SS #40 Time to back(5)

“That’s propaganda and lies. Natasha made it all up.”

Yuder said with a shameless look on his face.

It seemed that even as a newbie, Yuder’s shamelessness skill was still intact.

But instead of wondering, ‘He’s saying it with such a serious face, could he really be lying?’ Cordelia simply let the corners of her mouth curl into a smile.

“Made it up, you say? Not a fact?”

She asked, tilting her head slightly.

Faced with a gaze that already knew everything, most people would have looked defeated, but not Yuder.

He replied, his expression still brazen.

“She made it up. If you know Natasha, you know what she’s like.”

How mischievous and playful Natasha was.

“Hmm.”

Cordelia gave a single nod at Yuder’s assertion.

She knew Natasha’s personality all too well.

But.

“Is it really, really propaganda and lies? Huh? For real?”

Cordelia tilted her head to the other side and asked again, leaning in close to Yuder, whose expression had shifted from shameless to aggrieved.

Cordelia’s face.

It was an old expression, but her blue eyes were truly as clear as a lake.

And that made it overwhelming.

It felt like the mask-like expression he had so carefully crafted was about to shatter.

But Yuder endured.

He recalled Alexei’s teachings and tried to maintain his composure.

At least, until he heard Cordelia’s next words.

“Natasha told me she definitely saw our baby Yuder, face bright red, secretly washing his underwear.”

With a rarely seen look of panic.

His face was a mess of bewilderment and embarrassment.

Yuder flinched.

It felt as if a crack had appeared on the shameless coating of his expression.

So Cordelia took another step closer to him.

Feeling the sweet thrill of revenge she had always wanted to exact every time the rankings were settled—or more accurately, every time Yuder teased her—she said in a bright, cheerful voice.

“She also said you got caught in the act of washing it?”

“…Hk.”

“And I heard that for about three days, you couldn’t even look at Natasha’s face, let alone her chest?”

“Ugh.”

That was the limit.

Yuder crumbled once more.

Covering his face with both hands, he collapsed to the floor, radiating pure mortification. He asked in a voice drenched with shame.

“H-How much did she tell you? Just how much?”

It was, for all intents and purposes, a declaration of surrender.

But Cordelia didn’t accept his surrender so easily.

After all, the one standing here was Black Cordelia, her heart tainted black thanks to a certain someone.

“Hmm, let’s see. How much, I wonder?”

“Ugh…”

Yuder reacted unconsciously to her tantalizing question, and Cordelia’s smile grew even more wicked.

Our baby Yuder.

My cute newbie.

It was so hard to see this side of the max-level Yuder.

No, besides the time she had forcibly shoved him into her own avatar, she had never seen it at all.

‘The max-level Yuder would have still been shameless, right?’

He would have more likely used this incident to provoke Cordelia’s jealousy rather than collapse so helplessly.

But that was the max-level Yuder. The one before her now was a fresh, green newbie Yuder.

And so, Cordelia brought her face close to Yuder’s ear and whispered.

“As you know, our Yuder, Natasha gets very honest when she drinks. And she loves talking about Kang Jin-ho.”

So, you see, I heard quite a lot of stories.

“For instance…”

“Stop, please stop! I believe you! Okay? I believe that you’re Cordelia from the future, and that you and I were… uh… l-lovey-dovey? No, that we were… in l-love. Yes, love! I’ll believe that we were in love!”

Yuder pleaded in a desperate voice.

It was no longer a de facto surrender; it was a full-on prostration.

“But, Yuder.”

“What… what now?”

As the great Yuder spoke in a voice that sounded like he was about to cry, Cordelia felt her heart pound anew.

She felt as if she was about to awaken to a dangerous new world.

‘Wait, have I already awakened to it?’

In any case, Cordelia was as impulsive as ever, so she immediately put her heartfelt thoughts into action.

“Was it good?”

“…Huh?”

“Was it good? Kissing me.”

Yuder flinched again at the provocative question.

His ear, where her breath had touched, was already flushed red.

His green eyes, their guard now broken, trembled faintly.

Cordelia’s own breath grew hot.

She hadn’t realized it herself, but her face was also flushed with a mixture of excitement and the last remaining sliver of embarrassment.

“Tell me honestly, okay?”

