Thud, thud. Feeling Carbon’s slow, steady pulse made her own blood seem to move faster. Excitement and anticipation and a thread of fear pooled low in her belly. Her heart fluttered, and her p*ssy clenched.

Flustered by her body’s blunt response, Hyde deliberately redirected her thoughts.

‘More importantly, Carbon’s chest might actually be bigger than mine.’

Using both palms to slowly press into Carbon’s pectoral muscles, Hyde marveled inwardly. She had always been quietly proud of her own chest, but kneading Carbon’s broad pecs was doing a number on her confidence. Maybe the reason Carbon only saw her as a child……

Hyde looked back and forth between her own chest and Carbon’s with a dejected expression, then slowly slid her hands lower. They pushed down to his navel and stopped just before reaching his pelvis. Where before she had been focused on the massage itself, pressing with appropriate force on the necessary areas, now she was dragging her fingers in a slow, sticky trail, grazing sensitive spots. She caught the instant Carbon’s muscles tensed and twitched, and the corners of her lips pulled up faintly.

Seems to be working! Encouraged, Hyde traced lines with her fingertips through the grooves of his divided abs and brushed his lower belly, and Carbon’s expression went rigid, his core locking up like a wall of bricks.

“Wait.”

Carbon’s frown deepened and he spoke quickly. Hyde smoothed away her sly expression and asked in an even voice.

“Did that hurt?”

“……No. That’s not it.”

“Then please bear with it a little longer.”

Carbon let out a suppressed breath at Hyde’s words.

Hyde saw that and let out a small, quiet laugh. Her hands moved down, pressing firmly into his thighs. Concentrating and putting real force into properly working the large, dense muscle, Carbon relaxed the tension he had gathered back into his body.

That was her opening.

Hyde slipped her fingers just inside the edge of his short shorts and grazed his inner thigh, and she felt the muscle there go taut under her fingertips.

Carbon couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Stop, you don’t need to do that part.”

With those words, Carbon sat up and caught Hyde’s hand, bringing it to a halt. He had meant to be gentle, but the gap in their strength was so vast that Hyde couldn’t move at all.

‘But I can’t stop here.’

Not yet. He needed to be more worked up. She couldn’t let this end as just a massage and be sent on her way.

“I’ve finished the back now, so please turn over.”

Hyde gave the instruction as if nothing were happening, and Carbon swallowed a sigh.

“……That’s enough. This is plenty.”

“No, it isn’t. There’s still more before we’re done. I’m going to finish what I came here to do.”

Faced with Hyde’s stubbornness, Carbon exhaled and turned over. Right, as long as she didn’t touch the front, it would be fine. And staying face down was easier on his nerves, since he was worried she might notice the state of things below.

Hyde glanced at Carbon lying still and applied more oil to her hands. She rubbed her palms together to warm it with her body heat, then placed her hands on Carbon’s back and worked her knuckles in firm, pushing strokes to loosen the area around his shoulder blades. She worked through the dense muscle, moving gradually down along the spine and pressing firmly into his lower back.

“Ngh.”

“Does that hurt?”

“……No.”

He didn’t say that was enough this time either. He knew Hyde wouldn’t listen anyway. He had decided it was better to let her finish quickly and be done with it than to keep stalling with conversation.

Carbon exhaled, but the touch that grew more and more deliberate caught him off guard. The slow, circling pressure made things tighten below. What had already been half-hard went fully *rect.

D*mn it. Carbon cursed inwardly. At least he was face down.

But then Hyde lightly climbed up onto the bed, spread her legs, and settled herself on top of Carbon’s backside.

The sensation of soft, yielding flesh pressing down onto his body made Carbon cry out in surprise.

“Hyde!”

He looked ready to sit up and throw her off at any moment, so Hyde delivered the excuse she had prepared in advance.

“My arms are short, so I can do your back much better like this.”

Carbon’s expression creased. Compared to his nearly two-meter frame, Hyde at a mere 160 centimeters was impossibly small.

Carbon gave in to Hyde’s stubbornness again.

“Hurry up and finish.”

It was the voice of someone who had accepted defeat.

Hyde shot a glance at the back of Carbon’s motionless head, then leaned forward and pressed close. Her full chest flattened against Carbon’s solid back. The sensation of her soft br*asts being pressed flat was overwhelmingly vivid. Eyes still closed, Carbon’s brow furrowed.

Even with Hyde’s full weight bearing down on him, Carbon didn’t feel the slightest sense of heaviness or strain. If anything, he only worried whether someone this light was eating properly. And the fact that her chest was large relative to her small frame…… Idiot. Carbon swept the thought away the moment it surfaced.

But even with that dismissed, Hyde kept provoking him endlessly. The soft thighs squeezing around his torso, the small, smooth hands rubbing against his skin, the scent of her that was stronger now that she was close.

His patience wore down fast. He thought he felt a bead of fl*id escape below. He was going to lose his mind. Hyde was genuinely trying to help him out of good intentions, and here he was having these filthy thoughts and reactions. Carbon felt a deep revulsion toward himself, toward this version of him that had become a vessel for desire.

Before he could recover from that sinking feeling, Hyde whispered softly near his ear.

“All done. I’ll wipe the oil off for you now.”

Carbon, who had been frowning throughout the entire massage, replied slowly.

“……No. That’s fine. Wait outside.”

“But……”

“Enough. That really is enough now. Hyde.”

The firmness in Carbon’s voice left Hyde no room to push further. She knew when to retreat. She left Carbon behind without so much as a goodbye and walked out, feeling deflated.

* * *

Out of the room, Hyde went straight back to her own space. Her hands, her legs, every patch of bare skin outside her clothes was slick and slippery with oil. She wanted to wipe it all off as fast as possible, and yet, knowing it was where she had touched Carbon, part of her didn’t want to wash it away to the very last trace.

But there was another place that was damp, and it had nothing to do with oil.

Hyde took off her oil-and-sweat-soaked clothes. The thin top and short bottoms dropped, one after the other. The bra that barely covered half her full chest dropped too. Only one piece of fabric remained on her body.

Hyde hesitated, then reached down. She hooked her fingers into her underwear and drew it slowly down, and a thread of slick arousal stretched thin and snapped.

The center of the underwear on the floor was visibly wet. Hyde picked it up and put it away quickly. Looking at it was making her embarrassed.

A warm wash cleaned her thoroughly, and the lingering heat of arousal rinsed away with it.

Hyde came out fanning her flushed face, calmer than she had been earlier when she was barely thinking straight. Calm enough to assess the plan with a clear head.

“This one failed too.”

The second attempt had failed, following the first. The failure stung more this time because she had seen Carbon’s reactions.

But a failure was a failure. Whether she liked it or not, the time had come to use the last resort she had prepared.

Hyde opened the box she had kept carefully hidden and took out what was inside. A glass vial, sealed with a suspicious liquid within.

Hyde stared at the pink liquid inside the small glass vial. Misusing a substance, especially for something like this, was a serious crime. She knew that, but……

“Using it on myself should be fine.”

Hyde put the vial in her bag and made her decision.