126) Chapter 19. M-Me Too……! (4)

Actually, taking Jinwoo somewhere to hang out wasn’t that huge of a deal.

We’d already gone out together before, hadn’t we? The amusement park.

It was just that, unlike back then, this time there was a slightly different plan.

“U-Um, Rua?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“H-Here, isn’t this your house?”

“It is. So?”

“N-No, um, I was just wondering if it’s really okay for me to come in.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s home.”

Auntie Yujin and Uncle Dohyun often rested on weekends too. Basic public safety was handled by the police, and the two of them only got dispatched when villains too overwhelming to handle appeared.

And it wasn’t like they were the only heroes in the country either.

Still, even so, there were often weekends when they weren’t home. Aside from villains appearing, they also had something like duty shifts.

“No, but why are you worried about whether nobody’s home? I’m just bringing a friend over.”

“Exactly.”

Soi chimed in.

Though her gaze felt a little dangerous somehow. Or maybe it was that her eyes looked narrowed.

Had she worn this expression when Hyeonji first came over too?

“In the first place, we’re all girls here, so what’s the problem?”

“N-No, that’s true, but…… I’m worried someone might misunderstand…….”

“Misunderstand?”

“I-If someone sees.”

“Everyone already knows we hang out together anyway.”

Jinwoo lost her words for a moment at Soi’s rebuttal.

“B-But going into your house together is kind of, how do I put it.”

“Ah, right. You’re worried people will say we brought a boy home and let him sleep over?”

Soi snorted.

“If that’s what you’re worried about, there’s no problem.”

“N-No problem?”

“My mom and dad are the only heroes in this neighborhood. Even if someone saw us, they wouldn’t go spreading rumors or anything.”

That’s right.

Rather than just being a wealthy neighborhood…… the houses were individual homes, but they were managed more like apartment complexes.

There was an actual guard post at the entrance leading into the neighborhood, and I knew patrols happened regularly too.

Even when I quit school, reporters never came all the way into this neighborhood to take pictures of me or anything.

More importantly, people honestly weren’t all that interested in heroes’ private lives. They were popular, yes, but compared to celebrities, they were closer to public officials. Or maybe somewhere in between.

Public officials at least had their family relationships exposed during election season, but heroes didn’t really even have that.

In my case, it was only because the incident itself had been so huge, combined with Auntie Yujin being famous, that things blew up the way they did.

“And we’ve thought this through too, okay? So just come inside already.”

“Ah, ahh?”

That’s right.

Because if we actually brought home a real “boy,” Auntie Yujin and Uncle Dohyun would absolutely lose their minds too.

We had prepared for that possibility too, after all.

“Come on, here.”

“Ah, ahh, e-excuse me for intruding…….”

“I already told you nobody’s home.”

When I grabbed Jinwoo’s wrist and pulled her inside, she moved stiffly, like her body had completely frozen up.

Without even bothering to sit her down in the living room, I just headed straight toward the room—

“W-W-W-Wait a second!”

—and while trying to bring her in, Jinwoo raised her voice unusually loudly.

When we stopped and turned around, Jinwoo was trembling with her face bright red.

“Why?”

“N-No, um, it’s just, this is my first time coming to a friend’s house.”

“……So?”

“A-And, entering a friend’s room is kind of, um, too fast, maybe.”

“Eh?”

I momentarily lost my words.

Actually, Soi, Chae-yi, and Hyeonji all lost their words too.

We all stood there blankly for a moment before looking back at Jinwoo.

“Then when you go to a friend’s house, if you don’t go into their room, where do you go?”

“Huh?”

Jinwoo stared blankly at my question.

“Do you just stay in the living room? Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“W-Weird?”

“It’s weird.”

Jinwoo blinked.

She stood there with her mouth slightly open for a moment before finally slowly nodding.

“Ah, y-yeah. I-I see…….”

Wait, was she like this in the original story too?

…….

Ah, I think she actually was.

I think there were descriptions saying she didn’t really have many friends. Though there weren’t any detailed depictions of her past. At first, some readers even speculated that Jinwoo had been bullied before.

And there definitely were descriptions about her freezing up awkwardly every time she was alone with a girl.

So I guess this part was accurate to the original too. It was just that because the story was written in first person, we never really knew how Nam Jinwoo looked from the outside.

I think every time that happened, the heroines would make a huge fuss about how cute she was.

She was cute though. Now that I thought of her as a girl.

Right, because I was thinking of her as a girl.

“……Let’s make one thing absolutely clear.”

At this point, I suddenly felt weirdly anxious again, so I decided to confirm it one more time.

“You really are a girl, right?”

No matter what, it still felt strange for someone to panic this much just from entering another girl’s room.

“Ah, ah, yeah. I am. I’m a girl.”

She answered reflexively, then her face turned red again.

“You’re sure, right? You’re not lying?”

“Yeah. I am.”

Only after asking one more time did I finally feel reassured.

“Then…… um, technically this is Soi’s room, but we use it together anyway…….”

“That’s right. It’s ‘me and Rua’s room.’”

Soi proudly straightened her shoulders as she spoke, and Chae-yi clicked her tongue.

……Was that really something worth clicking your tongue over?

Anyway, I grabbed Jinwoo’s wrist and pulled her into the room.