At her coaxing voice, Yuder swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the floor instead of meeting hers. In a voice that trembled as much as his eyes, he said.

“I-It was good.”

“How good?”

“V-Very.”

“Very good?”

“It was… very good.”

With each question from Cordelia, Yuder’s voice came out colored with embarrassment and desire.

Seeing his face, so red it looked like it might burst, it seemed the heat had risen to his head so much that he couldn’t think straight.

“Do you… want to do it again?”

“I… want… Hah?!”

Yuder answered reflexively before barely managing to regain his senses, but Cordelia the huntress was not about to let her hard-won prey escape.

She pulled Yuder’s head towards her and kissed him again, giving him a new stimulus by lightly biting his lip.

What followed was a deep, adult kiss.

A sincere kiss from Cordelia, whose heart had been blackened by a certain someone and whose kissing skills had also reached the max level.

It was far too much stimulation for the bright-eyed newbie Yuder to handle.

Yuder, whose life points were already at zero, quickly fell apart.

He couldn’t even raise the shield of reason and was simply led by Cordelia’s lead.

“Haa… haa…”

The sticky thread connecting Cordelia’s and Yuder’s lips as they panted hotly finally broke.

In Yuder’s green eyes, there was no trace of shame or embarrassment, not even a fragment of reason.

Just green eyes, steeped in pleasure.

Cordelia saw her own flushed face reflected in them and asked.

It was an impulsive question.

“Was it good?”

Yuder nodded instead of answering.

He didn’t even have the mental capacity to form words.

“Want to do it again?”

He nodded again.

Cordelia gave his lips a fleeting bird-like kiss and whispered once more.

“Cordelia is the best, right? Number one, right?”

—Hey! This is gaslighting!

—No, no, this is what you call taming.

For a moment, she heard Scarlett and Kaisa chattering in her head, but Cordelia ignored them.

She focused only on newbie Yuder, and newbie Yuder, so beautifully, nodded his head.

‘I can’t take it anymore.’

Should I just… just go all the way?

The sudden impulse was tempting, but Cordelia shook her head.

Yuder’s life was already at zero.

If she pushed any further, he might really pass out.

Besides, they had a schedule for the day.

It was best to stop the teasing here.

—Wait, you call this teasing?

—I’ve raised a tiger cub…

Scarlett and Kaisa started chattering in her head again.

Cordelia casually ignored their voices and cast Recovery on the still half-dazed Yuder.

“Yuder-gun, are you feeling a bit better now?”

“Hk… Ugh.”

At Cordelia’s question, Yuder could only bite his lip and make a face like he was about to cry.

Thanks to Recovery, his head was clearing up, and a fresh wave of shame was washing over him.

‘Patience, patience, Cordelia.’

If she kissed him again, it would just start the cycle all over again.

“Anyway, Yuder. Let’s get on with the story. Pull yourself together. Okay?”

“W-Wait.”

Letting out a strained voice, Yuder took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to mutter something.

‘Alexei, help me!’

She could tell what he was saying without even needing to read his lips.

And as always, it worked.

Though he was still in tatters, Yuder, who had regained some light in his eyes, took a few steadying breaths, glared lightly at Cordelia, and said.

“…Lewd.”

“Hey, Yuder. You sound like a really naughty newbie right now, you know? And… who do you think I learned it from?”

At Cordelia’s question, Yuder bit his lip again and lowered his head.

For some reason, she thought she could hear a voice saying, ‘This is karma…’

“Anyway, Yuder, I know you’re tired, but we don’t have time, so let’s talk while we move. I’ll carry you.”

Finishing her words, Cordelia turned her back to Yuder and crouched down.

“Hurry and get on. Let’s get a piggyback ride. Okay?”

At her baby-soothing voice, Yuder, his face flushed with shame, clung to Cordelia’s back.

“My, look how light you are. You need to gain some weight. And build some muscle. Your butt is all bones.”

“That… story.”

“Huh? Oh, right. The story. You believe my story now, right?”

As Cordelia asked while striding forward energetically, Yuder barely held onto his dizzying mind, which was being stimulated by her scent, and brought up a rational point.

“Almost. I believe almost all of it. If you know Natasha… and if you heard that story from her, you must have had a really close relationship… Wait, didn’t you say earlier that you heard it directly from Natasha?”

