160) Chapter 22. Because It’s Summer! (8)
Well, whatever else happened, we really did have fun.
After I smacked Hyeonji in the chest with my face once, she finally blended into the group.
For some reason, Soi and Chae-yi teamed up to attack her, and the thoroughly soaked Hyeonji got angry and splashed them with icy cold seawater.
Then Jinwoo, who had somehow ended up on Hyeonji’s side, splashed water at Soi and Chae-yi too.
And then, when Hyeonji later heard that Jinwoo had buried her face in my chest today, she suddenly switched sides and joined Soi and Chae-yi.
Well, it’s summer.
It’s the ocean.
When you’re splashing around, you eventually forget whose side you’re even on.
After spending the whole morning playing in the water, the girls all looked strangely refreshed.
“Hoo.”
Playing in the water drains an absurd amount of stamina. Even energetic teenage girls, like Golden Retrievers, need a long break after spending the whole morning in the sea.
We sat on the mat under the parasol to catch our breath.
It was almost lunchtime, but we’d played so intensely that putting anything in our stomachs right now felt like it would cause trouble.
“I-I...”
Right then, Jinwoo suddenly jumped to her feet.
Since she had been sitting right in front of me, my eyes were suddenly filled with—well, her backside? The back of her lower body? Anyway, a plump area that you normally don’t get to see filling your entire field of vision.
Jinwoo actually has a surprisingly developed lower body. Not because she works out—she doesn’t have a lot of muscle, but she has some softness, and she’s not fat either. It’s more like her pelvis is naturally wide. And since her overall frame is thin, her waist looks even narrower.
…I mean, I figured it out when I touched her chest, but how has no one else noticed anything from looking at her from behind?
Thankfully, Jinwoo didn’t notice my thoughts at all and turned around to face us.
“I-I’ll be back.”
“Huh? Where?”
“Uh, um.”
Jinwoo hesitated for a moment.
“The bathroom…”
She said it in a tiny, uncertain voice.
I almost burst out laughing.
I mean, if you need to go, you just go—right? But then again, I guess she might feel awkward going into the women’s restroom.
…Of course, that doesn’t mean she’d go into the men’s restroom. She may be a girl dressed as a boy, but she doesn’t think she’s a man.
So what does she normally do?
She holds it.
She holds it until she can go back to the dorm bathroom during lunch break. She barely drinks anything during the day.
She does go when we’re at cafés, but those are usually unisex restrooms, so she doesn’t have to worry.
So she doesn’t have a huge problem with women’s restrooms, but—
“Should I go with you?”
When I asked teasingly, Jinwoo’s face turned bright red. The way she shook her head frantically was kind of funny.
I quietly watched her back as she hurried toward the restroom.
“Rua, you only talk naturally when it’s with Jinwoo.”
“H-huh!?”
I flinched at the sudden comment.
It was Soi.
“When you talk to Jinwoo, you don’t stutter at all. You’re totally natural.”
Soi pouted as she spoke.
“H-huh.”
Is that so?
It’s true. I wasn’t unaware of it.
Well, Jinwoo is easy to deal with.
Sure, Jinwoo is strong. She just doesn’t use that strength much, and she rarely has a reason to. In the original novel, she eventually uses that strength to fight villains.
But that’s not what I mean.
It’s not about strength—it’s about attitude.
For example, imagine—though I would never actually do this—that I suddenly pounced on the girls around me.
Soi and Chae-yi would probably accept it playfully. Hyeonji would probably get serious.
Jinwoo, on the other hand…
She’d probably scream like a herbivore being pounced on by a predator and get pinned down.
…What on earth am I even thinking?
“Uh, um.”
I gathered my thoughts for a moment.
“D-do you not like it?”
I asked.
“No, it’s not that I hate it, just…”
Soi mumbled while glancing around.
Chae-yi gave a wry smile, and Hyeonji tilted her head.
“It’s not like I’m upset.”