“Wo, o-oh.”

Jinwoo looked around the room after entering.

“What are you doing, acting like some kind of pervert?”

“Ah, ah, sorry…….”

At Soi’s scolding, Jinwoo immediately shrank in on herself.

“……Well, if it’s your first time entering a friend’s room, I guess that can happen.”

I scratched my head and immediately walked over to my wardrobe.

……Though technically this was Soi’s wardrobe too.

At first, I still changed clothes in my own room at least.

But little by little, as I started doing everything in Soi’s room, even my old clothes naturally ended up mixed into the wardrobe there too.

“Ah, found it.”

What I pulled out after digging through the wardrobe and drawers were clothes I used to wear several years ago.

Both Soi and I had continued growing throughout middle school. We weren’t hugely different from now. Slightly taller, slightly heavier, maybe.

So while the old clothes were a little tight now, it wasn’t impossible to wear them.

“Here.”

“Huh?”

Jinwoo looked startled when I handed her the clothes.

“You’re going to wear these.”

“Huh? Huh?”

“You don’t want to? Too bad, you don’t have a choice. We said we were going out today, didn’t we?”

“Huh? Huh? Huh?”

“Anyway, change clothes. ……You didn’t bring any underwear for the top, right? Then…… just keep the bandages on for now. We’ll think about that part later.”

“Huhhh!?”

Leaving behind a Jinwoo whose language function had completely broken down, Soi, Chae-yi, Hyeonji, and I all flooded out of the room together.

Thunk.

And then we closed the door.

“I’m opening it again in ten minutes.”

And I spoke toward the other side of the door.

Well, ten minutes should be enough time to change clothes.

*

*

*

Nam Jinwoo stood frozen for three whole minutes while holding the clothes.

Wear these? Rua’s clothes? Right now? Me?

For reference, the clothes were obviously girls’ clothes no matter who looked at them. If they had been pants, maybe they could’ve looked somewhat gender-neutral, but instead it was a fairly short skirt. Though not as short as the school uniform skirt Rua was currently wearing.

Gulp.

Without realizing it, she swallowed.

She had already been called a pervert by Soi earlier.

But no matter how she thought about it, there was no way she could stop herself from being conscious of this.

She barely regained her senses.

They said ten minutes. Three minutes had already passed.

If she wasted time carelessly, she might end up showing herself half-undressed instead.

“…….”

She quickly lowered her head to look at the clothes.

Then froze again for a moment.

R-Rua’s clothes.

Then that means…….

No, no. No matter what, burying her nose in them and smelling them would be too much. Though Rua probably wouldn’t know.

And they weren’t clothes Rua had worn yesterday anyway, so there was no way they would smell like her.

Had she thought she regained her reason when actually it had already completely flown away?

After hesitating briefly, Jinwoo first set the clothes down on the nearby bed (isthisRua’sbedthenshedsleepsherealso), then slowly took off her clothes.

When she removed her school shirt, her somewhat slender body was revealed.

Bandages wrapped tightly around her chest several times over.

Maybe the reason her face kept flushing and her breathing kept becoming strained was because of the bandages. Her figure wasn’t as incredible as Rua’s, but there was nothing she could do about that. Honestly, if she had a figure as incredible as Rua’s (softwarmsoftsquishywarmwanttokeepburyingmyfaceinitforever), then wrapping bandages around it would’ve been meaningless in the first place.

At least beneath her pants, she wore normal underwear. ……The kind girls would plausibly wear.

“Hoo…….”

Jinwoo picked up the skirt (keepwantingtoburymyfaceinit).

She wrapped the skirt around her waist.

For some reason, her overheated body reacted sensitively to the fabric touching her skin, making her flinch and tremble repeatedly.

Slowly, she zipped up the skirt. Her movements felt awkward. She still remembered how to wear it, but it had been far too long since she last had.

The waist was slightly loose. Still, it caught on her hips, so it didn’t slide down.

She picked up the shirt (itwasn’twornyesterdaybutitstillsomehowfeelstlikeitsmellsgood) and put it on. This time there was far too much room around the chest, which made her feel miserable, but somehow it also felt soft and comforting, like being loosely embraced—

“Hup.”

She barely managed to cling onto her sanity.

Once she tucked the hem of the shirt into the skirt, the slightly loose skirt seemed to stay in place a bit better too—

Bang.

“Hwub!?”

The door suddenly opening nearly made her bite her tongue.

“……It’s loose.”

Rua said it like she had expected exactly this.

“Ah, uh, ah, uh.”

“Good. Then let’s put some makeup on you and head back out.”

“M-Makeup? Go out? M-Me, me, me go out?”

When the language center of Jinwoo’s brain completely collapsed, Rua let out a deep sigh.

“You can’t keep wearing loose clothes like that forever. Soi’s parents said they’d be home by dinner too.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going to buy clothes. No matter what, it’s kind of weird for a boy to buy clothes at a women’s clothing store and wear them. We’ll buy underwear too while we’re at it.”

“Huhhh?”

Jinwoo felt like she should probably refuse somehow.

But from the moment she entered this house, Nam Jinwoo had never really had any choice to begin with.

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Pub: 17 May 2026 08:16 UTC

Edit: 17 May 2026 08:17 UTC

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