Side Story: Other World – 9
The next morning.
“Hehe, big brother! Do you need anything?”
“Are you out of your mind? Just call me normally, not crazy big brother.”
“Understood! I’m sorry, oppa!”
“Hey. Get some fresh water for Aurora.”
“Yes! Leave it to me! Oppa!”
“Aurora says she can’t grab the side dishes that are far away…”
“I’ll grab them and give them to my sister-in-law!”
“…”
“…”
Usually, Yujin Baek wouldn’t even look at me or would just give me the finger and go back to her own business, but now she’s voluntarily serving me. Our parents sat there with their mouths agape.
This continued not just when the meal started, but even after it ended, when Aurora and I were resting separately on the sofa.
“Son, why is your sister acting like that? Did Yujin do something wrong while we were out drinking and went to bed?”
Mom, clearly baffled by this unpredictable behavior, called me into the kitchen, whispering cautiously so that Aurora wouldn’t hear.
Dad, who seldom shows any emotions, looked thoroughly flustered. It’s rare for Dad to be caught off guard like this.
Aurora maintained her characteristic beaming smile as she sipped the coffee Mom made, apologizing for getting drunk by herself last night.
My sister, if it had a tail, would be wagging it incessantly next to “sister-in-law,” asking if she needed anything.
Since my relationship with my girlfriend seemed to be going pretty well, I guess she’s decided to target the other side first, stacking all sorts of unlikable traits against me.
“Well, she went to bed before Mom did. She probably saw my girlfriend and came to her senses or something.”
“They say drastic changes in a person can be a bad omen. I hope nothing’s really wrong.”
Mom had a completely bewildered expression, but since she couldn’t perfectly explain this behavior either, it seemed like we were in a wait-and-see mode.
‘Seriously, she should tone it down a bit.’
I clicked my tongue inwardly. If a person is changing for the better, why worry? It must be that my sister usually behaves so poorly that such a reaction seems warranted.
“Hey. Don’t bother my girlfriend and just go sit in your room.”
“Yes, oppa! Sister-in-law, please rest comfortably!”
“Dear, what should we do? Yujin seems to have changed in some weird way.”
“…Let’s just wait and see. Juwon’s right; she might have regained her senses seeing that girl.”
“Yujin?”
As I watched my sister dash upstairs, my mom and dad whispered between themselves with skepticism, while I sat next to the now-empty Aurora.
Amidst the chaotic atmosphere at home, Aurora spoke up first with a question.
“What did you do to your sister yesterday?”
“Did Minerva not show you?”
“Delta… No, Juwon, I only saw a part where you asked your sister if she wanted to grow her breasts. I couldn’t see what happened afterward.”
“Really didn’t see it? Why?”
“Minerva looked in first and laughed a lot, then said it wasn’t something she should show and turned off her Surveillance Magic. I don’t know if she watched alone afterward, but I guess she didn’t.”
Is this her way of protecting my sister’s honor?
Given Minerva’s personality, it might be more for some other purpose, but that’s hard to say for sure, just like with Ceres.
I heard she had such a brutal experiment that she achieved a 100% synchronization rate with her clone, causing some ‘side effects’ for a day. I didn’t really want to think about what those side effects were.
“It wasn’t anything that huge. Just a little trade. You know how bad the relationship is between her and me, right?”
“Of course I know. I watched everything from the first to the last minute. The atmosphere was so that you made sure to mention that she originally had that personality, so if you hadn’t, it wouldn’t just be good comments but bad ones too. Especially your aunt didn’t seem pleased from the start.”
It was fortunate that Kaiquilia didn’t outright show her distaste when we met yesterday.
Well, considering how she openly curses at me and displays an utter lack of manners, there’s surely a limit to how much my sister can put up with being called that.
“Here’s the problem. What kind of deal did I propose that made such a brattish kid do a complete 180 in attitude? Here’s a hint: think about what physical changes happened to her compared to yesterday.”
“Hmm…”
Putting her hand on her chin and pondering, Aurora soon realized with an epiphany.
“I got it. It’s about her breasts, right? They seemed bigger than when I watched with Surveillance Magic yesterday. I thought I was seeing things, but clearly I wasn’t.”
“Correct. That was the trade. I promised to make her breasts grow.”
I checked the direction of my parents. They were still having a conversation with half worried expressions.
“Is that okay? You said you didn’t want to request a perception change from the Goddess because you wanted to minimize interference with this world.”
“It’s not really a matter of a perception change. It’s not about manipulating something that doesn’t exist; I just gave a slight hint, and she got it all mixed up on her own.”
Aurora looked utterly confused. I held up three fingers.
“Let’s use the coffee you’re drinking as an example. There are three main ways to change perception in that situation.”
Then, I folded down a finger with each explanation.
