around at all and instead just clung to me one-sidedly.
Today was one of those days.
They burrowed in, shoving their heads beneath my armpits and climbing upward until they rested on my shoulders.
Naturally, to stabilize their heads there, they had to tilt their faces slightly downward toward my chest.
When I lay down, gravity caused my breasts to spread slightly to the sides, and as a result, Soi and Chae-yi’s noses naturally ended up pressed right into my chest.
Their bodies also slid slightly downward, and unfortunately their chests ended up touching my somewhat sensitive sides, which felt very…
It was an incredibly embarrassing position, but there was one advantage.
It was a posture where I could tightly hug both of them at the same time.
“……Hey, Rua.”
A mouth moved against the upper part of my chest.
If she was going to talk to me anyway, I wished she’d at least look up at my face. It tickled.
……She’s not doing this on purpose too, right?
But the question that followed was unexpectedly serious enough that I quickly realized it wasn’t a joke.
“You don’t actually dislike us hugging like this, right?”
“Hm? Dislike it? Why?”
The truth is—
I want to be hugged too.
Back when we were kids, it felt so good whenever Soi hugged me. And the reason I always accepted Chae-yi constantly clinging to me and hugging me whenever she wanted was because I liked it too.
Back then, it was fine.
But as Soi and Chae-yi grew older, as they got bigger and became able to pull me tighter into their arms, being hugged started to stir up those childhood memories.
Whenever someone hugged me, my body stiffened, I couldn’t breathe properly, and the memories of being drenched in that blood resurfaced exactly as they had been.
So the only way I can physically connect with these girls is by hugging them instead.
“No, it’s just.”
Soi hesitantly continued speaking.
Her face was buried in my chest, so I couldn’t see her expression.
“I was wondering if maybe always sleeping together like this and sharing the bed might feel uncomfortable for you.”
“Mm…….”
If you asked whether it was uncomfortable, then yes, it was a little uncomfortable. I couldn’t even properly roll over to the side.
But I thought it was worth enduring that discomfort.
“……Earlier, you said it, right? That I’d get lonely without you.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s true.”
It probably was.
Because I’d spent too much time stuck together with Soi.
If we were really separated, there was no way I wouldn’t get lonely.
Maybe that was why just imagining Soi or Chae-yi dating another man instantly made me feel awful.
“Rua, what about me?”
This time, my other breast vibrated.
“What about me?”
“Chae-yi too. We’ve known each other for a long time. I’d probably feel incredibly lonely without Chae-yi too.”
“Heh.”
At my answer, Chae-yi let out a pleased little laugh.
From Soi’s side came a sound that resembled a puppy grumbling. Maybe because she’d been the one to bring it up, only for Chae-yi to immediately snatch the answer for herself.
The two of them squirmed for no reason.
If they hugged me tightly, I’d get scared, so they couldn’t bring themselves to do that. But they still wanted to hold me. So they merely pressed their bodies tightly against mine and wriggled around.
So, since things had already come to this, I tightened both my arms around them.
Soi and Chae-yi’s bodies pressed even more snugly against mine. Maybe because they were wearing soft, thin pajamas for sleeping comfortably, I could feel their warmth even more vividly.
That warmth made my heart feel calm.
And guilty.
Holding someone tightly like this was such a pleasant feeling.
Yet I was the only one allowed to feel it.
But as though this alone was enough for them, the two girls quickly began breathing softly and rhythmically with their faces buried against my chest.
And somehow that only made me feel even guiltier.
So I kept holding the sleeping girls tighter, and for longer than usual.
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Meanwhile, there were two more girls in the same room who couldn’t fall asleep for quite a while.
“…….”
“U-um.”
Jinwoo couldn’t fall asleep because she was too conscious of Hyeonji staring directly at her while lying turned toward her side.
The curtains had been tightly drawn, so it was hard to make out their faces clearly in the room, but not so dark that their silhouettes disappeared entirely.
“D-do you maybe…… h-have something you want to say?”
When Jinwoo asked that while trembling in fear, Hyeonji sank into thought for a moment.
Did she have something to say?
Emotionally speaking, yes. But she wasn’t sure what exactly she should say.
Watching Jinwoo hesitantly ask to hug Rua and even share the same bed simply because they were “friends” had left her with many thoughts.
But she couldn’t properly understand what exactly the feeling she’d experienced while watching that had been.
“Earlier.”
Still, if she let it pass without asking anything, she felt like it would continue bothering her later, so Hyeonji finally opened her mouth.
“What you said to Rua.”
“Ah, uh.”
“Were you serious? Not joking?”
“Uh, the bed?”
“Yeah.”
“U-uh, y-yeah…….”
Jinwoo answered hesitantly.
“How?”
