Chapter 398.


    <strong>Chapter 398. A Heart-Pounding Day Together with My Girlfriend: Things Get Steamy Down by the Stream. (4/5)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">Though I was feeling pretty lightheaded. Her nails had cut into the skin on my back earlier and I’d been bleeding a bit from my back for a while now. It wasn’t too deep or anything so the bleeding had stopped, but there was definitely still blood visible. Rosa’s fingernails didn''t have any blood on them because they’d been under the water when it happened and the blood had been washed away.


    <span style="font-weight:400">One reason I sat up so quickly before was because the water that got into the cuts stung and I was concerned I’d lose too much blood if I hadn’t.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa’s expression turned glum as she stared at her fingernails and mumbled, “I’m always so careful, but I still messed up. This is terrible.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s really not.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It is! We’re out of the city, what if it gets infected? We have to sterilize it right away.” She said worriedly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hold up, I don’t have that sort of strange fetish.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">It took her a second before she understood what I meant.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I didn’t mean like that! I brought a first aid kit, there’s a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in it. Hurry up, let''s get back. Actually, no, it’s fine, wait right here. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa stood up, flustered, and ran over to the rock with her sandals. She hopped out of the water onto the rock. She wiped her feet on the surface of the rock to dry them off before she slipped her sandals on and sprinted into the thicket of trees.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She didn’t even bother to change into her clothes. Seeing her in such a panic and how she was worried about me, I didn’t know how to describe the way it made me feel. Was I a bit happy that she cared? Maybe I was.


    <span style="font-weight:400">But I also didn’t think she needed to overreact like this. It would have been fine even if it wasn’t treated immediately. It could have waited until after we changed back into our clothes and got back to the campsite together.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I didn’t bother to sit still as Rosa told me to. I stood up, headed over to the rock I left my own clothes and shoes on top of and jumped from the water onto the rock the same way Rosa had to avoid getting dirt stuck to the bottom of my feet. I’d done so to avoid ruining the inside of my shoes with mud. I wiped the soles of my feet dry on the side of the rock, then shook them to send the remaining water flying. Once I slipped into my shorts and long pants, pulled up my socks, and had my shoes back on, a tree beach snapped a short distance away.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing? I told you not to move,” Rosa scolded anxiously.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When I turned my head in the direction of the thicket, she was beside a tree, stopped in ce, with the medkit in hand. I naturally retorted, “I’m not a kid. It’s not like you stabbed me with a knife through my chest and I’m on the verge of bleeding out… yet.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yet? What’s that supposed to mean? Do you think I’m going to do that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then why’d you say that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It was a slip of the tongue. Don’t mind it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Whatever, now’s not the time for this. Sit down.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa hurried over to my side while I did as she requested and took a seat on top of the rock.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m… sorry.” She whispered under her breath from behind as she ced her hand on my back. She sounded extremely bitter.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not a big deal. It’s not like I haven’t been cut by your fingernail before.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But it didn’t hurt that time, right? I removed my special pain-numbing nail polish when we were at the restaurant earlier today and I didn’t reapply a new coat after that. It must have hurt when they cut into your skin this time. I… feel awful now… I wanted us to both feel good just now, but in the end, I got carried away, hurt you instead, then went and felt good all by myself,” she exined in a glum tone.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I don’t mind dealing with a bit of pain. It really didn’t even hurt that much. It was like a prick with a needle.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re just trying to make me feel better…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“And what’s wrong with that? Do you think your boyfriend wants to see you getting all depressed over something pointless?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not pointless. What if I’m not careful and I mess up again? What if next time it’s something way worse? What if I identally cut you when we’re asleep or when we do it. If I cut your throat with my nails and it’s not something small enough for a bandaid to easily patch up?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It hasn’t happened until now.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Because I’ve always been extremely careful. But… if I lose myself in the heat of the moment the way I did just now… it scares me. I should… really just clip my nails. What am I even still keeping them sharp for? It’s not like I need them sharp... if I be a teacher instead of an assassin.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well… that’s certainly true. You don’t need them…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah… I don’t need-”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But! I like them as they are.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? You… like them as they are? But… why? They’re just… inconvenient.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, firstly, I’m opposed to the idea of defanging a tiger.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not an animal.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, you’re certainly not. But you see, there’s something that annoys me from the bottom of my heart.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Annoys you? What?” Uncertain, she questioned back.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, you remember how I like to read?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, what about it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Stories where an overpowered woman hooks up with a guy and suddenly bes weak to the point any random thug on the street bes a threat to their entire existence annoy the living hell out of me. I genuinely can’t stand them. Really, why do they even exist at that point? They were so strong one second, but the next, they were suddenly being kidnapped by every Tom, Dick, and Harry off the street. For the love of god, for my sanity, don’t be that girl, Rosa.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I squeezed my forehead as I recalled all of the stupid female characters in the novels I’d ever read that turned into useless deadweights the instant they became cursed by that cursed damsel-in-distress syndrome the second they hooked up with a guy. They’d eventually be left behind andpletely forgotten by the author.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Damn it, don’t get me attached to them if they’re just going to turn useless and be forgotten forever!


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Pfft. Hehehe.” Rosa giggled behind me.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What’s so funny?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How seriously you said all of that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, I’m being serious. So don’t go and think about clipping your nails behind my back.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But... they’re a major inconvenience for me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then be inconvenienced. If you go and do it, I’m not going to lie and tell you I like them dull when I prefer them sharp. It’d be the same if you suddenly went and cut your hair short. I’m not going to put on a fake smile and tell you you look better with short hair when my preference is girls with long hair.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Why’d you suddenly bring up hair length?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s another pet peeve I have. Girls in stories I’ve read who cut their hair short to show their conviction, I want to p them silly for dumbass logic like that. So just like your hair, your fingernails are the same. You’re perfectly fine as you are now.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But if I cut you…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then I can only me myself for that since I’m the one being selfish here. It’s no one else’s fault but my own, not yours.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“...” Rosa’s hand slid down my back in silence before I felt her lips press down on the center of my back.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Kissing it to make it better.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do I look like a baby to you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m going to sterilize it now with hydrogen peroxide. Try not to cry or else I really will start calling you a baby.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">A few seconds after she said that I felt a wet cotton cue tip press into one of the cuts on my back. I grit my teeth firmly together as it seriously stung like a bitch.