SHC Chapter 15

15. Deodorizing Work

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His breath touched my skin.

I flinched from the ticklish sensation and hunched my left shoulder, pushing at him with both hands on reflex. But he didn’t budge. Just like Kiss, the ringmaster was impossibly strong.

After a moment, when I finally stopped resisting, he pressed his face deeper against my neck, and his lips touched the skin there.

“Ringmaster?”

I could understand the mouth-to-mouth part for removing the scent, but this was different. Especially the neck, such a sensitive spot, it was far too embarrassing.

“Um, Ringmaster.”

“Were you scared?”

“…What?”

He pulled back a little, resting his face on my shoulder as he asked.

But if he was only going to ask questions, why wasn’t he letting go?

“I said, were you scared?”

His voice echoed quietly against my left ear. I hesitated. If I told the truth, my pride would take a hit, but if I lied, he might expect me to handle situations like this alone from now on.

So I made a decision.

“Yes.”

It was better to admit I was scared.

Pride doesn’t feed you or keep you alive. Personal experience had thoroughly proven that.

“I… was scared.”

My lips wouldn’t move at first, so my answer came out hesitantly.

“……”

The ringmaster didn’t respond to what I said. Instead, the hand cupping my right cheek slid back and gripped the back of my head.

So he really was going to do it.

My body went stiff. As he lifted my head slightly, I squeezed my eyes shut.

My shoulders felt lighter, but the air grew heavier. The thought of his face right in front of mine made my stomach twist as I clenched my mouth shut. My throat bobbed as I swallowed.

He said nothing. But his silence only made the noise in my chest louder.

‘Is he coming closer? Why isn’t he doing anything? Is he not going to continue?’

Part of me wanted to peek, but I was too scared.

‘How long is he just going to…’

A faint sigh brushed my lips. My mouth tightened instinctively. My body tensed so hard it felt wooden, and the ringmaster placed his free hand on my left shoulder, not on top of it, but right at the joint where the arm began, gripping lightly.

Another nervous swallow.

Closing my eyes was a mistake. It made all my other senses sharper.

But opening them? No way. Not with him close enough that I could feel his breath. Keeping them shut was the lesser evil.

What was I supposed to do? Why wasn’t he doing anything?

‘Hurry up, what are you waiting for?’

Just as frustration built, and I started cursing him silently, something touched my overly-sensitive lips. I jerked my head instinctively, but the hand holding my head kept me from moving.

The shock faded quickly. I remembered the purpose of this whole thing.

I parted my lips as he’d instructed before. They trembled as they slowly opened, reflecting my nervousness completely.

As soon as there was a gap, he began to suck gently. Much softer than last time. Probably because he’d realized I was a human who could die if I couldn’t breathe, so he started very carefully.

‘Ugh…’

But that only made it feel weirder.

He sucked lightly and slowly, then pulled back so I could breathe, then came back again seconds later.

‘Should I ask him to just do it strongly all at once?’

It almost felt like a sweet kiss… almost, making my whole body tingle.

‘No. Last time, I nearly suffocated.’

It wasn’t a real kiss but a pulling-extraction process, so I kept my eyes shut tight and followed the rhythm of his breath.

When he pulled away, I inhaled. When his mouth touched mine again, I slowly exhaled. All my breath flowed directly into him.

Then, when I hesitated for a moment, the ringmaster tilted his head, trying to realign our mouths. The hand on my shoulder had somehow slid down and was now gripping the small of my back.

Oh. Wait.

‘Our stomachs are touching.’

Even with my eyes closed, I could feel my pupils shaking.

He pulled me closer by the waist, making our stomachs press together. Stomach-level was fine, barely, but lower stomach… absolutely not.

And since our middles were touching, naturally our chests and hip areas also brushed. The chest was fine, flat as it was, but below that…

‘Hey, seriously…’

I placed my hands on his side and pushed upward, sliding between our bodies until my palms reached his upper chest and pushed.

Because of my movement, the ringmaster missed the timing to inhale; his lips stayed pressed to mine, but he slowly leaned back. Our bodies separated, but his lips remained against mine, with no breath exchanged.

