Chapter 720: Tongue

Seo Ye-in usually showed Fast-Luckless a tremendous amount of flexibility, but on this point alone, she couldn’t allow it.

She didn’t even fully understand the reason herself yet.

From Fast-Luckless’s perspective, though, she was just being arbitrarily denied, so she pouted and said,

If anything, she went a step further and answered in a grand, dignified tone.

“The path of the overlord.”

Fast-Luckless must have sensed that, because she changed tactics.

Instead of forcing the issue, she moved to persuading the original.

Seo Ye-in’s gray pupils widened.

That kiss that night had been the first for both Seo Ye-in and Kim Ho.

Fast-Luckless had been singing about reclaiming first place, reclaiming first place, and then she went and succeeded in a place like this.

Fast-Luckless pressed on.

That was a point she hadn’t thought through yet.

Once they returned to Dragonslayer Academy, everyone in the group would inevitably find out about the “first kiss.”

With Kim Ho’s personality, there was a much higher chance he’d reveal it proudly than keep it secret.

Then Dang Gyu-young and Hong Yeonhwa would probably want to move their relationships forward too. The same would go for Song Cheonhye, the strongest candidate for Number Four, and for Zhuge Soso, even if she was far away right now.

Stopping them was practically impossible, which was why Fast-Luckless was proposing that second and third place should at least go to her.

No matter what, wasn’t a clone better than someone else?

Seo Ye-in agreed to that to some extent, but she still didn’t like it much.

“...Will review positively.”

This was not the time to worry about who got second or third.

This was the time to worry about herself.

After learning more about kissing, Seo Ye-in had evaluated herself with extreme objectivity.

“...Terrible at kissing.”

She could boldly demand, I’m next, but that didn’t mean she was any more skilled.

Most likely she’d end up just barely touching lips and stopping there, same as Seo Ye-in.

In the first place, that was why the two of them were so absorbed in searching.

Kiss special training.

The sound of typing rang through the quiet room once more.

TAP TAP TAP.

Soon the screen filled with all kinds of educational material.

Most of the thumbnails showed a man and a woman standing so close they seemed about to touch, staring heatedly into each other’s eyes.

Faced with such a shocking sight, Sloth and Fast-Luckless were instantly overwhelmed.

“...!”

They looked at each other, then back at the screen, then at each other again, then back at the screen again.

But they couldn’t just stay frozen like this forever.

“...Time to choose.”

As always, anything difficult got dumped onto the clone.

Fast-Luckless looked faintly dissatisfied at that, but still slowly extended a finger.

Then, after wandering across the screen for a while, she pointed at one thumbnail.

Not all kisses were the same.

They varied wildly depending on the people involved and the mood at the time.

And just their luck, what they had picked belonged to the very high-intensity end of the spectrum.

The next instant, the man and woman’s faces filled the screen—

SLURP SMACK SUCK!!

The room was instantly flooded by intense sound effects.

Naturally, Seo Ye-in and Fast-Luckless both froze solid.

Behind them, an infinite universe seemed to spread open.

“...!”

This was something a million light-years removed from the “lip kiss” they had imagined.

And if there was one decisive difference above all else—

“Tongue...!”

How could it be used like that?

Behind the two Seo Ye-ins, the vast universe continued to unfold, great and small planets drifting through space in orbit.

And even in the middle of all that, the man and woman kept kissing.

It looked like if nobody stopped them, they might just keep going all day.

In the end, Seo Ye-in couldn’t make it through the whole educational video and shut the screen off.

“...”

It must have been so shocking that it had been burned into their brains.

After sitting there blankly for a long time, Seo Ye-in spoke.

“...Not easy.”

Strictly speaking, what she had done with Kim Ho that night didn’t even really qualify as kissing.

And that they still had a very, very long way to go.

*****

Ever since our first kiss, there had been a few small changes in our relationship.

First, Seo Ye-in had become a lot more conscious of me.

Before, she’d held my hand or used me as a Kim Ho pillow without a second thought, but now she would hesitate and stiffen up even from simple contact.

As if she were thinking about whether to go further or not.

Though the conclusion was always, I’ll just do it anyway.

The other change was that Seo Ye-in had started staring at my lips more often.

Same as right now, with those gray eyes fixed on me so intently they were almost boring holes through me.

Like she was observing some mysterious phenomenon.

“...”

