“Arahnia, can I speak to you for a minute?” Glenn held out his hand and took the sake bottle from Arahnia. He took a swig.
“Oh, you’re ready to drink, Doc? If you would have just told me—mmm?!” Arahnia opened her eyes wide.
“Mmm-aaah?!” Sapphee let out a screech that no one had ever heard from her before.
Glenn had taken Arahnia’s lips in his, his mouth still full of sake.
“Mmm?! Mm?! Ahh…mmm!”
Arahnia was resisting, her lips still locked with Glenn’s. Glenn didn’t know why she was struggling, but he remained calm and wrapped his tongue around hers, pushing past it to pass the sake from his mouth into Arahnia’s. The process was basically the same as when he gave Lulala mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration in the water. It was passing the liquid in his own mouth along to someone else.
“Mm! Mmm…mmm…argh… ahh…!”
Unlike the underwater process, Glenn didn’t have to hold his breath, so it was much easier for him to use his tongue this time.
He closed his lips over hers and wrapped their tongues together, careful not to get in the way of her breathing.
Of course, from Glenn’s perspective, he was only kissing her to extract her pheromone. But to the naked eye, what they were doing could only be interpreted as a sexual act between fiancées.
“Mmbbaah… Doc!” Arahnia pulled her mouth away from him in resistance. Despite the intense kissing, not a single drop of sake dripped from her mouth. “What are you doing?! I thought this was your first kiss, Doc! N-no one said that you knew how to use your tongue like that! Where and from whom did you learn that?!”
For some reason, she was really interrogating him. It was rare for Arahnia to act so openly jealous, and in a way, it made Glenn happy to know she was that infatuated with him.
“It’s not his first kiss?! That’s news to me too!” Sapphee shrieked.
“Settle down,” Aluloona said.
There was a commotion on the other side of the shoji screen.
“No, um…this is my first kiss.”
“Really? It doesn’t seem like it.”
“But artificial respiration was hammered into me at the Academy…I had to practice on others,” Glenn said, recalling his experience.
To make a long story short, he’d taken Cthulhy’s class on artificial respiration. Thanks to technology developed by the cyclopes, they now had dolls that could be used to practice artificial respiration. But that hadn’t been the case when he was at the Academy, forcing him to practice on live subjects.
“Huh…so in other words, your first was…Cthulhy, Doc?”
“No, that was really just a class. There was nothing romantic about it…and besides, Sapphee took the same class.”
“Ahh, we did have that class!” Sapphee spun around, looking annoyed.
Cthulhy had trained every student in her class how to perform artificial respiration. No exceptions. That was the only way, back when there were so few study materials available.
“The lives of many have been saved by artificial respiration, thanks to that class.”
“It’s just treatment, not a kiss—mm,” Arahnia began, but Glenn stopped her, covering her lips.
He estimated they only had a small quantity of the pheromone. They would need a lot more if they were going to use it to write out coded messages. Sapphee was still wrapping thread around the spool, but he didn’t think it was enough.
“Mmmm, D-Doc…oww…mmm!”
“I’m sorry, I want to get a bit more thread.”
“You always get so forceful…mmm!” Arahnia squirmed, trying to resist.
Glenn thrust his tongue deeper, attempting to excite her as much as possible. Every time he wrapped his tongue around hers, large amounts of thread were produced.
“Mmm…mmm… Aaagh…”
He could see Arahnia’s eyes were glazing over. He couldn’t tell if it was from his kissing, or from the sake. They had both consumed quite a bit already, so it would make sense that they would be inebriated by now.
I think…I drank too much.
If he were to be honest, Glenn couldn’t do this sober either. It was because of the sake that he was able to act so boldly.
“Mmmp…ahh…mmmhhmm…”
More and more thread was produced as Glenn explored Arahnia’s mouth with his tongue, accurately determining which spots produced the most thread and made her seem the happiest.
“Mmm, mmm, bfaa!” Arahnia pulled her mouth away again. A string of saliva connected their mouths. “Doc…I…I’m so embarrassed.”
“Arahnia,” Glenn whispered in her ear.
“Aggh… Th-that tickles…”
“Arahnia. It’s all right,” Glenn said. His head was fuzzy and spinning from the sake. Perhaps that was why he was able to utter words that he never would have thought of under normal circumstances. “It’s all right. I love you, and so does Sapphee.”
“D-Doc?”
“I don’t want you to say that you’re fine being a mistress… Don’t think you should keep your distance in case something happens, or that you don’t need me to like you… No matter what happens, I’m here for you,” Glenn told her.
Arahnia just listened to him, dumbfounded by a combination of alcohol and humiliation.
She listened to Glenn’s words and couldn’t come up with her own.
Glenn could see right through her. He knew she was trying to keep their relationship casual. He knew she was continually prioritizing Sapphee and Tisalia, making sure that he didn’t care about her any more than necessary.
She’d always thought this day would come—when she’d hurt someone she loved because of her bandit mother. She thought it best to stay a mistress and separate herself from Glenn and Sapphee, so she wouldn’t cause them any future trouble.
But—
Glenn not only saw right through that—he declared that he would always be by her side. He never wanted them to be separated again, like what happened with Sapphee before.
“Ugh…” Arahnia held Glenn tight.
She’d been so sure he would never notice. She’d thought, based on how he behaved, that Sapphee would always come first for him—but she’d been happy with that. She loved Sapphee anyway.
But, Arahnia thought to herself, the fact that she wasn’t completely immune to jealousy was a testament to how much she truly loved Glenn. And it couldn’t be helped.
“You’re hopeless.”
Arahnia decided right then and there that she would never let him go. No matter what happened, they would be together, as if bound to each other by a spider’s web.
“Okay, okay, okay!” Sapphee opened the shoji door. She jumped in between Glenn and Arahnia, not willing to let them continue for even one second more than necessary. “We have plenty of thread. That’s enough! All done, the end!”
She threw her arms around Glenn, her jealousy on full display. Arahnia laughed inside. She knew that Glenn loved Sapphee the most, no matter what she did, and it was adorable that Sapphee couldn’t contain her jealousy, despite that.
This is how we should be.
Arahnia thought they could be happy forever, if they just stayed like this.
“Huh?”
“Doc fell asleep.”
The sake must have been too strong for him, because Glenn was snoring in Sapphee’s arms. It was only to be expected after consuming that much alcohol, since he didn’t normally drink.
“I’m…a little tired too.” Arahnia was lightheaded.
“Hey, Arahnia—are you okay?”
“Fine, fine.” She laughed, but she was unsteady. Sapphee narrowed her eyes.
“What did the Doctor say to you?”
“Er.”
“I knew it. Ugh, unbelievable. He’s never said anything important to me.” Sapphee wrapped her tail around Glenn, lifting him. She laid him on the futon.
“No, I mean, er…”
“Oh, my. You’re flustered, Arahnia.” Tisalia laughed, having stuck her head out from the shoji to see what was happening.
It was useless. Arahnia would no longer be able to hide anything from these two women—the women who loved the same man as her.
In the past, it had always been Arahnia who smoothed everything over. But she wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.
“Ugh, I hate this…” Surrendering, Arahnia covered her bright red face.
Sapphee and Tisalia watched her, amused.