CH Extra 25

Shuraina was splayed on Yves’ bed as she was stuck in a quandary.

‘How did things become like this?’

Many days had passed since she had first visited Yves’ home. She had definitely planned on leaving on the morning after but she had ended up staying at his home. Whenever she tried to go home, he kept on giving her more things to work on to make her stay. Then, he would say, ‘Maybe it’s time for her to go home?’ and was showing Shuraina home before he made another excuse to have her stay.

The window was wide open, and a strong gust of wind came through it. Shuraina let the wind hit her face as she stared at the ceiling before she closed her eyes.

“Yves. I’m done with the work you gave me.”

Shuraina said loudly as she laid down, organizing various documents. Yves was leaning on the desk opposite of her, wiping the water away from his neck with a towel as he looked at her. Yves had just come out of his shower. He was wearing a gown with his wet hair resting on it.

He lowered the towel and slowly walked towards Shuraina. She was hunched up in a ball as she laid on the bed. It was because it was in the middle of the day. Her body was still getting used to a regular schedule, so Shuraina was about to pass out. She was still drowsy during the day and awake at night. Her hands shook as she held a handful of documents as she stretched it out towards Yves.

“Can….. Can I sleep?”

“No. Sleep at night with me.”

I’m sleeeeepy. Shuraina buried her face onto a nearby pillow and sighed. Yves was helping Shuraina get out of her night owl lifestyle. He took back the stay-awake documents back from Shuraina and dragged Shuraina, who was crawling back under the sheets, and placed her on his lap. Then, as always, he wrapped his arms around her thin waist and dragged her close.

Shuraina was basically drowning in sleep, warmed up after her shower and comfortable in Yves’ arms. She also liked his smell lingering around her nose.

“It’s cold…..”

Shuraina was half-asleep as she stretched her hand out towards Yves.

“……!”

She wrapped her arm around Yves’ waist and rested her head on his chest and rubbed her cheeks on it. She was basically asleep. She hugged him so tight that his gown slid down slightly. Her cheeks landed on Yves’ bare skin.

“Shuraina, are you really cold?”

He pulled up his gown and asked, voice gentle. She just breathed without a proper response. She must’ve fallen back asleep after failing to stay awake during the day.

This was the first time that Shuraina had acted first. He was so touched for some reason that his fingers shook.

He was nervous that she might move away if he moved wrong that he moved as carefully as he could as he grabbed the blanket. He wanted to wrap her in the blanket after she said she was cold. But he soon realized that she was clinging onto him because she was cold and soon pushed the blanket away.

Yves hugged her tightly instead of the blanket.

It still wasn’t time for him to sleep, but Yves stared at Shuraina’s sleeping face for a long time. Her body warmth began to cool as the cold wind continued to blow. Shuraina grew colder and unconsciously looked for a blanket, but Yves grabbed her hand and wrapped her arms around himself.

“If you get sick because of this, I’ll kiss you.”

I’ll get infected for you, so just stay cold.

He touched Shuraina’s ears for a while before putting his mouth on her earlobe and nibbling on it. He pressed his fingers near Shuraina’s collarbone and put his hand under her shirt and dragged his hand across her stomach too. When his hand tried to go further down by force of habit, Yves scowled and clenched his fist.

“You’re clean, unlike me.”

Yves smiled bitterly and brushed his hand across her forehead.

Looking back at everything he had done, he couldn’t become as clean as Shuraina was. He couldn’t become innocent.

Yves didn’t have the courage to let Shuraina go, even if he wanted to. There were a lot of people in the academy who were acting rowdy for him to not cross the line between him and herself. And because of that, he was able to focus on her happiness at the forefront instead of his selfishness.

But he was now able to spend time with her and herself–and with this, things changed. He wanted to take everything, not only her time–her heart, her mind, everything. Even if she lost that clean part of herself.

“……”

Disgusting bastard. You sick son of a bitch. Yvnes cursed himself again and again. I could endure it all, if that meant I could have you…..

He couldn’t take it back. He had lost his sanity the moment she came to him with her own two feet. He shouldn’t have seen her. He should’ve paired her up with someone before his emotions got the best of him. Even Swanhaden would’ve been better. He put Shuraina at the forefront, ahead of himself, so no matter how disgusting his selfishness was, even if it was worse than his own, he would’ve been able to suppress it all.

But even if it was just a hypothetical, thinking about Shuraina being together with someone other than himself made him feel like he was going insane.

He rested his head on Shuraina’s shoulder and sighed deeply.

“Just take one step closer to me, Shuraina.”

You need to let my disgusting self in yourself.

‘Smells good…..’

Shuraina was buried in soft white blankets as she fought off sleep. Her nose wrinkled as she smelled something good. She sniffed the air without realizing it and sat up.

She held her chin up in the air as she followed the smell of food. The weather had gotten pretty cold, so she wrapped her white blanket around her, just like she did at home, before she realized that she was in Yves’ home and placed the blanket back.

