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Chapter 7
The 72nd June 9th.
“Good morning, Pandora-ssi.” “Doctor. What’s your name?”
Because everyone in the mansion called the doctor “Doctor,” she had never once asked for his name all this time. Whether the name spoken by “fake” him would be the real doctor’s name or his own was impossible to know, though.
“Erp… Darling.”
After a brief pause, the man spoke his name one syllable at a time.
Uttering it awkwardly as if pronouncing his own name for the first time, he opened his mouth to toss out his usual question: “Is there any pain in your eyes?”
“Erp.”
Before he could, Pandora, having softly muttered his name, reached out her arms and fumbled in the empty air.
Erp carefully caught Pandora’s flailing arms.
He must have thought she wanted support.
Taking advantage of the moment, Pandora grabbed Erp’s arm with one hand and sharply yanked his collar with the other.
With her slight strength, Erp didn’t resist and easily yielded.
As a result, Erp ended up sitting perched on the edge of Pandora’s bed.
Not stopping there, Pandora found Erp’s face and grabbed it with both hands. Then, she pulled him straight in and crashed their lips together.
“!”
Lips as red as a sweet fruit were pressed and mashed against pale pink lips.
With her eyes tightly shut and her lips pressed firmly in place, Pandora stealthily wiggled her toes.
Her heart hammered like a naughty child who had just committed a crime.
After learning that even Erp, her final hope, didn’t remember a thing, she had decided to completely change her attitude toward life.
Let’s live recklessly.
If she had no future to design a life around, she would enjoy the intense pleasures of every single passing moment.
Wasn’t there a saying: If you can’t avoid it, enjoy it.
No matter what I do, nobody remembers anyway.
Since she was going to enjoy herself, she planned to enjoy it properly from now on.
Chasing only joy and amusement, she would do whatever she pleased, wherever her heart led her.
She wouldn’t hesitate to commit bad deeds or crazy ones, either.
In that sense, Erp was the entity that currently held Pandora’s greatest interest, affection, and curiosity.
A strange existence that suddenly popped up right in front of her after she swallowed poison.
For reasons unknown, he was the sole being who genuinely worried about her and showed something akin to affection.
An existence she feared might run away or vanish.
An existence with beautiful eyes, a hot body temperature, and pretty lips.
Pandora wanted to press her lips once more against the ones that had breathed life into her.
The gods loved love.
That was why they created dating simulation games, played them, and strove to win the affection of male characters they liked, culminating in a kiss.
A kiss. What on earth was it that made the gods so wildly enthusiastic about it?
Pandora was dying of curiosity.
Yet, having actually tried it, she understood it even less than before.
Unlike when they first met, their lips parted slowly and cautiously.
Parting her lips, Pandora watched the expression of Erp, who had frozen like a rock.
For some reason, she felt her breath growing short.
This was the first time she had ever been this terrified that her poor vision prevented her from seeing her partner’s expression properly.
By 11:59:59 PM, time would turn back to morning anyway, and Erp wouldn’t even be able to imagine that such a thing had happened.
That was why she had gone ahead and done it, but… if he were to look at her with a gaze of contempt, even for a brief second, it would probably hurt a lot.
“…” “I’m sorry. I…”
Just as Pandora, unable to bear the suffocating silence, was about to stammer out some sort of excuse—
The gaze with which Erp looked at her, watching her make a crying face, instantly sank deep and heavy.
Erp’s hand wrapped around the back of Pandora’s head and pulled her closer.
Soon after, the soft surface of his lips touched hers, and Pandora’s lips were instantly swallowed between Erp’s.
Startled, Pandora grabbed onto his arms. She felt the veins protruding sharply over his thick forearms.
The hot kiss that followed was vastly different from the kisses Pandora knew.
It was a whole new world that could neither be seen nor understood through the tame, lip-pressing illustrations meant for 12-year-olds in <The Guide Love Villain’s to>.
Pandora’s eyes, which had slowly drifted open, squeezed tightly shut.
The hot breath that softly invaded swam through every corner of her mouth. The desperate movements of tangling, parting, and wrapping around each other were dizzying enough to swallow her whole body.
Her heart dropped with a thud, then vaulted back up like a high jumper.
Their overlapping lips, the heat of the large hand that had slipped through her hair, the solid arm resting beneath her small hand, and their knees brushing against the blankets.