“H-how?”
“How can you ask something like that?”
Jinwoo seemed unable to fully grasp what Hyeonji meant by the question, remaining silent for a while before finally answering:
“I-it’s just because…… I wanted to……?”
“You wanted to?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Even though Soi and Chae-yi are there.”
“S-Soi and Chae-yi are friends too.”
“……And?”
“R-Rua said I was her friend too.”
“…….”
But even among friends, everyone’s sense of distance was different.
Soi was closer to family than a friend, and according to what she’d heard, Chae-yi had known Rua since they were extremely young.
So maybe that was why they could live while constantly hugging each other like that.
No, in the first place, even among very close friends, sharing the same bed like that was—
“Hyeonji, do you dislike it?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Being hugged by Rua. Do you dislike it?”
“…….”
No, she had never once thought she disliked it.
Of course, it felt strange. Somehow it felt different from a brief hug shared out of affection. No matter how she thought about it, deliberately burying her face in someone’s chest and being held like that felt a little… wrong.
But even while thinking that, she still didn’t dislike it. There was that faintly sweet, faintly bitter, slightly salty scent, the gentle softness brushing against her face, the embracing plushness, and the somehow welcoming warmth….
It was ridiculous to think this way about another girl.
Would she feel this way with another girl too? If Soi or Chae-yi hugged her, would it feel like this?
For some reason, Hyeonji thought probably not. Though in the first place, those two would never allow anyone except Rua into their arms anyway.
“I-if you don’t dislike it, then why?”
“What do you mean why? Obviously because…….”
Because?
Because obviously, lewd things weren’t allowed. That kind of thing was improper.
That was what she’d been taught. If there were rules, you had to follow them. And since Soi, Chae-yi, Rua, Hyeonji, and Jinwoo were all still students, they should behave appropriately as students…… that was what she’d believed.
Yet every time Rua smiled and opened her arms, somehow she wanted to ignore all of that, at least for that moment.
Even now, Hyeonji still had absolutely no idea why.
“R-Rua doesn’t think I’m weird.”
“……Weird?”
“I-I dress like a boy. But even so, she didn’t think I was strange and just accepted me as a friend. And because of that, Rua was my first friend ever, so I just wanted to get closer to her, hehe.”
“…….”
The first friend she’d ever made.
I see.
Actually, Hyeonji wasn’t all that different herself. Even in middle school, she’d been very rigid.
Maybe she’d become even more so after what happened to her father. Her father had been injured fighting heroically as a hero. So she’d believed that as his daughter, she also had to follow in his footsteps and become even more heroic, even more righteous.
But the more she avoided all the things teachers said “Don’t do that!” about one by one, the farther away she became from the other kids. She didn’t think they hated her, but there was still enough distance that they wouldn’t contact her separately to hang out.
Ironically, the one person who refused to back down no matter how many walls Hyeonji built was Rua.
At some point, the other kids started saying things like, “Hyeonji doesn’t like this kind of thing, right?” Even when she sometimes wanted to join in, once someone said that, she couldn’t anymore. Because by then, a precedent had already been established.
But Rua, for some reason, kept trying to pull Hyeonji into those embarrassing situations. Instead of saying, “You don’t like this stuff, right?” it was more like, “Want to try it too?”
And somehow that made it harder and harder to refuse, until she got swept along with it, and before she realized it, she was burying her face against Rua’s chest….
“I’m jealous…….”
“Jealous?”
“I-I can’t share the same room with her…….”
“…….”
That statement was absurd.
But at the same time, she felt even more absurd realizing she somehow understood exactly how Jinwoo felt.
“……You could’ve just not hidden your gender in the first place.”
“Y-yeah, true. Hehe. But if I hadn’t…… t-that might’ve caused problems in its own way too…….”
Hyeonji was curious about what she meant by that.
But Jinwoo stopped there and quickly fell asleep.
Listening to the steady sound of her breathing, Hyeonji quietly let out a soft sigh.
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A word from the author (A/N):
Thank you for reading today as well!
=
eternalyg, thank you so much for your support!
Thank you, as always, for reading my writing! Thanks to all of you, I was able to happily write again today! The harem tag has been added, and all the heroines have now appeared, so I’ll do my best to make sure these heroines can continue bickering happily(?) together within Rua’s wide and warm embrace! Maybe because it’s been a long time since I last wrote a harem story, I’ve been having fun the entire time while writing this! Of course, that enjoyment is all thanks to all of you reading my work! If there hadn’t been readers supporting me, I might’ve run out of motivation long before writing this much! So once again, thank you very much! I hope that at least a little of the joy I felt while writing was conveyed to all of you as well! I’ll continue doing my best to write stories for all of you in the future too! Please continue to support me!