Her pajama skirt dragged on the floor too much so she folded the fabric around her waist and tied it with a long towel. She had a knack for making normal clothes turn ugly.

She followed the scent of food, still sleepy. At the end of the smell was Yves. He had a variety of ingredients out as he cooked. There were chopped vegetables on the fry pan. He was adding various sauces and tasting his dish ever so often before nodding in approval.

“You woke up from the smell, right?”

Yves said, not even turning around to notice that Shuraina was around.

Shuraina felt guilty. She bit her dry lips for a moment before changing the topic.

“But you know how to cook?”

“Ah…..yeah. I can’t eat very well, but people like food. It’s easy to look good if you know how.”

Massages, memorization, and now this. Yves seemed to be good at small things here and there.

“Drink some water as you eat.”

Shuraina ate the food as if she was dying of hunger. Yves handed her a cup of water.

“Shushu, do you have a type?”

“What. Why are you asking something like that all of a sudden?”

Shuraina narrowed her eyes at Yves as she gave him a look. She stabbed a sausage with a fork. It made a small bursting sound as its juices leaked out. She bit the sausage before speaking.

“Before, I liked people who liked me. But now my standards have gone up, so.”

“Gone up?”

Shuraina said as she briefly thought of Swanhaden. Then, she wondered why she thought of Swanhaden and shook her head. She felt strange.

When Shuraina stopped talking, Yves furrowed his brows. He became increasingly annoyed as he knew who she was thinking of. Especially because he knew who she was thinking of.

Someone who, like him, was completely twisted but tried as hard as he could to conceal it in front of Shuraina–or maybe he was even worse than him.

If someone like Swan had the chance to get together with Shuraina, then why not him? He was trying to not be a bad influence for Shuraina, so he could do the same too, right? That was something he thought about often these days.

Yves smoothed out his brows and forced himself to smile.

“What do you mean, whoever you like.”

“Something like, a whoosh! Like when someone approaches you.”

“Whoosh….? Was this the same for Eric?”

Yves leaned his head on his arm and smiled, asking with a teasing voice.

“He was the former type. I didn’t have any confidence, so I thought that nobody would ever really like me. He confessed, so I just went with it. I thought that I would never have any kind of love in my life if it wasn’t for him.”

“And now?”

“Now I feel like I’m kind of a catch.”

I’m not going to go out with just anyone. I’m precious. Shuraina said sternly.

Yves smiled at Shuraina’s more confident self before going silent, thinking about something.

Not too long after, Yvnes changed the topic.

“Oh, Shushu. So about what I mentioned last time.”

“…..?”

“I looked for people who could design your products.”

Yvnes placed Shuraina’s blueprint on the desk and a slew of other designers’ resumes under it. On top of the profiles were pictures that showed the designers’ different styles.

“If you pick one that you like, I’ll contact the designer for you.”

Shuraina nodded slightly, awed at how quickly things were moving along. She was once again awed at Yves’ ability to put things in motion. She looked at all of the documents he had handed her as she continued eating her pasta.

There were designers with clean styles and ones with fancy patterns.

She was skimming through the artists’ individual styles from left to right when she found someone that immediately caught her eye. The designer’s works were slightly dark and sad, but they looked incredibly luxurious. Shuraina wasn’t the best at figuring out if designs were pretty or not, but this particular designer’s works were unique. They immediately caught her eye.

Not just that, but she liked it even more because of how familiar she found it. Had this person requested a device from her before?

Shuraina stretched out her hand to grab the document–it was sitting the furthest away from her. But Yvnes seemed to be taken aback as he snatched the document back.

“Sorry, I don’t know how this got here. I’ll take this.”

What, why did you hand it over if you were going to take it away? Shuraina stabbed her pasta with her fork as she stared at the document that had gotten further away from her. What was it that made him hide it with such unease? He seemed to hate it so much–he must have some reason for it. She wanted to ask but she clamped her mouth shut.

Which one should I pick? Let’s try and figure it out. Eenie meenie. Shuraina didn’t really have a particular favorite so she just flicked her finger left and right to choose a random designer. She couldn’t stop thinking of the other designer as she groaned. She looked up, intent on picking a designer, but she couldn’t help but think of that one designer.

When Shuraina was still unable to choose a designer after a while, Yves let out a long sigh. Then he handed Shuraina the document containing the designer’s information.

“You like this person?”

“Uh…..yes. It just caught my eye.”

It was true that she really like this designer, so she slowly nodded. He was allowing it, so there was no reason to refuse.

“It sounds like you know them. This person.”

“….mm, we do know each other. Then if you like them, I’ll give them a call. Do you want to head out?”

Yves put all of the empty dishes in front of Shuraina under the sink, where the clean spell washed the dishes. Yves walked over to the contact orbs lining the side of the living room before grabbing one in particular.

While Yves contacted the designer, Shuraina took the documents holding the designer’s information and began to carefully read through it all.

T/N: self-hatred is hot but you know what’s hotter, yves??? consent bro