Only a few parts were touching, yet her entire body felt prickling and tingly all over.
Pandora straightened her waist, which kept folding and collapsing. In response, Erp’s hot arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her tightly against him.
Pandora’s chest rose and fell in shallow rhythms.
A strange thrill made her shoulders shiver with goosebumps, and a dull heat pooled in her lower belly.
The comfortably cool air of the early summer morning room had grown muggy and heated up in the blink of an eye.
Clatter!
It was right then. At the sound of silver cutlery crashing loudly onto the floor, Pandora and Erp startled violently, pulled their lips apart, and sprang far apart from each other.
Both of their heads snapped toward the door where the noise had come from.
Anna, holding a tray with breakfast, was staring at the two of them with her mouth hanging wide open.
“Oh my! Oh-oh my. Oh my goodness!”
Just as she was about to cross the threshold, Anna wore a sly, beaming smile and hurriedly spun around.
“My, oh my, I have no tact! Oh my, oh my! I’m sorry! Please go right back to what you were doing!”
“Ah, wait…”
Wait. Not that. Well, actually that was it. No, wait.
While she was flustered and stammering thoughts without being able to speak, Anna’s retreating back vanished down the stairs.
A flush of burning heat scorched Pandora’s face at the embarrassing situation of being caught kissing the attending physician by her everyday maid.
Besides, to think she had been so lost in the kiss that she hadn’t even heard Anna’s noisy footsteps approaching.
However, since Anna told them to finish what they were doing, should they keep going?
“Doctor.”
Pandora called out to Erp and gestured with her hand. But Erp hesitated and refused to come close.
“Doctor?” “…”
Erp was standing far away from the bed, his back plastered flat against the wall as if he were trying to merge right into it.
With trembling hands, Erp wiped at his red-hot face.
“Pandora-ssi, this is… I’m out of my mind… I am truly sorry, I went crazy for a moment…”
Erp rattled off excuses rapidly like a rapper, but most of his words trailed off without finishing properly, scattering into the empty air.
The voice of the man, whose excitement had yet to settle, trembled erratically just like his accelerated heartbeat.
“I’m sorry.”
Apologizing once more, Erp bolted away in a rush before Pandora could even catch him.
With just a single person disappearing, the room felt as barren and hollow as an empty shell.
Pandora stared blankly at the spot where he had vanished, then idly stroked her own lips.
The sensation of another person’s warmth lingering hotly on her lips was still vivid.
Only belatedly did her face flush a brilliant red.
Only now did she realize what kind of outrageous thing she had done. And what kind of thing the other person had done, too.
Why did you kiss me back?
What was the reason he accepted this selfish, mischievous prank?
Swallowing down the questions that hovered solely on the tip of her tongue, unable to chase after him to ask, Pandora let them drop.
Today felt like it was going to be an exceptionally long day.
Morning, morning, and yet another morning.
“Good morning, Pandora-ssi.”
Pandora even grew fond of that greeting she used to dislike.
Once she checked whether he was the real doctor or the quack Erp, she would throw a tantrum or pull his arm to coax him into a kiss.
Lacking visual stimulation, she had become fixated on much more primal and direct tactile sensations.
Though he looked troubled, Erp ultimately couldn’t win against her and ended up granting her kisses.
It was a bit disappointing that they weren’t as deep as the first one, but unlike the first time, he didn’t run away and lingered by her side for a long time, so she was satisfied.
“Lady. The doctor needs to be on his way now. You know he has house calls at 9 o’clock.”
9:00 AM.
Pandora threw a stubborn fit to keep Erp from leaving.
“Doctor. I can paint even with my eyes closed. Aren’t you curious how that’s even possible?”
Yielding to Pandora’s overbearing insistence, the affectionate man took her left hand as she sat before the canvas.
He found the paints Pandora wanted and squeezed them out for her instead, held the palette, cleaned her brushes, and didn’t scold her even when she moved her fingers to slip them shyly into his, holding hands in return.
Whenever Pandora wanted, Erp became a sweet lover, an incomparable friend, and a reliable, caring guardian like a father.
From 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The time before being dragged off to the art gallery.
Pandora drank her fill of this delightful yet precarious, fluttering excitement.
However, as this state repeated over four, five, ten, and twenty times, Pandora grew increasingly tormented.
The 100th June 9th dawned.
Staring fiercely at the calendar and clock by her bedside, Pandora cursed the developers.