The atmosphere was getting more and more awkward, so I asked first.

“Are you going to keep doing that?”

“...No.”

“If you really can’t focus, go rest.”

“I want to keep going.”

Seo Ye-in shook her head as she answered and placed both hands back on what she had been working on.

That turned out to be dough mixed with flour, chocolate chips, and various other ingredients.

Since there wasn’t much to do while waiting for the [Consecration], we had decided this was the perfect chance to rest, relax, and have fun by baking cookies.

Soon Seo Ye-in and Fast-Luckless started dividing the dough into portions.

Their portion control was absurdly precise.

And they were following the recipe perfectly too, so the taste probably wouldn’t be bad.

The problem came after that.

As I watched them start shaping the dough one piece at a time, I found myself forced to speak up again.

“Seo Ye-in.”

“...”

“Seo Ye-in, stop for a second.”

“Yes.”

“What exactly are you making right now?”

“...?”

Seo Ye-in tilted her head like she genuinely didn’t understand the question.

She looked at the dough, then tilted her head again, practically seeming to say,

This lump of dough with two large masses attached to it was—

“A butterfly? A moth?”

“...A camel.”

I looked again at the camel cookie dough, according to its creator, and let out a low groan.

“Seo Ye-in, your condition is extremely serious right now.”

“Why?”

“Not long ago, you were making pretty things just fine. How did you regress back to this?”

Through repeated practice, she had sharpened her artistic sense and gotten good enough at baking cookies to impress even Ahn Jeongmi.

And yet after only a short break, her skills had somehow deteriorated again.

Seo Ye-in herself, though, didn’t seem to grasp the issue at all. She merely floated a question mark over her head.

Then she shamelessly pointed at the cookie dough pieces and her eyes sparkled.

“Peak form.”

“The world is wrong.”

That gave me one more reason not to leave this situation alone.

So I brought over the cookie molds sitting in one corner of the kitchen.

“How about we use these and work our way back up step by step?”

“Tool of the weak.”

Dumbfounded, I pointed at another lump of dough.

“No, the weak ones are you two. I can’t even tell what any of these are. What’s this one, a lizard?”

“Grandma.”

“I see. Now that you mention it, it really does look like her. My thinking must have been too narrow.”

Still, I’d gotten half of it right, so shouldn’t that count for something?

Trying to escape the danger zone, I hurried on.

“Then let’s do it like before. Half and half.”

We would split one piece of cookie dough and shape half each.

That method had worked decently well before, so there was a good chance it would work again.

Seo Ye-in seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she slowly nodded.

“...Half and half.”

We resumed the half-and-half strategy, and thankfully the cookie dough gradually started returning to normal forms.

The difference from before was that Seo Ye-in froze every time our hands touched.

“...! ...!”

At this point it felt like she was focusing more on the skinship than on the dough.

Her eyes kept tracking our hands, and before long they had drifted back to my lips.

And by the time we had shaped several proper cookies, she was practically staring a hole through them.

“...”

“What now?”

Seo Ye-in shook her head.

“Because you want to? A kiss?”

“...Don’t know.”

She quietly averted her eyes.

Then she stole another glance at my lips from the corner of her eye, then looked away again.

So I asked again.

“You have to say it clearly if you want me to know. Yes or no?”

“...Yesno.”

“Then should we finish the cookies first? We can kiss later.”

“...”

Instead of answering, Seo Ye-in started pressing down hard on the cookie dough pieces for no reason.

Apparently several complicated emotions were coexisting inside her.

She wrestled with them for a long time, then at last seemed to make up her mind.

“...I want to now.”

“Then let’s.”

We turned to face each other.

Seo Ye-in hesitated, but slowly came closer.

Watching her, I thought,

The first kiss was initiated by her.

It had been part of checking the kiss homework, meant to help her understand her feelings toward me more clearly.

And there had also been the intention of testing whether she was really as sure as she seemed that a lip kiss would succeed.

Back then, Seo Ye-in had been the one to gather her courage, so—

This time, it should be me.

So I slowly leaned forward.

For some reason, Seo Ye-in seemed even more embarrassed now than the first time.

The closer I got, the redder her expressionless face became, and eventually she shut her eyes without even realizing it.

But when I got almost all the way there, I had no choice but to stop and ask,

“But why is your tongue out?”

“...?”

Seo Ye-in pulled her tongue back in.