Feeling bad for interrupting the deodorizing process, I gently grabbed his arm.

‘…?’

His breath exhaled into my mouth, and then…

He pulled away completely.

“……?”

I hesitated to open my eyes and look at him, but then his lips came back so abruptly that I let out a small sound without meaning to.

The ringmaster froze again.

Had the rhythm been completely ruined?

“Um, wait, hey…”

In the middle of speaking, I was suddenly sucked on again, and another sound escaped me. But when he halted immediately, I hurried to speak. With his lips still on mine, I grabbed his face with both hands and pushed him off to get him to detach.

He quietly let go. I pushed him a little farther away and opened my eyes.

But even then, the distance was close. His one hand was still on the back of my head, and the other on my lower back, there was nothing I could do about that.

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I’ll stay still.”

The ringmaster’s expression was blank. But something behind that stillness wavered. Was he holding back anger? No… not anger. It felt more like he was suppressing something else.

His gaze, which had been fixed on my eyes, dropped downward. It looked like he was staring at my lips.

“We have to do a bit more.”

He said that, and without giving me time to respond, pressed close again. His mouth opened wider this time and covered mine with far more force.

‘He’s rougher than before.’

I couldn’t tell if he wanted to finish quickly or if he was… excited. But his movements were clearly more intense.

Awkwardly holding his face, I let the prolonged mouth-to-mouth continue.

If someone saw us, they’d think it was a real kiss. The position was almost romantic, and because his lips kept moving slightly, opening, tightening, it made me overly sensitive in a way I couldn’t define.

I didn’t know whether it was my body reacting, or my mind, or something entirely different. When he tightened his grip and essentially pulled me into an embrace, my heart pounded so hard it hurt.

This was basically a kiss, wasn’t it?

His lips pressing and sliding against mine, no matter how I looked at it, it felt closer to an actual kiss than a scent-removal technique. He was definitely sucking, but did he really need to move his lips like this?

“Ugh.”

Our teeth brushed. A sharp sound slipped from my mouth, and the ringmaster immediately pulled back.

I was too afraid to open my eyes.

From a small distance away, the ringmaster told me we were done. His voice sounded lower than usual.

Somehow, the air inside the shed felt warmer. I opened my eyes while lowering my head.

‘This… no way. It can’t be, right?’

There wasn’t anything between the ringmaster and me. Nothing even remotely like that.

I just slept in the guest room of his lodging, woke up when he woke me, did whatever work he assigned, ate separately, washed separately, walked around separately, and whenever my body got wet, he yelled at me to dry off with a towel.

If anything, it was like a servant-master relationship.

So why did we just do something like that? Was the only purpose really to remove the scent?

“Is the scent completely gone?”

My voice came out muffled.

“Yes. It’s gone.”

As soon as he replied, I rambled to break the awkwardness. I wasn’t even filtering myself. I was too confused, unsure if he’d been excited because of me or not.

“It’s gone, huh. Um, what about the human scent? How does that get detected? Oh… did you give me this outfit on purpose so it would be okay if someone saw me walking around in the daytime?”

I also had no brakes.

“And, uh… Kiss is the vice ringmaster. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Since I was staring at the ground while talking nonstop, I couldn’t see his expression at all.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

At his voice, my words dried up. My mind went blank.

Honestly, if he was going to do the scent-removal, it would’ve been easier if he’d just sucked hard like the first day. Doing it like this only caused weird misunderstandings.

While I dug myself into a hole after bombarding him with questions, the ringmaster asked me something instead.

“Aren’t you curious about your missing-person report?”

My head snapped up at that.

The ringmaster looked straight at me with his one visible blue eye and continued speaking.

“You’re a strange kid. You’re not curious about the things you should be.”

Then he threw me a sidelong glance and told me to give Samdu more food before leaving the shed.

Left alone, I stared blankly at Samdu’s cage. Inside were three empty bowls, licked spotless, and Samdu panting happily like someone saddened that the popcorn at the movie theater was gone.