She looks upset.
But that’s understandable.
This is technically my fault.
I’ve known Soi for so long, and yet I still stutter around her. Of course she might feel that way.
But the reason I stutter around Soi is just a habit. It’s not because she makes me uncomfortable.
If anything, it’s more like I just find Jinwoo easy to handle.
Not that I dislike Jinwoo or anything.
“S-still, Soi is also… a precious friend.”
I tried to explain somehow, but once I said it, my face flushed instantly.
I mean, friends don’t usually say things like that, right?
Honestly, I don’t know.
The only people I can truly call friends are the girls here.
In my previous life, friends never said things like that to each other, yeah.
“…”
Soi’s face turned red too, and she didn’t say anything.
“Rua, what about me!?”
“Chae-yi too, of course. You’re a precious friend.”
Chae-yi’s face reddened as well.
For someone who demanded an answer, her reaction was extremely honest.
I met Hyeonji’s eyes.
She quietly shook her head.
She is a precious friend, but maybe she doesn’t want to hear that right now.
Honestly, I didn’t have the courage to say it again either, so I simply nodded at her instead.
*
Jinwoo still hadn’t come back, even though quite a bit of time had passed.
We had already decided where to eat lunch, and even picked out the bingsu we were going to have afterward.
It had been about twenty minutes since Jinwoo left.
Maybe the restroom line was long. Especially for girls, even just using the toilet can take a bit more time than guys, so it wasn’t impossible.
I sent her a message on my phone, but she didn’t reply.
“Should we go look for her?”
“What if we miss each other on the way?”
“Then we can just call and tell her to wait. And it’s not like there’s anywhere to miss each other. There’s only one restroom nearby.”
The beach was big, so there were multiple restrooms, but the closest one to us was just one. If she went to a farther one, she’d probably get even more desperate on the way, and besides, the other restrooms were crowded too.
“Should we all go? It’d be weird to leave one or two people behind to wait.”
Hyeonji looked like she was about to say something, but closed her mouth at Soi’s words.
She probably meant to say she’d stay behind and wait.
But really, since we all came together, it was best to move together.
And Soi was right—there was no real chance of missing each other.
Because not long after we stood up and headed toward the restroom, we ran into Jinwoo.
“No, she said she doesn’t want to!”
And next to her, a girl was raising her voice.
“Huh.”
Soi let out a small sound.
The girl was someone we knew.
I called her “someone we knew” because I didn’t know her name.
She was the girl I met halfway through the semester, but never managed to learn her name before the semester ended.
Now she was in a swimsuit, hands on her hips, shoulders squared, yelling at a blond-haired boy.
And strangely enough, I knew the blond-haired boy too.
I didn’t know his name either—not because I forgot, but because I didn’t want to know.
He was the jerk who picked a fight with me on the first day of school, bringing up Hyeonji for no reason.
I looked back.
Soi and Chae-yi already had sparks flying in their eyes. Hyeonji sighed deeply and rubbed her face.
And honestly, I was angry too.
We were having fun, and suddenly someone barges in.
Well, I didn’t mind the girl joining us.
But the guy—
I started walking toward them, annoyed.
“No, I wasn’t asking her to hang out!”
The boy protested.
“I just spoke to her because I thought she looked familiar!”
Hearing his frustrated, desperate tone—
Ah.
I stopped walking.
This… might be dangerous.
“I mean, isn’t that basically hitting on her!?”
The girl shouted proudly, puffing out her chest.
“This is Jiwoo! Not Jinwoo!”
“Uh, um, I, I—”
For the record, Jinwoo’s shoulders were red all the way up to her ears, and she was frozen, unable to say anything.
I looked at Soi and Chae-yi.
For someone who had marched forward ready to explode, it was a rather pathetic reaction.
But somehow…
Honestly, I was scared.
If I said even one wrong thing here, wouldn’t it be over?
A word from the author (A/N):
Thank you for reading today as well!