“The first is to make her recognize it as slightly better coffee. The second is to make her think she’s drinking a different beverage. The third is to make her believe she isn’t drinking coffee at all. Which of these would require the most interference?”
“Definitely the third. You have to make something that exists not exist.”
“Right. It’s the third one. And what I used on my sister is closer to the first one.”
“Introducing us to your parents in such a complicated way as that?”
“Well… It’s not exactly the same, but since the purpose is similar, it roughly fits. Ultimately, the goal is to minimize interference in this world.”
Aurora nodded, looking like she completely understood.
“I only told my sister, ‘there’s a massage to make your breasts grow.’ Massages like that exist in our world too. I don’t know if they’re really effective or not.”
Why would I know if the methods for breast enhancement work?
“Oh, so then Juwon, you personally gave your sister a massage— Oh, sorry. That was a slip of the tongue.”
Thinking she messed something up all by herself, Aurora immediately apologized when she saw my expression go sour in real-time.
“Aurora, that’s a beast kid, not a human. She did the massage herself. What kind of beast would I ask to touch her breasts? I’d rather cut off my hands.”
“If you want to touch some breasts, you can just touch yours, right? Isn’t that right?”
“Uh, yeah. That makes sense.”
Her cheeks flushed slightly, and her left arm slipped suggestively under her chest fat. In the world of Eclipse, she’s close to average, but here she’s certainly well-endowed.
When I teasingly touched it, the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Oh, do you want to see what happened yesterday?”
I pulled out my smartphone and entered the gallery. Among the sea of screenshots and strategy captures of Brightest Darkness 4, I found the video at the top and played it.
—Please! Just a little bit more! I beg you!
—Will you do it? ‘I beg you’ is a little short, isn’t it?
—Please! I really beg you!
—Well, I don’t know. Should I do it or not?
—Damn it. What would it cost you to just comply…?
—Hmm, I think I just heard someone say ‘damn’. Was that just my imagination?
—Oh, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, oppa! That was a mistake! Just once! Aaaaah! Please don’t go into the room! Oppa! Oppa! Big brother! Biiiig broooother!
Then, the video showed my sister collapsing to the floor, sobbing and clinging to my pants.
That’s a completely expected reaction. After all, she’d noticed her breasts had grown just a little due to my instructions. There was no way her eyes could remain unturned.
The massage was a fib; I’d momentarily cast healing magic at the right timing, but still…
“By the way, isn’t there a massage that makes breasts grow as soon as you receive it? What if your sister starts to suspect something?”
“Now that her breasts have grown, who cares about that small detail?”
“Ah…”
The reality of whether or not there’s a massage that instantly makes the breasts grow is not important at all. What matters is that they grew. Thanks to that, it was also pretty easy to erase the uneasiness.
There was practically no uneasiness to erase.
“I’m planning to grow it just a little at a time, and once her perception has changed sufficiently, I’m going to gift her an Enhancement Potion.”
“Enhancement Potion? But if she takes that….”
“For a duration of one day. You know I’m not gonna do anything that’d lead her on for something permanent, right?”
Aurora looked horrified at my smile.
“I’ve never seen you smile so wickedly.”
“Thanks to a 20-year-old grudge. If she had been in the same position as me, she’d probably be no different.”
After a moment of horror, Aurora became completely engrossed in the video.
It wasn’t due to the antics my sister was pulling but rather because of the sheer strangeness of the past being played back so vividly.
“Isn’t it amazing?”
“Well, yeah. There weren’t any electronic devices in my world.”
That’s because Eclipse didn’t bring some when they took the refrigerator and air conditioner.
“Come closer. I’ll take a picture of you too.”
“Uh?”
I draped my arm around Aurora’s shoulder, pulling her in, and switched the camera app to the front-facing camera. The two of us, shoulder to shoulder with Aurora’s wide-open eyes, reflected in the camera.
Seeing her own image on the smartphone, Aurora stiffened up in surprise and pressed the record button.
Click, it echoed.
“Oh my, oh my. Dear, look there.”
“Just leave them be. We don’t want to make them feel awkward.”
“Seems that way, doesn’t it?”
We could hear our parents’ voices, delighted by our little interaction. Even though they were whispering, we could hear them clear as day.
“How is it?”
“Wow…”
Aurora’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the picture of the two of us and turned to me.
“Can I take this with me later?”
I paused, wanting to say how there was no way to take it, but then nodded. Gifting them smartphones as a sort of token doesn’t sound half bad.
As long as it doesn’t spread in the Eclipse world.
Before long, the weekend came to an end, and just as our parents began to adapt to my sister’s crazy feats to grow her breasts, Mom dropped a bombshell.
“By the way, do you two have any thoughts on marriage?”
Puff—
At Mom’s bombshell remark, Iris choked with all her might.
