Chapter 31: Definitely Not Jealous

"Who is Angel?"

"If you give me back the phone in your hand, I’ll explain."

"You’re not old enough to accidentally save some unknown number as ’Angel.’"

I reached for my phone, but Eris raised it above her head and held it away from me. The movement caused her shirt to ride up again, revealing her flat stomach and the lower band of her black sports bra.

She must have taken advantage of the distraction because she moved to the other end of the couch with my phone.

"Give me my phone."

"Tell me who she is first."

"This is an invasion of privacy."

"You temporarily lost your privacy privileges after ignoring me for four days."

"There’s no such rule!"

Eris didn’t try to unlock the phone, but she read the message in the notification again.

"She cares enough to ask whether you made it home." Her gaze moved from the screen to my face. "How long have you known each other?"

"Since yesterday."

Eris’s smile froze for a moment.

"Since yesterday?"

"Yes."

"You haven’t answered me for two days, but you’re going to let some girl you met yesterday know that you made it home safely."

"Those two things have nothing to do with each other."

"Of course they do."

Her voice remained calm, but I noticed her fingers tightening slightly around the phone. When she finally handed it back, her lips were faintly pursed and her gaze had turned away.

I opened the message and quickly typed a reply.

[Noctis: I made it home. I even worked out a little.]

The message was read almost immediately.

[Angel: Don’t overwork your arms. We’ll keep training tomorrow.]

When Eris tried to look at the screen over my shoulder, I pressed the phone against my chest.

"Stop doing that."

"Does she mean you’re training together tomorrow?"

"Yes, because she’s helping me work out."

Eris leaned back against the couch and crossed one long leg over the other. Her bare foot swayed gently while she wore an expression that tried very hard to look indifferent.

"So that’s why you started working out."

"No, I had already started. She only increased my motivation a little."

"A little?"

"I need to do forty pull-ups within a week to learn her name."

Eris’s head snapped toward me.

"You don’t know her name?"

"She hasn’t introduced herself yet."

"You call a girl whose name you don’t even know ’Angel’ in your phone?"

"She was the one who saved her number like that."

That information seemed to make her even more uncomfortable rather than reassuring her.

"How romantic."

I noticed the slight edge in her voice.

"Is there a problem?"

"No. Why would there be a problem with you calling some nameless girl you’ve known since yesterday ’my angel’?"

Could Eris be jealous?

The moment that possibility entered my mind, I studied her more carefully. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her bare foot had begun swinging slightly faster than before.

Still, if I asked directly, she might hit me.

"Is she pretty?" Eris asked.

My answer escaped before I could stop it.

"She’s incredibly beautiful."

Eris’s swinging foot stopped.

"Is that so?"

"She has golden-blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s also kind, athletic, and—"

"I understand." She turned her head away. "She’s basically a goddess."

"Something like that."

Eris slowly turned back toward me.

"Is she prettier than me?"

I didn’t need the System to understand that this was a trap.

"I haven’t compared you."

"That isn’t an answer."

"You look completely different from each other."

"That isn’t an answer either."

"You’re going to attack me no matter what answer I give, aren’t you?"

Eris shrugged.

"Maybe."

To change the subject, I began telling her how I had met my angel. I explained that I first saw her running, encountered her again near the outdoor exercise area, and trained with her the following morning.

I tried to move past the part where I collapsed after a single pull-up as quickly as possible, but the moment Eris heard it, she forgot her jealousy and burst out laughing.

"One?!"

"I had already run for almost an hour and done twenty push-ups beforehand."

"Your excuses don’t change the result."

"I did five today."

"What happened on the sixth?"

I looked away.

"I got distracted."

A curious glint appeared in Eris’s eyes.

"How did she distract you?"

"I’m skipping that detail."

"Then that must be the part I especially need to hear."

I wasn’t going to tell her about the slap. If Eris learned about it, she would remind me every time she saw a pull-up bar for the rest of my life.

I quickly shifted the conversation to the forty-pull-up challenge. When I told her my angel had completed forty perfect pull-ups in a single set, the amusement on Eris’s face faded.

"She didn’t get tired at all?"

"Her breathing didn’t even change."

"Did she use her legs for momentum?"

"She didn’t break form on a single repetition."

Eris thoughtfully touched her chin.

"Either she’s been receiving specialized training since she was very young, or she has a physical-enhancement-type Nexus."

"I thought there was something unusual about her too."

"Do you know her last name?"

"I already told you that I don’t even know her first name."

Eris leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling.

"Unbelievable... You trust a girl you met yesterday even though you don’t know her name or what kind of Nexus she has."

"If she wanted to hurt me, she could have done it already."

"Why? Because she can do forty pull-ups?"

"She caught me with one arm when I fell."

Eris’s eyes narrowed again.

"She caught you when you fell?"

"I lost my balance when we met today."

"Do you constantly fall whenever you’re around her?"

"That isn’t important."

A strange expression appeared on Eris’s face, somewhere between jealousy and amusement. A few seconds later, her brows drew together as though she were replaying everything I had told her.

"Wait."

The change in her voice gave me a bad feeling.

"What?"

"What did this girl think you were when she first saw you?"

It was an extremely simple question, but there was no safe answer. Without looking at her, I shrugged.

"A human."

"I’m asking about your gender."

"That subject never came up."

Eris slowly turned her head toward me.

"Noc..."

"What?"

"She knows you’re a guy, right?"

Silence spread through the living room for several seconds.

I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the cars outside, and the ticking of the wall clock much more clearly than usual.

