City of Witches Chapter 164

Sharon, who had said she'd just change her clothes and be right out, emerged into the living room only after about ten minutes had passed.

“I didn't make you wait too long, did I?”

“No. Just grab us some beers. I already popped the popcorn.”

“Okay!”

Microwave popcorn bought for 2,000 won at the convenience store and cold canned beer.

Watching a movie with the AC cranked up and a blanket over your lap was nothing short of paradise.

And watching a movie with a pretty female friend like Sharon...

“Woo-hoo!”

Sharon placed the popcorn and beer on the armrest and plopped down onto the sofa, leaning back.

Naturally, the distance between them was close.

They sat so close that the smooth thighs revealed beneath her dolphin shorts were touching.

“Let me have some beer.”

“Here.”

Even though it was summer, the AC was so cool that sitting close wasn't sticky or uncomfortable. At first, it was a bit nerve-wracking, but now it felt natural.

As Siwoo leaned toward Sharon to take the beer, reaching out his arm, he noticed something.

“.........?”

Sharon preferred the combination of dolphin shorts and a tank top as loungewear.

The combination of Sharon, who had a surprisingly full bust for her slender waist, and a braless tank top had consistently delivered a culturally shocking impact to Siwoo.

After all, with every slight movement Sharon made, the shifting shape of her chest and the distinctly protruding nipples were almost unfiltered in their visibility.

While he'd gotten used to everything else, that particular aspect was hard to accept, so he'd been managing by averting his gaze appropriately.

Siwoo wasn't the type with a bold enough personality to outright say, 'That's a bit indecent, so please wear a bra at home!'...

But today, Sharon was suddenly wearing a black bra under her black tank top.

She probably matched the color of the straps.

Instead of the prominently protruding nipples asserting their presence, bra cups now occupied that space.

“What?”

“Oh, it's nothing.”

Noticing Siwoo's hesitation, Sharon asked.

But here was the problem.

In Sharon's somewhat shy question, there was a clear sense that she was conscious of Siwoo's reaction.

After all, she fidgeted her hips and brushed down her own arm for no reason.

“........Hmm.”

“Hmm.....”

Siwoo cleared his burning throat with beer and straightened his posture.

Why did she start wearing a bra now?

Had he been glancing too much while trying to avoid looking?

Three parts of him felt relieved that the awkward spot he'd been conscious of had disappeared without him having to make an uncomfortable request.

Seven parts of him felt uneasy with the question, 'Why did Sharon suddenly...?'

“....Um, I thought you might be a bit bothered by it, so that's why.”

“Huh?”

“That... the underwear thing. I haven't been wearing one until now, but I suddenly am. I was worried you might think differently.”

Sharon stole a glance at Siwoo's reaction, then averted her mint-colored eyes slightly as she spoke.

Since Siwoo was also the type who couldn't hide his expressions and emotions well, it showed immediately.

“Oh, right.”

After Siwoo's brief reply ended the conversation, only the dry sound of sipping beer was heard for a while.

What was this suffocating awkwardness?

It felt like he should say something, but he didn't know what to bring up.

Fortunately, Sharon broke the ice first.

“So, what movie are we watching today?”

“Haven't picked one yet. I'm not really good at this.”

“Then let's just pick something random. I don't mind anything.”

“Shall we?”

Click, click. He pressed the remote and randomly selected a movie.

Originally, he intended to pick a war movie or a suspense, but in his haste, he ended up choosing a genre he hadn't planned on at all.

It was a romantic comedy he'd never heard of and didn't seem like a particularly acclaimed masterpiece.

Siwoo and Sharon began watching the movie, munching on popcorn with a crunch, crunch.

“........”

“........”

Within less than 15 minutes of the movie starting, Siwoo had an intuition.

You know how sometimes when you watch a movie, you get that feeling?

That intuition where just from the early scenes and the flow of the plot, you can tell whether it'll be boring or interesting.

According to his initial assessment, Siwoo's choice was a complete failure.

The actors were terrible, and even the event that entangled the male and female leads was utterly contrived.

From this point on, it seemed like it would be a struggle to hold back yawns.

Of course, Sharon was watching the screen with wide, sparkling eyes, completely unaffected.

“Siwoo.”

“Yeah?”

Despite being billed as a romantic comedy, a lingering kiss scene appeared just 15 minutes in.

Watching it, Siwoo abandoned any remaining expectations.

Sharon, who had been watching the male and female lead cling to each other and kiss stickily at a graduation party, suddenly called Siwoo.

When he turned just his gaze to look beside him, Sharon was also looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

With only the screen's light in the otherwise dark room, it might have been his imagination, but her face seemed a bit flushed.

“Have you ever kissed someone?”

“Suddenly?”

He scratched his head at Sharon's abrupt question.

Even though Siwoo now prided himself on understanding the female mind to some extent, it was hard to grasp the intention behind Sharon—of all people—asking such a question at this timing.

Because what he had confirmed during his time living with Sharon was simply: 'Ah! Sharon has no interest in male-female relationships and doesn't even see me as a man!'

If so, it must be out of curiosity.

As if to prove that assumption, Sharon followed up.

“I've seen main characters kiss a ton in movies until now, but I just got curious. I thought I'd ask if you happened to be experienced.”

Experienced, huh...

Just counting the people he could remember, there were four.

Amelia, Odil, Odette, Yebin.

He suddenly felt a sense that maybe his life in Gehenna had been more fortunate than he'd thought.

