NOVEL NEXT Chapter 62
Thud.
After finishing my bath, I wiped my hair with the towel hanging on the wall and flung the bathroom door wide open.
I planned to get dressed properly before Amy and Friede woke up.
But then…
“Oh.”
“Uh, e, a, u, Hilde? Have you… woken up?”
Waiting for me, who stepped out of the bathroom with my body completely exposed, were the startled faces of Amy and Friede, who had already put on their clothes.
“Uh… So, you’re awake…?”
I instinctively spread the towel to cover my body and awkwardly laughed.
It was a short towel, so despite my efforts to cover up, half of my chest and the tip of my groin were blatantly exposed.
“Ahaha…”
Heat rushed to my face.
Biologically, since we were the same gender, I understood that I didn’t have to be embarrassed… but you know how feelings are, they don’t split so clearly.
If I had mentally prepared myself like I was entering a public bathhouse, it would have been different, but suddenly exposing myself like this was just too much for me to handle.
Of course, saying I was okay with public baths was just a metaphor; I had never actually set foot in one.
In such places, you inevitably have to lower your face due to a little thing like my conscience and shame.
The public baths in this world are mostly mixed-gender. I wasn’t thick-skinned enough to confidently walk in and bathe as if it were nothing.
…Okay, I’m rambling a bit.
To sum it up, this situation was simply too embarrassing and shameful for me to endure.
“Um… let’s put on clothes! Clothes first!”
“Ah, ugh, right! We should do that!”
I barely managed to respond with a dazed expression and scurried over to the wardrobe to immediately pull out new underwear.
After quickly covering my important parts, I took out a new set of pants and a shirt.
“Phew…”
Finally, my chest felt somewhat calmer.
◆◆
After properly dressing in everyday clothes, I placed the damp towel on the table and rubbed my hair with it while sitting on the chair next to the bed.
“Ahem.”
I glanced at Amy and Friede, who were sitting demurely on the edge of the bed, and coughed awkwardly with embarrassment.
“Phew…”
“Um…”
Friede turned her gaze away, her cheeks turning bright red, as if recalling the earlier scene, while Amy lightly closed her eyes, deep in thought.
“Phew…”
I placed the drenched towel on the table and shook my head lightly to tidy up my hair, letting out a light sigh.
I felt a bit stifled. No, it was more like bloated? It felt like my throat was clogged.
“Hey… can I ask, uh, something?”
Finally, the moment had come to ask what had happened last night. I didn’t genuinely want to, but it had to be done.
“…What the heck happened last night?”
So, I opened my mouth.
Praying desperately that I wouldn’t hear anything like “It was a hot night!” or “It was my first time!”
Cough…!
Friede, who had been avoiding my gaze, stiffened her shoulders and coughed awkwardly.
“…Do you really have to know?”
Amy looked at me as if to gauge if I could handle it.
‘…What’s with this reaction?’
A horrific feeling crept into my mind that my prayers had been betrayed.
‘No way, no way…!’
A chill climbed up from my toes, freezing my entire body, as if I were gripped by an ice-cold hand, and my pale face stiffened, my lips quivering.
“Ah, no… right? It wasn’t like that?”
I expressed my desperate emotions, wishing that whatever had happened was something that had no significance.
But reality was cruel.
“…You’re responsible. I’m never getting married now.”
Amy said, raising her hands to gently rest on her chest, whispering with a bright red face.
“Me too! I mean, it was my first time! Please take responsibility…!”
Friede also chirped in with a flushed face while rubbing her thighs together.
I was totally at a loss for words.
Responsibility. Marriage. First time. Responsibility.
These words weighed so heavy on me, spinning in my mind like a whirlpool of shock.
Words that I couldn’t think of in any other context. A reality I couldn’t escape from, hitting my mind like a hammer.
I messed up.
Had I completely lost my composure due to alcohol? I couldn’t even remember, but I had spent the whole night engulfed in passionate ecstasy.
With minors, both in paperwork and appearance.
I… did I touch them?
Both at the same time? Under the influence of heavy drinking?
An unbearable, shocking reality.
“Ah, aaah, uuuaaa…!”
My mind went blank in an instant, and strange groans slipped out of my open mouth.
It felt like my soul, detached from my body, was plummeting into an abyss.
Like a dagger lodged in the back of my head, my eyes rolled back, and my consciousness scattered like fog in a storm.
“AAAAAAAH…!”
I fainted right then and there.
“Wha, what!? Hilde!? Hold on, come to your senses…!”
“Hilde?! I’m just joking, just joking!”
Through the buzzing in my ears, I felt the frantic voices of the two drift past me.
My hearing was almost gone, so I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
◆◆
Forty minutes later.
I finally woke up, laying neatly on the bed.
“What… was it a dream…?”
My voice was weak and exhausted, more like a groan than speech.
Like a terminally ill patient whose last leaf had fallen, I closed my eyes and gently placed my trembling hand over my brow.
Right, it was all a dream.
Being almost naked, finding Amy and Friede in my bed, the shocking story I had heard after bathing—it was all a nightmare. If I thought about it carefully, it was obvious. There was no way I could do such things.
Really, what a bizarre dream. Could it have been the fatigue piling up from all the fighting? Or was it from the alcohol?
Right, I need to cut back on drinking…
“Hilde! Have you woken up! Thank goodness, thank goodness!”
My escape from reality came to an end there.
As I removed my hand from my eyes at the voice that pierced my ears, I was met with the worried faces of Amy and Friede looking down at me.
Both of them were dressed just as they had been in the ‘nightmare’.
…So it wasn’t a dream. Oh hell.
“Should I just… sleep forever…”
“Not a chance!”
As I tried to say that and close my eyes again, Friede quickly grabbed my shoulder and shook me frantically.
“I was joking! A joke! Nothing happened! Nothing happened, I swear!”
Delivering stories that were hard to believe.
“…Joke?”
A joke…?
What does that even mean?
…So you’re saying nothing happened?
The moment my foggy mind grasped the meaning of those words, my consciousness quickly cleared, and my half-closed eyes sprang wide open.
“It was a joke?!”
I shot up, shouting that out.
Wham!
My forehead collided forcefully into Friede’s head.
“Eek!”
With a startling shock that felt like fireworks in my eyes, Friede, hit on the forehead, let out a scream reminiscent of a kicked chick and tumbled out from under the bed.
“Gyaaaaaah?!”
Startled, Amy flinched and, in her haste to dodge, lost balance because of Friede’s arm, and the two girls rolled across the floor of the inn with thud-thud-thud sounds.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch…”
I clutched my burning forehead, glaring at the two girls.
Even if I hadn’t butted heads, I would have been holding my forehead for sure.
◆◆
A little later.
After untangling their limbs, Amy and Friede explained the entire situation regarding what had happened last night.
The things they said about having a “hot night” and saying I should take responsibility were all just jokes.
In reality, they had helped me to my room while I was swaying from drunkenness and laid me on the bed. I, feeling hot, started throwing off my clothes, and in their flustered state, they’d collapsed onto the bed trying to stop me.
After that, they themselves had fallen asleep, unable to withstand the intoxication any longer.
As for the talk about responsibility, it was something they had planned while I had gone for a wash, a prank between the two of them.
Amy suggested it, and Friede hesitated for a moment but eventually agreed to it after being persuaded.
They thought it would be amusing to see my blank expression.
…I was so taken aback, it was unreal.
“No, there are jokes you can make and jokes you can’t!”
I had both of them kneeling on the floor beneath the bed, lecturing them with a face full of rage.
There’s a line even in jokes, and making a joke that crosses that line is not okay.
“Got it? No matter how close we are, there’s a line we need to keep—so, manners—you’re both two years younger than me—I’ve been too casual with you—how surprised I was—”
Thirty minutes later.
“Hey… um, Hilde? We know we messed up, can’t you let this go? You’ve been repeating the same thing for thirty minutes now…”
Unable to handle my pressure, Amy raised her arms, trembling, and begged for mercy.
“What? Is this boring for you? Keep listening. This is a lesson and advice from your elder.”
Of course, I flatly rejected her plea. I had become a ruthless judge worthy of applause even from the devils of hell.
Compared to the shock I felt, a tingling sensation in my arms and knees was nothing.
“I’m the same age…”
“Your behavior is exactly the same!”
As Friede meekly protested, her face flushed, she quickly sealed her lips.
I would keep going until I got permission to lower my hands, even if it took another hour.
Honestly, I wanted to keep lecturing them for another two hours like this, but my stomach was starting to grumble, so I decided to let it slide this time only.
Really, what kind of joke was that?
I thought my heart was going to drop.