Eris’s mismatched eyes gradually widened.

"She doesn’t know."

"I never said that."

"You don’t need to. Your face says everything." She brought both hands to her mouth. "God... She thinks you’re a girl!"

"That isn’t my fault."

Eris burst into laughter again.

"Ahahahaha!"

Her shoulders shook as she collapsed against the back of the couch, and small tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

"What’s so funny?!"

"Everything!" She pressed one hand against her stomach as she struggled to breathe. "You met a girl, took her on a date, and saved her as ’Angel,’ but she thinks you’re a girl too!"

"She was the one who took me out."

"That doesn’t make this any better!"

"I’ll tell her when I find the right time."

As Eris’s laughter slowly faded, she sat up and wiped the corners of her eyes.

"When is the right time? Your wedding night?"

"Don’t exaggerate."

"Noc, people don’t need to wait for a romantic moment to explain their gender."

"She never asked me."

"People don’t secretly ask whether a beautiful girl they’ve just met is actually a man!"

I folded my arms across my chest and turned my face away. Eris had stopped laughing, but the grin at the corner of her lips remained.

After a while, she gently touched my shoulder.

"You need to tell her."

"I will, but I want her to get to know me first. If I explain it now, she might think I tricked her and never speak to me again."

"You’re genuinely deceiving her by delaying the truth."

Her words bothered me because she had a point.

My angel mistaking me for a girl had been convenient at first. I had been able to stay beside her comfortably and get her number without attracting the suspicion of her overprotective father. Even if I hadn’t caused the misunderstanding, it was true that I hadn’t made any effort to correct it.

"I’ll tell her after I learn her name," I said. "Within a week at the latest."

Eris studied me carefully.

"Do you promise you’ll do it?"

After a brief hesitation, I nodded.

"I’ll try..."

"..."

I stood and walked into the middle of the living room. Since Eris exercised regularly, she knew far more about training than I did. If I wanted to reach my goal of forty pull-ups, it made sense to put aside my pride and ask for advice.

"Since you’re already here, you can help me with a few exercises."

The faint smile on Eris’s face disappeared.

"Now you remember I exist?"

"What?"

"I asked you to work out with me for months. Every time, you said you were tired, needed to prepare for a stream, or didn’t want to leave the house."

"Circumstances have changed."

"Yes. Now you need help to impress your blonde angel."

The jealousy in her voice was too obvious to hide this time.

"This has nothing to do with her hair color."

"Of course it doesn’t."

When I took a step toward her, Eris leaned back against the couch and raised one long bare leg.

Before I understood what she was doing, she planted the sole of her foot against my face.

"Mmph?!"

Her warm, soft sole covered most of my cheek, with her slender toes resting beside my temple. The surprising strength in her leg pushed my head backward, even though Eris didn’t appear to be putting in the slightest effort to keep me away.

I grabbed her ankle with both hands and tried to pull her foot away. The muscles beneath her smooth skin tightened, but I couldn’t move her leg.

Her athletic shorts had ridden slightly higher in that position, exposing almost the entire length of her toned thigh. When my gaze unintentionally traveled upward along her leg, I felt my face growing warm.

"Go ask your angel for help," she said.

"Get your foot off my face!"

"No."

"You’re the guest in this house."

"Hosts who ignore their guests for two days deserve this kind of treatment."

She extended her leg farther and pushed me back. I lost my balance and had to sit on the other side of the couch, but she still didn’t remove her foot from my face.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she stared at me with pursed lips.

"Are you jealous?" I asked.

The pressure against my face suddenly increased.

"Of whom? Some blonde girl whose name you don’t even know? Don’t be ridiculous."

"Your reaction isn’t very convincing."

"If you keep talking, I’ll use my other foot too."

"Fine. You’re not jealous."

Her red eye twitched slightly when she heard the mocking tone in my voice. Still, after a few seconds, she removed her foot and stretched both legs across the couch.

I rubbed my cheek and glared at her.

"If you aren’t going to help, you can go home."

Eris reached for her gym bag.

For a moment, I genuinely thought she was going to get up and leave. That should have relieved me, yet a small sense of disappointment formed in my chest.

Instead, she pulled a folded T-shirt and a pair of shorts from the bag and placed them beside the couch.

I frowned.

"What are those?"

"My spare clothes."

"Why did you bring spare clothes?"

Eris lay back on the couch, placed a cushion beneath her head, and comfortably rested her bare feet across my legs.

"Because I’m staying here tonight."

My eyes widened in surprise.

"What?"

"I already told my parents. You’ve been acting strangely for the past few days, so I said I wouldn’t come home until I checked on you with my own eyes."

"You’ve checked on me and confirmed that I’m alive. You can leave now."

"The way you speak has changed, you’ve voluntarily started exercising, and you’ve fallen in love with a girl whose name you don’t even know." She folded her arms behind her head, causing her shirt to ride up again and expose her flat stomach. "There’s still plenty to investigate."

"I haven’t fallen in love."

"Of course, my angel."

It was obvious that she had deliberately used the nickname to mock me.

When I tried to move the feet resting on my legs, she pressed them down with more weight. She had completely settled into my couch, thrown her socks into two different corners of the apartment, and decided to spend the night without asking for my permission.

I was about to remind her that we were both eighteen and that I didn’t need a babysitter, but the determined expression on her face told me it wouldn’t change anything.

As Eris closed her eyes, a small, satisfied smile appeared on her lips.

"By the way, I’m hungry. You can make me something in a little while."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Forty pull-ups were now the least of my problems.