“I have.”

“I thought so...”

Sharon's voice sounded somewhat dejected for some reason.

“What do you mean, 'thought so'?”

“It's just, you seem pretty nonchalant even when watching kiss scenes.”

It didn't seem like Sharon had been watching with clenched fists and sparkling eyes either.

Anyway, the important thing was why she brought this up.

“Oh, right. So what I wanted to ask is.”

“Yeah.”

“When do you kiss? Is it just like in the movies?”

“Just like in the movies?”

Sharon had also seen and heard things by now.

But her frame of reference was still ambiguous.In movies, protagonists share a kiss against a romantic BGM when they reunite with an ex-lover after a long time, confess their love, or when love is finally realized.

"A kiss is something between two people, right? When you watch movies, the two people almost start kissing simultaneously. Is it because they feel like 'This is it!' at the same moment? Or is there some socially agreed-upon thing?"

But does a kiss only happen during such 'important moments'?

That wasn't the case either.

Upon waking up in the morning, right after meeting, while eating, before going to sleep, etc.

Once characters are classified as lovers, they suck and bite each other's tongues in all sorts of everyday situations.

"Hmm..."

The conversation had started, leaving the movie behind at some point.

Siwoo thought Sharon's question was similar to the Twins'.

A curiosity emerging from a blank slate.

Should it be described as an attempt to classify and categorize problems arising from emotions into the realm of reason?

"How was it for you?"

"Me?"

Excluding the first kiss, which was more like Odil pouncing on him, the kiss with Odette was also a binding kiss stemming from the Mysterious Potion of love.

That leaves Amelia and Yebin.

In Amelia's case, he hugged her while she was crying and apologizing, and without realizing it, their lips met. When he kissed Yebin, it was at her request, "Shall we kiss before sex?"

"Hmm..."

Among those, only one case fit Sharon's question.

The kiss with Amelia.

His chest stung for no reason.

Forcing himself to ignore what was bothering him, he thought only of that moment.

But thinking about it, it was hard to pinpoint.

It's not difficult to recognize a bouquet of flowers as 'a bouquet of flowers,' but if asked, 'From how many flowers does it become a bouquet?' the answer becomes ambiguous.

"It's hard. How should I put it... I just felt like doing it."

"What did you feel?"

Moreover, the conversation topic was really...

Should he say it's embarrassing to be having this kind of conversation while watching a romance movie?

No matter how unconcerned Sharon was, Siwoo felt quite awkward.

"My heart beats."

"Your heart? You mean it goes thump-thump?"

"Yeah."

Sharon's eyes widened as she spoke.

She looked as if she had received a huge shock.

"After that, should I say it's like just seeing lips magnified? The thought of wanting to kiss first comes, and then you just try it."

"Try? What about the other person's intention?"

"Well, from that part on, I'm not sure either. Thinking back, I think I might have gotten a hunch that 'somehow, the other person probably wants it too.'"

Although the conversation topic was embarrassing, Siwoo answered sincerely to Sharon's unusually focused and probing questions.

"If you weren't sure, you wouldn't have done it?"

"Probably not?"

"Hmm... Relationships between men and women are harder than movies."

They are.

There were still too many things Siwoo didn't understand.

Because they were full of complexities that couldn't even be formalized.

With that, the conversation ended for now.

A considerable amount of time had passed without watching the movie content, but the two decided to just watch it.

In Siwoo's case, he wasn't very interested in the movie content from the start, and Sharon was pondering Siwoo's answers.

[Smack... Smoooch... Oh... Smack]

[Haa... Slurp slurp, pant pant]

"........"

"........"

And not long after, another lingering kiss scene appeared.

Sharon, who had been deep in thought without looking at the screen, also started watching the movie again.

Her profile was visible as she began a precise analysis, using what Siwoo had told her earlier as background.

But it felt like this wasn't going to end with just a kiss.

[Oh, fuck yeah~]

Siwoo's intuition, honed by watching romance movies, wasn't off.

A man and woman who kissed as soon as they returned home and immediately merged in the entranceway.

Perhaps because it was an adult romantic comedy, it was an explicit bed scene with the woman's breasts and the man's buttocks fully exposed.

At first, watching such scenes with Sharon was quite awkward, but it's not like there are only one or two movies with sex scenes.

Since Sharon showed no signs of being bothered at all, Siwoo had long stopped getting unnecessarily flustered.

Of course, even normally, conversations would suddenly stop, making things slightly awkward.

But today felt different.

He realized it as soon as he glanced at Sharon.

Sharon, who had been sitting hugging her knees, had by then half-buried her face and was staring at Siwoo with sparkling eyes.

Could it be...

"Can I ask one more thing?"

Her body scent felt especially close today.

Even in the dim TV light, at this distance, he could see everything about Sharon.

Her pupils, a mysterious color that couldn't exist naturally.

Her facial features, flawless and about half the size of Siwoo's face, to exaggerate a little.

Her long eyelashes and the stray hairs sticking out to the side.

He realized anew that they were together at such a close distance.

"It's nothing important."

He tried to refuse.

Siwoo liked his current life.

He didn't want it to change hastily.

And he could sense it instinctively.

That this question might be a moment that could become a turning point in their relationship.

If something happened and he and Sharon were no longer friends, or if they became distant, it would probably be quite upsetting.

"What is it?"

The words that escaped his lips without him realizing were a bit braver than his true feelings.

Author's Note (Author's Afterword)

It's already Sunday....