Jhin obediently turned around. Megumin clutched her chest, feeling as though her heart was about to leap out through her throat. She didn't dare even breathe loudly, her toes curling up tight from nervousness.
She'd originally thought that even soaking in the spring beside him while wearing a swimsuit wouldn't stir up any nervousness at all. Yet the very instant she walked to the edge of the hot spring and felt his gaze, emotions like panic, bashfulness, unease, and worry all came surging up into her heart at once.
Does this swimsuit of mine look good on me in his eyes?
Wasn't picking this kind of bikini—the sort that requires a good figure—just a little beyond my abilities?
When it came to her figure, Megumin had never had any confidence; you could even go so far as to call it an inferiority complex. So when she'd discovered that Jhin had a special fetish for girls' feet, she'd actually felt a little pleased instead, thinking that he wasn't the sort of stupid man whose head was stuffed full of big breasts.
Inside the Gourmet Edifice, she had the worst figure of them all. Pecorine's monster-tier huge bust went without saying, and even Kyaru was a size or two bigger than her. Although she'd never made a careful comparison, she had a lot of confidence in her eye for this sort of thing—so much confidence that it made her feel rather miserable. Only the flat-chested would ever be this sensitive about bust size.
As for Kokkoro... comparing figures with the eternally-loli elven race was purely an exercise in self-deception.
This was also the reason she'd made an excuse to come back and soak in the hot spring. She worried that, upon seeing the scene of Pecorine's big puddings bobbing up on the surface of the water, she would die on the spot with tears welling in her eyes.
Jhin hadn't heard the sound of anyone entering the water for a good while, and felt it a bit strange, but he still didn't turn around. "Megumin, are you still there?"
"Ah... mm... I'm here... I'm stretching my body. Don't turn around, okay? Wait until I'm in the spring before we talk."
"Oh."
Having fobbed him off with an excuse, Megumin took a deep, throat-trembling breath, then stepped into the hot spring and slowly sat down, only speaking once the water had risen past her shoulders: "It's fine now, you can turn around."
"Mm."
On the misty surface of the hot spring, the black-haired girl glanced about bashfully left and right, simply not daring to meet his eyes, and her spot was at the very outermost edge of the spring. With a smile in his voice, Jhin asked her, "Is this you being all embarrassed?"
Wh... who's embarrassed!?
"Then why are you hiding yourself so thoroughly?"
"A maiden's body isn't something to just be shown to anyone! If you want to look, then let me look at you first!"
"Does this count as you being a perv toward me?"
"This is called an equivalent exchange! What, you don't dare?"
Jhin shrugged and borrowed the words Suou Amane had once said to him: "My body's got nothing so shameful to hide."
As he finished speaking, the body that had been reclining against the edge of the spring sat up straight, revealing the greater part of himself.
"Yah!" Megumin reacted swiftly, raising a hand to cover her eyes—yet she couldn't help opening a sliver of a gap between her fingers to peek through it. Under the influence of the water vapor, Jhin's body—well-proportioned and full of aesthetic beauty, like a marble sculpture—took on an added touch of hazy beauty, and the gap between her fingers gradually widened from at first only letting a few strands of hair through to revealing a pair of eyes that glowed with red light.
A... a boy's body can actually look this good too!?
"Gulp." For who knows what kind of psychological reason, Megumin abruptly swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and the sound was so loud that even Jhin across from her could hear it.
Geez, don't tell me looking at me made you hungry?
Jhin shrank his body back into the water. Facing that head seemingly suspended above the water's surface and glowing with a glaring red light, even he felt a bit of pressure: "If you're hungry, go eat something. Don't stare at me and gulp—I'm not an ingredient."
"Eat your head!" Megumin was beside herself with embarrassed indignation. How had she failed to keep her own mouth in check? Why had she gone and swallowed her saliva for no reason at all? Didn't that make her look like a pervert?
"Anyway... you've seen my body now, so it's your turn, right?"
"Look, then! Go ahead!" Megumin's words carried plenty of bravado, but in reality she stood up and then immediately sat back down, the whole process taking less than a second, after which she fixed an even more glaringly bright pair of eyes on Jhin: "That makes us even now."
"Why are you so worked up? It's not like I'm going to eat you."
"That's hard to say..."
"..."
The open-air hot spring suddenly sank into silence, and music coming from who-knows-where began to play, filling up the soundless space.
Megumin looked at Jhin, whose face showed no real change in expression, and said out of nowhere: "What do you think?"
"Hm? About what?"
"I'm asking you what you think."
"Like I said, what is it you're even asking about..."
"My... figure..."
"Huh? Say it louder. I'm this far away from you, and there's music playing on top of it—I can't hear you at all!"
"My figure..."
"Lady, I genuinely can't hear you. Are you about to say something boring again?"
Boring? He actually dared to call my figure boring!?
Megumin automatically ignored the issue of her own voice being too quiet, deciding that Jhin was toying with her. In an instant her anger value smashed straight through the upper-limit gauge. She shot to her feet and charged at him with a look like she meant to fight him to the death: "You actually rated my figure as boring!?"
"When did I say that?"
"You just said 'boring'!"
Jhin grabbed the two claws she'd thrust toward him and explained with quite the headache: "I said I couldn't hear clearly what you were saying, and asked if it wasn't going to be something boring. I wasn't saying your figure was boring."
"Isn't that exactly what you're saying right now!"
"Would you actually listen to what people say..." Right now his head was twice its size. He had no idea what on earth had set off this chuunibyou mage, that she'd suddenly react this strongly to this kind of topic: "Your figure isn't boring! The parts that should be well-proportioned are well-proportioned, and your thighs feel surprisingly fleshy to the touch too..."
Megumin held the posture of shoving palms against him, and said with a cold, detached look in her eyes: "Keep going!"
"Huh?"
"I'm telling you to keep going!"
Jhin was left with no choice but to keep praising her in a positive direction while looking her over, and she tacitly permitted this behavior, as though she figured only this counted as telling the truth.
Apart from her chest being a bit barren, no faults could be picked out anywhere else on Megumin's figure. Set off by the black bikini, her delicate, fair skin—smooth as congealed cream—was all the more dazzling. Beads of water slid down her skin, made a little swirl in her cute belly button, and continued sliding downward. A pair of firm, elastic thighs gave off a faint shimmering glow like ivory.
How could a figure like this ever earn the rating of "boring"?
Jhin felt as though the inside of his mouth was about to turn into the Sahara Desert, yet Megumin still remained silent. It wasn't until he raised his head that he discovered the other party's two eyes had turned into mosquito-coil spirals, spinning round and round endlessly—by the look of it, she'd been praised into a daze.
Feeling both exasperated and amused, he helped her sit down beside him, then rested both hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the hot spring.
Before long, the now-revived Megumin lightly poked Jhin's shoulder with her finger.
He opened his left eye and shot her a glance: "What is it? Don't tell me you want me to rate your figure again?"
"It's... it's not that. I just wanted to ask... those things you said just now, were they all sincere?"
"Of course they came from the heart."
"Then..."
"Let me say this up front—I have a girlfriend."
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone