Chapter 24: Arc 2 Ch. 12: Back Where it All Began (15+)

As eager as I was to start using all my newly acquired resources once I had teleported back into the city proper, my exhausted body was begging me to lie down and rest for the night. A convenient thought of returning to that familiar tavern where I lodged yesterday tempted me, but I just had to try checking up on her.

It felt like half a lifetime ago since I had first traveled this same path through the city and stepped into The Roach and Rat this morning. The once packed, lively adventurer’s guild was now eerily quiet and empty in the dead of night. Only two figures stood in the dim light of a lantern by the front desk: that clerk Pascal I met earlier, and the raven-haired girl I was looking for. Except now that this nerve-wracking moment had finally arrived, the words caught in my throat as the two of them turned to face me at the sound of the front door groaning open on its hinges.

Pascal stared at me with his mouth half-open as if he were seeing a ghost. Alice gave nearly the same expression, her indigo eyes now also a bit watery and surrounded by a tinge of red.

“H-Hey, long time no see?” I tried.

The flickering light revealed a handful of papers laid out on the counter between them. I stepped up to take a closer look, finding what looked like a form for making a request with the guild and a drawing that looked kind of like… me?

“What do you mean, ‘missing person?!’ And what’s with this crappy reward! Am I really only worth ten silver to y—hrrk!”

Alice knocked the wind out of me when she suddenly tackled me with a hug, almost knocking me to the floor as well until I steadied myself with a hand on the counter. She buried her trembling head in my shoulder with a breathless sigh of relief, hugging me tighter and tighter like she never wanted to let me go.

“Hey, it’s alright,” I said, returning her embrace. “I’m fine.”

My breasts had long passed the point of ‘squished’ and were now dangerously approaching ‘crushed’ within her overly snug embrace, but just this once…

Pascal blushed and turned away while scratching the back of his head. “Uh, you two girls need a room?”

***

Alice still hadn’t said a word by the time we made our way up the creaking stairs and into our lodging. Even though I hadn’t expected much here compared to the ‘high-end’ place I’d stayed at last night, I really didn’t feel like suggesting we try somewhere else at the moment. Sure enough, the drab room and single bed weren’t even half the size of…

“Just one bed?” I accidentally thought aloud.

Alice fidgeted next to me. “It… It should be big enough for both of us. I’m pretty used to it here, and—I mean, we could always ask for another room! If you, um…”

“It’s okay as long as you don’t mind,” I sighed. “I think I’m too tired to care.”

I glanced down at my dirty, tattered, and now effectively ruined dress. Tomorrow I would definitely be outfitting myself with some new gear, although I could only fantasize about the available options with my new funding right now. I was almost entirely lost in thought when I noticed Alice had already set down her rucksack at the foot of the bed and finished taking off her robes, the soft moonlight from a window illuminating all of her gorgeous, fair skin—except for the part below her waist covered by a pair of dark panties.

“Beryl, do you want me to help untie your corset?” she offered.

Why couldn’t she have asked before getting naked?!

Well, even if this dress wasn’t hopelessly dirtied, it still wasn’t exactly the greatest sleepwear. At this point, I didn’t see any decent reason to refuse her offer for the second time today.

After I set down my own bag and gave her a quick nod, Alice got to work untying the corset’s lace behind me. Somewhere during the crazy events from earlier, the corset must have gotten a bit looser than it had been tied originally, but nonetheless I felt a satisfying release when the front of the dress fell slack and my heavy breasts hung free. At least, I felt what relief there was to feel given the way they were both still aching from all that compression between us downstairs…

Us?

For some reason, an anxious bout of self-consciousness gripped me all at once. What was I thinking?! I really just wanted to go to bed for the night! I rushed to pull the rest of my dress up and off me before throwing my ‘old’ crappy starter tunic back on as fast as possible, but if I turned around and saw Alice staring at me—

“Beryl, what’s wrong?” she asked with her usual uncanny perception.

Ugh… There was probably no point to keep avoiding the issue anymore. I crossed my arms under my freshly clothed breasts and turned around only to confirm that she had been staring.

“What? Do they look weird, or something?”

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Her cheeks instantly reddened. “N-No, it’s not like that! I, I just…”

“And that really hurt earlier, you know!” I said. “They’re still kind of sore.”

The way Alice bit her lip and glanced away almost made me worried that she was mad until she finally spoke up. “I’m sorry, Beryl, I couldn’t help it! I was just so glad, you don’t know how glad I was to see that you were okay, and… you even came back…”

Her eyes looked like she had wanted to add ‘for me’ at the end yet couldn’t quite get the words out. There were still so many things I didn’t get about her, but I couldn’t be mad at her over something like this.

“Hey, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just been a really long day for me. And for both of us now, I guess.”

Alice finally smiled and let her tense shoulders relax, taking a step toward me and caressing my arms.

“I… I want to start over. Do you think we can try again?”

My heart started beating faster and faster. Even though I had a bad feeling about this, I asked anyway.

“Try what?”

Slowly, carefully, Alice slipped her hands under my arms and hugged me with a gentler embrace. As she rested her head on my shoulder, I felt her small, bare breasts pressing through my top against my own larger pair. I found myself wrapping my arms around her again, sliding my hands across the soft skin of her back. While Alice passionately hugged my chest tight with her body, that familiar intoxicating, euphoric sensation coursed through me, this time burning brighter than ever before. Another sigh of satisfaction escaped me when a moment of blissful oblivion took over my mind, and all the day’s accumulated tension began to melt away. And from the way she was breathing, too…

“Is that better?” she whispered with a hot breath on my neck.

Oh God, this was getting dangerous. Whatever it was, I didn’t think I would ever be able to tell what was really going on inside her head. And I didn’t want to imagine what might have happened if I were topless in her sensual embrace, or all the terrifying unknowns that would happen after I got deliriously exhausted, or…!

I gave her one last squeeze. “We should probably try to get some sleep…”

***

Alice insisted she preferred to get in bed without wearing even a nightgown due to the thick bed covers and because ‘it, um, gets kind of warm up here at night.’ I could at least agree with the first part, and I had no desire to debate the second. Then I realized we also had to share just one pillow, not to mention the far more pressing issue in an uncomfortably literal sense.

“Are you sure you have enough room?” I asked Alice, now tucked in between the wall and me.

Her cheeks flushed red while she fidgeted awkwardly like there was something she desperately wanted to say. Or do, as it turned out, because she eventually worked up the courage to answer by snuggling closer and leaning her head on my shoulder.

“It’s a little better like this,” she whispered with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

I’m seriously going to lose it if she keeps this up right now! But then again, even though her hair was tickling my neck and I could feel her breath on my chest, maybe losing your mind once in a while wasn’t such a bad thing…

I gently wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in—just a little closer.

“Good night, Alice.”

End of Arc Two: The Shortcut

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