“Yep, I heard it directly from Natasha.”

When Cordelia nodded and replied again, Yuder blinked, swallowed hard, and asked.

“Are we going back to Earth? Don’t tell me, is it something like only our souls get transferred?”

“Ah! Right. I only told you the main story.”

“Main story?”

“Uh… should I call it a metaphor? If it were a novel, it would easily be 360 chapters long, so I only told you the main story. But there’s more to it after that. Like a side story?”

“…I don’t really get the metaphor… but you’re saying there’s a next part?”

“Yep, yep. They reincarnated us on Earth to figure out a strategy, but when we came back to Pleiades, our souls were separated. So on Earth, we—Hong Yu-hee and Kang Jin-ho—are still alive. Well, to be honest, they’re already strangers who can’t be called ‘us’ anymore.”

Kang Jin-ho and Hong Yu-hee were just one of many past lives that Yuder and Cordelia had.

To the current Yuder and Cordelia, who had recovered all their past life memories, their sense of self as ‘Yuder Bayer’ and ‘Cordelia Chase’ was much stronger.

A separation of souls.

As Yuder had declared to Kang Jin-ho, they were already like strangers.

It wasn’t just a mental thing.

Genetically, they had no connection either.

All they shared were past memories.

Yuder and Kang Jin-ho, Cordelia and Hong Yu-hee, were different people.

“Anyway, after everything was over, we went to visit Earth. We met Natasha there. And now… no, it’s a bit ambiguous to say ‘now.’ Anyway, all the chatroom members know everything. Natasha spends about half the year in Pleiades, not Earth. And Natasha and Kamael became best friends.”

“…A strange combination.”

Natasha and Kamael.

“That’s probably why they get along so well. Well, if it weren’t for Natasha’s insane friendliness, they probably wouldn’t have become friends in the first place.”

It was a story that made him nod automatically.

The Kamael depicted in Heroic Saga 1 was the very definition of a hedgehog.

“But… Hong Yu-hee? Was that your name on Earth?”

“Yep, Hong Yu-hee. It’s a pretty name, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“But?”

At Cordelia’s question, Yuder narrowed his brow instead of answering right away.

For some reason, the name sounded familiar.

Hong Yu-hee.

Hong Yu-hee.

Hong…

“Wait, don’t tell me?”

“Bingo! That’s the name of the girl next door!”

At Cordelia’s shout, Yuder was so shocked he almost fell off.

“W-Wait. The girl next door? The one who lives next to us?”

“Yep, yep. The cute, kind, pretty, goddess of all gamers who lives next door, who already got into college through early admission and was enjoying the final vacation of her third year of high school, a prospective college student who was also technically still a high school girl.”

“Good heavens.”

Truly, good heavens.

Yellow Storm was the girl next door?

She was that kid, nearly ten years younger than me, who was just an elementary schooler when she moved in?

“Oh, you’re really shocked, aren’t you? Just like you said you’d be.”

“What did I say?”

“Well, you know. When we found out each other’s identities, we weren’t actually that shocked. We had already gone all the way and were in love. But later, you said it. That if it had been before we built up our affection for each other, back when we were just Outboxer009 and Yellow Storm, you would have been incredibly surprised. And shocked.”

“…That’s a valid point.”

And a rational one.

“Yep, yep. That sounds just like you.”

Listening to Cordelia’s nonchalant, yet somehow proud-sounding voice, Yuder thought.

‘I could die of embarrassment.’

He thought he had already seen the pinnacle of shame, but to feel this kind of shame anew…

Yuder was a man of common sense.

Therefore, he couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of shame and self-loathing at the fact that he had derived satisfaction from teasing a girl nearly ten years younger than him like a schoolboy.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s not a ten-year difference, it’s a nine-year difference. And Kang Jin-ho and Hong Yu-hee ended up falling in love anyway. So there’s no problem.”

“…It seems problematic in many ways, but fine.”

Giving up on thinking, Yuder lifted his head.

Far in the distance, he could see the entrance to their destination, the temple.

---

Translated By: Meher (RaidenTL)

Please do consider subscribing to my Patreon or donate to my Ko-fi if you like this work or to get early access to chapters